It is filling my summer time and it is filling my heart.
And when I need to process news like Nu saying they may not go back to college, it really, really helps to remind me that there are many, many ways to start over and over again.
Pic: This afternoon's culinary delight was the work of many toddler hands and combined broccoli, eggplant, and peaches. (I will not be trying this at home.)
Big A and I worked on dredging the pond all day and he thinks (correctly) that we should let things dry before we repair, but I want to just go ahead and refill it up already.
I typed up a response to the Whistler text book club after dinner, but it seemed too late to text. I'm mentally hopping from foot to foot, waiting for it to be mid morning so we can unpack more delicious details.
The mango pickle I started (based on memories and vibes of my grandmother's) needs time to cure, but I keep opening the jar for just a little sniff.
The submissions to the project with EM are beginning to come in, and I love everything and just want to tell every author their submission is accepted although that won't be feasible.
Pic: Max adores Nu. I mean, he loves watermelon, but Nu, he just worships.
I took the next day off. Like really off. If I owed anyone a text or a phone call or an email it just wasn't happening.
I've been spending all my time on summer reading... Finished the new Elizabeth Strout, then finished the new Ann Patchett. Both were lovely. I'd love to read The Things We Never Say with one of my bookclubs where so many are teachers. I'm currently almost through Maggie O'Farrell's Land. I get the charm the comfortable familiarity of stories like those of Strout and Patchett exercise. But give me the excitement of something like Land any day. I'm loving the anti-colonial intrigue, the imaginative recreation of bog people, the random snippet that pirates wore gold earrings so they could be used to pay for their funerals...
I spent a lot of time at the garden center. Also a lot of cash. But it's ok--I shop exclusively in my closet, and have no expensive habits or memberships--I can indulge myself. It was mostly flowers, but if the veggies take off, we/the deer will be grateful.
I had a long and lovely dream about my Amma, sis, and me. We were visiting a fabulous desert palace. (we were supposed to go to Turkey together this year.) We were sitting on a bench holding hands and I was playing a new-to-me song (Niall Horan “Heaven” I bet the title is not a coincidence) because it has some surprising melodic changes in the chorus I thought my mom would like (she did). Then I offered to get my sister ice cream, and my mom said the most her thing possible! "What, Kanna? You’re going to eat ice cream without me?" That's when I woke up.
Pic: I found this hasty scribble from my mom I'd saved. It had been on something she'd sent me via someone who was visiting. A box of sweets, I think. I took it as a good sign for the week.
I've done poetry readings before but that's with other people. This is my first book reading. What if choke or OMG... what if it's the most boring thing ever?!
I've forbidden Big A and Nu to come. If I'm going to flail, I'd rather do it in front of people I don't know, you know? But I think friends are going to be there although I have not (yet) shared this anywhere.
Pic: Flyer from the bookstore. I was happy to be asked. Really, really, hope it goes well.
Here's a publisher's link. Click on "sample" to see some dear, familiar names (alphabetical order of first names) pop out in the acknowledgements (para 5). If you'd like to order, please feel free to use "MAYA30" (without quotes) for a 30% discount.
Pic: SD reaching for it on a display table. This may be the only time I ever share a space with the likes of Ada Limon, Jeanette Winterson, and Rebecca Solnit, so I better make the most of it.
A long FaceTime with my dad first thing in the morning. Everything about this post is so true and his hair is still so luxurious except strikingly all silver. Hopefully, that's me someday!
The rest of the day was trying to make sure that At and Nu remembered to do something nice for Big A and that Big A called his dad. I'd ordered a custom bracelet for Big A with all five kids' names on it (Scout too, naturally).
Flashback: At our rehearsal dinner, At (whose bio dad died when they were a toddler) asked if Big A could be "dad." And when we were having Nu, Big A legally adopted At so there would be no question in At's mind or anyone else's that he was truly dad. This was one of the things that made my mom love Big A so extra. Maybe me too.
Pic: A robin in a tree along the Red Cedar River. Father's Day walk with Big A.
Then it hit me this morning... I had been looking at our wedding album yesterday... and of course seeing all the pictures of mom must have triggered my grief nausea. (I still have it most mornings, but not in the evenings.)
And then I pictured myself telling her. Except, inexplicably, the words that popped into my head were the ones that Estha uses in The God of Small Things (in the scene that never fails to bring me to tears): "Ammu, feeling vomitty..." he says as the train pulls away from the station. So there I was in the middle of Meijer, crying... Big A holding me to him while I was telling him NOT to look at me.
Pic: A series of her walking hand-in-hand with my stepmom-in-law whom she'd met for the VERY FIRST TIME that weekend. This is so her.
I've raised A LOT of funds for our Refugee Development Center over the years from generous family and friends, but this is the first yea...
