a study in roses.

we've been away and we've come home, and just in time for the roses, the exquisite coda of may, the closing prayer of spring. in shades of scarlet and peach, they sing their way up brownstone walls and spill over sidewalks between wrought iron posts. they speak and i pay attention.

it was two mays ago, two todays ago, that they bloomed with the news of our very own baby, and i will ever after look at them in this way: a love letter stating that i was going to be a mother. that i already was.

papa & boy, wishmakin'.

they say you've got to make the memories you want them to have, and so it's: hopping into puddles, walks before supper, making wishes on dandelions and eyelashes and pennies, the words "why not" lived out loud, early strolls 'round the block to say good morning to the blooms, carousel rides, picnics under pink trees, candles at breakfast, poetry and prose and the sound of spinning records, meals around a full table, getting lost in museums and gardens and bookshops, cinnamon rolls at the first snow, making a song of everything, celebrating everything, putting our hands on earth, stories of stars and the moon and god and how i met his papa, bon dylan and iron & wine, edith piaf and the national, louis armstrong, simon & garfunkel, small posies in jam jars scattered about the house, airplane rides across the sea, true fascination with his every curiosity, et cetera, glorious et cetera.

small things i want to remember.

musk and rose baths. rain i wished for. english muffins with honey and butter. iron & wine, circa 2002. the national, circa 2007. poetry and prose over breakfast and baths. their sing-song angel voices finding me through the window from four floors down as they strolled the sidewalk as father and son. eggs scrambled in butter with parmesan and chives. our third may together, if you keep count by the pull of the moon.

he loved moth orchids best.

it is clear to us that my own love for flora now hums in the very marrow of francis brown's bones. whenever we need to breathe deeper or start again, i take him beyond our walls, into the gardens and trees of central park. we are the same in this way: outside, we find paradise within.

and so it was the cold day we spent at the botanical garden. we went for the singaporean orchid show, sharing nibbles of manchego and fig in our window seat on the train ride north. we stood in amazement under varieties uncountable, jewel-bright and climbing arches and towers to float into the sky. moth orchids the color of late summer peaches were the ones he loved best, and so they were the ones that i, too, loved best. i held him in my arms as he wriggled and stretched his soft body closer and closer, answering their whisper-soft invitation: "come."

son-rise.

it's the utterly normal things i live for. like making a grocery list. like my husband's sweater draped over the chair. like the jingle of his keys in the door. like hanging laundry to dry. like mailing a birthday card. like the crack of a pepper mill. like picking out stamps and changing the water in the vase and re-filling a sippy cup. like the first minutes after my baby wakes, when he journeys to the window, tugs at the shutters, and stands awash in holy columns of light, just to see what's there. it's the utterly normal things i bow down to.

april days.

april '19, in which we lived the truest spring in memory. new york seemed to open to us like the pages of a children's book, all color and light and music and surprises. cherry blossoms sang so brightly that for one shining moment i believed they might stay forever. they didn't, of course, and they don't -- that's what makes them so special.

days were a tangle of hours in the kitchen that sounded like stardust and tasted like sea salt and olive oil and dill. there were sun-dappled afternoons and whole, lovely weeks of fog. there were music classes and laundry days, sunday farmers markets and trips to the playgrounds and sweet time spent with all four grandparents. we celebrated easter with family and grandma georgia's birthday. we read poetry over breakfast and baths. we spent weekends and dinners 'round full tables with friends, and we were charmed by the sight of small hands reaching and interwoven: in francis brown's sky, the mainardi girls shine brighter than bright. life came at us in a big way, nudging us to think and talk and study the shapes of our dreams. it was another month of miracles with our sunbeam of a boy. francis at fifteen months is a living love song of stretching on tiptoes up-up-up to kiss mama through the shower curtain, dancing more than he steps, hair wild with mama's color and papa's curls, fingers twirling through my braid ribbon as we nurse, delivering into my hands his first bouquet, a first pair of rain boots, fistfuls of blueberries. we lived under the blossoms and ended days with dirt on our knees, dirt under our nails, smelling of trees, sticky with berry jam, sleepy in that really good way, et cetera, delicious et cetera.