Small Things

Ode to summer in Northern California

Summer. At night we eat strawberry ice cream in bed, our bare legs tangled and golden and covered in bug bites from days spent by the river. Lit up by the moon through slatted blinds I can see the branches of the pines reaching into the sky like shadowy meridians. Remnants of smoke from a distant burn pile drift on the warm wind, blanketing our little guest room faintly in a scent both new and nostalgic. 

We talk about the future, about our year of sacrifice – wondering how it will all stack up. Like a boomerang I am catapulted back and forth between wanting to create stability and wanting to live an adventurous life. 

But the decision was already made —  adventure, in the larger sense (think; red-eye flights on jet planes to strange new places where we eat strange new foods and our feet ache from hours of exploring and our minds ache from deciphering the language and our eyes ache from taking it all in but it’s all so beautiful that our capacity magically expands to fill ourselves so completely and so exquisitely that the memory of it becomes written on our souls for the rest of forever) would have to wait. 

This would instead be a year about reimagining. And a year about finding romance in the small things. Like how in the backyard there are electric blue dragonflies who rush on invisible heat waves, always in pairs — a palpable friction pulling between them as they tumble and zip through the sky like shooting stars. Or the simplicity of a midafternoon nap with a window open and the fan on and white cotton sheets against bare skin. Or the confidence of the scotch broom blooming in big yellow bundles along the freeways and along every little dirt road in between (how I wish I could be more like it, unapologetic and boastful.) Or how our fingertips are stained a deep red from pulling the pits out of cherries to feed the fruit to our daughter. How in the night she will inevitably call to us from her crib and we’ll pull her into our bed, crumbling into each other until the sun breaks through again.

Here in this little room, the morning finds us detained in a half-dream, time distended and slow and sweet.

Here in this little room, through slatted blinds, I’m reaching for threads of light to sustain us. I’m looking for romance in the small things. And in the small things that I find, my love for you grows larger than ever before; boundless and brave and even boastful.