Lila Blue Read Online Free PDF Page B

entered my head until I heard it come out
of my mouth. I sounded like a spoiled child.
    "Here," she said, and she
gently handed the piece back to me.
    I arranged it along with the other
remains on the wooden porch beside me, making a little collage of ruin, then
shook the smallest sand particles out of my pocket.
    Lila pulled the big basket of rocks
and seashells over to where we were sitting. She chose a large spiral shell
that was creamy colored with an intricate design of pale purple lines. It was
perfect except for a round hole at the top.
    "Look, Sandy," she said.
"This creature was alive one time. It's a big shell, so the animal lived
quite a few years. Mollusks mature slowly in this cold water. This is the
skeleton of some old gal who had kids and grandkids and all, and then another creature
came along and ate her.
    "After her skeleton was
cleaned and polished, Mother Ocean tossed it up on this beach. Before this was
a mollusk shell, it was a fish or a plant or a whale or a tiny octopus or part
of a pine log or a deer that washed into the sea during a flood. Everything in
nature is alive, dead, alive, dead, recycled over and over, all one big play,
all beautiful, all perfect, at every stage. Our task is to appreciate the play,
be grateful for a chance to participate.
    "If we complain when things
change, we'll make ourselves and everyone around us miserable. Enjoy every
moment. Look deeply into now with a peaceful mind. That's all. Enjoy."
    She handed the spiral shell to me.
"Give this one to your mom," she said. "More durable." She
put the shell in my hand and closed my fingers around it. Her hands were warm
and soft over mine.
    The words she said made sense, her
conclusion was obvious, but I felt cheated. She was taking something away from
me, something I was attached to. It made me cranky, like a toddler when you
take away her dirt clod to give her a cookie.
    Lila stood up and stretched her
arms high into the soupy fog and let out a series of short yips, like a cartoon
coyote. A crow answered from somewhere nearby with a long, annoying caw.
    Lila laughed and said, "Come
on, girl. Let's go in and warm our toes."
    The toe warming ritual was just as
unexpected as everything else about Lila. She got me all situated on the big
crescent shaped couch facing the picture window, which was like a white screen
from the fog, and brought a plastic tub of warm water for my feet to rest in,
along with a fluffy clean towel. She set up another footbath station for
herself on the other end of the couch and then placed a small round table in
between the two pans.
    While I was trying to convince my
toes the water was actually tepid, not scalding, Lila was in the kitchen
preparing peppermint tea with blackberry honey from local bees. She seemed to
be on speaking terms with every plant, animal, and insect in the county. If I
had tried to invent a grandma who was the complete opposite of my mom, I
couldn't have done a better job.
    By the time I could dip my toes in
the water a few seconds before they jumped back out again and perched on the
edge of the pan, Lila had brought a tray in for the little table. On it was the
largest teapot I had ever seen. It must have held half a gallon of tea. It was
blue and white with an intricate design of bridges and little houses and bamboo
thickets and flocks of sheep and ladies in long dresses and old bearded men in
long dresses. A person could get lost in the blue landscape of that teapot.
    Lila poured tea into thick blue
mugs that looked like squat glasses because they didn't have handles. My
fingers wrapped around the warm mug, and soon a little cloud of peppermint
honey steam formed around my head that made me giggle.
    Lila giggled in response, and when
she was all settled on her side of the couch, she poured half her tea into her
footbath. "Feet love peppermint tea too."
    As soon as we were both still as
pillows, the cats hopped up on my end of the couch. They walked across my lap
single file, their