in late august.

reading aloud before a rapt audience each day, swinging on swings, meeting papa at the six o'clock train, finishing the west wing, awaiting the marvelous mrs. maisel, sipping rosemary coffee --- iced coffee -- milky coffee -- all the coffee, making spicy thai noodles by the potful, making him laugh through the curtain while i steal a shower, cutting four inches from my hair, bringing the rocky mountains east with cedarwood and pine oils, holding him and dreaming of holding him, planning a thirty first birthday, planning a girls' weekend, planning a wedding anniversary, delighting in thistles gracing the table, delighting in sixty eight degree mornings, delighting in toes, marveling at how he rises (rooster-like, laughing), marveling at how he enthralls crowds at crosswalks and checkout lines and whole coffeehouses, marveling that seven months have passed, bidding farewell to our season of co-sleeping, hunting and gathering trinkets and treasures for a nursery, shimmying up the ladder to our new bedroom in the loft, giving thanks for another month with each other and boy wonder-full, remembering that dreaming and planning are the very same thing.