He’d started to go spend weekends at Shane and Jenny’s house when he was pretty young. In the immediate aftermath of Kallie being so sick, they’d offered to take Charlie for awhile so we could spend time getting acclimated to her condition once she got out of the hospital. Ever since, Charlie had adored both Shane and Jenny and always wanted to spend time at their house. I suspect it might have had something to do with the fact that Bette and Tina’s pool was only about 30 feet from their door, but I think he genuinely liked staying over there.

Anyway, he’d been there one weekend in the early summer after Al and I had told them about his problems with swimming. They’d all gotten into their suits and gone next door, and I still don’t know how they did it, but Shane and Jenny spent most of the afternoon with him in the pool. After that, he had no problem at all with breath control and loved swimming in pretty much any way that existed.

It made me smile, looking at the picture now. It had been taken by Tina, who’d been out working in the garden when Jenny asked her if they could use the pool. She’d agreed, and watched them playing for awhile. She’d had her camera with her to take pictures of some of her flowers, and she’d taken it at just the right second. All three of them looked really happy, and I’d loved it since the first second I’d seen it.

Very close to that picture was one of Kallie and Helena, at a project site for the Center for Social Justice. Kallie had volunteered there in high school, and during a joint project between the Center and Habitat for Humanity, she’d recruited more than 100 kids from her school to come do labor on the new foster services facility for the kids of
Los Angeles County. The picture showed Kallie, in work clothes, covered in sawdust and smiling. She was standing next to Helena, who was also in work clothes and smiling. They had their arms slung over each others’ shoulders and were squinting into the camera in the direct sunlight. The building behind them looked gorgeous, and it had been mostly Kallie’s leadership that had gotten it done in such record time.