Where I kiss her

While she sleeps

twenty four hours

It started with snow and ended with strawberry blossoms.

one nation

So grateful to live in a country where my daughter will be able to have her voice heard, her body respected, her heart's love recognized, and her hard work rewarded.

birthday

it was a lovely day

grateful

Today I am grateful for simple things. A cup of coffee. The light of a lamp. The quiet hum of the refrigerator cooling our food. The creaks and crackles as the pipes warm in the heaters. So many have lost so much and today I am grateful for what I have.

she brings me treasure

just a minute

After daddy took the little one to the store for some last minute groceries I managed to empty the dishwasher, start a load of laundry, find my knitting and sit down on the front porch...exactly one minute before the sun slipped behind the trees. Two more minutes and they were home. Even so, it was a pause and a rest. A moment to breathe and be still and be here.

sticky

The cicadas are deafening in their buzz this morning. The air is slow and thick. Summer has been here forever and there are no other seasons this year. The snow won't pile where I'm sitting, skirt hiked above my knees and my fingers sticky with plum. The leaves won't fall in drifts and showers covering the garden and the grass. The air won't crisp and cool and smell of apples. It has all drooped and oozed until it puddled in this moment of distilled August.

a slow simmer

Our anniversary was yesterday and I have been thinking a lot about us lately. We never set out to define ourselves as a couple - you know the adventure couples, or the cooking couples, or the thinking couples - and yet here we are with what seems to be a clear and consistent pattern to our relationship. We are a couple that journeys together.

Both of our anniversary cards to each other included the concept of our life as a journey and the other as the ideal companion on the way. And it is. And we are.

In the last eight years together we have traveled thousands of miles together, cooked great meals together, thought big thoughts together. We have felt joy, and panic, and loss, and exhaustion, and always more joy. We find ourselves on the verge of yet more journey - not yet at the place where we will see how it feels to settle as a couple - and together we are ready.

The years of traveling the earth together have given us the opportunity to merge and release who we are to each other that makes life full and sweet and tender no matter the obstacles and the unknowns.

"In the end, all the distinct...characteristics meld and emerge as something truly greater than the sum of their parts." Molly Stevens, All About Braising, The Art of Uncomplicated Cooking

pages and pages

I am making lists. Pages and pages of lists. Loves. Fears. The life I see when I close my eyes and breathe in the rosemary. There are a few things that will not change - I will be a wife to my husband, a mother to my child, a daughter, a sister. Everything else though? Everything else could go.

shallow roots

We've been talking, Mister and I, about changing it all. Purging.  Choosing.  Shrinking.  Simplifying. How much, after all, do we really need to live? How much space? How much time? How much money? The answers are surprising us both.

home

We just came home. After a week on the other side of the country, in that town that used to be home...I find myself untethered and wondering just where it is that we belong.

This house isn't it. It doesn't fit right, doesn't feel right. Doesn't smell right. The feeling of what home will be has been so ungraspable for so long. But just a moment, glimpsed here out my kitchen window, of little one and her daddy doing the rounds, watering our neglected plants and rediscovering the corners of our space brought it a little closer into focus. They are my home. Right here where our feet are planted.

But here is the thing about us - we are moveable, adaptable people. I think our job is to make ourselves home so that the right place, wherever we find it, will recognize us when we get there.

nap time

today it is sweet coffee and soft yarn.

sun showers

I am sitting under the umbrella of one of the maples in our yard watching the sudden summer shower put curls in my daughter's hair. She just told me "shhh, listen mommy" and cocked her head to the sky. She is running to the strawberry plants and back with a new green bud in her hand every time. We will harvest no red fruit this year, but the abundance of her happiness sustains me. I'm listening my girl. Well, learning to anyway.