*I wrote this just before we left in the days where we didn’t know where we would live in San Antonio and still in the throes of goodbye. I’ve got lots more to say but we’ve been going like our hair is on fire and I’m a good month behind. (Moving // part 1 of 3)

// summer

I’ve got my eyes fixed open wide, pressing image upon image in the folds and creases of my brain as we weave down the backroads of Small-Town-Next-To-The-Big-City, Virginia. The honeysuckle is crawling over fence posts and telephone poles in a cloying death grip while the rest of the greenery hovers over the narrow road lush with color and light. Light that’s perfect while my Second Son holds his baby sister’s hand down the path because he knows the way and she trusts him unfailingly.

// fall

I can’t see what’s coming, so I need to see what’s here. To be present in my future memories, to remember what I know now. The full moon over our clearing in the trees. The wild laugh of my girl when she misses the sweet spot on the landing and splashes into the swimming hole. The blackberry patch I’ve waded into right before a sudden squall to fill my bucket with wild berries shot through with the static of an impending storm. The soft haze of monochromatic winter, snow blanketing the trees and piling behind the chicken coop in toddler sized drifts.

// winter

We’ve followed a meandering path of history and art and yes, always relationship through the trail of our nation’s capital and it is a gift, of hard and soft, of monument and memorial, of sacrifice and service. Of love, and friendship, and truth-telling. The future is a fog, and I may not have a picture of where we’ll lay our heads come seven weeks or so, but I’m awash in the snapshots of life lived, in a place where I may have been reluctant to live it.

// spring

~Love, M.