Quote
  
      Now is all we have.
      Love is who we are.
                 ~Anne Lamott
  
 I’m sifting through files, when this floats
 onto my lap, this cream-colored envelope—
 stationery Tim and I asked a friend to design
 for a business that carried us twenty years
  
 To here.
 To now.
  
 The quoted words are written in my hand,
 something from writer Anne Lamott,
 but the source? Well, I’ve read quite a lot
 by Anne. Never met her. Did not note
 the particular work. Does it matter?
  
 No. It is here.
 With me now.
  
 And I feel the truth, see it everywhere I look,
 stacked on our shelves, between the covers of each book—
 essence of each maker distilled into gifts speaking
 over the distance of years, abundance not just of the maker
 but of so many generous people who carried them here.
  
 Not just each book.
 Wherever I look.
  
 The silver teaspoons of my grandmother, a cross-stitch 
 from Tim’s sister honoring our wedding. A trompe-l’oiel 
 shawl from my mother disguising a battered door.
 Endless list—--towels in the bathroom, sheets on our bed,
 photographs on our walls, all sent by my sister.
  
 10,000 love notes.
 Waiting to be re-read.
  
 Friends. Living or departed, still a rich chorus.
 You, whom we understand, who are there for us.
 You know who you are! You have marked us.
 This morning, I see how love, our magic alphabet, 
 writes us real, sends us back to the source.
  
 To speak and to see,
 To love and to be.
  
 Or in Anne’s words now:
 Help, Thanks, Wow.
  
  
 Leslie Schultz 

These quiet days are filled with new reading and re-reading…books, letters, memories, and clouds…and the journey continues! LESLIE