The Road Back To Loved Ones
What I wore to my friend Carrie's wedding. No, I wasn't disrespecting her, it was a casual event. And don't worry, I had lipstick on to match the shoes and my eyeliner was impeccable.
House Of Lee is a Chinese restaurant that I love in San Rafael. My friend Cam (who's Chinese) and I used to eat here often when we worked together and then later to catch up with each others lives. I miss Chinese food. There are over three Chinese restaurants here in town and none of them can begin to live up to the standard I am used to from living in the Bay Area, so I never eat it here.
This is a bee on my friend Amy's lavender in her lovely garden. Amy and her husband Kiko are our friends who had a tree fall on their car on the way home from Amy's (step?)dad's memorial. Kiko was impaled by a branch that entered his chest and pushed through two feet of his torso...Amy broke her neck and a vertebrae...their children were unscratched! We are so deeply grateful that it wasn't their time to go and that we got to see them again because we love them so very much.
Taken while writing my last post which I wrote up in the woods at my friend Chelsea's house. Her children and Max have always known each other. I feel like their aunt. I adore them and it was wonderful hanging out with my lovely old friend for gossips and chats and food and we got to escape the kids to go see Julie and Julia which we very much enjoyed.
I have been traveling up and down I-5 since I was 8 years old when my parents moved us from Richmond to Ashland Oregon. This road was connective, long, hot, and crammed with landmarks and memories over the years that we drove up and down between California and Oregon. Now Max is getting to know it as I do. It is the road that brings us back to old loved friends and then back home again to Pippa and Penny.
Highlights and discoveries from our trip:
Highlights and discoveries from our trip:
- There is never enough time to spend with the people you love.
- We saw the scars that Kiko got from the surgery that kept him alive: the cut where they removed part of his lung, the hole where the branch plunged down through his body, the crazy long cut down his center.
- War song of the wild that children bellow as they rush down dusty hillsides to muddy holes where dogs swim in dirty bliss. Sword fights on the banks and echoes across the tiny microcosm of joy and spontaneous laughter followed by the kind of deep reflections on life that only children can have.
- Watching movies with Chelsea. Chelsea letting me watch "Lost In Austen" twice without making fun of me!
- Village bakery treats...we have nothing that compares to it here in McMinnville. Their hand is light, the confections are like breathless sugary pillows of food lust that come to you in dreams that you know can never be real: but they are real. All hail the glory that is the Bikvie!
- The back steps of Sid and Dennis' house where I devoured an excellent book (that I've devoured before) with beer, with hot milky tea, with shade, with the eager eye of a budding fiction author who is fresh from a prison of dark words who is looking for a sturdy foothold on the narrative path. Bliss to sit and read at a house filled with love and food and booze and open minds and intelligence. A place to feel belonging. A place to let the shades down and sleep tight.
- Talking with Dennis' about the hotness of women in general and in specific because I can never find anything to say about cars. Agreeing that Sienna Miller isn't hideous even though she's now gone out with two different married men: an abomination to all women. (This discussion sparked by taking Max and Joschka to see "GI Joe"...lots of explosions, Sienna in tight black leather, and military might...total boy overload!)
- The hospitality of all our friends being exquisite.
Comments (1)
I just really wanted to leave myself a comment here because this post seems so sad...yes, I know, posts don't have feelings. Anyway- I find I'm worried about all trees along the highway now.
Posted by Angelina | August 11, 2009 8:20 AM
Posted on August 11, 2009 08:20