On June ninth I woke to the sound of an acetaminophen bottle hitting the dryer and found a large black snake on the laundry room shelf. At eye level. Moments later it dropped to the floor to hide beneath the washing machine. This led to an unwholesome rodeo, with Bob wiggling-walking the dryer away from the wall, then loudly smacking the washer.

Frozen and barely awake I stood by, clutching a bath towel and later, a broom. “Put on your shoes!” I cried, slipping into my Teva flats. Bob ignored the shoe cue and kept banging until the snake came out and then we herded it out the back door. We don’t know how it got in or if it’s come back, nor do we know how many snakes there might be inside our house right now.

I immediately noticed an uptick in nightmares. Bad people doing bad things, with me trying to defend myself and others from murder, rape, and dismemberment. Yes, my Catholic upbringing—all those martyred saints—has proven fertile ground for night sweats.

A week later Tami saw a sizeable Black Bear ahead while riding her bike a couple of miles from our house. She moved to the other side of the road and once she saw that the bear was more interested in eating leaves than chasing her, she pedaled like hell.

So now I am hypersensitive to night sounds, and also self-soothing with sugar which does nothing good for my sleep patterns. I know I’m overreacting, but hey, try telling that to my sympathetic nervous system.

The other night I was awakened by something scratching or bumping against the wall behind my head, and with my high-alert synapses firing away, I nudged my hero and woke him up. Unperturbed, he jiggled the mattress to recreate the sound I thought I’d heard, and then he got up and pulled the bed away from the wall. Nevertheless, I lay there for another hour before falling back to sleep.

When I woke to morning light—arms at my side, stiff as a corpse—I heard something moving underneath the dresser. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t muster enough spit to talk so I got up and got a drink of water before crawling back under the sheet next to my unflappable husband.

Bob has been all patience and fortitude throughout all this snake business. He always comes up with a plan and has not teased me once for waking him up or wimping out. He hasn’t even said, “I don’t know what’s come over you,” even though he must be thinking it. I surely am. All my life, I’ve been unafraid, good in a crisis, always ready to chase down dogs, wasps, and cockroaches. Then suddenly I turn seventy, find a five-foot snake where it’s not supposed to be, and I’m all a-puddle.

After hearing Tami’s story, I asked Bob to set the trail camera up near the compost pile in case a bear shows up to gnaw corn cobs and cantaloupe skin with the possums. But the notion of a bear in our yard doesn’t concern me nearly as much as a snake in our bed.

As I lick the last pretzel crumb and set down my empty mug, a black vulture lands on the lawn between the persimmons. I watch the mockingbird chase it out to the ditch. You badass, I think, and wander towards the road to see if there’s a carcass I need to move before getting out the pitchfork and the wheelbarrow.

Thank you for taking me home to Mother. You are a good man to share me with the sea.

I believe you love her too: the way she licks our toes, how she feeds the sanderlings, and coughs up garbage for the gulls to fight over. How could you not adore the way she shimmers, undulating, breathing in and out: Whoosh . . . Ahhhh . . . Whoosh . . . Ahhhh.

We dallied, too preoccupied with our cameras on the sunny days when mother was calm, our bathing suits twiddling their thumbs on the shelf at the Air BnB.

Two days before our vacation was over, I decided it was now or never. I would walk in and keep on walking until my hair was salt-soaked. You did not back away from the challenge, quickly pulling on your suit while I wrestled with mine.

We stood at the edge of a writhing landscape, and tried to ignore the sand-spitting wind. Mother was worked up. She rolled her waves into hard bats like Sunday papers and slammed them onto the shore, one after another.

I went first, inching towards her black heart, turning sideways to minimize the impact, resisting the tug of receding water on my feet. I paused, then took another step forward and was knocked over by a frothing bludgeon. But I kept my head up from instinct more than anything else, and when I regained my footing I turned, only half wet, and came back to you.

You did better than I, it’s no surprise. After making sure I was all right, you peeled off your shirt, wrapped it around your glasses, and set it on your flip flops. Then you walked straight in and dipped your head under a wave. No inching or turning, you gave her no time to drag you out to sea. I was more grateful than jealous.

We had come to escape the incessant tugging of your desk, because it was your birthday, and to absorb the salt, the sand, and the squeal of the gulls. You were drowning in emails and needed to breathe. “I’ve got it to down to 50,” you used to say and I’d try to imagine having to deal with 50 emails. On our first morning, you log in because you cannot afford to look away and say, “It’s over 300.”

