Easter has come and gone. Mother’s Day too. Vintage shortsuits were worn with saddle shoes (!) and knee socks (!), and there was a lot of brunch. It seems like there is a lot of brunch in the spring. I spent my first two nights away from Aaron and Ewan in almost three years, on the Oregon Coast. It was not terrible. The strawberries are in full swing out on Sauvie Island (where these photos were taken), and we learned that u-pick with a toddler is both adorable and futile. This summer will likely be hotter than any I can remember here, and I am looking forward to it. I ordered Ewan two new swimsuits from the little boy's section. He will be three in August. I know this in my bones, when I look at him, when I try to pick him up, all limbs and solid muscle, but I also don’t believe it. Listen to me getting ahead of myself. In more ways than one. Tonight is cool and there is still some time unaccounted for. The world is that funny shade of florescent green. New growth. Spring.
What do you do when you’re feeling overwhelmed? Not the day-to-day kind of overwhelmed (although there is always that), but more, cosmically overwhelmed? I am still trying to find a solution. There is melodramatic television. (Hello, Outlander). Friends. Knitting sometimes. The god-forsaken internet. There are the same cookies every Friday. Everyone in this house but me is sick of them (if people can even be sick of cookies), and yet I keep making them? The same meals are on rotation (sorry, New Year’s resolutions). The same walks. The dogs are bored out of their minds. I sing to myself, mostly old songs. Hymns from my childhood. Listen to Sibyelle Baier
Reading rut not withstanding, I started Sally Mann's autobiography this week and finished it in a few days. I think the book is good, even great sometimes (although often problematic), but more than that, it was what I needed. I wonder about what Ewan needs. That is the understatement of the century. It leaves me reeling, all the ways I champion him and fail him every day. I am not doing a very good job of keeping track of his reading habits here, although I wish I was. Those posts matter more to me than all the others. There is one post, long overdue, about picture books involving letters and numbers and how we have read EVERY ONE IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE a million times over these last six months. I now consider myself an expert in the field. Albeit a narrow, only-interesting-to-a-small-handful-of-children, sort of field. Maybe I will still write it. There is a lot of comfort in a story about letters. There are only (ever) 26 of them. Finite things in an infinite world. I think I know exactly what he’s after.
