This morning, driving to camp, Whit pointed through the sunroof and said, “Mummy, the clouds are peaceful.” I turned around, surprised, and said, “Peaceful, Whitty?” And he said, “In pieces.” The sky was mottled with faint clouds. I love clouds, both aesthetically and metaphorically. Whit was right, in both his intended and mistaken observations: the slightly cloudy sky was both peaceful and in pieces.

It was a very random and empty day – actually a privilege, and a treat, though today also a reminder of my failure to find something truly meaningful to do with my life (yet!). I went for a nice run, and listened to my standard weird music en route. What, you don’t think Garth Brooks is running music? Why, you’d be wrong – “If Tomorrow Never Comes” is quite the pick-me-up in fact … I ran thinking about how this is one thing on the very short list of things I am sure and confident about: I don’t hesitate to say how I feel, those I love most deeply really know how I feel. If tomorrow never comes, that isn’t something Garth is going to catch me regretting.

11am at Fresh Pond seems to be Stroller Hour. I ran past countless new moms strolling infants and was struck both by their common shellshocked faces and by how many of them were clutching phones, either talking or texting, clutching their lifelines to the “real world.” Oh, how I remember those days! Of course when Grace was tiny and colicky it was pitch dark at 430 and raw and cold. I recall walking with her in the Bjorn in the late afternoon, talking to Bouff on the phone, my hand freezing into a claw as it clutched the cell against my ear. I remember that the pain in my hand was nothing compared to that in my head and that I felt it was clearly worth it to keep talking to someone from my Old Life!

It’s good that I ran when I did because there was a wild thunderstorm this afternoon. It was dramatic and beautiful and noisy and now the evening has cleared into a placid sunset. Pictures taken just now. This evening as they were this morning, the clouds are both peaceful and in pieces.

I am listening to a new mix I made and cooking right now. This is my favorite kind of cooking: using whatever vegetables I have around to make something I invent as I go along. I am a very casual cook – it is either an exception to my personality or evidence that I am not quite as anal as the world has decided I am. I love to cook without recipes and even when I follow them I rarely measure carefully or obey to the letter. This was no doubt learned by osmosis from my mother, who is a spectacular and very self-guided cook. She can whip up a feast from what others would deem an empty refrigerator, in 20 minutes flat, all the while having a sparkling conversation over a glass of wine. She is an icon of effortless cooking and entertaining. My productions are not as delicious as hers (today it looks like I am winding up with a chard, zucchini, and shallot gratin with parmesan – jury is out on how it tastes). In the kitchen, I am proud to say I am truly my mother’s daughter.

We had the most wonderful mellow morning. Grace and I took Whit to a birthday party and then wandered around, playing with a friend, climbing trees, skipping on the rocks in the sprinkler rocks by the Harvard Science Center. She climbed up very high in this tree and wanted to go higher. This was as close to a perfect Saturday morning as I can remember.

Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing, and which shirking pain, misses happiness as well. No one ever yet was the poorer in the long run for having once in a lifetime ‘let out all the length of all the reins’. – Mary Cholmondeley