August 3rd

Last night, I had a dream that my friend Anna and I were going to explore some catacombs somewhere in France.  No one knew what was down there, so we braced ourselves in case we found rows and rows of skulls or hollowed out spaces in the walls containing dessicated bodies.  What we found instead was an exhibition on the fashions of the Middle Ages behind glass display cases.  So that was a relief.  (If you have read Pattie McCarthy's poems, which I was reading before bed, you might understand why I hold her partly responsible for this dream.)  

Today Elias and I met Anna, Kari, and Kari's kids at the American Museum of Natural History on 81st Street in Manhattan.  The baby and I got there later than everyone else because of nap schedules, etc, so they watched a movie about dark matter at the planetarium while waiting for us.  The poster for it that I saw said it was about how we know what 5% of the universe is made up of, but WHAT IS THE OTHER 95%?  Now I will never know.  (The answer, according to Anna, is that if they don't know what it is, they call it "dark," which is typical.)  Incidentally, the only part of the museum that E seemed to like was the Hall of the Universe.  

I've known Anna since I was 13 and Kari since I was 15, and I don't know when the last time was that the three of us were together.  It's been years and years.  And now we are all mothers, and my baby seemed to accept them as alternate mothers when they picked him up and comforted him after he became fretful and tired in the fossils and the mammals.  And I didn't even get a picture of us all, just this picture of a flyer on the subway.

MRS. TAYLOR   and she says .......  DON'T GIVE UP.