the busy heart

On Sunday we had the best weather of the year.  Sure, it rained, but it was also 77 degrees and mostly quite sunny, so we did the only logical thing: we took a walk along the Charles River.                                  [i didn't get a good pic of sam. he'll thank me for not posting a not-good one.] [boats. we have big plans to ride one of these boats very soon.] I love spring here.  I wish it would feel more springy and less wintery already, but the trees are blooming, and I'm remembering how obsessed I get with them.  When I'm walking downtown, I have to be careful not to run into buildings or cross streets without looking both ways, because all I want to do is look and look at these incredible trees.  I love how dark the bark looks, and how green the green looks--like the freshest thing in th...

Last night Sam and I and a few friends went to Easter Vigil at Sam's church .  When we arrived, they had a basket of long thin candles and everyone picked one up.  At the beginning of the service, the church dark, the priest stood at the back of the church and lit an enormous candle.  From that one candle, several small ones were lit and then, slowly, we passed the flame to everyone in the congregation.  I could tell once mine was lit that it was made from bee's wax, which instantly brought me back to my childhood.  My father kept six hives of bees in our backyard, and that smell reminded me of extraction day, a big metal drum spinning with wax frames in our driveway and the bees flying around, intensely curious.  I stood there in the church, next to Sam, watching everyone's face lit by their small flames, listening to a man sing about the light of Christ, how it illuminated the world, how we must keep it and tend it and pass...

Sam went to school one day and came back with a card for me featuring this image.  He says it's a publicity photo.  Apparently the guys at the mall photo booth took him completely seriously, which makes me laugh all the more. Being married to Sam? Not a bad deal at all.

On Sunday I said two awkward things.  Two things that made the people I was talking to raise their eyebrows or laugh nervously.  I'm the type of person who is still thinking about those things I said two days later.  It's not that I offended anyone, it's just that sometimes my brain works differently, and what I think/say comes out a little weird.  Sometimes I love this about myself--that my brain is not like other brains--but most of the time I wish it wouldn't be so.  I wish, in some deep part of me, that I could always be the good girl, to think how you think, to please you, World. I realized today that Sam is sort of the opposite of this.  If he says something shocking, something surprising, this is a good day for Sam.  He may worry, occasionally, about his students reporting him to someone who might be concerned about the edgy joke he made, but mostly, when he makes his students laugh nervously or raise their eyebrows, he feels like he's done hi...

Remember the friend who made the miraculous quilt ? She's teaching me to quilt, too.  I thought I was just going to learn to use the sewing machine I got for Christmas, that maybe we'd make a skirt or something equally simple, but when we got to fabric store, E had a plan.  "A quilt," she said, "is the best way to learn to sew. All straight lines."  And so we picked out fabric, went back to my house, and while the husbands played guitars and talked about music, and sweet potatoes roasted in the oven, we cut out little squares and spread them out according to a chart that E drew up in about ten seconds.  This is what it looked like, spread out (with cat). (This is the thing about cats: they seem to get quilts.  When you even suggest you might make one, they know we're dealing with a potential blanket right off, and commence utilizing it.) I found something fascinating once I got the hang of putting those rows toget...

In the days leading up to Valentine's Day, I had a sense that I wanted to do something nice for Sam, something a bit sentimental, but I wasn't entirely sure how he'd take it.  He doesn't seem the sort.  And when I asked him casually about it, he confirmed that he indeed was not the sort.  "Valentine's Day," said Sam, "is for girls."  He claimed he didn't expect anything, indeed didn't want anything, that girls invented the holiday  so they could have an extra birthday, etc.  And in his defense, he really came through.  He sent me a beautiful bromeliad, which arrived at work with a gorgeously-written card, and then came and visited me and we went for a spontaneous dinner out (we'd planned to be wise and eat at home, since we'd eaten out in a V-day way over the weekend).  Somewhere in there, I just decided to do it, to do the romantic thing I'd been considering, which was to find a series of short love poems or excerpts from l...

I've always been obsessed with self-improvement.  From the time I was small, I've been making these lists that divide my life into categories--health, money, talents, etc--and writing out ambitious and nearly-absurd goals for myself.  Examples: I will create five new recipes a week. I will exercise for 2 hours on our rebounder trampoline every day.  I will read a book every day.  (Mind you, I was 11 years old.) Maybe this sort of system works for other people, but for me this was a recipe for discouragement.  Fast forward to my life now, and my goals have gotten more elaborate, no less plentiful, and no more doable.  And basically, for all that I hope to change, and for all of the ways I want to change, I had grown to completely mistrust my ability to do so.  Sort of like: why bother? I'll just fail anyway.  That sort of thing. Last year, in another effort to change my life ...