Last late night

It's gotten late again, almost midnight. The day goes quiet, though I've come strangely awake, the way it happens sometimes when it's silent and we know things we couldn't understand earlier in the day. I had meant this to be an early night. But this is Sunday, my last evening here, the last one that stretches open to me before I finish packing tomorrow night and leave very early Tuesday morning. I want to savor it; this quiet moment. Before.

So much, so much. This morning Michelle Sumares emailed a lovely article in the Asheville Citizen-Times--A sweet piece foreshadowing Thursday's Sisters Singing event in North Carolina. It hits all the right notes, and goes out to who knows how many thousands of people. Later in the day, Robin Rector Krupp writes to say that a diner called the Early Girl Restaurant is offering a 10% discount to anyone who mentions "Sisters Singing" between 4 and 6:30 pm on Thursday, April 2! This of course, the night of the reading, and they are on the same street as the Jubilee! Community Center where we'll have the event. So come on down! I can hear in the back of my mind, like some grand, big-hearted, easy-smiling women are welcoming us all to town.

How did this come to happen? Good people. Good people, devoted to a life of creativity and the spirit live in this town, and they have welcomed us to join them. And the fact that three artists in Asheville have organized a Sisters Singing art show this month (my dear friends Terese Armstrong and Michelle, along with Robin), and that twenty members of the local women's choir Womensong, hugely popular, are joining us that night. Sisters Singing is held within networks and circles and webs and waves of creativity and connection. Everywhere I turn, a friend.

A lovely weekend, getting ready to leave. No commitments; lots of sunlight splashing in through the south-facing windows, spring crashing into our lives in a great brash flash of color from the bulbs Jean planted last Fall. Daffodils, narcissus, tulips, crazy wild yellow and red and pink and orange, and the birds bathing for hours in the watery bath and the squirrels visiting and chirping around. Two great crows in the redwoods squawked for hours this afternoon -- the finest sound around, in my view.

I slept. I woke and read and did a little work. I ate and slept and dozed and ate. I watched it get dark and come light again. Jean and I chatted and twined around each other the way mates do when they are resting. As trip preparation help, Jean has done all my laundry, which lies in folded piles right now on the living room floor. She is determined that I will not leave my packing until the last minute. And now the Early Girl Restaurant in Asheville is offering discounts if you mention Sisters Singing when we're there! A strange series of events are knocking into each other as if we are meteors meeting in the sky. None of us knows each other, really. And yet we are all comfortable; there is ease in this. We do know each other, in the end.

My mother had daffodils that came up every spring just about now, in the bed right in front of the house. They were reliable as the sun, and abundant. They continued to spring to life each spring long after my mother stopped gardening or spending much time outside at all. But I remember the younger mother, leaning in the soil, tending her roses. Those daffodils never needed special treatment. They were common, unspecial, consistently beautiful. There were years they were the only color in our yard, after my father had the roses taken out. Once in my early thirties I lived near a great shady oak tree, and to my delight that first spring I found that someone had planted hundreds of daffodil bulbs underneath. A crazy, unending splash of yellow flowed up under that tree, and I found then that I love daffodils with the undying affection of the seven year old child. Jean has them in little vases throughout the house; it is as if they they bring spring inside; not only this lovely one in Santa Cruz, but every spring I've ever had.

The air was fragrant and breezy this weekend; the light fine. I sat in the sun and stared at the redwoods swaying. Something is settled in me. As if I can take the light of those daffodils and contain it in my skin. As if I can carry it with me where I go; offer it out; as if light itself can enter the heart and turn it bright.

I think it is possible to travel like a beam; to carry spirit like daffodils in your pocket, always a bouquet ready. Now there are just the last details; that little list on my desk that I am always adding to and crossing off. It's gotten kind of short. We're almost there. Just one more day. Then leap... and land in the arms of big-hearted women and men, waiting, and ready, in the blossom-filled mountains of a vibrant, sweet North Carolina town. Yes, leap.