On our epic six-week drive across Europe the summer of my high school graduation, one of our stops was Versailles.

On one of my last visits with my father at the nursing home, we were sitting out in the courtyard together, and I noticed the moon in the sky. I pointed it out to him, partly because it was something different to talk about and partly because Daddy loved the outdoors and it was hell being stuck inside a nursing home, the same one where both his parents had died.

As a child of about six or seven, I can remember sitting by the window on the train on one of our trips to Georgia, one of those slow freight trains with a few passenger cars tacked on the end that seemed to stop in every tiny town. It was nighttime and the train had stopped in a town in South Carolina, maybe Dillon, maybe Florence, maybe Kingstree.

One weekend off from my job as counselor at a wilderness camp for troubled teenage girls out near Palestine, Texas, my buddy AB, who also worked there and had that weekend off, decided it would be fun to drive into Dallas and visit with a relative. I can’t remember exactly what kind of relative she was, maybe a cousin or a great aunt; she definitely was in the age category of a great-something. But it was a place to go that was somewhere other than the piney woods of East Texas, and we needed that.

So many thoughts upon returning to Texas. I didn’t miss the heat. The zinnias, which mysteriously appeared in my front yard before we left, equally mysteriously continued to be glorious. My hair is so long now that I’m wearing hair clips just so I can see. (I didn’t have time to do another bang trim in Ohio).

Today I was thinking about Nazis which made me think about Germany which made me think about my time at St. Andrews University in Scotland when I became good friends with three German students--Gabi from Bochum, Uli (short for Ulrich) from Essen, and Klaus, I’m not sure from where. Dusseldorf, I think.

Grace Lee Irby was a power house, a tiny one, on a mission to bring as wide a range of art and culture to the young people of Blackstone, Virginia as she could cram into an hour after school. When your mother dropped you off at her house, Grace Lee, always in a dress and pumps, hopped up from the baby grand piano where she was giving a lesson, greeted you with her raspy smoker’s voice, and hurried you off to the art room to get you busy with something.

Daddy couldn’t swim, really. He could dog paddle a bit, which is to say, he could just manage to be in water above his head and not drown. The extent of his swim training growing up on the farm consisted of being thrown into Spring Creek and left to his own devices.

I have let the Elena Ferrante books sit unread on the bookshelf, partly because reading fiction has seemed a bit frivolous these last four years, and instead have plowed through piles of books like Arlie Hoschchild’s Strangers in Their Own Land, Sarah Kendzior’s Hiding in Plain Sight, Nancy MacLane’s Democracy in Chains, trying to understand how America got to this place.   Like a student, I underline, take notes, check sources.

I read recently that Margaret Wright, a real Austin icon, has died.  Lucky me, when Margaret was a regular as piano player at the Driskill bar, I was a regular as a drinker and have nothing but great, if Scotch-infused, memories of those days.

After the week when we came within seconds and feet of having Pence and Pelosi in zip-tie handcuffs, there was snow here in Austin.  More snow than I’ve ever seen in the 35 years I’ve lived here. 

Jen Psaki.  Where has she been all my life?  I think I love her. I’ve never been in love with a press secretary before.  That red hair against the blue of her dress.  Her unearthly calm and composure.  That twinkle in her eye, ever so slightly wicked.  Her grounded presence, gracefully but distinctly separated from past press secretaries. 

I grew up in a town chock full of characters, folks all twisted a hair or so off the pattern. My parents were among these characters, of course. No one who ever met my mother for five seconds would argue that she wasn’t a character. She was some kind of fierce wild orchid that just kept blooming despite inclement weather.