Birthday candles

Last weekend With-a-Why, my youngest child, turned eighteen. And Skater Boy, who has been an extra in our household since before kindergarten, turned twenty-one.

Such milestone birthdays meant that our house was filled with young people and extras all weekend. The gang spent Saturday doing crazy stunts outside in an old wheelchair that we found when we cleaned the garage. By evening, more extras had arrived to join the party. Philosophical Boy, on midterm break, showed up unexpectedly. Blonde Niece arrived with her boyfriend. First Extra brought lottery tickets, the same gift he gave to Boy-in-Black and Shaggy Hair Boy when they turned eighteen. It’s a tradition.

Boy-in-Black came up with a new way of gathering everyone for the candle ceremony. He pulled the living furniture into a circle and began batting a ball back and forth. No one could resist the “keep the ball in the air” game. The circle quickly expanded to a gang of fourteen young people leaping up, making dramatic dives, and knocking into each other to swat at the ball. On several occasions, the entire loveseat went tumbling over. You might say that we’re a little competitive.

By the time the room had gotten dim enough to light candles, everyone was hot and sweaty from competing over a little foam ball. I wondered whether Shy Smile, With-a-Why’s girlfriend, would find our noisy, crowded household a bit overwhelming, but she seemed to be handling the chaos just fine. It’s easy to find nice things to say about With-a-Why and Skater Boy, but of course as we went around the circle, there were also teasing insults and jokes. That’s the tradition.

Another naked woman

Last week was supposed to be “Photos of Naked Middle-Aged Women” week on my blog. After all, I have to keep up my google rating. I used to be the number one hit in that category, but recently a surge of creepy porn has tried to take the spot, so I was trying to be pro-active. But Blogger (the blog-publishing service I use) shut down when I was trying to post the photo above. Maybe all the naked photos were just too much for blogger. I gave up when I started getting emails from folks telling me they couldn’t post comments.

To be honest, most of the women I take photos are a bit past middle age. In fact, two of the last three women in my photos are grandmothers. Yep, it’s true. Grandmothers wear cowboy hats to celebrated their naked bodies and go skinny dipping in cold mountain lakes, even in October.

Now that Blogger seems to be working again, I figured I’d start the week with another naked picture. Here’s my friend Makes Bread. It looks like she’s all relaxed as she’s walking into the water, but the reality is that she was saying, “Hurry up and take the photo before those kayaks get any closer.”

It’s a weird thing about kayakers. When they see a bunch of women skinny dipping, they tend to paddle over just for the heck of it. It's happened before. I was all for waiting on the shore so we could introduce ourselves to the kayakers but my friends decided the skinny dipping was over. Makes Bread climbed out, dried herself off, and pulled her clothes on before any boats were within earshot.

For the history of the naked blog photo project, go to this page and click on each photo, beginning with the first. Each photo has a link that will bring you back to a post on this blog that tells the story of how the photo was taken.

Holding up the clouds

Some of my friends are quick to pose naked while others need a few minutes — or even a few years — to make up their minds. The naked photo is inevitable, of course. Resistance is futile. Everyone gives in eventually.

Last weekend on our retreat, Signing Woman and Makes Bread decided to do some yard work and weed the wildflower garden during a stretch of sunny weather. The breeze still felt cool to me, but they declared after a couple hours of work that they were hot and sweaty.

“We’re going skinny dipping,” Signing Woman said. She smiled at me, and I knew she was ready to pose. I grabbed my camera and followed her out to the lake.

We’d been talking earlier about butterflies, how they are the messengers between heaven and earth. We’d discussed the possibility of Signing Woman’s ancestors’ spirits wandering around this lovely property where her family has come for so many years. Signing Woman herself has such a emotional and spiritual connection to this place that I could well imagine her coming back as a ghost someday.

As Signing Woman stripped off her clothes and stepped into the Mountain Lake, her body looked as natural as a tree or a rock or a deer, completely at home in the clear cold water. With her feet firmly on the earth, the lake lapping her legs, she reached up into the heavens to touch the sky.

For the history of the naked blog photo project, go to this page and click on each photo, beginning with the first. Each photo has a link that will bring you back to a post on this blog that tells the story of how the photo was taken.

Those long, elegant legs

“I’ll pose for you,” said Dancing Woman. “But I’m not going outside naked.” Her concern, it turned out, wasn’t the neighboring camps or the cars that sometimes drove slowly past, but the cold breeze blowing off the lake. The obligations of friendship apparently do not include setting your bare butt on wet ground on a cold fall day.

“How about the red chair by the fireplace?” she asked. It was probably the warmest spot in the house.

