An Irish Girl 

for Ethan and for the town of Doolin


Once there was a small girl with long hair that shone like corn silk, and her name was Nola.  She lived in a small village, which had just a few farms, cottages and castles, cliffs and the wide dark sea. 
 The town was called Doolin, in County Clare, nestled snugly









on the Western shores of Ireland.  Nola's mother Dierdre was a laundress, and her father Niall (Neal) a dairy farmer.  

But there was not enough money for them from selling milk from the cows and washing neighbors' clothing, so Dierdre also sheared their sheep and knitted beautiful Aran sweaters to sell to neighbors and to visitors from faraway places like America and Europe and Mexico. 

So many people came walking down Doolin's narrow stone lane to the sea, people from everywhere in the world, to see the shaggy pastures rolling up into the hills, the mountains jutting into the rocky sea, the boats going to the Aran Islands, and the colorful  tiny homes dotting the landscape like jewels studded into green silk.  

Nola spoke Irish (some call it Irish Gaelic) with her family and in school, but she also spoke English, which all Irish people do now, in order to communicate with one another and with people in other countries.  People who speak Irish say words like FAILTE, which means welcome, and comes out "felta." SLAINTE means "cheers!" and sounds like "sh-laun-ta."  These soft-spoken words roll from their tongues as songs.

Dierdre taught Nola to knit sweaters too, though the girl was only seven.  Nola spent many afternoons knitting patterned sweaters from the creamy silky yarn her mother spun from an old wooden wheel. The wool was fluffy and made thick garments, warm enough to keep away the cold wind and sea spray.  

People loved their sweaters, so as soon as they finished knitting each one, a customer would pay them 200 Euros, snuggle into the sweater, stretch out their arms, pat their sleeves and walk away proudly.

Every day Nola got up early from her little wooden bed in the loft, climbed down the ladder, and helped her mother to bring in dried pieces of grassy peat to burn in their kitchen fireplace, so they could have tea and cocoa for their breakfast.  

Nola got to put the water into the kettle, while her mother made scones as big as Niall's fist to go with  scrambled eggs and sausages.  Niall came in from the barn to gave them fresh milk to put into their tea and cocoa, and he sat down with them.  They held hands around the table and said together:  

"Lord, for what we're about to receive, make us truly thankful."  Quietly in their beloved cottage, they ate their breakfast, making noises of contentment like "mmmm...".  They were happy in their home by the sea.

Sundays were different, though.  They slept later, had breakfast later, and Niall only had to milk the cows, but he didn't do any more work that day. Dierdre and Nola took a day off from their chores and knitting.  They went to church and sang a song:

All creatures great and small,
The good Lord made them all.

After church they followed the stone fences winding down toward the main road.  They stopped at Aunt Eire's wooden home, which was a magical place.  The square house actually appeared to be round if Nola looked at it in the early morning haze.  It was white, but on cloudy days it looked sort of blue, and in the evening it looked purple!  The roof was made of thatch, but it was also full of bird's nests, so that you had to watch your head, or an egg might fall into your hair.   

Nola loved Aunt Eire's home and when they arrived there one Sunday after church, they smelled her stew of beef, potatoes and parsnips cooking on the fire, and her bread baking in the big black kettle hanging by the fireplace.  They smelled something else!  Oh, what was that?  

It was Nola's favorite, Banoffee Pie!  It had sugar cookies for a crust, bananas cut into rounds like coins on the bottom, golden butter-toffee sauce and clouds of whipped cream on the top. Nola liked to lick the cream from the pie and devour the sticky filling with her spoon.

They heard Aunt Eire's horse Shuffle making his snuffling noises out in the hillside pasture; Nellie the cow mooing in the paddock, the pigs making their whining noises as they played in the barnyard, the chickens fussing and the geese bawling as they played duck-duck-goose with the ducks.  After dinner, Niall took out his fiddle and sat on Aunt Eire's front porch.  Watching the passers-by going down to the sea, he played a song slowly as they all sang:

Oh Ireland, our dear old home,
Keep us all aware,
Help us to care,
For one another, for our friends,
But also for earth, skies, and seas.
Oh Ireland, our dear old home,
Keep us all aware.

By the end of many songs, Nola had drifted into sleep on Aunt Eire's knee, a lovely dream of pies and ponies.  When she woke up, it was already time for school on Monday!  She hurried off down the schoolhouse lane, pulling on her mittens, carrying her backpack and lunch box.  The air smelled of sea winds far away. Nola was happy.  It was the start of a brand new Doolin day.

by Gran, written especially for Ethan

Good-bye to Elena

Our friend--the whole town's friend--Elena Shoemaker died this morning.  To think we will never hear her voice again--laughing, singing, instructing--seems impossible, but it is true--we'll have to remember it each in our own way.


