The Perfect Gift

Back from my birthday party. We had it at our friend Johnny's restaurant and he offered so many appetizers no one was hungry to eat supper, but we all did anyhow. There was good joy there, much love.. being together. I'm overcome with gratitude in a multitude of ways. And Greeks know how to throw a par-tay ~ when I go there I sort of wish I was Greek, but it is enough to be around them when I can. My german roots and dutch ancestry and welsh background and irish.... whatever, I still seem to have a bit of opah to offer because of my greek friends.

I was pleased and surprised at what I was given as gifts and they were enough and more.... Sometimes when I am outside and in the street playing with the kids I like to look down toward the end of the road there is a dead end that leads into the woods by Eisenacher's nursery. I get this feeling of home, being home and it's so.. beautiful ~ what with the little houses and the trees in the yards and the way one side of the street the trees seem to be reaching over to try to reach the others on the other side, and then knowing that the dead end is not the end at all but moves into a forest and a grove of pawpaws, the community gardens, spaces where wildflowers grow, walnuts, sycamores, oaks and there are wild grasses and mayapple and then after that the creek, and it just goes on and on... So tonight looking down from my end of the table to see my family and then seeing beyond, and knowing their faces and in them faces of grandmothers and grandfathers, great and great-great and more. And then the after, whoever comes after us... they are all there and there is home.