Adventures

The Long-awaited Nervous Breakdown

/ J. F. Riordan / 32 Comments

Yesterday I never got out of my pajamas. I walked the dogs in my down coat, so no one could have known it was covering pajamas. I knew, however, and it made me inexplicably happy.

I took a very long scented bath.

I did not put on mascara.

I did not write.

I also did not drink. (Oh, Dry January, get thee behind me.)

I did not cook, other than the avocado toast with poached eggs which we all ate for breakfast. (Except the dogs, who do not like avocado, but just had their poached eggs on toast with rice and ground beef and pumpkin and goat yogurt. They were happy.)

I lay around and read a book.

I searched online for vintage houses in unlikely places and concluded that people who watch HGTV should be prohibited from remodeling any house built before 1970.

I annoyed friends and husband with texted listings of vintage houses in unlikely places. Husband promised to send postcards.

I did not mop the floor.

I did not take down the small tree in the library.

I did not run to the local co-op for any missing pantry item.

I achieved Genius level in a NYTimes word puzzle. Even the venerable NYT has succumbed to grade inflation.

I actually did not nap, but I snuggled my big dogs while they dozed in the sunshine. Auggie purred. Eli snored.

I watched British Antiques Roadshow on the new tv in the library.

I bored myself, which, I think, is something we all need now and then.

This morning I had a full hour more of essential REM sleep than previously, even though I thought I was awake all night.

Oh. And I woke up with a new idea for the book.

Last day

/ J. F. Riordan / 24 Comments

Our adventure with our eldest grandson began August 26th, and now we’re down to our last day. We had a quite splendid Christmas holiday together with his little brother and mom. As my daughter said, we are lucky to be a family who all like one another. Not everyone has that.

This morning we are going out to breakfast at a place our grandson likes, and the afternoon will be spent doing laundry and packing, and resting for the thirty-plus hour trip home. The boys’ dad is planning a big welcome home party for New Year’s Eve. I hope the boys can stay awake for it.

Tomorrow morning we will take them to the airport, and when we come home, the house will have an emptiness that even Auggie and Eli can’t fill. I’m not quite sure how it will feel. But it will take me a few days to recover from the mad energy of boys.

And then will begin the slow un-Christmasing of the house, which, depending, can be either depressing, or a fresh new beginning.

I used to have a cleaning lady who took down the Christmas tree for me. Oh, how I miss her.

And now for your gratuitous dog photo.

Accidental Christmas Tree

/ J. F. Riordan / 39 Comments

I have mentioned my friend from sixth grade before. We met at age eleven, and our friendship was cemented soon after. Our math teacher commented on our report cards that we giggled too much in class. We have a deep mutual commitment which has lasted these many years, and although we are very different personalities, we seem to share a general tendency toward lunacy.

We don’t live in the same town, but close enough, and I was on my way to her house yesterday to see her Christmas decorations, have some lunch, and, because she really is a good friend, drop off some papers pertaining to a small dilemma (See: accounting; loathe.) I was a tiny bit late, so I was tooling along the country roads at a nice clip. 1

However, as I turned down her familiar rural road, I noticed that the rickety farm market and petting zoo that has been there for decades was selling Christmas trees. I slowed, and saw there were some good-sized trees. For the next mile I debated whether I should buy the tree myself rather than going on a family outing. It was too far to come on a school night, and the place wouldn’t be open after dark anyway. And honestly, after a basketball game all an eighth-grader can think about is eating.

So after a pleasant few hours of lunch, conversation, and admiration of decorations (my friend has, among other things, a magnificent hand-carved Italian creche with bespoke lighting), we turned to the subject of trees. “Want to come?”

She did.

It was a balmy December day, almost 50 degrees, which in Wisconsin means mud. We pulled into the dirt drive of the place. There were no other customers, but an eclectic collection of barnyard animals in pens all around: turkeys, various sorts of chickens, a donkey, a sheep, several types of goats, emus, and at least one vociferous pig.

A guy with a shovel looked up from where he was standing.

“Are you open? We’ve come to look at Christmas trees.”

“Nah,” the guy answered cheerfully. “I’d rather shovel pig s*&t.”

He set down his shovel and came to speak with us. “I have to tell ya: Did you see that trailer driving off?”

We confessed that we had not.

