Dreamy(ish)

[dreamyish]

I floated around the pool like a leaf, drifting from edge to edge as I sunbathed and read my book. It had been a while since I’d breezed through one. I finished it that afternoon, so immersed that I lost track of time entirely. By the evening, the tops of my thighs near my bikini line had turned a bright cherry red, rawer than the rest of my skin. I wasn’t paying much attention, and I think the way I’d been lying kept hiking my bottoms higher than usual. My skin doesn’t usually burn. Growing up, my family always laughed and said the Polish side flushed red in the sun while the French side lovingly gathered it. For me, that’s always seemed true. By morning, the burn will have softened into a deep caramel tan.

Chris said something to me that has lingered in my thoughts since. “I know, I see you every morning with your hat pulled low and your book under your nose.” You can see the backyard well from almost every window in the house, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. Still, it caught me off guard that he had noticed. It feels so romantic, in a way, to be watched and seen from afar. 

I’ve been feeling so much more lovey lately. ‘Lovey’ in the sense that I’ve been needing Chris’s physical touch. The other night, we were sleepily tangled on the couch, and I had slid to the edge and knelt beside him while he lay there half asleep. He moved his hand onto my cheek and held the side of my face, and I pressed my hand over his to keep it there just a little longer. The way my body craves intimacy can be so subtle at times. His eyes were closed, and he had no idea how I blushed, but maybe he felt the warmth of it in his palm. I’ve only wanted to lie on him to fall asleep, which isn’t very like me. I usually like my space at night. I’ve always felt like a textbook Aquarius in that way.

But something in me shifts sometimes, and I get so needy I can’t even bear it.

[dreamyish]

My daughter is sunshine if it were to become a little girl. She loves every shade of pink imaginable, but somehow she still feels like the whole rainbow. She has such a strong sense of herself, insisting on choosing her own outfits most mornings with tireless certainty. She loves flowers, twirls through the house as though she’s always on a stage, and dances with a confidence I hope the world never convinces her to lose. Her imagination has no edges. Watermelon and Gala apples disappear almost as quickly as I can cut them. She’ll only let me French braid her hair. She adores her brother with her whole heart, watching him as though he hung the moon. She is my center of gravity. There is something deeply optimistic about her existence, as though she wakes each morning already expecting such goodness.

My son has always made me think that if summer were a little boy, it would be him. He has the sweetest little boy face I’ve ever known. We spend afternoons talking about Greek mythology, and lately he’s become fascinated with the Paleozoic Era, a phrase I only know because he taught it to me. He has started keeping a journal all on his own, collecting his thoughts before anyone ever suggested he should. Wherever he settles, there is always a stack of books nearby, usually on dinosaurs, mythology, or some new subject he has thrown himself into with wholehearted curiosity. He is sensitive in a way that people often mistake for fragility, but I think it is its own kind of strength. He is my north star. He notices everything. He feels everything. And somehow, he carries both gentleness and resilience in equal measure.

And as their mother, each and every night I hold all I've ever wanted in my arms.

[dreamyish]

I haven’t wanted to write much lately. My life feels so abundant with love that sometimes it resists language altogether. I can’t seem to catch and cradle words into sentences the way I once did, though perhaps it’s less that I can’t and more that I don’t want to. At this point, so much of what I would write feels redundant, another page about earnest happiness, another attempt to explain a life that already feels complete. And there is something unusually intimate about keeping pieces of it tucked away for myself.

The way summer eases my mind feels almost like a kindness. When the light settles warm across my face, I loosen my grip on time. I stop trying to collect every beautiful moment as though I’m afraid I’ll lose it. Summer is gentle in the way she reminds me to stop reaching for words, for meaning, for whatever may come next. Instead, I let the sun-soaked days carry me where they will, trusting that the moments worth remembering always find their way back to me.

And they do.

June has been spent mostly outside, eating lunch beside the pool, chasing each other through the water, and lingering until the sun slips low enough to drench the backyard in golden light. Our skin stays warm long after we’ve come inside, and our hair carries that familiar scent of sunscreen and chlorine.

