Happy National Reading Month

This photograph of me at seven reading to my new little sister Mary Ellen is one of my favorites. I have always been a reader and recently I was talking with a friend about how that came to be. 

As a kid, my parents definitely read to me. My dad also used to make up stories about a beloved character named Rocky Raccoon. I made frequent trips to the library and the bookmobile. Our main library branch had an art collection available to check out and I kept renewing an ornately-framed Renoir for my bedroom. I loved Junior Great Books and kept lists of my summer reading (I still keep annual lists of what I've read each year). I used to read straight through books, finish one and pick up another without a pause. I remember my mother would call from the kitchen to come set the table for dinner and I would beg to finish a chapter or just one more page. Once at the dinner table, we were frequently sent to the set of encyclopedias to look up answers to questions. I knew how much my dad loved his book club, which he was in for over 20 years. My mom read too and books were just part of our family routine.

When I had the chicken pox, I read the entire Chronicles of Narnia seven book box set. I went through a phase of Sweet Valley High, Choose Your Own Adventure, Nancy Drew, Agatha Christie, Louis L'Amour and Victoria Holt; and later Dickens, Hemingway and Anais Nin. I read the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip in the Sunday Paper. I flipped through my parents' New Yorker Magazine to read the cartoons. My Aunt Pam gave me A Wrinkle in Time at the right moment and my Uncle Jim gave me Robert Frost's book of poetry You Come Too, to coincide with an art show which included his diptych with the poem "Fire and Ice." I spent weeks happily organizing all our books in the basement with the intent of opening a neighborhood lending library, but I really just wanted to play librarian. When my older brother entered St. Thomas as a freshman, he game me a copy of the Lifetime Reading Plan they gave him, full of recommendations and a page of blank lines to add your personal list. I still have mine.

As an adult, I treasure my books, especially those inscribed by friends and family. I collect ABC books and consider books the best way to decorate a room. At one point in my twenties, I had to ban myself from buying new books and allowed myself only to purchase used books (all the better to sell and trade for new ones!) And then in my thirties, I rediscovered the library and now borrow piles and piles for me and my children.

Recently I read the two most important factors in raising a reader - even more than reading to them regularly - is providing a book-rich environment and having parents model reading for pleasure. Check. Check. And looking back, that is what my parents gave me. Thank you, Mom and Dad!

Here is my son Xavier at age two "reading" to his baby sister:

For Julie

This is my dear friend Julie, me and our husbands on my wedding day. It is just one happy moment in our long friendship. This past weekend, I hosted a Blessingway for her as she prepares to welcome her daughter in March. I have been thinking about all the big life stuff (and all the beautiful little life stuff) that we have shared over the past thirteen years since we met. I love a good reason to make a list.

For Julie

I’m so glad Chris set us up to be friends.

At the time, I’d recently worked at Le Pichet while you were working at Campagne.

You invited me to a wine and cheese party at your apartment in Capital Hill.

After our waitressing shifts, we used to meet for drinks at the Edgewater, the Palace Kitchen or numerous other bars around town.

You hosted tea ceremonies in your backyard in Ravenna.

We went on our First Annual Girls Camping Extravaganza,

then the Second Annual Girls Camping Extravaganza.

You and Chris helped move me in and out of countless apartments.

I brought all my boyfriends to dinner with you both so you could screen them.

We celebrated my 30^th Birthday at Nells.

You took me to the Folk Life Festival and I took you to hear Elgar’s Cello Concerto.

Christian made scratch eggnog at your Christmas Party in Ravenna and we made a snowman from the trucked-in snow.

We celebrated when you bought your house and have watched countless sunsets from your deck.

You sent me off and celebrated my return from Alaska.

I sent you off and celebrated your return from Nicaragua.

You sent me off and celebrated my return from Australia.

I sent you off and celebrated your return from Africa.

You gave me your home for several months while you were off on adventures.

Each year we celebrated me quitting a job and finding a new one.

You came up to Canada to play with Christian and I for our weekend “Rockin’ the ‘Couv”

We celebrated your wedding on Orcas Island and I read a poem at your reception, an obscure one I rather regret now.

We started a women's social and philanthropy group over lunch at Place Pigalle.

You sent me off and celebrated my return from Antarctica, so many times.

Chris took over my job on the ship and I sent you off and celebrated your return from Antarctica.

We partied in Walla Walla, skied at Mt. Rainier, swam in cold mountain lakes.

We were sitting at the bar at Machiavelli when I told you I was engaged.

Then we celebrated in high style as couples at El Gaucho.

