Back home in Marin

Just got back to Terry and home in Marin. I spent 6 days in Bloomington (leading up to an actual court trial with Geoff over his violations of our decree) with Daniel and Ned and Ned's girlfriend Amanda, and then took the boys to NYC to visit my brother Steve, who lives in the West Village (still unmarried but current girlfriend is a concert violinist and Korean - I don't know whether to be optimistic because she is 15 years younger than him...).

It felt great to be in the city - I had the same experience as Colleen. I love the hum and smell and energy of it, and also the fact that there are so many more out-of-shape people there than in CA. I need my theater fix every 4-6 months; it became my substitute emotional outlet during the 6 years before the divorce. All of us saw Avenue Q, and then the boys saw Blue Man Group (again), while my brother and I went to Gone Missing, a series of monologues about losing things. I remember feeling utterly bereft during the fall of 1976, having lost all of you, and the community we made together. I would have been so much happier had I gone to NYC with Celia, Colleen, and Mimi, or to SF with Ali, but I was a major chicken-shit and chose the coward's way by living with Geoff. I agree with Victoria that Allison has a unique gift for bringing people into community, and that this is the essence of home. And it is hard to make a community of one, which may be why Colleen feels its absence with only her dad in Farmington.

My community in Marin is very narrow, but I have resolved to make it grow. I spend most of my time here in the bedroom or the kitchen (and very happy in both places!). There is Ali within reach, but our mutual schedules are madness, and then I have a growing number of professional contacts. Joe Edelberg is in Berkeley, but I have not contacted him. Terry has few friends, largely because a household with kids and a mom with metastatic breast cancer tends to fold into itself. I am hoping this will change, but his illness this spring postponed it. He is infinitely better, almost completely recovered.

One reason I am reluctant to sell the house in Bloomington is that Mimi and I have built a wonderful community there, with intersecting social circles. It takes time and being open to build it, which means in our all-too-linear lives you can only do it so many times. And that is why I need the one we built at Smith. It sustains me knowing you are all out there.

But does Ali's gift suggests we could get better at it, with practice and will?