April 2025

I love you! No fooling! I embrace April Fool’s Day because it ushers in more light, but I don’t try to fool anyone. I just love knowing it’s April First!

Before going into some of March’s happenings, and my thoughts, I want you to know how much I treasure all your communications. I appreciate being reminded of our first meetings, where and when we connected. I’m always fascinated to become friends with so many of you through my books, even though we’ve never met face to face.

It’s hard to imagine a more satisfying, fulfilled life than the one I’m living now, being in touch with this wondrous group of friends. So much of the continued richness of my life is having been given the opportunity to get to know you because of my writing that began over half a century ago. Hard to believe!

The fact that so many of you have stayed in touch with me for these several decades makes our fondness for each other especially beautiful. Thank you for all you do to make me part of your generational story. We’re truly blessed to be able to share our individual friendship that is so profoundly meaningful to me in my longevity.

No matter what our background, we feel a special bond that is woven into the fabric of our daily lives. We all want to be happy and find ways that increase the well-being of others. After all, as the poet Mary Oliver reminds us, “It is a serious thing just to be alive in this fresh morning in this broken world.”

The month of March began with a fun outing to go to a Beatles tribute. The performance group Rain was at the Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford on a U.S. tour. My friend Kim, a Beatles lover, his brother Kerry and I began our fun day by having lunch at a charming restaurant in an old mill in Chester, Connecticut. To enter Brushmill by the Waterfall, we walked on a bridge over a roaring waterfall in the bright midday sunlight with a crisp breeze.

The scent and smell of a wood-burning fire greeted us, awakening our pleasure senses of warmth, along with the gentle sound of the flames and the orangey peach colors of the burning logs from nearby trees. Ah, Sunday brunch. We were graciously served delicious comfort food in an authentic atmosphere that took us back in time. A perfect preamble to reliving our youth hearing the Beatles songs again.

When is the last time you felt like a teenager? There we were among thousands of ardent Beatles fans, reliving those years when we were enthralled by this English group from Liverpool. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey) were alive, in costume and singing their hearts out. The audience was ripe with kinetic energy, ready to stand up, sway, hands in the air singing tunes they know and love. When encouraged by the entertainers — “Come on Connecticut!” — we screamed in glee and all went wild. The sheer joy of this collective enthusiasm was contagious and lifted us up so high, we found ourselves feeling agelessly playful, even silly. In a word, we were giddy happy, relating back to the late ’50s through the 1960s.

How well we remember these impressionable, self-conscious years. No matter what age and stage we are in, no matter what the circumstances, music has the power to bring relief and hope and, above all, transportive pleasure.

Laughter is the greatest medicine. A good belly laugh keeps the dark thoughts away. The day after Christmas, when I went with my friends Mark and Erin to see the Bob Dylan movie, A Complete Unknown, I signed up to see a stand-up comedian, Paul Mercurio, who was coming to the United Theatre on Saturday, March 8. Mark is Paul’s agent and assured me he is drop-dead funny. When asked if I had an email, I said no. The next day, my movie buddy Alice received a text about the event. We were not disappointed. The fun exceeded our expectations. Again, everyone there was enthusiastic, and we collectively laughed out loud. “Saturday Night Live” indeed.

Paul is an Emmy-award-winning writer for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. This new tour is called “Permission to Speak.” With his quick wit, he’s able to get members of the audience to join him on the stage and spontaneously share their intimate experiences and secret stories. Wow. The punch lines kept flowing, every line a zinger, going in all possible directions. We all felt included, heard. Ordinary people shared details of the same kind of lives we all have in common.

Paul unveiled deep, dark, light, funny life situations that touched a chord in all of us. Where, when and how we met; the person we fell in love with. We learned about the chemistry and psychodynamics of their relationships!

