The calendars are getting full, the issues in committees and on the floor more weighty. Walking the long halls connecting the house and senate, the humor and kindness keeps it all together. We would so fall apart doing the awful things we are, if we all were not so determined to get along, to put every debate, loss and vote in the past and move on. No longer are the freshmen new. No longer is the chamber we serve in strange to any of us. There is a settling. The elections will undo this in part. They always do. It is both good and bad.
Of course I am feeling more loss now in looking at the Senate the way you do look at something you are planning to leave. My caucus feels warmer and the humor seems to find its way into our meetings and passings. We feel more like a whole than we have since I arrived here in the smaller body almost two sessions ago.
Of course all that may be my own sense of the wight lifting. Knowing you can leave something is very freeing. Whether you actually leave or not, it helps.