Today is St. Therese's feast day. The Little Flower, they call her. Her presence can be signalled by the fragrance of roses. The keeper remembers how on her feast day they all anointed hands with rose oil and how once later in the afternoon after the Feast Mass was long over, and long after the oils had been put away, the sacristy suddenly filled with a sweet sweet rose fragrance.
She said that it was at the beginning of her service there, and it was a consolation. By the way, I used to live at St. Therese when I was a kitten. My friend Downs and I lived in the parish house. Those were great days for us. Speaking of roses and remembering, the keeper also remembers her mother telling the story of how after her grandfather Pierre had died in the middle of winter, the doorbell rang at their Fargo home and piles of long stemmed roses rested on the doorstep. Roses in Winter. Light in Darkness. Hope. Miracles.
What a beautiful evening we had. 
Yes, we even went out for awhile. The keeper worked all day, and came home after an 85th birthday party, and a college counseling session. ( Note: These two events involved different people.) She said she hopes to be as wild and crazy at 85 as this person is. The young man is very smart but will be the first in his family to graduate from college. His mother became literate recently. He finished community college and now is negotiating the challenges of applications and admission processes. He will make it, with some good connections. If the keeper has anything, it is contacts! She had dinner with the family --pupusas from El Salvador. She says that there will be pupusas in heaven. When she finally got home, we raced outside. But the evening has a chill to it, and the wood stove smoke is in the air. We rushed back in. The keeper turned the furnace on for the first time and Alice and I sat on the vents, much better than sitting on the cold ground. The keeper went back out to watch the moon rise over the trees. She loves the moon.
