269/365: a good, long life

in ,
IMG_2513
{a good, long life}
Last night, after her amazing quinceañera birthday party, Cory died in her sleep. How neat that we were able to celebrate the sweet blessing she was to our family before she went. 

"Luke"
by Patricia MacLachlan & Emily MacLachlan Charest
from Once I Ate a Pie

The sun is warm
And I sleep.
I dream about when I was young.
I chased snowflakes in winter.
And ran through the grasses in spring.
I still bark when I want to.
And tonight I might howl at the moon.
But now the sun is warm.
And I sleep.
And dream.

Sunflowers

in
This morning Kate and her friend Hayley played in a sunflower field up north in Celina. 
These girls will someday be in school together, so it is neat to see a friendship blooming.

"Sunflowers"
by Rebecca Kai Dotlich

Yellow faces 

round 

as plates; 
giants growing 
at the gate. 
Golden guards 
saluting 
sky; 
garden kings 
with chocolate eyes.










The sunflowers were definitely on their last leg, so I have made a mental note to go earlier next year!

Thinking in Poetry

I know it may sound odd to you, but as a former writing teacher and lover of literature, I often make up poems. Here's one I wrote in my head when I was feeding Kate in the dark the other morning. I was thinking about how much I'm looking forward to finally staying home with Kate full-time, and how in just a few months it will have felt like a long time ago that I started staying home. Does that make any sense? In the dark, I felt for the pad and pen I knew were handy and scrawled my words, not knowing if it was even legible. It was. Here's my poem...


Isn't it strange
how time
sneaks up on you
then flies away?
The moments we
dread/anticipate
tiptoe up behind us
then
seem like
forever ago,
fleeing as
distant memories.