Today.

A friend of mine died yesterday morning. She was 32 years old.

Last May, she sent out an e-mail telling us she had a rare form of liver cancer. Something that usually affects older people with a history of drinking and smoking. This woman was one of the healthiest, greatest athletes I've ever known. Sometimes life just makes no sense at all.

I happened to go out to San Francisco around the time she had a major surgery to remove her tumor, and saw her in the hospital with two other high school friends. It was so surreal sitting there in her room--she in a hospital bed and blue gown, a spectacular view of Golden Gate Park, the bridge, the blue bay--four high school friends from Minnesota there in San Francisco.

We walked around the hallway, compared notes about having Canadian husbands and talked about the future. It was the conversation I would have with any old friend I hadn't seen in a while. It was the last time I saw her.

I had a restless sleep last night. Dreams so intense they felt like being awake. When the alarm did go off, I couldn't stop thinking: I can't believe she's not waking up to the world today. I can't believe she didn't brush her teeth, snuggle up next to her husband under the covers and kiss him goodnight. How can this day look like every other day?

I'm overwhelmed by how quickly things can change. I keep thinking about the things we don't know about our future. And that all we can do is hold who and what we care about as close as we can and just love and love and love.

The other day, I stumbled onto this moving video of an interview between Terry Gross and Maurice Sendak. He says,

"I am in love with the world...
It is a blessing to read the books and listen to the music...
Live your life, live your life, live your life." 



It made me realize that I too am hopelessly, shamelessly in love with the world. It confuses me and astounds me--is it so unfair and random and beautiful--it inspires me, disappoints me, makes me sad and blissed out and angry and it fills me to the brim with wonder.

My dear friends, I want to say with all my heart- thank you for reading my little blog. I can't tell you how much it means to me. Let's go read the books and listen to the music.
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P.S. This is a title I'm trying out. What do you think? This is a temporary re-design. I hope it will be prettier some day.

Work and dreams and everything in between.

Christmas + Bear Hats!

and sparkly tights- Hooray!

Road to the mountains

I made Dan a photobook for Christmas this year. There, over 50 pages, were all of our photographs 2012. One year of memories.

Playing with new Christmas toys!

I find it so easy to get bogged down in mourning what I don't have--girlfriends nearby, a job, enough money to travel wherever whenever I want to. (As our friend Matt used to say: white people problems.) That little book was just what I needed to remember everything we do have, and everything we have done.

Dan polished off Where'd You Go Berndaette?A great book!

"What was your favorite thing we did this year?" I asked Dan.

"The cottage at Georgian Bay with Nate, Dana and Brad," he said. "Or the dance party to Fun. at Laura Lee and Robbie's house." He paused. "Florida was pretty awesome."

Neither of us could settle on one.

Couldn't resist this shot of my new Cookie Monster mittens frolicking on the antler coat hangers.

We rented this little cabin in the middle of nowhere B.C. for New Year's (really! We had to snowshoe to and from our car). It was the kind of place where you really can't do anything so you do all the nothings you crave to do. Like read by the fire for hours and hours with a hot drink in your hand.

This picture pretty much encapsulates the weekend.

I read Just Kids by Patti Smith. It gave me a lot of food for thought about being an artist. She writes, "I would go as far as I could and hit a wall, my own imagined limitations. And then I met a fellow who gave me his secret, and it was pretty simple. When you hit a wall, just kick it in."

I learned a lot about sacrifice and commitment, and how important it is to have someone believe in you before you believe in yourself. Patti and Robert Mapplethorpe nearly starve at points. They live in dilapidated spaces, ones with no bathrooms. Robert keeps telling Patti she should sing. Patti keeps telling Robert he should take his own pictures.

There's this scene where Patti is consoling Janis Joplin after a guy goes home with a pretty girl over Janis and Janis sobs and sobs to Patti. I thought- by god. Janis Joplin was just a girl too. Sometimes it's easy to forget.

Dan chopping wood outside our sweet cabin.

There was a moment not so long ago that I was kind of ready to give up on writing. It just seemed too hard, maybe even impossible. It seemed like I would always be only-ok at it.

I nearly froze my hands off to capture this Dr. Suessian tree.

