It was hot and humid last night. Even so the morning went well and we were all bundled into the car in good time. At the Cortland and Mission lights, Jeremy said:

“I didn’t sleep well.”

“Me neither,” I said.

“Me neither,” said Claire.

“Neither did I,” said Julia.

I was dumbstruck. It was such a quotidian thing and yet it was the first time I had really felt the four of us as a family, individual people all living in the same house, sharing the same weather. I can’t put it into words.

This weekend, Jeremy’s mother is arriving but Jeremy will be spending the entire weekend wrangling adorable killer robots. That’s okay; I will take Jan with me to the girls’ piano, wushu, riding and swimming lessons, and to Najah’s birthday party. That’s assuming I finish the huge work deadline I am currently avoiding by writing this. Next weekend is not so bad – just a garden work day, school Fall Fun Festival and Julia’s birthday party, plus all the usual lessons, but at least I will have Jeremy around to help.

Sigh! I do love my wildly busy life. The girls and I have been doing a lot of cooking and drawing and reading. Julia has hugely enjoyed the beginning of piano and practices every day. Fourth grade at school comes with a choice of flute, violin or something else and Claire chose violin, which in practice means that she is trying to reproduce Zoe Keating songs at one-quarter scale. I am more than fine with that.

I am reading the Jenny Linsky stories with Jules and the Swallows and Amazon series with Claire. Jules is enormous fun to read with: every plot twist is a total shock to her. Claire likes to crochet or cross-stitch while I read, but will occasionally nudge me to ask a question or make an observation that makes it clear she has been hanging on every word. Curling up with them to read, usually with the cat walking over the mountain range of our knees, is the best part of every day.

DSC_2028, a photo by Goop on the lens on Flickr.

Ignore the poo.

DSC_1667, a photo by Goop on the lens on Flickr.

I seem to have spent the entire summer grinning like fule.

In an otherwise creepy and depressing thread, I found this wonderful comment:

A girl needs to learn how to perform “what boys like” in order to attract and keep boys’ attention, and boys take it for granted girls will be doing this, that girls exist as objects for their attention to pick and choose from (this is why many guys, especially young ones, feel perfectly at home evaluating women, any woman at all, with “I’d hit it” or not – we are surprised at their presumption, but from their POV that is their role as selector). Boys and girls (and men and women) will “punish” girls who aren’t trying to fulfill their given role.

This was such a strong pressure in my adolescence that specific instances of gender-enforcement stand out in my memory: Christine saying “It’s past time you started shaving your legs”; Aaron and his friends forming the Itty Bitty Titty Committee to give marks out of ten for our bust sizes; Cameron saying “I wish you hadn’t cut your hair; your long hair was the good kind, with curls.” And many more. Women were the biggest enforcers. Jan, the minister’s wife, was the worst. Anne Summers wrote a book I still haven’t finished, about women in early colonial Sydney, called Damned Whores and God’s Police. Those were our only options. Jan was God’s chief of police.

Girlness was a performance judged by a panel of assholes. I sucked at it, which turned out to be my salvation. Being a horsy girl was a recognized loophole on the tomboy spectrum (although, again, Claudia, when we were all of ten: “You can’t just talk about horses all the time, you know.” HAHAHA SUCK IT.) The panel of assholes still in full flight in Australia, by the way, where the gendered slurs against our Prime Minister boggle the mind. (Anne Summers, on point again.) But whenever I get to bitching about this on IM, Liz sensibly points out: “It’s not Australia. It’s the patriarchy.”

Argh! I have daughters. I drag them along to barns and science museums and give them math books and read Swallows and Amazons to them at bedtime so that they can have Mary King and Limor Fried and Fan Chung and Nancy Blackett as alternative role models to Jan-the-minister’s-wife. But they’ll need the hearts and stomachs of concrete elephants all the same.

And still. More vividly than I remember all the putdowns, I remember the day I realized I was a free agent, and could exercise a choice. I want that for everyone.

