We have had road trips and road trips and we are heading out on another.  We've given up school for the summer.  But somehow the kids keep learning.  Mercy's reading gets smoother and Peace starts sounding out words.  Verity flounders a little for things to do, picks up her math books, and does some subtraction.  We keep up our weekly art lessons and the refrigerator looks cheery.  Benjamin talks.  Jonathan gets up on all fours, poised to crawl.

Bruce and I took the twins and went to visit my grandparents.  Spending a quiet day with Grandma, going to visit Grandpa in the hospital.  The twins tried fiercely to lift up the place with their smiles.  One evening Bruce and I took a walk down Orphan School Road, holding hands, the dark trees overarching a sky lit darkly with stars and waning moon.  And all along the depth of those dark trees were fireflies, more than I had ever seen, tiny lights popping silently all around us.

We went to Bruce's 20th high school reunion, and I met his old friends, I continued in my growing into his history, and it was fun.  I took a long solitary walk along a lake on a sunny breezy day, daringly going with bare feet on the clipped grass, watching the people, an old lady in a dress with picnic basket, a girl catching a butterfly over the water, the bicycler family, the man running impossibly fast and gasping as if he were at death's door.  Many, many people.  Many, many stories.  And no one could tell mine, by looking at me.  How could they know that my twin babies and husband were there across the lake, that my life is full, so full?  All they could see was me, growing pinker of the skin, carrying a water bottle and my sneakers, skimming my feet along the tips of the grass and sinking them down in to the ground again. And again. 

Posted by Anonymous

She pondered these things and treasured them up in her heart.