I know you hadn't planned this trip, but surely you could have let me know. So what if you didn't want to go, you did go, you know. I am sitting looking out the window, watching the leaves shake themselves free and realize that much like them you have done the same. You have left us behind and taken the path that has no twists, but goes straight on til the morning of forever rises. You took my hand so long ago and walked a ways with me. We traveled from childhood, through pain of change and growth and death of love. Now you have gone, taking the memories of our youth and love. All the memories we shared are shared by none, but held by me. May all you hoped for and all you longed for be there when you reach the end of your journey and joy find you in the rising of eternity.

                                                  REMEMBRANCE  

When did the world stop? I don't remember noticing. Maybe it was when I heard that you had left and given no forwarding address.

I know you hadn't planned this trip, but surely you could have let me know. So what if you didn't want to go, you did go, you know.

I am sitting looking out the window, watching the leaves shake themselves free and realize that much like them you have done the same.

You have left us behind and taken the path that has no twists, but goes straight on til the morning of forever rises.

You took my hand so long ago and walked a ways with me. We traveled from childhood, through pain of change and growth and death of love.

Now you have gone, taking the memories of our youth and love.

All the memories we shared are shared by none, but held by me.

May all you hoped for and all you longed for be there when you reach the end of your journey and joy find you in the rising of eternity.

SOMETHNGS ARE FOREVER

           I heard on the radio yesterday about a jury award to the family of a man who died of lung cancer. The jury found a tobacco company libel on the grounds that the company knowingly and willingly deceived the public about the safety of cigarettes. The deceased man had maintained for years that a company would not sell an unsafe product. There were comments about the jury having made a mistake awarding such a large amount of money to the family. What is the price of a husband or a father? What price can be placed on the suffering? I couldn't help thinking about my own Mother when I heard of the verdict and the family’s statement.

There is an incident engraved in my mind, which took place only a month or so before my Mother’s death. My little girl and I were home visiting my family. One evening after dinner, having been given the news that she had been turned down for life Insurance, Mother asked my Dad, “Why would I be turned down!?” Dad’s reply was, “Agneata, I don’t know!” After all, she was only 51 years old and had never had a serious illness. In my lifetime, she had only been in the hospital twice, once when my sister was born, and again a couple of years later with cyst on an ovary. Why would a seemingly healthy woman be denied insurance? Had there been an obvious problem, surely her doctor, whom she had just seen would have told her about it.

Looking back, after many long years, and hearing about many other court cases, I know the truth. My Mother was addicted to cigarettes and somewhere, someone knew just how dangerous cigarettes were. We, the public, the CONSUMING PUBLIC, were not given this knowledge.

I don’t know that my Mother would have been able to put the cigarettes down if she had known and believed they were dangerous. People, who are addicted to cigarettes, find it extremely hard to quit - even if their lives are at risk. I know. Even after my doctor told me I was facing a very serious problem with my lungs, I just couldn't quit. It was sheer torture. I did, however, manage to give them up six months later when my six year old daughter told me she was planning to go live with my sister after I died. Surprised, I asked her why she thought I was going to die and she replied, “Because you smoke cigarettes, Mama.” I was pierced to the quick by her reply. She was too young to know what passed through my mind and though my heart in that moment.

You see, I miss my Mother more than words can say. I have needed her through all the long years that have passed since that day in November of 1967 when she died of a heart attack. Suddenly, without warning, in the middle of the night, she was gone. No chance to say, “I love you”, no chance to even hold her hand and cry. Gone. In the years that have passed by, I have given birth to three more children, struggled to raise them and endured the end of my marriage all without my Mother. Every holiday that passed, I missed her. I missed her loving touch and her sage advice. And I have missed her laughter too. It could lighten any burden. Who can know the worth of a good Mother? And yet, the loss I suffered pales beside that of my little sister and my Dad. Terry was only fourteen when our Mother died. She has had to endure an entire lifetime of this greatest of grief. And then there was my Dad. For years he wandered thru life like a lost soul. There were times he believed my Mother spoke to him giving him guidance and then there other times, in his pain, he turned to alcohol, compounding my sister’s loss with the loss of her only remaining parent. There is a picture in my mind that I will always remember. It is my Dad’s face the day we buried Mom. Even in my own sadness, I was struck by the look on his face. I have seen that face on another’s face only one other time. I saw it in a photograph. It was the face of a German Jew, in shackles, being herded on a train by the Nazi soldiers. There are no words for the infinite pain and hopelessness I saw in those faces.