An old buddy is Facebooking about his mountain biking adventures on the same Ku-ring-gai Chase trails Alfie and I knew so well: the Perimeter Trail, the Long Trail, the Cooyong-Neverfail Trail. I got to remembering what it felt like to let Alfie go. He was blindingly fast well into his twenties. He outran a 3yo QH filly once, I remember, my grand old Arabian king. Yet I don’t ever remember being afraid sitting on his back. I held the rein like a gossamer thread.

I realized in my body, in a way that’s hard to put into words, that I need to find that same feeling of openness when I point Bella and Jackson at fences: the same light contact, the same absolute lack of fear.

IMG_20120929_125536.jpg, a photo by yatima on Flickr.

This is Claire on a Welsh cob and I am pretty sure I daydreamed the whole thing.

I got back to the office today after more than a week of traveling on business and for fun. My desktop wallpaper is this picture of me sitting with Julia on the log bridge over the Garcia River at Oz. I looked at it for longer than usual this morning, because that’s where we spent last weekend.

Oz is a strenuous exercise in looking at landscapes of extreme beauty, eating delicious food, playing in the river and soaking up the sunshine. We read, we draw pictures, we toast marshmallows in the potbellied stove, we have long baths. It’s like everyday life only better. This year as I was reading in bed, an opossum came visiting on the deck outside, exploring the dome windows with its opossumy nose.

I am a creature of habit. Here’s what I wrote about Oz last year and here’s the year before. Liz blogged that same weekend although, being Liz, she added lots of interesting local history.

Speaking of which – local history, I mean – I paid more attention in the Point Arena lighthouse museum this year, and learned two Salient Facts therefrom. Salient Fact the First is that in the 19th and early 20th centuries the white settlers logged the living hell out of that part of the country, sending logs of old-growth redwood down the Garcia. There are pictures in this book, which I probably need to buy of the devastation. The logs ended up in San Francisco, building for example the house in which I live. So my pristine wilderness meadow isn’t, and it isn’t because it was torn apart to build my home.

Salient Fact the Second is also about the meadow, which turns out to be pretty much the San Andreas fault. The thought had never crossed my mind – that place is my sanctuary – but of course when I went back to look at Liz’s blog, she had already guessed as much. O promised land, what a wicked ground! No wonder I love you so much.

Already a hour into our window of opportunity, we have no product to ship. The CEO is hand-watercolouring the sign. The only employee had to be wooed away from solving puzzles. It is left to the investors (me and @jsgf) to juice the lemons and buy plastic cups.

Later:

Last night Claire and I went through her favourite cookbook and picked out the gnocchi, lasagne and baked peach recipes for her to make. Today after wushu we went to Lucca, the awesome Italian place on Valencia and 22nd, for pasta flour, amaretti and parmesan. (Some dulce de leche and tuna in olive oil snuck into my bag as well.) At the farmer’s market we found stone fruit, onions, spring onions, cilantro, kale, potatoes and Colin, who always has the best neighborhood gossip. At Good Life we bought meat, carrots and lemons. Right now I am baking paleo quiche (savory custard tarts in pancetta crusts) and the girls are about to make lemonade to sell at the street party around the corner.

It’s so rare that I find myself being more or less the mother I’d hoped I would be…

I just love this guy. Subtle and perceptive.

It requires almost a lifetime of riding to acquire really educated hands, because by “educated hands” we mean hands which are fixed on the reins with a resistance exactly equal to the resistance of the horse’s mouth against them, and hands so sensitive that they can yield the very instant the horse yields to their pressure. To continue that severe a pressure in the horse’s mouth even an instant longer than is necessary is to continue a punishment after the horse has yielded.

Also kind of totally Zen in a “you will never perfect this; deal with it” way.

In riding, you have got to feel. You cannot, and you must not, look. When you look down at your horse all you will see are your own mistakes! To keep from making those mistakes, keep your eyes up and focused on some definite point or some definite object.

