It is, I am quite certain, my first real memory: my grandmother washing my hair on the day that I was to meet my new baby brother for the first time. I can still see it all in my mind’s eye — me kneeling on a stool alongside the old clawfoot tub in the bathroom, with its windows looking out across an expanse of back yard, the weeping willow tree, the duck pond, the raspberry patch, the mountains beyond; the long rubber hose with a silver sprinkler on the end; the bottle of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo; Grammie’s strong, capable fingers….
Each morning this week, my husband and I have woken early and walked together. With our two sons back in school, the daily rhythm of our life has shifted. We’ve gone from twenty years of being utterly child-centered — and from a summer of family schedule-juggling, despite the fact that our children, at 17 and 20, are not actually children anymore — to the quieter intimacy of two. We take the same route from our house, a loop through the woods and along a quiet bike path, then up the hill toward home. By the time I put…
The other day one of my favorite fellow bloggers, Lindsey at A Design So Vast, wrote a lovely end-of-summer post. Reading her elegiac reflections made me realize that I wasn’t quite there yet myself; I’m having some trouble acknowledging this change of season, acquiescing to yet another ending. You can see it in my half-there-half-here outfit this morning: as I type these words I’m wearing flip flops and a wool sweater, trying to have it both ways. I keep looking at my bathing suit, tossed on the edge of the bath tub: if I don’t put it away, maybe I’ll…
“What are you thinking?” I asked Henry. We were taking a last hike before he heads back to college tomorrow, climbing up the back side of North Pack on a perfect early autumn morning. “Oh, nothing much,” was his reply. “Sometimes it’s nice to just walk in the woods and not think about anything at all.” My own mind, of course, was racing down the trail ahead of my feet, tumbling into the afternoon, considering what we would do for the rest of the day, what I should make for dinner, how we could make this last weekend…
