32nd Hymn to Sarah, August 6, 2010

This is the day Christians call
Transfiguration, and the day
remembered in Japan as the day
the bomb fell on Hiroshima...
so there are other reasons why
the date is special for others, but for me
it is the day when I waken to the
memory of walking to the window
in the delivery room of St. Joseph's
hospital with the body of a new
life of only minutes lying serenely
in my arms, not yet named
she was to become
Sarah Jean, after her
maternal and paternal
great grandmothers
Tuck and Nolan respectively
and she has walked now
for thirty-two years giving
that name, and her ancestors
nothing but pride in her
presence, and honour to be
knowing and getting to know
her as a little girl who loved to
help 'Dennis' shovel his driveway,
and play with her friends, sometimes
with her sisters, and go wherever
she was asked with her Dad,
she was the one, at three who asked
from coast to coast, 'how far is it
to the next pool?' and would hear,
about "one Sesame Street and one Mr.
Dressup"...her favourite shows and her
grasp of length of time...and then
there were metronome times for
piano practice and recitals and
festivals even for the wrong piece,and
there were times to drive the golf cart
while her dad tried to hit the ball around
the course, and 
there were seconds,
at the close of a basketball
game as she, point-guard, found her
team-mates and put them, with the ball,
in front of the net, to score
and there were college days, graduation and
a beautiful art-gallery wedding and
now, another new life, on March 17, her
Mila has taken her place on the front of
Sarah's stage, and makes her own
entrance every two or three hours
for nourishment, for bonding and for
the love of her mother that knows no
bounds, and this new grandfather
smiles secretly in wonder at the
thread of life extended again
miraculously to Mila
and her smile graces our lives
as Sarah's once did so
generously like a
flower in constant bloom
when no water or sunlight
seemed available, it was
Sarah who brought the missing
nourishment to every table, and
room and encounter and Mila
is following her mother's
legacy of love and hope and
togetherness as she begins
to weave her own tapestry of
love in her own
design.