March 11, 2016
   
Waves of hyacinth perfume greeted me at my door, and temperatures thirty degrees above frigid Holland. The journey home was almost miraculous. As I had slept badly the night before, I slept well on the plane. TSA’s unnecessary security check after Customs made me terribly late for my connection in Atlanta. When I looked to see which gate my flight was at, I also saw the word “boarding.” Dead run from F to C gate, thinking I was going to pass out. When I arrived at the gate it was empty, but the Delta guy called me by my name and said, “We were waiting for you.” And so they were, all packed in, delaying to lift off for Asheville, abiding that one little soul should not to be lost. I was very, very grateful. Maria came in just after I did, and Russell and their new wondrously fit French exchange student Hugo jogged by, and so my homecoming for once was not solitary.
   
Rose early–on European time– unpacked, worked out at the Racquet Club, reveling in the absence of inflammation in my shoulders. I have grown quite weak babying my joints. Caught up on bill-paying, phone calls, correspondence, then returned to the garden, planting roses and dicentria, having to enlarge the tilled plots to do so. Dug weeds. All this, and it is yet two hours before noon. 
   
Sam was very sad in France, and I was able– according to him–to do him good without really intending to. He certainly did me good. We were happy, I think.
   
I thought that not being invited back to Omaha would be the cataclysm so deep it could not be survived, but here I am. If I start to write again, we will say that it was an evil that came to nothing.
   
Feeling vitality the last few days. I was apparently sick for a while, a sickness so gradual I didn’t identify it as such. It has been months since I would have been able to work out and garden heavily in the same day. Maybe it was just winter.
   
Mockingbird calling in my hollies in the dark hour before morning.