Her mind was eluding her: it was living the day ahead of her; it was in the aisle of the supermarket, it was bringing the groceries into the house and putting them away; it was driving to the gym for aerobics and weight training; it was home eating lunch, then taking clothes to the dry cleaners and getting the clothes that were there, and driving home before three-forty when the school bus brought the children to the driveway; it was lighting charcoal in the grill on the sundeck. Maybe snow would be falling then; she loved cooking in the snow. She had a housekeeper three days a week and she liked running the household. None of it absorbed her fully enough to imprison her mind, as some work in school and some at the publishing house had. So freedom was both her challenge and her vocation: she was free on most days and nights to concentrate fully on the moment at hand, and this was far more difficult than performing work she had been assigned as a student for sixteen years, and a worker for eleven. She had told Ted she must learn to be five again, before time began to mean what one could produce in its passing; or to be like St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who knew so young that the essence of life was in the simplest of tasks, and in kindness to the people in your life.