So to me, the award of the Jury to the family of the deceased man - $8,000,000 seemed like a paltry amount. After all, what is the price of a good Farther, or a good Mother? After all what it is to ache, all your life, for someone who possibly could have lived many more years, if not for cigarettes, if only the truth had been told. After all, someone, somewhere, knew.

SANCTUARY

When I was a very young woman, I would often go to daily Mass. One day while at Mass, saw a man, who looked to be in his early thirties, in desperate need of help. He was thin, unshaven, shaky, and wearing a terribly wrinkled suit. The suit looked as if he had slept in it – maybe for days. What struck me about the man most though was the expression on his face as he approached the side altar after Mass. He almost ran to the altar and fell on his knees with a look of agony on his face. I wondered what circumstances had brought him to this point. Was it alcohol? Was it the loss or illness of a loved one or some despicable act on his own part? I never knew. But, I saw the man on several occasions over the years that followed, always in a church. I did not see him on a regular basis, but often enough that I thought about him more often than I saw him. I began to notice that as time when on, he changed. He became a clean, happy looking man - full of confidence. There was something else that appeared. On his face I saw gratitude and humility. Had someone told me that I could come to know and understand the emotions that drove this man to throw himself before God in such a pleading and pitiful way, I would have thought it ridiculous. I was a born Catholic with the confidence that comes from knowing you are a loved child of God. I thought I would spend my life helping and praying for others. I did not know that I too would struggle with myself and life. Now, I recognize the truth of transformation in my own life that must mirror his. Perhaps my ruin was not as obvious as his. I was never dirty or ill kept looking – at least on the outside, oh, but on the inside I was! I struggled with loss of love, loss of self esteem and my own weaknesses until I knew and understood my own ability to sin and feel separated from goodness and love. These realities taught me many lessons as I fought my way though them, especially about the infinite mercy of God and the tender love of Jesus for sinners. I know now no sinner need ever feel unloved or unwanted. In my darkest hour I too finally knelt at the foot of the cross and understood the great truth. Jesus paid that price for each and every one of us. He wants no one to be lost. No matter what our past, our future can be bright. I look up and see the sun shining in the sky and think of it as a promise of hope for my life. I have let go of self condemnation and moment by moment kneel before the cross in spirit. My face is turned toward God and in this I am given all I need. A full measure, shaken down and overflowing, given in love. The ring of salvation for my finger and the cloak of truth around me as protection are given to me, even as to the prodigal son.  In God, I have found true sanctuary from the storms of life. 

A walk in the woods

Each season brings a new perspective to woods. I can see so much further in the wintertime when the trees are bare of leaves. Yet it is in the summer when the leaves are at their fullest that I am more aware of all the life that lives in the woods. In the fall when sudden waves of cold wind embrace the trees, the path is full of crisp leaves that mark my passing with silence punctuated by the crunching of the leaves. When spring comes to the woods, I am in awe of the incredible wonders taking place daily. It is true resurrection from death in every direction. It is no wonder that Easter marks the true beginning of spring. A walk in the woods has always been a way of God's renewal for me in every season.

When I was a young woman and life crowded in on me and the weight of the world seemed to lie on my shoulders, sometimes I would seek out my little patch of woods. Sitting on the trunk of a long dead tree, I would let my mind empty of all it's daily cares, breath deeply and the realization of the brevity of my life would pour in. All that seemed so urgent took on a more relative importance. The eternal renewal of nature taught me that my moment of strutting on the stage of life was not long, not long at all. In the midst of the ever renewing and eternal peace reflected by the woods, I was renewed, refreshed and able to return to the chaos of a house full of children and never ending needs that I felt inadequate to fill. The sense that there was much more to life would permeate me and being closer to nature made me know how close and loving my Creator God was to me. One day when I went to my little patch of woods instead of quiet and serenity I found a chain link fence cordoning it off and saw a yellow bulldozer tearing up the land. All the beautiful old trees were gone. I was filled with anger. I wrote a letter to the owners, Christian Brothers College, that I never mailed. I realized the futility of the situation. Nothing would return my little patch of woods. Now years later there is a track and parking lot where my woods once stood. Remembering the time I spent in those woods helped me to realize that the peace I sought really wasn't from outside myself even through the place I came to did help me get in touch with it. I knew in my heart that God really wasn't any further away from me than when I sat in the woods. I had only to find another path within myself to the woods of solitude.

