<<raindrops on roses>>

the last few days have been days of mirth and gladness. nothing puts one more in the spirit to sing tra-la-la in full voice than rounding the corner of the dining hall to carry laundry down after supper and seeing the sky awash with delicate pinks and ethereal lavenders and even a hint of periwinkle…and the sea beneath a smooth shimmer of magical twilight hues. one’s mood is comparably elevated when one spends an hour lying on one’s stomach on the dock with bare arms outstretched in the sun and with simon & garfunkel fiddle-faddling summerishly away via one’s personal radio. or when one finds even more freckles generously lavished by that grand old sun … a totsy-wotsy pal if ever a totsy-wotsy pal there was. (and one finds, as the years progress, that freckles become an ever-increasing delight to discover, no matter on whose face they appear.)

one also finds the bean uplifted and the soul refreshed after beetling along in a golfcart past a grassy field sprinkled with blooming clover and forget-me-nots, or even after giving oneself a pedicure complete with burgundy frost nail polish and pearberry lotion. but despite all these happy things, one happy thing remains the happy thing to top all happy things, and that happy thing is this electronic message a girl you know and love received yesterday from a six-year-old she knows and loves:

Dear Katie, I love you really much and I’ll see you in May.   I love you as much as a hundred stars. Love, James

and that, my good fellows, is worth ever so much more than whiskers on kittens or doorbells or sleighbells or warm woolen mittens. at such extraordinarily expansive blessings, one must buck up and chin up and tip up the nose and smile with glee. and, one must also skip off to return the laundry machine keys and then toddle up the path to one’s accommodation in order to procure one’s full eight hours and perhaps to dream of silver white winters that melt into springs …