I am procrastinating

I sat doing a jigsaw puzzle, the winter sun pouring in. I felt guilty about not working on my proposal. I have completed the overview and am now working on the chapter summaries. In truth, I was thinking about them, and the arc of the book's narrative, as I hunted down puzzle pieces. As I've said before, a jigsaw puzzle is an excellent metaphor for figuring out a book. A piece at a time, the picture comes into view.

Last weekend was great fun, especially the engagement party for my son's friend and his fiancee. The guests were mostly drawn from the boy families in my son's middle school class—I suppose the moms in these families wrung our hands and puzzled out boy behavior together. It's the moms who stay in touch now, gathering sometimes and occasionally bringing the rest of the families together. The boys, now young men, almost without exception brought their girlfriends, almost all of them meeting the former middle school crew for the first time. My son's girlfriend, who is white, was taken aback to walk into a gathering that was almost all white. She knew my son went to a private school in the city but she'd imagined it to be more diverse than it actually was. She attended a very diverse public school in New Jersey, was the only white girl in her friend group, and is used to gatherings that include a more varied and multihued range of folks. We had an interesting conversation afterward about how people who don't know might have judged my son's school experience and her school experience to be exactly the opposite of what they were. Everyone adored her, of course. We all love her dearly and she gets my son. And there's a great bonus: She gets me too.