No cadence, no newsletter. Our members write these down when a day is worth keeping.
Harold couldn't kneel in his garden anymore, so I did the kneeling and he did the pointing. Every Tuesday and Friday, all season — thin here, more water there, don't you dare pull that, it's a volunteer squash. We put up nine jars of tomatoes in August. He passed in October, and his daughter mailed me a jar back in the spring with a note that just said, from the good summer. I still have it. I'm not opening it.
Dana had been with us four months and hadn't said a word at a meeting. Then in February she raised her hand and proposed we swap the Sunday overnight rotation so no one caught two in a row. She'd clearly rehearsed it in the car. It passed, unanimous, in about ninety seconds. Afterward she told me she'd worked nine years in care and it was the first time anyone had asked what she thought instead of telling her the schedule. She's a steward now.
Ruth doesn't always land on my name these days. But she knows my laugh, and she knows that at ten o'clock the kettle goes on — two sugars, splash of milk, in the blue cup with the chip she won't let anyone throw out. The dementia takes a lot. It hasn't taken the tea. Some mornings that small certain thing is the steadiest part of both our days, and I've stopped thinking of it as a small thing at all.