My granddaughter Beth set this page up for me in the spring and showed me how to type in the new part at the top. So the newest is up here and the oldest is at the bottom. If you are just starting, you might go to the bottom and read up. I made the letters big on purpose. My eyes are seventy years old even if the rest of me has been acting sixteen.

Sunday, September 26, 1999

After church I drove out to the cemetery by myself. I brought Marian three of the 'Jersey's Beauty,' because pink was her color and she never cared for the big show flowers. She said they looked like they were trying too hard. I used to tell her that was exactly why I liked them.

I told her about Evelyn. Out loud, standing there in my good shoes. I felt foolish for about a minute and then I didn't. Forty-four years is a long time to tell somebody everything, and three years is not long enough to quit.

Last night was the harvest moon. Evelyn and I sat on her back step and looked at it over her garage roof. Neither of us said much. Her pompons looked like little white buttons in that light.

Karen called this afternoon. We talked about the weather in Springfield and about Beth's driving lessons, and then she said, "Dad, I'm trying." I said I know she is. That was all. It was more than last week.

The Tigers play their last game at the old ballpark in Detroit tomorrow. Everything's ending somewhere and starting somewhere else, I guess.

Wednesday, September 22, 1999

My son Dale called from Indianapolis tonight. Karen must have told him, because he started right in with, "So, Pop. I hear you've got a girl."

I didn't know what to say. I have not been called a man who's "got a girl" since Eisenhower.

Then he got quiet and said, "Dad, Mom made me promise something. Near the end. She said, don't let your father sit in that house alone and eat soup out of the can." I never knew that. She never said a word of it to me. Marian was always three steps ahead of the rest of us, and it turns out she still is.

Dale said he and Kim want to meet Evelyn at Thanksgiving if she'll come. I sat in the kitchen a long while after we hung up. I didn't turn the light on. The dog next door barked at nothing and I just sat there feeling lighter than I have in three years.

I did not eat soup out of the can. I heated it in a pan like a civilized man.

Saturday, September 18, 1999

Well. I held her hand at the picture show.

We went to the early show Friday at the mall, the new Kevin Costner baseball picture, For Love of the Game. He plays a pitcher for the Tigers who is forty years old, and the whole picture everybody keeps telling him how old he is. Evelyn leaned over and whispered, "Forty. Can you imagine being that young?" and I laughed so hard a fellow in front of us turned around.

About halfway through, when he's out on the mound and his arm is going and he's remembering his girl, I put my hand on the armrest between us. Just set it there. I have delivered mail to German shepherds with more courage than I had right then. And after a while she put hers on top of it.

I couldn't tell you one thing that happened in that picture for the next twenty minutes. My heart was going like I'd run up the Belmont hill with a full satchel in August.

Afterward we had pie at the restaurant by the exit and she said, "Len, your ears are red." I said it was the air conditioning.

Seventy years old. I am a fool. I don't care.

Tuesday, September 7, 1999

Karen and Rick and Beth came down for the Labor Day cookout yesterday. I grilled bratwurst and made Marian's potato salad from her card, the one with the mustard stain on the corner.

I had planned to tell Karen myself. But Mrs. Dietz from across the street came over for a plate and said, right out loud by the grill, "And how is your lady friend from the garden club?" So that was that.

After the dishes Karen and I sat on the porch. She had a list. I could tell she'd been making it in her head the whole drive from Springfield. What do you know about her. Does she have money of her own. Has she asked about the house. Does she know about your pension. Dad, people read about these things.

And then, last on the list, the real one: "What about Mom?"

I told her the truth. That her mother is in every room of this house and always will be. That Evelyn has her own house, her own pension from the phone company, her own late husband's pictures on her own piano, and has never once asked me what anything cost. That I am not replacing anybody. I am just not wanting to be so lonesome.

Karen cried a little and said she knows, she knows, but it's too soon. I said three years. She said it's too soon for her. I suppose that's fair. I suppose she gets to have her own clock on it.

Beth hugged me on the way to the car and whispered, "I think it's cute, Grandpa." Sixteen-year-olds. They'll save us all.

Saturday, September 4, 1999

First dinner was last night. I will try to put it down right.

