couldn't ask for anything better

On Sunday morning we laid in bed and listened to the rain peter out, finally exhausted from it's nightlong temper tantrum, until bright gold rays lanced the blinds and the birdies outside said it was time to get up, get up, get up. Without the ceremony of showers or hair brushing or, if we're being honest, real clothes for any of us, we bundled P's nieces out the door and into the car and off to Denny's. A's tiny hand in mine, like a baby bunny's, warm and improbably small, across the parking lot and into a big booth by the window where water still dripped from the eves and made a lacy curtain of sparkles as it fell. R's intense adolescent persona softened, for once, as she colored her menu, and it was nice to see a calm little girl, if only briefly, in her stead.

We ordered breakfast, cheap and hot, and in between bites marveled quietly at the fancy church people in their pretty Easter clothes. Years ago, I would have felt self conscious under their eyes, but not now. I did not feel shabby, but shiny-bright and glorious and content. I looked around the table at those three complex and deeply lovely companions of mine and told them, I could not ask for anyone or anything better than you three, right here, right now. At a Denny's. On Easter morning.

capture, release

I went over the list, saved it on my computer. Read it again, closed it again. I am an avid photographer, like it or not; I could have completed the project easily enough. But in the end I didn't feel compelled to. It might have helped, early on. But grief is not something I want to capture, anymore. Those particular relics are not what I want to keep.

I am still the face. I have been captured by grief -- and then, without quite knowing the exact moment that it happened -- released. And I find I am able to return that favor, finally. And I am pleased, and pensive, and content.