The Farewell Drive in Pittsburgh

It began behind Maggie Mo at Carnegie Mellon.  Sitting in the car, waiting to pick up a tuba and a grad student, I realized it was going to be one of the last times I was going to drive through Schenley Park at the height of summer, with all the trees fully leafed and all the best things about Pittsburgh fully ready to be appreciated.

The fountain between CMU and the golf course.

Up ahead, Phipps Conservatory.  Turn left at the three-way and head over the Panther Hollow Bridge, passed the playground and Blvd. of the Allies, into Schenley Park proper.

Looping trails and roads.  Green pastures and fireflies.  I've been to a lot of public parks, from Griffith Park in Los Angeles to Central Park in NYC.  Schenley had plenty to please the senses and I never felt "unsafe."

The last leg.

If you recognize this from a certain HBO series, good for you.  On the screen it looped several times, making this section of the park seem endless, but it takes less than 30 seconds to pass the guard rail and trees.

The last leg of the drive home, the entrance to the bridge that went over the parkway and led to my little neighborhood.  Yes, that's a hub cap on the side of the road.  One of those tiny houses on the hillside beyond the bridge was my tiny little home.

I drove this road so many times, taking it for granted, but looking back on it now, I still have the visceral experience of its smell and its feel.

Getting Married Later in Life

June 5, 2010

Self Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine

Pacific Palisades

Everyone began the ceremony by first taking a peaceful walk around the lake.

Jordan liked having her picture taken.

Tim and I sat quietly while everything was prepared for the ceremony.  Brother Vishawananda blessed our rings.  When it was time to begin, the cameras were switched off.

It was a very serene day.

When Tim and I first began planning our wedding, we had a common thought:  How can we get our multitude of relatives to put aside their little squabbles and needs for hijacking family gatherings for just 24 hours?  The answer:  we couldn't.  

We took a very contemplative look at the list of people we were "supposed" to invite, the litany of brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, each name also representing an ongoing dispute and entanglement with another name, and we sighed.  Instead of being a day where we solemnized our relationship and invited our loved ones to partake of the love we felt for each other, it was shaping up to be a day of running between camps and putting out fires.  That was not the tone we wanted to set for our marriage.  Both being in our mid-forties, we felt it was time to acknowledge that some things were just not going to change, and it was time to move forward.

There were five wedding guests at out wedding, and seven at our reception lunch.  Two of these people were our grandchildren, both under the age of four.  The monastic who conducted the ceremony encouraged us to enjoy the event, even little Benjamin, who was verbally delighted by the sight of swans outside the window of the windmill chapel.  Brother Vishawananda stated that even the sounds of a child laughing were part of the ceremony, part of the celebration of life.