Peg was here today

Today is the eighth day. Irving Hellman and Penny stopped by tonight and explained that in Jewish tradition, the spouse is "sitting Shiva" for the first seven days and the spirit of his loved one is very close. For the next 30 days, the spirit is still present but encompasses a wider circle.

Today she made her presence known as she widens her circle.

I was on the phone with Joyce Mitchell and every time I looked out the window, hummingbirds were flitting around the rhododendron and lime tree. When I turned to the other window, a single hummingbird flew from branch to branch to branch under the Deodara Pine, which has no flowers. As long as I looked at that tree, the hummingbird did its dance.

A little while later, I got a strange urge to pull some placemats out of a kitchen drawer and group them with the larger herd in the credenza. Listening to Pandora on the Internet. "Do You Want To Know A Secret?" by the Beatles came on. This was the song playing in a restaurant in 1986 when we were first dating, looking into each other's eyes and knowing this was for keeps.

I pulled out the pile of placemats to find out what was pushing them up from the bottom of the drawer, making it difficult to close...and discovered these two hand-painted tiles Peg had put away years ago. They're now part of a little shrine on our mantle, Peggy's wedding ring at the heart.
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Norma, our friend from the women's group, spent a few hours here today and helped me sort through Peg's shoes and clothing. She filled her car with what is now Peg's gift to a local shelter for abused women. Zoë will go through the remaining clothing and may find something she might actually wear--hoodies and fleeces, water shoes, bellydancing skirts and scarves. She tried on a pair of knee-high leather boots--no go. Her legs are too muscular from swimming to squeeze into them.
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Zoë has taken her A.P. Calculus exam, and tomorrow A.P. US History. She's been studying since 1:30 this afternoon except for a brief nap. Next week it's A.P. English Literature and A.P. Physics. Then the SAT, followed a week later by the ACT.  Tomorrow night we're taking a break and seeing "The Avengers" movie. After all we've been through the last week, we're looking forward to some mindless Big Dumb Fun.