Happy Mother’s Day to my mom and to my sister, both among the best moms in the business. Their example of unconditional love encourages me to believe the world isn’t such a bad place.
My sister in particular further inspires me with her preparedness in the face of all situations. Her car, for example, is better stocked with the necessities of life than my house. The only items you might reliably find in my car at any given moment are some old cassette tapes my brother recorded for me in the 80s and a dog leash.
Once when my niece was still small enough to be confined to a car seat, I was driving her somewhere in my car. As we were driving along, my niece suddenly looked around the bare, dusty car and said to me in her clear, sweet voice “Helen, where is the water?” It took a moment before I realized her mom’s car always carries an ample supply of bottled water for drinking.
I haven’t blogged in roughly forever, but we did get away for a few days to Ocracoke Island on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. This photo was taken during an early evening walk on the beach after an amazing dinner at the Cafe Atlantic. If you go there, all I have to say is “Shrimp Tomatillo.”
“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
– James Joyce, The Dead
Let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man
