A few random things from this holiday weekend …
We are back from a couple of days with a big family congregation, including our patriarch, my 92 year old grandfather (and assorted foreign students and friends). Notably, my children fell head-over-heels in love with my cousin, who, luckily, lives nearby.
Today is the 8 year anniversary of a heart transplant that changed all of our lives forever.
My dear friend Gloria had her second son this week, in London. Grace and Whit have been asking every single day, breathlessly excited, if the baby had arrived. They were in a hurry. And so, it turns out, was he: baby boy was born at home, caught by Dad and the paramedics, because he arrived so fast. Gloria, goddess!
I’ve been reading Maya Stein a lot this week … I’ve long liked her poetry but only recently discovered more of it. The poem she shared this week on her blog, Thanksgiving and Wreckage, blows me away. The last lines: “for a moment, I hope,/ we will each turn from the palpable wreckage, /this unplaced place setting, and feel the featherdust/of healing, let a lick of warm light /enter into the raw edges of/ whatever has been broken,/ thread itself through,/ and stitch us while we sleep.”
Today I spent the afternoon with an old friend and his two sons. Jeremy and I met in 1996, at my first job out of college. We’ve kept in touch sporadically since then, and I’m a huge fan of his current company (check it out!), but we haven’t had a couple of hours to hang out like we did today in 14 years. Jeremy remains one of the very funniest people I’ve ever met, and I found myself laughing hysterically at everything he said. Just like the old days.
We hurtle now towards the solstice, which has always been a very important marker for me. Towards the light. Towards the radiance I talked about this summer. Always forward. I think of Vincent van Gogh’s hopeful yet resigned line, which captures how I feel in this season of so many kinds of darkness:
Still, a great deal of light falls on everything.
I know that feeling of the solstice, of everything being uphill from that point, of moving towards the light. It reminds us that there is hope even in the darkest hour.