You want to know more about vacation. It’s not enough that we caught a fish and it lay dying in a metal box at our feet and then we ate it and it was delicious. Even if I had told you that its gills were “frightening ... fresh and crisp with blood,” like Elizabeth Bishop said they would be, that wouldn’t be enough. How was it really, Carey? Did the children have fun? Did you eat lobster? Did you play tennis? Did you get some sleep? Tell us how it was, how it was, how it was.

You guys have a crazy idea of vacation.

Elizabeth Murray died while we were away, and I didn’t know it until yesterday. When my Nana died I expected to find her death in the papers, and for Murray’s death I expected to be called and told. I didn’t know Murray, of course, but I loved her, and shouldn’t I have been told?

Murray was a real artist, she addressed directly what art should be and what art should be about, she took me to school, and I’m sorry she died. She was young, and still painting. In fifth grade she sold erotic drawings to her classmates. She understood sex and babies and the way the daily stuff is eternal, and she made paintings that embodied all of this. Another way I've been thinking about this is, She understood that everything is a problem, and she loved that about everything.

As for Nana, well, she was the most important person in the world and I’m still surprised so few people knew it. When she got into the back of a car so that she could lie down comfortably for the ride somewhere—she was old, her legs troubled her—you knew that she lay in the back of the car with her feet up as a full person, as a mind that never rested, always pushing and thinking and loving.