Love
Several things to note, before turning attention to the odd glance:
1- That’s my daughter Katie, dancing with her husband Trey, in the right side of the photo
2 – That’s Marnie visible in the back, in the green maid-of-honor dress
3 – Yes, that’s right, I’m wearing the same dress at Katie’s wedding as I wore at Marnie’s. First, both girls crazily decided to have OUTDOOR weddings in the HOT SUMMER, so something extremely cool was called for. And second, I bought it specifically to wear to Katie’s wedding, and when Marnie’s came up I decided to call it my “dress I wear to my daughters’ weddings.” I’ll have to keep it safely aside to wear in the future when my youngest girl gets married, which will probably be several years, since she’s a sophomore in college.
It’s a very long story with my beloved son – lots of very long stories with him, to be more accurate – so I know everything that lives behind that glance, behind my close hold on him. I store the photo here so I don’t forget about it again.
.
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Well. As you can imagine, Marnie was kind of crushed. She didn’t want to spend her wedding night at the Super 8 (or wherever…any place would be a letdown compared to the gorgeous Lodge). Coleman spent the night there Tuesday night, just checking, and sure enough, around 4am, a little bat flew within inches of his face.
Instead of the hotel, when we arrived Coleman said that he’d rented a house in town – a very old house, huge, just for them. At his expense. Well, that’s very sweet, right?! So we went over there last night and *cue the organ* (which happened to be in the living room) it was ca-reep-y. Like, very very VERY creepy. It had that very old grandmother smell (not the rosewater or talcum powder smell), and I just expected Norman Bates’ mother to be in that top bedroom at the top of the stairs. There were random stairwells in random odd places, going up and down. There was a full scary basement – empty, except for a small child’s wooden WHEELCHAIR. I was totally creeped out, but Tom and Marnie and I stayed there last night. During my hot and sleepless night, I was sure I kept hearing music, but I think it was my imagination.
Tonight Marnie and Tom are just going to take their chances with the bats.
We got to the Lodge this morning and started the decorating. I sewed the buttons on Marnie’s dress after doing the final fitting….it’s really beautiful on her, the dress. Really. I can’t wait to see it on her tomorrow evening.

the tent, pre-decorating

Marnie and her little twinkly lights

Marnie & Tom, Katie & Trey, setting things up
For weeks, Marnie sewed these muslin banners. There are ~52 of them, each approximately 5 feet long. I threaded a length of heavy twine through the top of each one, so they can be hung from the rafters of the tent, along with the twinkly lights.

