In a clean nightgown with damp hair, I sit at a table in the bedroom of a boy gone to college.  My hostess normally lists this room on Air BnB, and has rented it to me for a few nights of this trip at the auspices of a mutual friend in Kansas City.  But the rent does not include all that has happened.  We have shared a meal, talked of our changing lives, told stories of our children, and towards the end of the evening, sat at the breakfast bar speaking of grace.

I came east to this place when I left the ocean.  Reluctance to leave the coast dogged my heels all the way.  But I stopped in Half Moon Bay to reconnect with a woman whom I have met on other trips, a maker of jewelry and lovely clothing.  We reaffirmed our desire to entwine our lives, on a plot of land somewhere, in tiny houses built by her father, her brother, and her own strong hands.  She made a  pair of earrings while I waited; and engulfed me in her angel arms; and we vowed to meet again in six months — there, or in Oregon, or by the sea.

Before I came to that place, I rose at dawn in a hostel on the shore of my great ocean.  I padded to the kitchen and made a pot of rich Santa Cruz roasted coffee.  The other early risers drifted into the kitchen, and cups came to the counter to be filled.  I cannot help myself:  where there are mouths to feed, I cook; where there are nerves to soothe I murmur; and if there is coffee, I pour for all who come into the room.

I ate my eggs, then went back to begin preparing for departure.  I knelt on the ground beside my bag, spying a crumpled piece of paper.  I eased it from a pocket, mystified. When its folds and creases had been smoothed, I saw a message wrapped around a sucker, given by a bank in town to someone who decided that I needed to hear a message about the search which compels me.

I carefully folded the paper, slipped it back into the slot where the giver had placed it, and finished packing.  In the parking lot, I took one last long look at the crystal blue sea, and the lighthouse rising above me, and the benches with their brass plaques and tender messages.  Then I got into my rental car, and started south, then east, and then to this place with its welcoming light and the warmth of the love its inhabitants share.

It’s the ninth day of the thirty-third month of My [glorious, endless] Year Without Complaining.  My magical life, with its fair winds and following seas, continues.