Half way through the Berkshire Mountains on the Mass Pike, I noticed a band of crows circling over my car. Five minutes later, one of my back tires went flat. A minute or so later, I was pulling off the road in front of a trooper, who just happened to be parked there waiting for speeders. Another five minutes and the emergency truck arrived; another two, and I was on my way again. “Somebody up there must be watching out for you,” the trooper smiled, winking.
We had put in my daughter’s meditation garden — turning what had been a huge circle of white stones that occupied the space where the former owners once had an above ground pool into a tear-drop patio that curves into the edges of a garden (that will soon be covered with the herbs, ground covers, and grasses that we planted. Except where there’s a path leading from the patio to a bench. And except where there are rocks, a fat maternal garden hare, a watchful hedgehog [which I call a hedgehag], and a guardian gargoyle.)

My grandson and I had our own journeys to take, as we spent a long afternoon together while his folks went out to lunch and shopping for more garden plantings. We improvised little scenarios, in which he always remembered both his lines and mine. And then there were the trucks. Lots of trucks. Diggers. Excavators. Front loaders. And a truck video on which, he explained to me, there were an auger drill and an impact hammer. We were on a learning journey, and he was the teacher.





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someone was in my apartment, she says. they moved things around in my dresser. were you in here taking my gloves, she asks. she’s back. you’re back. so much for rejuvenating journeys.