Reading · Abbey Goes Design Scouting

This newsletter mentions my grief at the sudden passing of an old friend; it was jarring to experience, and I suspect it will be jarring to read. I hesitated to share the news at all, but I always want this to be an honest place. If this is too heavy for you today, I understand.

This week in small joys: the rhododendron’s annual shock of hot pink, birthday celebrations (Alex is 17!?), and a long lunch with a friend on her porch. There was also the devastating news that an old friend, Nancy Park, died too soon. My grief is, of course, an echo of my love, and when I think of grief that way, as love reverberating and returning, it is easier to carry.

As they often do, the routines and rhythms of life steadied me: taking out the cardboard, the trip to the dump, baking the birthday cake, discovering the perfect cake glaze, checking the PO Box, and making small talk with neighbors out for an evening walk.

For her memorial, Nancy asked that her friends tell stories so her teenage kids could know her better. Years ago, when Nancy left NYC, I wrote this essay about our friendship on my former blog, and it contains the seeds of the letter I’ll write to her children:

Today I’m going to tell you a quintessential New York love story, one where Craigslist is the deus ex machina. I grew up on stories of New York City; where my father had driven a taxi cab, where my mother had worked as a producer for CBS News; so it was no surprise that after college I made my way there.
I’d just turned twenty-four, left the man I loved in Boston, and sublet a room on the Upper East Side in Normandie Court, at 225 E 95th. My landlord was a wanna-be actor who had moved to LA. Mirrors were everywhere; the bed on an angle such that I could never escape my own image or my ideas about why he’d set up the mirrors that way. Every time I opened a closet or dresser drawer, one of his smug headshots popped out.
It was August; back home in Vermont I knew exactly how tall the corn would be, the silky tassels lifting in the breeze. This apartment was on the 16^th floor and the only thing familiar here was the sky. The city was overwhelming; particularly for someone who’d only lived in the woods.
In this era before Google maps or cell phones I would print out MapQuest directions in the office and then cut out the tiny map that followed and fold it into my wallet for my inevitable dislocation. After work, I would walk the fifty blocks home to 92^nd street from my office because I didn’t have anywhere to go or anyone to see. Just to be around other people, I would step off the street and into Bloomingdales at 59^th street and simply ride the escalator to the top, standing behind women in chic trench coats and nice shoes, and then ride back to the street level.
It was also around this time that on weekends I walked to the Metropolitan Museum to just sit on the cool wooden benches in the Great Hall underneath the enormous flower arrangements. Just sit, not even set foot into the galleries.
I couldn’t seem to have a way into the delights of the city; I was an outsider, stuck as an observer. My sublet was up, I needed an affordable room; I trekked all over the city looking at apartments.
Then the miracle happened. I read Nancy’s craigslist ad for a room in her house in Brooklyn; I could see a sliver of greenery through the window in one of the photos. In the middle of a February snowstorm, I trudged down Court Street to an unfamiliar part of Brooklyn. It was dark by the time I walked down Pineapple Street. The lights of the city glowed across the river; it was magical; it was terrifying.
I slogged past the Watchtower building and knocked on a grey door with the paint peeling. Nancy opened the door; smiling, and let me into her garden courtyard; the lights of her row house glowed behind her. She made me tea; we talked for a long time. She asked me about my dreams (my dreams!). I had forgotten I had dreams until I sat on her pinstriped sofa with a cup of tea. She showed me the room she had to rent – it was double the size of the room I was subletting and not a mirror in sight. It even had its own bathroom and a washer dryer we could share. I took the room, where I could mark the seasons by the single tree in the tiny courtyard.
My friendship with Nancy grew over time to be a guiding light; a safe harbour. I’d never had a friend quite like her. No more walks home with a stop off at Bloomingdales to ride the escalator. I had someone to come home to. She was so certain of herself, so confident, so fearless. She’d been living in New York since she was 19; she knew the city and didn’t hesitate to share it with me; she was well-travelled; she had been on Wall Street on 9/11 and walked home barefoot after abandoning her high heels in the rush to safety.
She’d met Dan, one of the loves of her life, on a boat in Southeast Asia. A few months after I moved in, Dan moved from Denmark to live with Nancy, a few months after that my boyfriend from Boston, Tim, moved in too. We’d gone from two to four.
Food was critical to the rhythms of Nancy’s life and our life together. So it’s no surprise there were many shared dinners, sometimes Nancy frying tofu that she first coated in corn startch with a deft hand and sometimes Dan’s meatballs. I know Tim and I took turns cooking, but I don’t remember what we contributed except that there was so much laughter.
Dan and Nancy got married in May 2006 and then Tim and I got married in July 2006. Tim and I moved out in 2007 to our own starter apartment; in short order the four us when to six when Nancy and I got pregnant in the same week and delivered our sons two days apart. And now, Dan and Nancy are expecting a baby girl. They are leaving the city at the end of April for sunny California. I’m so excited and proud of them; I’m so devastated to be in New York without them.

Nancy made the best chocolate shortbread. When she ordered at a coffee shop, and the cashier asked for her name, she always said it was Sunshine. I asked her once why she did that; she said it was partly for security as a woman living alone in NYC, and partly because she loved hearing someone call out "Sunshine.” She had a radical ability to notice and bear witness; to be truly in the moment with you, whatever that moment contained.

There’s no good transition between the dark and the light this week, except to say that Nancy was always the first person to point out the duality of life - that it is good and bad, happy and sad, heavy and light.

A. We’ve had a bear amble by the front door a few times now, and so I purchased this world’s loudest whistle to carry on my key chain.
B. I have a mixed track record with planners (and a whole stack of unused planners in the basement to prove it). But this week, I couldn’t resist this Little Things All In One 6-month planner. It’s undated (less pressure to use it every day), and I like the common-sense groundedness of just 6 months to a planner. A year is a big bite to chew on, isn’t it?
C. I spied these tiny New York nibbles! cards while shopping for Alex’s birthday, and was charmed by the line drawings.
D. I seem to often post tiny things and candles, so this week I give you a … tiny candle holder.
E. These Birthday cake bubbles seem like a guaranteed joy machine.

F. Just some cool sneakers from Flower Mountain.
G. Two friends opened a charming, magical clothing store in Millerton, NY, and I snagged this sweatshirt and this perfectly soft t-shirt.
H. I’m always on the lookout for good men’s brands - I’m liking Clae sneakers, too.
I. At $15, these forever flowers seem like a sweet gift to have at the ready.

A birthday bubble machine, the world's loudest whistle, and a cozy, structured t-shirt

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