shapes on the forest floor

I promised another glimpse into Whimsy Sewing Frenzy 2009: Pre-Denver Freak Out and the Fruits Thereof. So this t-shirt dress? Is one of the fruits. A maroon-colored fruit fashioned out of a $3 Michael's t-shirt. I took an adult small and sort of cut it down and sewed it up and I was pretty happy with the results.

It is Monday as I'm typing this. Monday evening, to be exact, when the heat of the day has crept through the curtains and carefully closed doors and has settled into the living room - the last bastion of summertime cool. When the outdoors is cooler than the indoors for the reasons already listed. When Chip is trying to get off one last work email before helping me with Alice's to-bed routine. When Alice herself has been dinnered and washed off and is toddling in a large uneven circle between me and Chip. When I've done the post-dinner living room clean up and Alice is doing her darnedest to excavate a few toys from the toy basket. When the TV is off, the stereo is off, the cats are upstairs (fed, watered, now resting for their evening hijinks). When I am trying to tear a few minutes from the day's end to hold in my hands, to talk to you dear ones. We'll see how far I get, how much I can say before the next ridge in the grooves of this day pick me up and push me into the things we do every day, the same--- undress the little one, get her into bath, follow the paces, do what needs to be done.

(Our quiet has been broken for one of the few bands our family agrees on: The Shins, Sleeping Lessons- to be exact. With Chip showing Alice how to play air guitar and Alice offering her off-kilter smile while she dances a shaky shimmy bum bounce.)

It's so good to be home. I love how our familiar routine embraces us and pulls us in, helps us to know that our bodies have made impressions in the soil here. Doesn't let us think for long that we belong anywhere else right now than here, in this life we've made.

I still have so many thoughts I'm trying to understand, so many things I'm trying to frame in language that doesn't offend, language that tells you this is what I saw, this is what I heard, this is what I felt. I want you to know that the kindness of the people we met last week was overwhelming. Their sweetness, their upturned faces, their welcoming hands. I want to relate a story that helps you feel the tension, the stress, the worry, the frustration, the exhaustion, the humor, the hilarity, the tenderness, the sweetness--- I want you to feel all of it but I know that words will fail. Words will fail as, in the end, they always do.

I promise I will do my best but I know that it will never be enough. I wish I could have carried you around in my pocket so that I could have pulled you into the palm of my hand from time to time, have you tell me that things will be okay - that this too will pass - that this? IS AWESOME.

Because you are awesome. Really, you are.


- - - - - - - - -


Those moments bought us that much time - and now, and now I'm headed upstairs to help Alice off into sleep. The tide is pulling us forward to tonight and tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, as it always does.

Until then.