Monday, March 19, 2007

What I'm up to

The Summer of my life

It's Spring again. Research into the database of my moods that this blog provides reveals that every mid/late March I wake up and am phenomenally happy that the winter is over. If keeping a blog for six and a half years was worth anything, it was worth this: I can see the patterns now. I can tell when I've been happy and when I've been down, when I was crushingly in love and when I thought the whole world was shit. And I can search on those feelings using Boolian logic and tag and archive and look back at it all and realise how fabulous my life really has been.

I haven't posted in months, and I don't regret it one bit. I think six and a half years is a reasonable data set to pull from at present. Here's the catalog of me; now I can scamper to livejournal where things are a bit more organised and selective. Screening one's internet presence is a part of getting older. I'm sure you understand.

I realised the other day that I'm nearing the summertime of my life. First there was the winter, the hard bits, where I was growing up and lonely all the time. And then I left home and started my springtime, my green unwrapping of me, tender bits easily damaged, pushing back all that hard soil all the time and wishing there were more to eat always. My springtime is nearly over. I'm putting down thicker and more hard to transplant roots. When the sun came out and broke winter's back a couple of weeks ago, I felt like I had bloomed for the first time. I feel lush and healthy. I am ripening.

When I put out the marigolds last week, Dot scootched and climbed all around me, biting off some of the tops and sitting on other sprouts. I didn't mind; it was just so great to have her with me, to watch her play in the dirt for the first time. She's such a joy. I can't believe that a year ago she was still swimming inside my stomach, waiting to push her way out. I love her more than I can say. When she was born, the husband and I instantly began speaking of our other child, the one we haven't yet made, and when they would join us as well. Because we don't know the second child's gender-to-be but already think of them as family, we refer to our next offspring as Embryo Zygote. We are thus already a unit of four.

The husband is not only enjoying law school, but studying religious pursuits as well; in four years he'll emerge from all of this more formidable a mind than ever. He's in a period of serious growth himself. While our daughter learns to walk and talk he's learning to think in new patterns. We are growing together with our branches and roots entangled.

Atlanta is deliciously warm again, and the weather reflects the life I have built for myself. When I curl up at night in our bed, with the baby sleeping downstairs and the warm air pushing all around us, I know the world is perfect in many ways. There are so many political problems around that I know it could be better, but I've built my shelter and my family and we're going to be OK, we're going to be alright, it's nearly summer and the worst of the cold weather is nearly past. What will be next involves shaved ice and fireflies, fireworks and playing in the dirt.

We'll need a bigger house for more guests, but I know it will all work out.