Summer gold

A glorious day. This morning the milk didn't curdle in my tea; I had enough quarters to do the laundry; everything fell into place and I spent the afternoon with Annie and Carol and then had dinner with Cynthia and Phil. A theme emerged.

We all ended up talking about our grown children--how much we admire them, how we would have liked to make it easier for them. Each one is braver than we wish they'd had to be. I looked into the faces of these friends--all of us heading into old age--and saw the raw, naked love. Do the striving mid-life adults who were our scrappy children have any idea how much we love and admire them? Maybe they don't have time to take it in; they're so busy. But we old ones: we see how tired they are, how difficult it is to build healthy relationships, how perplexing is the quest for the good, the true, and the beautiful. We see, and we stand back in awe and bask in their light.

Between great lashings of talk, I strolled through Laurelhurst Park alone and watched the gold light shimmer on the water, pretty much the way I felt.