We enjoyed lasagna, green salad, and sage and parsley garlic bread elbow to elbow around the Saarinen. In a departure from my usual French drama, we drank Famiglie Montepulciano d’Abruzzo 2020, with a nose of sweet leather half-buried in the garden, mouthfeel like butter, and a grape jelly finish. After dinner we walked to the retaining pond, collecting Exceptional Sticks from the woods along the way.

A hike back up the hill and then we were home, singing around a homemade, lopsided, Dr. Seuss-looking lemon and wild blueberry cake with fluffy lemon buttercream frosting. After they’d gone the house fell quiet and felt empty again.

One short vanilla breve and one short hot cocoa to go before hitting the grocery store. No boys. Big smiles.

A visit to Grandpa’s house means dog spit, hair and barking, Coors Light, cheese crackers, giant weeds, root beer, chips and salsa, theological debate, playing in the sandbox, grilled sausage and peppers, a walk to the playground, indecent desserts and a sleepy ride home.

When I was twelve years old, she wrote this letter to me, just before heading into the surgery that would define the rest of her life. She was not sure she would survive the operating table, and wanted to make certain that I knew just how much she loved me. I keep this note in my underwear drawer. I take it out and read it on days when I need her.

Laura Lucia Roberto Anderson

born March 20, 1918

died March 15, 2010

*
*Her nickname was Ruby. She and my grandfather posed for this picture after Mass one sunny Palm Sunday on Long Island. Maybe they stopped by the bakery on their way home that day. I imagine my mother and her two brothers riding in the back seat of the car, holding their buttered rolls and watching the buildings blur through the windows.

While the preacher spoke of a world beyond the veil, one half of a mated pair caught his neck in a loop of nylon cord that he or his mate had worked into their nest. He parted the louvers covering the exhaust vent and launched himself through to the outside.

I closed the car door, then stood on the sidewalk, staring up at the side of the house. His bloodied head looked as though it was glued to the metal slats, and was twisted at an odd angle to his body dangling below. His mate clung to his bottom half, flapping her wings as if trying to fly for two, swinging them both back and forth. She flitted to an overhanging branch and watched as we freed his body from the vent and the plastic. I buried him in the garden bed along the back fence.

I told her just after she came through the front door. She asked if it was the mostly brown one or the one with a lot of black on his face, and I said it was the latter.

“That was Solomon,” she said, her voice breaking. She turned away to mourn privately. I stepped to the back window and watched thick grey clouds pass high above the freshly turned garden soil.

I text her a photo: pictures of her life hang from clothespins on my kitchen wall.

“It cracks me up that you took pics of all of the messy places,” she texts.

“Those are all of the beautiful places,” I text back.

And it’s true. Every corner of her home held beauty. All things burst green with the late northern spring in the Oran Valley. We stayed at her place even though she was away, but her family memb[…]

Bruce gathered eggs from the hens’ favorite corner of the barn (why they don’t lay in their coop, no one understands, but chickens are complicated people) and served them up for our Saturday m[…]

And then there were those chickens. I couldn’t stop myself–I took about 900 pictures of chickens that weekend. Why? I have no idea, but who wouldn’t take pictures of giant pet birds that w[…]

When we were away from the house doing family things, attending the events for which we’d made the trip north in the first place, we talked about what Tilly, Monty, Jag and the chickens might be[…]

Weeks later, I stand in the kitchen while the tulsi steeps. I reach out and touch each picture and remember sweet birdsong, the squeak of trampoline springs, the crack of a bonfire, the quiet of a[…]

• I could barely believe the beauty of Manhattan Beach. Lemon trees and succulents in nearly every front yard, warm and fragrant breezes, my feet in soft sand after a painfully long winter.

• I’d never before attended a wedding held outside in the rain, but now I can heartily recommend it: huge smiles peeking out from under dripping raincoat hoods and umbrellas, steam rising from the pavement, the sound of water all around.

