Girlfriends

I went to dinner and a movie tonight with a few friends and, driving home, I was thinking about the many wonderful women in my life. I love my girlfriends. Some I've known for a long time (like, since the first day of college!), and some are newer friends. Some live far away (in Italy, for example), and some I get to see almost every day. But one thing that I've noticed that my dear friends have in common is they are women who are thoughtful and intelligent...and fun. They can speak with authority about business or philosophy or the peace process in the Middle East; but once in awhile, they switch over to the universal language of women: shoes.

It drives me crazy when women think that they need to shun all notions of beauty and fashion to be taken seriously. That's no fun. It also drives me crazy when women spend all their time focused on clothes, shoes, and their outward appearance. That's just dumb! The women I admire--my friends--manage to care for their families, and do amazing stuff like writing books and being engineers and making paintings, whilst also rocking the Pradas from time to time. Here's to you, ladies!

Dinner with girlfriends.
A silly movie, short on
plot, long on fashion.
An entire box of Red Hots!
I drive home smiling.





An Unjaundiced Eye

This week I'm struggling with--not boredom, per se--but a sense of dullness, I guess. I've got so much to be thankful for but have a sense of being spiritually drained. It's time to read, and time to pray to see things in a new way. St. Fred has some wise words on the subject of boredom, which he says is the most deadly of the seven deadly sins:

To be bored is to turn down cold whatever life happens to be offering you at the moment. It is to cast a jaundiced eye at life in general including most of all your own life. You feel nothing is worth getting excited about because you are yourself not worth getting excited about.

To be bored is a way of making the least of things you often have a sneaking suspicion you need the most.

To be bored to death is a form of suicide.

--Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life
My prayer:

God help me to see
hear and taste my life anew
today, every day.

The Familiar and the New


It's been a slow Tuesday. The kids are back in school after the Memorial Day holiday, and I've been catching up on work and home projects that I neglected over the weekend. I don't have anything exciting to share. But earlier today, when I was doing errands, I parked my car in the old Pottery Shack lot on Glenneyre Street and noticed a plant covered with these spectacular little flowers--that I've never seen before--just inches from my bumper.


dear God I thank you
for familiar things and those
seen for the first time

Rites of Passage

Today was the big day: Willem attended his friend Adrien's Bar Mitzvah service, followed by the much-anticipated party. The picture above is of Willem and his friends Kira (aka Kiki) and Leslie. I went to the evening festivities and got to observe the kids in all their finery. It was fun to sit back and watch them, all dressed up and looking like miniature adults. I promised Willem I wouldn't throw my weight around the dance floor and embarrass him, and I made good on that promise. I only got up and danced once--a safe distance away from him and his posse--when the DJ played some AC/DC, because, really, how could I not?

boys in coats and ties
girls in dresses and high heels
mingling, dancing and
practicing being grown-ups

That's How He Rolls

My son Willem, age 13, has always had a strong "point of view," as they say in the world of fashion, when it comes to dressing himself. He doesn't put much effort into the day-to-day stuff he wears to school, but when it's some kind of special occasion, he throws things together in an unexpected way and ends up looking really cool. I admire his confidence. (I asked him to be my personal stylist but he just rolled his eyes.) He's attending a friend's bar mitzvah tomorrow and I wanted to make sure his dress pants and blazer still fit, so I made him try everything on. Wouldn't you know it, he rocked those Cotillion clothes. I didn't take pictures of his "try-on" session, but should have some tomorrow night.

Navy Brooks Brothers
blazer, grey slacks. Dad's cufflinks.
Purple tie, Nikes.

Wild Thing

One of the things I like about living in a small(ish) town is that the police blotter in the local paper is usually pretty entertaining. This was true of St. Helena, the bucolic Napa Valley hamlet where David and I got married and started our family, and it's also true of Laguna Beach, a larger but equally quirky community. Incidents involving errant wildlife seem to be a common theme--skunks with their heads caught in peanut butter jars, that sort of thing. The blotter in today's Laguna Beach Independent included a raccoon incident which gave me some pause. Apparently a rabid raccoon got into some unlucky person's house through a dog door, and then proceeded to terrorize the resident dogs and cat. The homeowner managed to chase the wild thing into a bathroom and shut the door. But by the time the animal control officer arrived to cart away the raccoon, it had literally destroyed the bathroom, like bad-ass rock-band-on-tour, trash-the-hotel-room type destruction. Holy cow.

Who knew a raccoon
could tear down drywall, break glass
and smash a toilet?


A Moment of Silence

The way this world works, people are very apt to use the words they speak not so much as a way of revealing but, rather, as a way of concealing who they really are and what they really think, and that is why more than a few moments of silence with people we do not know well are apt to make us so tense and uneasy. Stripped of our verbal camouflage, we feel unarmed against the world and vulnerable, so we start babbling about anything just to keep the silence at bay.

—Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life

I looked to St. Fred today for something to wrap my mind around, and found these lines in today’s meditation. I was struck by how true this is, for me anyway. So many times I have found myself in conversations—usually with people I don’t know well—in which I felt compelled to fill a pause with babbling—“just to keep the silence at bay” —and then ended up not really listening or connecting with the other person in a meaningful way. Guilty as charged. I needed that reminder.

Also, one of the great blessings I have received through my daily poetry practice is the discovery that I really can’t reflect on or process in writing the meaningful events in my life without some period of silence every single day, even if it’s just a few minutes. Maybe I’m a slow learner, but I’ve only just recently realized that I can’t multi-task every waking moment, like those chipper moms in TV commercials, and expect to create anything. I have to stop talking to start writing—who knew?!

Lastly, I love Buechner’s notion of using words not to conceal but to reveal who we really are and what we really think. Here’s my St. Fred-inspired injunction to myself:


Don’t fear the silence.

Let unnecessary words

fall away. Be still.