Joannie is now getting Mother and Daddy’s house ready to sell. A lifetime of things, most of them only of sentimental value. But Joannie is very sentimental, so this is hard. Some things, she is shipping to me — like the contents of Mother’s piano bench — because it is too hard for her to toss them into the dumpster.

She shipped some of Mama Harrison’s dishes all the way to Maui for Mary-Margaret.

Today, FEDEX delivered this to 1880. So much foam and bubble wrap.

It’s very old and very fragile, but it arrived in perfect shape.

It was brought back to the United States over 100 years ago by my maternal grandfather, Papa Harrison. I have no idea how.

He was shipped out from Oklahoma in 1919 to Vladivostok. He was eighteen. Joannie found a copy of his deployment papers. Fort Mason, San Francisco. They read: “Siberian Replacement Company.” I wonder what was in the mind of a teenage Indian boy from Oklahoma?

It reads “med corps” I wonder what that means his job was.

This ewer always had a place of honor in all the houses Mother and Daddy lived in. And there were quite a few. They lived the longest in this last one.

Now it has a place of honor in mine.

Sometimes you meet someone who changes how you think about things.

Sharon is ninety now. A widow. I first met her when she drove her husband, a retired obstetrician, to choir rehearsals. He had Parkinsons. He delivered most of the babies in town but not hers. She sat in the library and read until time to drive him home and often brought refreshments for the entire choir.

She’s one of those women I refer to, with great admiration, as a hoot.

She has four children and jokes that her husband was never around when she went into labor.

She’s a retired English professor who kept teaching until in her eighties. She invited me to join her book group which was mostly made up of old professors. It was a great group. Sort of disbanded now.

I just bumped into her coming our of Fred Meyer’s. We were both loading stuff into our old Subarus. She had big bags of bird seed, cat litter, and potting soil. She keeps her wild and crazy hair blond. Today it looked like she is now doing it herself. Fabulous, I say!

Before we really greeted each other, she said, “What are you reading.” I told her and put the question back to her. She’s reading the new book by Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway. I’ll be reading that next. She and I loved Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow a few years back. It may be my all-time favorite read.

She said we should try to get what’s left of our book group together and she would have us over for lunch soon. I said I would do it. She said “Oh, I should be able to fix lunch for a few old women.”

When I grow up, I want to be like Sharon.

Joannie is starting to move things from Mother’s house. She is very sentimental, so it must be hard.

This week, it was Mother’s “wedding china.” I can’t think why, for the life of me, Mother wanted fine china, crystal, and silver flatware when she was a bride. But she did and somehow managed to get what she considered “a comlete set,” which, to her, meant service for eight.

This is the delicate china.

Somewhat, it survived unshipped through many moves to little towns all across southern Oklahoma as we migrated with Daddy’s oilfield jobs. Ultimately, it came to Pecos, Texas.

It is so unlike anything the mother I knew ever would have chosen: Dainty rosebuds and pink and blue ribbons. But then I have to remember that it was chosen by an eighteen-year-old girl. she always treasured it.

Perhaps there were other occasions, but I can only remember it being used one time. I was about ten years old and an dear army friend of Daddy’s visited us in Ringling, Oklahoma, with his Australian wife, Agnes. Lovely people. Daddy had actually been entertained for meals by Agnes’s parents when they were stationed near Brisbane during “The War.”

I don’t remember the rest of the menu, but for dessert, Mother made an elaborate cake. I recall that it was very labor intensive and looked something like this:

As for the lovely china, no one wants that stuff any more. Even the upscale resale shops won’t take it. ( I actually have sixteen plates and cups and saucers of mine!) Regular people don’t live like that anymore. Actually, they never did.

This is hard. I know it’s time. But I have been singing “church music” since I was a tiny child and have been in my church choir since junior high. So, I am at a loss for words here, but I will never be at a loss for song. There is always a hymn humming along in my mind.

Yesterday, to honor my retirement, Dr. Klemme hand delivered to 1880 a huge bunch of flowers, all wrapped up in yards of cellophane and ribbons and my choir cross. Also included was a card signed by many members of the choir.

Words may fail. Song never does.