easter morn.

here, scenes of our earliest hours lived easter morn, baby's second, when quiet, holy light spilled over our apartment, four flights up, and our morning song was one of baby's squeals over the contents of an easter basket, ukulele strums, vivaldi's the four seasons, hands at work atop the cake  (frosting, scattering violets) we would share with family in the afternoon, papa just home from the farmers market offering hot coffee and sweetest words: i brought you easter daffodils, my own thankful exhalations as the thought rang like a bell in the cathedral of my chest: to be a mother on easter, yes, this, too, i wished for...

which is to say, a morning song of gratitude and grace, love and spring, redemption and peace and celebration. joy, bountiful.

lighting a candle. then lighting another.

an ordinary, beautiful moment that bloomed this week: a thick slice of birthday cake and a glass of cold milk while francis dreamed. i lit a candle for the occasion, because i believe everything is an occasion, and the very first lumineers album was softly spinning because this time of year always reminds of me of san francisco, 2013, when i turned twenty five and listened to it on repeat while i explored the city entirely on foot. this album, at this time of year, is where my right-now self and some long-ago-now iteration of me curl up in overstuffed armchairs to sip whiskey and tell each other stories.

and anyway, this week i passed into thirty one and i keep thinking of my view from breakfast that sparkling morning, when new york was unseasonably warm and they were right there, perched right across the table from me, one with dark curls, the other with roses on his cheeks. my boys. here. so many years, i missed them before we'd ever even met. so many years, i wished on candles for them -- for this -- for the chance to live days loving them.

i think maybe when you are given the chance to discover how very much you want something, gratitude becomes etched in your bones. memory of wanting, and the fear that often follows, becomes a tiny bird that sings from the eaves of your house.

another birthday: another year i get to live in the same world, inside the same days, as them. this is my soul-closest gratitude, my bone-deepest joy. and when i think of this wild and precious new year laid out before me and what i plan to do with it, my intentions find their shape:

to read, to listen, to witness, to absorb.
to notice compositions of breath, milk's curl into coffee, hands in mine, everything.
to live in wonder, inquiry, contemplation, and awe.
to be a blessing to my husband, our son, family, friends, neighbors, the world.
to live every day, every breath, as a love letter, as a thank you note.
to live the best life we can, together, day by day.

a birthday. a good one.

one year "happy birthday" is sung in whisper-quiet coos, and the next year it is "mama." last year's two-weeks-new dove on this year's hip. always, always on my hip. i had hoped for snow but sunny-and-sixty surprised us and made our bones sing. puffed sleeves in, let's call it, degas blue. writing. wandering. lost-count-of café au laits. roses the color of pointe shoes. a bookshop ramble. a tangle of streets. a book of poetry. a café in the morning. like being in paris. chocolate cake. looking up from pages in the warm bath to notice the sound: darling, dimpled husband baking said chocolate cake. his eyes glittering as my hands roamed the wrapping of the oblong and glorious box. love notes from ones-i-love. from my parents: a date circled on the calendar for an afternoon at the ballet. my father's memories of thirty one years back, in his own voice. (how we are, all of us, time travelers.) the view: my boys across the table, my kingdom, my whole life. stardust, and what it's all added up to: a baby (this baby, his baby) in my arms, the three of us, together. the song my life is spinning: gratitude. let's call it: heaven. here. the prayer offered on the wings of every heartbeat, every footstep, every exhale: thank you. (what a life is ours.)

a first birthday.

merriment for our merry boy: gypsy jazz, cheeses and baguettes, sweet potato cake, gilded balloons, cocktails reimagined (frenchie 75! aperol fitz!), birthday roses, a trip to his most-loved spot...our neighborhood laundromat. 

we gathered in our home with a small posy of the ones who love him most, and fell asleep heart-happy to falling snow just after. i search joy for her synonyms and find language outpaced, but said simply, it was just one of those really magical, love-brimmed days that might bloom in a life, if you are really, very lucky. 

happiest of happy birthdays, our little prince, our winter wonder, our boy adventure, our dream-made-real, our wonderfully clever, jovial mister. he is a treasure, and he is treasured. he has recalibrated my world, realigned my stars, rewritten in my marrow the very meaning of love and dreams and worth and time. i am so happy he is here. i am so happy we are each other's. i will never understand the hows and whys stitched inside the reason i am entrusted to be his mother, his guide, his first home, his magic- and memory-maker, but the song my life is spinning will evermore and ever after be this: thank you.

thanksgiving.

how all three of us are in that very first photograph: one in my arms plus one behind the camera makes two making a home out of me. how we woke to the thrum of drums and bundled in our woolies and walked to the parade. ten months old on thanksgiving eve: last year's carried-prayer become this year's held-dream. moving about the kitchen: stirring, chopping, checking the recipe. moving about the apartment: cedar and fir, wool slippers on hardwood, kisses for boy and babe. sufjan songs, glowy candles, fog kissing the windowpanes, fallen leaves collected on autumn walks. on the table: rosemary turkey, trimmings and red wine, her sweet potatoes. perfect. papa in forest green, mama in lace, baby in a ruffled collar, thanksgiving best, best thanksgiving. heaven. here. bundling once more to tote a pie across the neighborhood. voices of friends raised in happy song: take me home country roads and sweet caroline. joy, untouchable. how we were here, how we were together, how that is everything, how that is all. every song, every heartbeat, every prayer of every dawn-break and every first-star is the same: thank you and thank you and thank you. 

away to maine.

it's been a few weeks ago now, but i move in time differently now that i am a mother. that is to say: i seek a simple way of living as much as possible. that i might be aware of my life as it happens, and not looking forward or back. that i might feel balanced in my physical and spiritual spaces. that i might live fully just exactly the moment i am in. which is the scenic-route way of saying: it's been a few weeks ago now, but we roadtripped to maine for christopher's birthday, which fell on labor day this year. it's been a dream of his for such a long time now, laying his own two eyes on portland. the joke we volley is that his dream is portland (maine), while mine is portland (oregon). 

our maine was pine forests and wild blueberries, brown butter lobster rolls and butterbeer and sweet cream cones. we slept in a hundred year old cabin perched on the sheepscot river and woke like birds each morn to the tune of seal sounds and perfect sweater weather. we pulled over for roadside antiques and walked on rocky coasts speckled with lighthouses. we ate bagels dusted in sea salt and rode a ferry boat from island to island, each without bridges, utterly charmed by the scene: townspeople lining the docks to collect their mail and freight. baby and i met every sunrise together -- by the sea, nursing in the hammock, and walking in the woods. we built fires at night and read books for hours before bed. francis' dimpled hands roamed sticks and moss, and when he leaned too far toward soft earth and took his first tumble, i felt that i was witnessing the spark of his boyhood. my love passed into his new year with our son in his arms, and memory of this time last year -- when francis gave us first kicks on his papa's thirtieth birthday in marrakech -- brushed up against us. our last morning in maine, we ate potato doughnuts and sipped blueberry coffee and watched the frothy waves roll in and delighted at the sight: dwindling summer, baby's dimpled bum, white as the beach he was sitting on, bare as the day he was born, his brow ever so knitted, perplexed by the possibilities of sand.