Ten.Forty-Eight
1. Emotion hangover. Making me sleep in.
2. The sky is still dense and gray, but as a little bit of the light seeps through, I count the new tomatoes. Eight in all. Tiny, green, firm.
3. He said to me, last night, that I don't like when people take my dreams away from me. And that coming home was like reality snatching back every dream I'd been living over those past 4 days.
4. I love the color of this mug. Just off-white enough to shift my color story.
5. Three lunches and 3 snacks. Breakfast. Need to also buy 6 tab dividers with pockets.
6. I really need to get my new glasses. Maybe then I'll be able to see again.
7. I failed.
8. I don't really want to talk to anyone so I sit in the car until the very last minute. Then avoid eye contact and look low to meet the gazes of only my own children. I know that I am in hiding.
9. The blackberries are big and ripe and juicy. Let this, too, be a metaphor for life.
10. For just a moment the sun made the bottoms of the clouds glow highlighter orange and I think I'm going to be ok.
Ten.Forty-Six
1. San Francisco is quiet this time of morning.
2. This flight feels tighter than the last. Maybe I have grown.
3. I am sleepy. My eyes stay more closed than open.
4. Not ready.
5. I should have told her to stay on I-88.
6. Home. The children. My plants. Dirty floors. So much laundry. Everyone seems taller.
7. Dead battery.
8. I make frozen pizza and a Caesar salad for dinner. Re-entry is always about ease.
9. How is tomorrow already the first day of school?
10. I can feel my eyes getting hot with tears right before I fall asleep. This is ok.
Ten.Forty-Five
1. The last morning.
2. You guys are local, right?
3. We hope to be soon, we say. Order two more english muffins, double-toasted with butter, and blackberry jam.
4. I meet her at Bouchon Bakery and order a croissant and a large coffee. We talk a little bit of business, of children, of writing.
5. Gather all the things and bring them back down to the car. My bag has a large seed cone, some feathers, a piece of driftwood, vine skeletons, and a coffee mug.
6. My first barrel sample and it's given to me by my favorite winemaker. She says the guys didn't take to the haiku idea. I learn that the seeds of the grapes will taste like toasted almonds when ripe.
7. I could have stayed there all day looking at The Palisades.
8. Tyler.
9. The light on the vines. Been here three times before and this is the first time I've seen the vines full of leaves and grapes, drip irrigation in action.
10. My boots are so dusty.
Ten.Forty-Four
1. Heavy and low skies. Us and the runners. The second-to-last morning here.
2. Coffee again at Mini Model Bakery. I make him be the Instagram husband and have him take a picture of me between the vines.
3. The curvy roads back over to Sonoma for breakfast at Fremont Diner. Shrimp and grits and chicken and waffles. 3 cups of coffee. I buy a mug. It's the sink full of green leaves and the teal backless stools that I love.
4. Sandwiches and a bottle of wine while we overlook the valley. Karman has been working here for as long as I've been coming to Napa. 7 years, he says. You should totally move here, he says. We know.
5. Open houses. They all point us to Browns Valley and Alta Heights.
6. The agent we met yesterday sends over a file and sets us up in a porthole.
7. You're moving there?! No, not yet. But it feels like it's gonna happen soon.
8. Back in St. Helena at the winemaker's house. He tells us all the people he knows. We drink through three different wines. I think I now need to go to Mexico City.
9. How is any of this happening?
10. This is really happening.
Ten.Forty-Three
1. 4:38 am.
2. The Safeway on Jefferson Street is open 24 hours a day. We fill the cart with kombucha and water and smoked almonds; sign up with our email address to get the discounts and pay with gift cards.
3. The sun is just beginning to rise as we leave the grocery store.
4. English muffin. Double toasted. Butter and blackberry jam on the side.
5. I ask him if I can have the recipe for the granola. He takes my email address and says he'll leave it for the pastry chef.
6. We look at the app and see if we can find some open houses for Sunday.
7. How I wanted to say to him, "Thank you for telling the truth about what was done to the Native Americans here."
8. This place. The water and the cabins and the bells. How I know this will change everything. Jennette and me, 14 other women, fever dreaming.
9. It's going to happen. This is everything. The designer - talking to her about brass clips and stemware, her writer friends, and her favorite clients. Overhearing a bit of a conversation and walking out of there, mouth coated in zinfandel, with smiles, and a real estate agent.
