Playing hooky was one of my absolute favorite things to do in school.

It basically means not showing up where you’re supposed to be.  It doesn’t mean being permanently gone, it just means for today.

I loved it!  Still do.

In high school, we would pile into a friend’s car and drive 45 minutes to the shore.  (On the West Coast we call it the coast.  On the East Coast we call it the shore.)  We’d spend the day at the beach and be home in time so our parents didn’t notice we were gone.  Best time ever.

In college, my roommate (most awesome college roommate ever) and I would take the train to Philadelphia, meander exploring all the streets and top it off with the most fabulous split pea soup ever at a really chic French restaurant.  Sometimes we’d just hang out in our room and talk.  Or ramble down to the duck pond on campus to watch the ducks and explore.  We had the best endless conversations, so much better than what we were missing in class.

There’s something wonderfully delicious about brief escapes.

I absolutely love the work I do and the people I work with, and I’ve never had a day where I didn’t want to be there.  Every single one of us at ETS is a hard worker and no stranger to long hours.

But, at ETS we also all love to be outside and we don’t get enough of it.  So, we love arranging afternoon excursions for any reason whatsoever, like earlier this month we took an afternoon for a Spring Fling. That’s all the reason we needed.

Which brings me to the other day.  We have a beautiful client, Carlene, who has become a dear friend we all absolutely adore.  Her father-in-law has one of the most magical gardens in California.  It’s full of flowers, plants and trees native to California, arranged in the most natural, aesthetic manner you can imagine.  Hundreds of people tour his garden every year.

The photo above is the ETS staff who could make the tour Carlene invited us on.  Carlene is the gorgeous woman with her hand on my shoulder and her father-in-law, Al, is standing behind me in the baseball cap.

Al created this garden for 3 purposes, each for the 3 groups that visit.

First, it’s a safe refuge and natural habitat for animals.  Al created a stream with a pond that’s a duplicate of streams in the high Sierra mountains.  It has fish and the sweetest looking turtles.  There are lizards, a terrific variety of birds and many other small animals.  He has one plant, a Verbena, which attracts 11 species of butterflies (he gave me one that’s now in my garden waiting for butterflies).   Large animals, including deer, also come visit.  Yesterday we were beyond thrilled to see a mother quail with 9 babies, all less than a day old, running around like adorable little puff balls with tiny feet.

In the photo, you can see Janet has binoculars around her neck so she wouldn’t miss any of the many varieties of birds.

It’s also a place of discovery for children, a place where they can explore, climb friendly trees low to the ground, prospect under bushes, learn about birds, experience a close encounter with a wide variety of little animals, play endlessly.

The third purpose, the one for adults, is one we thoroughly accomplished. That purpose is peace.  When you’re in this garden, you feel supremely at peace.  The colors of the garden are in perfect harmony.  Al planted it so, wherever you look, you see no less than 7 different colors of flowers at the same time.  There are so many good places to sit, so many little paths to walk, so many beautiful things to look at, all under a sky that’s almost permanently blue, that profound blue that can only be found in a northern California sky.

These 3 beautiful purposes and his beautiful garden told me the story about the beauty of Al’s soul.  I have never met anyone who dedicated their energies to purposes such as these.  What a beautiful man!

I think planned vacations and scheduled days off are a good thing.  But there’s no substitute for playing hooky on a beautiful summer day.

I think the purpose of playing hooky is to refresh.  And we were very much refreshed by this wonderful experience.  I am still smiling.

Wishing you moments of discovery, refuge and peace, and, after some good hard work, glorious moments of innocent hooky to refresh your soul.

Love,

Ingrid

 

Dear Bonnie,

It’s just about 5 pm on Sunday, right around the time I usually sit on my patio and talk to you.  I’m writing you a letter instead.

Today there was a service in your honor.  Ralph told me it was packed.  I’m not surprised.  You are the most loved person I’ve ever known.

You have been one of my closest friends for 35 years.

I’ve called you my Fairy Godmother from the beginning.   I had the idea that all I had to do was tell you my dreams and you would make them come true.

You laughed but said go ahead and tell you anyway.  So over the years, each time we talked, I told you my dreams, and, funny enough, they did come true.  You always laughed and said I was the one making them come true, but I always said no, it didn’t come true until I told you.  Every letter, card and email you ever sent me started with, “Dear Fairy Goddaughter” and was signed, “Your Fairy Godmother.”

You helped me deliver my very first communications course to a large corporation.  We had 18 hard-boiled Labor Relations negotiators from a national railroad who argued like mad that showing any affinity would destroy their negotiations.  We persisted and they had life-changing wins.

We delivered a workshop to 400 teachers in the Philippines. Near the end of the workshop they told us they had something they wanted to say to us.  Then they joined hands, all 400 of them, raised their arms in the air and sang an incredible song of hope and optimism because it was the first time in their teaching careers they felt they could actually help every one of their students.  400 joyous voices.  There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

You were on my Board of Directors for 32 years.  You know every important thing that’s ever happened.  No one has expressed more pride in my achievements than you have.

