of summer and friends and babies

golly. it’s the first time in what feels like a Very Long Time that I have lain in bed in the morning and tippity-tappety meandered around catching up with people in the virtual realm– especially my mom- and mom-to-be friends jen and laurel and hanh. I expect the evident common denominator here is more than a little attributable to being a woman of a certain age, entering a domesticating stage and considering issues of, well, just what many of the women I know are doing around this time of life: having babies, writing, juggling various identities.

also, likely, due to the fact that I’m on the cusp of my first real roadtrip vacation in a very long time, all based around a dear friend’s wedding– next week we’ll be hopping in the car and meandering out to new york for my gorgeous friend thisbe’s backyard wedding hoo-ha! I’m totally totally excited for the free time and excursion with my darlin’ and the chance to see good old friends who live too far away to visit more frequently. we’ll be going into manhattan for a couple of days of art museums and staying at the home of one of my very oldest and dearest friends masha, with whom I went to boarding school. right now both chris and I are busy trying to tie up loose ends and arrange for backup on work projects while we’re gone– it’s a bit of a scramble. and for some reason or other I bought a gallon of milk the other day right before vacating. silly sarah.

we have a new tent and a new air mattress to put in it, and we will be kamping at the KOA kampground right near the wedding site along with a slew of other revelers. I’m having gleeful visions of firepits and smores and jumping in the swimming hole out back of thisbe & jay’s place. proper summer. I’ve been craving it. for all my proximity to a great lake, it’s a doggone shame that I haven’t thrown on my suit and jumped in it since last year. swimming and sloshing around in great fresh bodies of water is without a doubt my A #1 favorite all-time activity. the unfortunate thing is that the lifeguards on the chicago beaches won’t let you go out above where the water hits your knees– very aggravating, though I do get that they have a job to do and a swarming populace with iffy water skills to manage. but sometimes you just really want to get in over your head, yknow?

herbert hoover

poor guy. what a bum rap he’s given.

I like to go out to the museum and homestead in west branch, iowa and read about the bootstrap boy, the self-made man. what tragic timing– blamed for the Depression. as if one man might singlehandedly effect so much. but we have historically granted our public figures such inhuman stature. lionized and demonized.

I like to drive into the farmland and look at the hair wreath woven by his mother. artifact of an entirely other age. think of it! to build a decorative object out of one’s own hair. and I understand it was not an uncommon craft. such a dark and tangled object, so suggestive.

and, golly, what an age to live in, and through. to draw yourself up out of, to stride across wide, low-slung hills– to step across the slow mississippi and on into the East where the world begins, where America in fact got made. to take an active and determined role in all of that, by choice.

unfathomable from here.