A day of happy minutiae. Picked up the Subaru this morning with Anastasia along for the ride, then coffee with Natalie, then Whit’s first dentist appointment. He was not such a fan of the dentist, repeatedly turning away from the lovely young hygienist with a polite-and-yet rude squeal of “NO THANK YOU!” Unlike his pleaser sister (and mother), the promise of a sticker and the dentist’s approval was not enough to force him back into the chair. This little rabble-rouser cares not at all about following the rules, about the world’s approval. Long years ahead, I can see it now.
Grace spent the morning at the Science Museum with Jake Elkins. I went for a run around Fresh Pond which was a lovely way to be out in the bright spring day. In the afternoon I made homemade chicken noodle soup, IMed with Lacy for a while, and then headed down by foot to meet Alison and Bouff at Christopher’s. Delightful wine & chicken fingers (and buffalo tofu for Bouff) and now home in couch in pj pants while children sleep. Am going to head to bed before too long with my book.
Sweet dreams all!

Been this kind of couple of days – bright sun, floating clouds, vague gloominess. Can’t quite shake my offness, but am not sure where it’s from. The undertow has felt strong, lately, and I’m relating to that sense of being an open wound walking around that Michelle Williams described.

Photo taken this morning in Marion. I was driving home from an emergency Diet Coke trip to Cumberland Farms (I am a true addict) and pulled over to photograph the empty harbor. The sun was sparkling on the water and the day was crisp and clear and beautiful. I simply adore this harbor. On the subject of the ocean, I read a line today in the NYT magazine that really sounded familiar to me. It was a review of Marion Cotillard’s (I am counter-cultural in that I LOVED her Gaultier Oscar dress – someone should be rewarded for taking a risk!) performance of Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose. The reviewer described the performance as having “a deep undertow of sadness” and this is a good way, I think, of describing my own psyche, much of the time. Sea metaphors have always spoken to me, and I know the sense of something pulling me, towards melancholy.

Of course the Elle magazine profile of Michelle Williams is all heavy-duty with Heath Ledger references and inferences now, but if you get past that you get a fascinating, beautifully-written profile of a woman who sounds awfully interesting to me, and frankly familiar in many ways (the beauty, the celebrity, not so much). A few lines that resonate:

Her smiles come easily but are complicated, never carefree. “I’m always aware of the whole,” Williams says. “I have that feeling inside, when something really tickles or delights me – it’s not singular. I recognize all the awful things in the world, and in spite of them, I can still laugh.” This hyperawareness has come at a price. “For so long, I felt like a walking open wound everywhere I went,” she says. “There’s this Joan Didion quote about being afflicted form an early age with a presentiment of loss. Did I come into the world like that?” (see Didion quote below)

Like extrasensory perception, you either have it or you don’t. It’s a poignant, painful, and appealing quality that cannot be acted.

“The distraction of work is utterly invaluable. When I have too much free time, that’s when things start to get a little messy.” Tears pool in her eyes. She smiles one of those smiles.

“I was in and out of the bathtub my entire labor – 24 hours. I don’t remember the pain, or the sensation. But I do remember quietly talking to myself and saying, ‘Okay, you don’t have to tell anybody what you’re thinking right now. You don’t have to tell Heath, you don’t have to tell the nurse, you don’t have to tell the doctor: you are never, ever doing this again. It can be a secret just for us.” She laughs. “I was trying to tell myself, ‘Remember what I’m saying now: this pain is too great to bear. You won’t do this again.’ And here I am today and the next one I’ll do at home! You totally forget. It’s nature’s trick.”

Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook”

“Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss. “

I love this passage from an article about raising boys in Wondertime by Jacquelyn Mitchard (I also love Wondertime, and recommend it heartily):

My friends and I came up with an essential test regarding the difference between boys and girls: it’s called the Wet Paint Paradigm. Girls, it seems, can learn from their own experiences and even, occasionally, from others’. However, if a boy sees a sign that says Wet Paint, he’ll touch the wall to determine it’s not a joke, and then his friend – standing right behind him – will have to perform the same test with his own finger. Boys are not dumber than girls. They simply have a rugged and individualistic sense of discovery and wonder, untrammeled by prior evidence.