The hard, driving rain that began after the thunder rolled through has now passed, part and parcel of a Seattle spring. It’s a dewy morning, a beautiful one. A day for pardon and peace and absolution. I see that the rain has stopped but that the sun is flashing between dramatic, fast-moving clouds. I take a long shower. I get dressed. My mother is having coffee, and Abby is reading her mail on her laptop at the kitchen table. I am doing something mundane again: I am looking for a bag in which to carry those pages. I see Abby’s beloved head, tipped down in concentration. I love that head so much, and that hair, and every little bit of that girl, that young woman. It tears my heart, seeing her, loving her like that. It tears my heart to see my mother in her favorite sweat clothes, her white hair in disarray from sleep. And my sweet old Pollux, oh, yes, him, too. Beloved him. Beloveds, all of them.Double hugs, I say silently.I could cry, and so I get myself out of there. I take a bag from the narrow space on the side of the fridge, where we keep them.
