'Tis the Season

The jollity with the grandchildren continues! Ghana xylophone jam sessions, a giant robot made with cardboard boxes, a walk by the ocean eating sourgrass and snapping family photos with a Golden Gate Bridge backdrop, a Dim Sum brunch, rough-and-tumble chase games until someone gets hurt, reading books, books and more books, drawing and more drawing and making up little stories to go with the drawing, singing songs with ukulele, big meals and lively dinner conversation, the clean-plate-club group fist bump, group yoga, Zadie riding the training-wheel bike to the playground, Malik dancing to the piano, Polar Express video, the house in a delightful chaos of liveliness, a few stolen moments of adult peace and quiet when the kids are asleep.

Today off to Mt. Tam and the West Point Inn with three other families and the children of children I taught at The San Francisco School. (Blog cover photo is the view from that most wonderful place!). More welcome chaos to come, framed by early morning sunrise over the Bay Area, communal cooking, Hearts games, day hikes and more. Hope to end as we often have with four of us hiking down the mountain all the way to Sausalito and the ferry and the N-Judah to take us home again and prepare for the turn of the year.

The artist Andrew Goldsworthy once said “What’s behind a wall affects the quality of the wall” speaking of textures and such. I always thought it a profound metaphor for what lies below the surface, be it our psychological or cultural or political sub-conscious, affecting everything on that surface. It’s a blessing to not have to bring this up every time I write, but still I can’t help but feel that no matter how beautiful the painting on the wall, I can’t wholly enjoy it knowing the evil that lurks behind. You know what I’m talking about.

But music, art, hiking, reading, writing, singing, cooking, playing, dancing, the stuff of these days with the grandchildren, is what will see me through, what will see us through. Fa la la la la, la la la la.