10. One order of canolis.
Ten.Forty-Two
1. It is still dark. I go to each of them and kiss their cheeks.
2. The car is here a little early and I'm still scrambling to make sure they have paper towels and toilet tissue and cash for groceries.
3. Deep gratitude for them showing up and being here so that I could have this time away.
4. Airport fashion.
5. The way the clouds look like cotton balls planted in very neat and tidy rows.
6. Pieces of the earth cut up into rectangles and circles.
7. The greenish hue of the bay. How when I cross over it I think of how cold the water must be on a day like today.
8. This is everything.
9. Sometimes you get to live out pieces of your dream and trust that the holes will fill themselves in when ready.
10. The water at my toes, and then over my feet, and then over my ankles, and then just below my calves. How I giggled when the bottoms of my pants got wet. Feathers and driftwood and plants from the sea. Hot sand. Blue sky. Vanilla milkshake after a cheeseburger with peppery bacon. All the children laughing. This is everything.
Ten.Forty-One
1. I'm always worried that the sound of the kettle will wake them all up. But she comes down right after me anyway, pink and white pajama pants with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
2. I convince her that it was all a dream.
3. Butterfly. Black and that crazy bright blue.
4. Buying sneakers for three kids at the same time. Everyone is surprisingly patient.
5. I like this whole reading by the pool thing. Next time I will bring a hat to shield my eyes from the sun. Should be easier to nap that way.
6. The feeling of being stretched across cool cotton.
7. There is not enough time.
8. I am better today.
9. The deer are back. They are mesmerizing. I am always stopping to watch them graze or lay down or bound into the thickest of the grasses.
10. One sleep until California.
Ten.Forty
1. 5:45 alarm. School begins in one week.
2. Still stinging but my stomach is not as tight.
3. Cappuccino and front porch with my journal. I know that my head is hanging. I'm trying to stay upright.
4. No deer.
5. Monarch butterfly.
6. I feel for where I need to pull the tomato. 6 of them. Tomorrow I'll drizzle them with balsamic and a little bit of salt.
7. Dragonflies. So many of them. Is it that I never noticed them before? Or is it that this space we have here is full of the things that draw them near.
8. Praying Mantis. All of these signs.
9. I'm still sour and I know that it will pass in time.
10. Two sleeps until California.
Ten.Thirty-Nine
1. Waking up with the moon.
2. The bathroom tiles glow from the light. It's so quiet. These are always the quietest hours. I love the times when I'm the only one awake.
3. Pants and shirt and jacket. Don't forget the pin. The babysitter will be here in 5 minutes. She is always early.
4. Quickly to the store first. I need something to eat before I drink the coffee. We try to use the 1-hour and 29-minute ride into the city to review, but sit mostly in silence. You realize that you know all you can know at this moment and there's no use stressing yourself trying to add in just one more thing.
5. What I miss most about my old town is how much I walked to everything. This is what I like about city living: the fresh air, the movement of your body, the sites, and the sounds. And all that brick.
6. The four of them seem nice and friendly. The first two parts of the test are done. I feel much more relieved. Like, maybe this will happen after all.
7. Nothing I eat is staying in my body. I've had a headache since this morning. My stomach keeps cramping. I'm sweaty. It's mostly nerves, I'm sure. But I leave the service portion of the exam knowing that I drowned in those last 16 minutes.
8. I eat some croquettes, drink Pinot Grigio from Mt. Etna, and then top it off with a cone of caramel ice cream and a bombolini from Bombobar. Try to sip on an iced-coffee to soothe the headache.
9. He passes and I fail. Only 6 out of 18 passed. I am one of the 12 that did not. But I am a strong candidate. Each one of the Masters tell me to do it again. They are always so encouraging. I will try to take it again before the end of the year.
10. You can tell fall is coming by the quality of the light. It's taken on this honeyed hue in the late evening.
Ten.Thirty-Seven
1. Up with the alarm and then back to sleep.
2. Bagels, toasted. Coffee. Glassware lined up on the counter. He is ready to test me.
3. This blazer is uncomfortable. How am I to be myself?
4. The tomatoes are turning red.
5. The sun and the breeze. Quiet Sunday. Reading and practicing and studying.
6. I keep kissing him on the head. The questions they asked us in the hospital reminded me of the afternoon I went in to feed him and instead had to sign slips to allow them to give him new blood. Through the umbilical cord, they said. We don't want brain damage, they said. Mom is Af-Am, they said. It's a blood disorder, they said. This is the hematologist from the University of Chicago, they said. The way the attending ER physician pretended to know what the disorder is, and the way I knew she Googled it just before stepping into the room. So, no fava beans, she said.
