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My sweet older daughter Katie got married in June 2008 (easiest anniversary ever to remember: 06/07/08). Hers was a much more traditional wedding than Marnie’s, complete with puffy white dress, groomsmen in tuxedos, rosebud corsages, and all that happy jazz. She hired a professional photographer, who caught this very enigmatic shot that I rediscovered yesterday while wandering through her online photo album:
me dancing with my son
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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This is the detail that transformed this wedding from a great wedding to a great wedding with a hilarious story. Coleman, the owner of Maplewood Lodge, wrote Marnie on Wednesday and told her that the Lodge would still be great for the wedding, but there were baby bats in the Lodge (it’s a bumper bat season, apparently) and the bat removal guy kind of disappeared, so they should not sleep at the Lodge. Coleman rented a number of hotel rooms at his own expense for Marnie and Tom and a couple of their guests who might have been planning to sleep in the Lodge.
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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It looks like the heat wave has broken, finally – it’s only 78 right now, and the high is only supposed to be 87. Downright cool. Still, it’s the middle of summer so hot days are always in the neighborhood. If you are a knitter, you may be like me, and just wish to while away the hot days knitting with the a/c on, and watching a movie. I have a couple of recommendations for you:
#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:
heading down the foot toward the toe
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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II can only say: yeah, what she said! (Here’s a bit about Renate Hiller)
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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I’ve got a batch of ciabatta rising, and I’m coming down the final stretch with the wedding shawl, after spending much of yesterday hauling ass. (Sorry Marn, you can’t see it yet – but anyone who is on ravelry can see it on my project page.) I watched three movies yesterday while I was knitting, and I want to heartily recommend one of them.
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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In exactly 2 weeks, we’ll all be gathered at a lovely cabin in SW Wisconsin to celebrate the marriage of my second beloved daughter Marnie, to my newly beloved son Tom. It’s a thoroughly handmade wedding, and I can’t wait to show you pictures. For now, though, this is my little girl, the one getting married. Click to enlarge!
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- marnie and tom
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- that girl can’t pass a photobooth without stopping
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- my little christmas elf
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- all jeweled up, her typical M.O.
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- triumphant graduation from Smith College, Class of 2006
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- photoboothed senior picture for Smith College
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- such beautiful eyes
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- her 22nd birthday party costume – startled deer!
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- wasn’t she adorable? who could resist those cheeks?! not me.
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- marnie and tom
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- marnie studied with HH The Dalai Lama. That’s him in the middle, and Marnie 2nd to the right
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- so pretty
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So my dear friend Craig, another editor at my office, organized a smallish going away party for me at a neighborhood pub I’ll just call the Galway Hooker. Because that’s the name of it. There was an intimate, lovely room near the back, with 4 seating areas, and a waiter I fell in love with named Col. He reminded me so much of my son I had to keep forcing myself not to hug him.
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:
here it is, the party 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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Gosh – where to start. Maybe the color — they called it Avocado, I call it lush and gorgeous. The softness? OH yeah, it’s soft. The depth, those little flecks of yellow and red and navy? Oh so beautiful. [click the photos to biggify]
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- in a Peruvian reed boat
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- oh so tweedy
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- lotsa balls
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- 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.
I couldn't leave that Rowan Felted Tweed alone....
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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So. On Monday I gave notice at my job, and I didn’t know what to expect. I knew they would be surprised – and they were – but beyond that I just didn’t know. I was prepared for everything except what happened.
They cried. They really did. My boss cried when I told her, and came into my office the next day, sat down, and did it again. Colleagues said the most incredible things, things that were hard to take in. Inside, I imagine myself as just slinking around the perimeter, and not registering with people. I imagined that I’d just quietly slip out the door and no one would even know I left for a while. But that’s not what happened, and it has blown me back off my feet. It’s hard to take in, hearing people tell me what they think of me, what I mean to them. (Remember when you were about 12 years old, and you’d get mad at your mom for something and imagine that you died, and everyone was at your funeral, and they were all so sad, they’d all be so sorry then? This has been something like that, but without the death part!)
