My mother sent money from Oregon, insisting that she wanted to be part of something my father had cared about.
Slow Morning became the project’s unofficial meeting place.
We spent evenings discussing budgets over coffee, weekends visiting potential sites, and late nights revising plans at Diane’s kitchen table.
There were disagreements.
There were setbacks.
There were days when I wanted to abandon the whole thing and return to the simple comfort of making furniture for customers who paid on time.
But Diane never asked me to carry the project alone.
When I was exhausted, she took over the paperwork.
When she became overwhelmed, I reminded her that we didn’t have to solve everything in one afternoon.
We learned to work together without turning every disagreement into a test of love.
That mattered more to me than I could explain.
One evening, after a meeting with a potential donor, I found Diane sitting alone in the reading room.
