Hedgebrook, Day 2

It's a day of love in the land we call country, an affirmation met with as much wonder in the woods as the city. It's a day, too, of amazing grace, I hear, sung by our own leader in a voice as rich as we all are to have him.

I slept last night with the window open, the sound of frogs and crickets, the dark as absolute as my nakedness. Today I read in bed for hours, walked in a meadow buzzing with dragonflies, opened my computer and a manuscript that I haven't worked on in years and began.


I am in You and 
You in me,
Mutual in 
Love Divine

William Blake

Tear Down That Wall

Even a peacenik like me is riled up by what's happened in South Carolina. When is that state going to tear down that fucking Confederate Flag? Or when are WE going to tear down that flag?

I am, uncharacteristically, finding solace in rap.

I couldn't call it a day without replacing those raptor-headed women on the previous post with these lovely children

Home from camp for less than 24 hours, Oliver was already outside in our yard, watering the lemons and vegetables. We have a serious drought going on, if you hadn't heard, and we're obeying water restrictions. That's why our lawn looks so awful. I wish I could enlist someone to do a complete overhaul of our front and back yards -- make them drought resistant. Maybe we'll do it ourselves in a grand, homeschool-style effort this fall.

Henry and I went to see the movie Boyhood the other evening and then took a bunch of photos on the top of the Arclight Cinemas parking garage. The glorious sunset helped to mitigate the obliteration I felt watching the film. It was incredibly beautiful and interesting, and I haven't gotten around to writing a three-line movie review, but I will. Here's what the sky looked like:

And here's Henry's hand in the sky:

I'm going to miss those boys. They're leaving tomorrow for a trip to my parents' house in Atlanta and then onward to Hilton Head Island. We've been joking all night on when they might catch sight of a person carrying a gun -- legally -- in either state. Good Lord. I will join them for a few days next week, but this house is going to be quiiiiiiiiieeeeettttt, for sure.

The Greatest Weekend in a Decade, at least

This is the year we all turn fifty -- and to celebrate we flew and drove to a grand house in South Carolina. We came from Paris, France and Los Angeles, California. We came from Georgia, and North Carolina. We came from Virginia and South Carolina and Maryland and Tennessee. We are married and divorced. We are with children and without children. We have adopted children. We have children in college and children at home and children with disabilities and children without. We are gay and straight. We love our families and we love each other, passionately.

We went for a big hike in DuPont park on Saturday morning. Some of you who saw the movie Hunger Games might recognize the gorgeous, wild beauty of the place.

We enjoyed the scenery and took many group photos,

But we mainly talked. We couldn't stop talking!

In fact, it was nearly impossible to take a photo of anything other than us talking!

After dinner, on Saturday night, we convened at the homestead for caramel birthday cake and champagne.

We ended the evening with wish papers that I brought from Los Angeles. Evidently, this has never been seen on the east coast, and I was roundly mocked for the whole ceremony being "very LA." But we all made wishes and watched them float up and into the ether.

I am home, now, happy to see my family, but I am filled with warmth and love and happiness and gratitude for friendships that have lasted nearly thirty years, for the women who knew me when I was oh, so young, for the beautiful ways that they live, for the beauty of their faces, for the sound of their laughs and their voices filling my heart.