the beauty of an ordinary life
Looking back over the past 12 months, the way December beckons that kind of review, one encounter stands out as perhaps the best thing to happen to me in this terrible, wonderful year. I was having lunch with a philanthropist friend, trying (badly) to make a case for funding the nonprofit agency where I’ve worked…
I crave the mountains. Right up until the minute I set foot on a beach.
Last we were together (three weeks ago? four?), we were talking about seeing and being seen. You are thinking, perhaps, that my memory is dodgy, that I’ve forgotten about the Frye boot story in between. What you don’t know is that I wrote the letter to The Frye Company at the end of February, weeks…
The letter, were I to write it, might open this way: What a year this has been, right from the start… In January we had the craziest weather. One weekend it snowed; the next it was sunny and 70 degrees. Almost every night ended with an outrageously vibrant, pink sunset. Inside the confines of our…
On Monday I had to put on my big girl pants, by which I mean quite literally the black stretchy pants with the wide and forgiving elastic waistband. I have done little but eat and drink with reckless abandon since November 10. On November 9 I was too depressed to eat. In the initial days…
When I started writing this, 143 days ago, I was sitting on a porch in Santa Rosa, Florida. It was quiet, because it was early, and the sky was just beginning to lighten. I was alone, save for the birds. There was coffee, the sound of waves, a flutter of breeze, an occasional car on…
There are probably a hundred or more things I could tell you, right now, right this minute, were it not for the haze of weekend-away-in-an-un-air-conditioned-cabin-sleeping-on-a-top-bunk fatigue. I could start by telling you: how one of our dogs beat the tip end of his tail to a bloody pulp while we were out of town because…
It is sometimes hard to be optimistic, even for an optimist; it is hard even for me. And so, from time to time, I ask the universe to help me understand, to feed understanding in a way that might feed hope. The universe usually answers, though not always in a cute, tidy or immediately accessible…
