A Treasure to be Discovered
7am – the hot summer day barely peeks into my view…when you live in Cali, specifically Riverside, you can tell early on if it will be a hot one. I sit in the sort-of dining room / never quite an office / former in-between-nothing-room and put down words on a screen hoping they might be helpful to me and to someone who might read them.
The table is round, formerly tall, and like most things around my house, an e-marketplace win. I love this table….classic oak, the kind you need to use a coaster with, the light oak color that resembles pine, but not quite. It sits with three chairs around it, the fourth one isolated since it is in need of repair. We all need repair at times.
9pm the night before – I sit at this same table with my granddaughter who is visiting from a much cooler climate; she graciously doesn’t complain—takes the heat in her stride—carrying the genes of both the Pacific Northwest and San Antonio, Texas which allows for a bit of resistance to sunburning—a bit.
10pm the night before – we sit for a game of cribbage while the clock ticks toward the end of their visit—two precious grandchildren who will board a plane until another visit when they will be taller, each visit a bit more mature, each visit welcome and unknown.
10:30pm the night before – the child is winning the Cribbage game, each of us having gained tips from DeLynn Colvert on recognizing double, triple, or quadruple runs that may appear with the turn of the top card on the deck. “I have something!” she shouts. It is a quadruple run, on top of three 15’s—she races past me on the board. Her first win during this visit. Thank you, DeLynn Colvert, for training our eyes.
On the messy, well-used beloved table is a tiny vase of kindness from a widow friend. I am just into year two of being physically parted from my beloved; she is twenty years past. Widowed folks come in all varieties. This friend is a gentle soul that seeks beauty and passes it on at every opportunity. I knew her when her husband died, but not well. I can say with certainty that I did not know her at all in her “new widow” status. One can never know that until it happens to you. And even then, one cannot ever fully know.
Back into this day – 8:13am – I will squeeze in another game of Cribbage while I am doing laundry and packing for Camp Widow, San Diego. Gratefully looking forward to what awaits me there.
Definitely packing a cribbage board to bring along . . .
