The joy of friends and memory. New England. The sorrows of parting.

I just returned from a trip to New England, where I slept in a house set among the most gorgeous trees.

We were 'out of service'. No internet. No phone. We hiked and walked, kayaked and cooked. Together, with my parents, we celebrated the life of one of their best friends, my Uncle John, whose ashes flew away from the top of the great Mount Snow, and, at its slope, in his memory, I remembered my own childhood visits to Vermont.

My black diamond triumph. The smoky wooden smell of his cabin, sleeping with my feet tucked beneath its slanting roof. Candlepin bowling, a small and delicate sport, the way dollhouses are to a child, there's something small like me. The glittering hill where we used to sled, now overgrown with brush.

We visited friends and family across Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, each one planting a kiss on Little O's forehead. We sat on the dock of Rust Pond and stories I have grown to love became vivid scenes as I saw for myself where my husband spent weeks of summer as a child.

I met the children of two of my best friends, all born within months of my own son, a beautiful trio spread out across a blue blanket, in purple and flowers and stripes and polkadots, feet in hands, smiles ripe and ready, eyes wide to the world.

Every child Little O meets is labelled a friend. 

This is your friend Nora, Rosie, Meghan, Augie, Brooks, Addison. On and on. This list of new friends.

And so it was with a strange mix of joy and sadness, I drove away. What a beautiful thing, to ride a long yellow line from one person to the next, to be fortunate enough to have so many people to see and hug. What a terrible thing to physically separate from a string of names. A long, winding river reel of the people I love.

Colors on a Walk Through Prospect Park

My Writing Tree

So, this is my writing tree.  I don't sit under it, with my back scratching up against the bark. I sit next to it and, if I opened the window, I could touch the leaves.

In the winter, when it's bare, that space of white you see in the upper left, is the Manhattan skyline, and I can see the crisp edge of lights from the Freedom Tower. I can see the neighbor's terrace across the way and I watch as they move their plants from behind the sliding doors and, another day, back again, in a ritual I can not understand. I wonder, as I watch, if they see me, laptop balanced on my knees, my back propped against a pillow my mother knitted me.

But now my tree is green with a few patches of brick against the spine of each branch. When the sky is crayon blue it looks like someone painted it just for me.

What do you see from where you are?

Blooming

Today the trees look like shattered sky. I know this desire to bloom, to become.

Lately, I've wondered if I've been looking so hard, I can not see.

Wonderland

When I woke up yesterday I was like a child, went straight to the window to see what magic the night storm had brought.  There were, maybe, ten inches of snow and New Englander Tyler scoffed, that's nothing, but the kids were outside whooping and dragging sleds and the shovels scratched across the sidewalks and I insisted we go to Prospect Park to see it pure.  

I expected to see the long wide meadows of Prospect Park in a sheet of white, but I had forgotten that this oasis is also made of narrow, wandering trails, so we found ourselves inside this wonderland.  

Here in the middle of concrete Brooklyn.  

Tall Dreams, Trees and the New Year

I think it's impossible to capture the grandeur of an oak tree in a photograph.  You'll have to trust me. These tangled branches of the Cummer Oak in Jacksonville, Florida are far-reaching.  They extend towards blue and they plunge back into the earth, root themselves where they began. 

Trees are my favorite, favorite. I love them.  The way they reach, it's like racing towards a dream.  A kind of restless hunger.  I have it too.  

It's a new year and, like the goddess statue below, my hunt points toward the moon.  I've never been good at resolutions so I make only one each year.  Some years I meet the goal.  Some years I don't. But, each year, January comes and I make it mine again:

Write a book.

It's my forever-goal. It's my version of dreaming.  

Happy New Year to all my friends here.  Keep your dreams tall.

Forever Guessing

I live in a city I love very much but it can feel loud, crowded, plastered in concrete. Sometimes I am desperate for relief. I need to see some green.

I don't have a car and escaping to nearby quiet can turn into an epic journey. A 26 mile trip to my home town, with all its various modes of transport and transfers takes just over 2 hours.  Technically, a certain Kenyan can run there faster (Geoffrey Mutai's fastest marathon time is 2 hours, 3 minutes, and 2 seconds.)

So, in an effort to find the nature I crave, I have come to accept the travel time.  I wait on oppressively hot subway platforms, stick to greasy subway seats.  I take the Sunday Times and read it cover to cover.  I devour entire books.  I make it happen.

Today Tyler and I journeyed one and a half hours to Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx to hike its trails.  We crossed the breezy fields, passed a cricket team clad in crisp, white uniforms.  A haze of hamburger smoke hovered over three generation family barbecues. We made it to the hare and tortoise marked trail, crossed over the highway (yes, in New York City, hikes involve crossing highways) and found complete solitude. Quite possibly because no one else in their right minds would take a hike...in the Bronx...in a wet-blanket soup of weather.  But I am nothing if not determined.

As we approached the end of our here we go loop-de-loop, we were greeted with the best kind of sound. Not the call of birds or the scamper of deer but a sound unique to a city full of life.  In a mess of trees and raspberry bushes and runaway black-eyed-susans in pink: a band bursting with song.

I don't know any other city in the world that can boast hiking trails complete with live concerts.  It's why I love New York.  It's what keeps me forever guessing, never knowing what I'll find.

Last stop on the 1 train

Hazy cricket

The Hare and Tortoise Trail

Sun sparkle through these skinny trees

Proof New York City is not entirely concrete

Surprise!

A Child, A Woman, A tree

I've mentioned before that I don't know anything real about photography. I only have a point and shoot camera. I don't know how to use a flash so I avoid it at all costs. And I have no idea how to edit a photo once it's been taken.  But I love, love to take photos because they help me see the world so I can imagine it better when I sit down to write.

