island days

sometimes you are really there, taking it in. you see your older daughter get lost in a big field of dandelions and marvel with your husband at how beautiful she is and how well she is growing. you watch your little one gather piles and piles of rocks from the big, empty ocean on a much too cold morning, at a much too early hour, because she decided that five am was indeed when you were meant to wake. you aren't upset because the first thing you saw out the window was a family of deer crossing the road towards you and you would have surely missed that had you been asleep. 

sometimes you really can see how magical things really are. it isn't just made up. there are fairies hiding in the forest, you can almost see them, hiding under the pretty spring wildflowers. 

and the memory of holding your sleeping baby in a quiet seaside cottage gets etched deeper in you with every tick of the grandfather clock. 

and sometimes you get to introduce moments from your personal narrative. the salty, silver waters of puget sound. the sounds of seagulls flying over the ferry. a warm hot chocolate after running along the decks of the calumet. the little spit of land that rises out of the pacific ocean where you and papa married. and you wonder what this little stitch you are sewing in the fabric of their life will look like someday.