This afternoon, I sat at the water’s edge with a little watercolor set and workbook balanced beside me while Nolan and Lila splashed in the shallow end. On slower mornings, Chris stays inside with them while I stretch out beside the pool with my coffee and the book I’m reading. Those calm hours feel like borrowed time, and I know I’ll look back on them years from now with impossible tenderness.

And I can’t describe it quite right, but I love the particular tiredness that comes after a day spent in the sun and water. The children feel it too. Most nights, they fall asleep before I finish the last page of their bedtime story. It helps that we’ve been busy in the best way. Nolan and Lila have grown so close with their cousins over the years, and I love watching those bonds deepen. We see them often, filling our days with beach trips, afternoons at the movies, evenings beneath the night sky at the drive-in, and now the happy anticipation of Nolan’s birthday just around the corner.

Tonight, while I sat here writing, Lila wandered over and climbed into my lap. She looked at the words spread in front of her, not knowing what any of them meant, but she lit up when she recognized her own name. “What are you doing?” she asked. “I’m writing about you,” I told her. “About how happy you and Nolan make me. About all the wonderful things we’ve been doing together.” She smiled, rested against me for another moment, then climbed back down to play. It struck me then that one day she’ll be able to read these pages herself, and that alone feels like enough reason to keep writing. 

I think that’s why my journal has begun to sound repetitive. This is the life I’ve always been writing toward. Ordinary days, lived slowly enough, become extraordinary before you even realize they’re gone. And that is all I’ve ever really been trying to remember.

[dreamyish]

It’s been a while since I’ve felt this way.

Long enough that I had almost forgotten what it felt like to be comfortable in my own skin. It’s not because I believe everything is perfect, but because I feel like myself. At thirty-two, as a mother to a soon to be seven-year-old and a soon to be five-year-old, there is something surprisingly freeing about feeling beautiful in my body. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy spending my early thirties with two older children. 

The other day, a woman at the store seemed genuinely surprised when I mentioned I had two little ones at home. I took it as a compliment, but not for the reason I might have years ago. It wasn’t about looking a certain way or proving anything. It was simply a reminder that motherhood doesn’t have to erase the woman beneath it.

I mourn the years I couldn’t see my own beauty.

It was always so much more than being measured by milestones, pregnancies, sleepless nights, responsibilities, and the endless ways a body changes through it all. 

This train of thought came after I wore a new black linen strapless dress. There was something so feminine about it, so flowy and effortless. My bare sun-kissed shoulders, the way the linen fell softly against my frame. I felt beautiful without trying, like light falling on something I had forgotten was always there.

[dreamyish]

Lucky ❤️

[dreamyish]

My son was half asleep, his hands resting against my shoulders to keep his balance as I helped him get dressed. The house was quiet. He’s usually the second one to wake. My husband, being the first, leaves most days before the bus comes. I was half asleep too, so when he said, “mumma, I love you. I love you more than you think,” it caught me off guard. He reminds me of the sensitive parts of myself. Whatever he was feeling in that moment seemed like the weight of the world. I wonder what was moving through his beautiful little mind so early in the morning.

In June, I’ll meet with a cardiologist to schedule a minimally invasive heart procedure. I should have other results back by next month, just to rule out anything further. I think Nolan has been noticing when I’m not myself. I suppose he’s trying, but doesn’t understand what I’m feeling either. 

We leave early Monday morning to catch the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. Chris planned the entire trip for us, making sure the Airbnb is close to the beach, with things to do for the kids and places to wander. I feel so deeply loved. It’s so easy for him to reach through and find me, unguarded. He can hold it all in his hands, all of me. Because of him, I love so deeply. He is unreadable, but that draws me in. Tough exterior, calloused hands, a handsome face… there’s something about the contrast of it that gets me every time. And then there’s that tenderness in him, a part he doesn’t hand out easily. I fall for him again each time, not lightly, not casually. 

