Design

I’ve designed a few things recently.

A logo for the interior design firm my daughter, Helen (Coco), and I will have in a few years, when she’s done with school. We have to; our initials make the word home.

And the cover of the book I’ll write about my life after the people I might offend have died. Or maybe I’ll move to Nova Scotia and change my name, and write it sooner.

It’s a book about all the lies we tell ourselves, the ways we cope with the arduous task of being human. By fabricating a narrative that we come to believe, usually while the truth is simmering under the surface. It’s not a feel-good story, but neither is life, most days.

If I ever want to tell the story of my younger brother, Steve, whom I miss very much, I’ll use this for the visual.

You can see I like to play with words and typeface. I love making things look beautiful. This was the dining room last summer.

I’ve seen a couple of movies recently. Marty Supreme, which I hated, and Rebuilding, which I loved. Especially the moment when the little girl asks her dad, who has lost the family ranch to a wildfire, “Can you still be a cowboy without cows?” Brilliant.

There is no violence, arguing or sex. There isn’t even wifi. You’ll love it.

I just read Belle Burden’s book. I loved it.

I know Belle, tangentially. My daughter is friends with her daughter in their Martha’s Vineyard lives. I’ve met her; she’s lovely. Her story is not new, nor is it shocking: man walks out on family during the pandemic. Leaves to be with his mistress; wife is devastated, kids heartbroken. Belle is from American royalty —Town and Country magazine all the way. She’s also a Harvard-educated lawyer, so she’s no dummy. Most importantly, what she is, in writing this, is brave, because she’s embedded in a culture that prizes the stiff upper lip, the smooth façade (see above: It Was a Good Li(f)e), the we don’t talk about these kinds of things, get your whites on, we’ve got a tennis match to play world. In doing so she gives permission to the rest of us to lay the burden of silence down and get on with a more authentic life.

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I have remained true to my decision to be social-media free, and it’s wonderful. I have logged time looking at the beautiful faces of the devastated mother and father whose gorgeous son took his own life two weeks ago, of my kids, my partner, my parents, my hospice patients, the Unitarians, my friends. I am looking at the world with new eyes, stunned by how precious it is.

I’m making lists: things that are awful and things that are great, and I’m shedding the awful things, one by one, so the great things have more room to breathe. This includes behaviors of mine, too. I don’t know why, but I feel the sands of time so intensely now. I really only want to be in the real real of what’s happening in front of me.

I hope you’re reading a good book, maybe have seen a good movie. I’m going to Montana soon, with my kids, and my sister is coming, and her kids. And we’re going to do the most basic things: cook, eat, ski, talk, watch football. Together. Amen.

For George, whose face we loved, and kindness and grace and humor and love, always.