Monday, April 1
Coming home. The peaks and folds of familiar mountains. The bend in the road that we know so well. The sweetest scent of blooming muscari that greets us as we open the front door. A wildly happy dog.
Tuesday, April 2
On a sheet of pale ivory paper with deckled edges, I write a note to a friend. It feels special, gathering the thoughts, taking the time, writing across pretty paper. Just how I want my friend to feel when she reads it. (Oh, I just wish I’d remembered to use my new fountain pen!)
Wednesday, April 3
Giving is such a balm. Like life breathed into your soul. Happiness over someone else’s joy. Hold it gently. Savor it. Share it. Then give again.
Thursday, April 4
An unexpected zip in the car to a destination a couple hours away, and Maggie got to come. So many things for a dog to see from the back seat as we drive through the “big city” (it’s not). But there is a Dairy Queen and Maggie Mae’s mind is blown by the taste of her first pup cup.
Friday, April 5
We wake early. I make the bed, start a load of laundry. He’s in the kitchen, putting the kettle on, feeding Maggie (and Peanut, who insists on dining on dog food, and on dining first, ahem). The eastern sky is beginning to brighten when we reach the sofa together. He hands me a cup of tea, sweet with honey and foamy with cream. It’s pretty, he says. It is. And it feels like love.
Saturday, April 6
I was right and I was wrong. Tasha Tudor’s older son, Seth, was the carpenter who hand-built her house, a replica of a 1740 farmhouse in New Hampshire she admired. It was in the post and beam barn, which was attached to her house (a New England thing to do), where he used hand-whittled pegs to fasten the structure together (typical in post and beam). So, the house was constructed by hand, using only hand tools, and he indeed used pegs, but he used nails, too. (I thoroughly enjoyed reading about her over the rainy weekend!)
What a beautiful walk.
Tasha’s son, Seth, sounds very much like our son, Christopher, whom we affectionately, and accurately, refer to as a troglodyte- intentionally old fashioned.
Chris, who honed his word working skills by working on the complete restoration of the Ernestina-Morrissey, a 180ft wooden Grand Banks fishing vessel, in Maine. You can look it up on line. He’s the guy with the long red beard and really, really scruffy work clothes:-)
He now lives in the Hudson River Valley where he is (and excuse me for bragging here, but it is a mother’s right afterall) regarded as “the gold standard” - NOT my words - in woodworking.
We both joke that Chris was born in the wrong century!
Enjoy your day,
Birnie
Carmella:
I so enjoy the diaries of the week. That picture is awesome, Love ya pics. Yay Yay, Maggie Mae got to have her first Pup Cup, Yummy in the tummy. ❤️🐾🍨
Oh the art of the lost art of old fashioned handwriting, of cards/letters…. That pen.
Thank you,
Karen