They immediately started listing freelance work they want me to do, so they can keep me around and also to help me, which is kind. My authors have wailed, and sent me the most amazing letters that I will absolutely cherish.
I think this is true for most people, and we just don’t realize it. We make an impression, we have an impact on people, people in our lives feel all kinds of things that they don’t ever say, because they think they don’t need to, or they’re shy, or they’ll just tell you tomorrow. I think you’re a very lucky person if something happens while you’re alive and you get the chance to hear it – especially if it’s all at once. So maybe the other side of that is that we should actually tell people these good things we feel about them.
One thing nearly every person said in their little lists referred to my sense of humor. Well, I am a dramatic person, I do have a quick and dry sense of humor, and my reactions can be large and hilarious. For example (you can see that I like you, I’m willing to be ugly in front of you), someone snapped this shot at a birthday party they gave me. I was responding to something someone said. Oh the humiliation….
silly, dramatic me
So anyway, I’ve been silent because I’ve been silenced by all this. Plus I’ve been insanely busy. I did finish the wedding dress and today I bought beautiful little Italian mother-of-pearl buttons from Tender Buttons, which is such a cool store. Only in New York, man. We have a button district, yes we do. In the morning I’ll take it to the cleaners for a good pressing, then get it off to my girl, the bride-to-be.
I promise knitting content will return soon. I’m dying to return to knitting…
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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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Isn’t it funny that we have to use a euphemism for that word, that p-oh-r-n word? But it’s all I could think of when I looked at the photos I just took of my new yarn, scored from a raveler who wanted to divest herself of a bit of madelinetosh’s elusive tosh merino light. The colorway is porcelain, and it’s just the most subtle, pale pink. It shades to tan, here and there, but the palest tan. Here, take a look:
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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I just have not had any knitting time for the last couple of weeks; my usually-reliable time (on the subway to/from work) has instead been spent gobbling up the book I’m reading for my book club (Veronica by Mary Gaitskill, quite spectacular). So I’ve been posting all those other things, because (a) I can’t show any photos of the wedding shawl since the bride-to-be reads the blog and I’m surprising her with the specific pattern (hi Marnie!), and (b) how many more posts can I write about the other small things I’m working on, for heaven’s sake!
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:
color: 'tobacco'
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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It’s such a beautiful day today here in Manhattan, and we were in the mood for Vietnamese food. On holidays – especially in the summer – the city kind of empties out a bit so we’re more likely to drive downtown and hunt for parking. Otherwise, we just take the subway. So we headed down to Chinatown, to eat at Nha Trang One. It wasn’t as good as we remembered, but still: Vietnamese food. Pretty great, even when it’s ordinary.
I took my camera along and snapped some pictures. If any of the pics look interesting to you, click to enlarge them (“biggify,” as my husband says). What’s showing is just a thumbnail so you’re missing a lot.
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- not a B&W picture, just a B&W block!
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- water tower, graffiti, big ad, chinese characters. SO new york.
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- haberdashery on the street
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- this basket was so beautiful – luminous
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- old-fashioned firehouse in the midst of it all
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- looking up through a fire escape
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- busy busy busy
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- doing a little reconstruction on a tiny street
Hope it’s sunny and beautiful where you are, too. For now, I’m off to do a little spinning.
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This was the newest post on Dropped Stitches, and it just caught me at the right moment to think about the question myself. What makes me happy? 
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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Today is my sweet husband’s birthday – the 60th time he’s celebrated it. I’ve been celebrating with him since 2005, and I hope to be celebrating at least 20 more. I’m really shooting for 30 more, or more. He’s not like anyone else in this world, and I’m just sorry it took so long for us to find each other.
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:
cooling biscuits, just out of the oven
see the drizzle of honey oozing out? and the chopped pecans?
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:
carrot cake with orange cream cheese frosting
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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