7. When you do it right, you will hear only a slight hiss.
8. I think we believe in ourselves enough.
9. The smell of sulphur in the glass.
10. The moon. A trail of clouds in front of it. Glowing white and then orange through the trees.
Ten.Thirty-Six
1. Green and breezy.
2. She asks for hand pies again. I balance cherries on the mouth of the wine bottle and push the pits through with a skewer. Toss them with flour and sugar and cinnamon. Heap them into circles of dough.
3. The same and yet not. They are eating up the land for ego; that is the part I don't miss. But I do miss the brick and the warmth of it. The feeling of familiarity.
4. She's nice enough. We laugh about children and my introvertedness.
5. I need to shift my language around this. I am talking myself back into the spaces I no longer wish to be.
6. Caramel popcorn.
7. Rest.
8. I've never seen one of my children pass out before. Eyes rolled back and lips white. Fire truck and ambulance. Him on the concrete, lashes fluttering. Saying his name over and over again.
9. Two hours in the ER and he is himself again. No fractures, no bleeding.
10. The moon. So big and bright and white.
Ten.Thirty-Five
1. The coolness of this morning. Sweater weather in August.
2. The skies are gray and moody and this donut shop is always full. Two old fashioned; one caramel; a vanilla longjohn with sprinkles; and a cinnamon roll.
3. Coffee in the cappuccino cup. I like it because it's white and fills the hand.
4. This test.
5. Slowly through the isles searching for Syrah and Gamay.
6. The wind today. It keeps blowing open my sweater and creeping up my ankles.
7. Fox. So lean and with a thick, slick coat, pausing before he trotted off into the tall grass.
8. This test. This test.
9. The young deer, grazing by the trees at the foot of the berm.
10. I trust myself.
Ten.Thirty-Four
1. What is the name for this color? Not electric. Not hot. Dayglow? Whatever it is, it is gloriously unnatural and I cannot take my eyes off of it.
2. The windows are opaque with condensation. More gladiolas have bloomed. I gather the half-empty water glasses from the night before and clink towards the sink.
3. The softness of this light.
4. Cappuccino, no coffee.
5. Sweet orange oil at the base of my neck and on my wrists.
6. The way the wind bends these trees. I don't know what kind of trees they are but the way they sway in storms captivates me.
7. I admit to her that in some ways I am unwilling to open. I like the closeness of this circle as it now sits.
8. One kid out of three, and a husband delayed by bad weather, means Portillo's for dinner and a movie in my bed.
9. Lavender sky. This is a color of night I have yet to see.
10. The essential is invisible. And so then, how do we see with the heart? I must go read The Little Prince.
Ten.Thirty-Three
1. Up early to get last minute birthday things: m & m's and bacon and mozzarella.
2. I wanted to be better at this by now.
3. The air is so thick this morning but still I stand outside and watch the way the mist glows orange from the rising sun.
4. No deer.
5. I need to be studying. Instead I meditate for 10 minutes and then go downstairs to make guacamole and fresh chips.
6. The three of us huddle around the hot pans squeezing lime juice onto the chips before we toss them into our mouths. This. I want to always remember the moments we huddled around the counter eating bites of things.
7. We mark the wall with his name and the date. This somehow makes it all real. Makes this home feel like it belongs to us now.
8. Chocolate cake so deep in color it's almost black. Perfectly moist. The slight bitterness from the cocoa countered by the sweetness of the ice cream. Sweet/Bitter. Food is a metaphor for Life.
9. What is it that I will write?
10. Cicadas.
Ten.Thirty-Two
1. She's out by the tree grazing. Looks up at me when I slip through the glass door.
2. I sit on the stoop and watch her tiptoe through the tall grass.
3. Coffee is extra hot.
4. The sounds of mowers and trimmers and saws this morning.
5. Expanding into new ways of being require the creation of new boundaries. Right now they are pencil-thin.
6. The things I always forget: cilantro and extra tomatoes.
7. The way they are all in my bed, folded over one another, blankets on top of them. One is asleep.
8. How the heart stops when you drive around the bend and see the city skyline. Always. As if I'm seeing it for the first time, over and over again.
9. Rose water marshmallows.
10. Yes, I do belong here.
Ten.Thirty-One
1. The light this morning.
2. I tell him that I miss my 5 o'clock rise time. That I need that longer stretch of morning. That is where the magic is, I think.