• I made a cake, sewed a colorful bunting and watched a newly minted teenager dive into blue water over a long weekend.

• Bonum est praestolari cum silentio salutare Dei.

As I write this, a loved one of mine is snuggled up in his bed, recovering from his second surgery in three months. Nothing life-threatening, but surgery nonetheless. His recovery will include several days spent in bed, followed by several weeks of crutches and physical therapy. I’m by no means an expert on natural healing (really I have so much to learn) but I believe in the power of preventative care, am learning more and more about nutrition as medicine, and am wide open to ancient and naturopathic healing wisdom. I thought it might be worth sharing about how I prepare our home for convalescence, and the natural remedies I use to encourage rest and healing.

A calm and serene environment

Before the period of convalescence begins, I make sure to thoroughly clean the bedroom where my loved one will recover. I remove clutter, wash, fold and put away laundry, and clean off all surfaces with a non-toxic natural cleaner. I also wash the bed linens and dry them on the line outside, to bring fresh air and a bit of nature inside. Once my patient comes home from the hospital, I tuck him or her into a bed that smells of sunshine. I also vaporize a mixture of orange, patchouli and ylang ylang essential oils to create a peaceful vibe in the room.

A plan for things to do

Hanging out in bed can be a little tedious, once the novelty wears off. I always check out a stack of new-to-us books from the library for my patient to read. Once a trip to the television becomes possible, we choose a movie series and spend the next few days and/or evenings watching a movie while snacking on freshly-popped organic popcorn. Family favorites include the Back to the Future trilogy and the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies.

Nourishing food for healing

Again–I have so far to go in this department, but do have certain items that I keep on hand when someone has a need of healing. We drink several cups of organic tulsi tea each day, incorporate organic turmeric into our diet via golden milk or vegetable curries, and make smoothies with whey protein and green superfood powders (thanks to my stepdaughter for the recommendation) to get some semblance of greens into even the most reluctant of bodies. We supplement with multivitamins and vitamin C drink mixtures as needed. It’s good for me to remember that even the tiniest of baby steps in this area moves my family forward towards better health.

A way to get clean

Eventually after a period of extended convalescence we all reach a point where we long for a nice, hot shower. I’ve found all kinds of neat products at Walgreens that keep incisions of all shapes, sizes and locations dry. But waterproof dressings aside, you don’t have to purchase a bunch of medical equipment just to assist your patient with bathing. For me, helping an injured loved one into the shower is a precarious ballet that includes strategically placed towels, a waterproof limb cover from Walgreens and a small plastic step stool from IKEA sitting under the water stream, ready to be repurposed as a shower seat. It feels wonderful to put on clean clothes and towel off sweet-smelling hair for the first time after surgery.

A good night’s sleep

We all know sleep is necessary for healing. Melatonin, no screens for the 1.5 hours before lights out time, and adequate pain control all contribute to a good night’s sleep. I don’t hesitate to give the pain medication prescribed by the doctor, as pain really does interfere with rest. Once pain is under control, we move to over the counter pain relief, but we are in no rush to stop taking stronger medicine because of fear.

I can say with certainty that these measures are a great comfort to a person weakened by pain and dependence on others. I prepared in this way for my own surgery a few years ago, and was much more comfortable during my recovery than if I’d been surrounded by mess, in pain, and bored to tears.

We take the Metro to the National Mall to watch the Arsenal of Democracy World War II Victory Capitol Flyover. We walk to the western slope of the Washington Monument grounds and stake our claim. A black dog sits nearby and pants in the bright sun. We eat our simple picnic lunch on a blue plaid blanket in a dense forest of legs, lawn chairs and tripods. My girl passes the strawberries around, one eye on the sky.

The first warbirds appear just to the right of the Lincoln. He raises his binoculars to his eyes. I hear the clicks of a thousand camera shutters. Veterans and distinguished guests are gathered for a service at the World War II Memorial below. The public address system shouts sentiment, fills in the space between flyovers. I feel the engines in my chest, and close my eyes to imagine war, death, and life, the sound of victory rattling my ribcage.

