margaret&emilie

Margaret is the artist
1. I can’t dive. I rarely swim at all, but I insist that my children become excellent swimmers.
2. Combining seaglass collections with Jay was a more significant gesture of commitment for us than exchanging wedding rings.
3. I’m a major homebody. I’m content listening to old crackly records and doing art projects. Hence I love a good blizzard.
4. I love skiing, sailing, tennis, ice-skating, riding, and playing piano but I’m not a natural at any of it, unlike my mother who is amazing at all of those things. And she can ride a unicycle too. Tough act to follow.
5. I’m surprisingly good at archery and target shooting with a rifle. Wish these were more useful skills in my day-to-day life.
6. I hate how much time goes by without seeing people I love. And all the amazing books, and music, and art, and projects to complete, and travel destinations out there…There just isn’t enough time.
7. I met my husband backstage at a Phish show in Worcester. That was that.
8. I love dictionaries, field guides, atlases, almanacs and any reference materials.
9. I stage-dived dressed as an owl once.
10. I guess I’m a team player, but I’ve never played on a team. Actually I’m probably not much of a team player now that I think about it.
11. I grew up with a pet pony named Ringo that would ride in our Volkswagon bus. And I had a trap door and a trapeze in my childhood bedroom and also a skating pond with lights and music. And pet pheasants, geese, chickens and ducks. I can recall my childhood vividly back to age 2 probably because it was wonderful.
12. I confess that I took the “Sound of Music” tour in Salzburg, Austria. No regrets.
13. I lucked out big time in the family department. They are truly the best people. Friends too! How did I get so lucky?!
14. Optimism, humor, and curiosity are qualities I value most. And I must always live in a creative home like the one I grew up in.
15. I travel light, I use restraint, I save things, and I am easy to please and I don’t stress out much. I’m actually just cheap and kind of lazy...
16. Valentines Day has always been the most important holiday in my family. We take card-making very seriously.
17. I could never live in a hot climate. I’ve lived in the desert, the mountains, the city, the country, the beach…and I think I like Essex most of all.
18. I hate to discuss, carry, or even think about money. I never have any in my wallet.
19. I drove a mack truck full of movie props across the country once with my friend Susie. I think we were supposed to have a special license.
20. I miss my grandma every day. She gave me a newly dead blue jay for my 16th birthday. Few people can say that I bet.
21. I can’t tolerate pain of any kind, but I somehow had peaceful unmedicated childbirths both times.
22. I hate being underground or underwater and I’m scared of heights, but I’m oddly unafraid of snakes and bats. And I have a powerful sense of smell…
23. I am a fantastic parallel parker. Once parked a 15-passenger van full of Inupiat performers into a tiny spot on Charles Street in ONE MOVE. There were witnesses.
24. I have no sense of direction or time. I have to work twice as hard to be this dependable. It’s really handicapping.
25. I was in David Bowie’s immediate radius once. I was told to move out of it.

Emilie is the writer:
1. I have a secret obsession with celebrity. I often wonder what Angelia and Brad talk about at breakfast.

2. Once, I walked into a meeting that was underway at the Ministry of Education in Kampala, Uganda. At a long conference table sat about 30 or 60 or maybe it was 250 Ugandans, and one white guy. 'Oh' was the word that came into my head when I saw the white guy. It was love at first sight for me. Now he's my husband and it's still love at every sight and always.

3. There is such imbalance in the world---50 degree days in January, animals tortured for eye mascara, double hamburgers for lunch---you know the rote. Maybe, like the Navajo, we can restore harmony and balance a little by chanting the world back to health. I sometimes have serious panic attacks about the future.

4. Liv was born 10.4 pounds and Haakon was 11lbs. For weeks after their births, I waited for someone bearing a trophy to arrive. It never came.

5. I lived in Africa for 7 years, you can read about that at www.theflametree.typepad.com.

6. I used to be a freestyle skier. I was not very ambitious. But yes, I jumped and did ballet and moguls.

7. There is a statue of my ancestor Mary Dyer in front of the State House in Boston. (My first name is Mary, after her). She was a Puritan who was hanged on the Boston Common for the crime of being a Quaker. This was after a lot of brave and martyr-ish acts.

8. I'm only at #8?

9. I am working on a book (when I'm not procrastinating by washing windows, cleaning floors, writing blogs and practicing yoga), and someday I will publish it and implore you all to buy it.

10. That was scary to write.

11. Not as scary as that time in 1998 when I was accosted by a bunch of drunk, bored, Sunday-afternoon Tanzanian men while on a walk in the middle of nowhere, without my radio, a mile or so from the base compound. I managed to get back to the main road, when the whole village joined them against me (the locals resented the aid orgs for helping the refugees). A friendly truck happened to pass by and saved me. I was more cautious all the years I spent in Africa after that.

12. Honnnnng-k HONK goes the fire trucks passing below my window as I write. Liv is in the kitchen with my mother making cupcakes downstairs. I have never been happier in my life.

13. It's scary to be happy because there is the looming threat of losing the happiness. I was not happy for many years and that, in some ways, was easier.

14. Um, what else?

15. I have recently started to attend church and every Sunday I weep at some point during the service. I weep when the children enter in procession; or when the names of those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are read; or when, at the end of the last hymn, three women in the choir suddenly BELT out the last lines in a sort of angelic, beautiful, lets-go-for-it release. I do love God and believe he resides in every detail of nature and every gesture of every creature. phew.

16. After that pivotal moment at the Min. of Education, I lived in Uganda for two years with Mads. I loved Mads but boy I sometimes hated Uganda. It was boring and hot and dumb. Every American should spend two years being bored and hot and dumb and sort of lonely. It taught me to appreciate.

17. Is it really 25 things?

18. Why can't Alice Waters just say that frozen chicken nuggets heated in the microwave are the healthiest thing for children and for the planet? Oh how I dread cooking.

19. I have two brothers. They are stunning. When they walk into a room, everyone turns and sort of melts.

20. If I had $1000 I would send all of you these books: THE SUMMER BOOK by Tove Jansson and THE MIRACULOUS JOURNEY OF EDWARD TULANE by Kate DiCamillo. If I had $100 I would send them to you.

21. I love seaglass and feathers and jasmine plants and ceremony and Norway and my children, o Yes how I love my children!

22. I am pretty clueless about the world. It can be awkward at dinner parties but it makes for a thrilling life. I don't get it, so I make it up to suit myself, and so much is always new and weird.

23. Almost there.

24. A psychic told me I would live near huge bodies of water someday. Another said that I was about to run wild.

25. Hallelujah. That was fun.