"The saints and poets, maybe ." Answer to Question from "Our Town"

 Does anyone understand the value of life while they live it?  Emily Webb chose to relive an ordinary day in her life after she had died. She chose her 12th birthday to revisit the past. 

  I can't exactly recall all the events from an earlier day in my past life, but this is an approximation:

  It's a warm summer day and I've driven the kids to my mother's house in the village. The back yard is like a plaza, life abounds. My mother is there and Helen and foster girls, and family next door. There is a well-used old porch swing beneath the cherry tree in the little flower garden. My mother might have been working in the garden before sitting down to rest for a while. Helen would have been watching what  the kids were doing, carefully but non-judgmentally supervising the play of the five young cousins. There was an abundance of animals, including not only dogs and cats, but chickens, rabbits, a sheep, and even ponies. The smell of homemade tomato sauce may have permeated the air. 

  After visiting for a while, I decide to take my youngest child for a walk upstreet. The stroller is kept there at the house, a newly purchased item in orange and yellow; the other strollers worn out now and discarded, after several years of being no longer needed. I pass the Valley Inn. The doors are ajar, windows open and unseen voices call out as we pass by. I smile and wave, and keep walking. Near the corner on the other side of the street, Gloria is standing and I'm sure gossiping with Bonnie and maybe Julie. We exchange greetings and keep on with our journey. When we get to the duplex house, formerly Griggs's, Emma is sitting on her front porch, joined by Sharon who lives in the other part of the house. We say hello, but Emma, as usual, wants to hold the baby. So we visit for a while. As we leave, Alma is sitting on her porch across the street and calls for me to come over, to talk for a while. She comments on the baby's hair, which I've combed in a curl on top of his head. She says she used to fix her son's hair that same way. As we cross back over to "our side" of the street, Sharon calls out, asking to join our walk. She has undergone a recent tragic accident with her husband and needs to get out of the house for  a while. So she joins us on our stroll, in pleasant and ordinary conversation.

   My memory of this resurrected day does not include the homeward path, but that does not detract from the atmosphere of the day. I'm not sure that even saints or poets could have foreseen the value of such an ordinary day.