“That was the boss. He’s gone down to the other field with a load of manure. His wife has cancer, and it’s her treatment day, no one else is here, and I’m not allowed to touch the electronic stuff. So, you’d have to pay cash. That’s all I’m allowed to do.”

I did not have cash.

“But,” he continued, “you can go up to the quickie mart on the corner where they have an ATM.”

I agreed that we could do this, but suggested we look first so we knew how much we would need. So we tromped down the drive through the mud, I in my new black suede boots, to look at the trees.

Balsams have been hard to come by, lately. I like frasiers; they’re very pretty trees, but there’s nothing like the scent of a balsam. There was a blight a few years back, and it takes years to replenish. But here was a lot full of them.

We picked our way through various forms of manure. “Watch out for the poop!” became the mantra.

We found a tree. Just eight feet. It had a sparse side that could be turned toward the window, but it was the right combination of fullness and height. Just as we were calculating the purchase price with tax in preparation for our trip to the cash machine, the farmer returned with an empty trailer, and we were spared a trip to the quickie mart. Total cost: $66.

The checkout was a strange little place, with a greenhouse/gift shop that had a slightly creepy Miss Havisham vibe, but we soon escaped outside, where the tree was netted, and ready to go.

“I can’t put the tree on the car,” the farmhand informed us. “Liability.”

An emu lurked preternaturally in the distant trees.

My friend and I looked at each other. “We only have to go a mile,” she said. “Tom is home, and he’ll have something.”

“I got twine,” said our man, helpfully.

This is probably the moment to point out that we’d had champagne with lunch.

The tree was very light and I settled it on the roof of the car and opened the windows. Our friend handed us twine and without touching anything, explained how to weave the twine among the branches for extra security. Having never done this before, I was happy to have expert advice. We bumbled along for fifteen minutes or so, because I really didn’t want to have to ask Tom for another in a lifetime of favors.

It wasn’t until we were finished and ready to go that the farmer reappeared, and started to laugh. “I think you’ve forgotten something.”

We looked at each other, then at the car, and light dawned. We’d tied the car doors shut.

The farmer chortled. “I’ll get the scissors.”

“No,” Julie said. “We can just crawl in from the back.”

Now, I have a small car, as anyone who has seen photos of my German Shepherds’ sweetly bent ears can attest. But I am reasonably agile, and the whole thing seemed simple enough. I climbed in the back, and as I contemplated my move, I realized that the space was more limited than I had anticipated. Fully aware of my audience, and possibly somewhat compromised in my judgment, I crawled into the front, only to find myself stuck with my feet in the air, my head on the front seat.

I started to laugh, and could not stop. I lay helplessly, unable to move and barely able to breathe. Tears ran backwards down my face.

My friend was in the back seat doing the same. I could hear male snorts outside.

“Move the seat back,” called the farmer. But that meant getting myself in a position where I could reach the button on the outside of the seat. Finally able to move, I wriggled my way to find the button, and then found it impossible to get my legs under the steering wheel. My knee landed on the horn. There was another lengthy bout of deranged laughter.

When we drove away, securely entwined, we all wished one another a Merry Christmas.

Julie, unwilling to copy my methods, sat in the back. “Well,” she said, “we just killed thousands of cancer cells.”

A mile down the road, Tom waited on the driveway with scissors to cut us out, and a ball of twine to re-tie the tree.

Our plans for a post-basketball family event would have to be something else.

We went out for sushi instead.

  1. Sidebar: I tend to amble when the dogs are in the car because I don’t want to toss them around, but when I’m alone, I like a good corner. This has softened my views on round-abouts of which Wisconsin has far too many for no particular reason. But they can be fun. ↩︎

Escape Room

/ J. F. Riordan / 55 Comments

Well.

I used to teach Lord of the Flies, but somehow its theme hadn’t occurred to me in the context of a birthday party. It’s interesting–and as a former teacher of teenagers this should not be news to me–how individual boys can be just fine, but a group of ten transforms into something new. And I now know the exact number at which the change occurs.

Oh, did I say escape?

We had two cars. My little hatchback fit four boys; the rented Pacifica took the other six. The difference between four and six is significant. Because on each 30 minute portion of our drive to and from the Escape Room, the mix of four was civilized; the mix of six was not. It may have helped that I had assumed the teacher mode with my group, occasionally making ironic comments that kept them in check. My husband preferred to adopt a cover of anthropology, quietly studying the locals’ habits. This was a less successful approach.