I picked her up at six in the Buick, which I had washed and vacuumed and then washed again because a bird got it. She wore a blue dress and a little pin shaped like a dahlia that her grandson made her in shop class. We went to the Italian place out on Far Hills with the candles in the wine bottles. I had the veal and she had the lasagna and neither of us finished because we were talking too much.

She told me about Howard, her husband. Forty-one years. He passed in '94, his heart, out in his workshop. She said the worst of it was the quiet in the evenings. I said I know. I said I leave the radio on in the kitchen just to hear somebody breathe. She said she does the exact same thing. The same station even. I about fell off my chair.

I told her about Marian. She knew some already from the club, since Marian was in it before I was. Evelyn said, "She used to bring those lemon bars. Nobody could touch her lemon bars." I had to look at my plate for a minute.

The waitress started putting chairs up on the tables around us. It was ten-thirty. I have not been out past ten-thirty since the Bicentennial.

I walked her to her door. I did not kiss her. I shook her hand, like a Fuller Brush man. She laughed at me, not mean. Then she said, "Call me tomorrow, Len." So I did. This morning at eight. Probably too early. She answered on the first ring.

Thursday, September 2, 1999

Tomorrow night is dinner. I went to the store and bought a new shirt, blue with a little stripe. The girl at the register asked if it was for a special occasion. I said I didn't know yet. I'll tell you Saturday.

Sunday, August 29, 1999

The club show was yesterday at the community center. I was up at five cutting blooms, which you have to do early before the sun gets on them. I took eleven entries in buckets in the back of the Buick with towels between so they wouldn't knock heads. Most of my big 'Kelvin Floodlight' came through the earwigs all right, and my best one took a second in the giant yellows. The judge said the center was a hair off. It was, too. I knew it when I cut it.

Evelyn had her pompons in. She grows the little ones, perfect round ones about the size of a golf ball, deep red and white, like somebody rolled them in their hands. She took a first and a best-in-section and she was so pleased she forgot to pretend she wasn't.

I carried her buckets out to her car at the end. Nobody asked me to. I just picked them up. She said, "Well, aren't you the gentleman," and I said thirty-one years of carrying other people's things, it's a habit.

Then we stood there in the parking lot in the heat and I heard myself say, "Would you ever want to go to supper sometime." Not even a question. Just words falling out.

She said, "I would, Len. I've been waiting all summer for you to ask."

All summer! I drove home with the windows down and the radio loud and I don't even remember what was playing.

Monday, August 16, 1999

Out in the beds at dusk with the flashlight after earwigs. You roll up newspaper and lay it among the plants and in the morning they're all hiding in it, and you shake it out in a coffee can. Marian used to call it my night route.

Disbudded the 'Kelvin Floodlight' again. You pinch off the side buds so the plant puts all it has into the one bloom on top. I have been doing it forty years and today I stood there and thought, that's what I've been doing with myself since '96. Pinching everything off. Putting it all into getting through the day.

Watched the new quiz program with Regis tonight, the million-dollar one. Got the first few. Would have liked somebody on the couch to holler the answers at.

I keep thinking about Evelyn's laugh at the meeting. I don't know what to do with that. Marian's gardening gloves are still on the nail in the garage. I can't move them and I can't look at them.

Tuesday, August 3, 1999

Garden club tonight at the church. The talk was on staking and disbudding for the show at the end of the month. Mostly the same folks. Evelyn brought a coffee can of her pompons for the table and a pan of brownies.

Her car was at the garage with a bad alternator so I gave her a ride home. It's only eight blocks. We talked about earwigs the whole way. It was the most I've talked to a woman who wasn't at the bank or the doctor's since the funeral.

At her door she said, "Thank you, Len. You're a good neighbor." We aren't neighbors. She lives eight blocks over. I thought about that all night.

Evelyn has read this page, by the way, and says I may keep it up. She says I may even say she is 68, because it's true and she earned every one. I am not putting her last name. She'd have my hide.

A lady in Oregon wrote to say her father married again at 74 and it was the best ten years of his life. Thank you, ma'am. I read your letter twice. If you'd like me to drop you a note when I put something new up, write me and say so. I carried other people's letters for 31 years. I'm glad to write a few of my own.