Friends

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...

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...

The first friend I ever had, someone who came into my life when I was just three years old, sent me these two photos taken on our first day of kindergarten. I cannot get enough of the Donnie and Marie? Luke and Leia? lunch box I am carrying, or the crazy 70’s get ups, or her blond pigtails, and can you believe the adorable red flower I am holding for...

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

I brought 16 balls of pizza dough, a big jar of my homemade New York-style sauce, and a jar of my spicy caramelized onion and hot cherry pepper mix to a friend’s house Sunday afternoon. 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...

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 this: 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...

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...

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...

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.