She Laughs at the Days

Every so often when we visit Aaron's parent's house my MIL will call me toward the front to see what she's done with Shiloh's resting place now.


It's been a gardening challenge for her, to see what will grow there, and she's changed out plants multiple times.

I'm so grateful that this is here, that I have a place where I can slip out, into the quiet and sit on the swing for a few minutes and be near to Shiloh.


I like how this little clay circle of people and blue bird have made it out here to keep Shiloh company.

Every so often I find something like this out there.


I'm so grateful that this remembering of the child we had so briefly is not something I'm alone in. I can't tell you how it blesses me to see this final resting place so lovingly cared for by so many.

Grief is hard, but it's easier in a community than alone. I'm thankful for ours.

Dear Bam Bam,


Well, you made it. You have moved past babyhood and you are now a little boy. Of course, you're a little boy who doesn't yet say more than a handful of words and still poops in your diaper, so you have some work to do there, but that's alright. We'll celebrate 2 anyway.


You climb, everything, all the time. Once you even tried to climb out of a window. I'm so glad I was outside just then and heard the tiny noise you made as you lowered yourself over the sill and were hanging there 5 feet or so above the ground. I have very few open windows anymore, which is a shame, since it's pretty hot around here, but I'll sweat rather than have to see you with a bashed in skull. (Actually I blocked them all so that they only open a few inches so you can't fit through them.)




I'm picking my battles though, you can walk around on the front windowsill, since it's only 2 feet off the ground, and I'll stop you from sitting on top of the back step …

You have no idea, if you've never been married before, what exactly it is to marry another, what it demands of you, what it takes from you, and what it gives to you all at once. It's nothing like a fairytale.


This is, in part, because the things that make a marriage work, the work that it takes to love another person year in and year out are largely invisible to the casual observer.

No one sees the choices made to hold one's tongue, the effort it took to choose to smile and get up to fetch something for another, the decision to forgive and let go of past hurts, and all the times when you decided to put kindness and love above your need to be right.

Only when you are joined to someone, and spending your days with them, do you see how herculean is the effort required to learn how to love them truly, in the ways that mean the most, and to lay down your life to serve another.

It's not an easy thing, this being married, which is why so many marriages fail, and so many avoid…

Our peach trees have that leaf curl disease that will eventually kill them if it goes untreated. We didn't strip all the leaves last fall and spray it and it shows. Tons of little tiny peaches that drop before they are ripe and are rotten from the inside out.

But I grew up among frugal folk who don't let anything go to waste. So I picked up little peaches and peeled and cut and salvaged every bit I could out of them.


It took a whole afternoon to get enough peaches to fill one single pie.



I know I'm letting my frugal ancestors down when I say that I just let the rest of them fall after that. Because I just don't have hours a day to salvage small bits of fruit, and we're not hungry enough to need to.




But the whole time I was peeling and slicing peaches I was thinking of my dad's aunt Grace and the week one summer I spent at her house when we made dozens of peach pies and put them in the freezer for her to pull out and bake through out the year. We sat, paring kn…