A certain daughter of mine who took ballroom dancing in college (and who, unlike me, is quite good at that sort of thing) cracked up when I pointed out this comic. Heh.
Meantime. A follow-up re the peregrines: Haya fledged from the bridge between Oakland and Alameda a year and a half ago and was later found shot. She has had three surgeries and been through long, long training and rehab–and they are preparing to release her! She has healed and her flights have become strong now; they’d been afraid the day would never come, but it has. Very cool what good people can do.
And…
Years ago, I saw the hearse. It was parked across the street as I came home, not your usual suburban-neighborhood sight. Later that day, I saw the college-age son, who was so very grateful at having someone to talk to at his mom’s passing from cancer.
His dad remarried a couple years later and moved away–but he did not sell that house. A series of renters came and went, and after the moving vans would leave, the dad and son would be back and working around the place for a day or so. They kept it looking as beautiful as his mother had left it. Rose trees blooming in the front.
A new family’s little toddler grew into early school age there–but again, the moving van came just a few days ago.
And yet somehow it surprised me to see him across the street this afternoon, and it took me just a moment to be sure it really was him. He was as glad to see me as I was to see him–and I saw in his face what is always clearly there after each gap in time, an, Oh good, you’re still… The lupus and Crohn’s didn’t… Such joy in his face.
Life IS good.
The little eight-year-old boy who moved into that house all those years ago is now a 30-something good man with a fiancee and a life to begin. In the home where the ’89 Loma Prieta quake swept him clear out of the pool and splashed him onto the ground. A house with stories for him to tell their future children, of his mother’s roses, of her presence.
I look forward to pointing out the Cooper’s hawk for them. And maybe even an eight-octave zone-tailed. And hand in hand with their little ones someday, klutzy-footed and all, I shall dance.