what it is to soar—mother, son, Julie Diana Hench

This Mother's Day weekend I'm honoring my mother and son, pictured here, years and another neighborhood ago. My mother, who, with her elegant mind and many talents, cared about family first, about lasting love. My son, who made me a mother, who taught me all the important stuff, who, even as he takes Manhattan by storm, takes the time to tell me his best stories. To text. To write. To call. To love.

He's as beautiful as he always was.

On Sunday, I will sit in the parquet, DD, seat 6, of the Academy of Music, beside my husband, and watch my dear friend Julie Diana Hench dance her final song as the principal ballerina of Pennsylvania Ballet. Julie came into my life at a sideways glance early last fall, a moment she wrote of here. She let me into her world, which I wrote of here. And tomorrow she will do what she does so exquisitely well—take the music in through her soul, yield her soul to us.

Julie—wife, mother, daughter, dancer, writer, soul—has so many new chapters ahead of her.

She leaves us all with a truer idea of what it is to soar.

A lesson any of us would be blessed to learn again, on Mother's Day Weekend.