She began to fail after a long fight with diseased organs subsequent to heavy mold in her home a few years ago.  Her spleen, kidneys and liver were compromised, she got treatment from time to time in the states (her two brothers are physicians), but she kept this to herself, continuing to perform her music, to teach many people to play the piano and to sing their hearts out, even if they'd always thought that singing was impossible.


During the last month a group of friends have gathered to do whatever needed doing, getting her into and out of the hospital, and when it became clear that further measures were futile, hospice was called in and took care of her at home.


One of her brothers became touched and not a little curious about why we were all so feverish in our activities to help her, why so many went out our ways to do whatever small thing we could.


I wrote to him:

"Your questions reflect good insights into what's going on in our joint-effort wave of activity for Elena; it's often what happens in foreign-land-ex-pat communities--families form within certain neighborhoods and groups and overlap into others, because our birth families are in the states or elsewhere.  

That interactive, adoptive familiarity constitutes who we become when we move here--someone needs something, somebody else scrambles around and comes up with it.  Sight unseen, in many cases.  We know we'll be taken care of too, if we've participated in this way (and in many cases even if we have not).  

So that's San Miguel (or Vera Cruz or wherever) for you--we stick together naturally.  But this brief bit of exposition doesn't complete the story here.

In the case of helping Elena in any way we can, perseverance and magic emerges and flies in all directions from the experience each of us has had with Elena herself.  She loves life, loves people, loves the world every day, all the time--she loves us fiercely and we reciprocate the feeling.  She exudes joie de vivre in the smallest encounter.

Elena'll fight for the underdog, fight for justice for people she doesn't even know, fight for lives of stray dogs, children, plants and the birds in the parks.  That's contagious, but it's also affected us personally.  

When we're down, she won't let us stay that way. She's a music teacher par excellence, because as Kathy said, she makes people feel they CAN do it--they can do anything--they can succeed and love it if they try.  

Elena is an artist at living her life fully, at helping other people, just in casual conversation oftentimes, to live their lives fully.  If somebody's sick, she's sympathetic but she won't let them stew in it--she'll give them the sheer will to step up and out of that illness or hardship, and into gratefulness for life.

Everyone needs an Elena in his/her life.  By example she shows us the way things can be--good, good, good, all the time, even in the face of pain and trouble.  Experiencing her friendship she holds us up and entertains us at the same time.  Life's passions are the most important part of life:  Elena demonstrates that all the time.  She's one of a kind.

As an artist, the feeling of a piece to her is the main part of it--conveying that feeling, telling that story--and in that way she's even a conduit of truth for the composer.  She makes the notes into visions, experiences, of reality.

That's what makes this particular group effort special...and in many ways it's just another group of friends and neighbors helping out in a crisis.  

But the essence is to give back to--to take care of--Elena.  The way she has given to and cared for us. Even in her pain now, she shows us we are all works in progress. . . worthy of reaching for sudden insight, sparks of interest,  delight, no matter who we are.  

Being a work in progress in Elena's singing group has meant more to me than many high-flung classes--and it's been far more fun.  We love her--she's our friend, sister, teacher, champion. To champion her during a hard time--right to the end--means the world to us."

Woody Tiki-Tavi

So we're preparing to get Michael all set for hernia surgery on Tuesday, packing up some things and getting the extra dog food for our helper Ana to feed them, getting simple chores done.  A-OK.  No drama, right?

Right.  So Sunday, Mike was driving home and called me on his cell to open the big garage doors for him--I said sure, and went out there, but WOODY the DOXIE escaped from the patio into the carport, which is a no-no--he's a bolter.  So I unlocked the gate and then shoved the latch closed so I could grab "bad dog" and get him back into the house before Mike came in and the doors had to open.

I turned around to pick him up, but Woody had discovered a HUGE GRAY SNAKE behind a plastic garbage bag against the stone wall of the garage...HUGE.  Major snake.  3 feet away from moi. I went into a sort of mild panic and backed away as Woody and the snake were going at it--Woody was doing damage but the snake was trying to bite him too, and how did I know if it was poisonous, you know?

So from the yard, I'm screaming WOODY!!  COME!!....he let the snake go, but kept circling and the snake was HUGE I'm telling you...and kept striking at him...after I screamed 10 or so times, Woody came to me, and I carried him to the front of the house where I didn't have the key to get IN....but along came M in the car, and I screamed, flagged him down, waving my free arm:

"THERE'S A HUGE SNAKE IN THE GARAGE--THERE'S A HUGE SNAKE IN THE GARAGE!!"

Mike noticed I was hopping around tippy-toes on the porch so as to avoid any other possible snakes in the area (there never have been).  So Mike rushed around the corner & parked, got a big stick, examined the HUGE SNAKE and put it over in an empty lot--it was dying from Woody's having taken care o' biz--poor snake, but honestly!  

Mike said it was sort of a country snake, gray, and non-poisonous...it prolly came into the garage escaping from some construction a few houses down, from a once-emply lot.