When the last formation passes, the speaker asks the crowd to stand for Taps. All of the chatting and clicking stops, and we are hushed and reverent as we listen. As the last note falls away, I sweep one finger behind my sunglasses to wipe my eyes.

On our way back to the Metro station, we wander through the farmer’s market and make new friends. We cool off underground as we wait on the platform for our westbound ride home. As the train heads towards Rosslyn I say we’re under the river now, so they can imagine the car full of fish and current.

Three things that remind me of you:

the Hillstreet Blues theme song

plum eyeshadow

seashells

You were the first, the first one to push through the membrane between our worlds. I touched the soft stretch marks on your belly after you’d gone, while you were still warm. Hours later in the shower, I stood helpless under the water as your final minutes repeated over and over again in front of my unseeing eyes.

Now each loved one that crosses to the other side thins the barrier between us by degrees, and I feel myself half there with you these days.

I registered to become a bone marrow donor last month, the gift of time to another daughter, maybe. Happy Birthday, Mom.

I bought a fluorescent light fixture with two full-spectrum grow bulbs and installed it in our basement pantry. I made pots out of newspaper and we planted seeds. I water them twice a day and imagine them tall and strong in the sunshine.

My gift wrapping this year started with a walk in the woods to gather bits and ended with brown paper packages tied up with string. All of our gifts were handmade, out of necessity and also just because. I’m feeling super-inspired by Mary Jo Hoffman’s STILL project lately, so much so that I just ordered a plate for my tripod, and have plans to finally learn how to use my bounce flash once and for all.

Oh, and that last gift is a bottle of my daughter’s favorite barbecue sauce that the local stores have inexplicably stopped carrying. Because that is how I roll.

We spent about two weeks preparing for a Market Day at our homeschool co-op. During those two weeks our home buzzed with quiet industry and focus. The experience yielded valuable lessons in ordering, inventory, budgeting, pricing and perseverance. The actual event was a success: her hand-painted wooden families and gnomes were a hit, and his sweets sold quickly as soon as lunch was over. Now she is exploring the possibilities of opening an Etsy shop, and he talks of new recipes to try.

During the Market Day festivities, a fellow homeschooling mama asked me how we manage to fit creative endeavors into our school days. I explained that, when given this sort of opportunity to practice and refine real-world skills, we basically abandon most of our formal lessons and throw ourselves wholeheartedly into the project at hand. In other words, teaching my kids how to earn a living sometimes trumps first conjugation pluperfect tense. I suppose that wraps up my homeschooling philosophy in a nutshell.

I watch my heart trampoline hard on the wake, tethered to me with the thinnest rope.

He swings wide, an inked stylus recording a round swell of current, then jerks left and right, scratching thick and black the sharp spikes of my fear. A final jolt, and he slips under the dark water.

Later, we thump hard and fast back to the marina.
His brown skin glows a life vest orange,
his blue eyes closed against fat rain drops.
He scratches his jellyfish stings.

When it’s twelve degrees outside on New Year’s Day, it’s important to stay near the fire, have a guitar dance party, and drink eat leftovers for dinner.

Just spent four days in Syracuse to attend a loved one’s memorial service. I am pretty weary. We made little excursions to favorite places, and I saw some of my most favorite people, but really, I am just sad and tired.

My older sister invites me to come stay at a house on the beach to celebrate her 50th birthday. I rent a Ford Escape that has Bluetooth and satellite radio and cruise control, pack up my two kids, a suitcase and a cooler, kiss my husband goodbye and head for North Carolina.

We stop too many times for too many potty breaks, get too deep into the country to find a Starbucks, I drive too fast and get a speeding ticket five miles from the house, but eventually we pull into the driveway as the sun is setting behind Salter Path Road.

