May 2025

I love you!

Let all the joys be as the month of May: that is the Grace Note for May Day!

Thank you and you and you for all your innumerous gifts of love and grace that you bring to my heart and soul. You include me in your thoughts in so many sweet, little ways so we feel connected. The more we become sensually connected in the beauty of nature and in the beauty of our human nature, the closer we are to the divine.

I love that we are continuing to nurture and support our friendship, as we feel better, healthier and happier because of each other.

A Host of Daffodils

I absolutely love daffodils! A friend and her husband went to a daffodil festival in Bristol, Rhode Island, two years ago and, knowing about my love of daffodils, invited me to go with them this year. They made a mini vacation from their home in Massachusetts. Eileen arranged the timing of our visit to coincide with the peak blooms. Coincidentally, it also coincided with a daffodil floral-arranging contest at Blithewold Mansion.

This glorious display of a range of daffodil varieties on this 33-acre summer estate overlooking Narragansett Bay was awe-inspiring. We wandered about on sensuous garden paths, enjoying the natural beauty of the endless display of narcissuses and daffodils. We discovered a variety of trees in the arboretum, including an intimate forest of giant bamboo trees reaching to the heavens. The weeping cherry trees and magnolia blooms were also in full force, as were the chirping birds.

We were there. We merely had to show up. The 17^th century English lyric poet Robert Herrick understood the truth about timing.

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run

Peak day!

Another poet speaks for me from England.

One of my all-time favorite poems is written by the 19^th century British poet William Wordsworth. I’ve been on several tours in Connecticut during daffodil festival season, sauntering around country roads. The glorious sight of a generous cluster of daffodils on front lawns, next to a lake and on hillsides, transports me into spring’s magnificence.

When I’m not a well-informed horticulturist or gifted as a poet, I am unabashedly passionate about spring’s bounty. I am a sensualist and an enthusiastic appreciator of sumptuous poetry.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils
—William Wordsworth

I don’t expect everyone to feel the same degree of intense delight over daffodils. Experiencing the people who do grow daffodils and enjoy their beauty is contagious. I’m grateful I know how ecstatically happy they make me in the month of April. Nothing that lives stays the same. The promise that April showers bring May flowers is the gift we’re given each May. Whenever we reach out to expose ourselves to nature’s wondrous beauty, sunlight, flowers and fragrance, our hearts and souls are lifted upward. After this extraordinary host of daffodils, our tulips burst into their rainbow of colors.

Last month, a friend was coming for tea on a dreary, stormy afternoon. Mike walked in with a huge brown package. “Special delivery.”

“That’s my leg movement machine,” I told him.

Mike’s immediate response: “Let’s open it up. I’m an engineer. I love to figure things out.”

Coincidence? Mike coming minutes after the package landed on the threshold of the front door? I’m naïve, I admit — I thought I would just plug it in. There were lots of Phillips-head screws and a gizmo to tighten the two pedals. I’m a baby when it comes to figuring out how to put Humpty Dumpty together.

Voila! Two AAA batteries, plug it into a duplex outlet, turn it on to one of the three speeds, and I’m on the go. The first speed is 105 steps per minute, and it goes up to 165 on the third. I can pedal forward or in reverse.

I absolutely love having this near my study desk so I can keep my legs in movement while I’m sitting. I can work at my desk, talk on the telephone or watch the harbor from the study window. I now feel energized and stimulated while I’m sitting.

I live a sedentary life because of my love of reading and writing. This machine is a happy grace note. I feel it is helping ease the pain in my arthritic knees. Sometimes we’re surprised by joy at the discovery of something we can do so easily, pleasantly and quietly to enhance our well-being.

When Anita called me and asked if I would be the first speaker at a women’s luncheon series she was launching at the Gibson House Manor in Jamestown, Pennsylvania, I was excited. I was also enthusiastic to learn that she wanted me to speak about Living a Beautiful Life.

This book has quite a story behind it. My editor at Doubleday was moving to Random House. Because she had been nurturing my writing ever since my last book was published (many years!) she invited me to move with her to her new publisher. I accepted. Thirty-nine years ago, Living a Beautiful Life was published. Random House had an auction after their rights were up and bought the book as the highest bidder!

I also accepted Anita’s invitation to speak! When she asked me if I could be hooked up on Zoom, I inquired why she didn’t want me to go to Jamestown. “Because Jamestown isn’t near an airport,” she said, so she decided to have her speakers on Zoom.

Elissa made this possible. She came, set everything up, and I couldn’t have felt more comfortable. Our talk was conversational style, at my request. With few exceptions, my talks have all been face to face. When I’m not with a live audience, I want to be interactive.