So after he'd removed the intruder, Mike opened the front door for Woody and moi, and I hobbled, one shoe one, one still in the garage, into the house and Woody made a bee-line for the garden gate to see where the snake was--it was gone but he stood sentry for a long time.  

Of course I was shaking and hysterical but not nearly as much as I would have been had I, rather than Corporal Woody, discovered the snake behind the bag. I was planning to move it as soon as Mike got the car into the garage, as I wanted it--a bag of old clothes--in the car trunk.

So we're calling our dear dog "Woody-Tiki-Tavi" now.  I'm still seeing gray HUGE snakes everywhere, but it'll be ok.  Am going to buy some "snake away" from Costco if I can find it.

Meanwhile, there's surgery to take care of, right?  Never a dull mo'--------------we are actually looking forward to a night in the nice hospital.  It might be quiet there.  

The End

Mr. and Mrs. Brown, a short story

They were walking in Kensington Gardens.

“The shadows are growing longer," said Mr. Brown, lunging to miss a pram and narrowly missing the grass with the rubber sole of his Rockports. "We should be getting on soon."

He watched as Mrs. Brown chucked a blonde baby’s chin as the foreigner glanced at her Swiss Army watch and patronizingly half-smiled. The people they hire as nannies over here--it’s downright scary, Mr. Brown thought—the gal might even be from Iraq.

“I suppose we should, yes," Mrs. Brown called out gaily, her eyes never leaving the baby's bobbing face. The Slavic nanny hurried away down a side path imbedded with brass medallions marking the route Princess Diana had jogged. “The concert should start promptly at 3:00 and if we hurry, we just have time for a cup of tea!" She seemed even more driven to art in England than she was in Connecticut.

"Tea? We just finished lunch!" Mr. Brown grumbled. With the pound at pretty near two dollars, who could afford much more of this? That small lunch they'd consumed on Stanford Road especially irked him—little deli called Fait Maison. Paste a French name on a cafe and after a couple pastas and a fancy name for coffee, voila, it's a sixty-dollar deal. That's travel for you, he thought--nothing more irritating than highway robbery with a foreign accent. Well, two more days and they'd be home, he sighed with relief. Home again, patting the Spaniel's soft head, stocking-feet upon the hassock reading the Bridgeport paper, in the good old U. S. of A. Betty deserved her lifelong dream, and God knows he'd needed a break from re-roofing the garage. Thank God that's out of the way before the snow flies, he smiled to himself, dabbing his forehead with the clean white handkerchief Betty always packed for him. She was saying something from halfway down a path leading to a red brick mansion with tall black wrought-iron gates topped with what looked like common gold paint.

"Look!" she cried, pointing wildly, "Kensington Palace! It's where Princess Di lived; remember those oceans of flowers over there? Poor, poor thing. Let’s go in! Do you think we have time?" He'd caught up with her and reached out to stroke into place a strand of her silvery hair which had slipped below the brim of her gray beret. "What is it, am I bleeding?" she cried out suddenly.

"What?"

"What's the matter?" she looked confused.

He chuckled. "Nothing but a strand of hair. Bleeding? What do you mean?" She was so silly sometimes.

"Nothing." She kept walking toward the street corner.

"Besides," he continued down his own trail of thought, "we said we'd hear the concert today. It's free and it ought to be good, remember?" They'd caught up to one another and she took his arm, walking faster now—every three of her steps equaled two of his, after all. "They'll have coffee at the concert, the sign said," Mr. Brown said reassuringly.

"We're in England—I'd prefer tea."'

"Tea, then," he chuckled again. "They're bound to have some tea on hand." Now she was laughing at herself as well.

"I'm sorry, Henry, I know this trip hasn't exactly been your cuppa." She thought of his patience as the day before, she had lingered for two hours over manuscripts at Dickens House, and then they'd trooped as far into the British Museum as their feet had allowed. The place was immense and certainly wonderful, but she'd harbored a faint disappointment upon entering it, having pictured it more as she remembered the description of the Bodleian Library's old upstairs reading room, the brown and gold fading leather books in carved walnut shelves with cantilevered ceilings. Oh, it had been grand enough, she told herself, certainly grand.

It was all grand, and she had only one more item on her must-see list before they left: Number 22, Hyde Park Gate, the town house where Virginia Woolf had been brought up and lived until she'd married. Then of course, they'd all moved over to Bloomsbury. She and Henry had seen several of the homes on her list, between the two museums yesterday, on Tavistock and Russell Squares. It seemed so urgently important though, having her photo taken in front of the original "ghost house," as they'd called it, that home where Virginia had first discovered her prosaic voice, where she had waited with her siblings every evening for the dreaded pot to boil. She had trod these same park lanes, "where my feet are just now, just here," Mrs. Brown thought. It was too wonderful to believe. That she had finally made it to England after fifty years of marriage, three children, six grandchildren, keeping hearth and home and leading Book Club, St. David's altar guild, all the rest of it for all these years. This trip had been so wonderful that her heart had fairly leapt out of her chest at regular intervals.

