I HAVE BEEN...





*outside...taking long walks around the neighborhood counting flowers and turning down the volume in my own mind to listen to the calls of nesting birds. I say hello to the man and woman who walk six rescued greyhounds at dusk, nod to an older woman with perfectly coiffed silver hair who speeds by in her crimson sneakers, and wave back to the toddler twins who exuberantly shake their palms as they watch me go by, enjoying the coming evening with their blind parents on their wind-chime-laden front porch.
*outside...re-setting the channel of riverstones along our garden beds, getting the herb garden ready for M.'s fragrant summer meals, fretting over my lavender bushes who seem reluctant to rise from the bitter burn of February and late-starting spring.
*outside...reading books on a blanket, including this one which is making me dream in rows of seedlings and ears of corn. I had a moment's pause two days ago when I looked up from it on the sundrenched deck to see M. reading his guitar magazine, Petunia deep in her Harry Potter, Boy-o chortling over this, and Rosie--who cannot read officially just yet, scanning the pages of her new favorite. I would be lying if I didn't say I was sitting in the exact family I'd always wanted to create...as a reading teacher, writer, and book reviewer--could there be a more perfect version of family togetherness for me? (It isn't always dappled sunlight and book-love, of course...)
*writing...I have finished five full sections of new and re-written text since Friday afternoon, sitting out there with my manuscript, my notebook, and a fast-writing black ink pen. I've written two poems, revised one essay, and journaled every morning before sunrise to start my day in the right frame of mind.
*working on...setting up a new writing space in our bedroom. School ends for Rosie in just three short weeks and I will be banished from my writing center station (the kitchen table with its tree-lined view) for more sequestered space for the season.
*reflecting...on my eleventh wedding anniversary with M. tomorrow. I was a college girl-bride with a baby in her belly and flowers in her hair...he was a long-haired, round-faced boy-groom who proposed to me by saying he wanted nothing more in the world than to be a family with me. The day we wed, the flowering cherry trees were raining torrents of pink petals and the sky was a cloudless blue. It remains the best decision of my life to say "yes" and then "I do".
*living...as best I can with a full heart until the day I end up where I'd like to:

HERE
by Grace Paley

Here I am in the garden laughing
an old woman with heavy breasts
and a nicely mapped face

how did this happen
well that's who I wanted to be

at last--a woman
in the old style--sitting
stout thighs apart under
a big skirt--grandchild sliding
on--off my lap--a pleasant
summer perspiration

that's my old man across the yard
he's talking to the meter reader
he's telling him the world's sad story
how electricity is oil or uranium
and so forth--I tell my grandson
run over to your grandpa--ask him
to sit beside me for a minute--I
am suddenly exhausted by my desire
to kiss his sweet explaining lips