The persistence of joy

Last week was a devastating one for this country. Next week promises to be no less so. This was what it looked like in my house as we watched the judiciary committee vote on Kavanaugh on Friday afternoon when, in a surprise development, Senator Jeff Flake called for an FBI investigation into the supreme court nominee's past, after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford courageously and credibly testified that, back in high school, Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her. Like so many women, I'd cried watching her testimony. The White House has since placed limits on what and who the FBI is allowed to investigate, so I predict more sham proceedings in this matter.

These lovelies were at my house waiting for my daughter and her boyfriend to get home from work. My kids, my niece, and their loves were all heading to Ithaca for the weekend to attend Apple Fest with their cousin, my other niece Dani, who is a senior at Ithaca College and will graduate in May. My son and my niece also went to Ithaca College, and my daughter and her boyfriend went to Cornell University in the same town, so it was old home week for all of them. My son's girlfriend and my niece's fiancé called themselves "the Ithaca virgins."

From the pictures they sent me yesterday (because they know me and know how much I love glimpses of them living their grown up lives), I don't think there are any virgins left in the group. That's Dani and her roommate and bestie in the middle of the group selfie. They were paired in a double in freshman year and have lived together every year since. I love when that happens.

I post these pictures to remind myself that joy can be persistent, even as we fight for our country, even as we call our senators and march in the streets and have conversations outside of our silos and write.

And yesterday, more intentional acts of joy: The man and I, and our friend Leslie, went to see the exhibit of Georgia O'Keefe's Hawaii paintings at the New York Botanical Gardens. After viewing the vibrant canvasses and marveling that I was looking at works touched by the master herself, we spent a wonderful afternoon wandering through nature, strolling and riding the tram through the woodlands and around the extensive gardens, and reveling in our fresh air exhaustion come evening.

I'm going to try and copy one or more of the paintings in the exhibit. I'm pretty sure they won't look anything like the originals, but maybe I'll have a derivative work that served to calm my jangled news junkie mind as I was creating it, that will teach me something about the delicacy of brush strokes and the blending of color, and that will please me to look upon afterward.