Next month is our eighth wedding anniversary. It feels like everything is aligning altogether. The kids are finally sleeping through the night in their room upstairs, and somehow it’s brought us back to each other in a way I didn’t realize I had missed so much. I feel giddy again, smitten, just lying with him at night… carrying it into the mornings. Drowsy, holding each other like we used to. I melt into him. I really do.

Lila helped me prune and ready the garden beds. I wasn’t sure if any of what we planted would survive the frost, but it had. It was both rewarding and reassuring to see some of the blooms already thriving. The front beds that curve around the house are beginning, too. The family of deer that wanders our back lawn has already found the blueberry bushes, nibbling at the barely swelling buds. 

For all the bad I inevitably feel, there is so much good.

[dreamyish]

I have a memory of sitting on the large stone step outside of my childhood home. I couldn’t have been older than seven. The windchimes my father hung along the porch roof rang all around me. The patio had long cracks, broken open by earth and weeds reaching for sunlight. If I had known how to name it then, I might have lain there too, waiting to be split open. But I played in them instead, watching ants, using twigs to clear a better path by digging out moss.

The step was my favorite place to eat watermelon, and after each bite, I let the juice run down my chin onto my scraped, dirt-covered legs. I think, even then, I knew sitting on the sun-warmed stone would calm me. If my father swung open the screen door, I wouldn’t jump the same way. Out there, he couldn’t yell at me for the sticky mess my watermelon made.

A strange habit to carry into teenage years, but I did. I began shaving my legs on the same step. He didn’t want to see my hair in the shower. “You’ll clog the drain,” he’d argue. I didn’t mind at all, really. It was calming and beautiful on the patio. I think that’s why my mother didn’t challenge him. I was content existing on the edge of our home. Even if he told me I no longer had to be outside, I wouldn’t have stopped. I like to imagine my smaller self, swishing the razor in a plastic container of water, letting the sun dry my legs. 

I was difficult as little girl, I argued even when I knew what would follow. My older siblings would look at me like they couldn’t understand why. I remember running out into the yard during a rainstorm, in a bathing suit, holding a bottle of shampoo, and trying to wash my hair. He was so angry. And for what? I wonder if he remembers how much life I had. I tried so badly to keep it.

[dreamyish]

When I turned the corner from our bedroom, I found Lila sitting inside a box. She must have taken it while I was making the bed, when I wasn’t looking. She’d found a thin black marker, and by then had already drawn wheels and a windshield across the sides and front. The box was small, but she fit into it as if it had been made for her (to me, everything is).

I didn’t say a word. I didn’t want to interrupt the world she had dreamt of. So I kept myself busy nearby instead, listening to her “beep beep” and her precious little voice carrying on conversations with stuffed animals.

It’s almost childish to admit that something so small could undo me. I stood there, listening to her feet move in and out of the playroom. My heart filled at the thought of her innocence, and the way her kindness seems to exist without effort. Everything about her overwhelms me with adoration. Nearly seven years ago, when I held my son for the first time, I felt it then…too. That I had met my fate and my fortune all at once. I had always known I wanted to be a mother, but I didn’t yet understand how deeply that love would root itself in me. 

Still, she feels so much like a baby to me. I know that’s my own doing, trying to hold onto every last piece of her toddlerhood before it slips away, and I cannot follow. I don’t always feel that same pull and panic of wondering with my son. He’s reached something else now, a steadier part of childhood, one that suits him so naturally and well. When I look at him, my handsome little boy, I’m in awe of him.

And somewhere in that, I feel it too. Thirty-two, standing in the midst of it all, knowing I have everything I once hoped for. 

[dreamyish]

[dreamyish]

A string of random thoughts from life lately: My hair is longer now, grown out enough to soften my curls under its weight. I think I’ll keep it this way for summer, let the heat and wind move through it, leaving it a little tangled, a little wild. Similar to how days in the sun make my heart feel.

Back in March, my son was so certain the first day of spring meant the snow would be gone by morning. He said it like a fact, like something that had already been decided. He looked at me with even more curiosity when I told him nature doesn’t listen to the calendar. I think about that now, how sure everything feels to him, and how the world will begin to shift it. 

