“Stop! You have me wanting to hop on a plane tomorrow, and then Joanna would miss seeing the magician,” LeeAnn protested with laughter in her voice. “I need to go, Mom. If I’m not there at bath time, Joanna will leave soap in her hair, and it will look like straw all day tomorrow. We’ll talk soon.”
“Enjoy your weekend, Honey. Good night!”
“Love you, Mom. Bye!”
Annie clicked the “end call” button and placed the cordless phone on the kitchen table. After taking a quick bite of the corn bread, she carried the plate and bowl from counter to table. She turned back for her tea, sipping the decaf Earl Grey. Boots padded her way down the hall and into the kitchen, stopping for a brief drink at the water bowl.
“I guess I’m not the only thirsty one in the house,” said Annie. “Boots, you’ll be happy to know I’m staying home tomorrow. It’s looking more and more certain that we’ll be having company over Thanksgiving. I need to get the baker’s rack down from the attic and get everything set up for making the rose-hip jelly. It’s almost picking time.” Boots swished her tail and twitched her ears before slipping under the table and settling herself on top of Annie’s feet. Annie smiled at the thought of having a Boots blanket over the winter months, albeit a blanket with an ornery mind of its own. She turned her attention to the nourishing and delicious meal, replaying her conversation with Joanna and John in her mind. “Thank you, Lord, for keeping us free of celery disease so the twins can experience toast with rose-hip jelly this autumn.” Annie allowed herself the laugh she had suppressed during her conversation with John.
After dinner was finished, and the dishes cleaned and put away, Annie settled on the living room couch to begin her first pillow. She laid the copy of the poem fragment and her notes from the museum on the arm of the couch where she could see them for inspiration and guidance. Pulling the skeins of yarn from the bag beside the couch, Annie decided to start with the champagne and French blue colors, and put the sandalwood and cream colors away for later.
Selecting the right-size Tunisian crochet hook from the stash in her tote, Annie began chaining the champagne yarn. When the chain was the right length, she skipped the first chain, inserted the hook in the back horizontal bar of the next chain, wrapped the yarn over the hook, and pulled up a loop. As Annie pulled up loops in each of the chains, she murmured the words of the poem. The first two lines reminded her of a day almost twenty-five years before, when LeeAnn was young enough to be content in a stroller for a day at the zoo. They had wandered along paths lined with habitats for bears, lemurs, big cats, and gibbons until they came upon a miniature river populated with otters. While Annie had, as always, appreciated the power and grace of the black leopards, ocelots, and Sumatran tigers, she couldn’t stop watching the river otters as they slipped from the riverbank to dart through the water, and then flipped off the sides to change directions. Water dancing, she thought, just as the writer of the poem had said. Annie had been entranced by the otters’ dance too. She suspected that if she lived in a place where she saw otters often, she would feel a keen kinship with them also.
Annie pulled up the last loop on the hook and then turned her work to begin crocheting with the French blue yarn on the return pass. “Where would you dance?” She would have mourned for the one who was so obviously taken out of her natural element, if not for those four little words. “If love took you” changed everything. Annie had not always loved being the bookkeeper for the car dealership in Texas. While she pursued her studies at Texas A&M, she hadn’t been dreaming of a career in bookkeeping. But she did love Wayne, and their lunches together, quick moments of laughter, or even the flash of a smile across the showroom as she came out to refill her coffee mug, infused the hours of balancing, tallying, and recording with meaning. Had the poem’s author ever come to the place in her heart where she felt in her element again, even if she was never restored to her natural habitat? Where had that natural habitat been? How did Stony Point fit in her life history, if it did at all?
Annie began a forward pass of Tunisian purl stitch with the French blue yarn; she liked the effect of the contrasting colors. Boots entered the cozy room, jumping onto one of the chairs facing the couch. She curled up in a loose ball, tucking her paws into her chest. “Ah, Boots, what am I going to do about this project? The colors are perfect, but I’m not so sure this pillow is going to end up anywhere near doing justice to those gorgeous urchin baskets.” Boots turned her eyes toward Annie for a couple of seconds, and then closed them and lowered her head to settle in for a nap.