The book is 62 years old but could’ve been written yesterday.

Remember, it is the horse’s job to throw you forward and upward, when posting with the motion. All you do is sink down in the saddle. The forward movement of the horse will then carry you back into position. Much of getting too far out of the saddle, twisting the upper body in mid-air before coming down, collapsing on the horse’s neck, or, in the other extreme, being thrown too far back so that the legs shoot out in front of the rider, is caused by the rider’s trying to do the horse’s work for him. The horse throws you forward and upward. You sink down. The horse’s forward motion carries you back. And until then—Wait for him!

Don’t just do something! Sit there!

But somehow, after weeks of trial and error, Randy and his team had accomplished the ideal. They had found a design that was both functional and beautiful. The swept-wing solar array looked like nothing that had ever been created before. It looked so good it just had to be right. And the calculations said that it might be able to hold as many as thirty-six strings.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty; that is all ye know on Mars and all ye need to know.

Woke up this morning thinking, worst case scenario, Bella’s still sore and I have to ride Jackson in the Grand Prix arena. Then I thought, I’ll just jump smaller jumps. Done it before, can do it again. (A couple of months ago when Bell was being naughty I was busted down to crossrails!) And sure enough I had to ride Jacks in the Grand Prix, and we jumped smaller jumps, and it was FINE.

I’ve been spending cycles thinking about how I can improve my riding given that it’s just not practical to spend more hours in the saddle. Three things came to mind: first, have a better attitude; second, read more books about riding; and third, use visualization.

Attitude: I need to make the most of every minute in the saddle, which means paying attention every minute of the lesson, taking criticism gratefully, letting go of my ego and accepting that making mistakes is part of the process. Books: my Kindle is now full of equitation textbooks and I’ve already gleaned a ton of ideas, such as visualization and having a better attitude. Visualization: before every course now I try to not only learn what jumps we’re jumping, but also to feel how the course will ride, what rhythm we’ll need, where the sticky parts are, where to sit still and go forward. What it will feel like. That, surprise! Is helping me develop my feel.

Salome came to cheer me on and we talked without stopping for several hours, about horses and children and love and art. We sat in the sun at the Crissy Field Center watching the shadows move across the Golden Gate Bridge, and I felt so, so happy and lucky.

…which is what we did on Labor Day afternoon. We all schlepped down to Noisebridge, where the girls did a circuit hacking class with Mitch Altman. Liz and Milo were there and Jamey and Rowan came too, and then Danny showed up. Danny and I curled up in the library writing. Every now and then Claire or Jules or Jeremy would come and give me a hug.

Claire made an LED lamp that changes colour. The frequency increases if you put your hand near it – it has an infrared sensor. Julia made a name tag with her name spelled out in LEDs. She soldered it all herself.

I love Noisebridge for being so close to us and so full of light, and for having a library, and for running this class deliberately to be at a family-friendly time, and for being a place where all my friends hang out, and for having as its motto “Be excellent to each other.”

Another week; they flicker past. The big trade show of the year tired me out so much that I would come home and lie down on my bed for an hour after work. The first day I didn’t do that, the girls were surprised. A coworker said today he never thought of me as the sort of person who worried about client meetings. I said “Ever asked yourself why I do three hours prep for every hour face to face?”

Claire has a new violin. The school is giving lessons, free, so we rented this half-sized instrument from a place on Market. It’s adorable. I want to learn myself. The feel of the bow across the string is tantalizing.

Speaking of, Bella has a sore foot and I have been riding Jackson. He’s a big sour old Thoroughbred, scary sometimes to watch because of his repertoire of evasions. But when I ride him with my best self, I can get him forward and soft. I can only get it for a minute or so at a time: hence, tantalizing. I want to stretch out the nice moments so they get longer and longer. The trainers talk about the feeling of being “on rails”, when the horse’s hind legs are pushing along a straight line and the reins feel like train tracks and everything feels preordained. I’ve had that a couple of times on Bells, and now I can get it a little on Jacks. It’s quite a feeling to ride this huge horse over fences, fearless. Lopity lope.

