My Friends, Travel Wise

As I lit these candles yesterday, I allowed myself a moment to reflect on the many and varied emails that have come in these past few days. There's Mike Y. sending Where in the World updates from his trip to China and Hong Kong (snake brandy, he says, and three-story tall Buddhas). There's B.B., with reports of "decadence" in Turkey. R.R.R. is in the Bahamas, sand on her feet, and J.S. is at home, a father to sons. J.P. is planning for Las Vegas (then Arizona); my student, K.E., is at home (which is Manhattan), finishing up her screenplay; I.G. is settling in again with her short stories; and Alyson Hagy (okay, so I'll use her name) just returned from New Mexico, where, she reports, the University of Wyoming team won "one of the wildest football games played all year (or ever in the case of UW)..." and where Alyson herself ran toward the mayhem following the double-overtime win—an earned gambol given all Alyson does in her dual capacities at the university on behalf of literature and athletics.

I love my friends. It cannot be helped.

I'll take the red silk amaryllis to my mother's grave in a few hours. I'll tell her a few stories when I get there.