All That Glitters

The day after all the insanity at my message board, I signed off from it entirely for a week to give myself a break and detox from all the insanity. It was extremely beneficial to do so-- did you know there's a lot more time for housecleaning when you're not arsing around on the Internet?-- and it was a really fun seven days for all of us, complete with Eva's first visit to a swimming pool, a Book Club meeting at our house, and Eva's first attempts to feed herself! (For the record, her first finger foods were raspberries and those Gerber Graduates Puffed Corn thingies, which it pains me to give her, but which she loves).

Jason and I even made it to a lovely Actor's Theatre performance of Measure for Measure in a local park. It's classified these days as one of Shakespeare's "problem plays," but it certainly is a funny one. It was one of those charmed evenings after a broiling hot day in the sun, when the shade grows longer and the temperature dips and the air is calm. When the sun finally failed at 9:00, stage lights flooded the proscenium and bats swooped in and out, feasting on the bugs drunk on so much unexpected wattage. I looked around at us with our picnic basket and the other duos and trios spread out on blankets or grouped together in camping chairs and felt like I was back in Harrisonburg again, sitting in the Arboretum with Erika, Cary and Tracy. Those moments are golden to me, because that was a golden time.

I logged back in to the message board on Thursday to find an apology from the moderator and an unequivocal clearing of my name, much to my relief. I'm posting again, though not quite as much, and glad to be back...although some of the gild is off the lily. I think that's only to be expected.

We've just returned from the Farmer's Market, and there are berries waiting to be eaten in the kitchen counter. NPR is on (as is constantly is), Eva is napping, Jason is puttering around upstairs. I'm sure that one day, in another house in another place, a certain song will come on the radio and the sights and sounds will line up and I'll be transported back to this summer, when Eva was a baby and we were a family of three. Part of me already aches to know that time will be here sooner than I think. These moments are golden, too, though it can be hard to step outside of them and realize that.