1. Morning walks. Even though we’ve got more heat ahead, there’s a subtle shift you can feel when we start to move towards fall — my favorite season in Colorado. 

2. Healthcare. I had to go to urgent care this week for a dumb uti, and even though that sounds like complaining and I had to cancel my yoga class because it left me feeling yucky and grumpy and that’s not a good place to teach from, I feel so lucky that I have access, can go to a location close by without much of a wait (because you can get online and make an appointment) and get a test whose results come back right away and I get the medicine I need and everyone is very helpful from the front desk person to the pharmacist and I’m back home and feeling better in no time at all. It’s kind of a miracle. I’m also grateful for the care my mom is getting and in particular the care my cousin, who is in the hospital with a broken stressed out heart, is getting. I wish that every person who needed it could get it, that they could get in where they need to and be seen by who can help and never had to chose to not go because of the cost or time off work or the fact that a system is overwhelmed by the need and unable to meet it. I wish that those who have the most power over the financing and access were devoted to caring for ALL the people, regardless of their circumstances or need.

3. Hummingbirds. We have a much bigger population this summer. Typically they congregate about half a mile from here, but we’ve been hearing and seeing a bunch in our backyard this summer, in the morning and the evening mostly, and we aren’t even feeding them, unless there are some flowers in front they like. Hummingbirds always make me think of this essay by Brian Doyle, Joyas Voladoras. I’m currently finishing a collection of essays he knew was being put together but didn’t live to see published, One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder. It’s SO good.

4. Peach and corn season. Yum. Eric made me a peach tart. I think it’s my favorite of all the pie he makes, although his apple and strawberry cream are delicious too.

5. My tiny family, small house, little life. I’ve run out of new ways to say it and I know it might be boring or even irritating to hear it week after week, but I love it here, with them. I have made a lot of mistakes in my life and experienced a lot of really hard things, but this…this I got right.

Bonus joy: my Friday morning writing sangha, bird feeders, afternoon storms, streaming on demand content, watching good TV, listening to podcasts, finding new music, making myself mix tapes, listening to my favorite songs on repeat, a plain cheese pizza, family group texts, therapy, acupuncture, massage, down blankets and pillows, being able to check out books from the library for my Kindle without ever leaving the house, being able to keep those books past their due date without keeping them from other borrowers by changing my Kindle to airplane mode (best life hack ever), libraries and librarians, poets and poetry, comedy and comedians, music and musicians, cheese, the way when you cut up a peach or peel an orange that smell stays on your hands even sometimes after you wash them, a warm shower, clean laundry, clean sheets, being able to see the sun come up, other people’s dogs and kids and gardens, the smell and warm breath of horses, the way cats purr and make biscuits, the way a dog will circle around before resting and as soon as they land they sigh, the river, the sound of the ocean, texting with Chris and Chloe’, sharing reels with Carrie and Shellie and Kari, reading Julie’s poems, naps, reading on my Kindle in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.    

1. Morning walks. It was bound to happen eventually — we walked around the ponds and along the river this week and there were too many mosquitoes to go there anymore for a bit. And yet, this close to August means fall is coming soon so the wait won’t be too long, and the way everything turns golden then will make any wait worth it. I am savoring these next few weeks, the last weeks of Eric’s summer break, and am going to miss him joining us on our walks when he goes back to work.

2. Practice. Doing yoga and laughing with the crew at Red Sage and how kindly they indulge my mini “sermons” at the start of class, sitting in my practice room which is tiny and that makes if feel so cozy, writing in the morning with a mug of hot green tea in front of my HappyLight, and making art out of magazine pictures using scissors and glue stick.

3. Eric. He’s my favorite, the best decision I ever made, the choice I make over and over again. I wrote something in my Friday morning writing group about him, something that happened on one of our walks this week, written in response to “ides
for Andrea Gibson” by Maya Stein as our prompt.

“Maybe we’ll stop. Maybe we’ll keep going.” Ahead of us on the trail as we come around the corner by the spot where normally water rushes through but this morning it was quiet and almost dry, I see something moving, too big to be a bug but so bug like, and I say to Eric, “what the heck is that?” He steps closer, bends down, and says, “it’s a crawfish.” We surmise that it had left the dried up ditch that normally runs full, as he was walking away from where the water had been. Eric took a few pictures then moved him off the trail so he wouldn’t get stepped on or run over by a bike. He set him down on the opposite side of the trail from the now dry ditch, closer to the open field of grass where there was no water, other than the retention pond half a mile away by the road that the farm used to water the vegetable fields the crawfish would have to pass by or cross on his way there. As we walked away, I could tell it was bothering Eric, the man who stops when it’s rained to pick up earthworms stranded on the pavement and move them to the grass. He said, “where’s he even going to go?” We rounded the next corner where there’s another spot usually running water and he steps into the tall grass past the golden rod, pushing them aside to check if there is still water in that ditch. There is a bit, so Eric turns back around and jogs to where he’d left the crawdad. Ringo is impatient waiting, doesn’t like that he can’t see where Eric went, and I’m pretty sure Eric won’t find it on his own, so we follow. After a few minutes of searching, Ringo’s nose finds the crawdad, who has clearly turned around and is heading back towards the trail and the dried up ditch. Using a dog poop bag from his pocket, Eric picks it up and we walk with it to the other ditch where there’s still a bit of water, and he drops it in. I can tell Eric feels better, even though, as he says, earlier in the summer we’d gone to a crawfish boil and he’d eaten at least 50 of the same, turned bright red from the boiling water where they’d landed on the worst and last day of their lives. It’s all so weird and awful, this life, the way more than one thing can be true at a time. Maybe we’ll stop. Maybe we’ll keep going.

4. Mom. Still going, still doing well, still enjoying her snacks, still remembering us, still sending me selfies.

5. My tiny family, small house, little life. Eric and I were enjoying Ringo the other day, the way he vocalizes, the way he has to dig up the couch, the way he still needs to play a bit before he can settle down, and later talking about how exactly what we were afraid of would happen is happening — that he’d mellow out once he was older and be so cute and funny and loveable that we’d forget how hard those early years were and think “we could totally get another cattle dog.”

Bonus joy: a massage, texting with Chloe’ and Chris and Chelsey, pizza, peaches, new underwear, a good pair of slippers, books from the library on my Kindle and how I can keep them a bit longer by turning on Airplane mode, reading in the morning before I write, getting in the pool, sitting in the sauna with Eric, the hydromassage chair, ice cream, prescription glasses, watching TV, listening to podcasts, the infinite number of times we are allowed to start over, Andrea Gibson, Megan Falley, poets and poetry, libraries and librarians, comedy, true crime, music, other people’s kids and dogs and gardens, down blankets and pillows, fans, fresh air, a big glass of cold clean water, sharing memes and reels with Shellie and Kari and Carrie, kitchen towels, wolves, butterflies and bees, online banking, online scheduling, online shopping, garden centers, lemonade, grapefruit Bubly water, coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, the purple blooms on the mint, dogs with names like Monkey and Goose and Biggie, naps, reading my Kindle in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.