Giving one the infamous Bette smiles, “Of course. T, we’ll be fine. Have a safe trip and don’t worry.”

—

Living in LA had its perks, the weather being one of the first to spring to mind. What doesn’t spring to mind is public transport. LA is a driver’s city, though most drivers will bitch at the traffic. There is no way to exist there without a car. Though there are buses and a train of sorts, if you asked most people who lived there, they wouldn’t know for sure if there was a train and the bus certainly wasn’t going to really dismiss the need for a car. So this constant need to be in a car and hence be in LA traffic led Alice to love the DC metro. Though only four lines, you could get anywhere you needed to on one of those lines. She marveled at the wisdom and simplicity. Even though the hotel was only a short cab ride from the confirmation hearings, she took the metro, reveling in a public transportation system that actually had a real use.

After the hearing completed for the day, she walked aimlessly and then headed for the nearest blue line. She found herself a seat on the train and then enjoyed the ability to no longer pay attention to anything. For people whose commute was only in a car, the idea of a train was just pure indulgence. There was no need to continue the stress of work through the stress of traffic. She could sit down, and think about whatever she wanted or about nothing at all. And when the time came, she could get off of the train where she needed to and still get home.

After settling in on the train, she started to go through her bag to find her hotel key and came across the candy and card that she had so wonderfully managed to push from her mind all day. She pulled the envelope out and stared at it. She looked at Dana’s handwriting, something oh so simple that she had seen so many countless times but that always had the mark of Dana. Dana had once explained that when she was very young and learning how to write that Sharon had been upset by what Dana had shown her as her “A” in penmanship  and had sent Dana back up to her room until the letters looked “as they were meant to look”. Dana had spent hours writing and rewriting the alphabet, trying to make it what her mother needed them to be. She had come back down stairs later that night, well after she should have been asleep to show her mother what she had come up with. Sharon told her “They look much closer to what was meant to be on paper, I’m sure you’ll get better.”  To Dana’s s 6 year old ears, she heard that she had made her mother proud. She knew that if she tried really hard, she could make them even better. So now, as Alice looked at the writing on the front of the envelope she saw perfect handwriting, but she also knew that to this day Dana saw it as less than acceptable, but the best she could do.