I grew up on a lake. Most evenings of my first ten years of existence were spent walking its 2.25 mile perimeter, or else canoeing around it at dusk.

My mother's spun mythology permeates my childhood, the way she called the little patch of land surrounded by water ''Monkey Island,'' telling me stories about the orangutans who resided there. Christmas morning, she would ask, ''Did you hear the bells on the roof last night?'' and I would shake my head, wondering, How did I sleep through magic?

She was the one who convinced me, easily, that the fake deer along our neighbors' driveways were real, so that I would tiptoe past, not wanting to scare them.

She measured road trip time in Sesame Street episodes and told me stories whenever we had to drive more than 30 minutes, about my friends and me solving mysteries for our neighbors, hiding out in our tree-house club house, always heading down to the swimming hole in the woods at the end.

In a way, I think these stories, this enchantment, saved me. They helped me to access another world when real life did not feel safe, did not appear to be a desired story.

I was amazed to learn that over 50% of Wyoming's lands are public, that hematologists make upwards of $260,000 in a year... but you couldn't pay me enough to study blood, even if I had the mind for it.

The fog rains and the steaming kettle sings and dailiness is, in fact, luxury, if we will only take note.

Well I've been thinking of eating kumquats out of the trees at Westmont every year about this time, of the dogwood red along creekbeds farther north, the plum blossoms of February and March in San Francisco, the quickly-coming jasmine of Santa Barbara. I know I'll be heart-glad any moon now. I know the days themselves are rich.

And riding the bus with little J. after school, helping her get home in case of seizure, well the first time I boarded all I could think of were the last buses I rode, much further south, of the heart-attack feeling of fear at the driving, then the letting go, the trusting that things would be okay, the enjoyment, even, of the trip.

I've been thinking of the magic of our days, even in March grayness. Of the hope that all things will come together. So I will keep letting go.