So on my own, I sought though prayer to sit in the presence of God as there was no woods to run to. Eventually, I found Contemplative Prayer. It was a good answer for me. I found I love to sit in silence with others, let my mind empty and center on God. My prayers is “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of thy faithful with Divine Love”. In these moments of praying I find the peace I once had in my little patch of woods and more.

The peace I have found is in all parts of the world for me now with or without woods. I found it in a tiny ornate church in a mountain village on the island of Santorini. I found it in the ancient St. Mary's Undercroft at the Cathedral of Canterbury and in the quiet of silent prayer with my sisters by my side.

It may take some effort on my part. I have to make time to sat in silence. I have to make myself available to the Holy Spirit, but now I know the truth, God's peace dwells within me. I have only to stop and listen, and ask. Especially I have to ask

Technical Trouble

Our worlds have grown far apart.

We use to be a field away,

then it was a town.

Now I speak to someone hundreds

of miles from me,

Who may rub elbows with you

at lunch today.

There was a time it took a week

for mail to arrive,

Now 2 seconds and a text

lands in my hand.

It isn't the miles that make the

Difference, it is space that is lacking,

Space in our our lives and

In our hearts.

How can we be so far apart

And yet so close?

Sometimes our minds cannot

span the time and distance,

Yet our hands persist in trying.

MY SISTER'S GIFT

 MY SISTER’S GIFT

We would walk down the road to the very end of the street,

To the dusty bowl like depression with scrubby growth. Down the dirt 

path,

With horn toads scattering through the dust and at the center

A small lake and a big rock at the edge, “Fossil Rock”.

It was “Fossil Rock” we sat upon to eat

Our picnic lunch and let the Oklahoma sun

Warm our backs through our thin summer dresses.

Within the rock were tiny seashells, bits of fern bones

And a mystery. “How did they get there?” I wondered.

But you knew, you told me how the ocean once covered all the land

Even the dry, parched land around us and that “Fossil Rock” once was

At the bottom of an inland sea… My! There was a history beyond all the history

Written in the books. The land would speak if we would only listen.

You opened to me a world beyond my lifetime,

Beyond all the lifetimes I could think of.

It was a gift that fueled my imagination then and

Still shines like a nugget of gold threaded through in my thoughts

Lighting the way for understanding myself and my world...

MOTHER MEMPHIS

Mighty Mother hovering on the muddy banks of the Father of Waters
Sings the blues & rocks with rhythms of music that rolls out of a
  thousand juke joints, taverns, bars and the mouths of rising Stars
Hoping to catch the next train to fame.

Nurturing Mother who blends our voices and our dreams,
who weaves new patterns into the old lace of the South.
Sending a hundred jets a day to lands far away loaded
with packages blessed by our Southern hands and
given to the world - our Southern Hospitality renewed.

Surrounding with love the place of great work
begun by Danny Thomas, your adopted son
(Oh, Danny Boy, what a gift you have given!)
Nurturing hope in the midst of desperation.
Hope reflected in the eyes of smiling children.

We stroll along your broad avenues lined with trees,
sweet magnolias filling the air with subtle scent
Breezes wafting the blooms over our heads
while all around us mill the multi-hued people
you call your own.

On the dark breast of the Delta, we lay our
heads while your blanket of night stills
over us, taking the lights across the river
into the West.  We slumber while you
hum your song of hope and freedom
sending your magic into our dreams

A Father's Day Tribute - Between Two Trees

BETWEEN TWO TREES

This story is about a man whose lifetime was spanned by two trees. One planted by his Dad in honor of his birth: a mighty oak tree. The other tree is a graceful, flowering dogwood given in his memory to Christian Brothers University by my cousins Kathy Hughes and Mary McCallum. These trees are perfect symbols of him and his life. He grew to be a strong man with deep roots and strength of purpose and in his later years the hardships of life came to fruition with all the beauty and wonder of the dogwood in a Southern springtime - a flowering of wisdom and gratitude. He was not a perfect man, but he was perfectly splendid in many ways.

