Up the Sunbeam

-- I wish I had asked her name. I was in a bit of a hurry, and really needed to find a parking space close to the front entrance of our Costco store so I could get in and out quickly. I spied a family of 4 and an elderly woman, each pushing their carts heading toward cars in the first bank of spaces, so I pulled into position to snag the first space available. The elderly woman was closest to me and I watched as she moved item after item from her cart to the trunk of her car. She was small and slender, but there was nothing slight about her. She moved easily and efficiently, not even appearing to feel a strain when she picked up a box of assorted items out of the big basket. Finally everything was loaded into her car but one green box of Pale Ale she had put on the bottom of the cart. She looked around like she might like a little help with what was surely the heaviest item especially since it would need to be lifted from down so low. With what appeared to be perfect timing, a...

-- I went to visit my dear friend Fran yesterday. Late in her 80's now, she lives with her son and his family and she is slowly slipping away. She doesn't really know me anymore, and she doesn't remember 30 seconds after I leave that I've been there, but I go as often as I can because she went so far out of her way so many times for me. Fran, or "Franacious" as we lovingly called her "back in the day" was the librarian at the Bible college I attended. She started that library from the ground up and she painstakingly logged in every book, and spent countless hours lugging boxes and shifting shelves to put a proper library together for the Bible college students that had descended upon her church. She was an excellent librarian, yes, but she was so much more-- She was a kind of surrogate grandmother to anyone who needed one. She asked questions and listened like she really wanted to know . . . because she did. She comforted all manner of homesi...