Settling In

Hello from Provincetown! We are 95% moved in and the autumn seascape could not be more beautiful. I am still hibernating but I know rustles of activity are beginning to surface. I may walk down the street to ask a B & B if they'd like to offer workshops with me; I may take a writing course; I may join a town committee. But not yet. First I need to keep moving slowly.

    

Last weekend I went to my first and only high school reunion. With the exception of this crew--all of us friends since I was barely out of elementary school--I hadn't seen most of my classmates in fifty years. I was popular in high school and at the time I worked hard for that to be so. I was also kind, and that was re-enforced by the several 'loner' kids who sought me out fifty years later to say hello. I was also irreverent and funny and not beyond time in after-school detention. I straightened out my senior year so I could go to college, but barely. Since then, I've somehow become smarter. And still irreverent.

I have some impressions about people my age fifty years later. Less tolerance for b.s. More appreciation  of time and family. Calmer. Settled. But still traveling.

My heart hasn't let go of the farms and back roads I've left. I insisted on bring orchard apples back to the ocean with me and I think I will head back to those farms at least once or twice a year. I'm in search of locally grown fruit and vegetables and I think that search won't be easy. This is Lookout Farm in South Natick, Mass. Those are pumpkins in the foreground, there for the picking. I brought home a peck of apples and I'm ready to make apple crisp. And buttermilk biscuits too. And then, in time, apple pies and holiday cookies and chocolate cupcakes. I'm a sap for holidays.

My daughter Jess has four children and she calls the two youngest 'the littles.' Ages 4 and 2, Here are the littles. This is a huge delight in my life--these four fascinating kids. They are wild and entertaining and wonderful and exhausting. They call me Gram, except 2 year old Reese, who calls me BB by mistake. Which I don't mind….

This is the scene up the street. The bay sparkles like this almost every day. Sometimes people ride horses on this beach, and sometimes you can see seals playing in the background. Often this is a place to calmly walk and breathe in ocean air that surely must heal and help. I'm grateful to be here. It's been a bitch of a move but we're here and the house is nice and the bay is a block away and winter will be desolate and I just may finish this book of mine sometime soon.

love

kj