Somewhere Along West 53rd

She was innocent like words in a Taylor Swift song, and she wore her heart on her sleeve. Tonight, however, as she was getting ready, she hummed Joni Mitchell with determination. She knew she couldn't uproot her heart, but she could let it blend in with the color of her coat, at least for the night. She bought it because the sales clerk on Park Avenue told her she looked stunning. While tonight's activities didn't exactly call for stunning, she couldn't resist the red.

They took in the museum piece by piece standing together at times, alone at others. She liked the way he paused to study certain paintings; Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie, for instance. He peered through the painting like a marauder as if the connecting squares of color were and underground map to someplace mysterious. Clasping both hands behind his back, he rocked slowly up onto his tip-toes, suggesting that two inches gave him a completely different perspective. She wished she had a photograph of that.

Post-museum meander, he navigated her through Grand Central like a pro and then bought her a hot dog from a street vendor. She asked a stranger to take their picture, the only tangible evidence of the evening. She didn't believe in hanging onto other things like ticket stubs or museum brochures. She was slightly superstitious that way. Although she knew the photograph would end up in the corner of the mirror above her dresser next to an all too common-place post-it reminding her to pick up the dry cleaning, she wanted to remember how they looked that night.

Closer, said the stranger as he peered through the viewfinder.

soaking tubs and pink persimmons.

We narrowed it down to this tub and another the other day. I told my client I might just have to come soak in her tub. Isn't it the loveliest?

Also, I've been freeing up a lot of space on my hard drive by uploading hundreds of images here. My brother-in-law will be so proud. I've tried to source as many as I can, but I've had some of the images on my computer for years.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

"I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I am going to talk about it everywhere I go."

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

{Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.}

note to self

Tonight at dinner my dad was telling a story. He used a phrase I was unfamiliar with. I asked him what he meant by it. Let's look it up, he said, and then he left the dinner table. I thought, what is he doing leaving in the middle of dinner to look something up on the computer? This is very uncharacteristic of him. He returned within half a minute with the dictionary, just like when I was little. He put on his reading glasses and searched the big, text-covered pages. He read the definition aloud, after which we looked up a few other words. Note to self: Use a real dictionary more often in 2011.

Eight Balls and Apple Jacks

I used to spend time in apartment full of boys who had a white board that took up an entire wall in their kitchen. They covered it with numbers--equations to stump each other. Sometimes the same problem would be there for days.

They talked about math for fun. They wore those big black watches with built-in calculators. When we watched basketball they discussed the arc of the 3-pointers. During executive billiards, they'd talk trajectories until the 8 ball slipped into the corner pocket. They epitomized cool nerd.* No matter the activity, any time I crossed the threshold into their apartment, all I could think about was the fact that the pictures in their apartment were hung about 8" too high.

Half of them are now engineers, the other half dentists. Perhaps if I had paid more attention during their number wars (made slightly more bearable by the occasional bowl of Apple Jacks) I might be able to finish my physics homework.

*There's such a thing, you know.

365 days

One year ago today I broke my back. There are some days it's still sore, but mostly, I'm healed. I need to work on my getting my grip back. Strange that breaking your back weakens the muscles in the tips of your fingers. It's hard to clamp the lever down on the gas pump, to hold a frying pan full of suds above the sink while I do the dishes, or to use a can opener, but I'm getting better. Really, this is the last bit of strength I need to gain back.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in a waiting room. They wheeled a girl passed who had just broken her back. Three doctors talked in the hall, quietly, cautiously, seriously. In the next room, I could hear her slow breaths in and out. I wanted to tell her she was going to be OK. That they would take good care of her. That while she may not have the winter she planned, or the spring, or the summer, she's alive and breathing and her legs and arms work. That she was lucky. That before she knows it, she'll be back out on the lake, or swimming in the ocean, or skiing down mountains.

Sometimes 365 days goes by really fast.

Mailboxes, etc.

I have my brother's mission address memorized. Not just the main mission address, but the one to his current apartment, which may or may not change in a few weeks. He lives on Black Nugget Road, which rhymes with a phrase we used to make him say a lot when he was little. He said it really fast and it made us laugh really hard: chicken in a bucket. Black Nugget--like chicken in a bucket--Street, apartment D3. We can hardly go a week without sending him a package. We joke that his companions must think we're crazy--that we miss him too much. One week he got three separate packages, one from my mom, one from me and one from my sister. With better communication, we could have saved on postage, but how fun would it be to come back after a long day walking in the city to find packages from home on your doorstep? (I guess you can add the mailman to the list of people who think we're crazy. And his neighbors.)

Luckily this week my mom and sister and I found out that we each had something to send, so we're using the same box. (Never mind it was just Christmas and he got at least four packages, plus a scripture a day from my mom.)

Here's the thing: we do miss him terribly, but there's no where else we'd rather he be. I listened to my mom tell a friend last night that perhaps the reason we're having a hard time without him is because it took him so long to get here. For so long it was just my sister and me. We wanted a little brother or sister so badly; I practically came out praying for a sibling. And, after nine years, we got one, in the form of this happy baby boy who is now 19 and on a mission and not a day goes by that we don't miss him. Whether he misses us back, we're not sure. And how long this package craze will keep up, I'm not sure. But right now we're going through bubble wrap like nobody's business.

where palm trees sway

Santa knew exactly what I wanted for Christmas: a ticket to somewhere warm with killer sunsets. The palm trees were a bonus. When I heard my family was back home shoveling snow while I was running along the beach in the mornings, I felt extra spoiled.

Thanks, Santa.

Christmas Eve/Day in pictures

It's not hard to tell who the star was this year at our house.
Christmas with a baby around was pure magic.