Denial

Summer is over my head like a hood and I don’t want to come out.  We’re so far into summer I can’t quite remember the softness of spring or regime of school, and just far enough from September it feels like it may never come.  Puddles of pjs and cereal have pooled around the sofa alongside flip-flops, small bright socks, bathing suit bottoms.  No one questions pink lemonade for breakfast, or watching too much TV.  We sleep with sand in our beds, and eat peas until the vines are empty, feet still in the garden. 

I’m trying to forget that summer ever ends and that Jane will start first grade, her first year full day.  Or that Henry will go to school for the first time.  I’m lapping it up.  Staying deep in summer, lush with denial, flooded with flushed faces, bare bodies, beer.  For now it’s summer.  All day long.

{Preview} Portrait of a school-aged kid

In those first moments of summer, kids molt like snakes.  Piles of who they were yesterday ribbon like silk into the fragrant, cut grass.

It doesn’t matter how old you get, you will always remember those first days of summer.  Like the last walk home from the bus, marled pavement and small pebbles rolling beneath your feet.  The shock-of-white-sun from looking over your shoulder, making sure your mom was still there.  The sky.  Extra big.  Extra blue.  Some odd sense you are moving up in the world, even if it’s only from first grade to second.  Your heart high and full in your little chest like a balloon. 

Any fears or worries, or joys for that matter, from the year have fled.  What’s left is the core of a school-aged kid.  Ripe confidence.  Dirty hands.  Curiosity, glistening.  And the amazing feeling you have, and can always, conquer the world.

Born to

Have you heard of this?  “Flow”?  I didn’t know it had a name until I saw this documentary.  Flow is when you become so engrossed in process, whatever it may be, you loose your sense of self, becoming one with what you are doing.  Your world stops.  If you are an artist, painter, baker, runner, writer, musician, woodworker, gardener, or maker-of any sort, I bet you’ve felt this many times.

This past weekend, we took in the music of Waterdeep, a husband/wife music duo, in an old ark-like-barn, and I couldn’t get over their flow – deep and total loss.  Watching them felt true.  In many ways so true, it seemed the only real response was to cry.  Their flow blew me away.

The weekend was filled with many other things get lost in too, and these photos catch a few favorites.  But five days out, I keep coming back to Waterdeep’s melodies, pouring like rain, voices gleaning off the darkness.  And that blissful ability to loose ourselves in flow -- or watch someone else get lost in it -- feeling the glory of time melt to nothingness.

Film

Film.

Reminds me what it was like to make an image without listening.  Without blogs or Etsy or thousands of photography websites at my fingertips with eternal piles of imagery -- sun kissed children, lilac-ed brides. Paled skin.  Eyes all-a-perfectly shining.  A bevy of crisp, noiseless, digital sheen.  So many places to fall short.

I found these old photos and realized 10 years ago the only thing I listened to was my eye behind the camera.  And I didn’t even know I was listening, I just shot.  The film gave the magic of delay -- no looking or judging right away.   And when the film was developed, that was it.  No revising, never deleting.  It was what it was.  You would then share the photos in hand with family or friends, who stuck them in frames or pinned them to bulletin boards or the fridge.  So tactile.  Edges curled, they almost smelled like a book.  Glossy, light swelled, paper lined, words like “Kodak” or “Endurance” swimming in light blue script, corner to corner across the back.  These photos make me miss the way I could hold the image.  Tuck it into a pocket or bag.  Then find it months later like an old tissue or receipt.  Immediately brought back to the moment that it captured.

I just bought a new digital camera.  But I still miss film.

{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.