Cupcakes on the Beach

Here's a preview!

If you're in the area, come help us celebrate Sophie's 18th birthday!

We're on the beach, straight down past the public bathrooms and to the left of the lifeguard stand.  We'll be there from 4:30 onward! If you can't make it, stay tuned for photos. I'll save you a cupcake.

Dear You,

When we were freshmen in college, your mother died after a long struggle with cancer. I believe she might have been sick off and on for most of your growing up years, and since you were an only child and a particularly sensitive and intelligent girl, I imagine that you matured and grew stronger and wiser than the rest of us at a far earlier age. When I think back on that year when your mother died, I shrink a bit, inside, and my heart breaks. You were only eighteen years old when you lost your mother. I can remember getting the key to your tiny single room in the dorm and tidying it up with another friend, anticipating your arrival back at school after your mother's funeral. I knew nothing of such loss. Your mother would never see you graduate from college, find your first job, marry your dear husband and give birth to your own daughter. She would not be with you, either, when your father died too early last year and left you truly an only child. She would not know that you have grown into an amazing and generous woman, a beautiful mother and faithful wife. She would not know you as a steadfast friend whose heart knows no boundaries.

You reached across the miles and years and sent me a ticket to come east and join you and our best friends from college for a weekend trip that proved to be the best vacation I've had in at least a decade. A couple of days ago, we exchanged some emails. I wrote I'm having a bit of a blue period because Sophie turns 18 tomorrow. It's such a milestone and then it's not. I feel every one of the eighteen years and wonder how many more there will be. We're having a big birthday bash for her on the beach on Sunday late afternoon, so that'll be fun, but to tell you the truth I feel a little lonely in my grief/loss/etc. Hard to explain but perhaps easy to imagine.

It will soon be your father's birthday and the first anniversary of his death. You replied, Oh, I know . . . I've followed your blog all week and my heart aches and sings for Sophie (and you) at the same time.  I have a little something special in mind to send Sophie.  I thought of it earlier in the week but haven't been able to follow through.  Just a little something.  To bring you comfort, as well.  I understand exactly the lonely bit.  You hate to bring it up and yet you want everyone to know and remember and understand and empathize.  So as a result I tend to hole up alone so I don't have to wish people understood why I'm seeming a bit removed or overly chatty.  You get it, I know.

I read your words sitting in my car in a parking lot of a grocery store. They took my breath away and made me cry, two cliches that certainly don't do justice to the enormous gratitude I felt in reading them. Part of living an extraordinary life -- and I imagine that most of us live extraordinary lives -- is acknowledging and accepting hardship, grief and loss, shaping and draping them over your bones and tissues. And when my bones are heavy and tissues bleed, what sustains me are words and the connections they conjure. Your words arrived at the exact right moment and were arranged as a perfect witness, simple and graceful.

Thank you, dear you. I am blessed by your friendship and can only hope to return the love back to you in equal measure.

Love,
Elizabeth

P.S. The sandalwood bracelet with green amethyst stones is beautiful. Sandalwood is said to bring clear perception to the wearer, and the green amethyst, inner peace. When I see it on Sophie's small wrist, I will be reminded, again, of your witness and grace.

The Overview Effect

Since I was a little girl I have wanted to look out on the earth from space. I never aspired to be an astronaut, but I would love to go on a ride. If you have twenty minutes, watch this beautiful, beautiful video. It will make you happy to be alive.

We are stardust.

Edgar Mitchell

Apollo Astronaut

Birthday Celebrations, part two

We like birthdays around here, so I think I'll just post photos as we go. About an hour later than usual, Sophie woke up yawning and smiling,

She seemed genuinely happy when The Husband and I wished her happy birthday. I wish the boys had been there to see how engaged she was, but they had already left for school.

I had run out earlier in the morning for the traditional birthday donuts that we piled high next to the presents. Again, by the time Sophie got up, only the pink one on the top was left, and she ate that uncustomary sugary breakfast treat with scrambled eggs. We put aside the presents for the afternoon, when the boys came home, but I gave her one outfit -- a tee-shirt, jeans and soft sweatshirt.

You know what? She was all smiles this morning, making outrageous eye contact. Honestly, it took my breath away. There's a tiny part of me that still holds hope that this day will bring no seizures.

A little later, I brought a cake to Sophie's class, and all of her friends there, teachers and aides sang happy birthday. There's a warmth to her school world that always takes me by surprise. I'm grateful for all of it. Forgive all the photos, but I just wanted to share a little of the joy and celebration with all of you!

Part 3 is a big birthday beach bash on Sunday. If you're in Los Angeles and want to join us, email me at elsophie AT gmail DOT com.

Happy Birthday, Sophalofa!

Sophie, sleeping in on her 18th birthday

You whose day it is

get out your rainbow colors

and make it 

beautiful.

Traditional Nootka Song

Long ago time

Coney Island, 1995

This is me, about a month away from giving birth to Sophie, nearly eighteen years ago. It was late February, and The Husband and I lived in a tiny apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan. I suddenly and quite emphatically wanted to go to the beach, so we packed a lunch and caught a train out to Coney Island. I felt ridiculously happy. When I look at this photo, I don't see the future other than how important the beach would become in Sophie's life. She, not yet Sophie, and I appear to be casting a long shadow. Is there a metaphor in that? I can look at these photos of me, peer at them intensely and know nothing. All is inscrutable.  I think I sort of mourn that young woman standing in the cold sand with a plastic bag, lace-up oxfords and black stirrup pants.

