Summary of my 41st Year

Because my life is often reduced to lists these days, here is a list of the events of my 41st year that mattered to me. Maybe it was a book I read, something I saw, a sight or sound or song that moved me, or beauty that touched my soul. Maybe it was something sad, or something delicous. But here is my list--in no particular order.

We saw a lunar eclipse from the top of the parking lot at the Grove. The world went dark, the moon disappeared, and no one paid attention, it seemed, except a few random families on top of a corporate parking lot in the middle of Los Angeles. Magic.

We were surrounded by 25,000 dolphins. We went to the Channel Islands with my old, dear friend Athena, her husband Amir and her son Julian. We cruised out to Santa Cruz and suddenly the ocean was filled with dolphins as far as we could see. It was the world before man,before we destroyed it and killed it and made the oceans sick. This is what California was like. The whole ocean was choppy with thousands and thousands of dolphins cutting across our bow and behind our stern, leaping and jumping and playing.

My friend died. I got to be with her for her last 48 hours. I got to hold her and cry with her and take care of her and love her and look in her eyes and watch her go in and out and read to her and help her go to the next world, while I held her hand. It was my blessing.

I scattered her ashes. I spoke her name. I told her stories. I sat in a tiny cottage with my boys, my husband, Lauren, Jim and Sandy, her sister, and we ate simple pasta, got warm in front of the fire, and told our favorite, sweeetest memories of our friend. It was better than anything else.

I hiked half the Dipsea trail. Alone. I walked from Stinson to Muir woods. I hiked through enchanted forests, and up giant moss covered stairs and along ridges that looked out over hundreds of miles of fog. I descended into giant redwoods and sat and ate chocolate.

I climbed a tree bridge in a giant wood, and felt alive.

I reported the stories of 30 women, wrote a book proposal, and sent it out to two agents.

I finished my year as Canyon School President. We were quiet, not perfect. But we restored an era of good feeling, and gently led the school back to a sweeter, more transparent, more hopeful place.

We started a Charter School, and it really opened. It is spectacular and makes me feel plugged into the world, the community, and the world in a way that I don't know that anything else has in my adult life.

I have a new niece.

Obama is our president. I feel hope.

I took a collage class. I did one project about reflections: how your past reflects up from the depths and makes you who you are, and I am doing a second of a woman in a box. She is made up of cast-offs from the kitchen. Her message to me: As happy as I am, I still feel like a woman in a box.

I rode one spectacular, perfect wave in Malibu.

I read a trio of books that changed me: Ian Buruma's book on Theo Van Gogh, Persepolis, the graphic novel of coming of age in Iran under various repressive regimes, and Hirsi Ali's amazing autobiography, Submission, about what it is like to be a Muslim woman, and what muslim immigrants mean for the future of Europe.

I went to my reunion and felt at ease about my choice of college. I felt a love for this place that was still, beautiful, and taught me to feel orgasmic about reading Heidigger. I saw the chairs where I sat in the library and got intellectually turned on and I felt grateful, more grateful than I would have been for better parties, better connections, or more men. Wellesley taught me to be a woman. I am proud.

I took my boy to chess and swimming lessons, and now he can do both.

Jonathan and I went on the best hike we ever had on Cold Springs Trail in Santa Barbara. Three hours after we left it burned to the ground. But I got to hike it one last time. I have a perfect memory to hold onto.

My husband is happier. He is kinder, gentler, and trying to do small, sweet things. I am grateful.

My boys became even more beautiful and fun.

I listen to my a capella CD from the Wellesley Tupelos over and over and over again. I explain the songs to Theo and sing them at the top of my lungs in the car as I drive around Los Angeles. I love it.

Oh yeah...and Benji was hospitalized for two days after he drank a bottle of tylenol and i almost had a nervous breakdown and our marriage struggled, but he is ok. and we are, too.

And we panned for gold on the Little Ranch, and spent time with our dear friends the Marko-Tanners and jumped in swimming holes and ate blueberry ice cream made by Jill. Yum.

I read Isabelle Allenda's memoir and loved it, and The Road, and The Omnivore's Dilemma, and Miss Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun Lien Bynum and lots and lots of books on Buddhism.