New business was coming in faster than expected and it didn’t help that you had been in class the week before we left. You spent the first half of our vacation shoveling out while I wrote in my notebooks. “I’ve got it down to 200,” you’d say between sandwiches. I’d come in from a long walk and you would stand up to high five me. “Got it to 90!” The next morning, it would be, “It’s back up to 160.”

By Thursday you were able to take an afternoon off, and on Friday — a week in — you didn’t work at all, didn’t even make one phone call. You napped and ate and read and napped. The next morning, we drove down to the beach where you set up a tripod and watched the sun emerge from the sea. That evening we witnessed the full moon rising over Mother Atlantic.

We left on Monday. “Tanned, rested, and reluctant,” I heard you say to someone on your first official day back on the job. Within an hour of closing your office door I heard your feet pounding a staccato beat on our Pergo flooring and knew you were already overwhelmed. I stood and listened, wishing there was more I could do to soothe you and lighten your load. I felt guiltily nourished by our salt water time and grateful to you for your sacrifice, for accepting such a burden in order to cushion our retirement.

A bit further into the week, your boss had drafted a plan to keep you above the water line. You received a promotion and would continue training people to absorb some of the load. I was pleased to see you smile, and hopeful that you can stay afloat.

Hang in there, darling, and thanks for taking me home to see mother.

Love, Cookie

Bob and I were exploring the grounds behind St. Bart’s Episcopal Church last month when I came across a bench engraved with “In Fond Memory of Nick Meyer.” I stepped back, closed my eyes, and let his image come to me: a round-faced man with cheeks that bunched when he smiled.

Nick Meyer told everyone that he was dying, a statement he used as a free pass to hang out. He made his rounds, showing up at Chatham Marketplace to lean against the counter and talk while our daughter, Amy, rang up groceries; to St. Bart’s to work in their free community lunch garden, and to the purple and green A-Frame office where Tami and I ran Abundance NC and land-lorded the surrounding Industrial Park.

“Here comes Nick,” I’d say, watching him work his way across the lawn in a slow, rolling gait. Tami would sigh, fingering the envelope with her list of calls and must-dos, and give the papers on her desk a little shove. And when his straight-backed form shadowed our open door, she would bestow her signature smile, as warm as summer.

Nick would ease into our guest chair and make himself at home. “How are Our Ladies of Perpetual Abundance today?” he would ask and we would murmur what we hoped were witty remarks. He’d quip back and we were off to the races. He enjoyed the nuances of our work dynamic: Tami the creative visionary — a butterfly — and me earthbound, mired in logistics.

Abundance was (and still is) surfing a monster wave of grassroots activism. In those days we were focused on local food, renewable energy, and building community. To ease our stress, Nick gifted us a tiny, jade-colored Buddha sitting beneath the stunted branches of a bonsai pine.

Nick joined one of our Local Food Friday lunch teams, bringing groceries and helping us cook. When it was time to eat, he flitted from one group to another, joining our conversations as we ate lunch on the lawn. “You aren’t eating,” I said. “Yeah, well . . .” he said, and told me it had something to do with his condition.

When Nick found out that Bob and I were Vonnegut fans, he gave us a 1982 first printing of Dead Eye Dick signed by the author. “You know why he signed it this way?” he asked, and I turned red because, yes, I had seen Vonnegut’s drawing of something we are all born with.

One day he arrived, and with a flourish, spoke a quote he thought I would appreciate. I liked it so much I wrote it in red marker at the bottom of my whiteboard. “Everybody wants to build something, but no one wants to do the maintenance.” – Kurt Vonnegut.

Nick came to our house for dinner back when we were hosting weekly potlucks, and we took his picture with Spot as was the custom. And, as was the custom, we printed out the photo, pasted it into an album, and handed Nick a pen. This is what he wrote:

I wondered just how it would feel
To enjoy potluck with Bob and Camille
Despite my surmises
it’s the least of surprises
that “pot luck” is more than a meal

We all humored Nick, accepting his gifts and tolerating his idle chatter, pretty sure he was making up the part about dying. And then he did die. His obituary echoed our impressions of him with statements like, “A man of great humor and insatiable intellectual curiosity, Nick was politically active, angered by injustice, and generous of spirit,” and “He had a quick wit and especially enjoyed bawdy limericks and bad puns.”

