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Back from Italy. It was a whirlwind trip but a wonderful one. Being with Kara, Quincy, Charlotte, Courtney, Lacy, and others is a reminder of who I am. With a couple of important exceptions these are the people who know me best and whose attention, love, and wisdom grounds me.

Quincy, Dave, Sage and I spent Saturday in Assisi which was absolutely lovely; I’ve been there before (with my family a long time ago) and once again found it both beautiful and tremendously moving. Quincy noted that Dave had had the pleasure of a day with “two of her” (this in a one-more-person-to-nag-me tone!) – she commented that we are very much alike and I find this to be a huge compliment. I can share with Quincy things that are bothering me and she has the deep reserve of experience as well as the long-distance perspective to offer extraordinary insight. This kind of friendship is a balm.

The Crawfords put on a glorious celebration. Lacy was aglow. There were personal details at every turn: a runner with love quotations written on it, eloquent toasts, and beautiful poems excerpted in the program. The party was also just plain FUN: at the end of the evening I wound up in the tent with Courtney and Charlotte, laughing and watching fireworks. I was 18 again, a nervous and intimidated freshman, and these beautiful, brilliant women impressed me now as much as they did then. We reminisced and laughed and commented that though we talk rarely when we are together we slip back instantly into the same comfortable, familiar grooves.

I went on from Italy to a work meeting and had an extraordinarily wonderful two days by myself. Some of the best ever, actually. For the women I have loved since 1992, and for the days in Europe alone, I am deeply grateful.

Oh, my God.

Oh my God. Somebody stop her. How can this really be happening?

An excerpt I read on the plane to Italy that really moved me:

We human beings are uneasy about what truly occurs deep inside the Other, even if that Other is someone we love. And perhaps it is more than unease; perhaps it is an actual fear of the mysterious, nonverbal, unprocessed core, that which cannot be subjected to any social tampering, to any refinement, politeness, or tact; that which is instinctive, wild, and chaotic, not at all politically correct. It is dreamlike and nightmarish, radical and exposed, sexual and unbridled … It is mad and sometimes cruel, often animalistic, for good or for bad. It is, if you will, the magma, the primordial, blazing material that bubbles inside every person simply because he is human, simply because he is an intersection of so many forces, instincts, longings, and urges. It is a magma that usually, among sane people – even the most tempestuous – hardens and cools when it comes into contact with the air, when it encounters other human beings, or the confines of reality …

To me, writing, the writing of literature, is partly an act of protest and defiance, and even rebellion, against this fear – against the temptation to entrench myself, to set up an almost imperceptible barrier, one that is friendly and courteous but very effective, between myself and others, and ultimately between me and myself …

The primary urge that motivates and engenders writing … is the writer’s desire to invent and tell a story, and to know himself. But the more I write, the more I feel the force of the other urge, which collaborates with and completes the first one: the desire to know the Other from within him. To feel what it means to be another person. To be able to touch, if only for a moment, the blaze that burns within another human being.

– David Grossman, Writing in the Dark

When did Gracie become a teenager? In addition to “sweet!” (pronounced, with attitude, like suh-weet!) she busted out today with two new phrases.

She was eating vanilla pudding that I made at dinner and she said, “Mummy? I don’t like your pudding.” “Oh, Gracie, I’m sorry about that.” “I love it!”

And then, as I tucked her in, I told her I’d take her to school tomorrow morning. She said, barely visible under all of her blankets, “You’ll take me to school? That rocks!”

Eve Ensler’s piece about Sarah Palin made me cry. I had an email exchange with several dear friends from college about it, and we all resonated with the words. My mother is right, it’s a touch “screamy,” but I really think she hits on the key reason I am so viscerally upset about the Sarah Palin choice with this quotation:

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story — connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

Thinking about the piece has made me thoughtful about feminism and what it means to me. It’s a word so laden with stereotypes, so full of predetermined attributions, it’s almost hard to break it down to what it means to a middle aged woman in 2008. But I’ve been trying. It’s a word that almost comes with a stigma, I think, to my generation, and there is something incredibly sad about that. Perhaps my generation has retreated a bit from the firebreathing of the original feminists, but I think it’s critical to acknowledge that we do that because we can – there is room for retreat because of their very vigilance and determined assertion of themselves.

To me, feminism is being about equality but not about sameness. The dogged focus some people have on feminism being about women and men being the very same has always rankled me. Equality of value does not mandate congruence. In fact, isn’t it in the celebration of our differences that true equality comes about? I aspire to raise a daughter and a son who grow up thinking of their gender as neither liability nor asset; it is simply another part of their identity.

I haven’t quite been able to articulate what it is about Sarah Palin that bothers me so deeply, but the Eve Ensler piece comes closer than anything I’ve read so far. And yes, of course I admire that she has come from humble beginnings, I think she is clearly ambitious and determined, and she obviously stands by her principles (ie her Down syndrome baby). All of those things are true, and it would be irresponsible for me not to mention them. Ultimately, though, many of the things she stands for not only offend me but represent an affont to my aspiration of what the world can be. And her being a woman does not, for me, trump that. No way. It makes it worse.