Weaving Happiness In

          The weather is just lovely these days. I've worked in the garden. I've replaced the firewood on my front porch with my indoor plants so they can enjoy the outdoors, too.

I've hauled some old oak flooring from my old house to my garden, hoping to make retaining walls for garden beds with them. It's something Mike and I were going to do. I miss him for that. He would have done a better job than I can do!

          I went back to yoga class yesterday, for the first time since Mike got sick. It was difficult, not just because my body had forgotten how to do yoga but because the stretching and breathing released emotions I had held in my body and because yoga class was something Mike and I did together, and it was hard to return without him, even though these days, we would have been in the Zoom class separately. It wouldn't have mattered. I still would have gone to his house after yoga. He would have made us a light dinner—yogurt with fruit, cheese and crackers, maybe a glass of wine and a piece of chocolate—and we would have spent the evening talking about his work and mine, ranting about politics, working New York Times crosswords puzzles. I might have read to him, something we both enjoyed. (I read John McPhee's Encounters with the Archdruid to him while he was on hospice.) The next morning we would have gotten up at dawn and hiked up Table Rock Mountain, except that the trail is still closed, so maybe we would have taken a walk through Medford neighborhoods instead. I know the trail is closed because I spent the night at Mike's house last week (just because) and thought I would do a remembering-you hike at dawn, only to find a large sign at the trailhead telling me the trail was closed and, in case I thought I could sneak in a hike, anyway, adding, "This means you!"

          When I arrived at the house the evening before, I found a bouquet of small red roses stuck in the mailbox, dried by the time I got there but appreciated all the same. Someone had made a grass wreath and left it on the porch for me. The neighbor across the road had mowed the grass, a very thoughtful gesture. The house still looks a lot like it did when Mike and I were there, except that I've taken down the tapestry quilt my sister made us as a wedding gift last year.

It was hanging above our bed in Mike's house. Now it hangs in my sewing room. Mike's daughters, his inheritors, will eventually sell the house.

          The other day I installed summer screens on all my windows. I can keep them open all the time now, except that I close the downstairs windows at night so the bear can't get in. The birdsong has been beautiful. I do yoga on the deck

with the birds singing in the trees. I wake up at dawn to the birds' melodies. I write outdoors, amid birdsong. It's the perfect time of year to be outdoors, on the deck. A breeze ruffles through the shade, there are no mosquitoes or yellow jackets, the flowers throw out color like perfume, and birds fill the woods.

          At one point during the three weeks of hospice, after Mike's sister, brother, and sister-in-law had been there for one last visit with him, having braved coronavirus dangers to fly across the country, Mike said to me. "I know it sounds strange, but I'm happy." I could see that it was true. Even immobilized on the bed, dying of cancer, he could touch that place within oneself where one finds happiness.

          I, too, can find those moments, even these days.