Our coffeemaker died this morning - it wouldn’t **** all the water out of the reservoir - c'est tragique. We love our coffee and apparently, we brewed the life out of it. It sat, oddly neglected, in its usually busy spot beneath hanging copper pans. Adieu, faithful friend, you gave your life to a good cause. We’re reduced to using a freeze-dried brew.

Lisa grew up in New York highrises, and she was agog in our garden. “It’s like Versailles!” she whispered, when we first arrived and did the tour - flattering but hardly. It’s a six acre, French, Color Garden. An acre is like a football field without the end zones - so maybe you can picture the size of it as it wraps around the front of the house.

The lawn slopes off gently to circular beds and right-angled parterres. Two staircases lead to a fountain that feeds a rectangular reflecting pool full of lily-pads and lazy goldfish. Lisa and Leong spent hours this summer reading in the only cool spot, a shaded, wisteria-covered pergola, but gardens are best in fall and spring - when in bloom. I’m sorry they didn’t get to see the explosive flowerings - maybe we can come back, someday, for Easter vacation.

We’re leaving for New Haven at the end of the week so I’m slow organizing for academic life. I have 21 new notebooks (three per class or lab) and 60 various, carefully coutured, colored markers and gel-pens. I tried taking notes on my iPad last year but I found I remembered things better when I took colorful notes by hand, highlighting ideas, and pinning them down in my notebooks, like butterflies.

We hung out with a lot of rising college freshman girls this summer and across the board, it’s been fun. Their questions were super random, but super aware - their interests make our bumbling, freshie experiences seem buzzy. I remember being so ground-down the carceral, COVID lockdown of my 10th and 11th-grade years that college freedoms seemed like space travel. I’m excited for these girls.

Peter and I are squeezing in a morning Facetime call. He looked a little tousled and undone, sporting a black, almost blue, bedhead mess of morning hair. With his sleepy, brown eyes and five o’clock shadow, he looked like he just fell out of bed after hours of.. ahem. My usual, unfocused feelings seemed to find a compelling point.

I smiled and sipped my coffee, “What?” he said, self-consciously, upon catching my expression.

“I just can’t wait to see you in person.” I demurred, choosing to focus on this morning’s awful, instant coffee. I tend to chatter when I’m excited by something, but maybe I’m learning the power of silence.

What is left for me to write
That hasn’t already crossed the page?
My heart aches for something new
Something real to embrace
To put into place
The stale waste that has captured my heart.

Time trailing away,
Waiting for things to change.
I want to adventure,
To explore,
To be brave and face all the things
I tell myself are for people with less fear than me.

Stuck in a half panic,
I am exhausted all the time
From a fear of everything.
But I want to feel something different
Excitement, hope, achievement
Change.
I need to feel something change.

I know the time is coming,
I know I need to wait
Just a little longer.
I need to hold steady,
Keep the fear at bay,
And when things change

Take the leap of faith,
Experience the world I want to see,
Be the person I needed,
Do the right things,
But mostly
I want to live.

Then, maybe,
I’ll have something new
To grace the page
I’m ready
To find something new to say.

I want something unwritten.

The fruit of
the Pacific madrone
tree may at
first entice you
with its fiery
scarlet skin.

But bite
into it and
you’ll taste
astringent, gristly pith—
with hard seeds
like discarded
children’s teeth.

You will know
that foolish feeling
that lurks within
the shadow between
sugary expectations
and bitter truth.

To see you,
as you see me,
is a difficult art.
To repress it all,
to paint over
all the vivid colours
you inspire in me
is a labour of love.

All I'd like
is to see you
as you see me.
But to hear your voice
is to fall for all the same spells;
of all things concerning you,
I am defenceless.

Will the passing years
dull the yearning
of a heavy heart?
Perhaps,
but how helpless
I feel,
how lonely.