torrents of water

It was the biggest rainfall in Madison's history. Flood waters poured out of nowhere all evening long and continue to cause disruptions and turmoil now, ten hours after the last raindrop fell from the sky.

Ed the sailor came back just before midnight. It took a good many hours for us to review the last month and to reconnect. Before dawn, we fell asleep, exhausted but content.

In the morning, we survey the damage. We are on a hill so you'd never know there was a record setting rain! The cheepers are happy, Stop Sign is complaining that he wants more food. The flowers? Well, it's August. What can you expect! You gotta love abundance in disarray!






(A few lilies remain. I trim them in appreciation, for a season well lived!)






Ed is on a sailor's schedule: eat meals when the weather and conditions permit, not when the clock says it's breakfast time. I threaten to disenfranchise him from my morning routine! Each post does not have to have a photo of this meal. I am still capable of changing things around here, on Ocean!

Or am I?





A day for me begins with as beautiful a breakfast as you can muster. It just does.


The next three days have long been on the books as a farmhouse vacation for Snowdrop and Sparrow. It's the little guy's first set of overnights here and though he is rather chill about it...





...Snowdrop is extremely excited "to show him around."

I pick her up at school and I offer some adventure possibilities, but really, she just wants to come to the farmhouse and watch Sparrow navigate this place as only a two month old can. But first, an inspection of the tomatoes. Accompanied by Tomato. Who, by the way, has been nibbling on the tomatoes.






(Running after Henny, who will never let anyone catch up with her!)






("Can we play store? I'm selling magazines!")






("Is my sister home??)







Dinnertime: A hodgepodge of Snowdrop favorites.






So happy to have Ed home again!






Snowdrop and Sparrow. They roll in and out of play encounters. He's into her, she's into him, then -- just focused on just his toys. Something distracts her. He listens to the sound of her all over the room. Finally he wants someone to pay attention to him. She does. With vigor. Perhaps too much vigor. Or maybe just right? He is her friend. She is his friend.






It's dark now. Ed goes out to put away the cheepers. A real sign that he is home! She insists on going out with him. They come back waving their flashlights, pretending that the moon followed them indoors.







Bed time. Prolonged, too late, but of course I'm just getting the hang of putting the two of them down. Snowdrop, I can't carry you, I have to carry Sparrow.
Really?
Well, let me try...






Good night sweet children of the world. Good night, their parents. Good night Ed.


And so it seems like I quickly picked up the routines and pace of the weeks gone by, no? Does a trip far away really change you?

I can't speak for humanity, but for me, it does. Being amidst people who live with different allegiances, different traditions, different histories is so crucially important to me. As I get older, I get more cautious in my orbit: I no longer plan trips to places that are so different from my own that I feel myself to be lost. That belonged to a different decade. Still, when I go away, when I cross borders, I stop expecting the people around me to be as they are back home.  Forty-eight hours in Iceland may not have been much, but as always with these trips, it pushed me forward. And that's such a good thing.