Virtue Is Its Own Reward But I'm Not Returning the Purse

Artistic and her family went to China a while back, November I think. Visiting China means jumping through enough bureaucratic hoops to boggle my mind (ie, more than one) but details don't faze people as artistic as Artistic. Or so I've noticed.

However.

They arrived at Haneda Airport at the crack of dawn and discovered they were lacking the proper passport for one of her 15-year old twins (so many of my friends here have twins that I'd look like quite the maternal weenie if I didn't have James's birth weight to bandy about).

My telephone rang at approximately two minutes after the crack of dawn. Incredibly, I actually (1) heard the telephone ring and (2) deigned to pick up the receiver. Relief washed over me when I realized the caller was not an emergency physician in Texas or Virginia. How relieved was I to know that one of my children had not been involved in a terrible car accident? Relieved enough to consent to carry a passport from Yokosuka to Haneda while wearing a fedora because there was no time to shower. Not relieved enough to face down Artistic's huge canine while retrieving the passport from her house. I immediately nominated Weather for that portion of the assignment. Pretty quick thinking for someone who had not yet sipped any caffeine, n'est-ce pas?

Tossing that passport to Artistic just as the plane was boarding made me feel warm and fuzzy, probably the way you feel when you volunteer at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving. And just like you don't expect a reward for ladling out minestrone to the homeless, I was content to earn a few desperately-needed pennies in heaven for my good deed. And maybe a cell phone charm from China. But that didn't happen so I went back to savoring my little stack of celestial pennies.

A tatami mat with blue edging

A few weeks ago Artistic handed Weather and me gift bags. Inside were purses she had made for us out of the fabric used to edge Japanese tatami mats. That fabric bears a distinct resemblance to the webbing that left patterns on my chubby thighs when I sat in folding aluminum lawn chairs back in the 1960s and 1970s.

This purse is way cooler than a cell phone charm from China or anywhere else. I just hope my gleeful acceptance of this treasured gift won't require me to spend extra time in Purgatory.

My cool purse