Given that three-quarters of Lessons in Taxidermy was written in response to questions posed by Marisa, it is not surprising that our conversations over the last few days have inclined toward the intense.

Discussions about life, love, and work spill across breakfast, lunch, and dinner, concluding late every night when I send her off to her bed with a hot water bottle. She has an uncanny ability not only to sense what is on my mind, but also to sum up complicated issues I’ve been pondering for months.

Where writing is concerned we almost mirror each other – but she is always more succinct in describing the process.

Mostly, though, we laugh. We also read newspapers and books, lounge around, check email, listen to music, play with the boy, go for walks, work.

Normally when someone visits I feel that I haven’t done enough as a host. But Marisa isn’t a guest: she is family.

The other night my daughter was chattering with us about thirty-seven different topics at once and at some point said I have a blog for my internet junk and a paper journal for my private thoughts.

I replied I don’t put my private thoughts anywhere.

Her response was instant: Your private thoughts are boring!

Back in Portland Marisa was an important part of my daily life. We lived in the same neighborhood, shared meals all the time, and performed together; I went on tour with her band, and we’ve done solo shows.

If someone in the family needed help she was always dependably present – she even typed Byron’s thesis when his arms were injured. She is the designated executor of my will and the person who will decide where the children live if they are deprived of their parents.

Beyond the pragmatic details there is also emotion. My daughter points out, correctly, that Marisa is the only person who makes me literally jump with joy. She is beloved by the entire family and has an intense and extraordinary friendship with my son.

I do not regret moving away, but I miss my friends. The fact that Marisa flew all the way across the world to help me this week is beyond amazing. I am honored to know her and have this time together.

Yesterday we went to Ely to see the Cathedral and climbed the Octagon Tower to look at the view across the Fens. We listened to a classical orchestra rehearsing for a concert in the nave. I showed her Oliver Cromwell’s house, and the place I moor when I take the boat out, and we walked through muddy fields watching rabbits hop in the distance.

We laughed and wandered. People change – she arrived with a mobile phone and laptop, something I could never have conceived of back in Chorus days, and shocked me by using the words “bluetooth” and “youtube” correctly. I am almost not recognizable as the person she met at age twenty-eight. But the friendship is as strong as ever.

Sitting at the Cutter Inn, legs splattered with mud, we watched the sun go down and the full moon rise over the River Great Ouse, talking about the past and the future.

Later, back home again, we walked out to the Jesus Green to see the lunar eclipse. My son ran in circles around us, spinning and laughing with delight.

Marisa said Wait – I’m in Cambridge looking at the dark side of the moon – I’m totally having a classic rock moment!

This week I’ve been waking before the birds to ponder assorted tricky questions. Early morning has typically been the end of my day, not the start, but the adjustment happened naturally and mysteriously. I’m enjoying the change even if it might be temporary.

Seeing something routine in a different way is fascinating.

Right now I’m bouncing around in a state of bliss because Marisa just called from the airport – she will be here in a few hours!

I love her so much even if I never use the word often enough.

Three of my friends are pregnant again, approximately eighteen years (mathematically half a lifetime, culturally an entire generation) after giving birth for the first time.

I’m thrilled for them – and I can’t wait to see and hold the infants they produce. Babies are remarkable small people. The three families are very different in terms of construction, but each will offer an amazing life to the children they produce.

The choice to have a child at any age is a serious proposition, requiring an amount of work that can never be anticipated. I respect and admire anyone who takes the challenge, particularly those who know exactly what it means.

When I look at my own children I am thankful that the years of primal need are over, that they are big and strong and independent. There will be no more babies in my life unless I become a grandparent.

I’m in awe of the fact that my friends are so hopeful and have so much love to offer. I send them congratulations and best wishes.

My left leg has finally healed sufficiently that I can go on my daily bicycle ride; my right foot has not, but I can push off from the heel and that is good enough.

Riding in East Anglia is often accompanied by a crashing wind coming straight off the Fens. The best part is when the wind is at your back, relentlessly driving you across the flat fields, nearly knocking the bike off the path. It reminds me of being a kid on the ferry to Canada and jumping up on deck, letting the air carry me aloft.

