Do we look happy?

Last Saturday our daughter graduated from college.  For the second time.  She already has a degree in Spanish and Latin American studies, but after working for a while, she’s decided she wants to be in a medical profession.  So for the last two years she has carried around a backpack the size of a microwave, stuffed with books full of diagrams and language far more foreign to me than Spanish.  It’s hard to remember that there was a time when we could actually help her with her homework.

She got her biology degree cum laude from Cleveland State, a big urban university.  Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of students graduated, in a ceremony held in a huge, cavernous space, yet the palpable joy of all the familes gathered around us made it feel intimate.  Afterwards we all stood around outside taking photos, and I was glad all over again to live in this rusty, sturdy city where diversity is the norm.  Families of every size and hue posed and smiled and hugged as the seagulls wheeled overhead, doing their raucous best to add to the celebration.  Later we walked to our neighborhood Thai place and ate mango curry.  It was a wonderful day.

Okay.  It’s May 3 and I huddle here in  wool sweater and big fuzzy socks.  I just want to say this has been

The. Worst. Spring. Ever.

There.  I feel much better (not).

It was rainy and cold LAST week, too, of course, but my husband I still got on a ferry and sailed across a bay and spent two wild, wet days on an  island in Lake Erie.  My new book is set on a fictionalized version of that sweet chunk of limestone, and I walked around with pen in hand taking intensive notes, something I never do.   Paul took the pictures.  Here’s a photo of the back shore:

The water chortles and chuckles beneath those rocks.

We also spent a lot of time down in an abandoned quarry which, during a rare sunny moment, looked like this:

This place is Fossil Paradise and in the distance, behind a screen of tall cat tails, is a summer swimming hole.  On a chilly spring day before the tourists come, though, what it chiefly is is Quiet.  I sat there gazing at all the layers of rock and felt like a small thought  nestled in Earth’s many-tiered, ancient and all-knowing mind.