DAMNIT.

Sometimes it seems like you are just going along, living your life, when all of a sudden - WHAM! - two weeks have gone by and you haven’t written on your blog. I hate when that happens.

Went to see James Taylor in concert ten days ago. He can do no wrong in my eyes, but I have to say that he sounded even better this time than I have ever heard him before. The band was amazing and the arrangements were oh-so-tight. Brilliant.

On a sad note, I spent last Sunday afternoon with Mary Ann, Joan and Carol Anne - three good friends from college - their husbands and their, collectively, eight children. We had a great time, although I didn’t feel like I had much to offer the breast-feeding-diaper-changing-home-school-or-not-teacher-conferences discussions. That’s cool, all of their kids are great and Mike and I really relaxed and had a good time.

But here is the sad part. The next morning I got an email from Mary Ann letting me know that Joan found out when she got home on Sunday night that her father had a heart attack and passed away while she was with us that afternoon. For some reason I felt glad that Joan was with us when it happened. I don’t really know why. Maybe just because it spared her from the grief for a few hours.

This has led me to think about how life goes in phases - graduations, weddings, births, and deaths. Each phase feels foreign when it begins, and just as it becomes normal, usually shifts to the next phase. I remember the first of my friends who got married, the first to have kids etc and thinking how old I felt with each one. Now, I feel a shifting of the generations, where the parents become grandparents, and the kids (us) become parents. It feels strange.

And yet, no matter what phase I am in, James Taylor stays the same. Amazing.