She meets us at the door and we hug tight and long. She has our mother’s eyes, different color but same shape.

We file through the doorway, take in the view, drop bags on our beds and have dinner with our brother and my sister’s friends from work that have come to celebrate, too. That night we fall asleep to the ocean sounds coming through my sister’s open window across the hall.

The next morning we rise at dawn and look for shells, pick through deposits of brown sea lettuce, lengths of rope, wilted plastic bags. Little white piles of dried and empty sand flea skeletons are everywhere, as if swept into neat heaps by the sandpipers. Our collected treasure swings at our sides in green buckets.

We return to the house, hose sand off of our toes and heels and make coffee, make small talk, make chicken salad and salsa. We spend the day moving between inside and outside. We play cornhole and Frisbee and Quirkle, listen to Jimmy Buffet and Steely Dan, drink pitchers of sangria and chilled Coronas, swim in the pool and the ocean.

Later we make dinner, then her friends head out. The rest of us settle into an evening of cards and chatting. During a game of Greek Poker we disagree about something unimportant and my sister starts to mother me, gently correcting me. I stare down into my iPhone and read a random email over and over again, angry. I look up and it’s my mother’s eyes that are looking back at me from across the table, and when my sister’s friends suddenly pile into the kitchen, back from one bar and ready to bring her out to the next, I make my apologies and follow the kids upstairs to get ready for bed. Asleep, I don’t hear her slip into her room when she gets back from her night out.

I am scrambling eggs when she comes into the kitchen the next morning. She pours herself a cup of coffee and then begins to move around the room, tidying up while I cook, and we talk about nothing, really. I want to know if she saw my face flush angry last night but I don’t ask. I step out of the kitchen onto the deck, into a chill morning wind, and look out at the beach.

The sky is grey, the sunrise blocked by clouds. A large pod of brown pelicans is feeding in the shallows right in front of the house, all wings and distended pouches and flying spray. A lone adult glides in from the south and approaches the flock, sailing over the dark waves, and as she reaches the group she hurls herself towards the sea with great purpose, plunge-diving they call it, a precision strike meant to catch the living thing shimmering like silver just under the skin of the water. I hold my breath until she emerges from the deep.

We took the train into the city on a cold Friday morning. Union Station was gothic, beautiful and quiet in the early hours of the day. I sipped hot coffee and the children shared a cinnamon sugar pretzel in the white tiled food court. We walked across the street and into the National Postal Museum inside the Old City Post Office.

We spent the next two hours moving back and forth through two hundred years of history. I lost myself in lives lived and lost, my mind filled with their stories. The international stamp collection is stored in a wide wall of skinny vertical display cases, and we thrilled to the variety of sizes, shapes and colors. In a gift shop bin my son found a fat and heavy plastic bag labeled “OVER 500 STAMPS FROM ALL COUNTRIES INSIDE!!” His eyes were bright with excitement so I had no choice but spend the $7US. He held the bag tightly in both hands during the entire train ride home.

He sat down at their work table, made a hole in the bag and turned it upside down.. We watched the stamps spill out of that hole, big stamps, small stamps, all colors and countries and soon the pile covered much of the table. Over the next two hours we sorted stamps together, found countries on our world map, talked about how countries sometimes just dissolve and form new countries, and made many little piles all over the table. We each picked our favorite stamps from the whole lot–how lovely is the butterfly and those mushrooms?

The next day while he was at a friend’s house I sewed a stamp pile organizer of sorts, a temporary place to keep his piles sorted and visible until we devise a more permanent way to display his new (instant) collection. While the stamp holder isn’t as colorful as the last organizer I made, the green makes a lovely billiard-table-ish background for his treasures.

My sous-chef drizzled the maple sugar on the scones with more skill and style than I’ve ever brought to bear. My return to work weighed heavily on my heart and mind all day.

