Ten.Twenty-Six
1. Basil for the water. Lemon. Warm.
2. The deer is back. She's closer than she's ever been before and while I long to go out and extend a hand, I also know that this is not where she belongs. I apologize for being in her space. This would have been her home had it not been for humans.
3. Which makes me think of the wide open places that have yet to be touched by our hands. And the way you feel when you stumble upon them: small and infinite.
4. The water is not so bad.
5. I hear myself say over and over to the ones who knew me before, "I am having a harder time with this than I thought I would." It is honest but I wish it wasn't still so true.
6. Feta, dill, tomato, green onions, red onions, parsley, oregano, simple vinaigrette.
7. We sit on the sofa that I rarely sit on. I realize that I must sit on it more and gaze out the window toward the wind-swept trees and the tall grass bent over on the berm. This is a quiet corner. I need more quiet corners.
8. Dinner is late. I am slow. My body wants to rest. I had forgotten how tiresome it is to tread water.
9. This world. My heart aches.
10. Thunder in the dark.
Ten.Twenty-Five
1. Just cool enough for a sweater again.
2. He says I should give the young deer a name.
3. The words running through my head these days surprise me. Pleasantly. I could get used to this.
4. I have no intentions of leaving home today. Home. I told her yesterday that I needed to get rid of this mindset that this house of ours is temporary. Maybe then I can really root down into it. I want to root down.
5. I'm going to paint that wall black.
6. Like when you are growing and your skin feels too tight. Like your lungs are going to burst through your ribs.
7. The house is so quiet.
8. 4 straight days of meditation. My words for this week: Focus and Consistency.
9. Crumbled sausage, red onion, kale, parmesan, and pasta. Divine. Surprisingly good. So good we licked our plates clean.
10. They way the sun splits the trees when it sets.
Ten.Twenty-Four
1. I love a chilly morning.
2. Do dishes. Make granola. Brew coffee. Rinse the speckled bowl.
3. This chapter. This book and how it is shifting me. Making me exercise old muscles.
4. The way the light is the reflecting off the lake. Tiny ripples. So many geese. She's picking up all the feathers.
5. Friendships that manage to sustain themselves on a few short hours once or twice a year. For almost 10 years we've been doing this. All of us getting older and our conversations getting longer.
6. When he asks me to lay down with him, I always say yes.
7. The oregano is starting to flower. I've let it go for too long. The blackberries are still inside, finding a way to grow and ripen in this little sunny sweet spot. Everything is thriving. Everything is taking up space.
8. Gewurztraminer.
9. 15 days.
10. Rooting down and in.
Ten.Twenty-Three
1. Picked some basil. Birds hanging out by the stoop.
2. Bacon and english muffins and fruit. I'm eating the last blueberry hand pie with basil sugar that I made the day before. That and coffee.
3. Meal planning. Trying to find the joy in this again. Three new cookbooks from the library and the latest issue of Food & Wine magazine should give me enough inspiration. On Sundays we try new things. On Sundays there is time for work and rest and experimentation. I like to do new things slowly.
4. Lake dreams. I think of the time I spent a long weekend at Table Rock Lake with my friend and her family, waking up early with her mom to drink Folgers and watch the water while everything was still and quiet. Jason Mraz playing through my headphones all day as I sketched the women laying out by dock.
5. Find the joy in all of this again.
6. What I wanted to say: "What a beautiful way to honor your brother."
7. It's hot but I sit outside anyway. I do my best learning here. I am always finding little quiet corners in and outside of the home. Little quiet corners save me. Everyone needs a little quiet corner.
8. Bowl full of plums.
9. Grilled Okra.
10. Slow Sunday.
Ten.Twenty-Two
1. I step out onto the back stoop to check the movement of the air. This is how I know what the heat will be like today.
2. This newly acquired practice - of checking the air - reminds me of that morning in the vineyard with Adam. It was a chilly 42 degrees and the dew was soaking through my converse and wetting my feet. And he said that the way clouds and the sky looked that morning told him that the sunset that night would be beautiful. I am learning how to read the sky.
