July 04, 2016

Guests started arriving at 5ish. At 10 pm the calls came in, at midnight I pulled the phone out of the wall. The 80 year old arrive at 11. I was up at 5:30 for a breakfast on the grill as I type, for 7. The American couple needing to be on the road, across the frontier to meet up with friends for dinner. I forgot to ask what time the little old lady was looking for breakfast. I stopped cleaning and sat and listened to her, while we waited for her ride to the station, to continue on.

This is a notable guest ! An 80 year old traveling three days by bus, from Windsor. She is determined to go to a reunion of her high school chums. “it might not happen again” She graduated nursing school in 1954. She worked as a nurse for 35 years, often her niece said visiting them on snow shoe in the winter, when she worked up north.

Still attends university, and do not doubt, she claims, but the most remarkable thing? She gave up her car in 1989.

She was hit by a bus, riding her bike, last year, spent 20 days in hospital, more time in a rehab unit. Pins, 11 of them, in her pelvis and her right leg. She arrived here at the bnb, late last night, walks with a cane and has a walker. Bright and caring she went out to the garden, brought in some raspberry leaves and asked me to make tea, which she is drinking, while she knits her pot holders for Christmas presents. She has gone thru three rolls of toilet paper and a box of Kleenex I hid in my cupboard. Tea ceremony is a way of worshipping the beautiful and the simple. All one’s efforts are concentrated on trying to achieve perfection through the imperfect gestures of daily life. Its beauty consists in the respect with which it is performed. If a mere cup of tea can bring us closer to God, we should watch out for all the other dozens of opportunities that each ordinary day offers us.

  Moi and Lucy