Seeing Poet's Corner at Westminster Abby alone had felt so perfectly thrilling that she'd had to go up into the sanctuary to sit down. Even now, as they crossed the street lined with quaint old shops, careful to look first right, then left, seeing the beautiful flower stall outside the solid, lyrical stone doors of the cloister walk of St. Mary Abbots on High Street, or as they say "in" the High Street--her heart thumped so that surely Henry had heard it above the politely quiet whir of the traffic.

They picked up hot drinks from a long wooden table presided over by two parish ladies, such nice ladies just like herself, Mrs. Brown supposed. Henry stirred sugar into his coffee as the shorter lady spooned caramel colored powder into her Styrofoam cup—why it was instant tea, and as the woman added boiling water (she supposed it was boiling hot, but after all it had been poured from a modern white plastic thermal pitcher, so who knew if it was as hot as it should be, although one supposed with instant, well, maybe it didn't matter so much), the liquid turned immediately tea-and-milk colored, so it contained the milk already. How clever, but surely the flavor lost something, especially in Styrofoam? She sipped and frowned, then looked around the stunningly beautiful nave.

"We can carry our drinks into the church, right," ventured Henry. "I saw a couple of chaps over there—"
"Oh yes, quite, feel free and enjoy the concert," said the taller lady with a shy smile. Such nice people in England, thought Mrs. Brown. So friendly, calm, kind, self-assured. So very British. Again, she chuckled at being such a "besotted tourist" as Yeats had so cuttingly written, honoring Swift. But whatever could have happened to America, she wondered—what in the world? Of course things were fairly civilized in Bridgeport, she thought.

Henry directed her into a seat near the center aisle, so that she could see up close and he could hear the music better. Just another hour, and the hotel bar awaited them, he thought comfortably. The old church was like a quiet holy barn, like a manger where all God's children could come in on a harsh winter's day and find warmth and peace—oh waxing poetic now, Mrs. Brown chided herself. It was a perfectly beautiful autumn day and they needed no such shelter on this glorious trip. Why, she was losing her grip—but here came the thin young musicians.

Polite applause pattered as a young dark-eyed man in a tuxedo and a pale honey-haired girl in a deep blue taffeta gown (surely she must be freezing) took their first shy bows. Mrs. Brown noticed how hungry they both looked, how caved in their cheeks appeared in the soft light, then she thought but nearly all young classical musicians have that wolf-at-the-door look, as if they've just braved the Russian bread lines. The man announced a Brahms piece with three movements and then flipped out his tails before plopping upon the piano bench. The girl began to play her violin softly, at times raising her fine eyebrows in tragic communion with a climbing phrase. She had a little bun gathered at the back of her long porcelain neck, and from the aisle seat she resembled a young Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Brown thought--a lovely girl wearing that earnest look and no wedding ring on the finger, which curled like a new leaf as she hurried the bow lightly up what must be quite a difficult passage.

The girl definitely had the face of Virginia, the oval pale swath of iridescent skin shut off at the throat by a harsh square neckline of the dark taffeta, the light brown hair parted centrally, the small round head, the same slope of sadness about the eyes. But this girl, this violinist seemed suddenly bold, careening up with her bow in a running dash for the climax of the phrase. She surely would stare down any camera's eyes, looking at the world head on, rather than peering with Virginia's sidelong glance which had averted our eyes from the time she was a small girl, until she died. If Virginia looked directly at a camera it was as if she longed to steal a peek at her public before slipping quietly away.

The music came to a stop and people seemed uncomfortably still, lest someone might mistakenly applaud between the movements. But no one did, and the girl adjusted her bow, quickly shoved her shoulders backward as if to crack them, turned her head up again and they began the next movement, an allegro. Mrs. Brown couldn't shake the notion that this girl had the countenance of a young Virginia, and allowing the music to wash over her, she relaxed into that dreamlike state which good music well performed can often induce in a live audience, in which one drifts off for that brief, self-contained time, hoping not to nod off completely, allowing one's head actually to bob, or the drool to splash down the chin.