When you have been close to someone all of your life, it can be hard to look at them without seeing yourself. That is how it is for me. You see, this man was my Dad. There is so much of me that came directly and indirectly from him. My love of poetry and appreciation of music, a lively interest in ancient history and my enjoyment of literature were gifts he gave me. One of my earliest memories is of Dad reading the Sunday funnies aloud to me as I sat on his lap. He recited poetry to me too such as "The Walrus and the Carpenter" and "Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)". He would sometimes sing to me in German. I still know most of the words to "The Merry Widow" in German. He even taught my sisters and me to waltz. I remember well the feeling of twirling and turning to the music of Strauss.

I do think about him a lot these days. It may be because of my time of life. I am alone. I am no longer married and my children are grown. I came to know my Dad as an adult after he retired and came back to Memphis to live. My Mother had died some years before so he was alone and very lonely at times. Looking back, as I am sure many people do after a parent has died, I wish I had made more of an effort to include him in my life then. I have to remember not to be too hard on myself. Dad would never want me

to feel sad or unhappy over what he would have referred to as "spilled milk". Instead, I try to appreciate the time we did have together. I am still benefiting from his wisdom and generosity of spirit. I think it is because of his generosity of spirit that I am able to forgive myself. He really was one of the most forgiving people I have ever known.

One of the things that I cherish most about the time I had with him are the stories he shared of his growing up years in Memphis and about his family life as a young man. This was how I learned about the oak tree. He showed me the tree, but the house where he was born had long been torn down. There had been a brick wall that had separated Dad's home from that of his friend, Harry Lee, at the back of the lot the house had stood on. Dad and Harry decided to tunnel through the brick wall and to that end had removed a large number of bricks before quitting (or being stopped, I am not sure which anymore). Even fifty years later the damaged wall was there. Today there is a fast food place where the palatial home of the Lee family once stood and the wall is gone. But the oak tree endures like my memories of Dad. I never tire of telling this story to my own grandchildren.

Dad's friends called him "Skippy" when he was a boy. Skippy was the apple of his parents eyes, their only son and their first born. There are many, many pictures taken by my Grandfather, "Pop" Windler (also known as "Gaga"). The pictures that fascinate me the most are those of Dad in long dresses holding a doll. When Dad was a toddler all boys wore long dresses until they were big enough for short pants. There are pictures of Dad, at about age 10, sitting on a stone Lion outside a public library in New Orleans and another with him standing boldly, arms akimbo, barefooted on a seawall somewhere. There is even a picture taken in Overton Park during a World War I fund raising rally. He is holding a flag. One picture I have seen of Dad was printed in a local newspaper. It shows Skippy and a some of his friends in a wooden wagon drawn by a mule named "Sassafras". You can almost feel the lazy heat of the summer afternoon when you look at the picture. To me, his early childhood was close to perfect. Skippy didn't know about hunger, pain or sorrow. This all changed when he had a serious illness as a teenager. This illness was perhaps the source of many of his lifelong problems. The illness began when Dad was a student at St. Bernard Academy in Cullman, Alabama. He was injured playing football then developed a mysterious fever. My Grandmother came took him home on the train. He remembered being too weak to sit up and being transported on a litter. There never was a clear diagnosis, but I heard Dad call it, "Dengue Fever". This illness left him with a limp. Dad spent an entire year in bed. His recovery was very slow and difficult. As an adult, arthritis set into his leg and hip causing him tremendous pain. He did not let the pain or the limp stop him doing what was necessary to take care of his family, but the constant pain drained his energy at times and he never played ball with his son like other Dads or took us on fishing trips. It is amazing to me that he managed to serve in the Navy during World War II with this condition. I think it makes a statement about just how desperate the country was during the War that they would accept him with this disability. As the years wore on, his leg gave him more and more trouble. He had a partial hip replacement in 1968 and a total replacement in 1982. The first surgery allowed him to continue working until my sister was out of college. He retired the year she graduated.