Years after his death, I unearthed the little Buddha while digging in the garden around the old Abundance A-frame. Excited, I hurried over to Tami’s new office. “Do you remember this?” I asked, opening my hand. “Oh . . . Yes . . .” And we stood there for a few moments, thinking about that unforgettable man with the not-so-secret secret.

I met Shirley and Ken Kenneally in 1981 when Cathi invited me to their home for a party. Although the house was set a good way in from the street, I could hear the music from the sidewalk. I opened a wrought-iron gate set in boxwood and followed slate pavers to the door. The woman standing just inside turned her face upwards and said, “Welcome! I’m Shirley.”

Ken was equally warm and I soon realized that this was not just a party, it was family. Shirley and Ken did not have children and so put their energies into supporting the arts. They owned Free Reelin’ Sound: two recording studios in two houses. The party was taking place in their main home, Studio A.

The house is iconic, a masterpiece in concrete and plaster featuring a domed ceiling, and likewise, a domed rooftop patio. It was designed in 1932 by architect Eugene Groves for Mary Holland and is registered in Denver’s Historic Landmarks as The Holland House.

Although Shirley was soft-spoken, she had a magnificent aura that simultaneously soothed and energized. I was smitten. She was three years younger than my mother, and I remember telling one of her longtime friends that when Shirley got old I was going to take care of her. “Get in line,” he said.

Ken was a pilot for United and he owned a small Cessna which brought him great joy. He was older than Shirley and looked a little like Albert Einstein. He exuded wisdom, had a dry wit, and was always surrounded by young people, but his special friend — their special friend — was a musician and artist named Fred.

The Kenneallys often went out to watch their friends play in the Denver bars and I become part of their entourage. One Halloween I dressed as a black-leathered biker chick and joined Shirley, Cathi, and her two best friends, Sandy and Cheryl, to watch Fred play with his band in the boonies south of Denver. The three younger women — they called themselves the Pink Pussies — were dressed as roller derby queens in pink satin jackets and short shorts that Sandy had sewn. Back then, we all took Halloween seriously.

We had the bar largely to ourselves and it didn’t bother us at all to dance with each other. The Pink Pussies waved their arms and slid around on their skates, occasionally grabbing me or Shirley for balance, all of us parading back to our booth between songs to catch up with our pitchers of beer.

On one of those trips between the mosh pit and our booth, I heard a pair of husky-looking women hiss something. I ignored them, but each time we made another pass, they got louder and soon we all heard them say, “Girls don’t dance with girls in Douglas County.”

We laughed it off. We were there to have fun and if some people found that offensive, so be it.

Eventually, I found my way to the ladies’ room in the back of the bar. When I came out of the stall, one of the two women was blocking the door and the second one, furious, pulled a handgun from her bag and stuck it in my face. Without thinking, I grabbed her wrist and twisted the barrel away. She struggled, we both lost our balance, and I wrenched her hand towards the door and shoved it across the sill.

With my total focus on keeping the gun outside the bathroom, I had no idea that the other woman had jumped on top of me. Nor did I comprehend that Shirley had burst from one of the stalls and begun pulling the second woman’s hair. Moments later, the Pink Pussies were in the room breaking up the fight. They recovered the gun and alerted the bartender, who summoned the police.

After the cops arrived and took the two homophobic women into custody, the five of us sat at separate tables and hand-wrote our versions of what had happened. We shared notes on our way home and that’s when I heard about what Shirley had done. I kept shaking my head incredulously. It seemed so uncharacteristic, so surprising. Shirley bristled. “Why surprising?” she said, “I didn’t have a choice. It was two against one!” That night we learned that Shirley, that quiet and unassuming woman, was someone you needed by your side in a bar fight.

The Kenneallys were also into wholesome activities like hiking. I was game, despite being woefully out of shape, and so found myself at the base of Bear Mountain one morning with a gaggle of musicians and groupies.

The object when hiking above treeline is to get up and back before the onset of afternoon thunderstorms — advisable, but not practical with a large group of night owls. But we did our best with Ken at the helm, and I soon realized I didn’t know much about hiking. I sank into the boggy terrain, struggling to keep up, as the peak receded and the sun inched higher. Shirley, on the other hand, seemed made for this sort of thing.

