Gifts

Nick didn't get into Dartmouth.

But he got into Sewanee! And Loyola New Orleans! Big stuff. Unimaginable changes. What will we do without him? He's happy. He has a girlfriend who loves him and he's the district champion in Lincoln/Douglas Debate.

I'm not really surprised. He had the scores but not the grades.

Lilly went to Italy over spring break. She took 1029 pictures. She showed me all of them. They are all good. It's funny about Italy--any shot which includes the Pantheon is automatically a good shot. Very few pictures of her. 4 or 5 of her, standing in front of a fountain, looking out to the sea in Capri, hands in the pocket of her navy raincoat, auburn hair blowing around her face. Looking solemn and bemused and happy. A traveler. She told me people kept thinking she was Italian, and that only one Italian boy flirted with her. She sounded a little disappointed.

She brought us all presents--spent all the Euros, which she wasn't supposed to do--they were for emergencies, but, oh well. I now have beautiful red kid leather driving gloves and a cameo.

The cameo is of a mother and two little children standing by the sea. The mother is wearing a big hat. "See," Lilly said, "It's supposed to be you."

She also gained 4 pounds. Which made me ecstatic. "Maybe" I said, "you'll have to keep taking regular trips to Italy! Can they write a prescription for that?"

She didn't think it was funny. I always screw up. Now that the weight is finally coming back on, she's getting nervous again.

"Don't tell me I look healthy," she tells me in the car on the way back from the doctor's office. "Healthy means fat. Don't tell me anything. Are they going to let me get fat? How do we stop if we gain too much?"

We.

"Okay, Lilly," I tell her. "By healthy, I mean that hospitalization is not imminent. Is that okay?"

"Better."

But she does look healthy. All that pasta and gelato!

Thank you, Italy.

I had a dream while she was gone. I dreamt that Lilly was about 11 again. For some reason, we were in the hospital, in our Sunday best. This housekeeper, Jan, was also in the dream. She was wearing church clothes, too, along with a little sky blue hat with a veil and a round gold pin on a matching blue skirt suit. The place was flooding--the whole town was flooding. And we were trying to escape. "We need to pray the rosary," Jan said. So, in the dream, I started praying the rosary. Jan and Lilly joined me. We took turns saying hail marys. Then I woke up.

One of the things I don't even try to reconcile with my zen practice is my love of the Virgin Mary. My practice has been constant for the last 26 years, my marianism is sporadic, like a rain storm. I go a few weeks or months lighting candles and praying the rosary, then it dies down.
Our Lady of Charity is the Mary I got to know in Miami. Cobre de caridad. I used to have a candle lit to her all the time.

I think she appeared to me once. But I'm not sure. That's another story. That's my 1/2 hour.