In the Valley Of The Moon

When I met Peter and Linda Kane in 1983, they lived in an old house in the redwoods in Cazadero, above the Russian River. A few years later they bought a even older house in Boyes Hot Springs--aka: the Valley Of The Moon--to be closer to Peter's hospital administrative job. Linda works mostly from home at architectural drafting, photography and graphic design. The baby who was born soon after I met them is about to finish high school, and, like Karin's and Geri's teenage sons, a computer wizard. For many of us baby boomers, the high school graduation of the last-born child is a major life transition equal in importance, and often concurrent with, menopause. Peter and Linda plan to retire and live in one of the houses they bought on the Big Island in Hawaii.

Grape vine covered slopes to the east of Highway 12 from Santa Rosa
to the town of Sonoma in the Valley of the Moon

All of us were spaced out by the 110 degree heat
and gathered under the umbrella table for cold drinks.
That's Tracy, who is teaching and studying for her masters in math,
her parents, Linda and Peter Kane, her brother Daniel, and me.

Beside Linda's drafting table and above her bookshelf,
folk art dolls from Mexico and Japan

Peter and Daniel slipped off to tai chi class. Linda showed me wonderful her photo prints, collages, scrapbooks. I loved the book she made from her mother's writing exercises in a creative writing class, illlustrated with old family photographs, titled Vagabond Spirit, which she produced for familly members in memoriam.

Manipulated polaroid by Linda Kane

Manipulated polaroid by Linda Kane

Linda took these photos of me
while I was having breakfast the next morning.

"When I am old, I shall be purple"