this is a LOT of muslin, i'm telling you
When I left, the kids were finishing up hanging the banners; they’d hung the lights; they painted the table numbers on the mason jars, which they’ll fill with wild flowers tomorrow. We’ll all gather tomorrow morning and spend the day together, hanging out, playing games – bocce ball, croquet, tether ball, volleyball, kickball maybe, frisbee, board games, a little hammock-lying-about, a bit of swinging, some forest-wandering, and a lot of talking. Around 4:30 or so, Tom and Marnie will head into the Lodge to get ready, and around 5:30 or so we’ll gather for photos. Then we’ll all walk over to the prairie — pip, yes, it’s something like a huge meadow, filled with flowers — for the wedding ceremony.
Then a wonderful dinner under the tent, speeches of love about family and these great kids, a bit of dancing under the stars, some marshmallow-roasting over the firepit, and the end of a happy, happy day.
There are moments where it’s all worth it. Where everything that led up to it, all worth it. All the hard stuff forgotten, the tough spots valued and let go of, the love and cherishing at the front of your mind, and you know. It’s all been worth every second.
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#1 – One of my all-time favorite movies, Dead Man, directed by Jim Jarmusch, and starring Johnny Depp. This link will take you to a short video by A.O. Scott of the NYTimes, reviewing the movie and showing some great scenes and surprising cameos (Iggy Pop, Billy Bob Thornton, Robert Mitchum!). You can’t stream it on Netflix, but you can add it to your queue. There isn’t anything I don’t love about this movie – the actors, the story, the absolutely GORGEOUS black and white cinematography, the striking imagery, the weirdness, Gary Farmer as Nobody, Johnny Depp as William Blake, the references, the landscape, the ending, the feeling, the music, the depiction of the west, the depiction of native american culture, everything. Ostensibly, it’s about the journey of William Blake, out to the west, and then his journey after being shot. But that’s not what it’s about. It’s literary, full of symbolism and metaphor, it’s spiritual, it’s just amazing. I don’t even know how many times I’ve watched it, and I always want to watch it again. It’s meditative and moody, and so am I so I absolutely love this movie.
#2- A Single Man, directed by Tom Ford and starring Colin Firth and Julianne Moore. Again, not available for streaming but you can queue it on Netflix. I’ve never seen any Colin Firth movies, but I want to, after seeing his performance in this movie. Of course it’s a very stylish movie – veering occasionally into a little too much focus on the style of it, leaving me to wonder if I was just watching an extended ad for some vague product, but it has enough substance, finally, to overwhelm that feeling. Colin Firth gives such a subtle performance; he conveys every kind of feeling you might imagine, even though he’s playing a man who is relatively buttoned up….but not really. You just have to look closely, as he says once. Julianne Moore is gorgeous, enhanced by the wonderful style of the 1960s. It’s a haunting movie, and I was completely taken aback by the ending. I wanted to watch it again from the beginning, as soon as the last credit rolled. If you like a lot of action and excitement you won’t find it here; but if you enjoy lingering, and thinking, and being absorbed by a mood, you’ll find that here.
I got a few rows of knitting done last night, on my little socky-poo:
I’ll say one thing: these are going to be warm socks! I tried this one on, oh so carefully, and the fit is wonderful, and the squishiness guarantees warmth. Now if I can just imagine the day when I’ll long for warmth. ![]()
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The next time my husband watches me with bewilderment as I spin, and if he asks again “are you doing that because it’s cheaper?” I’ll just say that I’m getting closer to the universe. I like that answer. ![]()
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If you have Netflix streaming, you can watch it immediately, or at least add it to your queue. It’s Unmistaken Child, and it’s about a Tibetan monk’s search for the child who is the reincarnation of his master. It’s enormously touching, and when he finds the child, it’s hard to argue that he isn’t truly unmistaken. It’s fascinating to watch the Dalai Lama rename the child. It sounds silly to say this, but I forget that among all the rest, he is a Buddhist, enmeshed in the practices of his culture. When he does the variety of things required with the child, it kind of startled me. He seems so western to us – he speaks everywhere, he participates in western research, he exhorts us to peace, like so many other people do – but he is entirely Buddhist. It’s easy to see him grinning, in his big old glasses, and think he’s just a kindly older guy with incredible compassion and wisdom. And he is….but he’s ohsomuch more.
The movie has kind of haunted me since I finished watching it. Tenzin Zopa, the monk who searches for his reincarnated master, touched me and it’s hard to think about him without crying, for some reason.
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- marnie and tom
- that girl can’t pass a photobooth without stopping
- my little christmas elf
- all jeweled up, her typical M.O.
- triumphant graduation from Smith College, Class of 2006
- photoboothed senior picture for Smith College
- such beautiful eyes
- her 22nd birthday party costume – startled deer!
- wasn’t she adorable? who could resist those cheeks?! not me.
- marnie and tom
- marnie studied with HH The Dalai Lama. That’s him in the middle, and Marnie 2nd to the right
- so pretty
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Anyway.
Unbeknownst to me, Craig had taken 4 very old photographs of me and had them enlarged and mounted on foam core board. He and I got to the place a few minutes before everyone else, to kind of set up, and he started pulling these things out of his bag. He stuck them all over the room, and mounted one on the door frame going into the room. MY SHAME. First of all, it gave the space the air of a wake, and second of all, three of the photos are humiliating. But everyone liked them, and kept picking them up, gazing at them, and asking me about them. It was kind of sweet. Here’s the room:
It was a wonderful space, filled with people I love. Since you don’t know these people, I’m just inserting a slideshow – my kids and family, who’ve heard me talk about all these people, might want to see faces to go with the names. Otherwise you can skip them.
When each person left, he or she hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. It was stunning and warm and loving, and I thought “this isn’t how people think of New Yorkers, and they’re so very wrong” because this is how people here can be. I love these people.
Today is the last day I’ll go into the office as a regular employee. I will work at home until July 7, which is my last real day as an employee – I’ll go back at the end of that day for the big going-away shindig, which is on the rooftop of a hotel in midtown….a gorgeous space. More about that party afterwards. On the way to the office, I’ll start the next Peasy swatch, with the next size down needles. It’s a beautiful summer day, and I am very happy. I hope you are too.
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- in a Peruvian reed boat
- oh so tweedy
- lotsa balls
- s-o-f-t
I bought it to make a Peasy sweater [rav link here] – the very first time I ever bought the specified yarn for a project. Usually I don’t think that far in advance; I just get an itching to make something, I pick a pattern and check what weight yarn is specified, then see what I have in that weight. But I saw Saffron‘s Peasy, on her fabulous blog Mooncalfmakes, and she uses a lot of Rowan, so I was hooked.
Not that I’ll be starting the sweater any time soon, unfortunately. For now I’ll have to comfort myself by petting the yarn a lot. You know what that’s like, I’m sure.
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My wedding ring is just a plain gold band – somewhat wide, wider than my husband’s, but still just a plain gold band. In actual weight, of course it isn’t that heavy. But what it represents is heavy, if you take it seriously. Chefs talk about marrying flavors, which means the flavors complement each other but are a different thing in the combination. You can no longer identify this as entirely separate from that – the flavors are married. Bound together as long as the thing exists, in new form.
Anyone reading this who is married knows that marriage and married life is not just one thing. It is all things. There are greater joys because of the marriage, and more painful difficulties for the same reason. Joseph Campbell said, “Marriage is not a love affair. A love affair is a totally different thing. A marriage is a commitment to that which you are. That person is literally your other half. And you and the other are one. A love affair isn’t that. That is a relationship of pleasure, and when it gets to be unpleasurable, it’s off. But a marriage is a life commitment, and a life commitment means the prime concern of your life. If marriage is not the prime concern, you are not married.” The luckiest people have marriages that maintain the flavor of a love affair, I guess.
In our culture, we tend not to take marriage this seriously; we tend, instead, to get all wound up with trying to keep marriage for only some people, and not for others. I have never understood that, but this is a topic for a different post, or perhaps a different blog. We also tend to encourage others to just leave if their needs aren’t being met. “You should just leave, you deserve better than this.” Of course I am not talking about abusive marriages.
My marriage is the prime concern of my life, and my husband and I both give it that place in our lives. There are truly joyous times, fun times, times we each feel like we’re the lucky one, times we each feel like the other person is the lucky one, times our commitment to each other is the thing that binds us when we can’t feel the rest. It’s a very heavy thing, to take a marriage seriously, to truly marry another person, especially in our culture.
I am not a religious person, but I was raised with religion and I have more than a passing familiarity with the bible. Both Matthew and Luke deliver the same message – it is no credit to love those who love you, you must love those who don’t. I take the form of that argument here: marriage is not exerting itself when things are light and fun, better and in health; marriage exerts itself when things are worse, or sick, for all the days of a life. That’s pretty heavy stuff.
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tosh merino light, in porcelain. Actually, I have 6 skeins...

