This last Friday, Martin taught his last class ever at Waynesburg University.  Seven years of dedication to his students, to scholarship, to building programs.  Seven years of packed schedules with committee work and envisioning a better place and working long hours to create community.  Seven years of parenting alone when I had to so he could devote himself to his work.  Seven years of students in our home, for dinners and tea and long nights of discussion.

And life goes on.

When he came home, sad and resigned, we strapped Bea in the car and drove to Morgantown, WV for sushimi and miso soup.  We ate with three different sets of people over the weekend, including a lovely, long dinner with a few students.  We wrapped Chinese dumplings and Martin cooked up three different stir fries. We drank lots of tea.  We spent a wonderful afternoon with two beautiful people yesterday in their log cabin, decorated with artwork from over fifty years of world travel.  We sat under huge poplar trees while the girls caught salamanders in a pond.

And life goes on.

Today we prepare Martin's poetry manuscript for half a dozen contests.  We'll lick the envelopes and send them off.  Hoping.

Now this remains: faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love.

And what can we do but fight to love all of it, to pull people into love, to accept that we too are loved.

There's a kitchen full of breakfast dishes, a floor scattered with blocks, laundry, showers to take, manuscripts to compile and post.  Another day, full of dayliness.  Maybe a miracle or two if I open my eyes a little wider.  Maybe.  Whoever compiled my personality in the dark before I was born must have had themselves a good chuckle:  She'll still be looking for magic when she's thirty-four, when her husband's out of work in a year and she's gained ten extra pounds over the winter. 

Or maybe that was the blessing laid on me at birth.

I'll take the latter today, the invisible train headed for someplace good.  With a flask of tea along, of course. And the whole lot of you for company.