So fragile, so lovely.

Inspiration’s been a little slow in coming this week.  My writing has stalled to a complete halt and I’m trying not to panic about it.  I know that the specter of the end of the year has commenced its menacing looming; I can feel it flickering around the edges of every day.  Another school year is drawing to a close, bringing with it incontrovertible evidence that 365 days I can never have back have slipped by.  Grace and Whit grow ever taller, ever further from the babies they were just yesterday, as the raveling string between our hearts unspools.

All I have to offer today, from this morass of emotion, is a few moments from the last several days.

Another dandelion offering from Whit, proffered in a tight fist with a big smile and great pride.  I see no reason not to put these smack in the middle of my kitchen island.  I even move the peonies out of the way.

Grace still loves playing with her American Girls, and her absolute favorite thing is their dogs.  She is obsessed with dogs.  Witness them lined up by her desk.  This isn’t even all of them.  This child lobbies, daily, for a pet of her own.  I’m still holding firm to no but we’ll see …

This is how Whit went to bed the other night.  The famous exercise pants (size 3T) and a pirate hoop earring from Disney World.  Spray paint his torso gold and he could bartend at Studio 54.

The stunning flowers, even on a rainy day, that fill the yard of the kids’ school.  I’m sure the other parents wonder what I’m doing when I stand there, iphone pointed up, and take pictures of trees or sky.

The last pair of Grace’s shoes in size 13.  She is actually wearing a 2 now, but Converse run huge, so these were 13.  I can’t bear that she is out of toddler shoe sizes.  Really, I can’t bear any of it.

I was one of the parents who “helped” the kindergardeners hold the chicks.  Whit had this dear black one with a yellow splotch on his head.  I held him too, and could feel his tiny heart racing like a hummingbird’s against my palms.  So fragile, so lovely.

And then Whit drew this picture and wrote about his chick.  I cried at how I can read his writing now, at his detailed drawing, how he, like me, noticed the spot of yellow.  So fragile, so lovely.