with the quiet.

our earliest breaths of this new year were spent in south carolina living slowly, quietly. we delighted in heirlooms from a first christmas: the stocking pippi knit for francis, the rocking horse chief built with birch wood and his own hands. we tried coffeeshops strewn across greenville like rose petals. we nibbled rosemary shortbread and dropped in on friends. we drove north along the blue ridge one afternoon and had lunch and coffee, shopped for shoes and admired old houses. we rested and and read and went for drives and passed tins of buckeyes. i got very sick and stayed in bed; chris was back at work and chief and pippi rose with me in the night, keeping me comfortable and loving on our sweet boy and bringing him to me to nurse and sleep. i slept under a roof of my teenage years aside my husband and baby, and thought how funny time moves. and when two weeks had passed and we boarded a plane home, i felt another thought melting over me: how very much we needed this.