It’s the longest day of the year here in western Massachusetts too. This morning we picked strawberries, and put up a few quarts in the freezer (and another quart or so under vodka, which we’ll decant tomorrow bright red and redolent of berries) — like preserving the sun for the long winter.

Tomorrow I’m leaving for seven weeks in Israel without my sweetie, and I’ve been by turns joyful and deeply melancholy today. So grateful to have a home and a partner, so grateful for the gift of these anticipatory tears. Somehow it seems appropriate to be swimming in this emotional ocean on the longest day of the year.

I’m sorry that you’re not with your remarkable home community in Seattle today. But I hope the memory of solstices and equinoxes past can sustain you, and I wish you blessings as you journey toward putting down roots where you are now too.

Blessings of light to you on this day of all days!

Meanwhile, I’ve (I’m sure you heard) left my job and been at home for the last week. I may take the summer off – it depends on if I find a really spectacular job or not in the meantime. I’m making art and writing and designing things my “work” right now, and I’m being very productive, as far as it goes. But I’m becoming lonely already with no one to talk to all day.

And I will remember you tomorrow as people rejoice with the light. And I am singing “holy, holy, holy” for you since you are not here to sing it yourself.

I love you and miss you!

Rebecca

Wishing you a joyous solstice. I will try my best to take some photographs at the parade tomorrow and email them to you if you would like.

I have never gone before (as I arrived in Seattle on 6.23 last year), but something is pulling me there this year.