Am on unsteady ground of late and trying to find my balance. I need to find faith in myself. Rilke, again, gives me solace:

…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. – Ranier Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

This morning I took both children to camp, with my usual pitstop at Starbucks. We got to BB&N and walked to the door where we drop Gracie off. I went in with her and Whit stood outside, uncharacteristically quiet and pensive. When I came out I took his hand and we headed back to the car. He said to me, “Mummy, it looks like it is going to rain.” I was distracted, as usual, and said, “yeah, yeah, Whit.” It was pretty much full sunshine and I wanted to get him to his camp. He yanked my arm, stood stock still, pointed at the clouds, and said, “Mummy! It really looks like rain. Look at those clouds.”
15 minutes later it was raining.
Not only was he accurate, but he reminded me to pay attention to the clouds. My little meteorologist. Like Grace’s devil-may-care gumption, there’s a lot Whit can teach me.

Everyone is sort of burned out around here. Sound asleep by 7:15. I am hot on their heels.

Things that remind me of my Dad:

• Used bookstores
• The smell of pipes
• Running
• Wesleyan University, especially the Alpha Delta Phi house
• A notebook full of handwritten (in fountain pen) mathmatical derivations, like of the angles between the streets of L’Etoile in Paris.
• Europe’s cathedrals
• A ski trip the two of us to Zermatt – in bed each night with our books. Two peas in a pod.
• Good red wine
• Faded Nantucket reds
• Hand-drawn turk’s head knots (also in fountain pen) in every Valentine and birthday card
• Knots in person, too – learning to tie a real bowline, being awed by his skill at turk’s heads and other tricks with a line
• Celebrating birthdays where I became an age that was a prime number
• The note he wrote to authorize no-helmet skating in 6th grade at BB&N (“recognizing that risk is an inherent part of life …”) – I mortified at the time, infinitely amused now
• The carefully curated and annotated photo albums
• Exhortations to pack light, get ready fast, be able to read a map, and look good after 2 miles to windward
• A favorite bowtie that comes with the same joke every time: “I’ve nothing TouLouse!”
• Playing “Scarlet Ribbons” on his guitar, singing to us
• Reading thick history books in German, French, and English
• The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
• Teaching me to drive our old Jeep in Mattapoisett – being patient when I rammed it into a huge boulder at the edge of the ocean
• Christmas carols on the stereo at home from October to March
• His miniature Caterpillar trucks (Cat was a client, and Hilary and I teased him mercilessly, calling them “toys,” and were always told sternly that they were “models”)
• His diving off the dock in Huntington during our last visit to Gaga and Pops’ house there
• His beautiful, elegant skiing

All-star parenting.