The Cake Was Good, Too*

4-inch satin heels + Julia + 6.5 hours
               = Rare.

4-inch satin heels + Julia + 6.5 hours + no blisters or sore calves
               = When pigs fly.

But fly they did.  Fly they did in all their porky glory.  Over a pretty little island we know as Martha's Vineyard, they squealed and oinked as my dearest of friends joined the ranks of the blissfully wed.  To see her at her happiest, at her most beautiful for as long as I've known her, dancing around and around, I thought to myself, This must be what they call euphoria.  This was her day, but true to her form, she was still busy giving; unknowingly giving me the purest of gifts as I watched her radiate a joy so palpable that I could almost reach out and scoop some into a jar.

Oak Bluffs.  Massachusetts.
10:12 pm.  Saturday.  6 October.   2012.
When a tiny sliver of alone time opened up the morning after, I found myself standing along the water's sandy edge.  That unhurried sensibility, that delicious ocean smell, that calm from the sound of lapping waves, they were all there patiently waiting: more gifts on the most generous of weekends.  Time after time, the waters that surround this island give me something that no other place, no one thing, no one, has yet - a deeply soothing sense of serenity.  I am smitten with it and it me at every visit.  I think I'll be ok this winter.

*So good that I had two slices.  But not before all the guests had their firsts.  I might be greedy, but I still have manners.