Oh my. I seem to have distressed a few of you (thank you for your sweet emails.) Things are just fine. Promise. Things have a way of turning out, even when sometimes they don’t (at least not in the ways that we expect or hope.) Tonight I mostly want to tell you this: when I show up here, it is sometimes with cool palms, and a quiet heart; each sentence following logically after the next. But other days I come with flyaway hair and muddy feet; my heart in a hundred directions; my words haphazard. In times like these, it’s about trying to put a finger on the pulse of this moment that matters. I want a record of the in-between-times. The times of limbo, of breathlessness, of waiting, of wanting, of fleeting wonder. These are the moments I want to look back on because these are the moments I forget.
Today the irises revealed sleek purple buds by the front steps, and I know that in mere months the summer that is just now blooming will be gone.
The leaves will turn the color of flame and rust and fall to the ground. Sprout will be talking (he already is saying words—a new one pops up every day now, in that two-syllable repetitive way that toddlers have of talking. Banana becomes “na na”’; water, “wa wa”) and all the things that are uncertain now will no longer be.
But just as surely as this is true, it is also true that new unknowns will crowd in, playing a forever game of musical chairs in my head.
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Today, this: the four of us in the garden, up to the gills with dirt. The season's first sunburn. Lemon ice water. An impromptu trip to the general store for milk & ice cream sandwiches. Also laundry. I somehow can never quite seem to get a handle on that.