Mimi's here!

I almost wrote "Mimi's home!" as the name to this post, but that's not true. Mimi's 'home' is in Brooklyn with Tim and she lives some of the time in Sturbridge because she works for Jacob's Pillow. This used to be her 'home', but no more.

And when she's 'here' a deep, profound calm and peace falls over us all. It's already  here since Bern and I live within calm and peace, but Mimi brings the 'profound' piece.

I don't know why or how but I know when she shows up the calm and peace get like on steroids....

Sometimes, when she and Tim are with us on Oak Island, North Carolina, at low tide, the ocean seems like a lake, almost no surf, flat and blue as far as you can see.

Mimi has that effect on our home, though we laugh and joke and tell each other serious and not always pleasant stuff.

That's our Mimi--a little anti-tsunami of calm and peace, no matter what.

And when she's here--this time for a day-before-birthday-birthday--I can't stop smiling and feeling good.

It's not just that I love her 'that much' (though I do), it's that, no matter what, she brings me peace and calm.

Can't explain it more than that.

Bern told the dog that "Mimi is coming" about an hour before she arrived. He searched the house and barked and barked and even whined, which he almost never does...longing for Mimi. She is bad-dog-Bela's favorite person. I can't blame him.

Bern and Mimi and John Anderson and I had a dinner of potato salad and hamburgers on the grill--Mimi's request for her birthday dinner--and ice-cream cake (blue-raspberry and vanilla--which I bought at Sweet Claude's not even knowing blue-raspberry is her favorite ice-cream.) She said it was the first time she remembered a birthday cake with her name on it, though I think that's surely wrong.

She took a picture of it and sent the picture, I'm sure, to Tim. Tim sent beautiful flowers to her that arrived before she did.

Mimi and Tim are, to me, golden, wondrous, so good. The only thing missing from this day-before-birthday night is Tim. But Mimi is here.

Mimi's here tonight and I'm going to sleep like a baby.