Frosty outlines: fleeting beauty.

My dad has been diagnosed with a serious illness. 

The past two weeks have been a bit surreal. I often feel like I'm walking around in a protective bubble. It's shock, I'm sure. One of the mind's defense mechanisms.

Writing has helped. I started "Momentary Joy" because looking for the treasure in ordinary moments has been a practice of mine for years. These days, it's a necessity. 

Another fallen find.

This morning, I accompanied our dog as he "checked the perimeter." We walked through the back yard full of frost-tipped leaves. I came back just 10 minutes later to take pictures, and found the frost fading fast. Had I waited longer, I would have missed my chance. 

Later, I picked up a friend for breakfast (a more than momentary joy). While I stood in her back yard waiting for her, I looked up and saw bold yellow leaves fanned out high against blue sky. I felt the sun's heat against the back of my legs, and the top of my head as it tilted back. A moment of peace, and warmth.

When hard things happen, one of side effects can be a heightened awareness. I've been reminded (and I know it sounds obvious) that the present moment is the only place we exist. It is all that we are given -- and it is indeed a gift. 

I will always remember something my dad said to us during one of his first days in the hospital, something he repeated, because it was important to him:

"Enjoy your life." 

Good advice, Dad. 

May we enjoy many more moments with you.

It does pay to look down.*

One of my seasonal rituals is the changing of the refrigerator door.

Wistfully, I recently removed the sunny yellow flip-flop that holds foot-shaped pieces of paper -- perfect for shopping lists. It's tucked back in my desk drawer until next summer.

Down, too, came a photo I saved from the June 1st edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The picture, taken by David Warren, is priceless. It shows two 3-year-old girls holding hands and beaming as they dance under the cooling spray of a garden hose, wielded by one of their moms. They look so happy, so sweet, so absolutely the best of friends.

The photo makes me smile every time I see it, and I put it on the refrigerator so I could see it more often. 

Delicate beauty along the trail.

Another photo made the refrigerator gallery for that same reason. I took it in June 2010 with two friends, one I've known since first grade, the other since seventh. It's one of those group portraits you take by leaning in together and holding the camera way out in front of you. We may not look as young as those 3-year-olds, but we do look so happy -- and absolutely the best of friends.

For the past eight years, the three of us have met each summer for a "Meet in the Middle" weekend, or MIM for short. Two of us live near Philadelphia; the other near Cleveland. Each year one of us picks a town somewhere between those two cities, roughly "in the middle." We've gone as far north as Wellsboro, Pa. (home of the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania), and as far south as Berkeley Springs, W. Va. It really doesn't matter where we meet. What matters is that we meet. 

We arrive Friday afternoon and, in a blink, Sunday afternoon comes and it's time to say goodbye again. In between we talk, walk, eat, read and laugh -- a lot.

There is such sweet pleasure in "hanging out" with the girlfriends who knew you when, whether it's for a long weekend, a long phone call, a Sunday brunch, or just a slice of pizza and a stroll around the mall.

There are two other women in the constellation of friends we called "Our Gang." We grew up together. We shared sleepovers, passed notes in junior high, tried to figure out boys. I tried my first (and last) cigarette with them, listened to Bruce Springsteen for the first time with them, rented my first shore house with them, danced at "the Dunes 'til dawn" with them.

Having survived puberty and high school, we went off to college, some near, some far. Two of us shared an apartment at Penn State for two years. After graduation, three of us (plus a great dog named Alfie) shared a house in Hatboro.

Through those years and ever since, we have shared our lives, our joys, our heartaches. The crossed-out entries in my address book trace the paths of their lives. Miles may separate us, but we are always connected -- by history and by heart. I can't imagine life without them.

My refrigerator now holds a lovely photo of fallen leaves, and a great shot of a black cat for Halloween. I still haven't taken down that portrait from MIM 2010 (not until I print out the portrait from MIM 2011 to take its place).

Here's to friendship -- and 2012!

------

* The photos here were taken along the path to the Peace Chapel, near the Juniata College campus in Huntingon, Pa., site of MIM 2011.

One of many to come.

Seen in passing:

One lone oak leaf

twirling toward earth.

Perfect pirouettes,

landing so lightly.

The view along I-80: trees in transition.

For me, one of the first signs of fall is the display of spiced wafers at the grocery store. That stack of orange and black boxes means summer is over, and Halloween is just around the corner.

A more ancient sign of the season is the turning of the leaves, and there's no better way to see that than to take a drive across Pennsylvania, known as "Penn's Woods" for good reason.

My husband and I took a road trip to visit family last week (a more than momentary joy). Our route home brought us back into Pennsylvania from the west along I-80, a highway that rolls through the heart of the forests.

We had left home last Monday, still in summer season. As we headed north and west, Penn's Woods were mostly green, with only the occasional shimmer of orange. 

We arrived back home on Friday, the first official day of fall. What a difference a week made. Green still ruled, but those shimmers of orange had been joined by red, yellow and gold, signs of the fireworks to come.

Don't miss the show.

Proof that search engines have a sense of humor:

Today I was browsing through the library catalog for travel books. In the search field I typed "Ontario travel."

The catalog offered me many choices, but it also asked, "Did you mean 'interstellar travel'?"

Uh, not today, thanks. But maybe some star date in the future.

I find comfort in the eternal nature of nature.

Ten years ago today, I walked into the late summer night, 

looking for peace.

I listened to the world around me

and heard crickets singing their end-of-summer song.

I passed a family of four, which was soon to be a family of five:

father, mother, great with child, daughter, toddler son.

I thought of how normal they looked, 

and I thought of how so many families

would not feel "normal" for days, weeks, months, years to come,

if ever.

When I heard the crickets, I thought, tonight the crickets are singing in Central Park.

The natural world lives on.

  Night falls, the stars appear. 

Humans mourn but all around the earth tells us: 

Life goes on.

A time to weep; a time to mourn.

A time to remember, with love.

------

When I graduated from Penn State in 1979, one of my oldest and dearest friends gave me a copy of "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran.

Among his many beautiful words are these:

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."

I have seen those words prove true in my own life. I pray the same for all who mourn and remember today.

There are times I just love typos.

Not that I enjoy misspelling words, but I do love how an inadvertent keystroke can take you in a whole different direction. Freudian slips of the fingers.

In an email yesterday, I wrote that I'm looking forward to a visit from my brother-in-law and his wife, and that I hoped we would "head to the shore."

Instead of "shore," I originally typed "shire," and instantly the land of hobbits flashed in my mind.

I smiled, and thought of how much I've enjoyed spending imaginary time in the Shire and the rest of Middle-earth, home of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings."

Then I thought of my parents, bless their hearts, who gave me the whole set of books one Christmas. I still have them. They're the same copies my husband and I read aloud to introduce our own kids to J.R.R. Tolkien's world. 

Fond memories. All courtesy of a typo.

My copy of "The Hobbit," 
complete with beautiful runes, 
was published in 1966.