Twenty seven years ago Mom went away for a three day weekend to a retreat or workshop, can’t remember which. Tesia, a nine year old and Dad were here tending to things. We had a great idea to build a picnic table to surprise Mom on her return. We got out the drawing board that I used at forestry school with the T-square and pencils and stuff and drew up a plan. It was going to to be big and solid, no dinky tippy thing.

And off we went to the lumber yard to pick out the Western Red Cedar planks, a hundred dollars worth. And we built it, just her and me, daughter and father, no distractions. And it looked exactly just like the plan, thirty inches tall with the seats eighteen and a generous ten feet long. Yes, there it is!

And now twenty seven years later, after being out all those winters in the rain and all those summers in the sun the table needs help. It needs its relay partner to take the baton. So, this time Wiley and I got to build the table with the same plans that somehow I still had. Wiley got to participate this time when last time he was busy growing inside Mom and gone for the weekend.

Yea, the story of the tapas table, somehow not two tables but always one. Not old and new but one taking over for the other. Not just death and birth but a certain continuation. The idea of the tapas table with connectivity at its heart being one thing going on into the future.

Yea, and yesterday Patty was here to walk and after to have tapas and wine on the new Western Red Cedar planks. Tapas go on. She is such a dear and a great new friend for us here at Phil’s Camino. We were celebrating life yesterday in the warmth of the afternoon knowing that she was to be off to cancer surgery today. We are grateful for our times of lightness in all this. If the table was built for this one event then it would have been worth it. We laughed, we cried, we found out we talked the same language.

She sent this email:

We’ll have fun together. Glad we finally made the connection.
Patty

“What if our lives were precious only up to a point? What if we held them loosely and understood that there were no guarantees? So that when you got sick you weren’t a stage, but were in a process? And cancer, just like having your heart broken, or getting a new job, or going to school, were a teacher? What if, rather than being cast out and defined by some terminal category, you were instead identified as someone in the middle of a transformation that could deepen your soul, open your heart, and all the while – even if and particularly when you were dying-you would be supported by and be part of a community? And what if each of these things were what we were waiting for, moments of opening, of the deepening and the awakening of everyone around us? What if this were the point of our being here rather than acquiring and competing and consuming and writing each other off as stage IV or 5.2B?”
Eve Ensler
In the Body of the World

OK then. You are all beautiful, love, Felipe.x