Stories take shape in my mind from moment to moment. I come to write but I end up staring out the window, kick my feet up on my desk and sip espresso or latte and take deep breaths. I wish for warm, hot days and watery things. I long for the feel of white sand between my toes and the crunch of salt water on my lips. Outside my window a crow and robin fight. Mean and urgent, feathers fly. My throat is tight with the thought of Sully wrapping up preschool next week. My weekday sidekick growing into grade school monogrammed backpacks and lunch boxes, to be followed by more big money tooth-fairy wishes and a pink gummy mouth. My heart. I say it and I say it and I know it gets so old, but where does the time go? We were walking the other day and stopped to watch a group of middle school boys picking up trash in the schoolyard. I said to Sully, what a nice thing to do. His little fingers woven between the link fence, watching. Pure and clear were his words, mother nature's sons. I cannot stop hearing them. In just days we'll be here again, home. Without the rush of the morning routine and a mostly ink-less day planner. The promise of time spent outside doing this and that and cooling in the shade where I can sneak in a deep inhale of their sun-drenched hair and nuzzle kisses in their sweaty necks. Tell them I love them a lot. For now, I let these gorgeous words by Frances Mayes from her new memoir Under Magnolia soften in my mind, stay a while.
The soul is a swimming animal. Let it scrape the bottom; let it grow gills. The soul, flagrant and fishy. Let the cool mud settle. For there is no great dog in the heavens, only an abstract constellation, and who will connect the fiery dots? Let the soul somersault in clean water. Let me be still, a long amphora under water since the seventh century BC; let me be buoyant. Let me swim a psalm.