I nodded. “Sure. We can turn it toward the window to get some natural light.”

Dancing Woman stripped off her clothes, tossed them aside, and sat down in the chair. None of my other friends even looked up. Signing Woman went on reading her book, and Long Beautiful Hair wandered back into the kitchen for another cup of tea. Denim Woman, coming down the stairs, didn’t even look surprised to find a naked woman sitting by the fire.

In deference to Signing Woman’s family, who own the house we were staying in, I moved the photos behind the red chair. I wasn’t sure if any of her ancestors, with their stern black-and-white faces, would like to be included in the naked photo. She comes from an amazing family of missionaries and Sunday school teachers, physicians and academics and ministers. I suspect many of them would be most happy to participate in my project. I mean, really, who in the world wouldn’t want to be in a naked photo and get that fifteen minutes of internet fame? But my own rules include asking folks permission before I include them, and that was impossible since the people in the photos are dead. I certainly didn't want to take advantage of dead people.

“Put your legs up,” I said as I looked through the camera, “I want them in the picture.”

Pretty much every woman in the room looked up then to chime and say how much they loved Dancing Woman’s legs. That’s the fun part of taking a naked photo in a room full of women friends: they all start saying things about how beautiful you are. That part of this project never gets old.

For the history of the naked blog photo project, go to this page and click on each photo, beginning with the first. Each photo has a link that will bring you back to a post on this blog that tells the story of how the photo was taken.

Naked. With a cowboy hat.

The kitchen was filled with women. Quilt Artist stirred a pot of soup on the stove. Makes Bread knelt on the floor in front of the refrigerator, re-arranging everything to make more room on the shelves. Long Beautiful Hair waved a jar of pickles. Denim Woman pulled out a big bag of Dark Chocolate Bark and handed it to Signing Woman. Everyone was talking excitedly, nine voices echoing against the wooden cupboards and high ceilings.

Under the swirl of conversation, I said to Quilt Artist, “You going to pose naked for me this year?”

“Of course,” she said. “I’ve even brought a hat. To use as a prop.”

I love this about my friends. They are so very cooperative.

We decided the stone steps of the old house we were staying in would be a nice backdrop for a naked photo. The fact that the steps faced a public road did not phase Quilt Artist. “I’ll just duck down when a car goes by,” she said. Several cars did go by, and I snapped some photos in which she looked like Indiana Jones, slinking stealthily behind the stonewall.

Back inside, I pulled the photos up on my laptop, and friends gathered around to help vote on which photo we should use. “I like how the brown hat is repeated in the brown stones,” I said, pointing to my favorite. “And I like the curve of your body."



Almost everyone else voted for that photo, but Quilt Artist kept pointing to a photo in which she’s sitting on the edge of the steps. “I like how you can see all the silver in my hair. And I like how the wrinkles in my stomach are reflected in the stones. I know women aren’t supposed to like all those lines on their body, but I do.”

She and I smiled at each other. We’ve been friends for a couple of decades now, and I know the long journey she undertook to accept her body and love her self.

So I’m putting both photos on my blog. Readers can choose which one they like best.



For the history of the naked blog photo project, go to this page and click on each photo, beginning with the first. Each photo has a link that will bring you back to a post on this blog that tells the story of how the photo was taken.

By the fire with a bowl of hot soup

Every October I drive to the mountains with a group of women friends for a weekend retreat. Signing Woman’s family has a beautiful camp on a lake, and they generously let us use the place. Nine women came this year, bringing with us more food than nine women could possible eat in just a few days. When we arrived at the beautiful old house we were to stay in, we found a bra hanging on a hook by the back door. We took that as a good sign.

Soup is my favorite thing to eat on a cool fall weekend, and my friends know that. They came carrying pots of homemade soup. We had pumpkin-garlic soup, black bean-kale soup, potato-leek soup, squash-with-carrots soup, split pea soup, and several kinds of chili. I ate soup for breakfast, soup for snack, soup for every meal. I always say that I can never get enough soup, but I admit that this weekend, I may have come close.

We spend hours talking by the fire, walking along the lake, and admiring the fall foliage. Saturday night, Long Beautiful Hair cranked up the music, and we danced, sliding around on the hardwood floors in our socks. The next day, we walked to a labyrinth to spend some time in quiet contemplation. When the sun came out, we went skinny dipping in the lake and took naked photos. We played cards by the fire, sang songs, drank cup after cup of hot tea, and held a ceremonial burning of a hydrangea wreath. All in all, a perfect weekend.