Mrs. Brown remembered when, in a literature class years before, she had first read "To the Lighthouse," and how her professor had ploddingly, as if she and her female classmates could not possibly figure it out for themselves, explained the Modernist Theory of "Stream of Consciousness." Such nonsense! She remembered thinking they were, the authors, simply telling a good story in a normal way, with no self-awareness or worry, that's all. No need to denote it as something rare, when it was as natural as having a conversation with a good friend, and that was the genius of it, opening up like that at all. And through the years she had turned those pages, longing for a good visit from Virginia, and she had never been disappointed. Her way of suggesting the uncertainties of modern life, of the subtle repressions of women, of girls speaking with Father, of the ladies' making some grave request of the Master, such as the fact that, sadly, there were no more currants to be had in the market that morning, and thus Cook could not very well be expected to bake Sunday's Eccles cakes. Such tremendous care would have gone into the phrasing of a hushed apologia for the state of the table, laden only with its plain scones, chips and sausages. No wonder the sensitive girls like Virginia were able to phrase even deeper intricacies of social negotiation, Mrs. Brown thought. It's a wonder the poor girl did not self-combust from the tortures of Victorian restraint, just that small thing with no mother to buffer her and the other girls. Mrs. Brown felt light-hearted and glad, watching the pearly young violinist in the womb of the old church, that Virginia had had those free, happy, or at least productive days of Hogarth Press, before the war came, her illness won the battle and the wretched thing filled the pockets of her coat, probably a holdover from the Army-Navy store, with cold hard stones. At the thought of that, her heart thudded another palpitation and she suddenly roused, jerking forward, spilling a drop of instant milky tea onto the front of her London Fog. She brushed it away, listening again to the ending phrases of a Bach Concerto.

Somewhere a police siren blipped, then wailed, coming nearer and nearer the church, until it clearly raced down the High Street, so loud it could have been part of the Bach. The musicians, unfazed, continued and Bach eventually won out, but the irony left Mrs. Brown covered with goose bumps, shivering in her cold hard pew. She didn't want the moment to end so she tried to memorize it as if with a video camera—the darkly busy stained glass windows in their triptych behind the altar, the Slavic looking pianist, the floating sound of the violin at phrase's end, when sound and silence blend into one pregnant breath-held pause; the girl with Virginia's sloping eyes. It was over, and sudden applause roused her completely awake. They moved toward the side altar, placed their cups in a waste can near the long serving table.

"Oh, this might be nice," Henry whispered loudly, fingering some parish calendars for the upcoming year, boxed neatly under a hand-penciled notice, "To help the elderly at Christmas." He put three of the small green booklets into his pocket, dropping one-and-a-half pounds into the nearby can. "Father John might be able to use these." Mrs. Brown smiled and nodded. She wished they had weeks and weeks in this place together, to wander the town at will.

Outside the wind had become quite strong, the sky ominously gray. "It's pretty nippy out here," Henry cried over traffic noise, "don't you want to go on in? Maybe we could go back to that one place tomorrow."

"You go on back—I have my map," Mrs. Brown said, in the voice she well knew he would believe and would not question."

"Well then," he said, pulling on his gloves.

"Better pull your earflaps down, Hon." She barreled down the path after him, pulling up her collar. The chill felt as if it could freeze. How funny, she thought. It was just as warm as summer this afternoon.

"Now, here's Queen's Gate," she read from her notes, "so I think we can turn into that street over there, and it should be down behind the Albert Hall."

"I thought it was on this side of Albert's Hall." Henry clearly wanted his drink and the quiet hotel lobby, with its velvety carpeting and cracking wood fire in the bar.

"Honey, go back then," Mrs. Brown called to him. He had crossed the side of the boulevard already.

"Nope. Find it soon enough, right there on the map, like you said." He pushed his hands deeply into his overcoat pockets.

But after they'd made two full circles, arriving at the Royal Academy of the Arts twice, thumping down the same narrow swerve of the bricked alley yet again, Mrs. Brown felt trickles of sweat beneath her light wool sweater.

"I don't, do not understand this, Henry. We just did it again—here's that same school, same church. Surely we could ask someone?" Mrs. Brown's face had turned the color of raspberries.

"Well, we might start out fresh, go back to High Street—"

But she had stopped two chattering girls near the entrance of a classroom. They shrugged in confusion. One of them was polite.

"Sorry. We're not from here. Hope you get where you're going though," the girl said with a smile. They'd seemed not even to recognize the name "Woolf", much less the address. And how hard could this be, anyway? There had been Hyde Park. There were a thousand gates.

They ducked into an Oxfam shop, she stamping the cold from her feet, which were suddenly so painful she'd never admit such a thing. They'd been trudging in icy wind for over an hour now, circling like blind ravens. Maybe here in the toasty charity shop someone would show them—but the woman behind the counter said, "Oh, but isn't it shameful, I've lived just there in the lane behind Kensington Palace for thirty years, and never seen the house where Virginia Woolf—frightfully awful of me. Sorry." The woman seemed not at all sorry, but rather proud, Mrs. Brown thought. Imagine living in this blessed neighborhood and not knowing where—well no matter. She herself had a goddamned map and still had not lay eyes on the place. It was nearly 5:30--soon darkness would fall and there would be no picture. Tomorrow they'd be at Windsor, then Heathrow. If not now, just a quick photo for heaven's sake, then when in her life would she ever be back?

"Well let's mush on," said Henry stoically. They trod down behind the Albert Hall once more, but the little street did not appear and it was getting to be well within the L'heure bleu, thought Mrs. Brown, and yet that seemed all right—what more beautiful, appropriate time of day, indeed of life, was there, during which to view the childhood home of one's favorite author, the greatest female writer who ever lived? (But why, she asked herself, nearly tripping on a curb, feet dragging, did they persist in calling them "women writers?" They did not say "men writers," now, did they?)

