4th of July Was

+Northfield, Minnesota.
+A striped shirt and red shoes.
+86 humid degrees.
+A walk downtown.
+And then another.
+A flea market, that I wished instead was a farmer's market–with produce and honey and homemade bread.
+Resting in the grass, when I became too tired to stand.
+An old woman offering me her seat.
+Me saying, "No thank you. I prefer the grass."
+A sip of water in a cooled store.
+A perfect pear and a smashed peach.
+One picnic with strangers.
+One picnic with friends.
+(Kindness at both, all of the same.)
+Two conversations with two separate librarians.
+Sloppy joes.
+Bratwurst.
+Watermelon.
+Rice pudding, from a kind woman who kissed my cheek and asked when my baby is due.
+Peach and blueberry pie.
+Missing Provo.
+Missing Spencer.
+Tiny fireflies creating the tiniest, most magical lights.
+Big fireworks creating bigger lights, and louder.
+(We found them by following the sound.)

December is darkest, in June there's the light.

And more light. And more.

My new (least) favorite thing

is maternity clothes shopping.

Any mums have any advice for me?

My new favorite thing

is having women I love place their hands gently on my stomach. I can't shake the feeling that it's sacred–like a blessing.

One of the best ones.

I am going to New York

and I am bringing everything I own.

20 Weeks

Today I am 20+1 weeks. (The photo was taken last Sunday). I am thrilled to be a smidgeon over halfway.

A revelation.

There is a little tiny girl growing inside of me, and I couldn't be happier about it. I still have not felt the baby babe move, so watching her on the screen was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. Her little heart beat! Her little legs! Her little toes! Her waving arms! And here, her little profile:

S and I had the technician mark a card for us, so we could open it up together alone, over crepes. It worked out perfectly.

My two favorite boys on Radio Flyers.

It was the loveliest walk. And night.

Once upon a time we had family photos taken.

(Little did we know on that January day that there was already a little babe inside of me, that would soon expand my belly and our family.)

Sometimes someone you admire asks you to co-edit a book with them.

And even though you are overwhelmed, and pregnant, and moving across the country, you say, "Yes."

(Sometimes that person also appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart in the last year.
And gave a beautiful address at the conference that you spoke on Heavenly Mother.)

If you are wondering if this is the hardest semester of my life,

the answer is, "Yes. Yes it is."

In October.

(Card via Sycamore Street Press.)

I may or may not have bore my testimony on Levinas and Ricoeur in Relief Society today.

Today I received the kindest rejection letter of my life.

It still made me cry.

When it is finals

I will want to cry, but will just eat lots of cookies instead.

Blanchot on writing.

One must just write, in uncertainty and in necessity. Not writing is among the effects of writing.

Hesse on trees.

(And also on life.)

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow. 

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. 

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live. 

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all. 

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother. 

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.

*h/t Miss Pinborough

Been talking bout the way things change.

My family lives, in a different state.



Rivers and roads. Rivers and roads. Rivers til I reach you.
Rivers and roads. Rivers and roads. Rivers til I reach you.

(Family/Utah, I will reach you tomorrow. And for that, I am thankful.)

Colbert on grief.

INTERVIEWER: Your father and two brothers died when you were just 10.

COLBERT: That’s right.

INTERVIEWER: They were on a commercial airliner that crashed while landing in thick fog. Your brothers were both teenagers, and your father was taking them to Connecticut to enroll them in private school. How did you make sense of their deaths?

COLBERT: Things didn’t seem that important anymore. Nothing seemed that important anymore. My mother said to me—and I think she said this to all my brothers and sisters—she urged me to look at everything in the light of eternity. In other words, it doesn’t matter what I wear. I just wear the uniform of my youth. I wear an oxford-cloth shirt and khakis. What does it matter? What does it matter what I wear?

INTERVIEWER: As a 10-year-old boy who just lost his dad, that advice helped you?

COLBERT: Sure, absolutely.

INTERVIEWER: It’s been almost four decades since it happened. Does the grief dissipate?

COLBERT: No. It’s not as keen. Well, it’s not as present, how about that? It’s just as keen but not as present. But it will always accept the invitation. Grief will always accept the invitation to appear. It’s got plenty of time for you.

INTERVIEWER: “I’ll be here.”

COLBERT: That’s right. “I’ll be here when you need me.” The interesting thing about grief, I think, is that it is its own size. It is not the size of you. It is its own size. And grief comes to you. You know what I mean? I’ve always liked that phrase He was visited by grief, because that’s really what it is. Grief is its own thing. It’s not like it’s in me and I’m going to deal with it. It’s a thing, and you have to be okay with its presence. If you try to ignore it, it will be like a wolf at your door.

INTERVIEWER: It’s a loud wolf. It huffs and it puffs.

COLBERT: [Laughs] It does, doesn’t it? It can rattle the hinges.

I always want to hear the same old song.

These days it is First Aid Kit's "I Met Up With the King." (Thank you E.P.)