Family

I want to need to remember: :: a pod of dolphins hunting for their breakfast in the waters across the cove ...

The smell of simmering soup stock and baking bread filled our home yesterday. It did much to take the edge off. Fighting siblings and long-standing worries seem much more manageable when warm bread is on the counter.

The babysitter is in the kitchen. I think she’s sitting at the table, reading the paper and smoking a cigarette, but the door is closed so I am not sure. I am in the next room, the living room. I am smiling. I lovingly arrange my mother’s pink polyester nightgown on my little rocking chair. It’s her favorite nightgown and so when I am lonely for her I take it out of her dresser and I spend time with it. Its sleeves are slippery and so over and over I have to put them back on the arms of the rocking chair, but I don’t mind. The babysitter comes into the room and tries to ask me questions about the nightgown but I don’t speak to her. I am thinking only of my mother. I scoop the nightgown up in my arms and I’m giving her a hug. I push my face into it and I am cuddling her. I drag it around the room by an arm and I’m holding her hand. And we dance together to Kenny Rogers on the radio.

10:12 AM Tuesday, April 15, 2008 Haircut time