I had a late afternoon eye appointment today, which meant that I took off a bit early from work. After that, I did some shopping, ate a late lunch of sushi, drank a smoothie while knitting and ripping a row of knitting several times, and headed over to the garden. I feel very productive. Before that illusion wears off, let me share three four [what? I was on vacation!] beautiful things from my past week with you:

1. I spend the afternoon in Rhode Island with Karen and her family. I surrender first my hat, then my sunglasses, and finally my keys to her two young children, who combine them in adorably funny ways to inadvertently resemble Elton John and Elvis Costello.

2. Michael takes the kids upstairs to bed, leaving Karen and me time to talk for a few hours. It’s lovely to catch up alone.

3. My parents put the hammock up in the yard. I spend an hour lounging in the shade with my drink and my book.

4. A bird is perched atop the church spire, singing.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

Sarah, Plain and Tall, by Patricia MacLachlan

From the jacket: “Caleb doesn’t remember Mama, who died a day after he was born. But his older sister, Anna, says Papa and Mama sang ‘every-single-day.’ Now Papa doesn’t sing at all. Papa places an ad in the newspaper for a wife and he receives an answer from a woman named Sarah, who lives in Maine.”

My take: Told from the perspective of 10-year-old Anna, this is the story of a Kansas farm family in the late 19th century. Papa has advertised for a wife, and Sarah, who describes herself as plain and tall, has responded. She and her cat might be willing to move across the country from the Maine coastline to join them. In advance of her agreeing to come for a trial month-long stay, Sarah, Papa, Anna, and her younger brother, Caleb, exchange letters, asking and answering questions.

When Sarah arrives, it is an adjustment for everyone, but most particularly for the woman who has traveled so far and given up so much. Will Sarah overcome her homesickness and stay? Or will Anna and Caleb lose yet another mother figure?

I remember when this book came out. I must have moved past my historical fiction period into my contemporary fiction phase by that point, because I can think of no other reason why I would have skipped over this book. I am happy to report that it is charming and makes a lovely companion to the early Little House books and Caddie Woodlawn.

If you saw and loved the Hallmark Hall of Fame movies starring Christopher Walken and Glen Close, rest assured, you will find the book (and apparently its sequels) familiar. They tapped the novel’s author to write the screenplays for the film series.

A sweet, simple book, well worth the hour it will take to read to yourself or the few nights it might take to read aloud with a child.

Pages: 58

Oops! Too tired last night, so I fell asleep before posting. Apologies for vacation-induced tardiness. Now for three beautiful things from the past week:

1. We spend the evening in Asbury Park strolling along their boardwalk. We watch the moonrise over the ocean, eat dinner from food stands, and play pinball in the arcade. Mostly we just relax.

2. This year’s July 4th fireworks did a particularly good job at creating depth in their bursts. Also their colors were really bright.

3. Our friends John and Nicole have moved in together. To celebrate her last night in her old building, she invites us to join them for a rooftop party. The views over D.C. are stunning.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

Touch Blue, by Cynthia Lord

From the jacket: “The state of Maine plans to shut down [Tess’s] island schoolhouse, which would force Tess’s family to move to the mainland — and Tess to leave the only home she has ever known. Fortunately, the islanders have a plan, too: increase the number of students by having several families take in foster children. So now Tess and her family are taking a chance on Aaron, a thirteen-year-old trumpet player who has been bounced from home to home.”

My take: Superstitious Tess, daughter of a lobsterman and the island’s schoolteacher, is worried. Her friend Amy’s family moved off the island last year, dropping the enrolled student population below the state of Maine’s minimum threshold. If the state follows through on its threat to close the school before the fall term begins, Tess’ family will be forced to move to the mainland. So, her family and several others have agreed to foster school-aged kids, in the hopes that this will convince the state to keep the school open. Unfortunately, this plan is not without its unknowns — one of which is Aaron, who has no interest in island life or his new foster sisters, but who does have an interest in finding his mother, whose parental rights were severed by the state.

I found Tess to be a sweet narrator. With her superstitions (touch blue for luck or don’t whistle on a boat) and her fear of change, you can see that she’s got a lot on her plate. And in her anxiety, she makes a lobster pot’s worth of mistakes in judgment. But, mostly, those mistakes are made with good intentions at heart, even if their application may leave something to be desired. Aaron, too, is believable as a kid who’s lost too many families to open himself up to the possibility that this one might stick — and that’s particularly brought to light when he finds out that the islanders are using his and the other foster kids’ presence for their own purposes. Little sister Libby and Tess’ parents have a wholesome, timeless feel about them, where you feel like they could have stepped out of Gone-Away Lake or its ilk.

A generally sweet summertime book with an old-fashioned feeling to it.

Pages: 186

July 2 is the birthday of the girl I was best friends with in seventh grade. We grew apart during the first year of high school, and I don’t know that I’ve thought much about her since then. But when I looked at today’s date, she was the first thing that popped into my head.

February 22 is the birthday of the girl I was best friends with in fifth grade. We stayed friends through the first year of college, but drifted apart after she moved south for school and then decided to get married. I have thought about her since then and even went so far as to Google her once, but I don’t have any interest in getting in touch. Mostly I just wanted the internet to tell me that she’d had some semblance of a happy ending. But, still, she’s my first association with that date, even if I haven’t wished her birthday greetings since we were teenagers.

Dates feel a little bit haunted by ghosts for me. Not ethereal beings, but ghosts of my past.

It’s the same way where I glimpse someone on Metro or on the street and think, “That’s so-and-so.” But it’s not. They kind of resemble how so-and-so looked 15 years ago. But in my mind, they’re frozen in time.

In my mind, I didn’t think of a grown up Holly today — one who probably looks now a good deal like her mother did at the time we knew each other and who has a job and responsibilities and possibly a family. Instead I thought of a frizzily permed, braces-wearing, soap-opera-watching middle schooler.

Maybe no one else finds this weird. Facebook, after all, offers you the opportunity to wish birthday greetings to everyone you’ve ever met, which suggests that it’s something a lot of people are interested in. Maybe that normalizes it, makes it just another to-do item on your daily list, helps to remind you that every day is a special anniversary to someone, to lots of someones, in fact.

Maybe it’s the nature of growing older. As you age, you have more of a past to visit with. In the same way it’s easy to get lost going through a box of old mementos or snapshots, it’s easy to open a door in your mind and opt to revisit a day or a person from time gone by.

July 2 and February 22 not one of those important dates circled in red on my mental calendar the way July 7 or September 14 or October 21 or March 23 are. But there is still a faint pencil trace around it to remind me that there’s a ghost in need of a glimmer of my thought. And maybe it’s okay with me if on my special anniversaries other people have a glimmer for the ghosts who used to be me.