But the wind can only be at your back in one direction; riding home again it is also relentless, each stroke of the pedal moving the bike only incrementally forward. I know this, know that I’ll also have to ride with one hand holding down my skirt, but I would still choose the difficult ride if that is what is required to experience the other.

After my ride I walked out to Lammas Land and the folly, listening to an album I’ve never heard before, the wind whipping my hair up and around my face until I could no longer see anything.

The other night at a party littered with international academics Jean attempted to quiz people about how old they were when they lost their virginity. I was the only person to answer willingly. Jean gave out his stats (if you want to know, ask him). Byron and Rachel had to be prompted but they disclosed.

Everyone else just stared at us. Two refused emphatically, then started to debate the definition of virginity, and what constitutes sex.

When you associate with people who live on a spectrum that starts with theologically imposed chastity and arranged marriages on one end, and profound decadent hedonism on the other, these conversations can sometimes lurch in directions one does not anticipate.

At some point one straight white man said You wait for the right person your entire life-

Only to be interrupted by another straight white man who retorted But you have to do something while waiting!

I blinked and took notes, but did not join the discussion as I cannot relate to the concept of the right person as some kind of ideal that can be sought, or obtained.

Last year in Seattle Jeffrey told me about his theory that if you ask people for their virginity story and they tell you immediately, it means you are good friends. If they decline or lie, he said” talk about the weather while taking tiny steps away from them until you can no longer hear them speak.

This model presumably works in the context of the west coast indie-alternative scene in which he dwells. But of course when he tried it on me my mouth dropped open in shock and I refused to answer. Though I was apparently exempt from his schematic since we’re still good friends.

Later I sent a text with an abbreviated version of my very sweet story involving someone I loved with all my heart, who later succumbed to injury and violence. What happened between us, whether bad or good, was true and I do not regret any of it.

Life is a complicated adventure.

I spent the day exchanging email with people to promote the book, scrambling around putting things in order, and somehow also managing to conduct an important secret conversation.

During the course of a discussion with my agent she asked about my weekend and I filled her in.

I signed off with My life is sometimes quite peculiar.

She replied Yes, I’d noticed that!

I sleep with my hair knotted up on top of my head but since I’ve taken to brushing it the whole mess slips around and falls apart. Last night it all came streaming down across my face and neck, waking me.

I swept it back in place and stretched out, blankets pulled up to my chin, listening to the rain hit the boat.

Outside the crocuses and daffodils are blooming. Spring is here, everything is changing, and that is brilliant.

The other evening Rachel grabbed my journal and started to read through the scribbled notes and character sketches. Ten pages in she found a description of a secret plan that might change my life significantly. She borrowed my pen and scrawled NO!! at the bottom.

Lucky she didn’t read a recent journal that starts with Note to self: do not make stupid mistakes and repeat lessons learned before age twenty-one.

On her last night in town a crew assembled at Jean’s flat to eat tasty food and drink lots of red wine.

It was an eclectic bunch of historians, linguists, barristers, mathematicians, immunologists, and artists, born in six different countries and most of us living far from home. There were no English people present until Paul showed up at two with an emergency supply of cigarettes, by which time we were all laughing uproariously.

Somewhere around three in the morning a fabulous boy turned to me and asked a technical question about (look away now if you are squeamish) fisting; someone else needed to know about female ejaculation and I found myself practically running a disease prevention seminar.

I never talk about the fact that I have a degree in health education, but lots of people seem to sense it.

My first job in that field? Teaching sex ed in a juvenile detention facility. When I looked younger than most of the kids in the classes.

It was nearly dawn when it was time to say goodbye. I offered good traveling wishes to Rachel and we embraced. She exclaimed That was almost like a real hug!

When Jean introduces me to people he says things like (imagine this in a posh South African accent, which for the uninitiated sounds like 19th century boarding school British) Her book is about growing up with seven different kinds of cancer!

I shake my head; he hasn’t read it so this synopsis is quite misleading. Then I patiently explain that it isn’t about cancer at all. The book is about danger.

Not the danger of growing up with a rare genetic disorder and two kinds of cancer. Not the peril implied by poverty and violence. Not the ramifications of a horrific accident, or any of the other sundry things that happened in my early life.

The book details all of those experiences, but it is about rejecting that legacy and choosing to take real risks – like falling in love, raising children, finding friends. From my perspective it is more dangerous to care about someone than it is to simply stay alive.