Aftentimes on summer evenings, I would sit outside with my mother and look at the constellations. Welived in a small town, far away from city lights, and ourskies were inky black and so thick with stars it felt as thoughsomebody ought to stir them. I would stretch out beside mymother's chair, and she would lean her head back and gazeupward, smiling at Orion's Belt, at the backward questionmark of Leo, at the intimate grouping of the seven daughters of Atlas. Sometimes I would pick some of the fragrantgrass I lay in to put under her nose. "Ummm!" she wouldsay, every time, and every time there was a depth to her ap-preciation-and a kind of surprise, too--that made it seemas though she were smelling it for the first time. When Ionce commented on this, she said, "Well, it might be the lasttime, you never know.