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 Read more…

On Saturday Vera and I drove down to Long Beach to see a friend. On the way we stopped to pick up a few things that I put into a gift bag: a bottle of Beckman, some peanut M&Ms, a can of Graber olives, and a sack of beach toys — all things that hold Read more…

After my father died I found myself living alone in his condominium in Orange County. The days following his death were lonely ones. After having lived with him for so long it felt impossibly strange and disquieting to come home to those rooms by myself. I turned on music and opened the patio doors to Read more…

Apologies for my absence. One of my best friends, Lien, has been in town from LA for the last four days and we really did it up. On Friday night we surprised Greg with tickets to an Arcade Fire / The National show. Saturday we hit up the opening of Grant Achatz's The Aviary (see Read more…

For the last four years I've been getting together with essentially the same little group for a girls night. We do this every couple of months, most often at my house, but occasionally at one of the others. We all cook something and then usually watch a movie. Any boys around get the boot. So Read more…

When I moved to Chicago three and a half years ago, the only person I knew was Greg, and we'd only known each other for a few months. I was well aware that moving to a big city where the only person I knew was a guy I was involved with, was a recipe for Read more…

So, I'm going to Nashville tomorrow to meet three of my best friends from high school. This trip just kind of came together out of nowhere a couple of months ago when we realized that it had been 5 or 6 years since the four of us had been together all at the same time. Read more…

This week marks ten years since one of my best friends died. Julie and I went to high school together and while we weren't very good friends during our tenure at Galloway, we became incredibly close in the years that immediately followed. I was living in New York the night she called to tell me Read more…

A really dear friend of mine is coming to visit today from New York. I couldn’t be more excited to see her. It’s been well over a year since we’ve spent time together in person, and it’s been much longer than that since we’ve had more than a couple of hours in which to catch up.   Read more…

We had a really fun dinner party last night with two other couples. It was a collaborative dinner (my new term for potluck, since I detest that word), and it was just a really nice evening. Greg made a fire in the fireplace (yes, it's winter in Chicago again) and we lit a bunch of Read more…