Oh, Mary, it means the world that you have read and commented (and enjoyed!). Thank you.

I think of you so often, and that promise made so long ago that we should meet on a wintry day in CR, talk long into the night, be food-ish (and maybe foolish, since I believe I might be a Took underneath my Sweedishness!)

I'm so sorry that your memories of childhood are fading. Lately, I've begun to think that (unlike the Elves), the sadnesses we endure as mortal people cause our memories to fade out of a sense of survival.

And yet, I remember a lady at my mother's assisted living home who, lost in some world, had a single word, repeated over and over: "momma. momma. momma.'

all of those things we loved/have loved/*will love*. Locked tight in our minds. The love, along with the loss. The *knowing*, the certainty.....

the view of that Road, with the Sea, a glimmering promise of the future, in the far-off. And *that* velvet night, the one with heaven's own stars, the promise of an eternity amongst all that we love.....

CR! that is the 'top' of our hill....the little kitchen nook of this decade. We should make a date!

I love that you love this, dear Mary. And I love you, too!