"Should we turn back to High Street, then?" Henry pointed toward the distant blur of traffic.

"But it's clear on the map--it's behind! Behind!" She was breathing rather hard, sweat pouring down her back. "I need to sit down, "she cried.
"There's a pub," said Henry.

"No, I'll be all right, just let me. . . ." She clumped up some leaf-scattered steps and sat roughly down, staring off to the side as if to avoid Henry's eyes.

"Tomorrow then? Want to go on back? Do you--what do you want to do, Dear?" he asked in his patient voice.

Mrs. Brown pulled herself upright, tugging at her coat. It was filthy now, and she thought how odd it was actually to be getting old. Really it was such an imposition for ordinary people with things to do. How could her lower back be throbbing so insistently after just this small bit of a chase? "No. Thanks. I want to—keep on, just for a little--" she said firmly, only her voice didn't sound so firm. They turned back toward the Albert Hall, and though she must look a total fool, she found it easier walking on tip-toes, her heels having grown painful as if silver spurs were imbedded deep inside them. Inhaling deeply, she said calmly, "It can't be far. We'll just go around one more block, all right?"

"Hmm." Henry thought it best not to say more just now. He knew his limits and wished fervently she'd get acquainted with hers. They rounded three more corners but there again was that same fool academy. The same church faced them, closed up, forbidding with a maze of scaffolding shrouding the massive stone façade. He walked quickly ahead of her to look around the next corner. Mrs. Brown thought "Oh why can't he just slow down for once?" She called out, "Just a min—"
and she looked quizzically at him, then down at her own feet.

He moved quickly, reached her just as she slumped forward, her right fist clamped onto a black iron fence.

"Betty! Let's just get to that pub—it's right over there," he ordered in his commanding voice, taking her by the left arm, but it had gone limp, and at that moment, in the deepening blue light, she turned her face to him and grimaced, attempting to smile reassuringly.

In the warm buzz of the hearse-like ambulance, he held her hand lightly, but it was no use. It was no longer Mrs. Brown's hand. He glanced away and over his left shoulder, he saw in the swiftly fleeing scene a white sign painted in black lettering:

The Royal Borough

of Kensington and Chelsea

Hyde Park Gate

S.W.7

NOS. 9-35A.

The Farmer's Life, a children's story

Once there was a little girl named Jill who lived in the great big city of New York. Jill loved her home, an apartment overlooking the river, with its high-up views of skyscraper buildings and park treetops. She loved its elevator and Jack, the door man downstairs who always held the door open for Jill and her mother.

Jill had the loveliest clothes you could imagine: furry coats, shiny shoes and beautiful dresses that rustled when she walked. Jill's hair was done twice a week at the beauty salon, where she and her mother went to get shampoos, haircuts, pedicures and manicures—a nice lady always took care of their fingernails and hands. Jill played in the park sometimes, but she almost never got dirty.

Every morning, Jill dressed carefully, had a healthy breakfast of yogurt, muesli cereal and fruit. She and her mother would go to the elevator, push the "down" button, and go to the lobby of their building. Jack the door man would then hail them a taxi, which would take them to Jill's school.

Every afternoon, Jill would meet her mother in a taxi after school, when they would go shopping for food, clothes, hats or shoes.

On Sundays they would take a cab to church, then go to brunch with Dad, and maybe take in a movie in the afternoon. How Jill loved New York. Something exciting was always happening there.

But one morning, Jill woke up and her dad had a serious look on his face.

"Dear," he said to Jill, "I'm sorry, but Mommy is sick, and Dad must take care of her. She has to go to the hospital for a long time, but after that, the doctors say she will definitely get better."

Mommy appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, and she looked at Jill and smiled. "I will be fine, Sweetie, you'll see. There's nothing to worry about." She smiled at Jill until Jill could not help but smile too.

"You're going to stay with Grandma and Grandpa Johnson on the farm for a while," said Dad. "Then we'll come to get you, and bring you home. School is nearly out for the summer, so you'll start back in the fall."

"Are you sure Mommy is going to be fine?" she asked her parents. "Yes, we're sure." They both looked at her, then they gave her big hugs.

Soon Jill was in a limousine, a long black car which drove her far away from the city. They drove across bridges, into fields of corn and over beautiful mountains, until they came to a big sign pointing left, saying "The Johnson Family Farm."

Jill looked at the lovely farm, which she had seen many times before, in a new way. This was now to be her new home for a while, and she felt very strange indeed, as if butterflies filled her stomach with their beating wings.

Grandma and Grandpa Johnson were waiting for her on their big porch, waving their hands. Grandma had a handkerchief so she could make bigger waves, to be sure Jill could see her from the big long limousine.

