Life is good. Between the falls and fasts, feasts and laughter there are 3 children and more joy than I expected in such simplicity. I don’t understand the naysayers declaring my boys would not want to hug me in public (or otherwise) once they reached a certain age. They were wrong. I’m accosted on a daily basis. And when I do the accosting, it’s met with the sweetest welcome. My daughter spent hours repairing my favorite purse yesterday on the tailend of a weekend of standing watch over my drugged and bruised frame – at her insistence and with pleasure. And this was her second weekend of taking care. I’ve been that flattened by falls and extractions! The highlight of our day unfolded in my room in a pile of beautiful dresses and garments handmade by my mom too many moons ago. Marion got to pour her own light into their threads. Some things MUST be kept, if only to see the pleasure. The value is anything but practical.
And all of it bowls me over. Yes, it’s been painful. But has anyone else noticed? This is heaven. This and the myriad wonders ’round the bend. Why would we seek for a beyond, a tide to come, to bring reason to pain or loss when the only reason to anything is that we can make a feast of the moment in love, with our works, with our sewing, our hugging, our tending. It’s the guarantee of a heaven that creates a stupor of apathy, of self-deception posing comfort for losses, losses nothing, not one thing can justify. There is no such thing as compensation for any one thing. As if(!), as if it were possible.
There is only what is priceless now.
And the long walk on the beach with one of your big-hearted sons in tidal pools telling time, marking paradise for the richest paupers poising in the sand, making eternity drip drop stop and wait, ebb and flow at our feet. . .
J. Ruth Kelly 
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