Some of the things Dad told me about life for a boy growing up in the South of the early nineteen hundreds, painted a vivid picture of a very different world from the one I knew growing up. Perhaps this was especially true for me, because we moved around so much. He told me that when he was growing up, he knew everyone around and they knew him. Anything and everything you did was known and discussed by friends, family and neighbors. One was seen as "so and so's" child. Certain expectations were set

according to "who you were", meaning, who you were "kin" to. This could be good or it could be bad, depending on whether or not you had the "right kin". People were often judged by their place in the social structure, their religion and relationships of blood and marriage - not to mention skin color. There was very little mixing of various ethnics and religions. Dad had a "maiden" aunt that never married because the man she loved was protestant. They corresponded for years, but for them marriage was an impossibility as far as they were concerned. Even when I was grown Dad would tell me to "Tell them who you are" and he meant whose daughter and granddaughter. This was important in the world he knew, but it also made it even harder to overcome a negative image. It is no wonder that people went to great lengths to avoid certain stigmas.

In the life of the city of Memphis too, cruelty and fear of harsh judgment could rule the day. For instance, during the first World War the name of one suburb, Germantown, was changed to "Neshoba", the old Indian name for the place, to avoid connection with the enemy. People changed their names too, dropping "Von" or anglicizing a foreign sounding surname. It was much safer that way. Anti-Germanic feelings ran very high. Feelings against the Japanese in World War II did too. During World War II, citizens in their zealous anger destroyed the Japanese Gardens and bridge in a local park. I can see where much of the intolerance of Dad's generation could have resulted from this atmosphere.

Despite this there were many happy times in Dad's early years. Dad described one of the best days of his life as the day he saw Babe Ruth and on same day, a statue of our Blessed lady carried in procession through the streets of Memphis. I haven't any idea what year this happened, but I would be willing to bet it was the year the Babe set his home run record . It may also been the same year he and his best friend, Billy Burke, put onions on the radiators in a classroom at Christian Brothers the morning exams were to be held in that same room. They got in a "pack" of trouble for it, almost getting expelled. Not only that, but the exam went on anyway. The Brothers were a tough breed back then. They didn't take any nonsense from the students. According to him, this helped correct many an errant attitude. He had a great fondness for the Brothers and remembered his school years with joy. To him, they had provided a wonderful education and reinforced the moral training he received at home.

Dad made education a priority the lives of his children too. As I said, we moved around the country a good bit while I was growing up. this was because Dad was an engineer. He moved with the contracts and moved up in his business with every move. He had to do this because he had been unable to finish college due to the Great Depression. As a consequence, he went to night school and worked during the day, seeking advancement by accepting increasingly challenging jobs. He finally earned a college degree by mail, something I thought was funny, not understanding the importance of it. He was doubly proud of the Professional Engineers designation he received as a result of his lifework in Aeronautics. His work on the tooling of the Apollo tail section was the crowning glory of his career.

I realize many of these things are simply a reflection of who my Dad was to me. Others knew him in different aspects. He was to others a friend, a son, a brother, a sailor, a scholar, a husband. At times, he was a mystery to others and to himself too, I think. His faith was very deep and revealed itself in many ways. He tried to pass this faith on to his children. Everywhere we moved, on the first Sunday in our new home, we would go to our local parish church to be enrolled as members. We always went to Catholic

schools, no matter what financial hardship this created. A Catholic Education meant more to him than regular trips to the dentist or doctor. There were times he "doctored" us himself, swapping our sore throats or giving us paregoric for stomach complaints. According to him, a good, Catholic education was priceless. This philosophy has borne good fruit in the lives of his children and grandchildren.

It is true, he never stinted on education whether in a classroom or the larger arena of life. He never stopped learning himself. He read Dickens novels over and over. He said he could always find something new in them. He studied many other things too, such as antiques, Roman coins, stamp collecting, and painting. He took his children to museums, art galleries and various exhibits in order to educated them. Anything we brought to him for an explanation became a broader lesson. It was not that what he said was veiled rather that he had a way of putting things into a broad context thus making the principals applicable to many things.

Much of Dad's true beauty and generosity were hidden from the glaze of casual onlookers and even his own family. For instance, he spent years building up a collection of ancient Roman coins. He collected Denari with the portraits of the Emperors. It took him most of his adult life to amass this collection. He did it, not by buying the pieces, but trading and dealing and identifying a lot of coins for dealers just in order to be allowed to pick a few to keep. Among his possessions, after his death, I found a hand written

ledger, tracing out the history of each coin in that collection, where each had come from, the value of it. Dad sold that collection to pay for my sister's wedding. I didn't know this until she told me about it just a few years ago. To Dad, people were important, never things. It was a lesson he taught me with his quiet, unselfish ways.

