Celebrating Brooklyn, Friendship, Love, and Truth

Yesterday was loveliness.  A few moments stolen with my gorgeous son, a tour of Brooklyn with my friend Reiko (we always have so much to say, we know each other so well, and her new home is bountiful, artful), and time with my former student, Kim, the lovely creature in gold, who sits beside her own Big G during a celebration of their engagement.

This photograph was sent to me this morning by Kim's mom, Bonnie, whom you can see in the right edge of the mirror.  Bonnie is reading from Handling the Truth—Bonnie is, in fact, the first out-loud reader of Handling the Truth. The words she reads are words Kim had written in my classroom a few years, words I loved so much that I include them in Handling, a book about the making of memoir.

Kim's final lines are these:

I was lucky, I was born an American, I was born healthy, I was born into a loving home. I was unlucky, I was born judgmental, I have seen terror, I have seen desperate cries for life.  So we continue:  surprised, derisive, and awake by intuition.