We reached our apex as it began to rain. One of the hikers had brought wine, and another a tarp, and we were soon cozily huddled underneath the tarp, laughing and passing a bottle while thunder rumbled overhead.

Someone remarked on our false sense of security and we all laughed harder. That lighthearted sense of safety was emblematic of the Kenneally magic. Their web of friendship, support, and art sheltered us all from a cold and threatening world.

As luck would have it, I was looking for new digs when the house across the street from Studio A came up for rent and I took it. How wonderful it was to have my mentors so close. It was probably around that time that Shirley told me she suffered from loneliness. I had a hard time wrapping my head around this, so she explained. When she was very young her mother became sick, and her father put her in the care of an orphanage. It was a confusing and lonely time for little Shirley, made worse because the staff was forbidden to cuddle and hold the children. By the time Shirley returned home to her parents, she was infused with an inextinguishable sense of estrangement.

Ken was only 54 when an updraft tore the wing from his Cessna. I was living in Loveland when I got a call from Cathi. I remember watching the afternoon light fade from my wall phone, and the flat tone of Cathi’s voice. “Ken is dead.”

I recalled a recent visit to Studio B in which I had joined Ken for a walk. Ken was his usual straightforward self, and we found ourselves talking about death and regrets. He surprised me by saying he didn’t have any unfinished business. He told me that if he died tomorrow, he wouldn’t feel he had missed anything.

I was shocked. I was in my 20’s and couldn’t fathom running out of wishes or goals. I turned my head to examine his face but saw no sadness or depression, only an all-knowing calm. I shivered and gave a nervous laugh.

~*~

Ken’s wake was an extraordinary affair. The grass behind the Holland House was smothered in friends, their voices muted beneath the big trees. Their longtime friend, Charley, stepped up to the mic and said, “We used to call them hootenannies.”

Many of us began wiping at our eyes right then. Every person on that lawn had benefited from Ken and Shirley’s love and generosity. By the time Charley passed the mic, we were clinging to each other. The eulogies went on for a long time. We drank and reclined on blankets as the sky darkened. Fingers gently plucked guitar strings in search of comfort.

After Ken’s death, Shirley spent a lot of time in the air. She would pack a carry-on, slip a book into her purse, and go down to the airport. She came to see Bob and me several times, once in Virginia and once on Maui. Shirley told me that she sometimes flew across the country and back, just to get out of the house and read her book above the clouds. But she always made sure to be in town on the anniversary of Ken’s death so that she and Fred could drive deep into the Rocky Mountains for an afternoon at the crash site.

When Bob entered my life, I took him to meet Shirley and a few years later she stood beside me as I said my wedding vows. After we moved out of state, we made sure to hook up with Shirley whenever we were in town.

When our daughter Emily married, Shirley gave us her back yard to host a family soiree. Shirley had a spacious bedroom built off the back of the house, making sure it blended perfectly with the original construction. She extended an open invitation, one we took her up on many times. It was a happy place, with its floor-to-ceiling view of the lawn and gardens, flush with golden memories.

Fred tells me that Shirley is too fragile to talk on the phone and that they have called in hospice. That Shirley had fallen ill about five months ago and that he has been with her in the Holland House since she was discharged from the hospital. He tells me that they have moved her to the guest room and that a constant flow of visitors has been cycling through to lend support and pay their respects.

I talk with Cathi the next day. She says they are planning a wake a lot like Ken’s. We talk about how this period of hospice may be what it takes for Shirley to accept that she is not alone. She suggests I send a text just to say I love her. “I will,” I say. I put down my phone and think about how many of us are connected through Shirley and Ken. About their legacy of friendship, music, and art.

It was foggy this morning when I drove the shrouded backroads to visit a friend. I shared what was happening with Shirley and she told me about her aunt who is also dying. We both sat silent for a moment. “So much death,” she said, “So much grief.”

I spoke with Cathi on the way home. She had texted me yesterday evening, “Are you still awake?” but I had already gone to bed. I pulled over to talk and learned that Shirley had passed yesterday afternoon. “She died during happy hour, her favorite time of day.”

I switch on the radio and Harry Nilsson is singing, “I can’t live, if living is without you.” Next up is Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” a song that came out when I was coming of age on the east coast.