3. There are only the three of us in the warehouse today moving furniture around, taking pictures, making small talk. I take a stroll through the shop to see if I can capture anything interesting and my eyes rest on a stack of polygons cut out of wood. He sees me touching them and tells me what they're to be used for. He tells me that his brother died on Monday and that those shapes are for the lid to the urn he is making.
4. Him in his black cut-off tee and red bandanna around his head, coffee in his hand, Johnny Cash playing from his phone, telling me that his brother is dead now. That this is for the urn he is making for him. I am telling him that I am sorry and that this is going to be beautiful. Him with his sad eyes and soft smile and coffee in his hand.
5. What I wanted to say, but couldn't think to say in that moment was, "What a beautiful way to honor your brother."
6. We are in a constant relationship with grief. Constantly experiencing the loss of an idea, a dream, a person, a relationship, a sense of self or place. And so I know that because this is true about life, then there must ways in which we can learn to move with grief. How am I in my relationship with Grief? How am I moving with Grief?
7. The flashcards all over the floor. Standing in the middle of the stack.
8. Late afternoon cappuccinos.
9. What I didn't say: "What a beautiful way to honor your brother."
10. The deer are back.
Ten.Twenty-One
1. Dark skies make it hard to wake.
2. Black dress.
3. 10 years. How quickly the time passes. I can believe it but I can't.
4. Sets of espresso and cappuccino cups. Indigo ceramics. In this life, I'm determined to find ways to make the ordinary more magical. This is what I live for.
5. I also live for sunrises, sunsets, moody skies, linen, cotton, fresh flowers, dried eucalyptus, their smiles, a firm hand on the small of my back, hot coffee, good wine, the goat cheese croquettes from Barn Diva.
6. Silence.
7. Abundance. Community. Creativity. Curiosity. Inspiration. Grace. Gratitude.
8. Hibiscus flower. It's been imported from Australia and soaked in its own nectar and some sugar. It is delicate and delicious and sweet.
9. Bison hanger steak with pork cheek angnolotti, charred ramp butter, caramelized carrot puree, fresh peas, pickled garlic scape, and tangy veal jus. 2010 Chateau La Garde Pessac-Leognan.
10. Don P.X. Gran Reserva. 1986. My first sherry. I am in love.
Ten.Twenty
1. Morning that is dark and brooding. The sound of trains off in the distance. Coffee for one.
2. The golf course sounds an alarm when lightening is present. I've heard it go off twice already.
3. This is the kind of weather that pulls you back in. I light the candles on the tray, nestle into the corner and watch the rain come down.
4. He has forgotten. Calls me right as I've left the house, children half-asleep eating breakfast with the babysitter. I get a sweet drink through the drive-through and then sit in the rain. This may be the only time I get to be alone.
5. There is a tenderness in parts of my body that waxes and wanes with the cycle of the moon. Despite its consistency, the arrival of this tenderness still surprises me. I don't know that I want to get used to it.
6. Now that the skies are calm, I take the plants back outside, picking off leaves of peppermint to chew on. This is so satisfying. Last night the big kid says to me, "This is your first real success." I chuckled. It was the way he said it without the scent of judgement in his voice.
7. To be able to say out loud all that I've been processing. The new truths that are begging to be underlined in the skin. I'm really trying.
8. Keep it pointed to where you want it to go. [Or something like that.] - Danielle LaPorte
9. I'm ready for the rains to come back again.
10. There's something to be said for learning how to be alone. I remember when I craved closeness, afraid to be with only my self without the distraction of another body, any body. It's a tricky kind of hunger that I'm learning to feed by trying to understand the ways in which I can be all the things I ever I thought I needed. Maybe I already am all the things I ever thought I needed.
