Sue and Doug are 70!

All but two of the siblings showed up to celebrate Sue's and her twin brother Doug's 70th birthday. The guest list included over 60 people who converged in her back yard, painted a garden mural, ate, and celebrated what a delight it is to love her. 

In the picture, left to right, there's the elder sisterJudy, Doug, Sue, Peg, Mark, and Kathy. Philip and Jerry, the two elder brothers, were unable to come. The Extra is Sue and Doug addressing the crowd. Just over her left shoulder is Sue's elder granddaughter and Sue's two sons.

She had her hair dyed purple for the occasion, and I dyed mine a temporary hot pink. I am not easy in crowds, so I slipped away after taking 227 photographs, many of which were on the wrong settings, I was so nervous. But I have saved this poem of Pablo Neruda's to read to her when her people leave and we see each other again.

VIII

If your eyes were not the color of the moon,
of a day full of clay, and work, and fire,
if even held-in you did not move in agile grace like the air,
if you were not an amber week,

not the yellow moment
when autumn climbs up through the vines;
if you were not that bread the fragrant moon
kneads, sprinkling its flour across the sky,

oh, my dearest, I could not love you so!
But when I hold you I hold everything that is--
sand, time, the tree of the rain,

everything is alive so that I can be alive:
without moving I can see it all:
in your life I see everything that lives.