"Jill! You're here! Oh I'm so excited," exclaimed Grandma. She helped Jill to get out of the car with her lovely suitcases and her big stuffed teddy bear named Harringsley, her cases of beautiful shoes and her shopping bags of books and games.

"Come on up here, Lassie," said Grandpa with a twinkle in his eye, "and give us a kiss!"

"Hello, everyone!" said Jill. "I'm so glad to be here!"

"You're a sight for sore eyes, too." Grandpa swung her around in circles and they both tumbled down.

Inside they unpacked her suitcases and Grandma said, "Oh my word, we'll have to take you shopping, Little Bit, won't we?" She made little crisp noises with her teeth, as if to say that Jill's clothes wouldn't do at all.

"We'll get 'er fixed up soon enough," said Grandpa. "Let's get some supper into the child first, then we'll have a game or two and get on into bed. Gotta get up with the chickens!"

"With the—what?" Jill was not at all sure what Grandpa was talking about.

"He means we're getting up early, Dearie Pie…we've got to milk the cows and feed the animals. You'll learn soon enough." Grandma was laughing now.

The next morning, Jill woke up very early, earlier than she had ever waken before…she thought it was a bit strange to wake up when it was still nearly dark, but she smelled something delicious cooking, and she hurried downstairs after putting on her dressing gown.

"Look here, Dearie Pie," said Grandma. "I found some of your mother's old clothes. These'll have to do 'til we can get into town later on." Grandma held the clothes, very funny looking old jeans and an old checkered shirt, over the big black stove in the corner.

"OK, I guess," said Jill, looking doubtfully at the old clothes. She was wearing her house slippers, but the old clothes fit her very well, and they were soft as peach fuzz.

"Fit into y'er ma's dungarees?" asked Grandpa with a smile.

"Dunga-what?" asked Jill.

"Old-timey word for blue jeans, Dearie Pie," said Grandma, piling a stack of pancakes with bacon onto Jill's plate. Jill loved pancakes, although she'd never eaten so many of them at once. She dug into them, very hungry after getting up so early and sleeping in the big feather-soft bed.

After breakfast she helped Grandma clear the dishes from the table, as she did at home, and began to dry the dishes as Grandma washed and rinsed them in the huge old sink.

"Come along, Little Bit," called Grandpa from the porch. "Come help me milk old Bessie." Jill followed Grandpa into the large, red barn, where a huge brown cow was standing, staring at them as they walked in.

"Grab on and pull," Grandpa said, offering her one of Bessie's pink teats. Jill didn't quite know what to do, but she grabbed on and pulled, and heard a big loud groan from Bessie, who looked at her sharply.

"I don't think Bessie likes me very much," said Jill.

"Sit here on this milk pail, and get up real close," said Grandpa. This is how we get our daily milk supply around here…if we don't milk Bessie, she'll really be cross with us later on."

So Jill grabbed onto the pink teat, which is where the milk comes out, trying to pull gently like Grandpa did, and soon she had filled the pail with warm, white milk. It smelled faintly of caramel candy, she thought.

After milking Bessie, Jill met Frankie the horse, Milly the mule, many pigs and chickens. She learned how to scatter seed corn into the pen where the chickens were running around clucking to one another, thinking to herself they looked like people in Central Park. She poured out "slop," for the pigs, and she loved the way they said "oink," as if they were saying "thank you."

Suddenly, Grandpa came around the corner to see how she was doing with the pigs, and Jill ran to meet him, and they BOTH fell down in the pig pen. For the first time in her whole life, Jill was covered with MUD! She couldn't believe her eyes. Mud was on her slippers, it spattered across her jeans, and a hugs splat of it was on her shirt!

"We'll make a farmer out of you yet!" Grandpa laughed. Jill laughed too, and it seemed the pigs and chickens were laughing along with them.

Later Grandma took her to the farmer's store to buy her some new riding boots, tennis shoes, jeans, t-shirts and farmer's jackets, so that she could get as dirty as she needed to get, while helping Grandpa with the animals every day.

Every day she learned something new. "Come on down to the stables," cried Grandpa, after Jill had changed into her new riding clothes. "I'll show you how to ride old Frankie Boy."

Grandpa helped Jill to climb up onto the saddle. He led her by taking hold of the two leather reins, on Frankie's head, to lead her around the paddock—a little area of grass where the horse liked to walk and run. Soon Jill was riding Frankie all by herself.

After learning how to ride Frankie the horse, she began taking care of him. Grandpa showed her how to do everything Frankie needed. Soon she gave him a bath, scrubbed him down with a soapy brush rinsed him with a long hose of water, and then dried him with large blankets. Then she brushed Frankie's pretty brown coat until it shined. Every day, she took care of Frankie until he became like her best and closest friend.

When Frankie was all clean, dry and shiny, Jill gave him his treat, a big red apple from Grandpa's orchard of fruit trees, or a long orange carrot from Grandma's garden. Frankie made a giggling noise to say "thank-you," every time he got his treat.