Ten.Nineteen
1. The way the sun makes the prairie grass on the berm glow.
2. The peppers are beginning to drop. Every morning I am peering beneath the leaves, searching for new growth.
3. It's amazing how much you choose not to do when there is so much that needs to be done.
4. The edges of the gladiolas are browning and withering away.
5. Everyone should have a person in their life with whom they can communicate using only bitmojis. Because some days only words won't do.
6. The coordinating of time. How we are constantly trying to fold it and stretch it and bend to it.
7. Cherries. Sanguine. Fingers stained and dripping.
8. Their laughter.
9. The smell of roasted tomatoes and garlic. The scent of the rosemary. Smoked salt. Yeast.
10. The way the storms drove in. Hard, fast, and heavy. The way we flung open the door to rescue toppled plants, the sage too heavy for me to move. The white streak from cloud to road.
Ten.Eighteen
1. Fog hovering above the road in front and the wetlands out back. The tomatoes are increasing in size, as is my wonderment.
2. Butter, brown sugar, vanilla, water, salt, cinnamon, oats.
3. “I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing.” - David Whyte
4. You know you've reached a milestone when you let your new neighbor walk across the crumbs on your floor. You have your husband make her a cappuccino while you sip on lukewarm drip coffee and water laced with apple cider vinegar and raw honey.
5. Blue velvet cloud.
6. She asked us to give her the gift of beauty. On my list: the beauty of longing.
7. Hydrangeas, petals pink and wilting.
8. I have an affinity for things that are big and delicate. Like hydrangeas and peonies and dahlias. Like men and dreams and good wine. Like Life.
9. Car full of kids waiting for ice cream.
10. Readiness.
Ten.Seventeen
1. I missed the sunrise again today but still managed to catch a glimpse of orange on the blades of green grass. I didn't put this on my wishlist for a new home, but the sunrises we've had here - they are some of my favorites.
2. The tomatoes are getting so big. I think I will make a caprese. Michael says I should try to make my own mozzarella.
3. I am wishing for just one more hour without the children so that I can finish my morning pages and gather my thoughts. These quiet hours belong to me. They are mine. They are sacred. I just need need one more hour to be my self.
4. He made the coffee.
5. Live EMPTY.
6. Two steaks. I will sear them and slice them and serve them with a roasted corn and tomato salad and some potatoes.
7. These are the kinds of neighbors you wish you had. The kind that lend you tools and give you their extra mulch. The kind where your daughters float between the two houses without shoes, eating each other's food, racing bicycles around the neighborhood. So when you feel like maybe you made a mistake, think of your neighbors and the way the ways in which they surprise and delight you.
8. So many bricks.
9. I watched a spider eat an ant.
10. The sun is shifting. I should be studying a map of Northern Italy but instead I am drinking chardonnay from California and being talked into running a 5k in October. I missed capturing the sun before it fell behind the trees. The sky is now just dusty blues and pale yellows tucked away among the green.
Ten.Sixteen
1. The sun always beats through the upstairs window but this time I was in bed late enough, and the door was open wide enough, for me to see the light float into the room.
2. Make the bed. White on white on white. Red wine stains on his side.
3. Six teeny firm and green buds on the pepper plant. Grow little babies, grow.
4. The texture of the paper in this journal. The way the ink sits on the pages. How every line I write feels like prophecy. I am laying out my bones.
5. Because I know that I am destined for what's better than good.
6. The pit in my stomach because I know where we are going.
7. The coolness of this day in mid-July. A gift. I am breathing. The sun is here and then gone again.
8. Cold water.
9. The same question over and over. My answer each time is the same but I wish it wasn't. Even if I forced out different and new words, I think the corners of my mouth would still be lined with the truth.
10. How large the hydrangeas have gotten in just one season. So big and green and white. We rented an old farmhouse once, in Kansas City, from a family who had moved on to something more grand. But occasionally I'd see the wife sitting in front of the house in her silver Volvo smoking a cigarette, staring intently, before rolling away. I think I understand it now - the way the heart is always pulling you back. You return again and again until the healing is over.