We spent New Year’s Day at your house after Christian and I got married at the Courthouse.

Chris officiated at our second wedding in Stanley Park and you gave the best toast.

You were the one I called, crying, when I had a miscarriage.

You were the one I called to tell you I was pregnant again.

We all went to Hawaii to swim with seahorses.

You hosted my baby shower at your home.

When Xavier was born, you were the first friend to visit us in Vancouver when he was six weeks old – we went hiking, of course.

We celebrated when we bought our house and moved back to Seattle.

We celebrated your acceptance and then graduation from nursing school, then your acceptance and later graduation from grad school.

We donned animal masks for your magical candlelit  woodland masquerade party.

We celebrated you getting all the dream jobs you wanted, each after each.

We surprised Chris on his 40^th birthday on San Juan Island, jumping up from behind the kitchen counter – and a baby goat showed up to make the party perfect.

You joined us on Lopez Island and we paddelboarded in Watmough Bay.

You threw me a beautiful blessing way when I was pregnant with my daughter and gave me a spiral shell and lightning glass for strength.

You met Georgia at the hospital when she was two days old and still unnamed.

I always felt like I’d been camping with Chris, but we finally did on San Juan Island and hung out with orcas.

You've been such a fun and involved auntie to my children.

After years of not planning on having kids, we celebrated in our back yard when you told me you were pregnant.

You sent me the sonogram of your baby and I sent you poems about pregnancy.

We all gathered again in Hawaii, this time for your babymoon.

I hosted your Blessingway as we prepare to welcome Baby Fern.

Oh, all the champagne we’ve drunk over the years! All the celebrations and events and birthdays and dinner parties and walks and phone calls and goat cheese and hikes and picnics in Lincoln Park.

What wonderful things next, dear friend?

Lanikai

An unexpected opportunity came our way before the new year: a family relocating to Seattle requested our home on Airbnb for two months while they looked for a house to buy. Did we want to rent our house for two of the rainiest months of the year? Absolutely. Where did we want to go? We had fun brainstorming options (New Zealand? Mexico? Spain?) before opting for Hawaii where my husband could work early hours and spend the afternoon in the sunshine, my best friend from college lives close by, grandmothers could easily visit, and we could walk barefoot to one of the most beautiful beaches in the world: Lanikai.

After taking two inspiring poetry classes at Hugo House back in autumn, I traveled with two notebooks filled with writing prompts I wanted to explore. I didn't fill all the notebooks, but I did come home with a few poems. Here are two to share a glimpse of our time on the island.

Kailua

~For Frank O’Hara

This is about as far

from your Manhattan as it gets,

But we-can-do-this-

we-can-do-that here too

you know.

We’ll jump out of bed and share

halved papaya with lime on the lanai

and I’ll show you my palm trees.

I’ll tuck a plumeria blossom behind

your ear - you will look

so jaunty. Don’t worry

I’m sure we can find Galoises

somewhere on this island

maybe the Kalapawai Market

though I haven’t smoked in years.

I’ll take you to the Bishop Museum

to see the kapa weavings

and you can talk shop with the curators.

If you want a ukulele I know

just where we can find one.

I’d like to see you in an Aloha shirt,

but I won’t insist.

For lunch a poke sampler

from some counter and we

definitely need to grab fresh malasadas

and more coffee at Agnes’s for dessert.

Later a walk on Lanikai Beach

and a swim. I will introduce you to

some surfer boys and we

can all take naps in the shade

Isn’t this so much better

than Fire Island?

You can escape the crowds here,

let all those painters and

heiresses miss you

just one more day.

An evening paddle -  

have you seen whales before,

dolphins? They will blow

your mind. Then we can drink daiquiris,

(real ones not the syrupy kind) at Buzz’s

and have a few pupus. A

walk back to the house to watch

the moonrise while we

grill Opah and talk-story. You

can read us some new poems and

charm us all. Oh Frank!

You’ll love it.

Arcadia

I had always imagined it as an elegant

country house in Cornwall or Galicia

with a library, extensive gardens and a

long dining table to seat many friends.

But now I think surely it is a small beach house

just like this with plastic buckets, shovels and balls

strewn about the yard, sea kayak and beach

cruisers leaning against the fence, colorful

bathing suits drying on the line. Our children’s

small tanned bodies sleep beneath

ceiling fans after a day in the bright air

running in and out of the ocean. Just down 

the loop, waters a hue of turquoise I can never

fully believe lap sand the exact texture of

brown sugar. Two picturesque islands wait, close 

enough to reach in a fifteen minute paddle. 

