winter – Don't Gel Too Soon

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE – LOVING THE JERSEY SHORE — AND A BIRTHDAY

We went to Long Beach Island, off the Jersey shore, a few weeks ago. I’ve been there often but never before May — it was still winterish there, hardly anything open and just lovely. We came with friends for my husband’s birthday — four adults and four little kids. It’s so much fun to be there with little people searching the beach for shells in their parkas and climbing all over the furniture. We took them to Barnegat Light — a 150 year old lighthouse I’ve loved since I was a kid.

It was a 20 minute walk in very cold weather, everyone excited about seeing a real live lighthouse. Somehow anything, no matter how many times you’ve seen it, looks brand new when you see it with small children. When it’s new to them, it becomes new to you too.

It was, according to my husband, a perfect birthday. Much of the credit for that goes to the friends who came with us, who wrote and performed a song for him as a gift because "you have too much stuff already" and, in so many ways have taken us into their lives with love. I just posted a meditation on being a ‘fake grandmother" on the SV Moms "over 50" blog, where I’m a new contributor. It’s such a peculiar privilege – hanging out with preschoolers in that easy way that can only happen with frequent contact.

Continue reading TO THE LIGHTHOUSE – LOVING THE JERSEY SHORE — AND A BIRTHDAY

SNOW — TOTO WE AREN’T IN LA ANY MORE!

Last week I took you to see this tree outside my office. It was just lovely. Then I went to LA and, as this storm was preparing to arrive, worked outside by the pool all afternoon. Never have I been so aware of the good side of the left coast – where I lived so unhappily but have come to appreciate.

Back home tonight, which is Wednesday, it looks like this. I seem to be on a real tear about seasons and changes. I left a fiery display of falling leaves and returned just in time to welcome the magical silence that is my favorite part of an all-day snowfall.

I’m posting this on Friday, just before Shabbat. Ending the week.
Thanking God. Wishing I knew an angel named Earl. Remembering snowy
night time walks down Broadway with my kids. And snow days. And ski
lifts.

And back again to that old circle thing. There isn’t much in life that doesn’t come in cycles, and if you observe the Sabbath, it begins at 4:30 in the depth of winter and 9:30 at the height of summer. Jewish holidays too are built around harvest and planting, the moon and its cycles; it’s far more connected to the earth and its processes than I ever understood until we began living this observant life. I wonder sometimes if, given my pleasure in the cycles and their passage, that pleasure isn’t yet another reason we ended up here.

Shabbat Shalom.