There wasn’t enough space to notice how quickly or slowly time moved last month. Lila had her spring dance recital, and Nolan had his first-grade music concert. I will never tire of these milestones in motherhood, even if they pass before I can fully hold onto them. 

Lila begins kindergarten in the fall. It has altered my pace, remembering that mornings still belong to just the two of us now. But I know that will soon change. We’ve been stopping at a small French diner a couple of times a month, our “girls’ dates,” as she calls them. It’s the only place I’ve found where the crepes taste like my memere’s. 

Winter has slowly given in to spring. I’ve started taking on photography partnerships again, a few of which are with brands I’ve wanted to work with for a long time. There has been more rain than sun, and it has slowed me down, but I’ve found other places for my creativity to flourish. I’ve started drawing, painting, and picking up the ukulele again, just for the sake of it. When my children see what I’ve finished or hear broken melodies from another room (whether it's good or not), their eyes fill with so much light and love, it eases something in me every time.

I’m starting to notice the charm of the day-to-day again. Like Lila’s little hands reaching for pears on the counter, and how they never seem to last long in the fruit bowl. The grass still looks burnt and brittle from the snow, but at least I can open the windows and let the house breathe… even if only for a little while. I’m sinking into soft layers, pulling out lighter things to wear from my closet. I’m eagerly waiting to wear the Frye campus boots Chris gifted me for Christmas (he noticed I wore my look-alikes down to the sole). Each day, I’m meeting the season right where it is. With flowy skirts and knit sweaters to balance the crisp air and warm sun.

Chris talked of a trip to Edgartown or Oak Bluffs, a few days away, just the four of us. I find myself returning to the thought of it, again and again.

It’s felt burdensome to write. I’m kept by motherhood, time, and memories, a beautiful cage built by my own hand. I forget, sometimes, that I can step just outside of it.

[dreamyish]

When I was younger, we went to Sunday School and church in the morning. My grandmother was adamant that we did. But then, when we reached our early teens, my mother gave us the choice. There wasn’t any hesitation when we said we were finished. Unlike many of my sister’s friends and a few of my own, it wasn’t an act of rebellion to stop attending. We just didn’t want to spend our mornings like that anymore, and I know it broke my grandmother's heart. Even now, I’m unsure if she knows I’m not religious. But when she had her heart attack last year, I found myself desperately pleading with an unknown something. That is the strange thing about religion... that to most it only exists in the fear of death. 

She frequently would say things that stuck with me through the years. “If someone has to preach they’re a Christian, they’re likely not a Christian.” She could tell I didn’t pay much mind to it, until she said it didn’t solely apply to Christianity, but to everything in life, “just replace ‘Christian’ with anything you’d like,” she’d go on, and I thought that was so beautiful. And it’s true. I find myself being more cautious with words and the way I write and speak about love or motherhood. Maybe not everything is meant to be conveyed or forced into words. Sometimes it feels like trying to put something so large that I cannot carry it into a box that is far too small. The idea of letting go of documentation and superficial information is inherently its own form of growth. I cannot help but think before writing, “What is the point?”

But on the contrary,  

I love words. It’s like I have a deep infatuation with how ideas and thoughts can only be written into existence (I know that’s not true). And I think about when I’m older, how fortunate I’ll be to hold my hastily written thoughts. I fear, I’m so unreasonably afraid, that I’ll forget what I’ve held so close to my heart. And if I do, then what a gift this would be. My love and mothering are loud, but with sentiment and gratitude. I don’t know if I’ll ever have a point, direction, or purpose to my writing... but as I mature with age, it feels more and more like a letter to a version of myself that I have yet to grow into. 

[berlue]

Home. Winter has very few rewards it seems, but at least I don't get tired of this view.

[dreamyish]

The stomach bug pushed its way into our home this week, and the timing couldn’t have been worse. It began the very night Chris left for his eight day trip up north. With winter break already here, Nolan was home for the week, and I found myself setting aside the plans we had been looking forward to.

I’m not entirely sure how I managed it, but somehow I carried us through these long, foggy days. It could have been heavier than it was... taking care of them and trying to keep myself upright, but I’m grateful the children stayed in good spirits through it all. 