Ten.Fifteen
1. I am not the first one awake.
2. The way the sun splits the trees, red and orange. And the fog rising above the wetlands.
3. Two old fashioned sour cream donuts with coffee.
4. On the front stoop I stretch out my legs and lean my head back into the sun. I can still feel the tightness in my ribs as I breathe into this moment.
5. It's been so long since I had a Brunello di Montalcino. Montalcino. Mon-tal-chino. I like the way it sounds in my mouth. In another life I'd have been French or Italian and spoken in romantic whispers.
6. Dream. Blue velvet cloud.
7. The sound of Euro pop from the garage. How it makes me laugh until I cry. How it reminds me of the Russian who, when installing the subway tile, blasted Euro pop and N'Sync from a tiny black stereo.
8. Barefoot on the stoop. The warmth of concrete beneath my feet and on the backs of my thighs. This makes me feel most alive.
9. This time with them. The months apart are sometimes too long and I am craving the return of our circle. It is with them I become my best self.
10. On the long ride home I think of the old neighborhood with its Irish neighbors, the tall oaks, the holes in the sidewalk. I think of how I missed the peonies in bloom on Van Buren and the sound of the church bells. I cry.
Ten.Fourteen
1. What time is it? All I know is that it's dark and there is some star that is twinkling so brightly.
2. I am moving slowly this morning.
3. Still no deer.
4. The coolness of the breeze caught me off-guard. After so many days of thick humid air, this is a welcomed surprise. Sweater weather in July.
5. Still hanging on to that dream of all of us together so close on a cloud of blue velvet. How the rest of the world disappeared and fingers were laced and the laughter was quiet.
6. This is our last day.
7. Expired domain.
8. Ankle boots in cognac leather and how you know that these are going to change your life. Because shoes can do that, you know.
9. Dad is still sitting here and I'm already missing him. How is it possible to miss someone before they're gone? What other man do I know will appreciate my love of ankle boots in cognac leather?
10. I'm still sitting with that dream of us tucked into that blue velvet cloud, our togetherness so dangerous and sweet.
Ten.Thirteen
1. So much green. This is the first time I've kept my plants so alive. I want this to be a metaphor for my own life.
2. The coffee machine is leaking again.
3. There is no air-conditioning in the warehouse and so he turns on a fan for me - for us. This has become my favorite job: sweeping sawdust off the backdrop, squeezing myself between pieces of furniture to fit it all into a shot, in awe of all the broken beauty.
4. There is a small settee with one broken leg and it always looks like it's floating.
5. These helmets aren't clean but I put one on anyway. Legs wide. Knees bent. Elbows up. Bat straight. Keep your eyes on the ball.
6. I remember the summer before my senior year of high school when I took gym and we headed to the batting cages across from the school. This tall kid with blonde hair and blue eyes watched me swing and miss at the first three balls before he said, "listen. Keep your bat high. Bring out your front leg and kinda step into it when you swing."
7. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. I run down to the desk and ask for more tokens. I'm a little breathless. "This is really therapeutic."
8. I know I'm going to really hurt tomorrow. But it will be the good kind of ache. And isn't that a lot like life anyway?
9. Pink Gladiolas.
10. This is his last night here.
Ten.Twelve
1. Mornings that look like night.
2. The back stoop is cement and herbs. This is now my new favorite piece of my home.
3. Coffee and morning pages on the front stoop. The breeze is cool and refreshing; the humidity has dropped out for just a few hours and I am breathing again. The pages fill up with a litany of gratitudes.
4. The rains are here and the clouds are dark and low and this is what I need now: The quieting of a storm.
5. Silence.
6. Melted butter and olive oil mixed with dried herbs and kosher salt, rubbed over the skin of the chicken.
7. Rosemary represents remembrance and right now I know that I may remember this moment for the rest of my life.
8. We have only 1 full day left together.
9. The smell of yeast and the way flour drifts into and onto places you never intend for it to go.
10. Garden State Soundtrack. How this movie and these songs marked the beginning and ending of so many things and helped me remember how to feel. How this movie and these songs still lead me to of all the tender places within my body.
