At 6:15 this morning we drove our son Seth to the airport. He lives in Brazil, and we hadn't seen him since Thanksgiving. He was home for a total of eighteen hours, and, if you subtract sleeping, we had eleven hours with him. Better than nothing, but never enough.

On Saturday, he will turn forty. How can that be? Weren't Peter and I just recently referring to the occupant of my belly as "Pumpkinella" or "Pinocchio"? Wasn't it recently that I said that he would never be allowed to cross the street alone, and that he would be home schooled through college?

We had a great visit. We had lunch on the patio on a gorgeous June-like day. We went for a long walk. I cooked one of his favorite meals for dinner. We talked about his next assignment. Just before he arrived, the mailman delivered a disk I had had made of four hundred photographs—from our wedding through our grandchildren-- and we watched a slide-show of our lives together. So many wonderful memories.

And then, this morning, he was gone.