After-Christmas angel

[Entry backdated]

LeeLani arrived this morning with a fabulous quiche to put in my oven, homemade chocolate-dipped strawberries, baguettes for French toast, and a mission to put an end to Christmas at my house. She stayed about four hours while we had a lovely civilized breakfast and then took down, resorted and packed all of the decorations and the tree, and got the boxes back down into the crawl space. I had threatened to drag the whole business out into the street and torch the damned thing for Mardi Gras, so she arrived just in time.

There is no doubt in my mind that while I could do this alone, I could not...do this alone. I think of many situations through the years that people have given me such a gift of time and energy, and those moments are what stick with me, even if small by comparison to other sacrifices we make for each other in this life. I think of Kari coming to help me pack up and move (from more than one house). Becky doing the same (from about twice as many houses as Kari). Pat and Keith taking time this week to run me around on one day when I had to shuffle dead cars and rental cars and new cars - I had the day scheduled tightly into nine transportation legs but in only two did I have the right car/driver ratio. These seem like small things but when people are so tremendously busy, it matters to me. The gift is not measured only by what it did for me. Its real value is in the sacrifice of other things in that friend's life - things that got put aside in order to show me that caring in practical terms. I need to work on catching up that score.