Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.

                         W a l t    W h i t m a n 

   "Dad's twenty-nine now," Chloe said thoughtfully.     Her age is linked with his and she notices it. Last year it was twenty-eight and five; this year, twenty-nine and six.  The wheels of time turn round and round each year with equality. I was nineteen when I had her, just a girl, and just a woman.   She will always be Eldest; my Firstborn- words I disliked for myself but that seem so fitting for this dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty of a daughter.  May she have every gift we can bestow, and surpass us in every way.

     "It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to."

                     J R R   T o l k i e n 

J u l y 15

        The sun shines down, deliciously hot on my bare shoulders. Eleanor naps on a big striped pillow in the shade of a lawn chair, her eyelashes soft and thick resting on her little round cheeks. Her baby lips inspire kissing at all times, and she is sleeping too deeply to be woken by a kiss or two.
      Anthony, the son of his father, industriously pushes a miniature red wheelbarrow full of clippings back and forth across our small green lawn.
       Chloe and Elysia are playing at being rabbits,  picking wild flowers and clover stems for their dinner, and the shade of the lilac tree is dappled across the grassy hillside.
 
       The lake hums with summer noise, boats and float planes buzzing to and fro across and above the blue water. I'm reading 'My Life in France' by Julia Child- I love it, but her writing always makes me madly hungry. I think there is a watermelon cooling in the icebox.

                      Oh July! I adore you.

                         

           

                    
     "It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things."

             L e o n a r d o   d a  V i n c i

J u l y 1 0

J u l y  1 0

  The rain has fallen thickly all morning; there is nothing half - hearted about our good Alaskan summer rain.  I keep a window or two open so we can enjoy the sound of it falling. The gray sky envelopes the sun, and it is hard to tell whether it is ten o'clock or two! Eleanor sleeps on our soft white  bed, her sweet round face a  perfect 'O' on the pillow. Eleanor  Olympia.   You are like a creamy peony, or a full-blown white rose. How did I ever live without you?  

          

             

summer evenings

J U L Y 8

J u l y 8

Ten o'clock.  The sun streams in the windows,  nowhere near to going down yet. Chloe, in her white nightgown, can't fall asleep and asks me if she can read in her bed if she is quiet. Yes, my lovely, precious newly-six year old. Read all you want.

I fell asleep on our bed in the sunshine, and while I slept the sun clouded over and the wind picked up.  With my eyes still half-closed the sound of the wind murmuring in the trees reminded me of the sea, so strongly that I could almost smell the salt in the air and feel it, white and dusty on my legs. A seabird, wandering inland, screaming and calling in its wild tongue made the illusion all the more real, and made me long for the ocean, for the sun and the sand, the rain falling from a blue sky and the cool mountain breezes. Being born in Hawai'i is a gift you can never repay.

May 17 2014

                                    J U L Y  6

The Sunday rain falls, heavy and sweet on the grass, rinsing the birch leaves clean and ruffling the lake into tiny  waves.                                       Anthony snuck into our bed early this morning, and the thin, precious weight of him rests against my legs. Two years old, he has become aware of fear, named and unnamed. He wonders if a moose could climb our stairs. No, my love. The moose have their home as we have ours. Sleep soft and deep, my  little son.