I assumed I'd be writing to you from borrowed digs on Mount Desert Island this morning. But yesterday evening, after the memorial service, T and I looked at each other and said, "Let's just go home." The drive to the island is three hours each way, so this was work. But for whatever reason, we both wanted to wake up at home. I suppose that's because I'm still scrabbling to pull myself together after my Chicago adventure, plus prepping to teach today. On T's side, not only has he been working hard, but he'll be leaving for NYC on Friday. Suddenly, it seems, we didn't have the wherewithal.

Fortunately I'd done the driving on the trip up, so at least we were able to share the work, though poor T had the worst of it, what with rain and growing darkness. But baseball on the radio helped, and by 9 p.m. we were walking through our door, much to the joy of the cat.

And so, this morning, I sit gratefully on my own couch, drinking hot black coffee, looking out at the dim wet morning. The rain has stopped, and the garden glows with green and blossom . . . velvet soil, twining clematis and peavines, long spikes of onions, carpets of arugula, newly planted seedlings relaxing into vigor . . . a beautiful morning to be a young Serrano pepper or Brandywine tomato. It's cool--as it was yesterday at the memorial service: a classic spring day . . . lush, chill-breezed, spats of rain. "Fucking Maine," said the widow, with love and exasperation. Everyone was freezing, but what did we expect? I read aloud a Hayden Carruth poem, visited with a poet I admire but hadn't seen in forever, hugged the dear widow, talked with kind strangers, drank half a glass of red wine in a weedy dooryard, cried. Ah, sorrow and joy and awkwardness. Ah, icy feet in sandals that I knew would be a mistake but decided to wear anyway. Such are the puzzles of life.

A day like this perhaps explains our sudden drive home. Sometimes--not often--T and I are the same person.