We had planned to drop the critters boys off at the Escape Room and sally forth into the chic environs of Milwaukee’s Third Ward for an hour. When I found a parking spot on the street, my husband stopped, too, and let his group out so he could find a spot while we went on. At least, this was how he explained it. I now know he had ulterior motives.

It took a minute or two to finagle the parking app (How are these convenient?? A quick plug of quarters would have handled the whole thing in seconds.) while the marauders wandered out of sight around the corner making more noise than one might have expected.

We arrived in the small warehouse lobby. I turned my back to register our arrival–to the accompaniment of the most astonishing volume of boys–and when I turned back, they were literally jumping off the furniture. I’m serious. I commandeered the situation with my teacher voice.

It was at this point that the management informed me that an adult would have to accompany them into the room. Delightedly, I texted my husband the good news. I knew he would be thrilled to have this experience with his beloved grandson. This, however, turned out not to be the case. His exact words texted to me were “Can’t you ESCAPE??????” And then, “FUQ”.

I have seen the billboards for this adventure over the years, and each time my inner voice has said, “Sweet Jesus, No.” What a nightmare to be locked into some dank room and find it fun. Now, one of us had to go. And it turned out to be the one with mild claustrophobia.

If you have ever seen film of the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, you will note that while the bulls run when released, they do not howl like banshees. This was not the case when the door was closed to the escape room. I took a deep breath and found a corner to sit on the floor and send retribution texts to my husband.

There was no cooperation, no leadership, and very little thoughtful investigation. They were simply romping through the room, banging on things, pulling on things, and causing far more trouble than a litter of giant puppies. And they made an ungodly amount of noise.

There was a bar setup–it was a spy-themed escape–and there were rows of empty plastic wine bottles. At one point they began hitting one another with the bottles. I mean, these were not friendly raps. They were pushing one another into a corner while beating one another on the head. I felt like a prison guard. Sighing, I intervened. “Give me the bottles. NOW.” Meekly, they each handed them over. I had to explain to one of them to stop punching people.

Meanwhile, my husband is texting me. “I’m SO sorry.” And “How long do we have to have them in the house?”

If the intercom voice who was present to give clues and keep an eye on things had comments to make, these went mostly unheard. At one point, when the boys unlocked a door into the next room, there was a big metal box which had signs in big letters saying “DO NOT TOUCH.” Naturally, everyone had to run their hands over it.

Eventually, upon reaching the third room, which had a “DO NOT CROSS RED LINE” marking on the floor, pretty much everyone crossed the red line, resulting in a hideous siren going off. After about a dozen of these events, the management came in.

“You’re done.”
“Did we lose?” The boys asked. The manager assumed a look of weary irony. “You lost.”

He then told them to stop making so much noise.

I went up to the startled group of adults in the lobby. “I’m so sorry,” I said. I turned to the boys and raising my voice told them to wait outside on the sidewalk. “DO NOT GO ANYWHERE.”

I asked the manager if he had whiskey.

My husband texted me from his hiding place. “The ride home will take 4 years in Grandparent Time. It’s like dog years, but longer.”

As we drove home I began laughing out loud.

“Why are you laughing?” one of them asked.

“I was remembering you guys hitting each other with the bottles.”

We got home in one piece, and the boys tumbled downstairs into our basement family room. I had spent two days cleaning, cooking, shopping, and organizing. Or, as my husband put it, “putting doilies on things.” There was enough food for thirty adults, tons of candy, chips, and cupcakes. My husband poured himself a glass of wine. I reminded him that he owed me a carry-out margarita from the taco place down the hill. I could hear the clanking of the weight machine downstairs. “Make it two. Each.”

After a few moments, our grandson came upstairs, a somewhat anxious look on his face. “Can we go outside to play hide and seek?” I summoned a silent prayer of thanks. “Of course.”

There was a rumbling on the stairs as they came racing up to put on their shoes. It was dark. It had been raining much of the day, and it was going to be muddy. I didn’t care.

It was beginning to snow. I had imposed upon our dear friend, Scary Lisa, to wrangle the dogs, and the three of us now settled into our snug library to drink margaritas while ten boys, stripped to their waists, whooped and hollered, and ran rampant through the woods. I texted the neighbors in warning.

