"Next morning I was put into a car and driven out to the Center. The first person I saw connected with Baba's party was Kitty Davy—wearing a pink silk dress―standing at a dusty crossroads directing traffic in a very authoritative manner. I recognized her from many photographs Margaret had shown me.

“We finally arrived at the grounds around the Barn and there I found Ella Massey and Mattlyn Gavers with whom I was to see Baba. They had spent the night at the same hotel in a broom closet since they had no reservation. I remembered my double room all alone—well, it was too late then. Margaret had suggested we take gifts to Baba and I had made an alphabet board on Margaret's suggestion. We had figured out the size and placement of the letters from a photograph. We waited outside the barn until we were called. Then Ella, Matt and I went in.

"Baba sat in what I later came to think of as his usual place in the Barn. He was in white, his hair down. He was smaller than I had imagined. He was smiling, gay. How did I feel? Mainly numb, dumb and very shy. There seemed nothing to say. For my previous two years of thinking about Baba I had long since decided that since he was God and since God is in us all—that there just was not anything to ask or say. I had long felt that Baba must actually know me—my innermost thoughts and feelings, and this conviction, I regret to say, left me with shame and confusion. Baba told us he knew we had made sacrifices to come—that he loved us and suffered for us. Yet, though this sounds serious, there was laughter in his eyes and such tenderness and love.

"We presented our gifts. Baba was amused at the board. He commented that it was the first reversible one he had ever had and the only one with sufficient margin to make it easy to hold without obscuring some of the letters. He actually used it! Then he invented a game where he held the board between two fingers and twirled with two other fingers. He invited us to try it. The poor little board was bounding on the floor. We just couldn’t do it. Then the interview was over.

"What followed is a mere jumble of impressions. I remember meeting Delia DeLeon and Rano Gayley and sitting about drinking coca-cola. I remember Kitty Davy talking firmly to the husband of someone who had not felt Baba’s love and had lost faith and belief in him upon seeing him. I remember crossing the bridge to the Guest House and meeting those Margaret called "the little nuns" so gay and bright and happy, living only