12/11/16 (late afternoon)

After breakfast in the motel room, then a little levee walk, I sit on packed powdery sand at the river and watch the water churn. I take in as much wild and roiling beauty as I can, then drive off to Spahr’s for lunch with my sister, where we share yummy alligator chips and fried shrimp. We chit chat while we eat. She tells me her problems. Her cats have fleas. She has fleas. The whole house has fleas. And her health is a mess. Both knees need to be replaced. And she’s breathless, again. And time-challenged. She said she’d call at 10 a.m. At 11:30, I gave up and called her. She was just getting ready to ring me up, she said.

After lunch, I sit outside in the swing and watch the bayou. The birds flit in and out of trees. A pelican sits atop a piling; I think it is a wood-carving, until it moves, rises up, to settle in another spot. Some egrets flap away.

An older man steps out the back door, walks carefully across the stubbly ground, takes photos of the water, the birds. We chat about the beautiful day. He says when he was a child, some 60 years ago, he and his father would come out here to boat. It was always lovely. But it was only this time of year – heading into winter – when they could get through the mat of water hyacinths to fish. It’s such a special place, he says.

Driving home, I think about love – about my quirky, snarky sister, and this gorgeous and piecemeal place, this tattered world, and oh, how gloriously, stupendously, I love it all. What can we do, but love it all?