3. Blueberry pancakes. I make so many things for them that I don't eat. Like blueberry pancakes and french toast and frozen french fries.
4. The home on the corner is having a patio put in. The bobcat is scraping the asphalt as it attempts to pick up more rock and transport it to the backyard. I get the feeling he doesn't know what he's doing.
5. Trouble focusing.
6. I realize that before I can communicate to them what I need, I need to ge clear on it myself. What do I desire for this space? This home? I do know I don't need nerf gun battles while I try to vaccuum.
7. This is maybe an example of the epic domestic.
8. I walk the yard and pull the weeds even though he tells me it's no use. But there is something therapuetic about walking through this carpet of green, reaching over with my bare fingers to feel for where the stem meets the earth. And the feeling of tugging band twisting until it releases itself to you.
9. Toward the far edge of the yard I can smell the wildness.
10. Electric pink and blue and purple in the sky.
Ten.Thirty
1. It's a Sunday morning and so the gentle ping of the golfers teeing off is steady.
2. I see the deer, mom and baby, way off in the distance—just the tops of their heads through the tall prairie grass.
3. Think about where you're holding back.
4. Focus and Consistency. How am I already 30 days into this? It feels like I just started last week. These 10. My morning pages. Breathing. Meditation. The sum of these things and everything else that's fallen away.
5. I still need to work on boundaries. We'll have a talk at dinner.
6. Sometimes I think we should have tried to get that house on 1.5 acres.
7. But we are here now. And this newness is odd for everyone. The rules are not the same.
8. Salmon and buerre rouge and risotto. Spinach.
9. This documentary. It's spoken almost entirely in French. It's a funny thing to read a movie. I like it. It challenges the brain. Plus I am beginning to learn French. Everything sounds better in French.
10. Qu'est-ce que le vin? Qu'est ce que la vie?
Ten.Twenty-Nine
1. It is dark and he's kissing my forehead.
2. I am waking late again.
3. The yellow bars of light that slip through the slats of the blinds.
4. Dew on the feet again.
5. She meditates with me on the front porch while eating a scone from a ziploc bag. I tell her that she can't breathe very deeply while eating a scone. She tells me that she can. She tells me that she can do almost anything.
6. I do miss the broken brick. So much.
7. Picking the largest and greenest leaves of sage. The basil is yellowing. There's another tomato growing—that makes 8. The peppers are multiplying. Again I say, please let this be a metaphor for life.
8. Chianti Classico.
9. The light. The light.
10. The world loves to be fooled.
Ten.Twenty-Eight
1. This is happening in reverse. It's getting closer and closer to the start of the school year but I'm rising later and later.
2. Dew on the tops of my feet.
3. I sit half in the sun and half in the shade. I love the feel of this mug but the coffee cools down far too quickly in it.
4. I'm getting back in the habit of watching my own thoughts.
5. The longing to return to California. For long stretches of vineyards and mountains and valleys. For Spanish tile and the scent of orange and bergamot and rosemary and cedar.
6. In the dream-that-will-be-reality we'll grow lemons and figs, avocados and cherries, maybe plant an olive tree.
7. But already, every morning I wake up and say, "wow, thank you."
8. Gewurztraminer, Viognier, Chenin Blanc.
9. The way people speak the words you need to hear. How the right words have a way of carrying you through to the next level. When others hold for you the grandest version of yourself. Because sometimes we can't see it. Trust that it's truth and rest in that.
10. And what are we here to do?
Ten.Twenty-Seven
1. I woke up late again. An hour later than I usually do.
2. He's eaten both bags of the candied walnuts. And I know I shouldn't be mad, but I am. And I tell him so while he's drinking his coffee and I'm pouring mine.
3. The deer is back and she is still unnamed. I am wondering if I should name her at all since she doesn't belong to me.
4. I take my cup upstairs, make the bed, grab a light blanket to throw over myself. The littlest one and I watch another half of Jurassic Park. I will miss this when school resumes.
5. I forget how important it is to rest. Quiet corners and adequate rest. Yes, more of this please.
6. I want to paint this wall black.
7. That feeling you get when you go back over the words you tried to call into your life: freedom, community, gather, vision, sweet, and delicious.
8. "Wine is dead." He says this and I instantly understand what he means.
9. But why is this person still here, still saying things to me?
10. In the shower I repeat (with my best Italian accent): "F-L-A-P. Franciacorta. Lambrusco. Asti. Prosecco."