Tag: georgia

On a quiet holiday season

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Thanksgiving in the Pines

I still can’t read the news, because it makes me queasy, so it was nice to remove myself from a screen for a long weekend. We retreated for the Thanksgiving holiday to spend the time with Guion’s family, and it was very nice.

Thanksgiving in the Pines

One supreme benefit is Georgia. This is Georgia. She belongs to Guion’s parents, and she is probably the best dog who has ever lived. She really likes holding hands.

We enjoyed long conversations and memory-sharing at the dinner table; ate sumptuously; and took extensive warm-weather walks.

Thanksgiving in the Pines

(Guion also continues to be very good-looking.)

We are at peace, despite our increasingly doomed country. I let him get his first Christmas tree* of our marriage this year, and he is very happy about it. The morning after we put it up and decorated it, I found him sitting in the dark living room next to it, lights on, drinking his tea. I felt a surge of guilt for being such a Scrooge, for having crushed his childlike spirit for so many years. But we have it now. And Christmas joy permeates the house.

(*”Tree” is a grandiose term; the thing is barely 3 feet tall. My wifely generosity has limits.)

Thanksgiving in the Pines

Things I enjoy

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Loving on Georgia dog

THINGS I ENJOY

  • Dragging my sleeves through food I am trying to get into my mouth
  • Eating seven clementines in a sitting
  • Reading aloud in a British accent
  • Calling the dogs with a variety of cheerfully vulgar nicknames
  • Melting bits of chocolate into my clothing as I eat it with all the delicate precision of a woodchuck
  • Not living in Florida
  • Talking to dogs
  • Reading with a pencil in hand
  • Not reading the news
  • Touching people’s faces in the middle of a conversation
  • Listening to Guion laugh
  • Practicing The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying
  • Drinking tea in the afternoon
  • Watching Mitch McConnell’s mouth when it makes words

Family in Hatteras

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We spent more than week away from the “real world,” which was magical.

First, we spent a little time in the Pines with Nettles…

Nettles at some lake in Whispering Pines
Chris in some lake.
Nettles at some lake in Whispering Pines
Juliana reads Jhumpa Lahiri on the dock.

and left Pyrrha at doggy summer camp with Guion’s wonderful parents, and her puppy BFF, Georgia.

Doggy summer camp

And then we went to Hatteras and ate lots of food and talked and wandered around on the beach.

View from our beach house
View from our beach house.
Grandmothers on the deck
Ma-Maw and Gran.

I didn’t get any glamorous beach shots, because I didn’t want to take Louis in the sun and water, but these two photos give you a general idea of what we mostly did (ate and talked and ate and talked, and sometimes watched appallingly riveting television, such as “Swamp People”).

Beach laziness
MM, Kelsey, and Alex.

Beach laziness

You guys, I love these people that I happen to be related to by blood (and marriage).

Weekend with family and pups

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Our weekend with Guion’s parents and their new puppy, Georgia, was lovely. How could it not be? Just LOOK at this baby:

Look at that face!

Papa Pratt with the pups

My parents and my brother came down for lunch on Sunday, and we had a pleasant afternoon of great food and lounging about, doting on the dogs.

Gimme dat toy

Family and the fire

My idea of a perfect weekend.

Puppy at my feet

Keep the windows open

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windows

Frenzy

By Anne Sexton

I am not lazy.
I am not on the amphetamine of the soul.
I am, each day,
typing out the God
my typewriter believes in.
Very quick. Very intense,
like a wolf at a live heart.
Not lazy.
When a lazy man, they say,
looks toward heaven,
the angels close the window.

Oh angels,
keep the windows open
so that I may reach in
and steal each object,
objects that tell me the sea is not dying,
objects that tell me the dirt has a life-wish,
that the Christ who walked for me,
walked on true ground
and that this frenzy,
like bees stinging the heart all morning,
will keep the angels
with their windows open,
wide as an English bathtub.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

LOVE this poem. It hits me with such truth and deep, personal applicability today.

We are headed to Southern Pines for the weekend, to see both sets of our parents and, most of all, to meet precious baby Georgia! (Georgia being my parents-in-laws’ new puppy.) I can’t wait. I just hope Pyrrha plays gently and doesn’t try to snack on the wee babe.

Oh, and Happy Anna Howard Shaw Day!

Loose thinking

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Sunday afternoon

The upside of a quiet weekend is ample time to think, the kind of loose thinking that occurs when one is being profoundly unproductive, when one should be studying for an investment exam but is instead looking up rough collies for adoption and reading a funny but poorly structured feminist memoir. The kind of thinking that occurs in those spaces.

I have been thinking about: how the Old Testament has become more difficult to me over time; Georgia the puppy; the anecdotal mystery of why you always see so many nurses out smoking; the appalling state of reproductive rights for women in the world, not to mention the United States; my siblings; other people’s siblings; more heartbroken, beloved friends; Anne Sexton; scars; the appalling state of the world in which teens are getting the majority of their sex education from porn; fonts; the virtue of getting to stay and not die.

And then I look up and see Guion, playing guitar, writing new songs, and I realize that we are inhabiting wholly different spaces. His mind is fully engaged, 5,000 miles away from mine, but we can stop, make eye contact, and then there we are, together; we meet each other again.