I don’t know how many years he’s been gone, but our daughter was eighteen when he died and she’s forty-six now. You do the math. Imagine something that can make you laugh all those years later. I was a lucky woman.
This has been a time of pulling it all together-- the past, the near present(Bali)-- letting go of regret and anger, stripping my life of things unnecessary to its healthy continuation, learning to be completely alone, except for Vince D'Onofrio-- I have eased myself into sleep nightly with Law and Order, and he is the detective, and they run the series continuously, but in its different seasons, put together, so I can see him gaining weight in the course of one evening, and wish I could comfort and counsel him, as he is palpably gifted, and handsome. It threw me back to when I was living in Paris right after Bryn Mawr, and I wanted to save Judy Garland and Orson Welles, who were both there. I never ran into Judy (or of course she would still be alive,) but I did pass Orson Welles on a bridge on the Left Bank, and he was talking to himself. As bold as I thought I was, I was too respectful to interrupt.
But this has been a great adventure, as I didn't know I had it in me to be so quiet for so long. I have written little, but then in Bali I wrote a great deal, and the object here was Peace, which I was not quite sure I could achieve.
I think I have. We'll see.
But meantime I had beautiful closure last night with my family: Robert and Jennie who -- we'll see, Lukas who wanted to know if I was coming to his Bar Mitzvah June 29(I must not seem a very present Grandma that he could have any question-- Silas, who once again chided me for treating him or thinking of him in any way that was the same as when he was little-- "But we were very close then," I said. "We're close now," he retorted. So that's that. The sense of joy and relief was a balm.
On Tuesday I am off to New York. It is a fearful time politically, but as I have written before though not here, I had the calamitous privilege to be in the San Francisco earthquake in '89 with the great Ann Richards-- we took shelter at Lia Belli's house, overlooking the marina, which was on fire-- and I said "what if __ (I can;t remember who was running for president) wins?" And she Texas drawled, "Then this country will find out what the Framers always knew, that it could run without a president."
I hope we don't have a chance to find out.
Meanwhile, I love you all and wish you a Happy Autumn. It can not come quickly enough. I have had enough sun.