Jock Talk, Part 3,459,213

Henry's lacrosse season is over, and Oliver's basketball nearly so, but baseball season has begun, and yesterday I went shopping for gear with Oliver. Both boys are catchers and require the requisite baseball gear and then about a million dollars worth of catcher protection crap. Henry and I had gone last week, but I'd forgotten to purchase a few things for him, so when we got home, Oliver quickly separated his stuff from Henry's. He held up two identical boxes that housed jock straps, one an adult small and the other an adult medium. They were both priced $5.99.

If one is bigger than the other, why do they both cost the same? Oliver asked.

Well, it's probably only a bit more material, I said.

That's stupid, Oliver said.

Well, maybe they're ripping you off for the small one, I suggested, and was interrupted.

Yeah, and maybe you're getting a good deal if you've got a big _______.

Reader, I'll let you fill in that blank but know that I burst out laughing with Oliver when he said it.

Some of you might find this tiresome, but please:

This says it all.

The Long Haul

Sophie has always looked at trees, swaying in the wind, and she's always looked upward at ceilings, into corners and obscurity. Sometimes I look upward, too, and I try to figure it all out. Here we are yesterday at the doctor's office, waiting for Oliver's appointment. Sophie hummed and insisted on gazing up, so I did, too, looking into corners and into obscurity. Oliver asked whether it felt like nearly eighteen years had gone by since Sophie was born, and I told him yes, it feels like eighteen years, powerfully so, actually. He asked me if I was tired, and I said, nah, I'm in it for the long haul.

Thoughts while bathing (the mayoral election in Los Angeles)

This morning as the water beat down on me in the shower, my mind ran to politics and conversations that I've had in the car with my sons. Just last night, as I maneuvered through godawful traffic with Oliver and Sophie, we heard the atrocious story of the black mayoral candidate in Mississippi who was brutally murdered in what sounded like the 2013 version of lynching, and when Oliver asked me what happened, I told him that perhaps someone extremely racist and/or homophobic didn't want him to run for mayor. Oliver asked me what homophobic meant, and I told him that it meant one is afraid of gay people. AFRAID? Oliver said, incredulous. Why? And I told him that some people thought gay people were bad or unnatural, even evil, and Oliver just didn't get it, so I told him that sometimes people are profoundly ignorant and might not even know a gay person and so were afraid of anything different, and he seemed to get that so we dropped it. As I shampooed my hair this morning, I thought about the mayoral race today in Los Angeles and whether or not I'll vote for a Republican for the second time (I believe I voted for Guiliani in New York City a thousand years ago) in my life. In doing only cursory research I find the mayoral candidate Kevin James sort of, kind of,  interesting but only so because I'm tired of politics as usual. The fact that he's a libertarian does not excite me (I know it's simplistic, but I can't help but equate libertarians with Ayn Rand and that dreadful novel I read in my late teens, The Fountainhead, which even then, when I knew nothing about anything, made me feel as if my blood was draining from my body), but because he's fiscally conservative and socially liberal, my interest is piqued. Still, I probably don't know nothing from anything, and James makes all kinds of claims as politicians do, and they sound pretty good, but then there's the gathering for him that was held on Sunday that I didn't go to because I knew it would be a bunch of rich people from the neighborhood adjacent to mine whose politics I find smug when I'm feeling charitable, and I won't tell you what I think when I'm feeling like myself. I'm not sure I can vote for someone that they all support. Honestly. As the water ran down my body, I thought how there's a part of me that just doesn't care who the next mayor is, but by the time the water rounded my hip and streamed down my leg, I had jettisoned the cynicism and decided that if I'm going to live in a democracy I should vote for the person who best represents me, and that person probably isn't going to be a former attorney and right-wing radio shock jock -- is that what they're called? I don't know about this libertarian thing -- it sounds all sensible and logical but there's something about it that leaves me cold, and that thing is money. Or maybe it's government as Other, devoid of community. I think. Have ya'll read George Saunders' brilliant satire of libertarians from the New Yorker last fall? Here's the link. When I stepped out of the shower, I remembered my favorite line from the essay, words that evoke -- exactly -- the opposite of what voting in the Los Angeles mayoral election feels like. He wrote it as satire, but I'm feeling it for real, today.

Some days we would stride about, feeling violently alive.

Sophie's 18th Birthday Week

Sophie will be eighteen years old this Friday, March 8th, and I think in anticipation of this momentous birthday, I will reflect a bit -- but only a bit. I casually took her baby book off the shelf in the hallway and opened it up, flipped through the pages that I had so carefully written and where I had stored so many mementos. I pulled out the above piece of graph paper with The Husband's careful script, the names we talked about lined up like birds on a line. We didn't know if we were having a boy or a girl. We wanted to be surprised.

There is Sophie, tucked in next to last, a tiny smudged dot next to six delicate letters, about to unfold.

My response to everything

Dragging All Over Kingdom Come

This has been one hell of a weekend so far, what with Oliver acting in OLIVER!, Henry getting into the high school that he wanted, baseball season beginning (good Lord, already?) and me dragging my parents all over kingdom come. Here are some random photos, and now I'm collapsing into bed.

Oliver in OLIVER!

Henry and my father

A cactus in Santa Monica

Tulips at the Farmer's Market in Santa Monica

Henry and High School

What that little boy from yesterday's post looked like when I told him

that he was accepted into the high school he wanted most: