It is Tuesday. I wake glad. I wake in the dark and the still, before the dogs, before the neighbors. The rain has stopped. The quilt is heavy and warm. Though the obligations of the day are not pleasing to me, they are a change and I feel the lift of that, the grace of different. We will bathe and dress and drive out together. We will play our part. And then we will return.

I stretch into the warmth under the quilt. The rain begins again.