As a complete surprise, Anita has asked me to speak again in early May! Someday I want to go to explore this gem of a Victorian manor whose mission is historic education, preserving the past and educating the future generations. The Gibson House Mannor has Underground Railroad history tours, highlighting the presidency of Abraham Lincoln as told by Mark Twain. (Click here for more information about the Gibson House Manor.)

If you or any of your friends are interested in having me speak to a group (on Zoom), I’m all ears. Write me for details. My books can be available as gifts for attendees or for purchase at an event.

Living a Beautiful Life is breathing new life!

I received a note from my dear friends Kerri and Matt, who went to Concord, Massachusetts, on April 19 to celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the American Revolution. Paul Revere was a Revolutionary hero whose midnight ride still inspires Americans. The United States Postal Service’s Battlefields of the American Revolution stamp series became available on April 16, and Kerri and Matt sent me a letter from Concord using one of these stamps.

My husband Peter wrote in his book Village: Where to Live and How to Live that at the same time that Reverend John Rathbone’s church carpenter friends built our house “facing south to the point, the British chose to pressure their prime colony for tax revenues, ignoring decrees of self-representation granted to the colonists for decades. These pressures grew fiercely in 1774, leading to the first battle on April 19, 1775, in Lexington and Concord.”

Food was in short supply for the British in nearby Boston “in the spring of 1775,” he wrote, “when the foraging British frigate HMS Rose attacked Stonington Village, threatening to bombard and destroy unless the village surrendered its food and cattle.”

Few people knew that the British came by ship along the coast of New England to forage for food, attacking Stonington Village on August 30, 1775 (the year our cottage was built!). We were the only naval attack on the coast of Connecticut during the Revolution.

The brave Stonington Village people were successful in repulsing their attack. General George Washington “saluted the ‘spirit and zeal’ of this singular achievement.”

I’m glad to envision our declaration of total independence in 1776 knowing the house in the village I so dearly love is steeped with brave history. As we look forward to the July Fourth celebrations next year on the 250^th anniversary of our independence, we can all count our blessings for the bravery of our forefathers.

Twenty years after Joe Wright’s 2005 film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice was released, it was re-released in theaters on Easter Sunday. Because I’m a happy romantic, I felt an intuitive calling to be there to celebrate perhaps the greatest love story of all time.

I was out of town when my theater buddies went to see Pride & Prejudice on stage at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence several years ago. I remember taking the train from the Westerly station to Providence and seeing a modern stage setting. I’m not a good critic because I am passionate about live theater. My feeling now, after seeing several different film productions, is that an adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel requires this glorious expanse of breathtakingly beautiful 19^th century English countryside to evoke the nuances of her prose as well as the development of her characters. The British poet John Keats understood that “Scenery is fine but human nature is finer.” The sumptuous scenery was the background that set the stage for this romantic comedy’s two main characters to eventually fell in love.  

In her novel Sense & Sensibility, she expressed her belief that “It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.”

The British writer Sir Walter Scott was born four years before Jane Austen, in 1771. (I love to connect the dots of our interconnectedness in all things great and small. Jane Austen was born the year my cottage was built!)

In his journal, Scott wrote of Jane Austen’s talent for describing the involvements and feelings of characters in ordinary life. He marveled at her ability to make the ordinary, quotidian, commonplace things and characters interesting. She was able to express the truth of her characters’ description in ways he could not, he wrote, and he admired her ability to do so.

One of the poignant moments in Wright’s directing was Elizabeth’s silent, solitary contemplation on a rope swing as she twisted around slowly from one direction to another as though trying to untwist the knots in her mind. That conjured the mixed signals she was getting from Mr. Darcy.

The acclaimed director was able to brilliantly capture, in this sensuous version of the story, along with the excellent cinematography, musical score and superb British actors, a captivatingly lovely love story.

Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) and Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen) touch hands early on, and something happens that triggers this yearning that was subconscious but revealed his desires toward her. Mr. Bennet (Donald Sutherland) and Lady Catherine (Judi Dench) enriched their roles to perfection.

Elizabeth was bold, rebellious and of an independent nature, with a ditzy mother whose sole occupation was to find suitable husbands for her five daughters. Mr. Darcy’s behavior was mystifying and glum. He was able to mask his feelings until he couldn’t. Pride got in the way until it didn’t.

I swooned when they finally embraced, their hands interlocked, their noses and foreheads touching before their lips did. Mr. Darcy asked his love, “What should I call you when I’m cross? Should I call you Mrs. Darcy?” Elizabeth’s reply was, “No. You may only call me Mrs. Darcy when you are completely, and perfectly, and incandescently happy.”

