We had a memorial for my teacher Norma Almquist at my house yesterday. It was one of those perfect California days: bright sun, warm, a breeze, the ocean and sky a clear zinging blue. We sat out in the garden and read Norma’s poems and her niece Nancy with her husband Ed talked about her amazing life, and her grand-nieces and a great-grand-niece talked about camping trips and how much attention and love Norma had given them. How she had taught them about nature and music and given them wonderful books and the advice to be bold and fearless, to go wherever they needed to go. I talked about how she had changed my life and turned me into a writer, and then read the poem about her grandmother (a few posts below.) As I read it I choked up realizing how many of the people sitting in front of me were the descendants of Nettie Rice White.

All afternoon and into the evening as we ate and drank we talked about how Norma with her music, her poems, her teaching, her absolutely positive view of life and amazing laugh had enriched our lives.  

Today I read a quote by Lewis Thomas in Roger Rosenblatt’s Unless It Moves the Human Heart: “There’s an art to living,” Thomas told Rosenblatt. “And it has to do with usefulness. I would die content if I knew that I had led a useful life.”

Norma led a beautiful and useful life.