Around the House, I See

Around the house, I see beauty:

The girl who won’t nap, but is instead whispering to herself and gazing out her bedroom window.

The mother who decided to see this as beauty, rather than insubordination.

The basket of onion peels getting fuller and fuller for egg dying. Wool roving in spring colors to needle felt an egg mobile.

Two new books of poetry by local poets I adore. I can just look at them and feel peaceful knowing that someone is writing poems. Happily, I’m not too bothered that it isn’t me. I’ve got babies to take care of!

Dishes, again. A reminder that we live and cook and eat here, in this home.

There, too, is the old broom. Thank you for these clean floors, broom!

The bouquets of lilacs and apple blossoms filling the house with scent.

The ripe cheeks of my baby, luscious child whose sweet exhalations are the very stuff of life.

The pages and pages of notes I’ve been writing in my journal about homemaking–sometimes rising in the night to add a new insight, often leaping up from the rocking chair just as we’ve gotten cozy because I left my notebook by the stove (where I’d also been taking notes). How shall I ever decide how much to say, or where to begin, where to end?