I’m on my weekly trip on Amtrak from Penn Station in NYC to Providence. It’s always more fun when my fabulous husband is with me, but alas this week he is off to San Diego for a conference. I’ve had the great joy these past few years of enjoying the company and the love of a wonderful guy. When we travel together we play cards, read to each other and read separately, even enjoy eating and drinking similar things. On Amtrak that’s Dunkin Donuts dark roast and bagels that we complain about for being under toasted. Alone like today, I always work until New Haven and then put on the Slate Culture Gabfest podcast and listen while I knit. It’s a quiet few hours with just me and my thoughts.
My brain and heart have been working overtime these few weeks. I finally have all the photo albums from my 25 years of marriage and family life, and have begun the heartbreaking and laborious process of scanning them and sending them to the cloud, wherever that is. Yes, many of these make me smile. I’ve had fun texting pictures to cousins and friends when they appear, holding Sam or Grace or celebrating some holiday. But seeing my beautiful Grace—her steady gaze, her sly smile, her joy—slays me. As do the pictures of my parents, vibrant and alive,doting on my kids and on me. The pictures of the year and a half when it was just Sam and me reminded me of the wonderful family I have and all the people I can still call friends. They reminded me too of how the bond was formed between him and me in those days. So many pictures of us asleep together, traveling together, laughing together. I’ve been struck by how the pictures taken in Grace’s first year fill me with an unexpected sadness. Here is my young family, having fun and celebrating together. I peer at those faces, at my own happy face, at the draft Victorian we called home. I was so happy in that life then, and it shows. Yet much of it was an illusion; this has been a difficult part of moving on. I’m only in 1997 still—so many pictures, so many years—and I know there are more unexpected feelings to come as I turn these dry discolored pages and send my loved ones and my past to that cloud.
But today I turn my attention to my present. This slouchy hat I’m knitting with sock yarn. This book I’m reading to blurb. The student papers to read and comment on. The manuscripts to consider for Gracie Belle Books (and oh! What a successful launch for NOW YOU SEE THE SKY by Catharine Murray, our debut book!). My own novel and the research that it requires (I’m still that girl who loves a library). The books I’m reading and almost finished—the new Tana French and Jane Gardham’s FLIGHT OF THE MAIDENS—and wondering which to read next. Thanksgiving planning: menus, shopping lists, writing names on the seashells I collected on Sanibel Island. Tonight’s dinner for Annabelle and me: roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, green veggie. I’ll roast the carcass overnight with leeks and carrots and wake to a rich stock for tomorrow’s tortellini soup (Michael taught me this trick for stock, and the recipe is in KITCHEN YARNS: NOTES ON LOVE, LIFE, AND FOOD, my new book coming December 5).
Almost at New Haven. Time to pick up my needles. I hope you are knitting something lovely and reading something you can’t put down. I hope you can look forward to thanksgiving with love and joy. I hope that if you are or were lonely, devalued, emotionally mistreated, ignored or betrayed, you can find the strength to believe in yourself, to look back with some happiness at what was good. I hope you find the love of a good person, who adores you and treasures you; and that you find the great pleasure of doing the same. Oh! This life can be hard! But remind yourself how absolutely wonderful it can be too. For that, I’m grateful.
My brain and heart have been working overtime these few weeks. I finally have all the photo albums from my 25 years of marriage and family life, and have begun the heartbreaking and laborious process of scanning them and sending them to the cloud, wherever that is. Yes, many of these make me smile. I’ve had fun texting pictures to cousins and friends when they appear, holding Sam or Grace or celebrating some holiday. But seeing my beautiful Grace—her steady gaze, her sly smile, her joy—slays me. As do the pictures of my parents, vibrant and alive,doting on my kids and on me. The pictures of the year and a half when it was just Sam and me reminded me of the wonderful family I have and all the people I can still call friends. They reminded me too of how the bond was formed between him and me in those days. So many pictures of us asleep together, traveling together, laughing together. I’ve been struck by how the pictures taken in Grace’s first year fill me with an unexpected sadness. Here is my young family, having fun and celebrating together. I peer at those faces, at my own happy face, at the draft Victorian we called home. I was so happy in that life then, and it shows. Yet much of it was an illusion; this has been a difficult part of moving on. I’m only in 1997 still—so many pictures, so many years—and I know there are more unexpected feelings to come as I turn these dry discolored pages and send my loved ones and my past to that cloud.
But today I turn my attention to my present. This slouchy hat I’m knitting with sock yarn. This book I’m reading to blurb. The student papers to read and comment on. The manuscripts to consider for Gracie Belle Books (and oh! What a successful launch for NOW YOU SEE THE SKY by Catharine Murray, our debut book!). My own novel and the research that it requires (I’m still that girl who loves a library). The books I’m reading and almost finished—the new Tana French and Jane Gardham’s FLIGHT OF THE MAIDENS—and wondering which to read next. Thanksgiving planning: menus, shopping lists, writing names on the seashells I collected on Sanibel Island. Tonight’s dinner for Annabelle and me: roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, green veggie. I’ll roast the carcass overnight with leeks and carrots and wake to a rich stock for tomorrow’s tortellini soup (Michael taught me this trick for stock, and the recipe is in KITCHEN YARNS: NOTES ON LOVE, LIFE, AND FOOD, my new book coming December 5).
Almost at New Haven. Time to pick up my needles. I hope you are knitting something lovely and reading something you can’t put down. I hope you can look forward to thanksgiving with love and joy. I hope that if you are or were lonely, devalued, emotionally mistreated, ignored or betrayed, you can find the strength to believe in yourself, to look back with some happiness at what was good. I hope you find the love of a good person, who adores you and treasures you; and that you find the great pleasure of doing the same. Oh! This life can be hard! But remind yourself how absolutely wonderful it can be too. For that, I’m grateful.