At home I pull into the pole barn, wet-eyed and ungrounded. Bob comes out to meet me, and when I tell him, he folds his big arms around me. “I’m heading into a meeting,” he says. I wipe my eyes and say, “I’m going to do some stress eating and go for a walk.”

After a bowl of vegetable soup, I stand on our back steps and stare at the ashen sky. I urge my feet into motion and walk towards the woods. High above the trees, I hear the whisper of a propeller plane.

Emily was four and Amy two when we began spending afternoons at the barn. Molly would enter the picture a year later. Their mother dressed Em and Ames like twins in unimaginably cute outfits, especially during the holidays. Bob would spread a quilt on the lawn outside the arena fence. “Don’t leave the blanket,” he’d say, and they never did. They sat and watched as we warmed up the horse, cantering along the rail, several feet away.

Before I knew it, I had fallen in love with their tiny voices and their sincere interest in everything. I loved the way they held their hands still for each stroke of the brush when I painted their little nails. They were water babies, so we took them to an outdoor pool in the summer, giving them rides on our backs, pretending to be large water mammals, which, of course, we were. Em and Ames seemed always to move in tandem, so close I never thought about one without picturing the other.

Being the oldest child myself, I assumed that Emily was in charge. Tapped into the rhythms of the natural world, Amy often danced to the beat of a different drummer while Emily seemed more in tune with our adult, and more conventional, world. Bob remembers stepping into their room one morning, wondering what was holding Amy up as the rest of us prepared to load ourselves into the car. He found Amy sitting on the floor, moving her hand in cryptic patterns to catch the sunlight on her skin.

A more complex picture came into focus as the girls grew. Although she was happy to give the steering wheel to her sister, I noticed that it was Amy who often charted their adventures. And when Molly joined us and began to vie with Emily for Amy’s attention, Amy became both the coveted prize and the peacemaker.

When Bob and I moved to Virginia, we talked their mother into taking the girls out of Colorado for the summer. While Bob was at work, we four girls went about the business of homemaking together: shopping, cooking, cleaning, tending the horses, and keeping the yard mowed and pretty.

One day, as we were returning from the grocery store in our hot, husky-voiced hay truck, we found ourselves pulled over at the curb. Amy sat on the bench seat between Em and Molly, all three of them looking straight ahead through the bug-smeared truck windshield, their hair sticking to their necks. I waited behind the steering wheel, and all knew what I was waiting for because we had been here before. I wanted to hear that the kids are done bickering and carrying on, so that I could resume our drive home through the Williamsburg traffic, undistracted.

Amy must have felt her sisters eyeballing her from the corners of their eyes. For one thing, they didn’t want the ice cream to melt. No one did. And she knows that as per usual we are all depending on her to break the silence. So Amy sighed and said, “I want to be good.” Without hesitation, Emily, and then Molly repeated the magic phrase. Before the words were out of their mouths, I pushed the blinker arm down and turned the key in the ignition. I eased into the lane and air began to circulate, mercifully, through the truck cab windows.

Twenty-three years later, Amy is celebrating her thirtieth birthday in Oregon with her mother, her sisters, and her nephew, come from Colorado. Bob was lucky enough to spend a pre-birthday weekend with Amy, Jasper, and Osha the dog last month. He skyped me in from Cheshire that weekend to take me on a tour of Amy’s shrunken ecological footprint. He showed me the creek, the vegetable garden, and the box truck home she shares with Jasper and Osha. We stopped to say good morning to some of their friends that live on the same acreage.

Amy has done a great job of releasing her inner artist without upsetting the balance of nature. She takes cast-off garments made from cotton, silk, and wool and dyes them with black walnut, imprinting them with leaves and other plants. She calls her art: “Scavenge Magic,” and it is indeed a form of spell work in which she dyes clothing the color of the soil, by boiling them in a blackish liquid. She says she is infusing them with “some level of planetary grief.”

It’s a milestone, turning thirty, and we watch Amy reach it with disbelief and pride. Amy has not lost her ability to abandon herself to the beauty of the natural world, and yet she has found a way to survive within our monetary culture. She is an inspiration, a true believer who walks the talk without depriving herself of what matters: quality of life, and the time to enjoy it.

We hadn’t needed a car in Nicaragua. In fact, cars were forbidden on Little Corn Island, and although having a car would have come in handy in Alaska, we hadn’t stayed there long enough to invest in a vehicle.

