Yesterday was a perfect cup of butternut squash soup, and a perfect green salad with a citrus vinaigrette. There’s this little coffee shop, bakery, pizzeria, breakfast joint about 10 minutes away through the woods, and it looks like a little storybook house. In a village with a thatched roof and pizza smoke blowing out the top of the building. I hesitate sometimes to post about it on Facebook because people will think I’m bragging. The truth is, I have a least favorite part of the northeast, and it’s that odd place where NJ, CT, and NYC meet. It’s good if you like brake lights and car exhaust, but I prefer twinkly fairy lights and pizza exhaust. That’s just me, though. I thought of it today because I thought about how Thursday lunches began.
Des only had daycare and then preschool three times a week, leaving Thursdays and Fridays open. We used to go out to lunch. I’m not sure he ever appreciated it the way I did, or so I thought then, but I really pulled out the stops. We’d go to an airport cafe near Cassidy’s work to watch airplanes arrive and depart. We’d go to mill river cafes and eat sausage and cheese boards while watching the raging water. Sometimes it was diner french fries or clam chowder in bread bowls. Whatever it was, it was ours. There’s a romance of a Thursday and Friday lunch. He’s older now, but oh how the child is still there. It’s the way he waves out at me from the bus windows and hugs me fiercely in the school lines. Don’t go changing.
I think a lot about life before this – these two kids in elementary school with after school programs, school bus schedules, and homework. The baby/toddler time is contained. It’s safe and padded. Story time mornings. Nap time afternoons. Routines and structures and lunches, in the face of what could be chaos. No school. No daycare. I am so glad I had those five years with each of them, overlapping and intertwined. It was both chaotic and structured. It was both easy and hard for me.
And to think about going back to that is both the easiest and hardest thought. Five more years, with nearly ten years gone; moving on. Who would I be? Who would they be? How would it be? Whatever it would be, you know it would involve lunches.
For all the ways I’m diligent and in control, there are just as many ways I’m out of control. That’s sort of my thing. I make a point to having nothing out of control, when meanwhile it’s all creeping up and out until it’s unbearable. The thing is, this world is a little too crazy and too full of whim and whimsy and chaos and the unexpected to have all your ducks in a row. All your balls to the wall. The sooner you embrace that and own it, I suppose the happier you’ll be. That’s why I work at such strange paces – either full speed ahead, or snail’s pace. There are things that take me way too long for weird reasons.
I used to keep unedited photos for a rainy day, or just the soothing aspect of them. I’d stockpile them for sleepless nights – which rarely happen – but just to have some warm glow and to sit and work on all the details of the things I CAN control. It’s sort of like when you have a great book to read, but you can’t read it yet. Or maybe an ice cream pint waiting in the freezer for its next indulgence. The photos were/are like that. Except that more time passed. Soon, three months became six months became one year and became what is now 2.5 years behind. I edit my client and blog photos, and the best few of any set, but the bulk just grows. And how much longer can I really let them sit like that in outer space? Growing and stale.
Not to be morbid, but what if something happens to me and they’re never seen? I am about eight months behind on replying to blog comments, which explains why you occasionally get a random reply from me that no longer makes sense. 2.5 years of photos! I’m looking now to close that gap, and I’m starting today. Photo Share Friday, indeed. Here is a perfect day I had with then three-year-old Des. It might have been before lunch. It might have been after lunch. Whatever it was, it was ours.
This is me linking up, as one of my favorite things to do, with Finish The Sentence Friday. This week’s topic is Photo Share Friday And there’s still time to write yours. Come link up with your spin: HERE. What’s your photo? What’s its story?
