mornin'

It is today, and the season of competing to-do lists begins. The holidayscape looms, challenging one's ability to express love of family in delightful ways, more creatively, less frenetically than before, and as always, incorporating daily duty with grace. Quietude and grace can leak out and disappear, I remind myself. Tranquility is a project too, dang it. And yet the importance of these seasons of familial reunions, these lovefests we make for one another are worth the trouble, the anxiety, the money, all of it.

I attended a high school play last evening, the theme of which is the end of the world as we know it. A dark and timely topic, lightly and beautifully staged by the School of the Arts in San Francisco, it was The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder. My teen played Mrs. Antrobus to the bloomin' hilt. She was magnificent! I say that objectively of course, but my daughter-in-law agreed, as did numerous audience members who came up and congratulated Lena, post performance. (Sada Thompson, eat your heart out!) The actress playing Sabina was equally fine, and Mr. Antrobus too, but what a tight, fine show about climate change, flood, war...and written in 1941, you know, and if you don't know, it is also a comedy. Helps to put catastophe in its place, doesn't it? Let's laugh.