noticing, again

We planted these red dahlias a few days before the wedding, and they were some of the planted pots lining the aisle we made for our wedding.

I love going out in the afternoon to see how they are doing. And this day, I spotted the little bug enjoying them too.

This has been a time of big events. We have been running. Sure, I have felt the wind move through my hair as I run, and I love the feeling of my muscles working. But still, everything has moved at such a pace.

Write a book in four months! Change the restaurant to gluten-free! Give interviews to the press! Learn how to market a book! Move to a new house! Get married!

I would not change a thing. Most people aren't given this much joy in one year. Every single movement has been enormous joy. (Okay, maybe not packing up the kitchen.) But there has just been too much movement for one year.

I want to slow down. I want to learn how to feel my breath again, instead of the wind in my hair.

This will be my place for noticing. For life beyond food and love and public moments. Yes, you who are reading, you might have come here from that other site. You can comment, if you wish. This isn't my private diary.

But I need a place to write, the little moments, the bug in the dahlias in the backyard moments. And not feel like it has to be any good.

Here it is.

what we miss

We miss this kind of sight, every day.

There's beauty everywhere.

the tiny details of life

These days, for perhaps the first time, I'm interested in clean lines and a tidy house.

We're about to move into a new house, and now I want to keep it clean.

Everything in neat lines.

It probably won't last long.

Still, when I took this photograph this morning, the lines on the chopsticks stood next to each other. I didn't do that on purpose. It just happened.

Maybe something is changing.

sometimes, all I can do is look up at the sky

These days, it's hard to write about the tiny details of my life without feeling a little guilty.

The shooting is so horrific: all those young people dead; a Holocaust survivor blocking the door to save their lives and losing his own; the sad haunted kid who killed them all, clearly in need of help, for years, and no one could do anything.

This morning, I was reading about it in the newspaper, not moving in the bed, no longer wishing for another cup of coffee. When I put down the paper, I let out a big sigh. Danny turned toward me and opened his arms. I snuggled in, and he held me.

That felt a little better.

There is so much suffering in this world.

Last night, on the news, they called it evil. They bandied about that word as though it is an accepted fact. After one more news story about it, I turned to him and said, "I just don't believe in that word."
"What do you mean?" he asked me.
"I mean, saying the word evil means believing that there's this quality, something beyond us, a quantifiable entity, for which we are not responsible. The fact is, we are all capable of cruelty. And if we remember that — instead of calling someone evil — we can find some compassion for the people who do these things."
He sighed, so deeply that he didn't talk for a moment. I thought, perhaps, he didn't agree. He was raised Catholic, after all.
Instead, he turned toward me and said, "I've been waiting to find you all of my life." There were tears in his eyes. "I've always wanted to meet someone who believes the same thing I do."
We held each other. That's all we could do.

Sometimes, in these hard times, all I can do is look up at the sky. White blossoms blot out parts of the blue sky. At least there is spring.

the pictures painted on him

When I was a kid, you could not have told me that I would marry a man with a tattoo.

In the 1970s, tattoos only appeared on the body parts of sailors and hoodlums, bikers and rapscallions. Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront — he was the tattoo type. No way. Stay away.

But we have all grown up. I certainly have. And on the first night we spent together, seeing this tattoo of his was the clinching moment. I already felt myself falling in love with him. But when I saw John Lennon on his arm, I surrendered. He was my love. He still is.

He didn't know I took this. He was sleeping sweetly after I rose to make us coffee. In the mornings, nothing makes me happier than turning toward him in our sleepy state and seeing his face for the first time that day. He always smiles when he sees mine. But sometimes, I love kissing his forehead, and climbing over in the bed, and going into the kitchen for a little time alone. Mostly because, when I come back, I see this.

our hands at the spot where we will be married

It's more than six months since we took the first one, the photograph that became our Save the Date card. Here we are, not at the ocean, but in front of the Sound. This water made its way all the way from the ocean, to our feet.

We are standing on the beach at Golden Gardens, where we will be married in three months, and a few days. Three months!

If my love for him grows any more enormous, I might just split open.

the earth is turning

the last time I took this picture,
the sky outside was bleak
and the branches bare.

now, sunlight fills the kitchen
some mornings
the sky is clear
more of the time
and buds are emerging.

I can feel the earth turning.