making up with Love

credit: Sarah ClarkSomehow, without me realizing it, all this time that I've been breaking up with crazy, I managed to lose something along the way. 

There I was last night, standing in the audience watching Michael Franti sing against a backdrop of an enormous anatomical heart, bright pink one moment, blue the next, and suddenly there it was. For the last year or so, I have kinda been going without something big:

Love.

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Summer lovin'

Summer is so tricky.  All I want is to stay home.  There are so many invitations, so many parties, fairs and festivals. I love my friends and yet I don't want to go anywhere.

I love you, but could you let me be, please? Til, like, September?

I just want to be here, walking around, taking it in. A little bit stupid, in a bit of a stupor, quiet, busy, idle.

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Twenty Four Years of Love

Refreshed, originally posted on June 12, 2010.

On May 26, 1989, Katherine and I went to a party hosted by an old, old friend from the French school whom I'd run into at San Francisco State where I was a graduate student in Russian Language and Literature.  Nicholas lived on Fulton, directly across from the Jefferson Airplane house, in a flat shared with other students.  I picked Katherine up after dropping off The Kid, then 1 ½, at my parents' in the Castro.  I had on a favorite black vintage dress with lace trim at the collar and hips and black Sacha London cowboy booties (still have them).

I was 26.

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vive la différence

As a demonstration of how different we remain even after 23 1/2 years of love, I offer this recent exchange with my husband.  What's remarkable to me, always, is how many surprises remain, even after all of this time.  I may know him so well, or think I do, and yet he retains the ability to dazzle me with a perspective that is not at all my own.

It's a constant process of unfolding, this long, long love. I learn something new all the time.

 In typical fashion, now that we're exploring Bikram yoga, going to class together or separately,

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Cupid in full production

Completed one of my favorite tasks of the year early-early this morning: packing up a load of handmade valentines to take to the post office.  I didn't devote the amount of time to the task that I generally do, that I prefer to.  Unfortunately, my silly job interfered, eating up 4 hours of the Sunday that I had planned to devote to this crafty love sesh.

Still the Valentines are made and mostly posted.  I ran out of everything, most notably glue, so didn't produce the same quantity as in years past.  Some people who've received paper cards from me before will sadly have to content themselves with a digital version -- in order to have enough to go around.  There's probably an environmental argument in there somewhere: that it would be better for the trees in the end, if I just made one valentine and sent it out digitally for the rest of my life.  But where, oh where, would be the fun in that?

Instead, with the tv going in the background, Joe and puppy curled up on the couch, off I went with the scissors and the construction paper, with the stickers and the glitter glue, pasting up this year's rendition of the sparkly love-messages, reserved for my friends, the recipients of all of my Valentine's love.

As it should be.  Not a romantic holiday, but a celebration of the joys of friendship, the kula as we call it in yoga, that big family we make as we go about our lives.  

Valentine's Day is so my favorite holiday.  Thanksgiving is great, Christmas is delightful, but Valentine's Day is a holiday I can really feel, one that really fills me with a desire to celebrate, to make and send these little love bombs in the mail as I have done for my entire life.  This one's mine, super-sweet and good enough to eat.