Soon Jill was picking apples, blackberries and raspberries and taking them in baskets into the house, where she learned how to bake pies with Grandma.

Jill and Grandma mixed butter into the flour, added fresh cream from Bessie, and rolled the dough out with a rolling pin, onto Grandma's white cold marble slab. They put the pie dough into metal pans, filled them with fruit, butter and sugar, and baked them in the big old stove in the corner, until the kitchen was filled with pies.

"Whew! We have too many pies in this kitchen, Jill. What should we do about that?" asked Grandma, sitting down to sip some iced tea, and wiping her red forehead with her apron.

"Let's have a pie party! We can ask some of the people from town to come eat them with us," said Jill.

"Wonderful idea, Jill, let's get the telephone book out." Grandma looked very proud of Jill as she told her friends about the pie party. People came from everywhere in town, and they passed the pies around the picnic tables under the large, spreading Chestnut tree in Grandma and Grandpa Johnson's yard.

One day, the phone rang, and it was Daddy. "Good news, Jill. Mommy is home from the hospital a few weeks early and in two days, it's time for you to come home."

"Oh, that's wonderful, Daddy, please tell Mommy I'm happy for her," said Jill. But as she hung up the phone, she also felt something else. Over the summer weeks, The Johnson Family Farm had become her new home.

Jill loved the way Grandma's chubby tummy seemed to hug her as she sat in Grandma's lap for story time, reading from a very old book of fairy tales. She loved the way Grandma took time to show her how to cook the old fashioned way, and she'd made chicken pot pies, angel food cakes, country-fried steaks and lovely oven-browned potatoes, as well as learning how to make the best pies she'd ever had.

Jill also loved the way Grandpa laughed when something funny happened, like the time they both fell down in the pig pen and got all dirty. She loved the way he had taught her to milk old Bessie, to ride and to take special care of Frankie the horse, and to feed the pigs and the chickens. He had shown her how to go fishing, how to pick the best and ripest apples from the orchard, and to do so many other things she couldn't remember them all.

Jill felt sad to be leaving the farm. But then something beautiful happened!

"Hey, Little Bit, when are you coming back to see us?" asked Grandpa with a big grin on his face.

"Yes, Dearie Pie, when will you be back?" Grandma asked as she packed some pies into a big basket for Jill to take back to the city for Mommy and Dad.

"When CAN I come back," asked Jill with a worried look.

"Well, now, let's see: you have your weekends free all year long, you have some time off for Christmas when you and your mommy and daddy usually come for a while then, and you have all summer long, every single year. You can pretty much come whenever you like," said Grandma.

"Sure you can, Little Bit, whenever you want. I'd love to have you come help with Frankie on Saturdays and Sundays." Grandpa was putting away his coat on the coat rack, and helping to pack Jill's city clothes back into her suitcases. They had not been used except for Sunday church , all summer long! Jill almost did not want to put her city clothes back on to get into the limousine, so she decided to surprise her mom and dad.

Getting out of the car in the city, Mommy and Daddy were there to meet her at the front door, which Jack the doorman opened for her, saying "Welcome back home, Miss Jill, did you have a lovely summer?"

Jill took off her rain coat to show her Mommy and Daddy her big surprise: a red-and-white checkered shirt, old dungaree jeans and her new riding boots.

"Mommy, do you recognize these clothes?" Jill asked with a sly grin.

"Why, those are my little-girl clothes!" Mommy exclaimed, laughing.

"They're mine now! I am going to need them when I go back to the farm!" Jill said proudly.

"Go back? You mean you had a good time?" asked Dad jokingly.

"Yes. I learned how to do a lot of things. I brought you some pies Grandma and I made, from the fruit Grandpa taught me how to pick from the trees and vines! I learned how to take care of Frankie and to ride him, how to milk Old Bessie and to feed the pigs and chickens, too! One day, Grandpa and I even fell down in the MUD!" Jill said this with the most pride of all.

"In the MUD? You?" Both her parents asked her this at once. "We don't believe THAT for a second!" Everyone was now laughing….they sounded a bit like the chickens in the pen.

"I have jobs to do on weekends and holidays from now on. I love the farmer's life," said Jill, as they pushed the "up" button in the elevator.

When they got to their apartment, Jill made sure all her things were in order, putting away her country clothes and her city clothes. She called Grandma and Grandma Johnson on the phone.

"…and we're having the blueberry pie for dinner tonight, Grandma," said Jill. "Saturday when I come, can we bake your special chocolate cake?"

"Yes we surely can," said Grandma. "I wouldn't miss it for the world."

Jill went to bed that night and said her prayers with Mommy and Daddy. They were thankful for Jill's safe return home, for Mommy's getting all better, and for something very new to all of them. For Jill's new farmer's life.

--"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it."

--Edith Wharton

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