Gone back to Galveston....

Miss C left this afternoon.... home to her little rented house near Galveston, and to her horse Tallahatchie. She had arranged for someone to feed and walk Tallahatchie while she was up here visiting with us, but today it was time to go back home so Hatch (his nick-name) wouldn't forget who his mama is.  She just loves that horse, and the pictures she showed us proves that Hatch loves her also. Tallahatchie knows C's voice, runs up to her to nuzzle his huge head into her tiny shoulder, and he follows her around the stall and the corral like a puppy. That's one huge puppy... he weighs about 800 pounds now and he's not yet full grown.

Trying to fit a few months of visiting into a few days, C and I did all her favorite things.... from cooking together to having afternoon tea, and going to the thrift stores, and we even found a new local Flea Market that's open here every weekend.  I bought an antique Oriental bureau with lots of tiny drawers... it was dusty and sad looking at the Flea Market, but we bargained with the seller and got it for $35, carried it to my car and managed to fit it into the trunk, and then I got a bottle of "Old English" and rubbed that furniture polish into every bit of that wood and now it's shining and beautiful and I could probably sell it at the antique shop for more than two hundred dollars. However... it's in my living room, looking as if it's been there for over a hundred years, so that's where it will stay.

C left here with her new set of pots and pans that we bought yesterday.... now she says she has no excuse about not learning how to cook.  I also gave her some of my dishes, because she thought it would be nice if we both had the same cups and saucers and plates for afternoon tea.... plus I gave her an antique porcelain teapot, to replace the little-girl teapot that I gave her so many years ago. I suggested that she save her little-girl teapot so she can give it to her own little girl one day.

The house seems too quiet again without C here.... it was nice to stay up late talking, to walk around the shops and the outdoor market with her, to laugh at silly things and discuss serious things.... and she gave me three hugs before she got into her car and drove off down our hill.  C didn't want to leave, and I didn't want her to leave, but she's 23 now, no longer that little second-grader that I tutored in reading all those years ago. Time is flying by, C has graduated college, has a big-girl job (as she calls it) and she owns a horse and rents a little house near Galveston Bay.

And every evening, we will both make a small pot of tea, and pour the tea into green and white cups, and think happy thoughts and celebrate a very special friendship.