You don’t have to grow your own food or live in the country or love a donkey or walk in sylvan woods to live a meaningful life. A wonderful woman who lives in Detroit – she is a 76-year-old grandmother who will not live Detroit because her grandchildren are there, and her husband of 47 years died right in the house, and she sends me messages on a Nokia smartphone her grandson, a firefighter, gave her before he left Detroit for work elsewhere. She loves my photos, the donkeys, and the donkeys, but she trades me the beauty in her own life. She has a small garden behind her house, she has a chair with some flowers on the rooftop above her bedroom. Each day, she brings flowers to elderly shut-ins on the block and walks her toy poodle Martin, named after Martin Luther King, who she had the pleasure of meeting.

I cannot recall or imagine how she found my blog, I don’t really want to know. Miss Lucy is not afraid, she is ready to join Jesus any time he calls her, she says. She loves Red and Flo the best of all, donkeys make her nervous. She loves Maria’s quilts, she would love to have one some day, I suspect she will get one.

She sends me poems, stories, good wishes and compliments, I do the same for here. I think we are in love with one another, Maria would not mind that. She sings old hymns from her porch at night, bakes cookies for the kids on the street. She is the organist in her church, there are only a half-dozen people left, no minister. She honors the people who stay behind, raise their children, look for work, find community in a forgotten world, she loves her home just as much as I love mine, she will never leave it, as I hope to never leave mind, and she reminds me every day that some of the most meaningful and wonderful lives do not have gardens, animals or rolling hills in them. I would never diminish Miss Lucy by forgetting there are many ways to put your lips to the world, even if you have to eat store bought food and put three bolts on your doors at night.

Love to you, Lucy, great lady.