photographs

Tomorrow morning: Legoland.  On the way to the airport this morning at 5am both kids told me that they look forward to this trip as much as Christmas.  I think I’ll keep coming until I’m 80, in that case.

The height of summer.

Saying goodbye to a second-generation BFF at camp.  This year there were far more tears at departure than at arrival. Just as it should be. Now: planning our winter-time visits!

All I can think of is the lyrics to a song I’ll know deep in my bones for the rest of my life, the song with which we ended all assemblies at camp.

The lines which I know by heart, with which each of my many camp seasons drew to a close, run through my head:

Dear God, I’m leaving camp.  Give me the afterglow.

A picture from this week at camp.  Have I mentioned that I am routinely staggered, brought to my  knees, by the very fact that my daughter and my best friend from camp’s daughter, 12 weeks apart to the day, are walking on the beach together in such a special place?  When I think of it I fall into the black hole of memory where individual moments flash and glint: when I first met Jess, the moment she pulled up to be my co-counselor in cabin 18 after we hadn’t spoken in several years, her gorgeous, sun-drenched wedding, the morning I called her in a whisper to say I’d seen a second, shadowy line on a pregnancy test.  There are a million other memories that drift over me like snowflakes, together forming a bank that is one of the essential bulwarks of my life.

And now it is their turn.  These girls, our girls, this next generation.  The world turns forward.

May what they share on this magical stretch of coastline thread through their souls in the eternal, sustaining way it has through Jess’s and mine.

(Happy 10th birthday, Julia!  I remember 10 years ago like it was yesterday.  So much love to you.)

It has been an absolutely lovely week of just Whit and me at home.  He wrote her a card one night, and after he handed it to me he said, “Wait!  I want to write one more thing.”  He grabbed it and, concentrating, added the smiling face and “I love you.”  All on his own.  And I cracked a little inside, but in a way that just let in more light.