and now for the closeup
I’ll have today’s Creativity Boot Camp post later this evening…..
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But finally, I have a post that’s related to the ostensible theme of this blog. A woman on ravelry was selling a bunch of her yarn and fiber, and I scored this:
It’s 70% merino, 20% cashmere, and 10% silk, and the combination of colors is really beautiful. The photo above is pretty plain and straightforward because I wanted to show all the colors it contains. She originally bought it from Pigeonroof Studios, and my fingers are itching to spin it. Not literally, of course, because this is incredibly soft and lofty fiber.
The next time this appears on my blog, it’ll be yarn. I hope that happens soon.
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great big blue skies full of mountains of white clouds

the smell of bread baking

certain songs that make me so happy i cry. and they’re often unexpected, like the ending of Say You’ll Be There, by the Spice Girls. (SPICE GIRLS!!! really? I’m 51 years old with way too much education!)

that shift in the light and air when fall has really arrived

brownies

my kids’ voices and hands, any time
my husband’s eyes when he looks at me with love
the plane lifting off the ground

the smell that means i’m home
those moments when i feel peace inside myself
You play along, too! It’ll make you feel good.
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He’s a big foodie. He’s just a wonderful and intuitive cook. He tastes, gazes upward, stirs again, tastes, and at the end he’s made us something delicious for dinner. He never makes the same thing twice, even when he’s trying. That’s fun, but sometimes I really want that orange shrimp he made me 5 years ago!
One thing he doesn’t do is bake, so luckily that’s what I love to do. For his birthday breakfast, he wanted sour cream pecan biscuits – a Dorie Greenspan recipe, from her book Baking: From My Home To Yours. It’s a fantastic book, and spawned the wonderful group project called Tuesdays With Dorie. I participated for several months, and it was loads of fun. So here is a picture of the biscuits, to tempt you. They have brown sugar and chopped pecans in them, so they’re slightly crunchy and slightly sweet, and quite luscious with honey drizzled inside:
For his cake, he wants carrot cake, with orange cream cheese frosting. It’s hard to find a bad recipe for carrot cake, but this one is my very favorite. No pineapple – I never really understood the addition of pineapple – but it’s incredibly moist and rich, and the hint of orange in the frosting makes it special. Here’s one I made before:
Apologies for the quality of the photo – I took it before I really knew what I was doing. So my day will involve a bit of fresh flower shopping, some Post-It Note posting….every year I put little Post-It notes everywhere around the apartment (on doors, in the fridge, in surprise places, in cabinets, hanging down from cabinets, each with a little note of some kind) and they stay up all year long. So today I’ll take down the old ones and put up new ones. I’ll make that carrot cake, and he also wants me to make a batch of oatmeal cookies to have around. We’ll have pork tonkatsu for dinner – he’ll make that – and tomorrow we’ll go to Queens for dinner with our youngest daughter, to celebrate over a wonderful Greek dinner.
Happy birthday and many, many, many more.




















































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