For the boys, this was clearly the unforgettably wonderful part of the day. Elliott said later: “Oh, Grandma, that was the best time ever!”

As half-naked teenagers streaked past the windows, we adults looked at one another. “You know,” my husband said, “it’s like Christmas morning, when you give the kid an extravagant present, and he spends all day playing with the box. Next time, it will be Chex Mix and a bonfire.”

One boy disappeared and was unfindable for twenty minutes. One lost his shirt. One fell off a wall. There was a sprained ankle.

Margaritas never tasted so good.

Oh, and by the way, DO NOT TAKE TEENAGERS TO AN ESCAPE ROOM.

Also: There will be no next time.

The end.

***
And now for your gratuitous dog photo.

No One Told Me There Would Be Math

/ J. F. Riordan / 31 Comments

I had a busy night planned. It involved cleaning out a cupboard where mice had been and sanitizing and rescuing the framed family pictures that had been stored there when I repainted the stairway a year ago last November. I was planning to hang the pictures—about a dozen or so—in the repainted hall. I wanted to tackle this disgusting job so I wouldn’t be ashamed in front of my cleaning lady. (It was, in actual fact, another clever procrastination technique in my novel-writing avoidance scheme. But I digress.)

Instead, as I was elbow deep in sanitizing wipes and thinking words that would have shocked my mother, my husband called my grandson from upstairs—and me—to come into the kitchen. My husband has a mischievous sense of humor, and is fond of calling me on the phone from upstairs, or summoning me from various tasks to show me something entertaining. I was not amused. “I am in the middle of something,” I said, forgoing the opportunity to explain the precise substance I was in the middle of.

“This,” he said, “is serious.” He then read aloud an email from our grandson’s math teacher.

Only yesterday we were celebrating an excellent report card. But something had gone awry in the past four days since grades were closed, and we were exhorted to ensure that tomorrow’s test did not reflect yesterday’s quiz.

My husband, whose confidence in me is sometimes misplaced, assured my grandson. “Grandma is great at math. She will be able to help you.” Some of you may recall a note from a few days ago in which I explained my loathing of accounting. Which is math.

I need to say that it has been…some time… since I did basic algebra, and when I saw the graphing equations and the formula for slope ( y=mx +b) I was a bit shaken. The required physics course I took in college was affectionately referred to as “Physics for Poets”. There was no math. Opera singers don’t use much algebra, either.

So we turned on the lights in the dining room. “Get pencils and paper” I told my grandson. He brought two sheets. “That’s not enough.” There was no way I was wasting my precious writing notebooks for this.

And so, we began—both somewhat irritable—to review the past two weeks of eighth grade math. He was gleeful when I made a mistake, and sullen when I was right and teacher-y. And that gave me insight into how to help. So, I told him I couldn’t remember how to do it—which was sometimes true—and he had the fun of explaining to ignorant me just where I had gone wrong. Sometimes I genuinely was wrong, and sometimes I had to be right to explain where he had gone wrong. Old Person Sidebar: Why don’t they teach kids multiplication tables anymore?

But I have to admit, even if he dramatized how much he hated it (“Why do I have to do math? I’ll never use it.”) I was positively joyful that I could access the algebra file drawers in my brain.

Later, I told my husband the kid had better never take Calculus because I wouldn’t be able to help him. We giggled.

After two hours, we had gone as far as we could in one evening, and when my grandson came back downstairs in his yellow pajamas, he had hot chocolate, and I had two whiskeys.

I feel I earned them.

***

And now your gratuitous dog photo.

A friendly battle over Pink Pig, who was revealed under the leaves yesterday.

Mouse in the House

/ J. F. Riordan / 77 Comments

We live in the country. So, when the temperatures dipped into the teens this week, of course, that brought an influx of mice.

Mice are a houseowner’s horror. They are destructive, filthy, and carry disease. But—and I know how this sounds—I cannot bring myself to kill them. I see their big black eyes, and their tiny feet, and they are so frightened and vulnerable. They are like very tiny puppies.

By the way, did you know that mice sing to one another?

So I buy humane traps, bait them with the dogs’ freeze-dried liver treats, and early each morning load my catch into the car and drive out to a cornfield a little more than three miles away. It must be three miles, because, apparently, mice can find their way back over any smaller distance.

