It's been busy, busy, busy, but with good things. And today it's dreary autumnal weather but at least the grass glows, and if there were leaves on the trees they would be glowing too. It's hard to say goodbye to color, but I suppose I should focus on tuning myself to the gradations of each color that is left: browns, greys, and soon, white. I will turn my eyes to this and try to appreciate what I can.

Of course, if you've seen my house, you know what a task this is for me. Our walls are blue, red, orange, two shades of yellow, green. . .I love primary colors ferociously. Maybe because I grew up watching bougainvillea clamber over trash piles and up hedges all year. You can't beat the colors of East Africa: Flame trees, all orange and red; jacaranda trees with purple trumpets; at school, always the sound of wind in tree branches, and the trees were never bare. Winter is hard. I long for color.

I was talking with a student and a friend this morning about grief--is it a colored thing? It surprises you, catches you like a bucket of water in the face, then sometimes like a wisp of smoke, thin and hard to smell. This student recently had someone who was like a brother die, and she was telling me how grief blindsides her in the middle of class, perhaps set off by a shred of conversation or a comment. I have found this to be true, too--perhaps I was most surprised at Catherine's birthday party back in early fall, when I was setting out plates and organizing food and readying the house for company--I suddenly lost all composure. Of course, I thought afterward, of course. In every previous birthday party for two or three years that I had hosted at my house because Nancy was sick, I would run around before everyone arrived, busy with details, but heavy deep down as I wondered, "Is this the last one?" I wondered that for three years while Nancy was sick. And suddenly, this year, it hit me: a birthday party for a girl whom I love without her mother, whom I also love. I remembered how Nancy always said that Catherine had been born on a beautiful, clear autumn day full of sunlight, a gift child.

Nancy believed in the cloud of witnesses--the abiding presence of those who have gone on before us who now stand all around us, reaching to us in support, celebration, understanding. They are not silent people; we just can't hear them, I suppose. They are much like the trees that circle me in winter time; I long to feel the warmth of their life, long to touch fans of soft green leaves, to sit in their shade. In winter time I remember green, and it is no less real because I cannot touch it. Faith for springtime, for buds opening and the ground thawing, faith that the trees are not dead even though they bow in wind and snow. Color hidden as a bird in a fist, glimpsed if only I could pry up one finger, find sudden joy in red feathers.