Ten.Eleven
1. The whirring sound of the coffee grinder.
2. The peppermint is springing back to life; no sign yet that the rabbits are coming close enough to the house to eat the herbs.
3. There are too many things about Chicago that I do not like, namely, the gentrification and the prices you pay for parking. But driving along Lake Shore Drive can make you forget about it all.
4. Life is a lot like this maze of mirrors.
5. The Golden Ratio. 1.618. Looking for patterns.
6. In ice is the memory of the world. - James Balog
7. If I hadn't seen it in the pictures, I wouldn't have believed it at all. - James Balog
8. This is the memory of the landscape. That landscape is gone. It may never be seen again in the history of civilization and it's stored right here. - James Balog
9. What does it mean to have a visual voice?
10. There is so much to know and un-know.
Ten.Ten
1. Late.
2. The sky is thick and gray and the wind is beginning to pick up.
3. As much as I love light, I crave days like this that are long and dark and time is slow.
3. The children are gone and the husband is gone and this is the silence I've been longing for all summer.
4. How silly it is that I have to practice breathing.
5. What am I ready to release?
6. The sage and peppermint and oregano and basil are in new pots. I see six tomatoes. My cuticles are caked in soil.
7. It's still so quiet.
8. The sun is behind the clouds and it is making God light. That kind of light where the clouds are outlined in gleaming silver and you can see the rays beaming down toward Earth.
9. The only sound is the wind whipping through these trees.
10. Everything is sacred.
Ten.Nine
1. 4:02 a.m. Hello again big, bright moon.
2. If only every drive into the city was as quick and quiet as this one. I'd make my way more often.
3. Flashing yellow lights as the lanes go from four to one. A car, black and charred and flipped onto its roof.
4. The darkness of Lower Wacker.
5. This is the first time I've ever seen the sun rise over Lake Michigan and I am breathless at the sight: electric orange orb rising up over the rippling water.
6. This does not feel like Chicago.
7. The view from here. My god, the view. I'll cling to the memory of this.
8. This sand. This water. This moment with her as she looks out over the water.
9. Apples sliced for pie. Sugar and cinnamon and flour on my fingertips.
10. The figs I bought yesterday are soft and sweet. I roll the seeds on my tongue.
Ten.Eight
1. 4:07 am and there is nothing but moonlight.
2. 5:03 am and now the moon clings to the horizon. It is low and glowing orange and I want to stare at it instead of the road.
3. I always forget how vast and wide this world is until I take myself out past the edges of what I know.
4. This whole morning is a journey past an edge.
5. There are sounds that you hear only during these sacred early hours. There is so much life that goes unnoticed in the bright waking hours.
6. She is pure light.
7. This is the good kind of exhaustion.
8. On the return home I see the powder blue four-square with its American flag. I try to recall the last time I drove through a two-stop-sign kind of town. I want to stop and take a picture with the barn and its grayed-out wood. I wish I could pull over and steal a handful of wheat, all golden and brown.
9. I want to know this landscape intimately. So that when I step out into it, it is less of an intrusion and more of a communion.
10. Gelato, please.
Ten.Seven
1. The deer are back again and the fawn is sturdy on her feet. We lock eyes, the three of us (mama, baby, and me), and stand still until we finally resume our work. They continue to graze and I drag the hoses.
2. The gentle way in which the air blows at the hem of my dress.
3. The clouds look like halos.
4. I am so very tired.
5. The smell of frankincense and myrrh fills the room as I move the vacuum back and forth. Why is it that the act of cleaning feels so holy to me?
6. I pick the dandelion weeds without gloves and so sometimes, when I'm not careful, my fingertips ache from the prickles.
7. It is the thoughtfulness of the gift that brings me to tears.
8. I've always judged myself for the ways in which I am so thoughtless. And as I write this right now I realize that the best gift I can give is that of my words.
9. The air is still moving.
10. Sometimes the light looks best through dirty glass.