Some people just make my day rock.

Tonight one of them, my friend Penny Thieme, brought her shining eyes to sit in my living room and twinkle at me, to drink coffee from a blue ceramic mug, and drive her gorgeous convertible up and down my street and scandalize the neighborhood.  What a gift she has for bringing me up from depths which look like being bottomless.

And last Saturday, in the mail, I received a gift from another person whose timing couldn’t have been more perfect.  That gift came in a brown envelope, addressed to “M. C. Corley”, from my former spouse, Dennis Lisenby.  Inside, a book written and illustrated by my very own son, Patrick, about 15 years ago.  Saved, since we split up in 2008, by Dennis, and retrieved from a box of pictures and miscellaneous papers, from the basement of his home in Killbuck, Ohio.

Just in time to send me right when it could do the most good.

And my friend Jane Williams reached out to me today, with kindness, with compassion, with empathy, and with love.

For them, and others who have helped me, I offer this poem, by Robert Frost:

The way a crow
Shook down on me
A dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has lightened the weight
Of a heavy mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.