“Where there is love there is life.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
We baked a pie, she and I. Even though the wild blueberries in the forests and bogs won’t be ripe for at least another month and we had to use the last bag of berries that I had squirreled away in the freezer.
She knows that when nothing else makes sense, pie still does.
It will be delivered to a young woman we love like family who, this month, is loving with the pin point laser focus that a terminal diagnosis brings to people who are accustomed to loving each other in less terrifying, time-sensitive ways. She has asked her friends not for sympathy, but a commitment to loving better, and harder, and deeper.
And so, we are doing just that. Loving bigger. And in our family, nothing says big love like a wild blueberry pie. So my girl measured out the berries and the sugar while I rolled the top and bottom crusts. I checked the pie every ten minutes to make sure it was the perfect shade of brown before I set it on the counter to cool. The entire kitchen smelled like love by the time it was ready to wrap in foil for the trip to St. Paul.
Last night, I sat in the porch watching fireflies flicker and dance in the woods and thought about my young friend. The one who is losing her father. I added his name to the list of people I know who are currently fighting cancer. The list is too long. Too. Long. I lifted his name up to Whoever’s In Charge in the Universe.
The entity responsible for not only blueberries, but fireflies and cancer cells.
The one who made daughters.
And dads.
And love.
The Loon Whisperer 