Anna

Today is your birthday. A very Happy Birthday to you - this year coming, is going to be wonderful.

Autumn is coming here, the water is going to start to cool and the misty mornings will roll in.

Wish you were here xxx

Dear Kate,

I've missed you.

Love,
Anna

Dear Kate,

I was up in Montreal with a friend on Saturday and fell in love with it.  When you're visiting New York next summer, come up to Vermont for a week and we'll swim in the river and take hikes in the mountains and then spend a couple of days in Montreal.   It was frigid this past weekend, with blustery wind and freezing rain, but it will be warm in the summer -- balmy, even -- and we can walk and eat and walk some more, wander through the Marché Jean Talon and see if we can get the fruit vendors to smile.

Love,
A
xx

At the end of the rainbow

I found the pot of gold.... It was at the skate park all along.
Happy Belated Birthday Anna, love Kate x

Dear Kate,

The world is falling apart, it seems.

So, just for tonight, let's pretend we're somewhere else, like the County Fair.  It rained earlier in the day and it's a little steamy, but that's the way the fair should be, don't you think?  Every time the wind shifts the odor of something new settles over us:  farm animals, maple milkshakes, burned rubber and gasoline from the demolition derby, and the ever-present base tone of fried dough.  Smells like late summer to me.

SHOOT TIL U WIN

Watching the demolition derby

Rockin' out at the Fun House

2 tickets to Dreamland

Double the fried dough = double the goodness

Love,
A

xx

Christchurch

Dinner on the pier at Lyttelton Harbour.  November, 1986.  Dad (mid-chew), Mom and Leonard.

         

Dear Kate, 

For the past few nights I've been rifling through boxes looking for photos of Christchurch, but it turns out that I don't have very many.  There are lots of shots of family life in the '70's and '80's -- birthday cakes and napping children and a photo Dad took of Mom standing tall and proud next to her magnolia.  But very little shows how much was lived in the city itself;  no one captured our giggling, teenage loitering in front of the cathedral downtown, or Friday nights spent wandering from Whitcoull's to Smith's to the fabric shop where Mom looked at patterns and planned her next sewing project, or the way we draped ourselves over the bridge railings where the Avon River makes that curve -- you know, round by the boat house and the Botanic Gardens? 

I still dream, at least a couple times a year, of riding the bus up Colombo Street, tracing its route from home to town and back again. And now, of course, home videos show the utter devastation along those same bits of road.  Who knew so much and so many could be lost in a minute or two?

All of this to say how glad I am that your Al goes into Sydney every Sunday and takes photos in its streets; that Mil draws the buildings and trees and sky around you; that you capture that beautiful Australian light and shadow in your prints.   Promise me you'll keep doing it forever and ever?

It's time to go out and take some photos.

xoxo
A

My letter in all its handwritten glory will be winging its way to you this weekend. 

Resplendent with ink blotches... I love my fountain pen!

I've not had too much of a chance to read much this week, I did read Hilary Mantels' 'Beyond Black' last week, and if you want a bit of Norwegian, try 'Out Stealing Horses' by Per Petterson, it's an incredible book.

It's funny, Alistair was with my Mother and Stepfather last week out in the wild tundra of Utah, funny seeing him on the other side of the Skype screen, it was strangely touching, Milan saying "So feels so close, but I can't touch him." He's missed him alot "When's Dad coming home? what's Dad doing today? Where is Dad today?" (Although, he's probably just skirting around the question he wants to ask the most, What's Dad bringing me back from America?!).

Today, in Texas. Tomorrow, in Denver then SF and then hopefully on a plane home, we love meeting him from the airport on an early morning as it means there's Krispy Creme for breakfast.

Soon it'll be our turn, tickets booked for home, we can't wait.

Love

xxxxx