My dad gave me roses for Mother’s Day and I have been appreciating them all week. They’re perfect roses — they opened nicely, they look lovely, and they smell beautiful.

This morning I found a trail map of Oscar Scherer State Park — the place where I’m staying, and where I’ve stayed several times before — and I realized that there was a long trail that I’ve never been on. It leads to another lake, one that I’ve never seen. I’m leaving today, so I don’t have time to do it on this visit, but I mentally noted it for the next time we’re here.

And then I wondered whether Z would be with me the next time I’m here. She’s not doing great. She ate breakfast a couple of days ago, but now she’s pretty much turning up her nose at any food unless I hand-feed her, and even then, she eats a few bites and then turns her head away. The one exception was beef with sweet potatoes yesterday afternoon — she nosed out almost all the pieces of beef on her own, avoiding all the sweet potato, but at least she ate.

This morning, she was restless at 5AM, so I took her out, but she seemed confused: she just stood in the campsite and trembled, no peeing, no walking, no sniffing. I brought her back in again and put her up on the bed with me (she’s been sleeping on the floor, her choice) and by 7AM, she’d pretty much covered the sheets with pee. So today will be another laundry day, which is fine. But then instead of telling me at 6:30 that it was time to go out, she had to be persuaded to come for a walk. She did walk, eventually, with lots of very normal sniffing, but her walks are getting slower and shorter.

All of that added up to me being very sad when I thought about the trail that we’ve never seen and wondered whether I’d ever see it with her — and then I remembered: R is graduating tomorrow. My frequent visits to Oscar Scherer are coming to an end, because I’ll no longer have a reason to visit Sarasota. Maybe I’ll come back someday — it’s a great park and I love it here– but it’s not like I’m looking at a guaranteed return in three months or six months or even ever. So yeah, maybe I won’t have Z with me when I come back and maybe she’ll never see that trail, but life is change. Sometimes that means it hurts, but I wouldn’t want time to be frozen.

And meanwhile, we have today. It’s going to include — well, laundry, obviously. But also some good work on Grace, I hope; some texting with friends; some family time with my son and dad and stepmom; some delicious food, including a celebratory restaurant meal at a place where Z gets to come join us on the patio; and maybe even a movie.

Also, some appreciation of some lovely roses. They won’t last forever, because nothing does. But today they are beautiful and I am grateful to have them in my life.

I expressed my anger today. I was surprised at myself — I am someone who rarely admits to being angry, even when I am. I try to talk myself out of it, I tell myself it’s not justified, I look for the other person’s point-of-view… but this time, I was just too pissed off to not say something. I suppose that might be because it was on my son’s behalf, not my own, but still, it was unusual for me.

A few years ago, I did some intense therapy workshops where we did “anger exercises.” I was not good at them. Like, seriously, terrible. I mostly just cried. Completely incapable of defending myself with anger, even when it was justified. And even with this — I’m so angry that my hands are shaking, but I also feel like, oh, I shouldn’t have said anything, I should be more understanding, blah-blah-blah. But I think the therapist at my anger workshop would probably be patting me on the back and saying “good job.” Since she’s not here, I will do it myself. Good job, me!

The details: his paternal grandmother died this week. They were close; he’d spent a lot of time visiting her one-on-one. I would say that she was the grandparent that he knew best and certainly the one that he spent the most time with. His father and uncles scheduled her memorial service for two months away — on the weekend of his college graduation! This is a kid who was diagnosed as profoundly learning disabled at 8, who was maybe never going to learn to read because his disability was so severe. His college graduation is an achievement, a triumph. And they care so little about it, about him, that they plan her memorial service for the same time. Yeah, I’m angry.

When I started to write this post, I was actually going to write about how the nature noises of my campground — many nature noises! — have changed to neighbor noises with the weekend. Loads of people on spring breaks, I think. Lots and lots of little kids. I liked the nature noises, but I like watching all the kids on their bikes, too. This morning, when I took Zelda out for her walk, it was also the time when moms of toddlers take the toddlers out so everyone else can get some sleep. Toddlers can have southern accents. That should have been obvious, but wow, a toddler with a southern accent is adorable.

I’d intended to go for a good walk. I brought the camera and even the water bottle for the dog, so that we could hike for miles. But Zelda refused. It was both funny and charming. She sat down, head cocked, ears up, indicating quite clearly that she was not walking the way I was headed. I think the boardwalk probably has fewer interesting smells for her, since it’s above the wetlands and less used, but she was determined that what we were doing instead was wandering around the campground and letting her smell every interesting post. There are many posts. It was a slow walk. Not at all what I’d had in mind, but the toddlers made up for it.