Peace & Love

My friend Janice and I had such fun visiting with our college girls. Janice was my daughter's art teacher from pre-K through eighth grade, and our two daughters, classmates all those years, are as bonded as siblings at this point. Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon was the perfect span of time, just long enough for them to be happy to see us but not so long as for them to start chafing to get back to their lives. There was a sorority-frat mixer in their house Saturday evening, and we mothers stayed upstairs in our daughter's rooms sipping good red wine and chatting. Sunday morning when my girl and I went out for brunch, there were people asleep all over the living room. The house is very large for a student house, with great nooks and carved wooden details, a stained glass window in the dining room, a porch swing, shady trees and a fire pit in the back yard. You hear every step a person makes because it is also incredibly creaky. My daughter's room is large and airy with three big windows, and the quality of light in there is very tranquil, especially in the morning. She has posted photos everywhere and  says all the memories contained in them make her happy. Her childhood friend S's room is in the attic. It has eaves and angles and is a more expansive space than any of the other rooms. The drawback was that it needed work. Janice and S are artists and so they'e made that space wonderfully bohemian and creative, a hidden kingdom atop the house. In between lunch and dinner and errands with all of us together, we had a lovely time just hanging with our girls in their respective spaces. On the way back home yesterday afternoon, the fall foliage was on full display and the clouds were doing an opera in the sky, at one point forming an expansive white dove above our heads. Hello, Monday.