St. Patrick's Day

Three years ago I was sitting next to a good friend eating corned beef and cabbage and decided to send a text to the man who was becoming my friend; I didn't know with what joy he received it, how he showed it to his friends, and how he pulled up my website and said to his parents, "This is the girl I'm going to marry someday."

Three years later, we are making breakfast together, bumping happily into each other and waltzing while the coffee brewed. Our precious daughter kicks and coos nearby. We have three years of life lived intensely behind us and a whole lifetime ahead.

What a gift is true love, how rare, and how priceless. Dear M., I treasure you with every particle of my being and anticipate learning to love you more deeply every day for the rest of my life.

Happy Saint Paddy's Day!

Baby Face

Sing, My Angel!

I am sad to say I've never had the privilege of seeing "The Phantom of the Opera" live. But I know the music well. This clip actually sends chills down my spine.

And I had to include this for its overwhelming Gothic imagery! From the snakes on the gravestones to the wedding dress/mirror scene to the billowing red-lined cape of the Phantom, this absolutely smacks of the most ravening doom!

Today I'm Thankful for... Life

How easily we take for granted the life and glory in our children! There was a moment, back at the beginning of my pregnancy, when it seemed that I would miscarry, and that the new life we had just discovered would be snuffed out. Through the weeks that followed we reeled in the pain and joy of it all. I rested and nourished the budding life within.

Months later our precious daughter was born, full term, almost too healthy to be true, and she continues to boggle my mind with her growth and development. I am reminded that many parent have been less fortunate, and that life is not always a guarantee.

I am deeply thankful to look over and see my sleeping daughter breathing on the couch. And I wish to offer my heartfelt sympathy to all who have struggled with infertility, any who have had challenging pregnancies, and those who had to say goodbye to their little ones before even getting to meet them.

Cabin Fever

I'm not much of a homebody, so the past month indoors as a new mother has been rather a challenge to my emotional stability! I love our two-bedroom townhouse; it's filled with momentos of good times and gifts from loved ones, its walls are painted restful and eye-delighting colors by my talented and hardworking mother, and already we have found the home in our hearts reflected in it. I love my charming daughter, with whom I spend my days. I love my writing, Netflix, cooking (and eating), endless episodes of Deep Space Nine, lots of coffee, books, occasional cleaning, and long phone calls. But I can tell you with certainty that it's not enough for my eyes to rest upon.

I need the sky--preferably crisp and blue, with white clouds drifting across like puffy cotton balls. I need the sun to kiss my face and blind me in its radiance. I need to breathe air untainted by a furnace, full of sounds and scents which have nothing whatsoever to do with me. I need to see people in their cars like beetles on the highway, to exchange pleasantries with a friendly barista, to pace the aisles of the grocery store. I need to come home tired and ready to retreat into familiar things.

I'm realizing how much I need bigness around me. I need there to be more than myself and my surroundings. Perhaps this necessity is an integral part of human nature--why, after all, we have as an entire society never been content to imagine that life ended with our bodily death. Nor have we accepted the lack of a Beyond. We need to be small in the vastness of the universe. We need to be less than something--for that means we always have something greater to which to aspire.

My cabin fever is not just due to my extroverted nature, but also to the human necessity to acknowledge myself as part of a greater whole.

Do you get cabin fever? How do you seek to remedy it?