I'm baking pies at the cafe today, flying to Jersey for a funeral tomorrow, flying home Friday, and driving to the Frost Place on Saturday. My presence here for the next ten days will be scrappy, but I will do my best to check in when I can.

The gleam in this highly stressful schedule is that I'm flying to Jersey with James who is (1) extraordinarily competent and (2) extremely entertaining. Since we managed to have fun even when he was critically ill in the hospital, I am optimistic that on this occasion we will also find something to laugh about, despite the tears.

Here is a very small sample of James's thinking, circa 1998, when he would have been four years old. Though he's almost nineteen, the bright certitude persists--

James denies the reality of death, November 1998 

It’s true that nobody dies.
Just wonderful ants crawl up from the earth
and make us live again.