Catching up

It's been a while....I realized this week that June is really one of my absolute favorite months (right up there with October, honestly). All that green, all that potential. I dig in the sun-warmed earth and watch the things I've tended grow. I try to spend any hours that I'm not at a desk or behind the wheel of a car outside, soaking in the spring. It's fleeting; soon the air will fill with heat and haze, the sun will burn brighter, and I will try to spend my time by the ocean.

My irises, which I love as much for their reliability as for their beauty, are finally blooming:
And our little home looks so sweet I don't want to leave it.
Sometimes I can have coffee outside at the picnic table....but that's hard. I could stare at this all day:
We had the last insanely-early Saturday teeball game of the season Saturday. I knit and watch the game at the same time, which reminds me of a neighbor of my mom's friend Mary Alice. She would knit Norwegian sweaters at the beach, never taking her eyes off her children playing in the lake, not for a minute.

And on Sunday, we headed down to West Hartford for an event for patients of CT Childrens' Medical Center and their families. It celebrates survivors- these small warriors who have seen and battled more in their young lives than any of us should have to- and their families. Mostly it's a fun day for the kids and their families, and toward the end of the day some of the doctors speak, as well as some of the older kids.

As I listened to a mom read excerpts from her teenage daughter's journal, where she shared her experiences of the support of the hospital family and the connection between these kids who share this journey, I also watched the younger boy in front of me and his mom. He had one or two stars on the back of his shirt- years since diagnosis- and his head was bald. She had soaked a bandanna in water and was helping him tie it around his head to shield him from the sun, just as the mom up front was reading the section "Bald is Beautiful." I thought about how people find previously unknown inner reserves to take them through the worst of situations. And I thought about how lucky I am.....lucky that Emma has been doing so well, lucky to have a healthy child, lucky to be able to stand under a tent on this sunny June day and to be grateful for what I have.