2019-10-27 - 8:59 a.m.

phoebe.

here, the nights are growing colder, and the baby is still so very new. i bundle her up and carry her outside. she looks at the autumn tree branches moving in the wind, blinking her mysterious baby-colored eyes.

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not long ago, it was too hot, and i was so tired, and the baby was perhaps too small and definitely late to arrive. moving at a snail's pace, i stripped and stained and sealed the deck, painted the laundry nook, dug in a permaculture bed, and prepared the garden for the winter. displacement activities, slowly and one at a time.

* * *

in august, at the jersey shore, i was bowled over and tumbled around in a vast swirling exhaustion. i slept in the car, in the hotel room, at the dinner table. i turned out to be severely iron-depleted, and i spent a lot of time at the doctor's office.

* * *

in july, in maine, i still had energy. i spent every possible moment out-of-doors with my son, amidst all the different possible smells of water on granite, moss on pine.

* * *

from our time in iceland, i remember the wind. breeze in the grass on the roof, high gusts scudding the clouds along, an unceasing scour over the ridge and under the still-bright sky at midnight.

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