I have a people-I-cherish list. So dear are its occupants that they are unrankable by either importance or affection. Last Tuesday night I went to Books-A-Million to see Mrs. H, where she is in a knitting group with a bunch of girls/ladies/mothers/grandmothers. She brought me plastic knitting needles with blue yarn, and I began to knock out a scarf.
Sitting along side those women, I felt myself in the middle of an Amy Tan novel. They weren't Chinese, and I wasn't separated by some generational/cultural gap, but their quick hands and quicker conversation so strangely focused my perspective. How lucky they are to have a grandchild who needs a pink scarf and a pink hat, to have an unborn baby demanding a prayer blanket, to have a friend sitting close by so when the scarf/hat/blanket start to look unlike a scarf/hat/blanket, they can just lean over and ask for help.
Mrs. H went with her daughters, and I wondered at my own haste to leave home. What was my hurry anyway? Independence in the sense of emotional and physical distance is over-rated. Really, it is.
I'm leaving Shreveport forever... my home for the past 11 years. It is my personal belief that once a home, always a home.
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