I believe every American can recall their first car in great detail. The specifics of their successors blur as the years speed by, with precious few worth bringing up in conversation. My first was a robin’s egg blue Rambler wagon that I acquired for $125. I named her Susi and slid around Denver in overdrive until I wore out the gear. Other notables were the hulking, solid steel 1950 Ford sedan that I drove out of a farmer’s field for $175 (never did get the brakes fixed); the 1972 Mercury Montego in arrest-me red with the sporty black vinyl top, and fantastic stereo system; and Christine.

We picked Christine up for a song—a mere $1200 for a ten-year-old Ford Escort with five-on-the-floor and 65,000 miles—and drove home to Berthoud, Colorado. Just like that, we were independent. One minute we were not totally American and the next we were, confidently down-shifting at stop signs and pushing her into fifth to blow past the pack lumbering up I-25.

After finding her lights on for the third time, we named her Christine after Stephen King’s novel about a possessed car. Our Christine was configured in a way that made it easy to bump the light switch when sliding out from under the steering wheel and she had long lost the ability to ping us in alarm. We bought a pair of jumper cables to keep in her ample trunk and grew accustomed to the tentative approach of helpful souls coming to let us know our car was sitting in the lot with her lights on.

Christine was our only transport for four years and for that alone she stands out. I think every couple should share a car for some period of time. It kept us from becoming too autonomous and enhanced our scheduling and communication skills. Sharing Christine helped us point our lives in the same direction.

We became a two-car family with Blanche, a 1987 white Mercedes turbo touring wagon who sometimes depended on the kindness of strangers. Blanche was joined by Oliver, an olive green Outback gifted to us by beloved neighbors Jason and Haruka, and most recently Val, a “Kinetic Blue” 2017 Chevy Volt.

Now, fourteen years after buying Christine, there were four cars milling about our yard and it was time to thin the herd. I moved Christine from her place beneath the sweet gums to a sunny patch of lawn in front of the house. Bob handed me a razor blade and I scraped off the trash sticker and the rasta baby decal. I removed my hair ties from the glove box and reached into the trunk to pull out the catch-all milk crate.

When the day came, a nice young couple arrived to collect our old friend. Bob and I stood together on our soggy lawn and watched Christine’s tail lights as her new owners drove away. She paused, blinking at us with her turn signal before turning south towards the highway, and I’m pretty sure she flashed her headlights one last time.

My marks are not high when given the chance to test my caretaking endurance. Twenty minutes outside the Giant Eagle rest rooms, melting ice cream in the car outside pushed me over the edge last May. The shopping trip had taken an hour and a half longer than planned, the second stop announced after we’d paid for the ice cream at the first, after I thought we were headed home on an eighty degree day. By the time I got my mother back to her apartment, (“It’s alright dear,” she’d said, “I like my ice cream when it’s soft”) I lost control and let fly regrettable words. We’ll see how I do this year.

My brother works with developmentally challenged people, a source of great amusement to him. His clients are unapologetically candid, he says, crude and refreshingly unfiltered. He likes people, it’s as simple as that.

John is deeply talented but has put his creative career aside in favor of enriching our parents’ sunset years. Although his photography should be legendary, he never toots his own horn. He understands light like no one else. His creative eye unerringly homes in on the essence of a scene. He’s done a lot of studio portraits, many of them pro bono and has an uncanny way of teasing out his subject’s inner beauty.

You would never know that John suffers from migraines and back pain. At family events he works the room with tripod and cameras, mining for gold. Looking over photographs from our youngest brother’s wedding, we’re captured in candid enjoyment at round tables laden with food. John is missing. He’s behind the camera and I realize, has been on his feet the entire time. It’s all right, he tells me, it’s the editing not the standing that bothers his back.

John has a gaggle of grandkids and they crawl all over him, loving his attention, stealing his glasses. They call him Grandpa Basil. They make movies together, sophisticated ones with plots and multiple camera angles. The kids are great, flawlessly in character but I know how much behind-the-scenes patience it takes to pull this off. How John does this after a full time job and running our parents around, is beyond me. Surely he must pick the days between headaches, although I can’t imagine they are easily scheduled.

I was a pampered only child, regarded as miracle incarnate by my parents, until their next miracle appeared. Like many first-borns I felt dethroned, but quickly shifted gears after realizing I now owned a real-life doll baby.