Plumeria, jasmine and red hibiscus bloom 

in the garden and we treasure the palm trees. 

Neighbors drop by with avocados, strangers smile,

old friends visit. More than content, we live here

far from the noise of cities. You and I sit beneath

a canopy of stars sipping cold glasses of wine.

We breathe together, happy knowing all this

will be here tomorrow when we wake 

and weeks before we have to leave.

To the New Year

To the New Year

With what stillness at last

you appear in the valley

your first sunlight reaching down

to touch the tips of a few

high leaves that do not stir

as though they had not noticed

and did not know you at all

then the voice of a dove calls

from far away in itself

to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you

here and now whether or not

anyone hears it this is

where we have come with our age

our knowledge such as it is

and our hopes such as they are

invisible before us

untouched and still possible

~ W.S. Merwin

For the Winter Solstice, Stillness and a Great Shout of Joy

Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born. 

Even with the summer
so far off
I feel it grown in me
now and ready
to arrive in the world. 

All those years
listening to those
who had
nothing to say. 

All those years
forgetting
how everything
has its own voice
to make
itself heard. 

All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening.

And the slow 
difficulty 
of remembering 
how everything 
is born from 
an opposite 
and miraculous 
otherness. 

Silence and winter 
have led me to that 
otherness. 
So let this winter 
of listening 
be enough 
for the new life 

I must call my own. 

~David Whyte, from "The Winter of Listening"

Siblings

On this day 39 years ago, my brother Brian was born full term, held briefly by our parents and then died a few hours later due to complications likely caused by human error at the hospital. I was two and do not remember, yet I must have been attuned to the grief in our home. My older brother Patrick, age six at the time, remembers our father taking him to McKennan Park to attempt to explain how the little baby we were all so excited to meet had gone to heaven.

Now that I have two healthy children of my own after losing one baby in an early miscarriage, it leaves me breathless to imagine the pain my parents went through - still go through - grieving the sudden loss of this child. I think about Brian and try to imagine what he would have looked like now as an adult, what passions and interests he might have had, what interesting things he might have done with his life.

I recently saw this family portrait honoring children lost to miscarriage, as part of a campaign to promote October as SIDS, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Month. I didn't know this organization existed until a few weeks ago. Many of my friends and family have had miscarriages, but it is something most people don't talk about or have a space where they can talk about it. I wish I'd know about this organization when I had my miscarriage.

A few weeks ago, the three siblings I grew up with all came to visit along with our mother. We four kids try to see each other individually a few times a year but rarely are we all together at the same time, being dispersed around the country. I wish I could just run over to dinner at my sister's, have a beer with my older brother, go to the theater with my younger brother, laugh with their spouses, play with their kids all a lot more often. Not every family gets along and we're lucky to actually like and admire each other.

Photographer Nicholos Nixon took Forty Portraits in Forty Years of his wife and her three sisters. I love to imagine my siblings and I in a project like this, with Brian in the photographs with us.

Gloria

Sunday night I heard Gloria Steinem in conversation with Cheryl Strayed at a sold-out Benaroya Hall benefit for Hedgebrook, a women's writing retreat center on Whidby Island (the only place of its kind in the world and where I dream of someday having a residency in one of their cozy cottages). Gloria is on tour for her new book My Life on the Road, part of which she wrote at Hedgebrook. My friend Julie accompanied me, along with her daughter Fern still in utero. Tiny baby Fern surely felt the high energy, intensity and camaraderie in the beautiful symphony hall. Her mom and I were riveted and emotional throughout the evening.

A few of Gloria's great quotes from the evening:

Travel is the reason I have hope.

Telling our story is the most revolutionary act.

Your story is your credibility.

All social change comes from talking circles.

Change grows up like a tree, not from the top down.

Don't listen to me, listen to yourselves. 

Women grow more radical with age whereas men tend to grow more conservative with age.

Just as women deserve to be whole people, so do men. 

The biggest obstacle to Equal Rights Amendment is that people think we already have it.

I was shocked and deeply mortified to realize I was one of these people who assumed the Equal Rights Amendment had long ago been ratified - but no. It needs to be ratified state-by-state and 15 states have yet to do so. It is beyond appalling that this legislation from 1923 has not been passed, despite being introduced in every Congress since 1982.

There is so much work yet to be done, and all of us in the crowd were electrified and inspired. Gloria sent us all off into the night, telling us to greet a few people in the crowd we didn't know, as we might find a new friend, a new job, a new lover, a new community. Indeed, this is community building from the ground up. Thank you, Gloria for leading the charge.