But even so, I feel the weight of the aftermath. The laundry is multiplying faster than I can keep up with, the sink is never quite empty, and my (photo) work is piling up. 

After I finish my coffee, I’ll start on a few of the things waiting around the house, hoping to feel just a little relief. 

[dreamyish]

It caught me off guard when I slid open the bedside drawer, out of habit, and tossed in another broken strap from Lila’s glasses. I wasn’t expecting my eyes to well up, a sudden sting pressing me to the brink of tears, as I looked down at a pile of snapped bands. Anything can harbor sentiment in motherhood, but this felt new to me. 

Soon she will outgrow her first pair of glasses. And those, too, will start accumulating somewhere in a drawer or a small forgotten box. Their whole existence leaves little monuments around our home: the bedside drawer, the scuffed floorboards, lost little socks behind the washer and dryer, photobooth strips and artwork crowding the fridge, and fingerprints smudged along the windows. I notice everything and desperately hope I won’t ever stop. Maybe, even after all this time, I’ve missed a spot while cleaning. Perhaps one of those marks was left by their precious tiny baby fingers. 

I wonder if this will be what I remember most: the most promising years of my thirties, alongside my six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter. The timing of it all feels quite serendipitous. As they grow more independent, I begin uncovering pieces of my old self again.

One morning, as we walked down the driveway toward the bus stop, I found myself glancing down at Nolan. Those big, green eyes hold enough warmth to melt the snow around us. He tells me he can’t wait any longer for spring and asks when we might begin arranging the garden beds again. Then he reminds me, with such certainty, how unfair it is that the garden club at school is only for second graders. I agree, though I find my thoughts drifting back to the vice principal’s recent heartfelt letter praising Nolan, leaving me to wonder if there might be room for a small exception. But all I say to him is that I will try.

I can’t blame him for longing for sunnier days. I find myself doing the same, counting down the days until the air softens, the garden beds wake, and the sun begins to ripen my heart. My mother-in-law is already bringing her cloudless plans to fruition, with talk of slow, sandy mornings, just the two of us on a girls’ trip to Jupiter Island. 

[dreamyish]

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[dreamyish]

Hi, I wanted to say your journal is lovely and has helped me tremendously. I’m a little older than you but find you so insightful. I’m pregnant with my second, a happy surprise baby—would you be willing to share any favorite baby names? Im stuck.

Congrats! And thank you so much, that really means a lot to hear. The only boy names I was ever sure about became my son’s first and middle name, Nolan and Reid. The list I made when I was pregnant with him was over six years ago, and I honestly wouldn’t use any of those names now. We already have three kids (including my stepson) and don’t plan on more… though I do have one boy name tucked away just in case we have a surprise too. For girls, I only loved Lila. My second choice became her middle name also, Eloise. I wish I had more to offer and I don't feel very helpful. I believe when you find the right name, you'll know! Your heart will light right up when saying it, and you'll feel all warm and fuzzy.

[dreamyish]

There is something uniquely intimate and beautiful about discussing future plans. I’m always awestruck when I realize that he and I have been together for 11 years. And I’m still eagerly dreaming of more time together. We talked of traveling to Europe with the children. Truthfully, I am in no hurry. I am unsure my heart could handle such fullness.

It’s difficult to glorify February. Everything feels so hollow. Mornings are silenced by the few feet of snow on the ground. It’s deafening and cold. So bitterly cold to the bone. I’ve been searching for warmth everywhere, following every corner of sunlight or leaning into Chris every chance I can. The seemingly insignificant and ordinary conversations that break through the sterile air are keeping me afloat and warm.

Not every day is a rigid one, and I continue to search for the loveliness all around. Every so often, I am reminded of the little treasures in life (outside of my family and home). My girlfriends visited for my birthday. We’ve known each other for 17 years, and I don’t think I appreciate that type of love as much as I would like to admit. It’s challenging at times, like this particular moment, to articulate my thoughts. 

Sometimes I feel too exposed, too vulnerable, and I repeat myself.