For the past several weeks my garlic harvest has been curing in the barn, and yesterday I cut down the bundles and trimmed up the heads for storage. It was a beautiful crop: fifty-plus heads, fat and white and firm. Under normal circumstances I'd now separate out about a third of the crop for seed, but I have no idea where I'll be next spring so I cannot plant garlic in October. This makes me a bit melancholy. A friend fighting cancer once told me that seeing her garlic sprout in April was how she knew she'd managed to stay alive.

Ah well.

I looked at the news this morning: a morass of earthquakes and bloodbaths and racism and Donald Trump. But I have reliable heat in my house. And my cat hasn't run away from home again. And Paul and I will hug Tom at an early-morning diner breakfast on Friday. And my sister will meet me in Vermont and we will spend a giggly night together after we unpack Paul. And I have figured out an alternate route to the college so I don't have to drive over the bridge that scares me. None of this is fair, and it all makes me cry, and it all makes me angry, and it all makes me ashamed, and it all makes me wonder what grace demands, and what travesties loom, and where, and why, and when.