Self-Portrait with Lipstick

I'm practicing wearing lip color. I'm not sure why I feel compelled, after five decades of indifference, to make friends with lipstick now. It's may simply be my small reinvention to mark another birthday.

I have been largely absent from blog world this week, as we have a friend in town and are dancing in a whirlwind with her. She leaves tomorrow, and I will miss her infectious laughter, her come-as-you-are generosity, the camaraderie that extends to my husband and folds him in like one of the girls. She is the woman who introduced my husband to me. She grew up with him in Antigua and decided when she met me that I would love him. She was right. She is now my husband's lawyer as well as our friend, the kind that feels like family, and she visits a few times a year. In advance of her arrival, boxes begin arriving from Nordstrom and Amazon and other favorite places. I love when we come home and see yet another box addressed to her leaning against our door. It means she will be traveling north soon, and we will once again take the city by the shoulders, and twirl and twirl, and we will laugh while doing it.

And some day soon after she leaves, this Saturday perhaps, it is possible I will stay in bed most of the day, finding center again in a quiet space. And that evening, we are invited to a party to celebrate the birthdays of two dear friends. I think I will wear lipstick.