So, a while ago I had this idea to make paper lanterns out of origami water bombs. (You can learn to make a water bomb here.) I had some pretty origami paper, and then I found a white strand of 25 little lights at this place. This project was as easy as folding 25 water bombs (Sophie helped!) and popping them on to the lights. The opening at the top of the water bomb fits a little twinkle light perfectly. As Gram would say: “Walla.” (She means, “Voila.”)

Outside, across the grass under my little balcony, flowering trees and tulips and daffodils and heavy-smelling hyacinth are in perfect bloom. I think, on days like today, about the ornamental plum tree outside the bedroom window at the yellow house. I spent four springs in that house. At least two of those years, depression kept me in a sort of self-imposed lockdown, and I hardly left the bedroom. I’d sit in the soft Ikea chair and stare out the window. In the spring, when the plum tree had its halo of soft pink flowers, I’d wonder how I could look at so much beauty and feel so terrible. Or feel, sometimes, nothing at all.

One spring, I popped the window screen and climbed out the window. I slid down the porch roof toward the plum tree. To one of its branches I tied a small mesh bag Sophie made in Girl Scouts. Inside the bag we’d placed bits of ribbon, yarn, string, tinsel, Easter grass, even some cat hair. Birds were supposed to discover the bag — they did — and pull from it bits of treasure for their nests.

I’d watch those birds — little sparrows, mostly, but also some house finches — select just the right piece of string or ribbon, fly away, return for more. Those birds, I knew, were building, creating. Making homes. Those birds were taking care of their families. I was in my bedroom, silent, doing nothing, destroying.

When we moved away from that house, my ex-husband and children and I — on to separate places — the ornamental plum had just finished blooming. I wanted to tell its new owners how pretty it was. They’d just missed it. Wait till next year.

When I run, I am awake. I feel everything. I can’t go numb. I am there, in my body, controlling my breathing. Telling my legs they’ve got the strength to keep pulling me forward. Telling myself I am strong. Telling myself this is hard, but I can do this. I can do this.

There is beauty in this experience: maybe it’s cold outside, or my shoes are mud-soaked from the trail, or I’m so shaky I almost trip myself. My nose is running. My heart is pounding in my ears. Alive, alive, alive, my heartbeat says to me. You’re alive. You’re here, in these shoes, on this trail. This is what your body feels like.

My grandfather died Saturday morning.

After the funeral yesterday, during which he received military honors — he was in the Coast Guard during World War II — we went to his room at the assisted living place. In a drawer below his little CD player, I found a small collection of CDs. Just a handful, but among them, these:

I kept them both.

My grandfather was 88 years old. I will like to remember him enjoying his Christina Aguilera, even if my uncle said, “Oh. He just bought that for the pictures.”

Rock on, Papa George, wherever you are. Rock on.