trying to honor a commitment to get up early, not to stay on west coast time (sleep till 11 or noon, up till 2 or 3) and see more museums and eat at more restaurants, i had made a brunch date with my mom for sunday, likewise to clear the air, catch up, let no one else in the family speak on my behalf (not, as Peter explained, "in" my behalf). It was great to learn that my mother (who obtained her M.A. last year - the men in the family talk big but it's the women who've got the advanced degrees) gets the same kind of new-school jitters i get, feels the same kind of guilt about piles of pages unwritten.

We gabbed for hours, over attended by a not busy enough maitre d' and briggs had her second day of leisure and lounging (but no museum). We had a salad together in the late afternoon and on a whim (i'd been reminded by a bus billboard), i bought tickets to a play, As Bees in Honey Drown, playing in the Village. It was very quick and funny, pointed on the subject of whoring for fame. a lot of frank sex-comedy dialogue that made the provincial in me, the bourgeois i've become, cringe at the presence of two children on laps to our right (we sat in the 11th row of a 12-row theater) - but i nervous nellied for nothing. they were oblivious to all but the rise and fall of the actors' voices.