What made this evening’s engaging entertainment so much more personally relevant is that Paul is from Providence, Rhode Island. Dozens of his classmates from high school came up on stage, not having seen Paul for approximately 48 years. We learned that he was funny as all heck back then. It’s hard to understand why he chose to be a lawyer before committing to being a full-time stand-up comedian and writer. Paul is so obviously in his element when he is on stage, able to interact with his adoring audiences.

There was a warm atmosphere in the sold-out audience of energetic reconnection. We were invited to witness and get to know people in the audience without judgment. We were all together with the intention of having a lot of fun. We left smiling with a sense of shared community.

On March 9, 48 years ago, Peter’s law firm, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, legally set up Alexandra Stoddard Incorporated. With Peter’s encouragement, support and advice, as well as our collaboration, I was able to run an international design firm from the time I left Mrs. Brown’s firm, McMillen Inc., in 1977 until 2008. When Peter and I moved to Connecticut, I permanently closed my design firm and spent my time writing.

On Eleanor McMillen Brown’s 88^th birthday, she was eased out of the design firm she founded in 1924, at age 34. She’d borrowed $13,000 from her father with the promise that she would never take on a partner. I eventually became her only special assistant, accompanying her wherever she went. Without words, she was training me for my future success. I consider our friendship and deep bond one of the most significant developments of my life’s course.

I think of her with great reverence, continuing to ask, “What would Mrs. Brown think?” When I heard of her stepping down from the firm she founded, Peter immediately put the steps in motion for me to form my own design firm, modeled after the standards and training I was immersed in since 1961, when John Kennedy became president and we worked on the Blair House in Washington.

My design career was thrilling and exhilarating. I was continuously exposed to beauty, refinement and travel. I was introduced to and learned from extraordinarily accomplished professionals. Their knowledge and experience in the decorative arts, as well as their exceptional talents and skills, was awe-inspiring. Walking alongside Mrs. Brown (carrying her tote bags) and becoming a close, trusted friend continues to enrich every aspect of my life.

Interior design supports the environment and atmosphere for the life that will be lived in a private world of retreat. Our home is a place of personal comfort and joy, a reflection of our life’s autobiography.

My career in design led me to become a writer, with my first book Style for Living: How to Make Where You Live You. I wanted to help and encourage people to express their own personality and original point of view. I dedicated my first book to Mrs. Archibald Manning Brown (formerly Eleanor Manning McMillan).

Mrs. Brown (we both share husbands with the same last name!) has left a lasting example of elegance, grace and success. The interior design firm she founded 101 years ago set a high bar for all her designers. We learned far more than design. We experienced a great, grand, regal lady whose talent and discipline guided her art of living. Her example is timeless.

On March 15 (the Ides of March), I celebrated Peter’s birthday. He was born in 1922, 103 years ago. Spending a day of remembrance, honoring his life, was a most beautiful, sacred experience. I spent the day alone, together. This choice to be quiet, free to reflect and remember, brought our lives’ journey together in bright focus. The relaxed, calm mood of loving gratitude brought me many solitary moments of profound gratitude for the eternal love we shared.

I wore an Emilio Pucci scarf in the colors of Bermuda water that he bought me 40 years ago in Florence, Italy. There are certain objects in our possession that are symbolic, having the power to comfort us and represent our connection to each other. I wore blue socks we’d bought for him in Paris to bring his spirit from head to toe. I took the HOP bus to Mystic and had a leisurely lunch at a favorite restaurant. I sat at the bar in the exact seat where Peter sat for his last Kentucky Derby. We had invited close friends to join us to root for the horse they were betting to win. Memories as big as years.

I looked out at the drawbridge on the Mystic River and felt a peacefulness that was complete, pure, whole, and in a gentle way, holy.

Having given over a quiet, tender day of celebration, I felt close to Peter’s presence and guidance, lifting his spirit up on angels’ wings. Happy birthday, Peter!

Spring forward one hour. Whether we are for or against Daylight Saving, we all have a huge psychological boost when it stays light until early evening. Let there be light. In Buddhism, light is a symbol of wisdom and compassion. Bring it on! Soon after this burst of energy we enjoyed by extending our daylight, on the 20^th of March at 5:01 a.m., we heralded the first day of spring!

