summer on the breezeway

 

there's a little room between the kitchen and the garage of our home that my grandma christened "the breezeway." i like to think of it as the early-morning-coffee-with-the-sunshine-spilling-in-way. or the late-evening-salads-before-walking-way. it's the perfect little space for breathing, i've found. as because it's not quite outside but not quite in, pablo goes crazy over it, running from screen to screen looking out at bunnies in the lawn. one night in april, we sat and rocked on the glider and listened to a prairie home companion as a late spring storm spun outside and sprayed its droplets onto our ankles. pretty soon, it will be winter again and the breezeway won't be as comfortable, so we're soaking up this little nugget of time every chance we can.

recording, dictating and remembering

 

 

in an effort to record and dictate all that is beautiful and lovely and simple and small around me, and also in part to discourage annonymous spam comments that appear to arise when you neglect your little corner of the web for a bit too long, i am determined to write more regularly. if only for myself to read, or my sweet mama.

because there are things like cardinals perched on old swingsets and beans sprouting up through fresh dirt that are so beautiful and tiny and precious that i want to share them. or things like the time this weekend that i saw a tail creeping along the old back steps outside the breezeway and we discovered the black snake that has  plagued nanno's land for years, only to meet its final destiny on the sidewalk beside the wild onions. or how on thursday night i sat feet away from sam beam singing "passing afternoon" in a garden in virginia, my bare feet right in front of him and the knees of my sweet (and indelibly cool) parents pressed gently against my back.

we planted our garden last week and i can see it from the back bedroom window and it brings me deep joy. not because it's fruitful quite yet (in fact, the family of deer who live in our woods may turn it into nature's buffet table), but because it reminds me of the time last weekend when i, ankle deep in dirt and compost, shoveling until my little arms were sore, looked across the yard and saw robert on the mower, and felt entirely grateful for the act of movement, of bending down to push and pull the earth, then molding it into rows for our seedlings, my gloves caked in clay cooking in the may sunshine.

i remember every time i put on my favorite dean martin record and dance in the living room with pablo how quickly time flies and how grand of a thing it is that we have things like blogs to record our memories. i gave my right ring finger a callous in elementary school because i wrote every single thing down in a burgundy floral journal marked "read and die" (a bit extreme for entries filled with heart doodles and misspelled words). now the callous is gone and all i want to do is share my writing. funny how a little time and perspective creeps up on us day by day, isn't it?

so here's to a week of living, really living, the little moments, and throwing shouts of praise back to Heaven for each one of them.