My daughter is at play rehearsal.  My husband is out running errands with his daughter - cracked phones surrendered and clean, clear replacements being sought.  My friends have just left and Sonos is still strumming quietly just beneath the surface of the quiet, still air.  Wachi is digging in one of the closets, running to hide when he knocks this thing or that to the floor.  The granite is covered with china plates strewn with cutie peels and grape stems, small ceramic bowls brimming with fresh cut lemons and gold-rimmed glasses, half-full but mostly empty.  The daffodils purchased over the frigid weekend, are blooming and filling the air with the musky, sex-soaked promise of the spring that is coming.

My list for planning out the 'happiness year' lays still and quiet on the dinner table (aka the art table).  My friends are shaping it with me, our wildest dreams, our deepest yearnings spilling out in typed print and jotted notes and sketchy doodles.  I draw the curtains closed so the passers by, on the road just down the hill, can't look in and see.

I take down a quote, I have copied and pasted ~ printed and carefully cut out ~ to my daughter's room and I lay it on her pillow.  I catch my breath.  Laying it on the pillow her grandma gave her two Christmases ago.  The pillow too expensive for a young girl, the silk pillow-cover swallowed in black night sky, stellar nurseries, dark matter, nebulas, ancient stars, black holes ~ I catch my breath.

"I have been absolutely terrified, every moment of my life ~ and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do."
                                                                                                                                - Georgia O'Keeffe


And last year was the year of the embrace and the release.

This is the year of the re-imagined life.  5 generations, distilled into 2.

It is named and it is unfolding.





Dedicated with love to my daughter, who in all things is my teacher.  To my husband, who is in all things is my supporter.  To my friends, who in all things are my laughter.