Waiting Woman

I had decided that this conference’s naked photo should be of a man, just to help even out the gender imbalance. My friend Philadelphia Guy is having a great year — he got engaged to the woman of his dreams and then got a book contract soon after. I knew he’d be easy. Other male friends, when we talked about the naked blogging project, nodded and said, “Sure, I’ll pose.”

So the men did offer this year. Really, they did.

But actually taking the photo proved to be difficult. I wanted natural light, but our daytimes were packed with back-to-back sessions. I did carry my camera to sessions one day, offering to snap the photo out in the hallway, but my friends seemed to think I was joking when I asked them to strip amongst their laptop-carrying, coffee-drinking colleagues.

On Saturday, I returned to my room for a short break before the business luncheon, and found my roommate there, preparing what she needed to bring to the lunch. We began talking about the similarities in our lives. We both have sons who are seniors in high school, who will be going onto college next year. We have elderly family members — my mother-in-law and her mother — entering the last stages of their life.

“It’s a liminal stage,” she said.

“We’re both such caretakers,” I said to her. “I wonder what the next stage of life will be like.”

As we talked, I noticed that diffuse light coming through the window, striking her dark hair, and I said, abruptly, “Hey! Can I take a naked photo of you?”

I couldn’t remember, actually, whether or not I’d told her about the project, but I figured she might have heard about it from someone else. It’s a small conference. Word gets around.

“You get to choose your own pseudonym,” I said by way of a bribe.

She laughed. I took that as consent and jumped up to get my camera. She stripped her clothes off.

“I’ve thought of a pseudonym,” she said as she sat back down in the chair. “How about Waiting Woman?”

I snapped the photo. “That’s perfect,” I said. “Waiting describes this stage of life, but it’s also a verb – you’re always waiting on people.”

She nodded. “Exactly.”



(Readers who want the history of the naked photo tradition can check it out here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and  here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.)

By boat!

Taking a ferry across the Great Lake was a fun adventure that gave me time to talk to my friends on our way to the conference. But more importantly, it gave me bragging rights. During talks between sessions, during lunch meetings and leisurely dinners, I’d drop the phrase casually, “Oh, we arrived by boat.”

Many of my colleagues were envious, particularly those who had taken the long drive around the lake. The fast ferry crosses in 2 ½ hours; the drive around the lake takes considerably longer.

On Sunday, after the conference was over and it was time to go home, we returned to the ferryboat. I’d come down with a bad cold, and we were all sleep-deprived from a conference where there are just too many good things to choose from. The wind generated by the movement of the boat was terrific, so we found a place where we could sit on the deck, out of the wind. The sunshine poured onto us, the heat relaxing our bodies, and it wasn't long before I noticed that my friends had stopped talking and drifted off to sleep.

And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence

 Self-portrait on the deck of a ferryboat.

It began with bourbon

The first leg of my journey to the conference began with a flight to Big Rushing Water, where my friend Philadelphia Guy and his fiancé Medieval Woman live. (No, Philadelphia Guy does not live in Philadelphia. It’s confusing. But he’s been a character on my blog – and in my life – for years now, and I can’t keep changing his pseudonym every time he moves.)

Anyhow, Philadelphia Guy and Medieval Woman picked up at the airport, brought me to their home, and then took me to an Indian restaurant. By the time Artist Friend joined us that evening, my dramamine had worn off, my stomach was full, and I was happily lounging about in my sweatpants, playing with the two rabbits who lived in the house.

Artist Friend had been driving for six hours, but he was eager to start the party as soon as he walked in. “I brought five little bottles of bourbon,” he said. “Let’s do some bourbon tasting.” He insisted that the bourbon be poured into glasses of ice.

Medieval Woman quit after about two sips and returned to her knitting. And I don’t drink at all. But Artist Friend threw his whole self into the tasting. He picked up a glass, took a sip, and then went off into a long lyrical description based on that one sip. “Ah, that one has an earthy taste. Fruity almost. The melting ice is unlocking the flavor. I can taste wheat, perhaps corn, maybe something a little bitter. The smell – ah, it’s almost the smell of leather. But then there’s a lingering, pleasant aftertaste of oak. It might be aged just a bit too long. I’m noticing a mellowness that I didn’t notice before.”

Then Philadelphia Guy took a sip. He gagged and said, “That one tastes like shit.”

It was great fun. They drank up the five little samples of bourbon, then switched to wine. Eventually, Philadelphia Guy and Medieval Woman went off to bed, with Medieval Woman promising to set an alarm and wake us up in time to catch the ferry. Then Artist Friend and I stayed up late talking, catching up on our lives and all that had happened since we’d seen each other last.



That's Artist Friend in the photo.