It seems like an entire lifetime has transpired since I last wrote a weekly update. If we’re talking the life of an adult cicada. Speaking of cicadas, have you watched Slow Horses? I have and I love it.
To catch you up: the Eagles won the Super Bowl. I don’t get crazy over football but I love my home team and it was a great game.
I finally managed to get together for lunch with my new friend Kelly from the Frenchtown Bookshop Writer’s Circle. We went to the Lumberville General Store which was cute as hell. I mean, Bucks County knows how to be historic and quaint and all that. I wasn’t surprised when I drove through a covered bridge on the way. We talked about art and kids and of course, writing. See Kelly’s artwork here.
Valentine’s Day came and went with very little fanfare. I went to a funeral. My friend Meaghan’s mom was given a beautiful send off and I’m glad I could be a part of it.
The big event of the month, and probably the reason I didn’t write and had a hard time focusing on anything else was our son’s “procedure.” Not a “surgery.” My husband and I went down to Children’s Hospital in Philly and spent about seven nail-biting hours waiting while our son had an ablation, or multiple ablations in his heart. It was so stressful, so scary that I felt unable to do anything in that waiting room. I don’t think I was even breathing. And as I thought about all the possible outcomes, all the reasons why it might go well or not, I realized how much I live my life based on superstition. There’s no controlling life. It’s hard and often unfair and it doesn’t discriminate. And sitting with other parents, some with really young children, I became acutely aware that life is happening for other people, all the time. It was profound. And humbling. But I knew we had so many people praying for us and I was grateful. We left Philly as it started to snow and we ended the day driving through a blizzard. Our son started his new job at Panera three days later and baseball season a week after that. So I guess you could say he’s doing well!
If you’re looking for something fun to do in the winter, check out a semi-pro hockey game. Three of my friends and I went to a Lehigh Valley Phantoms game and had a girls night out. I stole my son’s Phantoms jersey and felt really cool wearing it. They have pretty good food there, just don’t get the pretzels, they’re terrible. Jahan Dotson of the Eagles was a special guest that night and that was fun.
I visited the Michener Museum of Art and met with the director of marketing, hoping to do some design work for them, and had an amazing time there. I’m hoping to plan a trip there with friends and clients soon. I am so completely at peace when I’m walking through a museum. Can you imagine working for an art museum, every day? And I went to an art opening for a friend of mine, Glenn Harren. You can see his paintings here. He was showing at the SVA in Frenchtown, which is owned by another friend, John Schmidtberger.
And a lot of other things happened that I don’t have photos of, or can’t share photos of. My daughter and I went prom dress shopping. It was fun but utter madness, at the King of Prussia mall on a Sunday. It was a workout! The kids finally got their photos taken for their driver’s licenses. The DMV. On a Saturday. We have survived a lot. Oh! AND, I drove into NYC for a mini high school reunion. Although I went to school in DC, an inordinate number of alums live in New York. We met at a shabby little bar in NOLITA. I got to see people I hadn’t seen since I graduated. So crazy. And it felt like no time had passed.
