Yesterday

Yesterday was full of love. It was my bud and I heading down the shore and getting to Lunenburg just in time for the ceremony at the cenotaph. It was a town that certainly understands history and appreciates it. It was faces young and old looking on as old hands lay wreaths, young hands played bagpipes. and small children wondered what was up. We had our two minutes of silence - such a short time to be silent for those who cannot be anything but - and at the end a huge elm tree shivered and lost its remaining leaves. They swirled down as the bagpipes skirling rose. Then the crowd dispersed, many of them ending up in the same cafe as K. and I. We found our way to our favourite paper store and the owner was futsing with outside planters full of frost stricken plants. She assured us she was opening and we spent a very happy hour in the land of Japanese papers, stamp sets, ink and other ephemera. Then it was lunch at the Tin Fish and the slow wander back on the old road with a stop or two in Mahone Bay.
I dropped K. off and went off to a very special Babe's dinner in town. There are six of us Babes and we try to meet as often as we can to sort out our lives and get that connection we so desire. We've been doing this for about twenty years - through all the major and minor life changes available to the living. We have between us nine birth children, five or six step or near step children, three grandchildren (all mine - I'm the eldest), several husbands, near husbands and ex-husbands, and so on. When we get together, we insist on things like great but simple food, drink for those who do, bubbly water for those who don't, perhaps a puff on the deck for those of us with habits and LOTS of talk. We might laugh a lot (we do) we certainly have cried buckets but mainly we are our complete and gorgeous flawed selves with each other. And as any spiritual, philosophical or psychological teacher will tell you - this is the gold! Nothing will replace it. Now, why was this a more significant one? Just because one of our Babes has been living in Ontario for the last six months, taking care of a sick parent, and makes it home sporadically. And we need her and she needs us.
So my novel was left on the back burner but my stroke bucket (as we transactional analysts say) is full and I'm ready to write.