A Friday

Warmer every day and the Bradford pears are popping white blossoms. Another winter we did not cut down any of those trees which block the sun but which I secretly like quite a bit.
I am wearing shorts and a tank top.
I am not kidding you.

A hawk is screaming across the sky and now there are two. I wonder if they are fighting for dominance over the space above my yard. I do not speak Hawk but the birds and chickens do. They look warily up and are quiet.


Time to put on my shoes and walk about my little village. I pass a place where I thought they were tearing down an old church, built in the 1800's but then I saw they were replacing old wood with new and I stopped and talked to a guy on the site and they are making a house of it and that warms my heart. New windows and doors, and yet, the solid old structure, built of the same heart pine as this house.
A thing which gives me hope, for some reason.
And on the window of the falling-in corner store which Mr. Lawrence closed the doors on a while back there is a small sign. "For Sale. $60,000 or best offer."
When I lived in Lloyd thirty years ago there were two stores at that corner, one across the street from the other. One has burned down long ago and this one vacant, ugly, truly, cement block and bars on the windows.
I wonder what will happen.
We need a core of the village. A place where a watchful eye is kept, where information is passed, where a can of soup or a coke can be bought.
The truck stop down the way cannot serve that purpose, nor does it.

Well. I must get moving. The walk and then to town and then back again to go over lines and paint my nails and roll my hair and get ready for tonight when we do Steel Magnolias again. We have done three performances, we have six left to go.
I looked at that little tribute clip to Colin twice last night and I saw the joy on his face and on all of our faces. A year ago.
I know that I should use Colin's joy to fill my own heart with the incredible gift of being able to play up there on that stage but his loss is still too fresh and it serves more as a barrier I must break through and I am sorry for that and Colin would hate it and he'd say, "Pull yourself together, woman!"
I can hear him say it.
But I can't feel his hand in mine when we take our bows and that's the loss of death.
Can't pretty that up any more than you can pretty up a cement block, falling-down building with bars on the window and I can hear the hawk crying across the sky and yet, we go on, knowing full well that some things can be transcended into new creation and some things simply cannot.