dinner and dessert.

The smalls and I have been tasting the fruits of this season. It is hot, but dinner is so so good.

These days are kind. I am exhausted and happy.

green.

Green is my favorite. And today was green. Something about a spring-cloudy sky making new grass, young leaves appear a crazy yellow-green. . .

Contrast. Juxtaposition.

. . .

In a few days I will finish my first year of graduate school. My mind is a little muddled right now. Sometimes it seems I am clinging to the edges of everything. Sometimes I feel like fire.

. . .

Maybe I am always looking for things to pull me up or hold me down. Grounded but really really awake.

Wanting enough to ask.

would you look at the pollen?

Spring is here. I guess it has been here for a few weeks, but I have really begun to notice it in the past few days. Suddenly I seem to be peering through a thick yellow haze. Tiny pollen particles dust every surface. Even the rain seems to be in cahoots with this stuff - not washing it away, but simply turning it into a mustardy mud.

While pollen does not bother me a bit, it does more than bother Lilley. After having skin tests done on her last fall, the allergist told me she had one of the worst reactions he has ever seen to oak pollen. If she is outside for even a few minutes her eyes turn red and she starts clawing at them. Last spring, we first discovered this allergy when her eyes became so swollen it looked like she had been in a fistfight.

So we have to be creative. While most people are running around outside enjoying the beautiful weather, I have to choose between the torture of keeping Lilley inside or the torture of taking her out. I have thought about getting her a face mask and a pair of goggles to wear outside. She would look a little bizarre, but she at least she might be able to play in the grass.

For now I am sticking with indoor creativity versus trauma to her young self-esteem. A few days ago we spent the morning at the Science Center. We ran around, did puzzles, flew airplanes, played on computers, and I even got to protect Lilley and Django from the dinosaur (which I do not think they accept is not actually real).

While crossing a bridge that runs over the highway construction sight, Lilley stepped onto a thick, plexiglass window. Django did not understand that she was safe, and it was precious beyond description to watch his 2 1/2-year old self try to protect his sister from the peril of falling through the hole in the bridge.

By the time we were on our way back over the bridge to go home, Django had grown to trust the plexiglass window. We stepped onto it together, and looked at the yellow world below.

pry your eyes.

Django has been eating two small cookies for 15 minutes. He takes a bite of one, puts it down, chews, swallows, takes a bite of the other cookie. . . deliberate boy.

They are in his belly now. His words.

. . .

Lilley is playing with finger puppets - a bear, a bird, and a ballerina. She speaks for them in quiet tones, and these three creatures become compatible in her imagination. Her mind seems completely alive. So many things possible.

. . .

Every day is not magic.

But there are wry smiles and such. The kinds of things a parent notices.

I write for myself. I speak to myself. It might be time for a dance party.

i will see you soon.

This morning the hospitals were backlit by the rising sun, so that escaping steam appeared purple and pink. Almost ridiculous - cotton candy waste.

. . .

It seems I woke a hundred times last night. And my feet were on the floor while the sky was still a gray and palpable presence in the room.

I entered the morning routine with reckless familiarity.

. . .

It is Sunday, and I am at work. My mind flees the scene, but such efforts seem a wasted kind of living.

Gather the threads of this promise. Tune yourself to the story.

Remember that night you heard three gunshots followed by the single toll of a bell?

cold january. midday.

These days have been so cold. Beneath the white sky, I laugh inside this thin body - almost a disgrace, almost at its mercy.

Gray bird walking the fence. I stand and wonder at any winged creature who is at home in these temperatures.

. . .

My skin holds liquid memory - beading on the surface, almost mine.

. . .

A tiny snowflake like a six-pointed star lands on my sleeve. I breathe until it melts into a drop of nearly frozen water.

There it is. Something touching bone, blood running thick and palpable.

this is christmas. part 2.

I saw a streak of lightning this morning. It is raining, and everything seems incandescent and gray on this 70 degree winter day.

. . .

On Christmas a conversation turned into a song. And suddenly I am aware of music all around me.

Something remembered, then found.

. . .

Lilley and Django are consistently surprising and beautiful.

I took them to the Action/Abstraction exhibit at the art museum a few weeks ago. When we first walked into the gallery, Lilley stood before two paintings - one by Pollock, the other by de Kooning. After a moment's furrowed stare, she pointed to the de Kooning and stated, "That is not a Pollock."

. . .

It is possible to be purely, utterly, ridiculously thankful.