Four Monday Things

I hear from a young woman in Chicago, who tells me that another young woman, a former colleague of my son's, is resigning from her job. She says that she is doing so, in a way, for him; she wants to put aside the neatly packaged life she had planned and find what she deeply desires to do.

I venture into church and run into a couple I have not seen there before; she is the secretary at the Montessori school my children attended through eighth grade. I express my surprise at seeing her, and she tells me that she and her husband were so impressed by the funeral service that they have been coming ever since. Their eyes fill with tears as they hug me.

The ground is covered with a foot of snow. Far below, a few bulbs left over from years gone by are pondering whether to shoot upward and emerge when the sun shines again and warms the earth.

My lower back aches and so do my joints. My body has no flexibility whatever, no memory of smooth and graceful movement.

We all respond as we can.