We were the perfect two child family for three years. There’s a lovely photo of us, sitting on the stone steps outside our home in Norvelt, Pennsylvania, my mother beaming, my father slightly distracted by the camera timer, Johnny and I unaccustomed to sitting still.

Dad immortalized our relationship in another photograph. Johnny and I are in our Easter best, he in a jaunty sailboat shirt and me clutching my hatbox. I’ve got a firm grip on my little brother with my other hand. My attitude is doting and overbearing, his response unabashedly trusting. Johnny bought into my wisdom until he was old enough to question my authority, after which he was wise enough make it appear he still trusted my judgement.

Once we were playing on ice and it began to break. I watched in horror as Johnny began floating out into Hudson Bay. “Jump!” I shrieked and he stepped off into the knee-deep water without hesitation. Another time we were playing with friends, rolling around on their lawn, when the younger girl picked up a huge rock and dropped it on Johnny’s forehead. Her big sister fetched her mother, and I ran all the way home to tell mine. Mom flew out the door leaving me in charge. Terrified he was dying, I prayed the rosary again and again until she brought him home, alive.

John jokes about the incident, “I think she was trying to impress me.” he says. He is one of those guys who sees the funny in everything. John is a gifted mimic, too easily assuming personas to illustrate a joke. Even his complaints turn into jokes. We talk on the phone after dinner sometimes, laughing until tears flow and my jaw muscles seize up. “Remember that kid,” he’ll begin and I know I’m in for a good one.

In our thirties, John and I visited our grandmother’s home. “Let’s pretend we’re little kids again,” he suggested, picking up my hand. “We would walk like this” he said, taking a tiny little step towards the terrace above the vegetable garden. Off we went, climbing the concrete steps, navigating an enormous world and we small as toddlers. My eyes shone.

Life without John would be boring and burdensome, yet I take his presence for granted. It seems like he’s always been there, shouldering the hard work while making me feel big, picking up the pieces and joking about it. He touches many lives in profound ways without making anyone feel indebted. My little brother is bigger than me and has been for a long time. But don’t let him catch you saying that because he’ll defend his big sister’s honor with unabashed fervor to the end.

In the twelve years since creating Abundance NC, Tami has built a vibrant local economy, beginning with Chatham Marketplace, a local food co-op grocery. In support of the Abundance mission “to cultivate and celebrate community resilience,” Tami and her team provide farm-to-table dinners, workshops, conferences and festivals. All of which handily promote community resilience by building awareness and fostering connections.

Tami’s husband Lyle Estill is also a local hero, playful and well-connected with a giant roll-o-dex. Between them they must know everyone within 100 miles of Moncure and their influence extends across the nation and globally. If you want to make something happen, all you have to do it pitch it to Tami and Lyle.

Tami’s secret is her natural penchant for parties. Even as a young girl, she loved to throw a party and has developed her talent into a fine art. Tami’s parties are legendary events, often themed and thrumming with costumed revelry. Her Mardi Gras parties come to mind, as does the Alice in Wonderland party she put together to celebrate her daughter Jess’s engagement.

What Tami has always known and many of us are just catching onto is this; people like to have fun. If I had a nickel for each time I’ve heard the word fun come out of Tami’s mouth, I’d be swimming in dollars. It would appear that her life’s mission is to make sure everyone around her is having a good time and in that, she succeeds mightily.

I’m reading Judy Wicks’ memoir “Good Morning, Beautiful Business – The unexpected journey of an activist entrepreneur and local economy pioneer” and noticing the parallels between her life and Tami’s. Affirming Tami’s wisdom, Judy writes:

“And we’ve seen that when people get together, amazing things happen. So we create opportunities for people to come together to learn from, inspire and support one another, in their shared efforts to build more resilient communities.”

Today is Pepper Fest day and Tami is already out at Briar Chapel, setting things up for another legendary party this afternoon. It’s been raining for three days and the forecast is for more this afternoon but Tami is unfazed, posting to facebook: “Super excited about my new raincoat and THE 8TH ANNUAL AMAZING PEPPER FESTIVAL TODAY! 3-7pm….It will be an adventure…come on out and enjoy the covered food and music and kids events. Wear your rain gear! Ha!”

