Kitsap as Elton & Home

Kitsap (Wildflowers) couldn’t decide which holiday glasses best suited him 🎅🏽

He is so very handsome — I think any glasses would look good on him 💙

Thank you, Bridget!

As I have mentioned, I am working on a manuscript. I am not ready to share too much about it except to say that it is broadly about my professional expertise, which is loss and grief. Who knew I had so much to say?! (Okay — everyone 😘 ).

Anyway, after getting a second set of edits from my Book Coach/Editor, I recently added the following text to the early/intro part of things. She hasn’t seen it yet and so it may change but you can get the flavor of why this photo of Carmen and Ozzie (not a Kaibab dog but we welcome all in our family) meant so much to me — and was so well-timed!

I remember where I was and what I was doing when Montana beckoned. I was going to a dog show, and when I drove north into Montana, everything just opened up, as if to welcome me. And yet there was nothing. Everything and nothing – that is how it felt. The forested snow-capped mountains, shadowed from big, fluffy white clouds floating lazily across the bright, blue Montana sky. The immenseness was overwhelming. Awe-inspiring. Like a postcard. There was so much and there was nothing. “This feels like home,” I said to the dogs who were riding in their crates in the back of the van.

 I did eventually move to Montana from Salt Lake City, where I had lived for about 12 years. Before Salt Lake, I had spent three years in Wisconsin and before that, there had been the three years in Oregon. But I don’t think I would have lived in any of those places if my mom hadn’t died. I think I would have just stayed in California.

 Montana was beautiful and wonderful, as I had imagined. I lived in a big cedar house in the Bitterroot valley, just south of Missoula. On a clear day, I could see the tiny structure at the top of St. Mary’s Peak from my kitchen. I rode my mountain bike on the trails, walked dogs on our long gravel road with my bestie, Suzanne, and her dogs. I named the deer and the squirrels and the moose. I took photos of bald eagles, elk, calves, the neighborhood donkey, mountains, bears, and my dogs. But Montana only ever felt like home, which is not the same thing as being home.

 I don’t know what home means. Is home a feeling? A place? I wish I knew. What I do know is that I want to be there. I want to be home. I just can’t figure out where that is.

 On the campus of the University of California at Berkeley is a log bench. When I sit there, I feel home. But a bench isn’t a real home. I can’t live at a bench. It’s not even long enough to sleep on.

But I belong to that bench. I am part of the memories and the history. It contains my childhood, and my family. When I sit there on the bench in the small grove of redwoods, next to Sather Gate, and trace my grandfather’s name on the small plaque, I am home.

 Maybe home is about belonging.

Thank you, Carmen, for visiting ❤️

Truth

“Almost everything will start working again if you unplug it for a few minutes… including you.” – Anne Lamott

Sparkle

❤️