{Preview} Feeding the fill

I don’t know if it is the Italian or mother in me, but I am deeply satisfied cutting a ripe banana into small round slices to feed my children.  I guess it’s the innate drive to nourish.  I’d get that same feeling right before feeding my babies milk, sinking into bed, blurry-eyed, while all the day’s corners fell.  Every noise vanished.  Every void, filled. 

Watching Renee felt very, very close to how I feel when feeding my children. It was Mother's Day, and nineteen years since I'd seen her last.  There she was, gentle mother, bent over her bow-mouthed babies, swooping pails, collecting nostalgia.  In those hours, Renee filled the hole of curiosity I have for friends from my past -- as life has pushed on so selfishly, sometimes there’s barely time to look back.  And for those few hours, the nineteen years between then and now disappeared.  Because there she was, looking just like she did way-back-when, and in the moment, filling my cup.  

{Preview} Becoming four

I remember visiting my mother at the hospital when my brother was born.  I was five, hands clenching paper puppets.  I can still see my mother’s papery white gown trailing the floor, and feel the softness of her skin and copper hair.  I didn't know how much my world was changing.

At six weeks, Crosby is everything lovely and new:  lips tightly woven to a braided knot, and liquid eyes, black as berries.  So much newness to capture, yet it was Katama that had me on this day.  Black-lashed eyes, wide, and watching.  Brain working:  new, baby.  New, BABY.  Her fingers fluttered everywhere, and limbs were like fluid, spilling into each photo.  Trapezed between her mom and dad she sang Crosby the ABC’s, and wanted to drive small cars all over his body.  It’s a big job to make sense of such a small thing, not a cat, or a toy, but a brother.  She wears her love, full and bright, on her sleeve.

May

It’s been pouring.  Today we stepped outside to an orchestra of knotted buds unfurling, and mind-numbing, honey-thick, lilac in the air.  We swooped small inchworms, bent and neon, hanging helplessly from the sky. And stepped carefully over storybook-mushrooms, threaded together like buttons in the rain.  The kid’s feet found every puddle possible, and stood like two-legged-rabbits eating Greek oregano plucked straight from the ground.  This time of year, it seems if you stop for even a moment, you can watch life pushing through the mud, scrambling anxiously towards blue light.  Feel the earth hum.  When we were outside, the day was good.