a walk in time
February 25, 2017 § 5 Comments
This morning I walked our dog, her dark fur and my bulky attire cutting a strong contrast against the pristine snow in the blinding sunshine. The wind was mischievously inconsistent, the sun undermining the temperature of the air, and so I prematurely cast aside my scarf.
It was the kind of morning I intentionally plan for, the simplest excursion made predictably unbearable by the folly of my last-minute recklessness. I was simultaneously curled against the sun and braced against the wind, my eyes stung by the brilliance of light against snow and my neck too bare against tendrils of wind that wound deep inside my collar.
Lost to discomfort I almost missed the happy delight of neighborhood children playing quietly, their sounds muffled by my cap pulled low against my ears. They looked like crayons overturned haphazardly against the snow; mix-matched snowsuits and cheerful mittens a riot of color against the quiet. Without their sounds they might have been a memory of my children’s childhood displaced against the indiscernible backdrop of a timeless winter day.
The vastness of uninterrupted snow and the solitude of my footsteps against old memories I might have been invisible, the cumbersome bulk of my shape frivolously insignificant; a trick of light against snow.
winter
December 13, 2016 § 7 Comments
The days dawn cold and I draw further beneath blankets and rest, rituals of comfort to spite the season; sustenance to fortify my body and layers to ward off the cold.
I curl lazily into the routine of coffee, the patience of tea; my hands lingering around the inconsequential weight of unfinished dregs. Each layer of clothing is a ceremony of thoughtful details for the day’s demands, a belabored exaggeration of caution in protest of discomfort.
Activities have become more mindful, less spontaneous. Errands are graded more genuinely by need as I relax into the pages of forgotten book titles and the corners of unfinished tasks. The joyful chaos of holiday trappings are a clever distraction of light, a willful irrelevance for the hour in a stubborn disregard for time.
It is only when the stars interrupt lost minutes of daydreams that I rediscover Summer’s recklessness and Autumn’s whimsy; tumbling into tenderness and reverence for Winter’s stark elegance.
what’s in a name
September 23, 2016 § 1 Comment
Mother is my first name, my favorite word.
As a child I wished for another name for self. Marie was my grandmother’s middle name. My middle name, my mother’s. Both wore like ill-fitting hand-me-downs.
I did not yet know that we name children in languages of sentiment and hope. Motherhood has made me mindful of the tenderness with which we gift one another belonging and individuality.
I have also come to understand we are forever becoming the person remembered by a name too small to eclipse a single lifetime.
One word begins a story that strings exceptionally ordinary moments into an extraordinary lifetime.
love letters
September 14, 2016 § 2 Comments
It should have been a day of learning co-workers names and memorizing workday routines, but I faltered at each corner. Between every tidy shelf of books was a love story I couldn’t dismiss. Picture books from bedtimes past and chapter books that bookended forgotten passions.
Hand to heart I held the books of my children’s childhood just long enough to remember the weight of clumsy hands tangled in my hair as they distracted themselves from the temptation of thin paper pages. Eyes that watched my mouth conjure shades of sound from black shapes on white pages.
As the books lengthened into the thick binding of lost afternoons, I could see the outline of my children bent over the work of reading or curled beside me as I tumbled freely into my own escape. Cold months under warm blankets and summer afternoons inside the shade.
Old friends and new loves, quietly waiting for the next chapter.
restless
May 1, 2016 § 2 Comments
As the rain relentlessly pelts the already soggy ground, I can feel discomfort chafe at my pleasure.
The question of what we could do pulling the joy from beneath the perfection of empty hours. Harmony cloaked in a blanket that scratches at the tenderness of stillness.
There is no thread to pull, no itch to scratch, only a pesky question to challenge the simple elegance of nothing.
I start over, determinedly, with gratitude until I forget the shape of my unrest.
It is a predictable predicament, this hastily exaggerated need; a pattern of fault that speaks light to the shadows of my best intentions.
A momentary indulgence or lingering want that distracts me from the uncomplicated ease of contentment.
another me
April 26, 2016 § 6 Comments
I remember the sky seemed to shed her last rays of light just as you lumbered into focus; your silhouette on fire, you plucked me from the shadows of the evening’s heat with curious amusement.
It was an hour of adolescence when time seemed a fabrication of authority and rules were something you leaned against for weight.
We were ghosts of something wanton chasing after stolen moments of spent youth. There was no afterthought in our distraction, only the urgency of fleeting freedom.
You chose me and I marveled at my good fortune. Moving recklessly against whim I let your contentment fill the vacancy of my certainty as I quickly disappeared into an extension of your pleasure.
There was no one to hear the quiet panic in my acquiescence, the silent loss of time squandered in determined hopefulness. I was less myself after you left, hollowed out and angry; unraveled and awake.
And so we became strangers long after we first met, speaking in a muddled language of shared memories and complicit ignorance.
A snapshot of self forgotten except in the light of summer’s first arrogance when I miss the girl who held her breath for magic. The girl I knew before you.
jagged edges
March 11, 2016 § 1 Comment
Maybe love is little more than a pattern of broken lines; jagged edges that belong. The tender places like valleys that do not touch and the rough terrain of old scars that mark our vulnerabilities.
Perhaps the great loves are tiny accidents of fate, chance and recognition claiming self in another; mysteries that cannot be manipulated by efficiencies or orchestrated by arrangement. A beautiful inconvenience and a desperate necessity; one too often left to stories.
He saw in her the bluster of defensiveness and she understood the language of his fears, posturing and preening they pretended a disinterest that was insincere.
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