Thursday

Can beautiful days become wallpaper, in the sense that you hardly notice them after you've had a long string of sunshine and warm breezes? Should you teach yourself to appreciate the gift of beauty, every time you are presented with it?

I think about this, but not very often. Mostly, I follow my senses and on good days I'm giddy and full of ambition, and on more fragile days, well, there are always deep breathing exercises and the calm shoulder of Ed. The point is, you can't spend all your time in deep appreciation, because thinking about how fleeting a good moment may be is just a recipe for getting yourself into a funk: oh! I'm healthy! the sun is out! I must rejoice because this will surely pass!  I mean, doesn't that guarantee that you'll start feeling anxious very quickly, thinking of all the storms that are hovering at the periphery?

So on this beautiful day, I do not feel compelled to go out and enjoy it. I go about my day as I would at any other time. In this month, early morning always has in it a walk through the garden. Bugs or no bugs, I snip and pull, I pause and smile.

And fall madly in love with some of the blooms right now.





Breakfast: on the porch. With my sweet partner, who just last night proposed that we head out for a week-long biking trip along the Erie Canal.
Ed, I'm too old to lug camping gear and daily stuff on a bike.
That's the trouble with you -- you think you can't do some of this stuff anymore, whereas, in fact, you can.






I put off thinking about this. I know Ed is trying to imagine a trip together that we would both love. I know I want to imagine it as well. The last time we camped was four years ago, in the Adirondacks. It's not that I believed it to be my last one, but still, the years go by and Ed cannot talk me into doing something in the wild again.

In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop, but only for a short spell.






We read her favorites, then she ropes us both into play that recreates the stories she favors these days. Ed, who is gathering up eggs for the farmers' market, gets assigned the dual role of two grandmothers: a spiffy one and a down to earth one who drives a tractor. (Honestly, I can't see him in frilly attire, but Snowdrop has a vivid imagination.)





And then, just a short while later, I am off to Chicago to see my city granddaughter, Primrose. It's been a month since I have sang goofy songs for her and hugged her tight!

Car to bus, bus to city, train to their neighborhood. (So green now! I was here in May, when sunshine and warm air were an iffy thing. Today, the city is in summer mode!)





Familiar routines, yet, with the passage of time, each visit is transformed into something new and different. And beautiful! No, not wallpaper at all: more like a kaleidoscope of ever changing patterns, each one remarkable, each one creating new memories that will last far longer than we could possibly imagine.