Yesterday I caught three. My 13 year old grandson willingly accompanies me because we stop for a doughnut afterward, and he then gets a ride to school. It’s a bit of an adventure.

Last night I set three regular traps, and something new: a bucket trap, with a little ramp and a trap door. I filled the bucket with dried leaves for a soft landing, and smeared the top with peanut butter with dog treats stuck into it. Although I can’t be sure whether anyone is in there this morning, there is a hole in the center of the leaves which suggests there might be. I’ll know when we get to the cornfield. When I dump out the bucket I will be sorry to lose the cache I’ve saved of dry leaves for soft mouse landings, but it can’t be helped.

I don’t know whether the farmer has noticed a car stopping by his field in the early mornings, but it’s a nice field, with corn stubble and lots of kernels scattered in a mouse-friendly way. I have some minor concerns about whether the mice are too cold, but I am doing my part. They are on their own now.

Godspeed, mousies. Don’t come back.

Wanderings

/ J. F. Riordan / 19 Comments

A friend and I went to a local greenhouse to make Christmas decorations with greenery and red trimmings in big outdoor pots. It was a lot of fun, and felt like the beginning of something both old and newly sweet. In the spring and summer, the seven greenhouses overflow with plants and flowers, but now everything smells like balsam and spices, and there are poinsettias, and garland, and wreaths, and hanging balls made with evergreens and sparkly things. It struck me sharply how much we need the presence of green things amid the darkness and cold of winter.

The family who own the nursery are fifth generation in the business, and the current manager told us of her great-grandfather who had been buried alive in World War I, and survived in an air pocket, eating the shoelaces of a dead comrade. He came home to his wife who had been told he was dead. Together, they began nurturing growing things, which seems both beautiful and significant.

In my family we have keepsakes: furniture, Persian rugs, silver, an ancient Bible, paintings and photos. And we have common threads, too: a love of learning, of literature and art, a passion for freedom and an expectation of basic decency. But I think about what it must be like to be upholding the family’s work in such a particular way, with all the significance and restrictions, resentments and pride that must come into the mix. All the generations–male and female–were represented at the nursery; they all seemed skilled and cheerful: laughing while disagreeing about the right way to place the boughs in a planter, teasing one another, singing along with the corny Christmas music, putting floral stakes and tape on pine cones and big shiny ornaments, and helping us create the right shape for our arrangements. They worked well together.

As we were leaving, we stopped to look at this old stone building next to the gravel parking lot. It was a poignant reminder of a family’s history.

And I like that.

Well, we can’t say we didn’t see this coming

/ J. F. Riordan / 90 Comments

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Twitter over the years, but when the new management took over, it was increasingly obvious that it was heading in the wrong direction. For weeks now, I’ve been prevented from seeing even my own tweets after about five. The functionality of posting photos has been broken. And last week I casually opened the app while sitting at the airport and found myself staring at graphic pornography.

But today I have been blocked from posting at all. No cute photo of Auggie on the bed in front of me, and no retweeting to help save dogs in danger. There were two in particular I wanted to help.

I have no idea how long this will last. I’m sure it’s not personal. It’s just reality, and we deal with it. Maybe it’s just time to cut the cord. If you’re on Twitter, please pass the word. And if you’d like to stay in touch, you can sign up to receive an email whenever I post on the main page of this site.

I am looking at this as a message from the universe to do more writing. Not that Elon Musk is the universe, but I’m sure he thinks he is.

(My apologies for the technical glitches here. I’m out of practice.)

He’s not relaxed at all.
My spoiled darlings.

For Jeff and Sahar

/ J. F. Riordan / 4 Comments

(From my talk as officiant at their wedding in Istanbul)

Anyone can fall in love. And most of us who have been married will acknowledge that it helps if love is the first requirement. The ancient vows that Sahar and Jeff are about to make confirm it: We promise first “to love”.

But, as we here make a commitment to support Sahar and Jeff in their marriage, we understand that love is not enough. I want to say “mere” love, although that would be at odds with every philosophy and theology in the world. But love can be a fleeting emotion. That’s why when we experience real love, most civilizations suggest that we add something more. We want to vow that our commitment is forever, and that we mean more than only how we feel.

Love, Honor, Comfort, and Keep. They are ancient poetic words, and they bear testament to an essential truth: Marriage is hard.