25 years ago we lived together for 7 years, sharing a house.  First in that charming cottage in the Oakland hills.  I remember the day I came home after work.  You were sitting at the kitchen table, you looked up at me and said, “We should get some goats.”  I considered it for a moment and said, “Sounds like a fine idea.”

So we moved to the adorable farm house in Sunol.  You had the house in the front, I lived in the house in the field in the back.  We had Japanese Silky chickens with long feathers and a rooster named Henry who crowed at 4 in the morning.  We grew out-of-this-world corn, tomatoes, lettuce, and big fat peaches we had to eat over a bowl because they dripped buckets of sweet juice.

I would come talk to you at the end of the day.  I told you about my day and heard all about yours.

For 35 years we’ve had an endless conversation, shared our joys, our sorrows, our struggles, our triumphs.  I’ve laughed with you more than with anyone I’ve known.  We both believe that nothing is so bad you can’t start laughing about it.

Our friendship has always been sunny, like a clear blue sky absent of clouds.  No arguments, not even 1 disagreement.  Only the purest understanding and mutual encouragement.  No one has encouraged me more than you have.

If I close my eyes, I can hear your voice.

And so I take the constant encouragement you gave me for the last 35 years and treasure it like I do the sun, that vital source of life-giving light.  It burns bright in my life, and will until we meet again.  For I am as certain of this as I am of the sun up in the sky, that our friendship is forever.

Love is Stronger

We were able to create a bond

That would endure after our last breath

Into worlds and lifetimes beyond

For love is so much stronger than death.

• Louis Alan Swartz

 

Love is stronger.

Until we meet again,

With much love,

Your Fairy Goddaughter

Ingrid

PS  ** “Goodbye? Oh no, please.  Can’t we just go back to page one and start all over again?” — Winnie the Pooh 

** “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” — Winnie the Pooh 

 

 

 

 

If you look online or in the dictionary for the difference between a village, a city and a town, you’ll get a rather sterile description.  I personally think the real difference is in the spirit and emotion they evoke.

I love cities!  I’ve been in many awesome ones.  San Francisco, London, New York, Rio de Janeiro, New Orleans, Kuala Lumpur, Bangalore, Guadalajara, Dublin, to name some I love.

The spirit of a city is grandeur and motion.  It’s a place where great, important things happen.

Emotionally cities are exciting, beautiful, vibrant, alive day and night.  Full of people you don’t know, colorful.  Demanding, competitive.  Excitement in the air, people are focused, purposeful, energized, moving fast.

I lived in Philadelphia for a good long while and it always seemed to be more town than city.  New York to the north and Washington, DC to the south are more cosmopolitan, sophisticated, as cities should be.  Philadelphia, with its old cobblestone streets, its colorful 250 year-old colonial townhouses, its gorgeous green squares and parks, is a town made for endless walking and looking.

Whereas people walk fast in the city, in a village you will stroll and even saunter.

Just the word village conjures up emotions for me.  While cities get my adrenaline running, something deep inside of me relaxes when I’m in a village.

Villages are friendly and welcoming, safe and happy.  Villages are charming.

I have 3 I particularly love.

Adare, Ireland is one of my favorite places on earth.  Its thatched roof cottages and elegant manor with 76 fireplaces (best place in the world for afternoon tea) transport me to another world, another time.   The beautiful actress Grace Kelly and I agreed (although never discussed) the best hotel in Ireland is the Dunraven Arms, built in the 1700’s, a place today where patrons come down for a big Irish breakfast dressed in their red fox hunting clothes.

I lived in Sunol, California for 4 years and still visit.  It’s a fabulous quirky village with only 750 people. Downtown has a Whistle Stop Antique Store and Little Brown Church.  We had bed races where people put wheels on beds and raced them down Main Street, with someone dressed in a way to make you laugh riding in the bed.  We had pet parades that included llamas, tarantulas, peacocks, horses, and the usual cats and dogs.  I lived next-door to a very large and intelligent pig.  Sunol made international headlines when they elected a dog, Labrador Retriever, named Bosco for mayor.  His slogan was, “I chase cars, not women” and he openly accepted bribes.  I adore Sunol.

It takes me about 5 minutes now to drive down to the village at the bottom of the hill where I live.  Every Sunday there’s a farmers’ market.  I know every farmer who grows my food.  We discuss the week’s crops and they tell me their struggles, their victories and little stories about the grapefruit, artichokes, peas, peaches and collard greens.  The farmer who grows the most amazing Meyer lemons in the world proudly tells me what time he picked them the day before.   What I bring home always feels like it was grown with love and each meal I make has special meaning.

I love them all, cities, towns and villages. They are humanity’s expression of the desire to live with others, to make a life in community.  Whether exciting or charming, they each have their own soul.

Wishing you a home and travels in places that charm your soul and make you feel whole.

Love,

Ingrid