Some women ask for flowers and chocolate for their birthdays. Me? I ask for 42 cubic feet of organic top and garden soil. Dad came into town today, and we built two 3' x 7' raised vegetable garden beds using slats from the as-yet-to-be renovated half-story. I'll take a picture of them with the new camera I bought with my birthday money...I'm getting much better at buying cool stuff with gift money. I only wish my Mom had been here to enjoy the day with the rest of us.
Tonight, Dad, Eric, Katie and I went to dinner and we got home around 8:30. It's a beautiful evening outside- absolutely perfect, if you ask me. Katie was pretty serious at dinner, even after trying some delicious garlic mashed potatoes for the first time, so we knew she was getting tired.
Or so we thought. After putting her in her crib, the three of us were on the porch swinging. Eric and I heard her screaming from her room. After rocking her a little bit, she wasn't going down easy. She and I walked onto the front porch, and Eric took out the stadium blanket for the three of us to sit on the front lawn.
Coleridge, I believe it was, or maybe it was Wordsworth- some British white guy writing a long time ago, wrote that words fade like embers the moment the poet thinks them. Sitting outside with Katie and Eric on my first birthday after her birth was magic, which I cannot adequately put into words now that the moment has passed. It was twilight and the sky glowed as it began to darken. Katie was wrapped in the quilt Mom made her and her face was shadowed by the unbelievably bright street lamp, but she sat calmly in my lap. Eric was laying on his side on the stadium blanket, and kids were playing down the street.
Katie watched as our cat Sita tried to jump into the neighbor's tree, and we realized fireflies were out. One landed on a blade of grass near the blanket, and I tried to point it out in the dark to Eric. He eventually caught it, and we leaned toward one another so Katie could see her first firefly. I'm sad to say the bug had performance anxiety and wouldn't do its bit, but we decided it was time to get Katie back to bed.
"Let's go listen to the Beatles, or James Taylor," I said to her, referring to the lullaby mix CD I made her. Eric and I started to try and sing Sweet Baby James to her, but we laughed as we flubbed the words. It was probably the world's worst attempt at soothing a baby.
She was calm, so we decided to go back inside and put her in her crib...that was twenty minutes ago, and right now, she picking up my shoe next to me at my computer, babbling away. She hasn't gone to sleep, but it was a truly magical memory: sitting in the twilight, with my husband and daughter, catching fireflies, and singing badly.
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