Man…if whatever’s broken inside me were fixable, these would be the people <3 Today’s my birthday, and bright and early this morning I found a little package in the mail from Albert. Right away when I opened it, I realized the lining was the little pink wrap Lotte was wearing the night I met her, that I’ve begged her for like a bazillion times since then. And wrapped up inside it was a pair of little green books — the Loeb Odyssey, the edition I’ve been wanting for ages to take on walks with me so I wouldn’t have to schlep around a dictionary. I mean — look at that! they know what I want before I even say it, they’re always finding these sweet little gestures that mean so much more than those schmancy presents people give you to beat you over the head with how rich they are. I can’t stop kissing that shawl, and every time I breathe it in, I taste a memory of the joy that overflowed from those brief, happy, irrevocably lost days… Will, it’s true, and I’m not just being grumpy, the joys we have in life are just — daylilies! How many blossoms wilt and fade away without a trace? how often do they actually bear fruit? And how many of those fruits ever ripen? But even so there are more than enough…and, I mean — unngh, Will! Can you just let ripe fruit lie there and rot, untasted and unenjoyed?

I hope you’re well! It’s gorgeously summery here; I’ve been spending a lot of time up in the fruit trees in Lotte’s orchard with the fruit-picker (a kind of long stick with pincers), plucking pears from the treetops. She stands below me and catches them when I drop them down to her.