So, I'm sitting here, editing photos from a photo session this morning, exchanging emails with a friend of a friend about scheduling a photo session with her and her baby for next week, thinking about the fall and the possibilities it holds, and I have started to cry, because I have realized, and in these words, in neon across the front of my mindscreen: MY GOD. I am so excited and happy about the days and months ahead.
It has been a fantastic summer, no bones about it. Katie and I had a "Mommy-Katie week" during which we went to Kiddieland (a local amusement park that is closing down this fall, sadly), to the zoo, on a riverboat cruise, to a backyard barbecue hosted by the downstairs neighbors, to a cherry picking party where I picked no cherries, to a restaurant (Wishbone - yum) for breakfast, to a Chinese buffet for dinner one night. She starts kindergarten the day after Labor Day. We - all four of us - have gone to the beach, by ourselves, with my mom, and with my brother and Frankie and their children. We have made chocolate chip cookies, and cupcakes, homemade Oreo cookies (twice), omelets, pancakes, guacamole. We spent almost a week in Cincinnati with friends, and we spent almost a week in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with family. Geoff went to a conference while my mom came to visit, and later Katie went to my mom's and spent most of a week there. We have gone to the movies several times, in various combinations of people. Geoff and I got gussied up and went to a wedding (black tie requested). I have had time with friends, and a few nights out.
Annabel learned to walk in July and is practically running (and falling) everywhere now, and is incredibly busy growing out her hair and learning to talk. She's 15 months old now, and she only gives hugs and kisses when she wants to, dammit. But since she's been sleeping all through the night, every night, for about four and a half months now, that's ok. We'll forgive the frequent shortage of hugs. We do get lots of smiles and laughs and mimicking.
We have had lazy days, and busy days, and the skin on Katie's long legs is tan and brown compared to the white skin on her belly. It has been the kind of summer that I haven't had since I was a kid, where the days stretched out forever, and where you actually got to DO most of the things that you wanted to do, and got to have most of what you wanted to have (fun, relaxation, goof-off time, putter-around-aimlessly time, tv time, coloring with the 5 year old time, visiting-the-park time, baking desserts-time, and more and more, and so much more). I can not remember a better summer in my adulthood, ever.
Since mid-May, and as of this morning, I have had a dozen (count them, a dozen) photo sessions. This weekend I am tagging along with our wedding photographer to photograph a wedding (my first). Then on Wednesday I have a photo session, then the following weekend I am having an "art opening" at a shop in Oak Park owned by a lovely woman named Kathy. (Kathy to me: "I wonder if you might let me host an art opening for you in my shop." Me to Kathy: "Is this some sort of joke? HELL, YES.") The following week, I have two more photo sessions scheduled. (I have a website of sorts up here, if you are interested.)
Today it occurred to me that one day, when somebody asks Katie what her mother does, she just might tell them, "My mother is a photographer." And THAT. That right there. That overfills my heart with downright joy.
It is good. It is not ALL good, but it is so much better. If we had health insurance, and if I knew what would happen when the unemployment runs out (it's been almost six months now; in a couple of weeks I enter "emergency extended benefits" territory), I would be completely at peace, I think, with this life. If we stay healthy, and if there are earnings in our future, it will be so, so good.
Thank you for sticking around. I think about writing here every day now, lately, so I know I will be back. I promise.
