Blogaversary

photographer: Heather McHugh

Hey, it's June 30th!

I'm sitting in the Victoria Airport, waiting for a flight to Seattle and then onward to Los Angeles and home. I have been reflecting about my week here -- how enormous, how fantastic, how very restful it was. I still can hardly believe that I had this opportunity -- that it was given to me by a poet and a person who seems to understand -- profoundly -- the needs of caregivers. I realized, today, that I learned of Heather and Caregifted through Jeneva, who I learned of through Vicki, who I learned of through Stephanie and Andrea, who are all writers and most bloggers and that this community projected me toward this week in Victoria EXACTLY FIVE YEARS AGO, TODAY, that I began blogging.

So on this day, June 30th, I send up thanks for blogging, for that seemingly innocuous day in 2008 when I started clicking away here and met you and you and you and this.

This.

(And now I'm off to walk outside onto the tarmac and climb aboard one of those very small planes. One just came in and people are wandering around all smiley and happy that they're in Canada. This place rocks.)

P.S. My second blog post, on July 1st, 2008 is one of my favorites. I'd forgotten all about it.

3rd Blogaversary

Female Tannery Workers -- World War I

This is my 1,384th post on the third anniversary of beginning a moon, worn as if it had been a shell. Traditionally, LEATHER is the gift one gives on third anniversaries, and this morning I surfed around the internet for interesting leather images. I found the one above -- a photo of women working at a Tannery during or shortly after World War I when men were in short supply. The work was physically demanding and often quite dangerous. I was struck, especially, by how these women skirted those deep pits, balancing with long poles, probably, that they also used to poke and prod at the dangerous stuff below. The balancing act of mothering -- particularly my Sophie, whose needs are extraordinary -- is a theme that runs through nearly all of my more than one thousand posts, and it's an act that many of my readers perform as well. This morning, as I sit at my desk, sipping coffee, counting my blessings and listening to the infernal racket of one damn mockingbird outside my open door, I raise my anniversary glass to my fellow tanners.

I am grateful to be part of this astounding blogging community of women and men that  has enriched my life in countless ways.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.