writing

You and I are always juggling facts, feelings, options out there, figuring out how to take on each day, each new situation, trying not to make mistakes, making them anyway. Life, in a nutshell. How we act is one thing, but explaining ourselves to others is quite another. You don't blurt out feelings and convictions to those you care about without paying attention to the impact your words may have. Those who feel free to blurt out their views on everything suffer the consequences. My mother was a fine example of this. Everyone was scared of her. Well, maybe not Ed who is rather indifferent to the words of others. 

But then, in 2005 I began writing Ocean.  I don't owe anyone a complete recounting of my day and yet, at the core of my writing here is my belief that what I do write must be honest. Now, we know that "honest" is a broad term that means many things. My honest may not be your honest. The way I see a truth is of course born of my experiences and feelings, and mental faculties. Still, anyone who knows me will tell you that there is indeed a basic honesty about the stories that appear here.

How did I manage this without hurting, indeed shattering the feelings of others? There may be some skill in presenting reality kindly, but mostly I've just been lucky not to live through much personal drama in the last decades -- the decades of writing Ocean. There was my divorce and that was in fact dramatic in the way most divorces are, but my ex and I have remained friends and so the recounting of my days even immediately after the separation and then divorce could remain true to the facts as I saw them then. Obviously I did not and would not spell out all that happened, but I was able to navigate that period in my posts, without wrecking things along the way. 

It's not that my entire life has been without drama. I think I had plenty of happenings when I was a child, an adolescent, and then a full grown adult. Perhaps the most dramatic years were those just before I began writing daily here.  One reason why I did not provide a part 2 to Like a Swallow (people have asked) is because I don't think I have the ability to write about those years without making a whole bunch of people unhappy. Why would I ever want to do that! Some dramas are best left behind.

I'm thinking about this because the day is hot as can be, Millie and I braved our very early meal outside on the porch...

... and then I took her to doggie daycare, returning home to work like mad to get things watered and planted in Steffi's Garden. 

And then I had lunch with friends who belonged to those years of such great tumult for me. This chaos was not their fault, perhaps it was nobody's fault, but they, along with a group of very talented musicians, were certainly in my life during those years. I haven't seen the two of them in a very long time, but they are in town and today we had lunch. Then coffee.

Old friends, especially those who drifted with you from one crisis to the next, have a way of hanging on to the details of your life. From there, it was easy to expand on where our lives have taken us today. We will have to meet again to continue that conversation before they return to their home in Mexico.

 

I pick up Snowdrop from her Shakespeare program, we go home, she plays for a minute, we read.

And the day doesn't stop there. We pick up Millie, I drop Snowdrop at home, I pick up Thai food and I head for Steffi's House, where Ed is waiting for me, along with three of his friends from way back when. We are all, um, older. In fact, in this setting I may well be the youngest. We get together in this small group maybe once a year -- two of them live in Washington, the state. And yet, once more, it is like a gathering of people who really know each other well (I'm perhaps the outlier here, as I've known them for only about 15 years -- that's nothing for people our age!). One was Ed's college roommate. Imagine that! 

A day of bringing in the past to catch up with the present. Not that I can get Ed to reflect on any of it. And that's okay. I have plenty of space in my head to process all this on my own. And to sometimes write about it here.

with so much love...