Progress

I bought a car. A Honda--a CRV, with better mileage than I have now but not as good as I'd get in a Prius. It was so strange--so casual: in ten minutes I picked a car and shook the guy's hand and ran off to catch a train to the city, and we just agreed I'd come back at some point to sort out financing. Who does that, except rich people; I bought it from the dealer in Westport, and I was dressed in my nice duds, and I guess he made certain assumptions. Not that it matters, but it was a far cry from the reception I got at Stamford Toyota, where I showed up in jeans with my brown kid and the guy started nagging the cash out of me before I'd even decided on a model. No surprise, I know: we all size up strangers and manage accordingly. But there is something quite pleasant about shopping without the nag factor; there's something quite nice about not being talked down to by some guy who finished his education ten years before I did--some guy who says "aksed" and "ecsetera." I should think more about how I present myself. I really don't--hardly ever; too many other things require thought.

I had such a wonderful day yesterday. I'm working on the launch of a new brand--a series of books for women. The lead title is an extremely powerful book by a woman in her mid-thirties who was diagnosed with a rare cancer a few years ago. (Her story launches in a documentary on TLC later next year. ) I met her for dinner. She's drop-dead gorgeous, for starters, and though she's quite pretty in fact, it's this aura she carries with her that hits you: she looks at you and it's like staring into clear pools: disarmingly direct and honest. She's funny and self-deprecating--she tells a great story, even when it's a story about trying to make sense of dying as a crucial part of living. I can't get her out of my mind; I can't think how her mother has come to terms with their new reality (because an individual death never seems as horrible to me as coping with the individual death must be for the ones left behind.) I love that she embeds her mother in everything: in proofing her sample chapters, in making sense of sickness, in refusing so many of the labels we assign to cancer and cancer survivors. Not to say that cancer could ever be a gift, but in her case it has clearly realigned her life in the most astonishing creative ways. If only we could all do that, minus the cancer part. Dump the shit--seize the dream, speak your own truth, etc. But courage like that--I think it often needs to be jump-started. Such a shame for the rest of us.

"Do you have a butler, and does he pack your lunch with love?" Liam asks me this morning when I'm waking up. I smile but don't answer. It's going to be so much fun watching him grow up.