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Everything about this weekend was perfect.

On Friday evening I joined my father at Villanova University, where my mother was being honored by artist Niko Chocheli. This was shortly after learning that my fabulous nephew has chosen to attend a very fine college not far from my own home. The kind of news any aunt would want to hear.

On Saturday, after writing a Going Over poem for a certain band of students who will be reading this Berlin novel over the summer, I had the immense privilege of visiting Little Flower Catholic High School for Girls on behalf of the first-ever, immaculately well-run Teen Writers Festival. All thanks to Sister Kimberly Miller and K.M. Walton, who organized the day, to the girls who came, to the families who encouraged them, and to my fellow rocking writers. The community strengthens. The friendships grow.

I read, and was deeply moved by, the portraits my own students at Penn created about people who matter to them. Something essential happens when we stop to remember. When we ask. When we listen. When we evoke. History of impressions.

My story about pre-season/post-storm Beach Haven appeared in the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer, sharing a front cover page with Philadelphia's own archbishop, one of those small coincidences that makes a writer smile.

A poem I wrote appeared on Serena Agusto-Cox's blog here, in honor of National Poetry Month.

Words I'd once written about the young adult label were quoted alongside the thoughts of Lauren Oliver and Cornelia Funke in a very interesting New Straits Times story by Samantha Joseph, here. This was the second weekend in which something I'd said in one place was discovered (by Serena Agusto Cox) elsewhere. A week ago, the LA Times quoted me here, in this piece about Gina Frangello.

I received a gorgeous, handwritten (!) letter from Amy Gigi Alexander, a letter written while Amy sat in a cafe in the Petit Square of Tangiers. Amy, I could not be more honored by your words there. Treasured words, which will sit among treasured things.

And finally, but never ever ever finally, Bill and I spent yesterday afternoon with our beloved friends, John and Andra. John Bell was both conducting and directing Meredith Wilson's "The Music Man" at the Labuda Center for the Performing Arts at DeSales University, where John chairs the Performing and Fine Arts Department. It was a rich and wonderful performance. It was a perfect time with two very dear friends.

Today I sit preparing for the launch of Going Over at the Radnor Memorial Library, this coming Wednesday evening, 7:30. I hope you will join us.

Tomorrow I say goodbye to my students. That, my friends, is one of the hardest things I do.

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"You're sharing the cover with the Archbishop," Kevin Ferris, my Philadelphia Inquirer editor wrote.

"Honored," I said.

Because, well, that's never happened before. And because this piece, on Beach Haven, off season, was a delight to both research (two nights at an inn, many walks through quiet streets, sunsets) and write.

What has Beach Haven become, these many months after the Super Storm? What does tenacity look like? How have the beaches been recombed, resifted, reshaped? What are the birds up to?

The link is here.

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Back in mid-April, at Beach Haven, when sweaters were de rigueur and wet hair dried in chilly crisps, when I rose early to meet the dolphins, when I tried to get away but work kept finding me anyway—back then, there was this woman by the sea.  A retired school teacher, she told me.  Never married.  The kind of person who only ever reserved rooms in hotels where dogs are welcome and where you can bring a little pan of some pre-concocted stew and heat it.  She was an off-season Beach Haven regular.  She liked to sit in an old beach chair, its plastic weave gone slightly awry, with a fishing rod poked into the sand.

She liked, she said, to sit all day.

And from what I could tell, she did.

I liked how comfortable she was alone.  How unafraid of time just passing.  How dutiful she was in her self-commissioned role of watching the sky and sea change.  I wondered if I could sit like that, if only for a day, and if, at the end of the day, I would better understand time, know more than most about what it is to measure out the hours.

I think of her now, when all I really want is to sit and read and (every now and then) look up and study a bird or listen to the chorus of the angry hot cicadas.

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with the stillness of off-season amusement parks.  The frozen wheels against the not-yet-summer skies.  The promise of lights.  The hollows of last year's laughter, and, perhaps, fright.

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The ocean is behind me as I type; the day has come in.  I have been up since an early hour, at work again on Berlin.  I arrived here anxious, late Tuesday night:  Could I find my way to the end of this complex novel?  Could I honor Tamra Tuller, who invited me to write this book for her—her faith a gift like none other?  Many themes would have to find their way home.  Two storytelling voices would have to hold their own.  Tensions couldn't lag.  Research (oh, so much uncountable research) could never be confused with plot.  And don't forget love, which lies at this story's heart.  Don't forget what it is to love, and to wait.  Don't crowd that small big thing out with all that is Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, Little Istanbul and Stasi paranoia, bratwurst vendors and David Bowie.

Writing here has meant rewriting here, taking things apart.  It has required long walks and a settling in above the old laptop at 3 AM or 4 each day; I was here, after all, to write.  I had better make use of the days.  Clients await me.  The final projects of my beloved Penn students.  Reviews.  A contest or two to judge.  A son's graduation.  Interviews.  Small Damages.  If I couldn't do it here, I wouldn't do it at all.  I felt the pressure immensely.

This morning, at this hour, the book isn't done.  It is, however, intimately understood and my anxiety is gone.  There will be a storm here later today; in the gray dawn outside the waves are churning.  I will always be grateful to Beach Haven for letting me breathe, for restoring my own faith in me.  And I will always be grateful to my husband, too, who gave me room to work, who heard me, weeks and weeks ago, when I said, "I'd give anything for just a few, spare writing days."

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