It's suddenly warm here. Days perfect for drinking fizzy water and limes. Days for getting first sunburns, working in the garden. A week of vacation: to catch up on writing and sleep and time with my boys.
Bean and I spend every second outdoors in the afternoons, ambling through our meadows, taking stock of everything that is new and green and budding. He found these old baskets from last autumn's crysanthemums on the brush pile we're preparing to burn. Natraully, they offered endless entertainment.
Made the first batch of sun tea this week. The temperature has hit 80, and it's almost soporific. Just two weeks ago I was wearing down and socks, now I'm barefoot, my toes badly in need of a pedicure.
Writing, upstairs, alone in the house, I heard a thud. Unmistakable, reminding me of a childhood in the Rocky Mountains in a big-windowed cabin and my dad, holding stunned birds in his quiet palms. They always flew away, and compelled, I went downstairs and out the screen door looking. It was there, below the frong windows, wings spread wide, eyes closed. But I scooped it up gently, and held it. (My dad always said holding the birds helped them with the shock.) And eventually, he started to blink, and move about, then perched for a while on my thumb before flying off. A small blessing.
Wildflowers suddenly everywhere, and insects. I'm so damn grateful to be through with winter.
We hung Bean's first tree swing yesterday. So much nostalgia from childhood: my feet scraping the blue bowl of sky.
I found two today, the first of the year. I think of them as my writing talismans. Last year they brough so much: my writing group, Pam, a piece to be published this summer in the Sun. I've pressed them in my new Molskine.
He's just so beautiful. Yesterday in the garden he was stomping about. "I'm going to get the moon," he said, and then wandered off, gesturing that he'd gotten it and was holding it and bringing it back. "I brought you the moon, Mommy," he said, beaming.