The Burrow

Do you know how happy you make me, denizens?  Do you have any idea how powerful a force you are in my everyday life?  Life Well Lived asked me to write about how blogging increases my happiness quotient; I couldn't have asked for a better prompt.

I'm sitting in the living room of the Arizona Inn, typing to you from a big red leather armchair.  There's a game table with 8" chess pieces on an inlaid board and a glass fronted library case with leather sets of the classics.  Each seating area has its own Tiffany style lamp shining brightness to match the scorching sun outside.

I've never been so glad to have read the Wall Street Journal as I am this morning.  Alina Dizik wrote a piece last week  extolling the virtues of the hotel lobby as public office space.  Hoteliers seem to like the buzz that locals create and the locals enjoy the environs, several steps above a metal table at Starbucks.  Since I had a meeting across the street and down the block from the Arizona Inn from 10:30- 11:30 and then physical therapy one mile from the Inn at 2pm, settling myself in this sunny corner and writing to you seemed like the perfect confluence of events and proximity.

How very very trendy I am.  I'm smiling already.

Though I am physically alone in this space, I have lots and lots of company.  There are Megan and FAMBB, wondering why yesterday's post was late (blame Blogger and its glitches) as they opened their laptops over a morning cup of coffee.  One's in DC, the other in Foxboro, but they are also right here with me now, sitting on the low wooden window seat, helping me frame this paragraph.  One of my oldest friends and one of my newest bloggy buddies and we're all sharing the same experience.  Though we are separated by distance, we are together in The Burrow.  They are two who read me first thing every morning.  I listen to their comments as I'm typing to you.  

FAMBB likes it when I am a sesquipedalian; I smile each time I venture in that direction.I find myself laughing at the big words along with her, and then I take myself on a mental journey to the Long Island Rail Road and the streets of Manhattan and a gigantic mid-town movie palace showing Gone With the Wind to two high school girls and their seatmates - women of a certain age who were drooling, with us, over Clark Gable carrying Vivian Leigh up that staircase.  I can still hear us sighing.

Without The Burrow, that memory wouldn't have had a place in my brain this morning.  Without The Burrow, I'd have missed that smile, that warm feeling in the middle of my chest as I remember our surprise when the overture began - it was the theme from WOR's Million Dollar Movie.  We learned that fact together.  We are still friends today, 45 years later.  That friendship is nurtured by my reading and her writing.  

Oh, yes.  Blogging makes me smile.

I consider Megan, getting to work and being disappointed because Blogger didn't publish at 6am.  Her cup of coffee on her desk, her basically wonderful but sometimes quite annoying co-workers strolling by, her daily fix of whimsy, profundities and truths delayed.  I am sorry to have been the cause of distress while I am happy knowing that she is thinking of me.  We've never met but we are friends nonetheless.  She's seen who I am by reading my words and I've learned about her life from reading her comments.  The blog is better for me than a diary - I like the conversation more than the self-indulgence of writing for myself alone.

As the physical custodian of the remaining grandparent on my side of the family, I find it easiest to keep everyone up-to-date on G'ma's well-being by describing our adventures here in The Burrow.  Grandchildren don't want lengthy phone calls, and G'ma can't remember what she's done lately so the burden of carrying the conversation rests squarely on their shoulders.  Since their physical selves have been in Germany and Hong Kong and Chile and San Francisco and Chicago lately, keeping up with their grandmother's activities is more difficult than when she lived across town.  I blog, I insert pictures, I recount conversations and they are connected.  G'ma doesn't remember if or when they call, and that is hard when you are 20 something and have your whole life ahead of you; the impermanence of your existence in her framework is frightening.  I can fill them in on our adventures here in the Burrow and they can pretend that they were there along with us.

I know that they can because that's what I do when I read Ronni Bennett's Time Goes By or Meg's  Member's Lounge.  I listen to JES's tunes at Running After My Hat and he's there with me in the library, smiling at Susan Tedeschi's lyrics and verve right along with me.  I've created a community of souls in the ether, beings I'll probably never meet in person but whose words encourage and enlighten and delight me.  I've been healed when I was down, not by strangers but by beings who exist in my consciousness without being in my presence.

It's like pen-pals, only more public.  And, just as I loved receiving letters from Judith Kelly in Tasmania when she and I were grade school correspondents, I love reading your comments and sharing your notions and suggestions.  Does blogging make me happy?  Indubitably.
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