Beth Kephart's Blog, page 347

The White Cloud Cat

I'm not what you'd call an easy airline passenger; I really have to want to go somewhere to get on a plane and go. Yesterday's flight home should have been smooth as a whistle, but the pilot did battle with cloud stuff on the forever landing, and it took me hours afterward to be able to look up and not see a listing horizon, a crooked screen. I answered all my work email, made some calls, did a few things that were necessary, then collapsed, with my husband, to watch more old Mad Men.

My eyes

"In Ciudad Juarez, young women are vanishing." It's a fr...

"In Ciudad Juarez, young women are vanishing." It's a front-page headline, LA Times, a story reported by Ken Ellingwood. "The streets of Juarez are swallowing the young and pretty," the story begins, and then, young woman by young woman, we are told the details. Of a studious, reliable college freshman who simply did not return from exams. Of a 17-year-old Brenda and a 16-year-old Hilda last seen downtown. Of girls as young as 13 simpy not coming home.

This breaks my heart. This is more bad

The Morning People

My father and I were the early risers in my house growing up. He made cinnamon toast and cream of wheat; he drove me, in the dark, to the skating rink, where I practiced double lutzes and flips (and tried to control my scratch spins) before the first bell at Radnor High. We were known, in our family, as the morning people, and I thought nothing of that until I went to college and discovered that I was one of the few out at dawn. One of the few crouched beneath the lamp of a not-yet-winter day

Captain Abby's Dolphins

In the flat strike of afternoon sun, we were escorted (first slowly, then not) into the bay by a rubber-boat captain named Abby. He promised dolphins. He told stories about strand feedings—dolphins who assaulted the muddy margins of low-tide creeks with gang slams against miniature fish. It happens nowhere in the world but here, he said, and he said, too, that only a privileged few have seen it. We wanted to see it. We did. Strand feedings of a violent magnitude—600 pound dolphins throwing

Moon Rising

I was the original girl workaholic—taking a motley medley of jobs as soon as I could, in any place that would take me. I remember the stink of the mimeograph machine at a life insurance company. The presents I failed to wrap well at The Mole Hole, a Hilton Head gift shop. The catering gig and the library shelves at the University of Pennsylvania. I was working up through my sixth hour of labor, and whenever my baby slept I was back at the machine, spooling through the corporate newsletters I

The Book of Weather

The lagoons, this morning, were mirror glass, drenched with the pink of the dawn sky. The egrets were a white, implacable strike. The herons were steel blue. I was alone on the bike path, biking miles.

And after that, yes, to the sea. This sea. No shark in sight, not even a pelican. But there was a chill in the underskirt of the current, and the full moon was yet high in the sky.

I brought books to read, but I have never left the tomboy me behind. I'm still running, I'm still aching, I'm st

To the Sea

I am off at this early hour to the sea.

I will return.

Shark at My Feet

It rained early, but I was out on the bike—almost alone beneath the Spanish moss of Sea Pines. You glide here, on the wide macadam. You go and you go and you go—past the big horses of Lawton Stables, out to the lighthouse of Harbour Town, and on.

It had stopped raining.

I went down to the beach with my camera. A friend—a choreographer—has been talking about sharks and how they move, how they move him. I thought perhaps I'd photograph a dolphin or two, watch them move, be moved.

There were no

Come Near

I was standing on the shore. They came this near. They scissored, circled, returned. What keeps us alive? What keeps us afloat? We each have our answers.

I require the honest exchange of the honest right now. The conversation that means something. The person who says, What if?, or, What now? I have, and I make, little room for the nothing nothings. I want every single moment to count.

Imagine what that does to those who know me.

The Day, as It Was

This day began with a call I made, very early on, to Anna Lefler. Her first words: This is Crisis Hotline.

She knew.

It spilled toward friendships expanded and deepened in unexpected ways.

It lifted, at the end, by my return to this blog and all your comments posted here.

It completes itself with this touching and personal review of Nothing but Ghosts by a deep-hearted blogger (What Happened in Between) named Barb.

Thank you, all of you.