I found an old journal a friend made me. It's filled with pictures of our adventures and lyrics to songs like "Into the Mystic" and "Visions of Johanna." Colorful pictures of our mid-twenties blissfully misbehaving--about the ages of Patti and Janis when Janis cried on Patti's shoulder.  I never quite filled it up because I always wanted whatever I wrote in there to be perfect. To somehow match up with the words of Van Morrison and Bob Dylan. But I'm learning more and more that we have to make a lot of messes before we make what we actually intend to make.

Ah, glorious Fernie!

In the back of the journal, I taped the torn-out title page to Dibs In Search Of Self.  A woman I hardly knew gave me that book. We took a writing class together in Minnesota, and on the last day she slipped it into my hand and then rushed out of the room. To Sky, she wrote. Keep, keep writing--I feel like your heart will help heal others just as Dibs got made well by belief and not-giving-up-ness.

Dan is a master dishwasher when there's no running water around.

That book is one of the greatest gifts I have ever gotten. So is my little journal. So the man who puts up with my mood swings, my despair, my excitement, my frustration, my fleeting highs, and for who-knows-what-reason sticks with me through it all. 

Sometimes I have to stop--take stock--turn it it all over in my hands and pull it in close.

Cabin decor.

I'm not sure how it was for other people--but in my twenties, my dreams felt like these big beautiful things that someday I'd just bounce around in, like a cloud playground in the sky. It has taken me some years to learn that dreams live right here with us on earth, and to live them is just plain old hard back-heart-breaking work. (I'm an easy dreamer, and a slow learner.)

So I am leaving grandiose dreams behind. My goal this year is only to not give up. And maybe--to kick a wall in.

Christmas & Magic

Well it's frozen and cold in Canada, Friends.

The Bow River

I chased temperate climates for most of my twenties (save that one year in Boston.) But because I grew up in Minnesota, winter is familiar--like an old friend. I recognize its icy kiss, the way the air scrapes at your throat, the gust of heat when you walk through the door, and the way it's almost impossible to get out of a hot shower, or worse--out of bed in the morning. I pretty much want to live under a soft blanket. You come to savor warmth in a kind of spiritual way.

Winter's ok with me around the holidays. There are lights sparkling on the tree, and the house smells like evergreen and gingerbread, I splurge on a weekly hot apple cider, and I even love to hate the constant drone of Christmas Carols in every store.

My family loved tall fat trees--the biggest one we could possibly fit in the designated nook. It was such an event! getting the tree. Hauling the decorations out of the attic, blasting The Nutcracker on the stereo while we decorated, Dad getting out the step ladder so that we could reach the high branches, squabbling over which ornaments we got to hang.

As the days went by, we'd inspect the presents every morning, counting the packages with our names on them. Oh the mystery and wonder those wrapped packages held!

We helped Mom bake hundred of Gingersnaps--the secret family recipe, she'd always remind us.

We'd roll the batter into tiny balls then send them swimming in a sea of sugar.

Yes indeed, I was a glutton for gingersnaps.

Christmas was full of magic. Real beguiling magic that nearly made my little heart burst every Christmas morning, as I opened my bedroom door and found that first little present sitting in the doorway. My brother, sister and I convened in one of our rooms to inspect these first gifts from Santa while we waited for 7 AM when we were allowed to wake up Mom and Dad, and then ran full throttle for their door and jumped all over their bed and cried, "It's Christmas! It's Christmas!" before tearing into the stockings.

Then Dad would make us wait at the top of the stairs while he got the video camera and set the coffee brewing. "Dad!" we'd cry. "Huuuuurrryyyyy!!" Oh the sweet agony of that wait at the top of the stairs, heart a-fluttering.

Dad would walk over in his robe, eye peering through the video camera lens taunting us, "Did he come? Do you think he came, Kids?"

Then we'd practically tumble over each other as we ran down the stairs and beheld the mountain of gifts. "He came!" we squealed, "He came!"

Although Christmas traditions came and went, that morning was always the same. It was always just us, just ours--and yet everyone's.

I often long for that magic feeling that intoxicated us on Christmas. Oh, I've found it in adulthood. On other continents, in random wanderings with friends, in the desert, in music, it showed up at our wedding, and it lives wild places. It's not something you can hold onto, so you just have lay back and let it fall over you while it lasts.

I hope there are flurries of magic wherever you are.


Happy New Year

Love, Sky

Thanksgiving. And time.

Well, dear friends, I am back from Florida.

It was hard to leave.

