Aching for Life

Peach blossoms at the community garden Every day for the last few weeks, whenever I take walks with Zeke or just look at the cherry tree just outside our back patio, all these thoughts about springtime last year rushes to me. For weeks I've been meaning to write them down, and for weeks I've decided to wait till later, after I'm done writing the literature review for my thesis, after I'm done soaking in my last week at home with Zeke. Well, my birthday has come and gone without me sitting down to write even a basic journal entry (my habit is to do some soul-and-life-stocktaking on March 7 each year), so March 9 2013 is the day I will stop and record some of these things. Blossoming My anemones are blooming! Let's start with that cherry tree. "Oh," I want to tell Zeke - "Oh, if only you could have seen how this tree welcomed your arrival last year!" For a few weeks it was a cloud of white, shedding snowy petals. This winter ha

This past week was Zeke’s first full week with Jean, our new nanny, shared with another family. And as much as I savored those three hours every day to sit down and focus on writing my thesis or to run errands with both hands free, by the end of the week, I felt this strange unrest – as if something wasn’t fitting quite right. I realized it was because it was such a dramatic reduction of focused, awake, sun-drenched, active hours with Zeke. It was essentially down to just the hours between his waking up and his first nap, because after his second nap, I am usually distracted with preparing dinner. Today is Friday, his stay-at-home day. Ryan took him to lunch and then I got to play with him out in the courtyard after lunch, and then put him down for his afternoon nap in a leisurely way. I’m watching him nap on the monitor right now, his chubby arms folded, his giant head pushed up against a bundle of blankets, his full little legs curled up into a right angle, and my heart is ful