After a quick visit with Paula, who was staying with a relative of hers who lives almost right on our route that day (and I mean quick--we had to take our welcoming cherry pie "to go"), my beloved and I arrived in my home town a couple of days ahead of the Chorale reunion. He had never been even in that state before, and I hadn't been there since my mother's funeral about thirty years ago, so I was to give him a guided tour of sorts, provided I could find my way around at all (thank goodness for Google Maps and laptops!). First on the windshield tour: the hospital where I was born--but ooops! where was it? A construction site with about five gandy cranes laboring away told its noisy story. Or maybe the hospital was at the other end of the medical complex. Anyhow, there was a nice view from there.

Next: my parents' grave. My sister says she's never been back there because "they're not there." I believe that, too, in my own way, but something drew me back to the quiet "park" with flat brass memorial plates on the ground above the graves, the favorite flowering trees planted to fulfill last requests, the lush grass crowding the markers. i was surprised that I had a strong urge to clean the brass letters and to pull the stolons of grass away from the names and dates. So with a tissue and, well, tears, I wiped and pulled.

Maybe it was the fussy little activity that took me out of myself, but as I stood I became aware of a continuum of energy reaching from those boxes in the ground up past me, toward the sleeping stars, sweeping the universe. I saw that some day my own body would lie resting in the earth like theirs, and I would be "not there," too. "They belong to the universe now," came the thought, and I wondered that I hadn't noticed it before. They weren't mine any more, these two people who spent such a short time on this earth. The came here for a time, made the best of life that they could, made two other people with their bodies, and departed. My yearnings and resentments were useless. I felt I was required to release it all--their sudden deaths at 44 and 63, their midwestern tenacity, their Methodist severity, their sacrifices for the sake of their children, the puppy they got for us, the homemade doll clothes, the driving lessons--all of it not mine any more, but everyone's, and in the One.

All the energy I had used trying not to think about the unpleasant bits of my early life was freed up to live with. In the context of the universe (or God, as the reader may prefer to think), none of the petty negative stuff mattered at all. What matters still is the sowing of love, peace, joy, consolation, and the rest of St Francis' list, for me and by me, for and by the whole world. Who else's name should I put on a brass plate in my mind and let them belong to the universe, right now, while I can still relate to them with no expectations but to enjoy who they are?

My beloved and I drove around town some more, found one elementary school but not the other, found two houses but not the first one, found the junior high, the dorm for freshman year at the University... and we continued the next day until I had to sequester myself with my music to get ready for rehearsals. But Thursday evening we paused in our investigations long enough to have dinner with an old boyfriend, or rather friend boy, who'd been a pal of mine after high school for several years.

Now, the way this story is going, you already know that the friend and I picked up right where we left off, that he and my husband got along so well they promised each other to keep in touch, and that we had a wonderful time. That the fit was going to be perfect was obvious from the moment hubby and I arrived at the agreed-upon restaurant. There was Bill, laughing his head off, sitting on the tail gate of his small SUV--a 2004 Honda Element just like ours.

Next: Singing and PD