And not just because I was turning in beaches and sun and sand and sunsets for freezing temperatures and snow.

 

I had to say goodbye to these sweet faces too.

I'm getting sentimental in my old age. Thanksgiving makes me all gooey with nostalgia. 

The boat ride we've made a thousand times.

My brother still making the Christmas Card photo session impossible.

Mom, yet again, cooking the perfect bird.

I don't mean to brag, but we had the best Thanksgiving ever. Every year, we eat with old family friends, the Spencers, and this year, we added another family we've known forever and ever, the Bassetts. I'm doubly lucky because the eldest Bassett Peter married my cousin/best friend Meghan, and they brought their four-month old son, Gunnar.

I couldn't stop thinking: aren't we the luckiest?

The tradition was in full effect, with Ed's fine wines flowing in abundance.

And each of us writing what we're thankful for on a colored feather to add to the turkey.

Construction paper turkey with our Thanksgiving musings pictured here.

Plus, we had Gunnar. The cutest baby of all time.

Doesn't this face just melt your heart?

There was a sing along to The Circle of Life. And then, dancing...

  

Also, this happened.

Surfin' USA was playing!

In Florida, we're all within walking distance. People would pop by for a glass of wine, a walk, a chat. You know those times when you are acutely aware of how happy you are? Doing something that's nothing--like playing bocce or Smashball or just sitting around after the sun's gone down--that's really everything?

Or eating ice cream.

Maddy's blissful anticipation of this bite just makes me smile.

I've been thinking a lot about time.

Bingo is one of Boca Grande's hottest nightlife activities.

About how I'm two years older than my mom was when she flew to Boca for the first time with me, six months old, in her arms.

Look at Pat's concentration. So heavy he can barely sit up.

About how even though our parents still refer to us as "the kids," we're really not anymore. 

Dancing to the Boca Bande: my dad's favorite Thanksgiving tradition.

It's crazy how the years add up.

Please note hippie right behind me and Dan.

Dan and I had dinner with another couple on Friday and we talked about this--time, that is. She said when we're kids we're anticipating growing up, and so time stretches out and feels so long, like we'll never get there. Once we're grown, we ache for it to slow down, to remain where we are, and thus, it feels too fast.

He said that if all our days are the same, time races by. If we do things--adventures big or small--if something major happens--a big move, a life event--time slows down.

Indeed, Dan asked me if I felt like this year had gone fast. I told him no. Last Christmas seems ages ago. This year was full of new things--a new landscape, new adventures... a new life.

Sometimes I wish there was a sunset that lasted forever. Where we would sit on our beach chairs, with a glass of my dad's cheap chardonnay and listen to him tell us it was most definitely a green flash kind of night, and watch as the sun just hovered there, the earth refusing to turn.

Boca Grande

There are places we only get to see once in our lives. We say hello; we pass by. And then there are the places to which we return again and again until they are written in our bones.

We only get a few of these in life.

They are the place equivalent of our very best friends. The ones you were lucky enough to stumble into, and would never be fool enough to let go of. The ones that soak in over many many years, if we're lucky, a lifetime.

Boca Grande, Florida is one of mine.

This crane was a real dandy.

I'm here with my mom on a very undeserved vacation. My only excuse is that I can't legally work in Canada, so...

Anyway, the ocean and I had some catching up to do.

Oh, how I've missed her.

Boca Grande is the smell of Coppertone sunscreen and hair full of saltwater dried in the sun. It is freckles you forgot you had gathering on your nose. Loose tank tops blowing in the breeze, white sand, excited dolphin sightings, my mom's salads--with hearts of palm, artichoke hearts and avocados topped with olive oil and lemon juice--and an endless supply of La Croix mineral water in cans.

It is playing tennis with Dad, even though I'm terrible after another whole year of not playing and reading books, with Mom, and a thousand other traditions and memories....

..and comparing last night's sunset to tonight's. 

 And an ice cold beer to toast the moment the sun melts into the horizon, knowing how good you have it, and drinking it all up--every last drop.

Goodnight, Sun.

Boca Grande is an ocean as still as glass.

The same old pier languishing--picture perfect--in the water.

And endless blue.

The ocean and I, we have an ancient conversation. How can this water know me so well while remaining an eternal mystery to me?  What a funny feeling to return to this shore year after year--and feel the same to the core, and yet entirely different.