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.