Festival Cubano

Heavenly blue and white flowers have arrived for Jumby's birthday - irises and tulips and lilies and phaelonopsis. They're from my lovely Mamma, who is off to Norway in the morning. "I didn't think I could give him another M&S jersey" she said when I called to thank her. Blue and white is in the air; it's spring, it's May, there's optimism, the birds are happy. Dotsie stares at me disconcertedly when I ask her to jump on the table as if to say, "it's far too hot for that, you nincompoop." My lovely Mamma flies into Oslo tomorrow and I'm suddenly sad to miss the fjord this year and stare at my pictures of the rocks on Tjome.

I am cooking and planning and ordering Tres Leches cake from Betty at Porto's, who regales me with the story of her daughter's broken wrist (so she won't be riding at the Memorial Day show, unfortunately). "It's going to be a lot of cake" she says. "Well I know, but it is his very favorite," I say. "Well you can freeze the rest and then eat it like ice cream - that's what I do" says Betty. This explains something, I think to myself.

J's dear friend Alden and his beautiful wife Danielle, who is a partner/litigator at a huge Delaware law firm, even though she looks about twelve, arrived last night and we ordered the delicious Cuban puerco and platanos in their honor (Versailles rocks my world). It's their very favorite thing, and ours. I woke up to a kitchen reeking of garlic and a fridge full of cold lemony chicken. I fell asleep in Minky's bed, a habit I thought I'd grown out of when I quit my job, but apparently the new writing group the night before took it out of me. Minky is devilish: "Oh, take off your shoes, Mamma. Please lay down with me. Just for a bit." I don't take off my shoes but fall asleep anyway, with her arms around me, while our our friends drink port and eat Sprinkles cupcakes in the other room. It's an appalling habit, I know, but is there honestly anything better than falling asleep with one's child?

My head is whirling with the story I started to tell in the new class. I googled my grandfather and found an article he'd written in 1947 for the Paediatric Journal about hermaphroditism in female babies. How random and how fascinating - I think of Middlesex, and I think of Hamsun, and then I wonder why I aspire to such heady heights. But it is interesting stuff.