Known and Found and Gathered In

Today dawned clear and I rose early in it knowing I had many jobs ahead. I’m  lucky because we’re eating at our brother and sister-in-law’s but I’m busy nonetheless: There's that bunny cake to make and I have to go get our uncle, 88, who will want to go sit by that special pond first. He has his eye on distant horizons now. And he’ll need some good hot coffee to wrap his hands around. And then there’s church and Skip and Miriam’s, and an airport run and an uncle drop-off and then back here with just our small family and the grandbabies and then to work at night to ready my column for its deadline in the morning.

Little Eddie called last night with his emergency voice on. “TT!” he said wasting no time on preliminaries. “Bring all my Star Wars guys to Skip and Miriam’s!” Only he still talks a little funny so it sounded like ‘Stoh Wohs.’

There is a stunningly capable young guy named Nick, soon to be 20, who helps me now in my business life and little Eddie and I went to his house on Friday where his beautiful mom and he dug out all his Star Wars toys to give to us. Then, while I went foodshopping, Nick and Eddie came back here and built a spaceship out of all the perfectly-sized boxes I had been saving to ship my books in when a clamoring public beat down my door to buy them.

Books by the thousand still fill the cellar. Not everything turns out the way you think it will.

But it’s true spring now, Easter, Passover, the season of release into new life. And this is our boy-cat at the top here, so sick a year ago and hiding behind a door waiting to die. He didn’t die, because he was found in the nick of time - just as we all hope to be found and claimed and gathered in, when we too set sail for that far horizon.