I tripped as I was leaving and as I was up in the air I thought it might be a good time to sleep. I settled like a lazy leaf on some busy stairs and told them I was ready for them to come in. They were from the Ph.D. program. Many very young but nice and I knew that though I was still pretending I had all my life ahead of me, I would go to the meeting and my life would change. But first, I had to finish packing. We had just been gone for a weekend but there were sweaters and sweaters stacked in giant tilting piles like mattresses in the Princess and the Pea. And, yes, under there somewhere my grandmother's ring. I felt every surface. Climbed higher on the sweaters, feeling between them. I found instead a candle. I let the cats out again (two! again!) and avoided talking to ______ about 'us'. I walked out, knee-deep in the thin, horizontally layered sliding waves of the mountain lake, facing forward, just the candle in my hand.