A political path to inner peace

This past weekend, I stood next to my best friend as she married her best friend. In the days of their celebration, life felt like love wrapped in light.  I found myself a student, wide-eyed and inspired by the teachers that stood before me--Kiwi and Stone, hand-in-hand exchanging vows.  Southern sunshine and a Georgia breeze carried a gentle refrain through the weekend: It is as it should be. When it came time to toast the happy couple, my words could not catch up with my feelings.  The kind that originate in the deepest wells of the spirit and spend years marinating in life experience.  The kind that have been with you for so long that any articulation feels like an insult to the true character of their meaning.  So here I sit, days later and hundreds of miles away, casually thumbing through Walden Pond for no good  reason but to check up on my friend Mr. Thoreau.  I should learn not to be surprised when the book casually falls open to everything I should have said.  Henry is alw

June 14, 2011 Today is my 28th birthday.  Twenty-eight feels big.  Legitimate.  Like everything up until now was just practice, and now it's time to get serious. I will not deny the anxiety that descends upon a woman of a certain age.  Like a light Nantucket fog, creeping in unnoticed and suddenly grounding planes due to lack of visibility.  That little voice growing louder.  Oh God.  Where did my youth go?  When did I become old enough to actually refer to my youth in the past tense? The traditional milestones, or lack thereof, don't bother me so much: unmarried, sans children.  I adore being the-bridesmaid-never-the-bride, and lord knows my nephews are more than enough to satisfy any maternal instinct that flares on occasion.  But it's the life markers I sought as the precocious youngster (a title I presumably held until June 13, 2011) that spur the prickly questions of doubt in my head.  Where's that advanced degree (or two) that I've been talking about for