A week’s flown by. Last weekend was jam packed as usual. A highlight was Saturday morning brunch with two friends from HBS – Brett L’Esperance (middle, with his three children) and Margo Dhaliwal (right, with Colin). We get together so rarely, as getting the calendars in synch is like aligning stars, but when we do it’s always really great to catch. Our children play nicely together (watching Gracie and Ella lying on their stomachs, heads bent over a book, was enchanting) and we have lots to catch up on! Sectionmates starting businesses, starting families, starting over. Seems amazing that it was eight full years ago that we started out in Aldrich 9. Brett was married to Emily, but Margo and I were just dating our now-husbands. And now look: six children between us! Wow!

Dedications

Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris wrote amazing dedications to each other in their books. Of course we know now that their story ended badly, but their extraordinary love affair is reflected in these brief phrases. For some reason they’ve always really captured my imagination.

From Louise to Michael:
To Michael
U R Lucky 4 Me
(The Bingo Palace)

To Michael,
Complice in every word,
Essential as air.
(The Beet Queen)

Michael,
The story comes up different every time and has no ending but always begins with you.
(Tracks)

From Michael to Louise:
For Louise,
who found the song and gave me voice.
(Cloud Chamber)

For Louise,
Companion through every page, through every day. Compeer.
(Yellow Raft in Blue Water)

When I was in grade school I spent my summers at Cape Cod Sea Camps in Brewster. That place remains near and dear to me as the only constant in a childhood of flux. I spent 11 summers there. The point of this is that I remember after every summer (I used to go for 3 weeks, and then 7) my father would remark, with a sigh, “Linds, you grew up a whole year in three weeks.” Which is how I feel after being away from Gracie for 24 hours this weekend. She went to New Hampshire with our former (dearly beloved) nanny, Andrea. She came back on Sunday afternoon and I felt like she was 10 years old. I can’t articulate why, nor do I have specific stories, but she was just all grown up and funny and full of new expressions and mannerisms.
In other news, Whit climbed out of his crib on Friday. Every parent’s worst nightmare. This necessitated a rush hour drive to Natick (don’t recommend that) to go to Baby Depot at the Burlington Coat Factory (recommend that even less) to buy a crib tent. Now the little man sleeps in a very securely strapped-on cage. Grace refers to it as “Whit’s trap.” I wonder if he understands more English than we think and his tantrums upon being zipped in are because he knows the way we think about the “cozy tent.”
Oh, wow, time’s a-flying.

That’s my girl. The one with that special firefighting midwife gleam in her eye. I’m not kidding! I find it extraordinary that Grace has explicitly decided she wants to be a midwife (which is how I’ve named the “special doctor who gets babies out”). She is fascinated with childbirth and delivery. She can sit and watch the extremely vivid childbirth video at the Science Museum ad nauseum (to Matt’s great delight, believe me). This interest has sprung up totally independent of my own interest in it. She asked me over the weekend if it is possible to be “two things at once” – of course I replied affirmatively (considering my schizophrenic existence this, too, is a choice near and dear to my heart). She then announced that she was going to be a firefighter and a midwife. I told her I might want to be a midwife as well, and she gleefully exclaimed that we could go into “business” together, as long as she could be the one who “pulls the babies out.” She then said to me, “and then, Mummy, after the babies are born, we can sell them in boxes!!!” Wow. How to respond? Matt, biting back his laughter, turned to me with an eye raise that suggested this was in fact a good business idea. I agree. Until, of course, we are arrested.

Ethan

Ethan: the brother I never had. Or, more accurately, the brother I DO have, though we weren’t technically born of the same parents. Last night was the formal celebration of Ethan’s dad’s receiving of the French merit d’agricole. We had such a lovely time at the Fly Club drinking all kinds of absurd wine.
Ethan and I met when I was 3 weeks old and he was 7 weeks old. Apparently we hit it off and we’ve been dear friends ever since. He was in our wedding, he’s Whit’s godfather (at right on the christening day with last week’s bride, Gloria – in fact we were all classmates at Exeter), and he’s my oldest and dearest friend. “We were ring around the rosy children, we were circles around the sun” – James Taylor’s Never Die Young has always made me think of Ethan. 32 years of memories, impossible to even make a dent in them here. We were only in school together very briefly – for 6 months at BB&N in 7th grade and for 2 years at Exeter for 11th and 12th. At our Exeter graduation we had a picnic with all EIGHT of our grandparents in attendance – that’s on the short list. I have Ethan in mind a lot as I think about raising Whit -he’s the closest experience I’ve had of a boy growing up, but more importantly I think he’s peerless: he combines intelligence, sensitivity, humor, great compassion, and an incredible artistic passion. Ethan and Tyler’s lives have been intertwined with Hilary’s and mine from the beginning. When I watch Gracie with James and Charlie I think of the Vogts, and of the extraordinary gift of “family friends.”