This Memorial Day weekend we rented our little house on an island to throw the IR's shower. It was pretty quaint and pretty weird: seven women in plastic old-lady rain-kerchiefs or wool scarves or Paddington-yellow hats crowded around a pregnant woman on a ferry in the drizzle, petting her wet hair because she was feeling seasick. It was me, and Iola, whom you remember was a stripper with me and was good friends with the IR in our salad days, and this girl Pete who is an urban photographer-type kind of like Jo from Melrose Place, only obviously cooler, and this girl Lotte who is I think the IR's best friend and who plays the sitar and has long, tragic hands and a long, tragic face, and this other girl Vivyan who is a well-lipsticked lesbian militant and fashion designer, and our friend Banane, who likes to cook, and the IR's best friend from high school, Norah, who is a systems analyst and rather baffled by everything everyone else does, but who listened to Vivyan proselytize with her game face on. Missing were the MB, who is in California, and the IR's own mother and sister, who live in that distant land from whence the IR has come.

At any rate, the IR recovered from her illness as soon as we hit shore and insisted that we go immediately swimming, despite the general damp and general chill. We compromised and took her to the beach, where she bathed her swollen ankles and we made a couple of sandcastles before heading up to the little house, with its silvery unpainted shingles and its vernal pond and its hammocks and its many warm embracing beds. Most of the weekend it rained and we played checkers and did puzzles and made up stories about the baby, who might be named Iris Milk now, instead of Isadora, if it's a girl. The IR drank hot milk with herbs and we drank hot toddies and lime rickeys, depending on the weather. We did her nails many times over. I gave her my ointments and Banane gave her a changing table and Norah gave her certificates to KMart and Vivyan gave her a whole suite of naughty baby-outfits and Iola gave her a vintage pram spray-painted black and Pete gave her a photo album that already contained several full-length nude studies of her and Lotte gave her a beautiful and ethnic-looking cradle and some funny-looking rattles and in general we had a good time and there was much weeping and laughter and the air was rich with lots of strange female hormones.