“Mrs. Darcy, Mrs. Darcy, Mrs. Darcy, Mrs. Darcy.”

The end!

The Mystic cinema added an additional matinee on the Tuesday after Easter. I went to see it a second time with another friend and also took out a DVD from the library. I’m hooked!

Originally the Wicked Tulips tulip farm in Preston, Connecticut, was scheduled to open for Easter. However, the cold weather caused the delay by several days. Suddenly we had a burst of warm (often hot) weather, and this caused the tulip buds to pop open in a flame of color.

This year, my friend Sandy invited me to join her, along with friends Anita, Gilda and Jean, for a lovely drive on country roads to the tulip farm. We went to a nearby restaurant next to a golf course after we walked through rows and rows of thousands of tulips in all colors and varieties we swooned over. We couldn’t have had a more ideal temperature — 78 degrees with a gentle breeze — for our day in the country. To learn more about this most happy place (with three locations!) and to order some tulip bulbs for your own garden or flower pots, visit the Wicked Tulips website.

Sandy’s husband Howard loved to go to experience this spectacular beauty; when he died, she had a picnic table dedicated to him and a cousin, Shirley. After we wandered in the hills, bucket in hand, we were invited to pick as many tulips as we wished. The day we went was half price in order to entice people to come pick the tulips while they were in peak bloom. The warm weather and longer sunny days had caused them to explode. With the ticket price, we were able to pick 20 stems and pay half price for any more we wanted.

We were to gather at the picnic table for a group photo after making our selection, wrapping them and cashing out. My pattern is to wander the paths as though I’m in a botanical garden, feasting my eyes and senses, and at the end of my explorations, fall in love with “my” tulips. I gathered several tall yellow stems, and then my eye spotted a variety I loved: pink with chartreuse variegations. I have a painting of Roger Mühl’s with this same tulip; I’ve seen them growing in his garden in Mougins.

Everything in our life can create meaningful memories. We can remember, we can celebrate, and we can create rituals. Thank you, Sandy, for another tulip romp with you and the joyful day among friends.

Fifty-one years ago this May, Peter and I were married at St. James Episcopal Church on Madison Avenue and 71^st Street. My minister, spiritual adviser and dear friend, the late John Coburn, married us in the chapel.

Our ceremony was intimate family and closest friends. We walked to my apartment on East 63^rd Street, between Park Avenue and Lexington, to a reception. All my family have now died. My mentor Mrs. Brown, John Coburn. Our best man, James Buckley, a classmate of Peter’s, died a few years ago. I continue to celebrate our anniversary to honor and renew our union in the spirit. Because of all the happiness we created because of our love, Peter lives in my beating heart.

This year I will be with my two daughters and grandchildren to celebrate Alexandra’s youngest daughter Lily’s graduation from Fairfield University. I can’t think of a more fitting way to enjoy May 18 than to be with family to congratulate our future generations of leaders.

While Peter and I were blessed to enjoy celebrating our wedding union for over 40 years together, I’m fortunate to be able to remember vividly all the different years that flew by without ceasing. I look back on our mutual affection and eternal love for each other. I now realize that we intuitively knew from the beginning about the preciousness of our human lives together. This awareness informed our choices about how best to share our earthly journey with whatever time fate had in store for us.

As it turned out, because Peter lived for 92½ years, the intensity of our partnership kept our curiosity and interests mutually supportive. We were each other’s muses, supporters and constant companions.

While we had each other, we “hugged tight.” We expressed our love unabashedly. All the insights we were able to share, all the interests we pursed together, are my rock-solid foundation.

Peter completed me. My life’s earthly journey is not yet complete. We never know anything about the future. Because I was able to find my other half in Peter, I will have completed my life whenever my time is up. Peter always reminded me, “It’s later than you think.”

Whoever you love, whatever you love, love loves! Keep on loving, as I know so profoundly, because when we love, we live happy. For all my dear friends who have lost their other half, that love never leaves you. The ancient philosopher Epictetus (a former slave and teacher) understood that “It is quite impossible to unite happiness with a yearning for what we don’t have. Happiness has all that it wants, and resembling the well-fed, there shouldn’t be hunger or thirst.”

In closing, I hope you will live to the hilt the entire month of May. Let’s, together, scatter as much joy as our hearts can hold! If you ever find a time when you need a little good cheer, remember Mark Twain’s insight: “The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer everybody else up.”

Love & Live Happy,