Spent the morning with my loves at a cozy coffee shop in Arlington. I wrote in my journal about 2013, about my hopes for renewal and rebirth. My girl began writing in her tiny purple Moleskine, too. Tonight we will light candles, share our writings and craft a family vision for this year to come. Then we will pop popcorn and play a game, and then we will blow out the candles and nestle down into our covers. And when we wake, it will be a new year.

The blue-grey light returned on Boxing Day, along with snow, sleet, rain, cold. I felt like I was back in central New York. I burned Nag Champa and played 80’s music in our warm kitchen. John fried cold slabs of leftover grits in the cast iron skillet, and I ate two of them with butter and my most favorite-est thing ever, Sriracha.

Pre-dawn whispers (I stuffed my head under a pillow and went back to sleep).

Presents opened before the eight o’clock hour.

Hot coffee from the Chemex.

Sweet, soft challah French toast eaten continental style by a bad piggie.

Organic, fresh-pressed juice to cut through the sweet.

Beautiful music streaming through the house.

Gentle, quiet focus on a new art.

For the first time, my girl helped braid the challah, her small fingers gently moving the ropes and curling in ends. We used the knife as a chisel and popped chunks of Callebaut in our mouths while we worked.

The challah baked up quick. We left the hot loaf to cool on a wire rack and drove to church, where I sat on the edge of my seat as our pastor hit all the high notes in O Holy Night. Once home I sat in my bent wood chair under my mother’s cable-knit afghan and stared at the lights on the tree.

Merry Christmas. xxoo

discovered while tidying the bookshelves.

We managed to slip out of town to the beach house and have enjoyed a few warm and sunny days, but now a cold front is rolling on in. At the ready are Playmobil sets, plastic Civil War soldiers, vintage Hardy Boys hardcovers, two decks of playing cards, and a variety of other wet weather beach house staples. I have good chocolate and a good book on hand, and am snuggled underneath a fleece blanket, so I say let the weather come.

Alastair and Jacqui were once “the church sound guy and his worship singer wife” to me, little more than strangers. In fact the first real conversation I had with Alastair went something like […]

Alastair, standing in front of me, a microphone stand between us: “Sing louder.”
Me: “I can’t.”
Alastair: *sigh*

Slowly we became good friends, and now ten years later, Alastair and Jacqui are as close to my heart as family. They invited us over for dinner this past Saturday evening. The meal Alastair cooked[…]

I’m hoping to begin this book with the little ones as soon as we’ve settled into our new dinner–>cleanup–>schoolwork–>bedtime routine.

She gets an unreal amount of attention when she rolls around in public wearing these skate/shoe thingies. Every comment she overhears from a little one (Mama, HOW is that girl skating on her SHOES??) makes her smile wide. The floors at IKEA are the bestest of all.

I hear giggles mixed with serious discussion drifting up the stairs to my sick bed. I haul myself to standing, hobble to my camera, and tiptoe down the open stairs to see exactly how this day of their summer vacation is starting.

It was slippery outside this morning, too slippery to run. I made maple oatmeal scones instead. We sipped coffee and read about dinosaurs, then I retreated to the home office to begin my day.

A sign hangs at the beginning of the long driveway, but I only catch the first word, Woods, white painted letters on dark pine. We pass fenced pastures dotted with small barns and stands of tall trees, only tufts of orange and brown leaves left at their very tops, their bodies spare streaks below. The horses lift their heads as we pass. We park under an old maple and haul folding chairs, blankets, and backpacks holding flashlights and sweatshirts past the farm house and into the back yard where the gathering has started.

This is Angelina’s farm. She is a former lawyer turned farm-owner. Her long, black hair hangs down her back, almost brushing her thick leather belt. Many of her family are here, and friends, and friends of friends like we are, standing around the food tables or sitting in small groups. Children run through and between the barns, jump into the leaf piles and then pull poking leaf bones from their hair and pockets. The sun hangs low. Thick rays skim the tops of the dry branches piled high in the fire pit. The air smells of horse and hay, salad dressing and vegetable stew, grass and sun-warmed wood.

