When our daughters were small one of our weekly routines was picking up the Palo Alto Weekly every Wednesday afternoon. With twin toddlers, I learned, it's helpful to have routines, no matter how small. The Weekly was the free and local print newspaper, lots of ads but lots of articles, too, about the city council, schools, construction, and weather (California papers always have a lot to say about how to prepare for the difference between 65 and 70 degrees). There were also reviews of local art exhibitions, new restaurants, movies, and books by local authors.
Almost 30 years later the Weekly is still around, and part of a larger but still local media group. Now it comes out online on Wednesdays. You can pick up the paper edition on Saturdays. Yesterday we went down to Palo Alto for lunch and to pick up this week's print edition. With us were our bonus nephew and his girlfriend, up for the long weekend to escape the smoke in LA. We have known our nephew his whole life, and he and his sister have been bonus cousins all their lives to our girls: when they were small they could play for hours, those deep, involved games that evolved as they went and sometimes included water and dirt and a couple of tools, or maybe a staircase. One memorable time they were all exploring my mother's woods and came across a copperhead snake sunning itself. (Everyone was fine and retreated to the screened porch, where they had a cookie.) For a few years as the kids were growing up we brought them all with us to anti-war marches on the National Mall. It's steadying to have Noah with us this inauguration weekend that is so much not what we wanted it to be.
But back to the Weekly: this edition includes an sizable article about The Case of the Disappearing Gauguin. How about that?
These sorts of moments are rich, and they're also startling. Rich in that my life has had so many continuities: those children, now adults; my over three decade marriage; my lifelong digging around with words and research. And startling: how did we all get precisely here? There's a part of me that is still that young mother of twins and is shocked to find herself on this week's page 27.
But here we are. It's pretty amazing.
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