A night of waking, but a later morning. Banana-pecan pancakes and coffee; enough time to finish my book. Bean asleep for a nap. Herb omelets and fresh orange juice. The cat wants in, out of the rain.
Skies the color of cement. Bright maple leaves like fallen stars under foot. Puddles in the low parts of the sidewalk, Bean in the Bjorn on DH, the three of us walking downtown.
At the farmer's market late, most of the stalls already packed up. Less people than the usual summer crowds. Gourds, squashes, pumpkins, bright root vegetables, their tips gathered up in piles. Organic local burgers from the farmer in the last stall who talked about his cows with an earnestness that was both sensible and loving.
Buildings stood up tall and stark against the wet autumn sky. The mercury hovered around fifty. Bean wore a hat, mittens, baby Uggs: shearling lined. I wore my boots, and felt my heels blister--the first christening of footwear for the season is always like this. In late spring, bands of blisters where my flip flops rub. Now my heels, soft, unused to boots, rubbed raw.
Later at a small harvest fest at the local market. A bright blue tractor. A bee keeper with a thin glass viewing hive. The bees circling round the queen, generating warmth in concentric circles. We picked out wine for diner with friends; apples to go in the wooden bowl on our coffee table at home. Bittersweet chocolate for a cake.
Small drops of rain fell, freckling the sidewalk. Clinging to grass. Making leaves stick wet and bright to our soles. Up high on a wire a lonely pair of shoesâ. I've always wondered about how shoes end up dangling there. I imagine boys, joshing each other, getting rid of an old pair of track shoes at the end of the season; or hoodlums pushing someone around, tossing up his shoes.
Hanging from their laces they felt like the small piece of my heart, wearing my father's blue flannel shirt this morning, as I wrote. It's been three years since he died, and more. And now my baby is taking steps around the coffee table, inching his way like he's up somewhere high, along the edge of a cliff.