Lettuce

"Here," Joe says. He flutters a green lettuce leaf on the sling-back lawn chair. Lettuce, from his garden, "Here," he says.

"Oh," I say. I turn in the rotisserie sun and glance squinted eyes at the lace leaf. "Thanks," I say.

"Yeah," he says.

I pluck winglike green between finger and thumb and crunch the chartreuse stem as it hits my teeth. Bitter. As if the waters of the deep have let loose, sour astringent wriggles rootlike fissures in my mouth.

"Wow that is bitter," I say. "Yikes. Here." I pull it from my lips, the broken stem still a mixture of lime, peacock, and beryl.

"Oh," he says. My hand upraised, he scoops the lettuce from my fingers, and completing a circle, places it in his mouth. "Mmm," he says.

"Does it taste bitter to you?" I say.

"Only a little bit," he says. "The rest is good."

"Oh," I say, the daybreak of his face more radiant than sky.

"I think I might make a salad later," he says.

"Oh," I say again. A salad later. This. Just this. Maybe I'll make a salad later. May all my trials always only ever be a salad later.

Gratitude:

6300. Hot summer greets us the way I always remember it, crinklingly hot where sprinklers splash with only stupendously cold water.

6301. We get the wrinkles ironed out of our insurance policy.

6302. Jane and I take an adventure, the two of us trying new things.

6303. I meet one of my life heros, the brave Dr. Suzanne Humphries. It's like talking to an old friend. "Mom," Jane says as we walk away, "she seems like someone that we would be friends with if she lived here."

6304. I catch up on sleep by acquiring a headache that eclipses half of two days.

6305. I listen to more of CS Lewis' The Problem Of Pain and then just sink back into the logic of it all.

6306. A friend stops by to retrieve her sunglasses, and we visit.

6307. Face cream, a simple luxury that feels like a universe.

6308. Sunday settles like quiet mist. I can't wait to fall into bed.