...a clean kitchen floor

and the fresh, clean smell of mopping solution mingling with open-window air breathing through our house.

...finding frozen moments

in other peoples' lives.  This picture was in a collection of old family photos on my father's side.  We don't know who the children are, or if they're even related to us.  The only notation we have is "Children in Lucern."  It's a compelling photograph, though, in the way of most old pictures.  These children grew up and perhaps were known to others as parents and grandparents.  Yet all we have of them is this one moment, preserved forever in youth.

When I glance at it from a distance, I have to admit it's a little creepy.  But as I look more closely, I'm struck by how intimate it is to be able to examine someone's face: the droop of an eyelid, curve of the lips, brush of hair upon forehead.  I wonder what the photographer's ratty old carpet smelled like, what color the backdrop was, who else was there, and what scene existed beyond the camera's window back through time. 

...high tea

with sisters.

...yes

this is a swimming cap with a cluster of plastic dollar-store grapes affixed.  Homage to Esther.  Tonight we were blessed to witness a church talent show in which seven lovely ladies brought together synchronized stage swimming and Michael Jackson's Thriller.  Poetry in motion.

...fragrant strawrburries

...Easter lilies,

especially white star-gazer lilies--I love them.  Last year in late winter we bought bulbs and planted them in pots to grow in our home where they would breathe the freshness of spring into each day.  My hope was that they would be in full bloom when we brought home our new baby in June--and that lilies blooming on his birthday would be a tradition throughout his life.  They were beautiful.  Absolutely.  When they died, I cut down the stems and put the pots down in the basement to winter.  This year, I have brought them upstairs and started watering them once again in hopes of more spring beauty.  However, my flower pots are inhabited by a different white creature.  Each morning, I shuffle to the dining room east window where we keep our seedlings and plants, and each morning I am greeted by little white mushrooms in my lily beds.  I open the blinds to let in the glorious sunlight, and within an hour those little fun guys are withered down to the dust.  But I know they'll be back again tomorrow.

...the baby giraffe

at the zoo decided to fold up its legs to have a rest upon the ground.  The process involved something akin to the challenge of folding a road map, the undoing of which must have been just as complicated because he didn't get up again.

...putting off

my muddling a bread recipe of the unfamiliar-complicated-scary-gluten-free variety to giggle chat with a dear friend.  With potato starch fluffed across the recipe book and seventeen other flours and starches and meals standing in stiff crinkly packages around my work bowl, I half-heartedly tried to find the tapioca flour that I'm certain I bought because I can plainly see the packaging in my mind--and finally gave up to the happy moment of enjoying friendship and sharing.

...family

game nights where the games are secondary to the conversation.

...baby grows head

...spring-lings

...ignorance + self-expression

...gradual mornings

when feeble morning light filters through the blinds pointing down upon our rumpled sheets and the soft warm forms under them, steeping the room in thin cool blue--a blue that seeps into skin, cloth, metal, wood. and my son's deep-throated giggles at discovering the skin just under his chin is ticklish as I do a spidery finger dance across it. lying in our bed, the light slowly growing around us.

...onomatopoeia