When I get off him, it’s another six inches or something before I land, versus getting off little Bella. My eyes are probably sixteen hands or so off the ground, but his wither is above the top of my head. He’s vast and gentle.

I’ve been intermittently organizing around the house and I made my folding desk into a proper workplace for myself, with paints and sketchbooks and pens and pencils, so that even if I only have half an hour I can make a sketch or a watercolor. On Labor Day Monday I was in a bad mood for various reasons, but I did a painting and it helped me to feel better. I am completely amateurish, which is the point: I am letting myself learn to fail more. Julia loves to paint with me. Claire likes it but is also enjoying her piano. We’re the Austen sisters around here, I tell you what.

Speaking of, Claire has mastered the rice cooker and the kettle, and tonight’s stir fry with chicken, broccoli, green beans and carrots was mostly her work. She taught Julia to make the rice. Claire likes to bring me cups of tea, and has been offering to make me gins and tonic as well. Kid knows her mother.

Jeremy’s lovely but between his new startup gig and wushu, and my promotion and the horses, we sort of terrorist fist-bump in passing. But he did get a haircut and is looking totally awesome. I wonder if he would go out with me.

Hugely enjoying this tale of growing up among Mitfords-manque in America.

Life is a scavenger hunt run backward as well as forward, a race to comprehend. But with Wasps, the caretakers lock the explanatory sorrows away, then swallow the key.

It is unkind of me to consider the embarrassment of the aristocracy my own private soap opera, but Goddess forgive me, I do.

When Donny lived in Manhattan he’d often walk by the Ralph Lauren store on Madison and glower at the windows’ horsy homages to the world the Robinsons once bestrode. “If Ralph really wants to get to the heart of Waspdom,” Donny says, “he should do a whole window full of beakers of lithium and patients in white gowns.”

I picked this up because one of the Rumpus bloggers read it in the Australian coffee shop in Brooklyn that Matt took me to – what? That’s cromulent! – but no one told me it was an AIDS memoir.

The Last Time

The last time we had dinner together in a restaurant
with white tablecloths, he leaned forward

and took my two hands in his hands and said,
I’m going to die soon. I want you to know that.

And I said, I think I do know.
And he said, What surprises me is that you don’t.

And I said, I do. And he said, What?
And I said, Know that you’re going to die.

And he said, No, I mean know that you are.

Oh, and also a love letter to her brother, two things which separately and together are bound to make me verklempt. I miss them, the AIDS dead. I imagine another mentor or two, acid-tongued, politically astute, fond of my children. The other books Paul Monette would have written, Kenny Everett’s late night talk show, Freddie Mercury’s kickass performance at the Olympic opening ceremony in London, the rest of Derek Jarman’s films. Fuck.

Nothing for it but my best Zen life hack: pretend you are travelling back from the future to see that person you loved one last time.

1. I work in SF’s tourist central, two blocks from the cable car turnaround, which is usually just infuriating but today, also inexplicable. I’m not sure how a person loses an 11-year-old page from his or her diary, but here it is, made weirdly poignant in spite of its shitty politics by its date.

2. I was still holding the page when I joined the line at Peet’s. The lady in front of me insisted that my favourite barista had short-changed her. “I gave you a twenty and you only gave me five!” “I’m sure I gave you another ten,” said my barista, flustered. “Is that it there hidden in your hand?” I asked the lady helpfully. She scowled at me. When I was a checkout girl in the eighties I was handsomely ripped off by a woman pulling that scam.

3. An update from my work-best-friend on the friend of hers who adopted a baby from Kazakhstan and bought a BMW and paid cash for a half-million-dollar house, all on a comfortable middle class salary: “she’s in Camp Cupcake!” I look blank. “Where Martha Stewart was?” Nothing. “She’s in the federal prison in Alderson. She embezzled $800,000 from her job.”

My mornings are not usually this entertaining.