(Didn’t want to stop at 3 pictures so here are a couple more)

Ground zero



Ah…. my Princeton girls. I am missing you all today. Thank God for you! The ladies who will always be the touchstone. Our roads have diverged but it always comes back to this. What I love is that each and every one of the Princeton girls who’ve had a child has had a boy … there’s Tate and Wilder (Courtney), Cade (Allison), Whit (me), Pit (Newman), Thacher (Quincy), Roscoe (Schuyler), Dylan (Catarina), and baby boy-to-be (Connie). The most amazing and brilliant women I know will be raising a fabulous generation of men. I can’t wait to have the picture I know we’ll take someday, of those boys all dressed up in Princeton duds and lined up on a couch (though by the time we get them together they’ll no doubt be too busy to sit in a lineup). We’ve always joked about how it takes a special kind of man to choose a woman like one of us … and now we get to raise some too. How lucky these boys will be to have mothers like you all … there really isn’t a day when I don’t marvel at how lucky I am to have each of you in my life. What extraordinary role models and companions you are! We’re all making – and will continue to make – different and varied choices, and I trust that we’ll continue to respect and honor each other no matter what those choices are. This kind of implicit understanding is rare and special, and the further I travel away from Princeton the more convinced I am that the friendships I made there will be the most enduring of my life. There will be and are other incredibly special friends, but as a community you all are ground zero: yardstick and safe haven, the people who knew me when I was becoming who I am. Your importance grows clearer every day. We ought not hesitate to say how we feel, because as my idol Catherine Newman says, the lesson of death is that we are living, today (and that is all we know). So, with so much love, thank you, thank you, thank you!

“From the first he loved Princeton – its lazy beauty, its half-grasped significance…” – Fitzgerald


A perfect day. I’m either more ambivalent than most moms or just more honest. I’ll admit it’s pretty heavenly being ALONE all day today. Matt is in India and the children are in Vermont and I’m just myself for the first time in I don’t know how long. Nobody needs me. I can do whatever I want. My perfect day started with waking up at 9am, going for a long run, and then lingering over a latte with the New York Times. I did a little shopping and then came home to make chicken pot pies for Brooke and Lisa.
I got to hold baby Hadley while she slept while dropping off one pot pie in Beacon Hill chez Laughlin. 3 weeks and just plain delicious … I don’t want another one but they’re pretty dreamy to hold onto! And then I got to see Lisa and her four (!) children while dropping off their dinner in Wellesley. Their new house is just perfect and makes me want a brand new construction house of my very own.
Since 5 I’ve been at home, just hanging out by myself! I’ve cleaned out my closet, done two loads of laundry, watched some of Lost season 2, and done a bunch of paperwork. I spoke to Gracie who reported a fantastic day in Vermont picking apples and playing in the fields (see photo).
And now I get to sit on the couch and watch Desperate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters! Life is pretty good!

Today I got to give that whole I-love-roadtrips concept a whirl. Given the lead paint disaster zone that our house is, we decided it was best to get Gracie and Whit the heck out of dodge. So I drove them to Lebanon, NH to meet Grandpa. That’s 2 hours each way. And, I got 30 minutes north before realizing I had left my bag, wallet, etc at home: an extra hour right there. Delightful. Treo was dead and the minute we hit the road my cell phone beeped that it was out of charge, so I was totally off the grid for a while – kind of refreshing in a way. Then children fell asleep for 30 minutes which allowed me to snag the cigarette lighter from the DVD player to charge my phone a little.
The reports from Vermont are already flooding in: Whit apparently jumped up and down in his crib like “your everyday caged Russell male” before bed, and Gracie took a framed picture of Johann to bed with her.
Matt and I had a very romantic Saturday night. We stopped by the office briefly before having dinner at a restaurant in Terminal E. I then packed Matt off to his flat bed in BA first class before heading home to the aforementioned disaster zone.
Sweet dreams!

“Everyday life is laced with miracles …”

This evening was one of those (fleeting) moments … driving home from family dinner, a huge, full harvest moon hanging low on the horizon, all four of us singing along to You Are My Sunshine in the car. For five minutes, all was right in the world.

And then we tried to put the children down at 33 Lex and we’re still at it. The stars are now out of alignment. But, for those five minutes, it was pretty sweet.

Extra credit question: what’s engraved in Matt’s wedding ring? (and bonus points if you know what the folks at Shreve’s said to me when I asked for that message)