We eat and laugh. The men pick up guitars and try out a tune or two. The grey mare gives rides to the little ones, circling in the pea gravel until the passing three wheeler spooks her to a standstill. The sky deepens and the barn darkens as the children take turns swinging blindly at a pinata hanging from a cross beam. One final crack of the broom handle and candy pours from the fatal wound onto the cement floor.

The moon is round and orange. The sweet mares whinny for attention and carrots from their fences. We sit near the fire and watch the bats make laps around the horse barn, passing in front of the floodlight with each go-around. We circle little limbs and pull blanket corners down and around body edges. A flashlight hunt for a lost belonging takes place in the giant leaf pile; we hear a shout of victory and know that what was once lost is now found. Sparks fly upward.

When we are here there is no hurrying and no herding and no lunch-packing, no prying small hands off of my body, no pushes toward the school door, no blue eyes full of longing to be home. We walk along the bay bottom at low tide and dig, and we poke at slimy things with long sticks. We pick up the hermit crabs, and we talk about how we love our visits to the beach, and we don’t talk about the times in between. We are different people when we are here.

Four cousins who had never met became fast friends. The brothers gave a free concert to the frogs in the pond, and the frogs gave a free concert back to the brothers. And I floated barefoot throug[…]

Last week we sat together on a single chair at Starbucks, waiting for our Frappucino. I piled her long limbs into my lap and circled her with my arms, holding in her angles and big feet. I rubbed my nose into her hair, and she closed her eyes. “You two are so in love,” said a woman to us in passing. “That’s so rare to see.”

She lingered in the kitchen with me all of this morning while I made scones and coffee. She slipped out for a few minutes, then returned and handed me this card. I whispered my thanks into her sweet, soft neck.

I am very glad that I am not a mama pig. Wait a minute. My young roll around in the mud, too. Maybe I am a mama pig. If so, I got gypped in the boob department.

I made a world for them. When I couldn’t find the perfect bunny house for sale, I glued wood and moss and stone, late into the night. I crafted grass, and a pond, and a path between the two bunn[…]

I love you.

I believe in you.

I am so happy to be your mommy.

One short vanilla breve and one short hot cocoa to go before hitting the grocery store. No boys. Big smiles.

I forgot to arrange a sitter, so I sent him without me. Part of me wanted to go, but I was afraid I’d have nothing to say to them. I didn’t realize he was going to come home so late and so hungry.

When it’s twelve degrees outside on New Year’s Day, it’s important to stay near the fire, have a guitar dance party, and drink eat leftovers for dinner.

Warm cookies and gloomy skies are the October norm in central New York. He was home all week with the flu. We sat next to each other on the couch, our respective laptops at hand. She wished for fl[…]

Post script: Our chalkboard wall was [featured on the lovely Ohdeedoh today](http://[…]

As I watched this day end I somehow knew that I was really watching the end of a season. When we left the next morning, the air had turned much colder. The leaves that lined the turnpike with fire on our way down turned brown and curled in the wake of our speeding northbound minivan.

I am not the only one who waits at the window for my little friends’ return.

It was hard work. I had to lift heavy pine branches over my head to finish the lean-to, and while I held still to staple the sides of the tee pees, the mosquitoes nearly ate my face off. In fact, one bit me on the left side of my lower lip, and I have been doing dead-on Silvester Stallone impressions all afternoon. Adriaaaaaaan!

I wanted to tell them no, because I am old and tired and over-caffeinated. But this was the first weekend after the first week of a new school year, the end of the first week of our new days spent more apart than together. So I said yes instead. Yes, I will play with you. Yes, I like what you do. Yes, I love you.

“Before beginning a hunt, it is wise to ask someone what you are looking for before you begin looking for it.” – Winnie the Pooh

Things here are still brown and gray, so we hearty Northern types have to hunt for Colour in March. We found a marble, played Pooh Sticks, collected rocks, and endured A Perilous Crossing. I think five is my favorite age.

