# 177 TIDY COMEBACKS

From my earliest childhood I have possessively guarded my fanciful interpretations for that which can neither be proved or disproved. I am that kind of dreamer. Hub is practical. And so sometimes Hub’s cool practicality collides with my idealistic notions. That’s what happened today.

Now we both got up to a stunningly beautiful day in both fanciful and practical terms. Bright sunshine. Verdant grass. Profuse flowers. Trees and shrubs looking their best. Fields golden with grain and hay-fields lavender with clover.

“Come to the deck,” Hub said. “Now take a good look. What could Heaven have that would be better than this?”

Now you must remember I had only just got up. Head still fuzzy with sleep. I mumbled “streets of gold?”

“Streets? How drab would urban construction be, compared to this? Gold pavement would be hard to walk on and slippery when wet. And how could one drive with that glare?” was Hub’s cool and practical response.

That meant I needed another comeback. It’s part of the essence of any decent husband-wife relationship to always have a tidy comeback no matter what. So I searched my limited references to Paradise (having never been there) and pulled out another random thought.

“The lion can lay down with the lamb?”

“We have that here,” was Hub’s reply. “Already there are many lions trained to be sensitive and congenial enough to lie down with lambs, if that’s what you want.”

At that point, as I gazed at the landscape, I felt myself rapidly slipping from a fanciful to a practical conclusion. The heaven-shattering conclusion that maybe heaven is located on the Mezzanine Floor. Looking at this perfection, why wouldn’t it be?