It would seem at first thought that in the commitment that they are making today, the challenges Sahar and Jeff face will be accelerated by their different cultural heritages. But this is only a detail. Because in many ways every marriage is a melding of cultures…of family…of values…of male and female. 

Our work, as married people, is to accept the alien nature of the other. And, come to think of it, isn’t that the work of us all?

Because the fundamental requirements of all human relationships are those we practice first at home, and so, the relationship of husband and wife reflects our relationship with the whole world. That is not a coincidence.

We start with the imperative to love, with all that it entails, but there are also these other requirements: 

Honor.

Comfort.

Keep.

Together, they form a hierarchy, with each of these actions dependent upon the other. 

Honoring…it means we don’t hold one another in contempt…that our familiarity breeds, instead, respect, and generosity, and patience, and understanding. 

And we cannot comfort without honoring, because offering comfort requires an essential respect of our beloved’s individual humanity and need.

Comfort requires, too, understanding the value of offering not what we need, but what someone else needs—which is almost never the same thing.

Comfort is an act of solidarity, but also an act of empathy: a moving out of ourselves and our needs, and into the needs of someone else.

If I need solitude, maybe I need to understand that at the same moment my partner needs affection. And the efforts we make to frame the world based on someone else’s needs is key part of marriage, and, indeed, of any relationship.

And “keep”. What does that mean? We keep watch; we keep time; we keep chickens.

But to keep one another….

It’s vigilance, isn’t it. It means we hold one another in esteem, with honor. We comfort. We pay attention. Sometimes at cost to ourselves and our pressing priorities. But…it also means to give shelter. We smoothe paths…we encourage… we understand foibles…we attempt to care, not just for physical, but for emotional requirements. 

Come to think of it, it is a bit like chickens.

We nurture.

We protect.

We keep.

Which brings us back to love. These vows are all encompassed in the act of loving; they are the recipe for all human relationships: To Love, Honor, Comfort, and Keep. 

It is more than a philosophy. It is an action; an endeavor; our daily work. And it is a challenge. 

A healthy marriage—the keeping of these vows—requires fierce dedication, determination, and commitment, all entered into in the endeavor of love.

Sometimes blindly, sometimes fervently.  But deliberately, reverently, joyfully, and not just with our whole hearts, but with every fiber of our beings. 

**

For Jean

/ J. F. Riordan / 2 Comments

Fall is late this year. It is already mid-October, but for the first time the woods have a tinge of gold, just beginning, and the sunlight’s yellow is intensified when it shines through the trees. These are the kinds of days I count as finite in my life. All our days are finite, of course, but some seem to belong in a category as different as a gemstone to a handsome pebble.

Life hasn’t seemed, really, to have returned to normal for us. The contagion levels are still high where we live, so although we have tentatively dined outdoors a few times—and enjoyed it thoroughly—the cold weather will end that small bit of normality. The world feels smaller.

In pre-COVID times, I would go now to the Island. It is one of the places where the golden light of fall permeates everything. The long, empty roads mean I can walk for miles without seeing a car, and the dogs, who return to me instantly when I call, can run off-leash. We wander through golden lanes, and my brain, usually obsessedly plotting and exhausted by the extraction of writing, is distracted by the resonating vibrancy of the color. I remember these walks repeatedly, and return to them in my dreams, and in my books. They are, I think, how I would spend eternity, if I could.

But we are mistaken if the wet days, the bleak and dreary ones, are not treasured, too. My dogs, who love to swim, but hate the rain, nevertheless run joyfully through wet weeds and brush, shaking themselves with vigor when they come in, smelling of mud. Dogs have a capacity for appreciation that my ideal self would try to emulate, but I am not a dog, and can’t seem to achieve their purity of mind. 

My joy ebbs and flows with the seasons. I have never fully understood spring, with its mud, its dirty snowpiles, its cold rains, and its disappointed hopes. For me, joy comes when fall it is at its peak, and even still later, with the stark, purple cold of winter. Once the leaves and crops are stripped away the sculptural shapes of the trees and the shape of the earth is revealed, and the light pours down, undiffused. The world seems a brighter, clearer, purer place. That cold  clarity purifies me.

In our mortality, I wonder whether there is, too, a clarity that comes as we can, at last, see the end. There is no need for the extraneous, just the focus of comfort, where we can; of love, if we are blessed with it; and the firm hope that when the seasons pass, the essence of what we are will always be.