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May 09, 2005

and the world seems so strange, so common and wondrous at once,*

Exactly.

I've been trying to write about Sunday and I'm having trouble getting at how... how--see? That's where I have to stop. I don't know a word or words that can make you see; sum it up. How it was.

How I woke up to birdsong after a not-very-good sleep at 6:00 a.m., with Herself huddled against me breathing quietly. How the sky was a brilliant blue, and cloudless, when I went downstairs for paper and coffee, with Spike curling around my ankles and meowing for company. How the trees sounded as the breeze came up with the sun, the air yellow with pollen, everything blue and green and yellow.

How I found everything I needed at the grocery store for a change, and how when I got home to Herself and Moo they helped me bring in the bags without being asked and didn't fight. How surprised I was to get flowers from D., who arrived with her son and bearing hot dishes of eggs and cheese and sausage, which we added to the bagels and fruit salad on our plates before we went downstairs out onto the deck under the trees to have our Mother's Day brunch.

How we talked and ate and and then after we finished still sat outside and talked some more and watched the wind on the lake and listened to the birds through the late morning and into the late afternoon. How for the first time in a very long time the day went by without me having to think it through. I sat in the sun, the shadows moved, the breeze sounded through the trees and I was just there, in it all.

How after everybody left, Moo and Herself and I went to the beach. How she swam in the still-frigid lake and her brother and I lay on the grassy banks and talked and watched her and watched the other families and kids and the couple flying kites, and then how the three of us tossed a ball back and forth until it went into the water and was gone and it was time to go home and have dinner. How the sky looked as the sun went down and the world turned orange and the day ended, and it was perfect, and how long had it been since I had felt so there. So right there, and so happy to be, there with them and it was enough, and the best thing was that we all knew it.

^{*Ruth L. Schwartz, Grass}

Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)