"Stay close to anything that makes you glad you are alive." Hafiz

 One of my yoga teachers ended a recent class with the quote above. My list is long, and by no means fully described by the photos below. A decade ago things did not feel so joyful in my personal life.

Pure white doves in flight

A beach full of birds and treasures

The roses in my own front yard

Trying to grow a lemon tree

Looking at art
This is from the exhibit, Rotari's Muses, at the Norton Simon

A visit from faraway friends

A sweet dessert from a beloved friend

24 Hours

This is the So Cal talk of the town this evening. But not for me.

I slipped out the door yesterday morning, simply telling my mother that I was off to an evening of theatre with old friends. (M is here.)

It was a much bigger day than that. It was a drive through the past, recent and not-so-recent, in a grid-lock through L.A. way where you have time to inhabit years of your life, taking it all in, remembering this and wondering if you'll ever forget that.

I had lunch with my dear friend Elizabeth, a friend I know "in the memoir way." You want to get to know someone? Take a memoir writing class. Write down your story. Read it. Listen while they read some pages from their story. Repeat, repeat. Thereafter those words will always hover between you. They are the basis for how you know them. How you trusted them with your story. How they will always be able to trust you with theirs. Sprinkle some of that over your Greek salad.

She and I went to the memorial service for the husband of the beautiful and fabulous women who taught that first class we took something close to a decade ago. This must be hard for you, Elizabeth and other friends said, acknowledging my own recent loss of the man who loved me. A dark place I chose not to step into. One cannot go to the service for another's beloved and wail. T'ai Chi Chih has taught me to place my feet flat on the floor, to feel the earth beneath the floor, and connect with the energy there. To breathe. To recognize my t'an tien. Your friend's grief is not your grief. All grief is all grief, said the voices in my head. Both are true. So I let those voices just talk it out while my feet stayed flat.

There were prayers, and poems, and remembrances. One learns so much at a memorial. Memorial. Memoir. Both peel open the story. The music, performed by the church choir and a soloist from the Los Angeles Opera was probably the most stunning I have ever heard at a church service. The soloist, a beautiful young soprano, was from South Korea. Dan's face seemed to materialize from her face in the moments I felt most transported. There he was in front of me, my beloved.

Then came the driving. I drove through one old neighborhood after another on surface streets, crawling along in traffic that seemed just one car short of gridlock, contemplating the three decades of my life with a man who discarded me like I was nothing. How incredibly lucky that was in the bad luck good luck sort of way. I shuffled my plans around to this and that as if all the time travel was unhinging my brain and after, a stop at a favorite museum, ended up in the new incarnation of the very restaurant where, for years, I ate dinner nearly every Sunday night with The Someone, Finally, I went to the theatre with friends and saw a play that I performed in myself forty years ago. I slept at the house of those dear old friends who gave me oranges and almonds this morning that I ate in my car with a perfect latté I bought at an old-haunt coffee shop.

It was a lot to think about.

And 24 hours later, an empty cup in my cup-holder, I was back. Not singed from the re-entry, but warmed.

Traveling the World(s)

Ideally, when one goes off for the weekend to stay in a swanky-ish spot, one would not be wearing pink flannel pajamas and be in bed alone. However, I survived. I even had fun. A lot of fun.

My godson's wedding was completely charming. The after-party for the older generation (plus the groom's brother as a representative of the younger generation) was delightful and involved a lot of wine, some really good goat cheese, and one of those irresistible confections from Trader Joe's involving chocolate and nuts and coconut. I have no solid recollection of what exactly we talked about, but I do remember laughing a lot. I was afraid I'd feel like shit this morning since I barely drink these days, but I woke early and hit the road. Driving does weary me though. More than drinking too much wine. I got off the road  for a while and went exploring in a beach town a couple hours north of where I live. It was full of tourists eating salt water taffy, and  fro-yo and the sidewalks looked as though they had suffered a lot of fro-yo and taffy spills. I like where I live better.

So it's lovely to be home. I took a long walk and met an acquaintance/friend for a glass of wine which turned into dinner with more friends of hers, and god, we older women are fascinating. There were five of us and the collection of life experiences was not for the faint of heart. But there we were.

I've been trying to prompt myself to dream of Dan this past week or so. A couple of nights before I left, I dreamed I was at a party and ran into an old college friend who'd heard that I had a wonderful boyfriend. Oh, he died, I told her. He's dead. Her eyes filled with tears and she seemed shocked that I'd been so blunt. I had another dream a couple of nights ago and it slipped away before I could solidify the memory of it. I remember only touching his face.

And so it goes, I move through these two worlds, communing with both the dead and the living.

What I Made This Weekend

A chocolate cake whose secret ingredients are beer and sauerkraut. (My mom found the recipe in a newspaper in the cardiologist's office.)

Saturday night dinner. Guests were the man who loves me and my friend Nancy, who brought peppers from her garden. And a bottle of champagne.

The peppers were stuffed with couscous and cheese and then covered with marinara sauce doctored with cinnamon, cumin, and dark chocolate. If I were breathing my last, I might request a cup of this sauce before departing.