Most of the time, when I see a photo I took, I don't like it. I think, it doesn't look the way it really looked.  I often find that dissatisfying. Very rarely do I think, this is exactly how it looked.

While in Spain, we discovered that I love to take pictures of three very distinct things:

1. Children
2. The elderly
3. Trees

So...I give you three photos that I think look the way they really looked. My medley.  A child. A woman. A tree.

Roots

This, to me, is story.  Grey roots bulging on the cranky steep of the slope. Sun and leaves at a stretch.  There's a way of meandering, digging deep, before you get to any epiphany. 

As a reader and a writer, I think it feels this way. So much more of the experience is earthly.  Walking over the rust of wet leaves, winding past a snap of twig. 

Sky is brief.  But it's what we remember.     

My Tree

This is the magnolia tree in front of the house I grew up in. I don't know the last time I was able to see it in bloom.  But I happened to be there.  Lucky enough to see it blossom early.  

This was not my climbing tree.  That was cut down long ago.  That tree, technically, resided on our neighbor's property because, in suburbia, we must draw those lines, make the proper distinctions.  One day I came home from school and it was gone.  Maybe they didn't like me dangling from its branches.  I wonder.

But this tree is still there.  The only magnolia tree on the street.  The most beautiful. I think I'll call it mine.

Through The Trees

It's been a warm winter in New York City.  Too warm, some argue.  We were blanketed with white only once and it melted hours later.  March has, so far, refused to live up to its fate. It has come in like a lamb. 

Yesterday, I left the office in the middle of the day to read.  Maybe a little reckless of me.  But.  Well.

I sat at Madison Square Park and was struck by all you could see through the trees.  It is the best thing about winter.  The view it affords.  With trees in bloom, I would not be able to see the Empire State Building, the clock tower, or building tops dipped in gold.

Later that evening, I walked to Bryant Park before attending a late night recording session for work. And again, I could see the New York Public Library and buildings soaring into sky just before the sun dropped. 

I'll try to remember the relief of this winter, next winter, when I'm stuck inside, when I'm shivering while waiting for a train.  I'll try and look up and remember that bare trees allow us to see so much more.

Celebrating The Fish

I've been feeling 'meh' lately, lonely, disconnected from people, frazzled, a little over-programmed.  My life has become very structured.  A full work-day, then time at the gym five days a week. I return home, cook, eat later than I would like (around 9:30pm), write something, anything, sleep, repeat.  Through this I've been planning a wedding, force-feeding agents one novel, researching another.  

It's getting to be a bit much.  I miss people.  I miss lounging.  Sleeping.  I'm re-evaluating.  Everything.

A few weeks ago, I decided I would plan a short trip to DC to rejoin the living and visit my friend Rebecca (better known as Becky.  Sometimes known as the Fish.)

She expects a blog post out of it.  As she should. One of the first and most dedicated readers of this blog, she deserves one.

We biked through Rock Creek Park. (You didn't expect me to go on a trip and not take a photo of the trees, did you?)

We listened to live jazz.

And fell in love with a giant teddy bear singer named TQ.

She cooked Indian food.

Then put together a puzzle while I organized the pieces by color. Puzzles are, uh, not my strong suit.

As we killed a bottle of wine, my brain in a fuzz, I remembered something random.

"Once you told me you loved Bette Midler and then we listened to her albums on repeat. This is when I knew I adored you."

"Tell everybody that," she requested.

So I am.  

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: A New Year

For weeks all my photos have been trapped in the camera. I lost my memory card reader.  In other words, it was sitting quietly with all the other gadgets, right in front of my face. But it was not until I gave in and purchased another one that Tyler looked over and said, 'Hey, look. It's right there.'

So, I had been wanting to share my New Year's day in Prospect Park.  For you to know me, really know me, you must know I am obsessed with trees.  To spend the first day of a new year with them (oh and Tyler) was, in my mind, perfection.

Because the access to the pictures didn't quite match up with the day I say Happy New Year, again (waves).

And you have no idea, how much I wanted to join that boy in a tree. 

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Trees and Trees

When I went to visit my childhood home last weekend, they had ripped out all of the trees on our tiny street. All of them. Every last one. They were growing too wild, too beautiful and were tearing up the sidewalks, ripping through the pavement. In the opinion of the Town of Oyster Bay, they had to be stopped. The sun poured in and the new sidewalks gleamed white. And I felt sick, knowing they were gone.

So I went to find them elsewhere. And I wondered...did anyone stop to think about what all the trees, even those too close to the path, could be?

A Winter Tree Perspective

You've all seen how nostalgic I've been for biking in these cold months. Well, thank you mother nature, for giving me two glorious biking days in the middle of January. 45 suddenly feels like beach weather (I choose to ignore the cold air in my lungs going up the hill in prospect park and my nose running as I pedal up Union Street...)

And I want to thank the winter tree. The winter tree affords me a completely new perspective. When I rode the loop through Prospect Park yesterday, I saw everything through the bare branches. Don't get me wrong, I love the lushness of every tree come Spring, but to be able to see through all that, right into the park is a lovely thing. It's also quite fantastic that I only have a view of New York City from my apartment...in the winter. Because of the winter tree. That makes me smile.

Yesterday, I reached my goal of finishing the revisions for Part I of my novel. February 15th is my next deadline, the revisions for Part II. This is going to be a lot more difficult. Part I of my novel was a lot more polished. It came before the whole 'I've got to get this 1st draft over with or I'm going to jump out of a window' feeling. The pacing in Part II is quite wonky and there are some very obvious plot holes. It also requires a lot more new scenes than the Part I revisions did, so I'm back to the terrifying blank page.

My fingers are crossed that Part I has become a winter tree. That I was able to trim all the leaves back so I could see a little bit better for Part II. I guess I'm about to take a look and see...