washwords

Before noon today, I received surprise news concealed in a routine email – an acquaintance is engaged … and expecting!

I shouldn’t have been surprised. It capped an already happy morning. I came in early and was done what I thought would take all morning before nine, and then found a meeting canceled – happy day indeed, which, in turn, laced and tied a wonderful weekend. More than happy, it was a weekend, no a time, of love.

Saturday morning ML and I brunched with an old friend. I was blessed to grow up with “family friends” – I was probably 20 or so before I realized not everyone had this. But we did. And this friend – J – almost exactly a year younger than me has been my friend pretty literally from (her) birth. We shared a crib and a childhood at the therapeutic camp our parents ran that integrated “typical” kids and those with emotional disturbances or developmental disabilities (yessss, it was the 70s), holidays and playgrounds.  She and her family are more than friend, sometimes more than family. We spent weekends in a multi-family cabin in the Adirondacks, touring Williamsburg one year, at their community pool, after they moved to Virginia, a lifetime away then, when I was a kid.

Her dad’s calm, steady, soothing eulogy is one of the few concrete moments I can recall from my dad’s funeral when I was twelve, their support instrumental beyond measure in helping us all move beyond that day and breathe again.

J and I are both “sensitive” people, something that as anyone who has Read more »

Snark V Lark returns today, form of

Grace in small things

Snark: My Verizon episode:
i have been trying for week to pay my Verizon internet and Fios (that’s Tee Vee for those unititiated) bill. It has not been easy (harken back to my long-fought battle circa 2005 to cancel a Verizon account never installed for which I was billed $29.99, plus late fees every month.)

This time around, I ordered TV and internet when I moved in. I should have known there was trouble from the start. Trying to track down my (it should go without saying) late installation, no one seemed Read more »

I’ve never really been a girly girl. God knows I’m no tomboy (that would imply being sporty, which I am not) but ribbons, make-up, heels, shopping? eh.

Likewise for jewelry. It’s not that I don’t spoil myself or like the finer things but… spas and five-star hotels are more my weakness than flashy fashions or gems.

Usually.

When I was married, I came to love the sparkly diamond. I missed it when it was gone. But it, much like I probably was to my then inlaws, was a curiousity. I never fully understood or recognized it. It wasn’t fully me. People would tell me it was big or it was a particular cut and I would stare back, “mmm?” I had no words, no expertise in this arena.

pink by Peter on flickr

So it was a surprise that this time around, I’ve been dreaming diamonds. Pink diamonds. Pink like the color, not of the sunset but of the glassy sea in the twilight of the shore. I didn’t even know such a thing existed (till, blush, I looked it up and found it). I’ve dreamed the platinum antique setting – delicate, wiry, dreamed the bliss of it on my finger and the serenity of real, profound joy.

There is some sadness in joy, my wise friend “A” told me on that other long-ago wedding day. And behind this glassy pink sea is sorrow, too. I am sorry that I didn’t know how to love like this before, sorry that I didn’t know that than, or know at least enough to say I wasn’t ready. I am sad that gold and big didn’t ever fit me right, though I wanted desparately to meld with that ring.

I mourn the lives we didn’t create together, the one that flickered in shared laughs, late-night talks and true, real friendship. And I hope, deep in the core of my being that you are finding your own glassy pink sea and that it is smooth and sparkly and sacred. I hope it suits you and brings you the surprising joy my dreams of pink diamond oceans have brought me. Mine is a joy of lessons learned, rock-solid friendships, love hard found and yet as comfortable as that warm sea, as ancient and as deep.

Thank you.