Claire Bidwell Smith

It was a lovely weekend, full of friends and cooking and languid hours spent outside in the warm sunshine. On Friday Liz and the kids came up for an afternoon visit. My cousin Ron dropped by, fresh from a swim in the ocean, and we all ate supper outside on the deck, palm trees swaying in the breeze overhead.

On Saturday morning I actually made it out to a yoga class, got some writing done during Vera’s nap and then had friends drop by in the afternoon. (As an aside, I swear that I would prefer to live in one of those cultures where people just unexpectedly drop by each other’s homes on a regular basis.) My friends who came that afternoon are the siblings of my friend Abby whose home I’m living in. Abby has been so busy with her project in Vienna that I haven’t heard much from her, but they caught me up on the latest, including these videos of what she and her husband’s aerial company are doing right now. I’m just floored by their talents. Check out this BBC news clip of their performance.

Minutes after Abby’s family left, the house was again descended upon by half a dozen girlfriends for my first official Los Angeles Girls Night. Everyone cooked (we went with a southern theme) and I made cucumber-watermelon margaritas and Vera modeled her mermaid costume and Greg stayed far, far away from it all, out seeing a movie with a friend in Santa Monica.

Yesterday morning we drove down to Newport Beach to have a birthday brunch with my mother’s cousin who turned 80, and then after that we spent the day with Amber and Daniel and Nora in Long Beach. Right when we arrived Greg and Daniel headed out for an afternoon of disc golf and I put Vera down for a nap in Amber’s room. Nora was napping too and before properly catching up, Amber and I happened upon the most glorious plan of all. Without even chatting about the latest in each other’s lives, we poured hefty glasses of white wine, grabbed our currently-obsessed-with young adult books (Divergent for me and Mockingjay for her) and sat outside under an orange tree reading quietly while our girls slumbered inside the house.

It was one of those moments that you can only share with a truly good friend. A friend who totally gets everything about you in that moment, and one whom you know you have eons of time with which to catch up. Amber and I stole little smiles at each other as we sipped our wine and nosed our books, until finally Nora began to stir on the monitor. Then we brought the girls outside and Greg and Dan came back with pizza and the afternoon continued with a long, warm happiness that spread through all of us.