Yippee! I have spring fever. I feel frisky. I’m full of beans. The snowdrops in Charlie’s yard have morphed into mine. A birdie brought over some snowdrops under a lilac tree. One purple crocus popped up. Crocuses are coloring front lawns. My daffodils are about to burst open. I spot tulips in leaves, anticipating their color to come. Alexandra gave me white dahlias from Holland to be planted in full sunlight soon.

Away with the shovel. No more need for salt or worries about ice. I’ve spent a few joyful hours on my brick patio in my solitary Adirondack chair. Solitude in nature is awe-inspiring. Facing the garden, Charlie’s camellias will be in bloom in this new month. The resident cardinal will reappear from our friend Alice’s linden tree. We are experiencing a rebirth. Rejoice in nature’s renewal. Natural light is IT!

When we are alone, quiet, enveloped by nature, the soul is awakened to infallible truths. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus taught us that “there is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.”

Springtime brings us hope. “True happiness comes as a pleasure of the mind in pursuit of truth,” a valuable insight of Aristotle’s. We can cultivate our interior garden, Aristotle understood: “The pleasure arising from thinking and learning will make us think and learn all the more.” When we have spring in our hearts, we enjoy the beauty of all our neighbors’ gardens, realizing everything in existence is connected. Collectively we create a more total experience, making every aspect, great and small, have value.

With this new light, spring in our hearts, we can seek and find great clarity in our minds. I like Timothy Snyder’s insight he wrote about in On Tyranny, “To understand one moment is to see the possibility of being the cocreator of another.”

None of us suffers from amnesia. We faced fear and uncertainty surrounding the pandemic. There was a lack of transparency. We faced deprivation of all our normal freedoms. There were vaccine contradictions. Conspiracy theories. Tragic deaths.

The darker the situation, the greater the ingenuity of the human survival instinct. We bundled up and went to restaurants that served outside in parking lots and terraces. We discovered the different ways we could communicate with friends and family.

We were all in the same boat. We rang bells. We were obsessed to learn about the vaccines that became available. We found solace in reading. We wore colorful, patterned masks. We all have our own Covid autobiographies. My last Happiness Retreat was the critical weekend of March 11, 12 and 13, 2020! I also had Covid for two Christmases in a row.

Right now, this March remembrance is important as we think about how we can’t take everyday, ordinary, normal activities and interactions for granted. Life itself, mere living, is a privilege we all share.

Reflecting on the people from all corners of the globe, we realize how utterly, extraordinarily precious it is to live a normal life. I was heartbroken by the recent tragic earthquake whose epicenter was in Myanmar (formerly Burma) that stretched for over 600 miles to Bangkok, Thailand; Southern China; Vietnam; and Bangladesh. It was such a tragedy, with so many innocent lives that were lost.

I often think of the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that was published in 1974, one year after Style for Living. My beloved literary agent Carl Brandt was the agent for Robert M. Pirsig and was wildly enthusiastic about the ways this book taught about Zen Buddhism’s focus on enlightenment through meditation and intuition; overcoming dualistic thinking. Who among us doesn’t want to have spiritual and intellectual insights that will inform and instruct our thinking?

Using his motorcycle as a metaphor, Pirsig teaches us that whenever we focus our undivided attention on something we care about, we are meditating. “Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind,” he wrote. “I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.”

We survived. We can use our backward glance to treasure the simple, ordinary, everyday things we do to make our life move along in a healthy, productive way. I believe what Pirsig taught us has “lasting value.”

Just before Alexandra came to visit me, she’d spent a week in Amsterdam, Berlin and Vienna. While in Amsterdam, she went to the Anne Frank Museum, and during our time together, she showed me a virtual visit that was incredibly powerful. I felt I was in the place where they were hiding for two years. Her father (“daddy”), Otto, told her that all children must look after their own upbringing.

“Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.” —Anne Frank, in her diary one year before she was killed

After Anne was killed at the tender age of 15, Otto had her diary made into a book, The Diary of a Young Girl, that has been translated into 77 languages. The influence of her spirit for the two years her family was in hiding astonished her father. He said he didn’t know his daughter’s depth of feeling and spirit until he read and reread her entries.

“Whoever is happy will make others happy too,” she wrote. “He who has courage and faith will never perish in misery!”

One year before Anne was killed, she wrote a compassionate entry: “It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”

Her father survived and spent the rest of his life spreading his young daughter’s positive message of hope.

When my aunt Betty took me around the world in 1959, she introduced me to the Chinese philosopher Lin Yuteng, whose classic book The Importance of Living is a favorite. “Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do,” he wrote.

In the natural course of my life cycle, at 83, I’m humbled and grateful to be alive. I’ve also become extremely risk averse. Because I choose to live, as long as is humanly possible, in the sanctuary of our 18^th century cottage, I have signed up for an alarm system in case I fall or need immediate medical attention. There is nothing to be ashamed of when we gradually grow old. I feel it is a privilege to have lived as long as I have and to be living such a fulfilling life.

I live alone. When Peter grew old and was in inevitable decline, I was here for him. Even on my watch, he fell and was hospitalized several times in his later years. Peter’s wonderful heart doctor, George Bourganos (who is now mine) told him, “You can do anything your heart choses to do, Peter, but don’t FALL!”

Every friend I’ve told about how pleased I am to have this 24-hour protection tells me a horror story. So many grandparents refuse to wear the pendant or watch when they’re in the house. Being in denial about our vulnerability as we grow old is selfish. We’re irrefutably more vulnerable. One granddaughter told me her stubborn grandmother (who had a pendant but didn’t use it) fell and spent her last years in a nursing home miserably depressed.

I feel protected (as though I had four shifts of nurses covering me around the clock, without them being underfoot). Resisting help when it is so clearly useful is a shame. Both my daughters are delighted, and I can take deep, mindful breaths, feeling the comfort of Alexandra and Brooke not worrying about me. I’ve got myself covered!

When I’m in the shower, I can press a “Help” button if I fall. When I’m out and about gallivanting anywhere in the United States, I have a small GPS I can press that will track me down. I’m embracing my longevity. Everything is hunky-dory until it’s not. We don’t want to intentionally be a burden to our family. What a small price to pay to be able to live joyfully at home, gaining self-assurance and giving it to loved ones. Peace of mind is priceless!

Alexandra drove up with her beloved golden retriever Chief at the end of March. We enjoyed fun-filled, relaxed time together, knowing how important it is to be together when we’re all in good health. Her daughter Lily came for a night because she didn’t have classes the next day.

We went to a restaurant in Mystic with amazingly delicious food and live music. My two daughters and two of my granddaughters brought me such happiness. Lily graduates from Fairfield University in May. These family reunions are so precious and are important, unrepeatable celebrations that bring lasting memories. Love made visible is felt and expressed in so many kind, thoughtful ways when we’re all enjoying our familial bonds and history. My cup is overflowing with abundance of warmth and feelings of mutual love. We celebrated Alexandra’s birthday with candles on the desserts as we listened to beautiful music. I thought of Michel de Montaigne’s understanding that “to laugh, love, and deal gently with one’s family and oneself, and not to contradict oneself, that is something rarer, more difficult, and less noticed in the world.”

Reflecting on our family time together, we know we’ll be there for each other throughout our lives. We feel the love in our bones, acutely aware how vitally important it is to express our devotion whenever possible. When we feel this mutual love in our essence, we know how rare it is and worth every effort to sustain.

Happy April! Happy Easter! The cherry blossoms are in bloom in Washington. Nature’s fleeting beauty is ours to worship and cherish. Become renewed when you meditate in awe at the majesty of our natural world.

Great love to you.