kite
Photo and video by Billy
Kites make me think of futility and possibility, both, in one shiny, wind-whipped package.
William is three this week—full of breathy wonder; I’ll soon be thirty-eight, inevitably, and grounded as maybe a mother should be.
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Photos and video by Billy
Lately I've been striving to be simpler, easier, more fun, like maybe I used to be. I still make my manic lists, but then I go back, before I've actually accomplished anything, and strike things out. Tedious, ordinary things that before, I would have finished first, like finishing your broccoli. Lately, I’ve been underlining, marking in sparkly asterisks, the simple, easy things; the fun things I’d like to do. To receive notices of new posts on Jocelyn’s Stories, click here Trancey video of William getting his twitchy groove on
riverside
Billy’s new photo project: the scant but pretty woods in town, all woven with our incidental litter
Photos by Billy
Saturday morning, we went down to the riverside. Down past the end of our street, through too tall grass. Our reward was a narrow muddy path onto the Rivanna trail.
It was all of us. Billy, William, the two dogs and me, walking more or less single file except when we were carrying William. Suddenly, we were in what might have been deep woods, except, around one bend, we saw a view of of tall beige houses above a retaining wall, with beige men balanced precariously on too tall ladders: painters at back windows. We had no idea where these houses might be by road.
Then we were hidden again, from everything except wet woods, water rushing, and incidental trash woven into to the greenery like an unlikely courtship.
Molly and Katie rushed down to the water, our lab returning soaking wet, our Katrina rescue mutt with muddied feet. And Billy stayed back for a moment, his camera heavy around his neck. All of us a tribe, but William and I were just the same. We wore the same expression of wonder and fear at that narrow but dense onset of nature—everything, all at once, teaming and coupling, and thriving, and falling apart.
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My dad and William, trying—for the first time—the training wheels
Photos by Billy
It’s been raining here for near a week, and looks like a week more in the works. On the forecast in pictures on my computer screen, the sun peeks out briefly, through slanted rain drop and jagged bolts of lightening.
Outside, in the foggy grayness, all manner of things are ripening: clematis,
clover,
white eyed grass.
If I knew what was good for me, I’d pull and prune and tidy, but the the rain doesn’t let up. Our lives are a new jungle—wild, chartreuse, dripping. William puts on his own boots to stomp in puddles, and hurries back in in with the cuffs of his paints soaking wet. Later, we listen to Sarah White in the car as water slides recklessly down the window-glass.
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William, a while back, on a dry Fridays after Five afternoon
video by Billy
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