Life is Good

It is autumn in Minnesota and I love to feel the chilled air in my nostrils.
by Charlie Leck

The Minnesota evenings have on them that lovely chill we so expect and cherish here. One seems to breathe more joyfully and carry on with such energy at this time of year.

Visitors arrived from France early last evening, at a delightfully crepuscular moment. I wish I could have painted the way the darkening sky hovered over us and how the trees, bare of their leaves, looked against it. The visitors brought with them that special joie de vivre that the French are so good at! They gazed about in wonder at the rolling land beneath the dark, autumn sky and they spread their arms in wonder at it, laughing and almost cheering.

My memory captures ambrosial moments like this as surely as a camera lens and won’t release them – ever!

I was in a particularly good mood anyway, because a message had arrived from Colorado that our dear friend, Lisa, had received her kidney donation from the saintly Sarah. (See yesterday’s blog!) Nearly three hours of surgery and then the doctor appeared with as much good news as they are willing to share: There had been no surprises and the surgery went as they had hoped it would. Now they will run their constant, important checks and monitor both of the women.

Le vie est trés bonne, non? Mais oui!

Organ transplantation was once a wonder of medicine and science. Now it is common. Mon Dieu!

Little things make life so wonderful. Yesterday, while I was scurrying around the kitchen, preparing a special dinner for these arriving guests, an old buddy called to say he missed me and thought often of me. How nice! He’s scandalously out on the right wing politically and hopelessly religious and righteous about it, but I still like him almost like a brother. I gathered energy from his call and it drove me to make the dinner very special.

“How about this truffle oil as the base for the salad dressing,” I asked myself, “and some tres cher vinegar from the grape mixed with it?”

I took a sip of the breathing wine, to test it. Ahh!

Le vin est bon!

And so, too, is life.

La vie est belle!

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