On Friday night, I made the rounds from room to room, gathering up the day’s detritus. I put away dishes and returned jackets to their hooks. In our closet, I paused to admire the puffy abundance of our children’s coats and snowpants. Many of them were handed-down to us by P. & S., two dear friends from college. P. & S. married soon after graduation. They started their family six or seven years before my husband and I did. From our earliest days of parenthood, S. has sent us boxes brimming with clean and neatly-folded clothes. Somehow, even with three children of her own to keep track of, S. has managed to time her packages to arrive just at the right age and season to outfit our children. Now that they’re older, my daughter and son look forward to these bountiful boxes as much as I do.  P. & S. live just two hours away, and through regular visits through the years, our children have all become friends. When the packages arrive, they are ripped apart, and their contents relished like presents on Christmas morning. My kids feel regal wearing the clothes once donned by the big kids they so admire. “Generosity” could appear on the garments’ labels, just as accurately as “cotton” or “nylon.”

When I look at the coats, hooked over their silver knobs, I think most especially of S.  Of how she once chose and ordered these items in good time for her children, anticipating winter’s cold.  She probably selected the clothes on a regular weeknight, under lamplight in a quiet house, without notice by CNN or the Washington Post. But her daily efforts on behalf of her children, and her attention to their growing bodies and burgeoning interests, form the armature of their sense love and security. Hers is work of enduring and incalculable value.  I see my children wearing boots or hats from P. & S.’ family, and I am grateful for their style and utility. But mostly, I am grateful for the example of motherhood they represent.

Two feet of snow and four days later, we’re still mostly home-bound in Central Virginia. We dug out our cars on Sunday, and managed brief outings yesterday. But even the main arteries in our town are still packed with frozen slush and snow. Driving around to get a change of scenery, my husband, children and I sang different notes and laughed at how our voices bumped up and down with the wheels.  The only people we saw had snow shovels in their hands. After our car slid a few times, we returned home.

My daughter wants to be with her kindergarten friends. My son wants to go “on an adventure.” My husband checks his iphone for canceled meetings. Everyone longs to be somewhere else.

I offer no resistance to this longing.

Last week, before school let out for the winter holidays, I substituted for one of my daughter’s teachers, who had called in sick. The school is located in a facility that provides services to the elderly, including an adult day care center. At mid-morning, I took the children to the building’s great room for their weekly craft with the elders. Carol, the activity leader, handed us materials to make pipe-cleaner reindeer. Then she turned to welcome a newcomer to the day care center–an attractive, dark-haired woman who looked to be in her seventies.  I was taken by the respect and enthusiasm Carol showed her. “I’m Carol; what’s your name?” she asked. “Florence,” the woman replied. “What a beautiful name!” Carol said. “Have you ever been to Florence?”

I looked up from my yarn and pipe cleaners. Please, please, say yes, I thought. Most of the elders at the day care center have physical or mental limitations that make them unable to be home alone while their caregivers work. If Florence were here, at the center, was she beyond the point of flying across an ocean?

“No, I never have,” Florence said, smiling. She reached across the table and chose an umber pipe cleaner for the reindeer’s antlers, and a blond wood bead for its body.  To my untrained eye, she appeared lucid and graceful. Another staffperson strolled over and asked if she wanted some cider. I half-listened and half-helped the children select red beads for Rudolph’s nose.

I wished we were there, Florence and I. At the Duomo or the Baptistry or even the San Lorenzo Market, with its barkers hawking Fendi knock-offs. We’d bring roses to Michelangelo’s tomb at Santa Croce. Florence would pester me to buy the roasted chestnuts I’d been smelling for blocks–the ones I denied myself fifteen years ago as a cash-strapped architecture student. And I’d snap her portrait on a balcony, gazing out over the city’s vermillion roofs and ethereal domes.