As I have come to realize, Tami’s ability to make everything more fun is what makes her nonprofit, her community and her life so successful. People respond to her and gravitate into her circle of light, eager to participate and support. Indeed, it was the twinkle in Tami’s eye that lured Bob and I here eight years ago. I couldn’t wait to throw in with Tami professionally, and when we saw the opportunity we bought a house in her neighborhood.

So there you have it: Tami follows her heart, and we follow her, eager to help create the antidote to the destructive soul-sucking global economy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m heading out to Pepper Fest!

Thirty-five years ago my economics teacher shocked the class by observing that “Death is nature’s way of telling you to slow down.” I’ve come to regard Josie as a less drastic reminder to take it easy. The line can be sixteen deep, but Josie takes her time. I start out at the end, fidgeting impatiently and eventually surrender to the lull in my needlessly hurried day. By the time I reach Josie, with her gentle, open face I’m tempted to ask her about her lilacs. She helps me put time into perspective.

The other day I was at Pittsboro Feed, paying for a bale of wheat straw and I overheard Christine telling another customer, “Josie’s got chickens, you can get them from her. Do you know Josie? She works the window at the post office. Stop in and she’ll get you fixed up.”

One of the things I dislike about living in the U.S. is how rushed I feel here. It’s part of our culture to be too busy for chit chat, too busy to wait in line. It’s not as bad down South here in the intimate ambiance of Pittsboro, but palpable nevertheless. “What if we lived in Boston?” Bob asks, reminding me to count my blessings.

Last night I read the following in Alexandra Fuller’s latest book, “Leaving Before the Rains Come.”

Time was the first thing I noticed about the United States. There seemed to be so little of it, and its unaccustomed short supply panicked me in the grocery checkout lines, during meals, and at traffic lights. I fumbled with my checkbook, I was unsure how to use credit card readers, I sat a beat too long at the intersection when red changed to green. I found time was jealously guarded too, as if to share any of it, or to take up someone else’s allocation, was the greatest crime. Ironically, it seemed obvious that most Americans had more time than almost any other humans in the history of the earth; they lived longer and more luxurious lives than had ever been lived before. And yet instead of slowing down to fill up all the space of their extra years, they sped up and up and up.

In Africa, we filled up all available time busily doing not much, and then we wasted the rest. We didn’t bother trying to hoard what could not be safeguarded, restrained, and stored.

Alexandra Fuller’s words fit my reality to a tee. Africa is full of Josies. The hardest thing about moving back to the States from Africa is trying to keep up with the snappier pace. Like Alexandra, I fumble in check out lines.

Those who buck the hurry up trend are regarded with annoyance and suppressed admiration. We’re jealous I think, of the people who refuse to scurry. This passage from “Horse Heaven” written by Jane Smiley 2000 has been stuck in my mind for years.

Once, when Rosalind Maybrick was still Rosie Wilson from Appleton, Wisconsin, on a school trip to New York City, she had seen a sight that changed her life….That was when things began to go wrong. The stroller caught something and began to fold. They boy began to cry. The driver opened the door and shouted angrily. “You gonna get off, lady? I got traffic here.”

The woman was magnificent. She adjusted her coat and her gloves before doing anything else. Then she righted the stroller. Then she picked up the boy. She adjusted her purse on her shoulder. Then she picked up the stroller. Then, very deliberately, holding up traffic all over Manhattan, she lowered herself and her things down the steps, pausing before stepping down onto the curb. As the bus pulled away, Rosie looked back and saw the women serenely strap the boy, who was no longer crying, into the stroller, then hand him a banana from her purse, then begin her promenade down the sidewalk. It was a riveting sight. She said to Mary, “Did you see that?”
“What?” replied Mary.
“That woman.”
“God she was rude,” said Mary.

And from that Rosalind knew that Mary would live the rest of her life in the Midwest, which she did.

Rosalind saw that, if you had enough self-possession, you could reconnoiter, plan ahead, take your time. It went beyond being careful. Being careful was something you did if you were in a rush. If you were self-possessed, you never had to be in a rush.

On Friday, I popped in to check my mail. Josie stood at the counter without any customers. “Hey Josie, did you manage to get your hay up before it rained the other day?” I asked. “Yep” she said with a smile, “the rain kept missing us for awhile there.” A woman appeared with a package and I motioned for her to step up, “We’re just chatting,” I said. The woman smiled and said, “Josie’s great for that, isn’t she?”