I haven’t been up to posting much lately — such a busy weekend with the Revels yard sale, a Saturday night cook-out with friends, choir and a Revels troupe appearance at Billings Farm on Sunday. And surprise! We forgot we scheduled a renaissance choral practice on Monday. Oh, and I bought a new old violin — but that’s for another day.

Then Dave’s sister arrived for a short visit and I landed flat on my back with a cold and (oh, the indignity!) conjunctivitis. I’m getting better. I can open my eyes again, but now I have a lingering cough. Woe is me and all that. Dave and Cherie had a great visit. They talked, canoed and kayaked. I slept.

Today was a disappointment. Dave saw his daughters for the first time in over a year. His report of the meeting wasn’t encouraging. I haven’t written about the situation before now because it is heartbreaking. It’s pretty hard to discuss without starting to analyze and explain, and sometimes that just doesn’t help. It all degenerates into “she said, he said” stuff that won’t resolve anything. Right now it feels like all the moves available to us are wrong ones and we can’t ever make it right.

So … that leaves me with the title of this post, a quote from Voltaire’s “Candide”:

We must each cultivate our own garden.

I can’t do anything to fix this situation right now. All I can do is take care of my own little patch, tend to those I love, take care of myself, and look for where I can be of use in the world. As my former yoga teacher, Stephanie, used to say “All you have to do is show up, be yourself, and share your gifts.”