keeping count.
Posted: October 21, 2013 Filed under: birthdays, family Leave a comment
The morning after I turned forty, the power went out.
At first I worried about the significance of the lights going out on the first day of my new decade, but in fact it wasn’t so bad. It was a drizzly day, and we (we grown-ups, at least) were all feeling a little foggy from the previous night’s enthusiastic consumption; we lit candles and gathered vintage silk and Mongolian lamb and feather pillows and coverlets and curled up.
My sister was here for the briefest of wonderful visits, so we took advantage, drinking perfect coffee (courtesy of the restaurant around the corner) and looking out at the rain and reveling in the chance to be together, which doesn’t happen for us nearly as often as I’d like.
At a certain point my husband dashed out for provisions and we opened the last of the bubbly. My sister kept me company while I made dessert for the following day’s Thanksgiving feast. An easy, comforting dinner, a little more wine, an early bedtime – and, just like that, the weekend of my big birthday was over.
My sister flew home early the next morning.
And now I am forty – the age I had been approaching with a mix of curiosity and dread all these months, the age I was determined to be on the right side of, to be content with, to somehow conquer – and nothing has changed.
Things here carry on as they do, haphazard and beautiful.
This weekend, we are having a party.
I have more blessings than I know how to count.
as it happens.
Posted: October 8, 2013 Filed under: family, love 2 Comments
Our summer ended abruptly and sadly just before Labour Day.
I won’t go into the details, but we were left reeling and panicked with worry over someone we love; and even now, roughly six weeks later, everyone having settled into a quasi-routine with this new normal, we are living with a degree of heartache which will, I feel, possibly diminish but never quite disappear.
As it happens, though, I woke up this morning and realized that we are just over a week into my very favourite month of the year – all of us (and all of you too, no doubt) having navigated September like so many hamsters on wheels, careening slightly from one moment to the next – and that there is some mindful celebrating to be done.
This is our month, friends, to give thanks and acknowledge joy and look forward with some gladness.
Just before we leap in to all of that goodness, I hope you’ll permit me this brief backward glance, a grateful goodbye to one of the dreamiest summers on our family’s record and a salute to the September that was – just as it was.
The garden was out of hand – in the best possible way.
New views were discovered, and new paths taken.
The training wheels came off.
We ate dozens of salads and piles of cake and drank glasses and glasses of Pimms.
We shared amazing moments with family and friends.
We made a pie.
My young son went to school for the first time.
The leaves began to turn.
And this dress sits glimmering in my cupboard, biding its time until the next celebration…any minute now.
Annie Dishes 