Tonight's dinner: Kabocha squash soup garnished with roasted red peppers, which unfortunately turned out to be hot peppers. I had to fish them out of my mom's bowl, but enjoyed a rather pleasant glow from them myself.

I also made time to nap, walk, and read a bit. And the effort I made to get out and do something fun with my mom worked out swell. Friday afternoon after picking up her new glasses we went to a thrift store where she snagged two nice tops and two pairs of warm pants for $5.39. Saturday we went to the Seaside Games to hear my friend Nancy play with the Scottish Fiddlers. Completely enjoyable.

This morning when the man who loves me and I awoke, I could hear my friend, Nancy, and my mom chatting on the patio. A sort of music that was, too.

Phone Calls, Ph.D.s, Pelicans, and Parking Lots

I did the Mother's Day thing. Spoke to my daughters. Spoke to my mother. Soaked up that long distance love. Sent it buzzing through cell phone towers and phone lines stringing telephone poles together from state to state--and I got plenty of that buzzing love right back.

I also had my first gathering (well--mini-gathering) at my new house. My friend S. might have the distinction of being the first friend to come over at every new place I've had. There's been champagne or red wine in front of fireplaces, next to the pool, on the patio. We've toasted to newness, friendship, happiness, and yesterday there we were again--S. and her guy and me marveling at boats and birds and water with a tablecloth thrown over a grubby million-year-old folding table. And it was a day for a extra celebrating since S. had just returned from her graduation ceremony in which she was awarded her Ph.D.

We toasted that, too, of course, and ate local berries and avocados, and good cheese, and fresh roasted cauliflower. Afterwards we walked to the sand and marveled at the ocean, and then they drove back to Hollywood.

Later that evening, I rode the Ventura County Airporter shuttle bus from my tiny local airport to LAX to have dinner with a friend in town very briefly on business. The freeways were a troubled infinity of accidents and traffic jams, so the minibus rattled down the coast on the way there. We wove through Malibu, Santa Monica, Venice, and Marina del Rey. Happy families picnicking on the sand, surfers crossing four lanes of coast highway traffic riding the openings like a wave, pelicans dive-bombing their dinner, a happier infinity of blue water, white waves, and sunshine.

Dinner at Encounter was......an encounter. George Jetson meets tired coffee shop meets inflated prices meets harried wait staff. The tuna tartare and the fresh green salad were very good. The calamari less so. Dining with my friend, talking writing, and dogs, and traveling could not have been better. 

I caught the last shuttle back. At shortly before midnight, I found myself trapped in the parking lot of the shuttered and dark Oxnard airport. After calling an 800 number on a parking lot sign, a guy emerged from control tower. "Oh that button," he said. "It's sticky. We really should fix that."

In Honor of the Bride and Groom

I had a little dinner last night because the bride and groom are visiting. It did not look exactly like the picture below because that photo is from a Thanksgiving dinner at my old house. But if you take the dishes and the crystal and, in your imagination, put seven of those place settings on the table in the next picture, you'll get the idea.

The china was given to me by my mother and the crystal used to be my step sister's. After the divorce when I moved from a large kitchen to a tiny one, it was easy to see I wouldn't have space for the fancy things and the every day dishes, so I left the everyday dishes right where they sat. Except for a set of bright red breakfast bowls and coffee mugs, the china is my only dish ware. Even a piece of toast and a glass of orange juice gets served up as if it were paté and champagne. So last night's dinner of chili and salad and warm bread and chicken apple sausage got the usual rather luxe treatment.

One of the couples at dinner has known my daughter since she was a baby, the other for more than a decade. I still find myself somewhat stunned by the idea that my daughter is a grown woman with a husband of her own. That baby, that little girl, the teenager all seem present, too, but just out of reach--as if she were a set of matryoshka dolls forever sealed shut. The past versions of her are there and simultaneously forever gone.

That's the way I feel about my father, too--dead now for decades longer than I knew him. I keep a lot of old family photos around, and I sometimes feel that those dead people I loved are looking out of the pictures at me. As if they, too, are present in a way but inaccessible.

A couple of months ago this photo below of my grandmother (she's seated in the center) surfaced in some kind of historic display from an old department store in Dubuque, Iowa. I suppose she's a few years older here than I am now--but maybe not much. Last night at the dinner table when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I saw a silver-haired lady with big eyes, and I thought of this picture. I never used to think I resembled my grandmother, but now I see her in my mirror as if she's been inside me all along, waiting to come out.

Thank You, Everyone.......

I am grateful for my friends--those in the my real word and those from cyberspace.

I've been discouraged. Dragged down by the undertow of 60-some pages of fictitious forensic accounting.

Thank you for the dinner and conversation. For the phone calls. For the lunch. For sweeping me off to a margarita as big as my head. For your blog comments. For your understanding and patience and love. For holding me--literally or figuratively, all through the night.

It's you I owe--not Mr. Ex.

Blah, blah, blah

I had my friend Suzanne over for dinner last night. We talked about many things. Politics and the upcoming election. Her job. How the plans for building her house on a lake in Montana are on hold. The menu for the Thanksgiving dinner we are planning to cook together.

And we talked about my divorce. Again.

Let's talk about something else.


I'm over at   again today.


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