For this alone on Death I wreak / The wrath that garners in my heart; / He put our lives so far apart / We cannot hear each other speak.

My dad would have turned 52 today, but he died instead.  He’ll have been gone 10 years this August.  I’m not very good at remembering dates.  I always forget when it’s a significant day, and then something or someone reminds me, and they hit me so hard.  So, now I’m missing him.  And feeling guilty about not remember his birthday, about not being with him when he died, about not thinking of him often enough, about every single time I ever said anything mean to him.  But these are not thoughts for here.  So I’ll share a happy memory with you!

It was my birthday.  I don’t remember which.  I’m going to guess it was my eighth or ninth, or maybe tenth, birthday, and all I wanted for my birthday was this mountain bike.  Right before we were going to have cake, my dad took me aside and told me that he wasn’t able to get me the bike I wanted, that he’d gone to buy it and they didn’t have any left, that he was sorry, that he’d tried.  And I understood that and told him so, that it was okay.  So they lit the candles and we cut the cake and we ate it, and then we all moved from the kitchen to the living room to open presents.  And there, in the middle of the room, on the big blue rug was the bike!  He’d tricked me, and I’d fallen for it.  He was so sincere and apologetic about it that it hadn’t even crossed my mind.  I was ecstatic and shocked, and I think there’s a picture somewhere of that moment, the bike in all it’s yellow and neon-green glory, my arms thrust so forcefully into the air in triumph that my shirt pulled up and you can see my little-kid belly, the hugest open-mouthed smile on my face.  And he made that moment for me.  And I loved him for it.  And I still do.

Miss.  You.

but in the city / in which I love you, / no one comes, no one / meets me in the brick clefts; / in the wedged dark

So, it's been a while.  My goal of at-least-a-post-a-week-and-hopefully-two-or-three is out the window.  Not that I haven't seen things to love or admire or be awed by.  It's just that I haven't taken the time to reflect or document them.  And I sort of have three posts in the works, but they're not quite ready to go.  So this is just a little catch up

Since I last wrote, I visited Portland again.  Lovely place.  Good food.  Good friends.  Good times.  I saw more of the city, bought some books at Powell's (poetry!), had crepes (and beers) at Lana's, saw a show (with the craziest homeless man outside hassling the doorman), ran into some San Diego friends randomly on Hawthorne. Of course, the Monday I had to leave town was the most gorgeous day.  The sun was shining, and that city in the sunlight is one of the more beautiful things I've seen in the recent past.  And now I'm home again, working, doing the things I need to do to get through the days, enjoying what I can, which, though it might not sound like there's much, is actually a lot.  Walking, cooking, reading, music, sassy bus drivers, tea.  Life.  Is.  Good.

Love is a dress that you made long to hide your knees.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about sunshine in the midst of rain, which is beautiful and lovely, and in that long time of heavy rain, the sun was refreshing.  The rain has slowed, and Monday was pretty clear and sunny, and yesterday was too.  But yesterday morning as I was walking into work from my car, it rained a bit.  The sun was out, and it lit the sky brightly like it does when it's hiding behind and illuminating the clouds.  I could see bits of sky, and the clouds that were there weren't dark and didn't look heavy, so the bit of rain was completely unexpected.  It was a light rain, but it wasn't drizzle, it was big, full drops, falling slowly and sort of sparsely.  Every moment of the few minutes I stood there enjoying it felt like it was the first moment of rain, where you feel a few sporadic drops on your face and hands before the skies really open up and you get soaked.  I stood under a little tree, which provided no actual cover, and watched as the faded green awnings of my office building became spattered with darker green spots where the drops hit them, and I looked up at the bits of blue sky and the not-really-grey-enough-to-rain clouds, and I felt the damp in my hair and the wetness on my hands and forehead, and I didn't care that my lunch bag was being weakened, and the weight of my lunch did actually tear through the weakened bag later in the day, but that doesn't matter.  All that matters was taking to the time to enjoy that moment, and I did.