short flowers, voices, willows

*Nearly veered into a street sign when I spotted yellow croci in the tree row of the botanic gardens.

*Shrieky voices from children playing in the snow denuded park.

*Pussy willows.

Alice, wool, award

*Alice in "Vicar of Dibley".

*wool...wool...wool. (sigh)

*To see a person who most deserves an award actually given an award.

notice

*All day he has looked at the snow out the window and exclaimed that I certainly know when the snow and cold is coming and when it is time to start an eight hour's drive home. I glow because I have always known things and it is lovely for him to notice now.

birthday, early morning, life

*I had the happiest, happiest birthday ever I had for a long time--and so simple it was.

Museums in the morning. Sitting on a sun warmed bench in the afternoon until my bottom was numb and my nose was cold. Then up the stairs to the San Francisco Grill for a Cobb salad to eat at a table by the window. We sat looking out until the still entangled Christmas lights of the Plaza were turned on. We walked back to the hotel to read in bed.

*We woke at the same time and walked out into the dark, under the arcade to buy some coffee. The Plaza was deserted, the arcade also. Our shoes counted out rhythm on the cold bricks. Coffee. Then into the car through the Sunday sleeping city of pinon smells and animal eyes glowing in the dark and crisp air.

*Life isn't about

waiting

for the storm

to pass,

it's about

learning

to dance

in the rain.

hole

BECCA: Does it ever go away?

NAT: What?

BECCA:This feeling.

NAT: No. I don't think it does. Not for me, it hasn't.

And that's goin' on 11 years.(pause) It changes though.

BECCA: How?

NAT: I don't know. The weight of it, I guess. At some point it

becomes bearable. It turns into something you can crawl out

from under and carry around--like a brick in your pocket. And

you forget it every once in a while, but then you reach in for

whatever reason and there it is: "Oh, right. That." Which can

be awful. But not all the time. Sometimes it's kinda...not

that you like it exactly, but it's what you have instead of

your son, so you don't wanna let go of it either. So you

carry it around. And it doesn't go away, which is.....

BECCA: What

NAT: Fine...actually.

"Rabbit Hole"

temperature, veg, leaps

*The subtle discernment of temperatures in the winter. Right pinky finger numbness. Hair crackly. Toes unfelt. Nose hair frozen at inhalation.

*Cleaning out the refrigerator of old, forlorn vegetables. Into a warm nourishing soup they go.

*Small dogs leaping over snow drifts to follow.

gone

*I held her all the way in the car--wet dog smelling, limp, rolled up in a dark blue fluffy towel. It seemed that I could feel her ribs through the towel. He couldn't find a vein until the third leg. I never knew she had freckles there. I knew she could not see well and hardly could hear but that her sense of smell was still keen so I kept my hands and as much of my body as possible near her nose. Her muzzle rested on my palm. A bit of pink liquid and I felt her gone before he even placed his 'scope on her chest. My cheek nuzzled her as I kissed her good-bye. Blindly I found the door knob and stumbled out toward the car, pieces of her fur in my pocket. Through it all I kept my sunglasses pinched onto my spectacles to hide my swollen eyes, the tears dripping down my cheeks.The gem of this day is the remembrance of the pure joy she gave for seventeen years.