Spring has been sprinkling its pastel glimmers everywhere. Not long ago, I began seeing trees dressed in frilly white blossoms or dripping with wisteria earrings as I drove home from work. My apartment complex's sidewalks and parking spaces were pale pink with fallen petals. All this made me want to believe in fairies and to see and embrace the woodland elves who live with me.
The wisteria is fading to gray now, but the willow beside our balcony is in leaf, and the grass by the pond is bright green. We sat on the balcony today. Oliver was warm enough in his diaper as he sat in his bouncer, and I fed him squash and peas (he'd had the tastier foods--bananas and oatmeal and rice cereal and sweet potatoes--earlier in the day). Josh brought the expensive, spicy candle out onto the mosaic bistro table, and the scent rode the breeze. I wrote in red glitter in my red and silver journal. Oliver watched me, rapt, and I let him hold the pen. Before he tried to eat it, he scribbled a little. I marked the scribbles as his first drawing. Josh sees a sailboat, waves, and a mountain. I can see them too. I wonder what summits Oliver will sail toward.
I've been wearing jean capris from Target (Fit 4 is perfect for curvy hips and small waists) or a strawberry pink cotton dress from Old Navy and Big Buddha canvas flats covered with silver glitter. I ordered rose pink dress pants from The Limited; I'll enjoy those once I find someone to hem them.
At work, I've been wearing cropped pants, polka dot tops (black on white, white on black, white on navy, raspberry on white), shimmery neutrals from Stila's In the Light eyeshadow palette (my first Stila! I bought one for myself when I bought one for my mom for her birthday), and summery button-down blouses I bought for absurdly little (BOGOFF and teacher discount!) at New York and Company. The Limited has also granted two wishes: more green (a beautiful gemstone green short-sleeved top) and more polka dots + a grown-up rain coat (black trench with white polka dots--also reversible to solid black--50% off!). I'm pondering heels in dove gray, dark pink, teal, and pale sea green, and I'm wondering if I have the courage to wear dress pants in aqua, salmon, or indigo. Since this color block trend is so major, and though I don't like the crazy mixes of electric blue with tropical yellow (for instance), this does seem like a good time to store up color (and polka dots).
Work has been madness, particularly since a lone student editor (who, fortunately, is fantastic) and I have been creating a new literary magazine for the school. But Josh now keeps my peanut butter fudge cookies (faux Tagalongs) in the freezer, and they're crisp like Magic Shell. We've been watching
Downton Abbey, Once Upon a Time, and
Flight of the Conchords. I've been reading in earnest again, often dovouring a book each week. I've recently read
What Alice Forgot (wonderful! It felt original, kept me fascinated without wearing me out, and made me ponder relationships and choices) and
The End of Everything (brilliant writing, like a prose poem, but extremely unsettling not only in plot but also in the startling clarity with which the author remembers the experience of being a thirteen-year-old girl--not something I was prepared to remember). I went to a visiting writer presentation at school this week, and though it was interesting, my attention kept wandering to the fiction shelf beside which I had, foolishly, sat. I kept touching books, pulling them out, and studying their jackets. I love finding books I had no intention of finding. I checked out
Forever by Pete Hamill.
Josh tirelessly prepares my lunches, sets on the round black table everything I need for each day, lets me sleep for an extra hour on Saturdays, rubs my back, and tells me I'm lovely. This quotation of Burnett's from
The Secret Garden reminded me of him today: "Mary could scarcely bear to leave him. Suddenly it seemed as if he might be a sort of wood fairy who might be gone when she came into the garden again. He seemed too good to be true." He is my Dickon and my key-pecking robin. What a sour, unhappy, ill, and unpleasant Mary I was before he appeared.
Oliver could have been a Colin, but he isn't. I hope, though, that he will discover and love magic. He is another sort of Dickon, a small one who laughs at and reaches for cats, touches our faces and sings, and longs to run.
Oliver gives kisses with wild generosity now. He gazes at me with intoxicated wonder, reaches out, holds my face with both hands, leans forward with an open mouth, and plants his kiss on my check, chin, or nose. It is the brightest enchantment I've ever encountered, and it sends me out in the world with a trail of fairy dust. Everywhere I walk should be a carpet of pink and shimmer; I just have to remember to see it.
