When the Life You Designed Is a Dot on the Horizon

Plus a photo essay from July on the farm.

This year our garden offers more flowers than food. Maybe that’s exactly as it should be.

The giant old crape myrtle is in full bloom.

Figs are ripe, although you have to get to them faster than the birds.

If you look closely at this maze of kumquat leaves, you see a final ripe kumquat + unripe fruits + new blooms. The tree is in all stages at once.

Our clothesline looks different these days.

Almost daily rains have helped create stunning summer skies.

Happy Fourth of July to You & Yours!

I attempt to paywall all essays and photos that concern my baby daughter.

When the Life You Designed Is a Dot on the Horizon

IN MY SUBCONSCIOUS is a fear so deep that I know it only from dreams.

In the darkness of midnight I awaken, heart fluttering, adrift. I listen for noises, lying completely still until I orient myself in the darkness. I’m in my own bed, in my own bedroom. I hear cicadas through an open window.

I have awakened from a dream in which I have misplaced my own child. I’m supposed to be taking care of him, but I’ve gotten involved in my own desires—gone off on a trail or down a river or out with friends—and I’ve forgotten him. In the dream I am running about, panicked, trying to remember where I left him. How long since he’s had food? What about water? How long has he been alone? Has he been stolen?