A little one acting not quite right. A pizza lunch at the amphitheater, sheltered from the drizzle. A visit to the library. A confession: a sore throat since morning. A quick ride home. A fever. A[…]

One day, when I was about five years old, my mama found this piano on the side of the road. She recruited friends to haul it back to our falling-down farmhouse, and then just like that, we had a piano. She played it, I played it a little, and when he visited, my crazy Swedish grandfather played it a lot.

We were very poor when she found that piano. My father still slept on our downstairs couch because he had nowhere to go after the divorce. We scrounged clothing for free from the Rescue Mission. I had sores in the corners of my mouth from malnutrition. You know, that kind of poor.

My nutty mom, my sardonic dad with the Brooklyn accent, my grandparents, friends from church, they would all gather in our kitchen with their guitars and pipes and jokes, and they would talk and smoke and play games of penny poker and laugh and laugh. I would lie on my back under the glass table, between pairs of feet, and watch the cards and coins move across the surface above. Later on my grandfather would crank out tunes on the red piano, and we would dance and sing.

He will be eighty years old this October but he still mans the grill on Sundays.

She walked out of the gray woods holding this pot. She found wild snow drops under a shaggy mat of brown. She freed them from leaf bones and dried tangles, then plopped them, dirt and all, into discarded plastic. Now the pot sits on our front steps and makes Mama happy.

He tried the yarn’s length around my neck after each trim, over and over again. I put Fray Check on the end of the yarn to keep it from unraveling and told him I wasn’t peeking. His little man[…]

“So, Joss, what do you think about coffee,” I ask her.

“I think I’m going to like coffee when I get older, and I’ll probably drink it,” she says, not looking up from her book.

Good answer.

“So, Noah,” I say, turning to my left to look at my five year-old, “do you have any thoughts about coffee?”

Pause.

“Well,” he says with much gravitas, “I did try a Red Bull once.”

I nod my head slowly and furrow my brow a little, matching his tone. Then I take another sip of coffee and watch the morning traffic pass by the front window, and we all think about coffee.

We’ve been staying inside during this frigid week. Warming by the fire, playing with Legos, watching shows, deep conversations, preparing meals, drilling holes…feeling quiet and buried. Snuggling in.

We had a lovely Saturday night date during a big snowstorm: sandwiches at The Blue Tusk, followed by a $5 movie at The Palace Theater. I wish I had known that The Palace doesn’t actually heat the theater in winter. I watched most of the movie sitting sideways in my seat, my stockinged feet in John’s hands and the rest of me buried deep inside my down jacket.

The Christmas cookie project took us from daylight to darkness. But we could feel those extra few post-solstice moments of light.

I spent our snowy winter solstice indoors, watching the snow fall out of the corner of my eye as I crafted last-minute gifts. All under the watchful eye of one feverish director, that is.

And yet there is a gift: we are reminded that we are alive. We have today. We remember that we are here on Earth for a reason. At this moment my reason is to set out bagels for those who mourn, to hold people I love close to me, to put out the butter bells. But the next moment it may be to share the reason for the hope that I have. And in so doing my faith ignites and burns, my love for He who is in me is renewed, and I am once more brought to my knees, so grateful for a God who came to Earth as a baby to deliver us. Through death, we sometimes find life, again.

I want to need to remember:

:: a pod of dolphins hunting for their breakfast in the waters across the cove

:: the smell of laundry that has dried in the salty bay air

:: laughing and carrying on with old friends over wine and clams casino

:: a funky haircut that heralds a new season in my life

:: rounded triangles of moonlight reflected off the backs of thousands of waves and minnows

:: linguine con le vongole made by my former chef of a husband using clams dug from the bay with our own big and little hands. so. very. yummy.

:: reading sonnets under blankets after the weather turned much colder