Eggs

and family and candy and sunshine! 

And snakes, because boys.

northern flickers

Tolliver spent much of the morning watching birds out the back window. He noticed one we hadn't seen before, and identified it using google and a guide book, based on the color of its nape and the sound of its call. He knew there were ants in the yard where the bird was pecking, and that food source plus a text exchange with the next door neighbor helped solidify his conviction. 

For the better part of an hour he watched the bird and I watched him, and I wondered, when the world feels shaky in one area, whether our instinct may be to double down on certainty in another.

the kitchen runway

a flash

Hank often sounds like a lawyer, speaking in the least straight-forward way possible. His language is not ornate but it is sometimes tortured, taking routes around and under what he means to say rather than just stating it outright.

I feel like I'm gonna be lopsided, since I only got growing pains in one leg last night.
I did wake up at 8:21 but I was trying to sleep 39 more minutes till 9 o'clock.
Can you measure me on the wall?

I try to explain that I'm thinking, that I'm working on something and need a minute, that I will be able to listen well in a little bit. That I'd like to finish my coffee.
He hears nothing but the absence of No, his voice like a speeding train, veering from left to right when confronted with a switch.

Do you know how to portal into books?

Why do people have to feed their souls? Do you think souls need protein?

You know the stripes that come up from girls' eyes in pictures? What are those called again?

Where do you see my stamina running out?

Settling himself on my lap while I take a few more sips of caffeine, studying a spot on my hand where a bandaid had been the day before: 
Your cut isn't bleeding anymore, now it's just like a blood cave.
Did it hurt? I don't think you cried. 
When I'm crying I usually sort of see a flash of rainbow through my tears. 

I feel like I could say a thousand things about him, a gathering storm, but somehow all the words seem used up.

mud season

It's like a fifth season around here, really.

Mud aside though, sunshine and a change of scenery and even a snake make family happiness feel a little less like a fragile thing.

mounting a response

It's spring now, the time of year when nature does not stand in opposition to things like hope.

I got a covid shot last week, the moment I was eligible. 

It rained on my drive home from the strip mall vaccination site.

I squinted to see through the windshield, to see the road and the light at the end of the tunnel.

I am trying to remember myself outside the context of stay-at-home

and out of sweatpants and topknots, in shoes and bras and stores.

For a year I've grasped through murky ideas for some measure of control 

wondering whether there might be relief in the details, 

realizing that it mostly boiled down to what any of us were doing, or not doing

underneath all the warnings and all the words, and how we could do it better.

It still does.

It turns out pandemics are personal and peculiar, 

we cannot expect our experiences and emotions to coordinate.

At our house, this year, we've suffered a series of small bereavements

but none that have stolen a load-bearing beam.

We've made messes and mistakes and progress and plans

and noted innumerable measures of great fortune.

I'd already built a very sturdy muscle around seeing loss and joy coexist.

I've binged shows and double masked, equally unexplainable to any former self.

All of this improvisation will end though, soon maybe

and when it does, what is our new assignment?

I hope to carry into the future some framework for slowing down, for growing in new ways

like spring, brutal and blossoming, a masterclass in the both/and of it all.

nothing more

I want nothing more for the boys than the proclivity to be forever possessed by wonder.