What women wander?

June is slipping by, full of being a family of four, of sunny days and rainy ones and dogs at the beach and meals at the table and donuts and long walks and Mad Men and iced coffee and board games. Zoë was here for three and a half glorious weeks, and as I write this she is flying over Europe, eastward, destination Delhi and ultimately Jaipur. She does a beautiful job, that girl, of balancing the thrill of the adventure with the sadness of saying goodbye, the scariness of heading into a year on her own in India. She is good at expressing all those conflicting feelings in a straightforward way, while I maintain calm outwardly, punctuated with bursts of frustration or weepiness that take me by surprise.

Mark's mom came to visit, to give that girl one more hug. And also, to take a ride in this vintage Cadillac with Christian and Isaac.

There were a few really hot days, as if nature were preparing our girl a bit for living in the desert this summer. We went to the beach, like normal summertime people!

The sky put on all kinds of shows for us.

These clouds might be my favorite.

It's the same sky, but it's different every single day. And it's the same sky, really, under which Zoë is living for the next year, even though we will be adjusting to the bizarre ten-and-a-half hour time difference yet again, as she adjusts to the forty-degree temperature difference (the least of the differences, of course). She loves it there, it's her place, and it makes her so happy to be delving deeper into Hindi, into India, and then starting this fall, to be diving into Tamil (language number six: English, French, German, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, and I am allowed to list those in a bragging way because I am her proud proud mother). Her happiness makes the distance not so far, makes the adventure feel a bit like we get to participate, of course in a vicarious and virtual way. Although Mark is hatching a plan to meet up with her in December. More on that soon.

"What women wander?

Not many. All. A few."

- Marie Ponsot