My fingers are stiff from a walk (I carried tired Bea the whole time) though it's so blue and sunshiny you forget how cold it is. I came home, put on the teapot, and watered plants. I found a nice gift waiting for me at the end of a brown peach tree cutting I'd whisked inside after pruning some weeks ago. It wasn't a blossom--those have already appeared--but a slender green leaf, tightly rolled and just beginning to unfurl. I remember my first year of college, when the Women's Chorale left Chicago and headed south on tour. The flowering trees were lovely but it was the leaves that filled me with joy--I remember wanting to eat them by the handful.

So maybe the leaf wasn't waiting for me at all--leaves and stones and sunsets don't, really--but maybe, without knowing in, in my weariness this afternoon, I was waiting for the leaf. And I found it.

I will cap this pleasure with a hot cup of tea and move from there to wine, and then my happiness may very well be complete.