A cold Sunday afternoon with friends. We caught some serious air on the jumps, Jack. We sledded until dark, and then fifty percent of our family fell asleep in the car on the way home.

I text her a photo: pictures of her life hang from clothespins on my kitchen wall.

“It cracks me up that you took pics of all of the messy places,” she texts.

“Those are all of the beautiful places,” I text back.

And it’s true. Every corner of her home held beauty. All things burst green with the late northern spring in the Oran Valley. We stayed at her place even though she was away, but her family memb[…]

Bruce gathered eggs from the hens’ favorite corner of the barn (why they don’t lay in their coop, no one understands, but chickens are complicated people) and served them up for our Saturday m[…]

And then there were those chickens. I couldn’t stop myself–I took about 900 pictures of chickens that weekend. Why? I have no idea, but who wouldn’t take pictures of giant pet birds that w[…]

When we were away from the house doing family things, attending the events for which we’d made the trip north in the first place, we talked about what Tilly, Monty, Jag and the chickens might be[…]

Weeks later, I stand in the kitchen while the tulsi steeps. I reach out and touch each picture and remember sweet birdsong, the squeak of trampoline springs, the crack of a bonfire, the quiet of a[…]

The tender friendships one gives up, on parting, leave their bite on the heart, but also a curious feeling of a treasure somewhere buried. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Southern Mail, 1929, translated from French by Curtis Cate

The truest, most loving friends in the world helped us pack our truck and clean our house on a Friday night. Kids raced around, got underfoot and played hot potato. Crazy Phil discovered some 20 year-old homemade pickles in my basement. Despite the corroded lids, despite the fact that the pickles were floating around in a murky, green water filled with unidentifiable objects of plant origin, he ate them. Then he passed them around. Video of that disgusting event here. There was pizza and a little drinking and my girlfriends washed my bathrooms, packed my food, washed my fridges, and slipped care packages of new toys and goodies into the truck for us to discover on our arrival. Their acts of kindness that night filled my heart to overflowing.

Even more blessings awaited us at our new home in Virginia. Our new housemates had vanilla candles burning in every impeccably clean room, more dear and devoted friends helped us unload what we had loaded just hours before, and we shared a meal of very good Chinese food in our dining room to celebrate this new beginning. The next morning, running on adrenaline, I dug into the work of creating a home, but had to pause to satisfy a mysterious craving for fresh salsa. And as expected, eventually the migraine came, forcing me to bed and to rest. But we’re here, and we’re loved, and will forever be indebted to our dear ones.

A coffeecake for new homeowners. I’ll never be able to wrap presents in plastic bows and bright paper again.

Pizza for 16 was quite a project. I slid pizza on and off of the hot stone for about two and a half hours, red-faced, hair piled high on my head and sweat trickling behind my apron. Lovely image, I know. I sipped on a glass of old vine Zin and chatted with lady friends while working. Children popped in and out of the sweltering kitchen to place their pizza orders and check on status. My pizza was last to come out of the oven. It was delish, if I may say so myself.

I have tons of soft, sweet clover growing all over my backyard and I and refuse to cut it short or spray it with herbicides. I just can’t do it. I often sit on a bar stool in my kitchen and watch the bunnies and birds hang out. The bunnies chow on the flowers and the birds look for worms near my de facto/illicit compost pile.

On warm spring evenings, our neighbor carries his huge bass across the driveway and plants it in the front yard. His little ones often follow him over. We grab the sidewalk chalk and whatever instruments are handy and then we jam. People dance, people draw, people come out and stare.

Whatever. We are that family, the one with puffs of unruly clover in our lawn and messy drawings on our stoop and a ten year-old playing cajon and a twelve year-old dancing with a box on her head and a crazy mother filming the entire circus on an iPhone.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/o8yUl8mw6oE

Alastair and Jacqui were once “the church sound guy and his worship singer wife” to me, little more than strangers. In fact the first real conversation I had with Alastair went something like […]

Alastair, standing in front of me, a microphone stand between us: “Sing louder.”
Me: “I can’t.”
Alastair: *sigh*

Slowly we became good friends, and now ten years later, Alastair and Jacqui are as close to my heart as family. They invited us over for dinner this past Saturday evening. The meal Alastair cooked[…]

I keep my distance, as usual, camera as buffer and coping mechanism. The cast and crew of my friend’s film are called into the poolhouse in groups to watch behind-the-scenes clips on his laptop. The kids steer chunky white rafts around the water. I am called to bear witness to a ritual that is strange to me, but apparently is a very traditional part of this sort of celebration: the throwing of the directors into the pool. I ask no questions, just lift my lens and get the shots, pleased that I chose photography over movie-making.

A sign hangs at the beginning of the long driveway, but I only catch the first word, Woods, white painted letters on dark pine. We pass fenced pastures dotted with small barns and stands of tall trees, only tufts of orange and brown leaves left at their very tops, their bodies spare streaks below. The horses lift their heads as we pass. We park under an old maple and haul folding chairs, blankets, and backpacks holding flashlights and sweatshirts past the farm house and into the back yard where the gathering has started.

This is Angelina’s farm. She is a former lawyer turned farm-owner. Her long, black hair hangs down her back, almost brushing her thick leather belt. Many of her family are here, and friends, and friends of friends like we are, standing around the food tables or sitting in small groups. Children run through and between the barns, jump into the leaf piles and then pull poking leaf bones from their hair and pockets. The sun hangs low. Thick rays skim the tops of the dry branches piled high in the fire pit. The air smells of horse and hay, salad dressing and vegetable stew, grass and sun-warmed wood.

We eat and laugh. The men pick up guitars and try out a tune or two. The grey mare gives rides to the little ones, circling in the pea gravel until the passing three wheeler spooks her to a standstill. The sky deepens and the barn darkens as the children take turns swinging blindly at a pinata hanging from a cross beam. One final crack of the broom handle and candy pours from the fatal wound onto the cement floor.

The moon is round and orange. The sweet mares whinny for attention and carrots from their fences. We sit near the fire and watch the bats make laps around the horse barn, passing in front of the floodlight with each go-around. We circle little limbs and pull blanket corners down and around body edges. A flashlight hunt for a lost belonging takes place in the giant leaf pile; we hear a shout of victory and know that what was once lost is now found. Sparks fly upward.

Our neighbors have an awesome deck, a welcoming firepit, and a killer fashion sense.

The sound of Noah learning how to hammer nails on our front steps rang through the neighborhood, acting as a beacon to all knights neighbors within hearing range.

A cold Sunday afternoon with friends. We caught some serious air on the jumps, Jack. We sledded until dark, and then fifty percent of our family fell asleep in the car on the way home.

I want to need to remember:

:: a pod of dolphins hunting for their breakfast in the waters across the cove

:: the smell of laundry that has dried in the salty bay air

:: laughing and carrying on with old friends over wine and clams casino

:: a funky haircut that heralds a new season in my life

:: rounded triangles of moonlight reflected off the backs of thousands of waves and minnows

:: linguine con le vongole made by my former chef of a husband using clams dug from the bay with our own big and little hands. so. very. yummy.

:: reading sonnets under blankets after the weather turned much colder

Funniest conversation overheard:

Abbie: “Wow, you can see the whole world from up here!”
Jocelyn: “Can you see Italy???”