After a 3 day snafu, I’m glad to say my blog is back up again and seems fully restored. Some of you might have received an email with the last few posts, some a note that my blog was down. What was the problem? I’m not sure, but it should be fixed now.

Before the fall so to speak, I was going to write a post about my past weekend jaunt to Big Sur to a young friend’s blessing way–part baby shower and all blessing within weeks of a mother giving birth. It was one of those incredible, gorgeous fall days on the coast, where the fog hovers over the Peninsula like a bad cold, but clears magnificently once you hit the homeland. One of those Sunday afternoons that beg you to linger under the arbor long after everyone is gone, to rejoice in the simplest moments of your journey, to see poetry in every twist and turn of the road.
I planned on writing something about the homey kitchen of the barn-like house we were in, about this other large family with a long history on the coast; about how creativity and the arts similarly inform their lives as it has ours; about the sharing of food and renewing friendships; the sheep, the goats, the cows, the sea like one great hope that is so hard to leave behind. Lemons on the windowsill. I could go on.

But looking back, I can’t help but recall something other. It was as if I saw myself sitting there under the fabled redwood trees, years before, swollen by baby and life’s decisions. Certain one minute and uncertain the next. In her was the same twenty something young mother to be bearing the truths of her story in the company of Big Sur women, the mothers, midwives, and friends who will be her guide as they were mine. Some days she may take a left on a right hand turn and visa versa, but that’s how it is. Like knitting, you pick up where you left off and keep on going. Knit a row, pearl a row. Repeat.

What life offers may feel bittersweet at times, difficult to embrace in all its complexities, and yet it is so much more than that too. Becoming who we are and who we want to be, facing the challenges of growing up and into our own is just the beginning; capturing the beauty of each given moment as we move into love and life as we imagine it is yet the essence of living fully, of creating the life we want to live.

Somewhere along the way we find it. There are no mistakes, really, just different approaches to the task. Many paths but no one way to becoming ourselves.

All the more sweet in reflection.

On creating a life, my cousin Erin Gafill, who like me grew up at Nepenthe, has recently published a book of memories speaking to her path as an artist, what she is calling her “little book of hope”– daily mediations on living the creative life. Drinking from a Cold Spring is available on her website and at Amazon. Looking for the light at the end of the tunnel? Take a long, cool drink of Erin’s words and be soothed. You will be glad you did. You can read more of her writing at The Big Sur Fix.