What’s it like to be an adult?

Today skipped by with no chance for any fun photo shoots out in the fall air. But that’s just as well, because this commitment to photograph and write daily in November prompted me to snap some shots of my son and husband playing music together.

Sometimes I wish they would both help me get dinner on the table instead of playing the piano. But I also know that there is profound joy for both of them in music — all of us, really, as my daughter likes to join, too, and it’s sometimes the only time all day I’ve just sung and stopped thinking.

There is more appreciation to go around, that’s for sure. I’ll try to keep that in mind daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. No matter how fast they all speed by.

When will we?

So many of my son’s questions
start like this.
At six, a month is an eternity.
And still, he forgets nothing,
and pines along,
his head filled with wishes
and wonder.

Nearly twenty years
and half a life ago,
when I walked neighborhood streets
among winter houses,
cold air sticking to my wet cheeks
as I mourned the end of one era,
one doomed relationship,
and wondered where and when
I would make a home —
stand in a lit kitchen
as dusk fell outside,
put children in pajamas
with some kind of song
and call that all a life —

how could I know then
that I was weeks away
from meeting the man
who would make that home,
from his belief in dreams older than us.

His first serenade then was shaky
from a hangover, from nerves, or
from picking the wrong song,
but he brought me music at the beginning
and fills our home and hearts
with it now.

After casting aside my poetry hat for far too long, my NaBloPoMo plan is to write a poem — and to take and post a photo — every day in November, spending less than half an hour on both. The hope is to drill down, to focus, to look for and create beauty.

Previous Posts:

Day 1: Eleven One

Day 2: Shoreline

Day 3: Damage

Day 4: On Parenting and Sunrises