Perhaps it is his abundant courage that I admire most when I think about his life. It took a lot of courage to love again after the early death of my Mother. He loved her so dearly and suffered so greatly when she died. But he did love again and married at the age of seventy. My Step-Mother, Virginia Townshend Hutzler, was only sixteen and Dad was twenty when they first met under what could be termed "unfavorable" circumstances. She was among a crowd of young people who watched him jump off the Spring River Bridge at Hardy, Arkansas, on a dare. Had he not been drinking, he would never have done it he once told me. Virginia's Father put a stop to their budding romance by telling Dad that he was too old for his daughter. So, Dad went on with his life, meeting my Mom, falling in love and being married for thirty years, raising a family and then enduring some bitter years of widower hood. It was those years alone that made a profound change in this man who was so strongly rooted in faith. During this time, he revealed to me later, God had made him a promise. Someday, he would be a happy man. Looking back on that time during which Dad battled alcoholism and depression, I realize it took tremendous faith to believe this promise. Dad did believe and it pulled him out of the depths of despair. He did this and when the time was right, Virginia came back into his life. The story Dad told of their meeting again after all those years was so far fetched that the family could hardly credited it as truth. As the story went, it all began with a telephone call. Dad was now retired and living back in Memphis, after living away from here his entire working career. It seems that Dad was selling an oil painting. The dealer who was handling the sale was named "Virginia". Dad dialed the dealer's telephone number and identified himself saying, “Virginia, this is Frank Windler”. The voice on the other end of the line exclaimed, "Frank Windler! I haven't spoken to you in forty years!" So began the blossoming of love again in the December of his life. He never forgot where this wondrous gift came from and he never stopped being grateful to God. Virginia brought Dad the happiness God had promised him. I pray that God grants me the courage to be open to His promises like Dad.

At the end of his life, I came to know Dad on an even deeper level. The day the tests were back and my sister, Mary had to break the news to him that he was dying, instead of feeling sorry for himself, he tried to comfort her. When she begin to cry while telling him that nothing could be done, he patted her hand and told her, "It will be alright. Everyone has to die someday. I will be with your Mother again and see all the people I love who have died . Don't cry, Baby " (We girls were always his babies). Here,

he was dying, but he could reach out and try to comfort someone else. There had been times in our lives that he had been unable to do this, but time had brought him this remarkable ability. His faith and his courage did not fail him in this time of need. Yet, I remember he did worry about what heaven would be like and about "all those mixed up relationships". I quickly realized he was referring to his marriage to Virginia. At one time my Mother had made him promise not to marry again if "something" should happen to her. I am sure they were very young when he made this promise. Mother was only fifty-two when she died very suddenly. I told Dad that I thought Mother didn't care about him having remarried as Jesus tells us there is "no marrying or giving in marriage" in heaven. I felt like she would be glad he had found joy and comfort in his later years. Dad then confessed to me that he had never realized how loved he was during his life. Now, here he was at the very end of his life, surrounded by his children and some of his grandchildren, who had come great distances to be with him. We gathered to be with him, to console him and one another, and in some measure to celebrate the life he had shared with us. Yes, we loved him dearly. What a surprise to learn that Dad, who had spent his life loving and caring for others, as imperfectly as it may have been, had never known that he was so deeply loved. Even without this great knowledge, he had the faith to withstand attacks of depression and alcoholism, and the courage to believe God's promise of happiness. And even more, he had the love and generosity to share so many of the things that mattered to him with those he loved. Yet, he did not know until the last days of his life how much he was loved. No wonder life was so hard for him at times. I know God has rewarded his faithfulness, his courage, his loving generosity.

I say this Father's Day, "Thank you, Dad, for all the love you gave me, for all the knowledge and wisdom you shared with me. Your life has been a blessing to me and many others too. I am still learning from you, Dad every day. I know that even if wisdom and understanding come late, they can turn any tide. More than this, joy and happiness can fill the heart and spirit no matter what age the vessel. I will always remember these things, Dad, and more, much more.

So, it is the image of the dogwood tree that comes most clearly to my mind when I think of Dad now. In my mind's eye, I can see a beautiful dogwood tree, blossoms dancing in the wind, in the freedom of another Springtime, radiant with joy.