Because I know how life can be (nasty, brutish, and short) I want to can the end of last week and the anticipation of this week. If I could, during harder times to come, I’d go to the basement shelf, perhaps having forgotten completely the dusty Ball jar is even there, and discover it. It’s full of yellowness. Open it. Inhale it, taste a spoonful. A few reasons for this urge, in mostly chronological order:
1) Serendipitous pizza lunch last Friday with my daughter and her friend and her friend’s mother, also my friend….the fun the children had, the fun their mothers had…
2) This ridiculous summer in March!…
3) Spontaneous last-minute plans to have dinner with friends Friday, the fun the kids had despite not getting lollipops afterwards…the portrait her friend drew of most of us as sponge bob characters…
3) A playground work party at the Antioch School, where I did very little work, but being there with others, at one of the few places near here that still has a seesaw, caring about the place tangibly (I picked up a few sticks after all) talking about the importance of that place in the world; seeing the school with my dear old friend, also an alum, and her daughter, hearing from my friend how small the rooms are now…spending time with those friends later in the weekend, how our children play together like puppies…
4) A healthy and joyful daughter, a loving, gorgeous husband…
5) A birthday party of another of my daughter’s friends, where the sun shone like July and the kids ran up and down the beautiful Ohio hill, chasing chickens…
6) Anticipation of the new moon, and being in a circle with women I love…
7) Anticipation of seeing Julia Sweeney on Saturday night for a really great cause…
8) The iPod’s parting song this morning, during which my family danced our daily goodbyes…
9) Forsythia everywhere…
10) The ability to keep adding to this list as it grows…
Rebecca Kuder 
so nice and joyful Rebecca, nice to read it! Funny, at first, i took it as you wanted to can last week, as in ‘drop it’, because you didn’t want to revisit…glad to know it was something else so dear to our hearts!
Funny! I knew it was a slippery title…