"Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when . . . "

We scraped up the edge of the glacier before we left for Tucson, arranged for Ashlee to take care of our cats and plants, and shivered off to the airport. We sat there quite a while, as the small scheduled maintenance turned into an unscheduled computer problem, but we made it: from zero to seventy degrees!

We stayed with Michael and Susan and the kids for two nights, just before Phonz and Lucy and Nate had to resume school schedules, and then drove clear across town to Stan and Becky's home.

God, we had a good time! Stan and Becky, having wondered for some time whether it was time to trade in their pickup, decided to do so by rolling their old one over in an icy ditch in Oregon. No scars; no more pickup! Poor Stan! He is going through a change of life crisis, wondering whether to buy a Ford. It is hard to know what to say to a man whose certainties are under review, like that. As I see it, he may very well end up in the priesthood if he cannot come to some peace of mind.

On Mari's birthday, we drove south to Nogales, Sonora, just across the Mexican border, to La Roca, where Mari and I have filled their rock-sided, grand old dining room with important times in our lives, every since we began celebrating Mari's progress through her Ph.D. program there. It is a fine old home, housing El Changarro downstairs, where we bought a big pot and shipped it home, and the restaurant upstairs. Once called "the best restaurant in Tucson", it clearly has lost that honor, but it is one of the mileposts of our lives, which we reach out and touch each time we go by.

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