Philippa woke early. Even as she had stayed awake longer than her usual bedtime for an excellent reason. After getting dressed quietly, she kissed her still sleeping husband good morning. She had left him sleeping downstairs but he had found his way up the stairs to their warm bed. She left the party when she had not because she wasn't enjoying herself but because she was just older now. She left the party to the babies satisfied with the amount of get down that she had offered and when no one noticed, even as the party started to wind down, she made her way upstairs content to clean up later. She had raised good kids and heard soft humming from someone in the kitchen, she heard the soft clanking of dishes and running water. Her kids had also raised good children, even as she walked down the stairs she noticed the house was that much tidier than when she had retired to bed after leaving her husband snoring on the recliner. She would help later, she just needed to sneak out shortly and then she turned behind her quickly on instinct. Her granddaughter was following behind her in a way that kids do when they think they're being sneaky exaggerated tiptoeing and all. She looked like a little cartoon character she whispered louder than Philippa thought she meant to. There was nothing for it, the little girl, her sweet grand baby sensed that her grandmother was going out and every event with her grandmother was fun, every event an adventure. They were outside after morning salutations and a kiss on the cheek to the girlfriend of one of her grandsons, the one doing the dishes. A girlfriend. Philippa sighed to herself and thought she really was an old woman now. If she were lucky she might get to meet a great grandchild. Her granddaughter looked up at her a little impatient, asked if they were ready to go now. I am lucky, Philippa thought.

Philippa and her granddaughter walked small, young little kid hand in bigger, older grandma hand. Shortly, Philippa and the baby, whose nickname was alternately Lentil or Bug because she was so small, came to a flower stall. Her granddaughter chose and insisted on carrying a single flower and her grandmother chose a bunch of several. She admired how decisive this child was that she had insisted on the one. Philippa asked if she wanted only the one and that type of flower and offered to get a few more but the child remained resolute.

"No, this one.", she had said looking over the others in confirmation of the one she held. She absentmindedly brought it to her chest.

They boarded the bus and they talked in their old, young person young, old person way. The journey was shorter than it had ever been but Philippa still thought the baby might get tired but instead she had kept her from being tired. She would fall asleep on the way back after staring out of the window in a meditative baby silence observing and recording and remembering and feeling but on the way, she chatted with her grandmother laughing openly and freely and making several of the other bus riders smile to themselves. When they arrived at the beach Philippa and Lentil took their shoes off at the edge of the street and the sand. Philippa found a nice spot to sit on the edge of concrete bench one of the many and they both watched the sea until the baby got distracted which happened almost immediately. Look at this shell! What's that? Grandma, let's go in the water! It was too cold for that, the sky filled with a noncommittal haze of grey clouds the fog having lifted only a few, sad hours ago. She ran to the edge of the ocean and back and back again screeching and screaming and laughing. Philippa got up to run and play too. Why not? They ran back and forth to the water's edge and both got their shoes wet. They went back to the bus panting and laughing as the morning sun started to burn off the last bits of haze stuck to the shore. Somehow the child remembered the flower long enough to grab it for the return trip home and then forgot it on the bus. Philippa had forgotten her bunch and they never made it passed their perch on the bench facing the water.

They both got home empty handed and happy to a house full of even happier people, more of them awake now. When asked what they had done and where they had gone, the child realized in her child way how special, if insignificant, the trip had been and kept the information very much to herself smiled to her grandmother, held up a finger to her round, little face, a shush which her grandmother returned smiling. Philippa's daughter and Lentil's mother shrugged still tired but thankful.

It was too early for this. A cousin had peeked around downstairs, realized it wasn't worth his time, snuggled right back down to sleep smiling. Grandpa had done something similar but went to his chair in the living room and being a grandpa he found a luxury in falling asleep in a chair surrounded by his loved ones but thirty, forty years earlier, he would have gone right back upstairs to sleep in a bed too and I mean right back upstairs. This one was rubbing his face, a yawn, the other adults and even the older children woke up and the morning sounds started. Even the building was happy and waking up with a yawn fluttered its upstairs shutters to enjoy the remainder of the week's birthday events. The girlfriend sat at the piano now that the house was almost completely tidied after the nudging of someone who wanted music in the house. They would take over whatever she had been doing. The house perked up even further. The house loved music and laughter and joy! Philippa turned at the piano being played and then remembered the flowers. And she felt so happy she could cry but didn't. Her granddaughter went to sit at the elbow of the pretty, nice girl who had come in with her cousin. The granddaughter picked out parts of a tune she had never heard. Philippa sat on the couch with her family buzzing around her. She didn't want to remember what she remembered but maybe you can't always control that. So she listened and remembered and tried to forget and couldn't but also did. Some parts of the music had changed or did she remember incorrectly? She did not. She would never forget that music. Her mind might but her hands wouldn't and she played along in her mind and realized that someone must have changed other parts. She did not know what to feel so she sat and listened. The house had never heard that music before and trilled. It kept the secret joys and fears and pains and regrets and funerals and births and birthdays and Sundays and Thursdays and everydays of all who had ever lived there once and those who lived there still and remembered the best, happiest parts listening to the piano music. The house hummed which was the humming of the people in the house, really, but it was the same thing. It kept and held the memories of those who would remember or forget, even by choice, because it kept and held them. Sometimes the house held people who were even very happy and sometimes. The piano continued into a sweeping something that soared over a cold lake at dusk and the cousin who had tucked himself into bed couldn't get back to sleep because he was awake listening too. The house held the young and the old and they held their secrets: the flowers, the bus ride, the beach and their wet shoes airing outside, their feet dry and warm now.