We have company right now, our friend Melina. Last night we stayed up really late, sitting by the fire, our faces macbook-aglow as we wrote. We gave each other writing ideas and laughed hard about inappropriate things. My daughters tried really hard to wake her up at 7 this morning and I found myself fiercely protecting her sleep. I pulled two giggling, half-jammied kids out of her room and shut the door. She is still sleeping now, at 10:45, and I find myself tip-toeing around the house to encourage every moment of shut-eye possible. I am on my third espresso. It’s like I’m getting a contact high from her sleeping-in, fondly remembering the time in my life when I could sleep until I woke.
There’s a lot of that with Lina, we see ourselves in the other. It’s quite fun. She is me, sometime ago. And I am her sometime ahead. Or vice versa. Or both. I wrote about it in this week’s mamalode column. Click to read mama digs: everything is big and important.
Melina and Hometeam
This morning, my dirt-crusted station wagon zoomed past snowy hills, under gray sky. NPR barely audible over the full-on defrost that wasn’t yet warm. I held my shoulders near my ears in an attempt to squeeze warmth into my core.
My daughters sat buckled in their car seats, hands folded in laps. Reflected in the rear-view mirror, their clothes a celebration of pink, red, purple, blue and orange which vibrated off the neutral expanse beyond the windshield. Their stripedy legs climbing out of chunky boots.
“Mom?” Margot asks slowly and deliberately, like a statement.
“Yeah bug?”
“You know what is SO awesome about summer? I can just get out of bed and put on a leotard and sparkly shoes and run straight out into the field. I don’t even have to wear socks or anything.”
We haven’t had the energetic benefit of new snow in a week. When the sky quilts the hills with bright white, it feels like cleared countertops, clean sheets, a deep breath and new undies all at the same time.
The benefit to four seasons is living in them and also dreaming of the next. The dreaming always happens a few months in, with a few months to go. And, with glorious predictability, the next seasonal rhythm moves in with her own version of cleared countertops, clean sheets, a deep breath and new undies.
