Flora, 5.25.13

The other day, my kids and I stood on our front porch picking lilacs.  

I know, I know - it's All Lilacs All The Time this time of year.  But they're my favorite (we picked our wedding date based on when they'd be in bloom), and since it was Mother's Day, the children wanted to do anything and everything to make me smile.

Mother's Day has never been a thing for me.  When I became a mother, it was important to me that my kids never felt guilted into awkward or forced displays of Hallmark affection.  But this year, they were completely in love with the idea of loving me, and I'd be an idiot to reject that, right?

And so we picked.  We filled vase after vase after vase, some huge and table-ready, others big enough for only one sprig, and spread them throughout the house.

:::

Later, after mid-day errand running, my family returned home with this:

This is Roxy.  

Each year she'll gain a friend on Mother's Day.  

And the space around my lilac bush with grow and grow with kitchy love.

Elements, 5.11.13

Elemental -

the opposite of searching.

Possible -

the opposite of now

of then

of maybe

maybe so,

or not.

The opposite of searching.

Mornings: 4.27.13

When my kids were infants, days and weeks old, I would pray for the light to return.

Evening loomed like a heavy, musty blanket; it seemed preposterous that I was responsible for these tiny little pieces of life through so many hours of darkness.

The unknown lingers everywhere in the darkness, you know.

As the first wisps of light peered timidly into my windows in the morning, I'd breathe deeply, open my eyes, and thank everything that we'd made it through once more.

:::

My sister birthed her very own baby daughter last week.

I've been trying to impart bits of helpful knowledge, have tried to remember the things I'd wished someone had told me.

"The nights can feel long at the beginning.  The morning will come."

My stomach tightened for her.  I remembered that this was her time to wait for the light, not mine.

"She'll make it through, of course she will," I thought.

Of course she will.

SKY: 4.13.13

Sometimes it’s the only thing that helps me know I’m here.

The blue, the radiance of it.

Sometimes I head out into the day, murky and swishing, grabbing at something to root me down.

It’s a constant surprise to get roots from above, to get pushed deep in instead of pulled straight up.

:::

I wasn’t really an outdoors kind of kid.

I watched a lot of bad television; I’d sit inside, lying on the couch, as the bugs buzzed and swirred into the screens.

I had no idea.

And then one time, I walked across Europe for a few months.  This college escapade was the least likely choice for a couch-dweller like me.

But something told me to go, to see, to let my skin feel the blue.

And of course nothing was ever the same again.

Because sometimes things need to change.

:::

The other morning I dragged my laptop through my studio window, set it down on the kids’ red table in the yard. 

Mid-workout I stopped and sniffed the air.

I looked up.

I looked up and breathed deep and realized that the magic isn’t in Europe, isn’t in my early twenties, isn’t anywhere but right here.

Out in the air, deep under the blue.