This is a day that matters.

He was right to leave the dog home so we could ride our bikes to the river. It was an easy jaunt, just two miles in and two miles out. A short steep-ish walk down to the river side, which was rocky but completely deserted. We balanced carefully on the stones, trying to step only on the wide, flat ones, but missed sometimes and braced delicate insteps on pointed, angled rocks, wincing the whole way.

The current was thicker, faster here and we walked carefully in - careful of those rocks - and Madeleine wanted to surrender to the current, to let it carry her wherever it wanted to. Wayland held on tight for a bit, then just let her go, keeping close by.

Violet, always a bit slower, more careful, found a spot in the middle of the river and sat, pulling small rocks from the bed and placing them on a large one jutting out of the water. "It's a rock family," she said, placing another "baby" down. "These are the babies, and this is their mama."

Saying "family" like this: fan-uh-wee.

I sat with her, collecting stones of my own, while Wayland and Mad traversed up and then down the river a stretch. They found treasure: a collection of golf balls (21!) washed up on an inset of the river, and a tan and black moth, with surprising hints of orange on the inside of its wings.

We saw a crawdad scuttling from underneath a rock in the river and a millipede-looking creature crawling across the stones. Tiny minnows nipped around our ankles.

It was late afternoon and the sun made light dance on the water. We heard nothing but the rush of water and the call of birds and a little bit of wind clapping against the leaves.

This is a day that matters, like a reset button, a centering force to stick a pin in, so that the rest of your days can revolve around it, focus on it, come back to it. Because these are the things that matter: the careful steps, the sun and the water, the silence and the unexpected treasure, the absolute joy, and of course, the fan-uh-wee.

I belong among the weeds.

This song feels like our frequent walks down to the river, the trails thick with weeds, the heat beating down. It even feels like scratching the bug bite on my forearm, dotted with calamine lotion. These are happy things. Yes, even bug bites in a weird way.

The first time you saw the ocean.

The first time you saw the ocean, you ran to it full tilt like you'd been waiting to do such a thing all your few short years of life so far. It was instant understanding that the huge body of water in front of you was for you, for your own joy, for love of life. And you seized it, your face so full of joy.

It was evening; the light was soft and warm around you and the small waves at the shore swallowed you up to your ankles, and you laughed. Instinct commanded you to jump the waves and you did, venturing a little deeper each time.

No, wait, stop, I almost said. I felt the words rise up in my throat but I stopped them because you weren't going to go too far. I could see that. You'd lunge in and then pull back, just a little when the waves got a little too high, up to your thighs.

I joined you. "Do you want to go deeper?" I asked and you nodded. You really did want to go deeper, but there was something else there, a tinge of fear, of trepidation in your deep brown eyes. "We don't have to," I told you gently, "But I think you will like it."

So you nodded and I picked you up and carried you so that our heads were level and the water was as high as my chest. You could see the shore, but it seemed so far away, and facing out into the wide expanse of green-gray water all you could see was water. It was so close to infinite, this feeling, the perfect feeling of being a small thing contained in something so much larger. I wondered if daughters feel a similar feeling wrapped up in their mother's arms. Tucked safe inside an infinite presence.

We jumped the waves, you and I, rose with the crests and fell with the white caps. We felt the water tug and pull at our bodies and it made us feel anchored, rooted in the sand even as it pulled us a little further out each time. The first swells surprised you and you were afraid, clutching me tightly, a solemn look on your face. Then you relaxed and enjoyed though the fear never really quite left your face.

When I thought it was time to go you swore it wasn't, and in the vast expanse of the ocean, feeling fear and joy in tenuous coexistence and hopefully, comfort and safety, too, you never wanted to go. You wanted to stay in this place forever, and I thought yes. Yes, let's stay in this place forever.

But there were things calling us to the shore -- there is always something, of course -- so I carried you back to dry sand, dragging my legs through the water until I overcame the pull of the ocean, or simply left it behind. But that's an impossible task. Even as evening descended and we walked back to the hotel, we could feel the ghost of waves lapping at our bodies.

You have to be brave with your life so others can be brave with theirs.

Oh. This made me cry. Just lovely.

One day I decided that I was beautiful.

Gabourey Sibide’s response when Harper’s Bazaar asked her where her confidence came from:

It came from me. One day I decided that I was beautiful, and so I carried out my life as if I was a beautiful girl. I wear colors that I really like, I wear makeup that makes me feel pretty, and it really helps. It doesn’t have anything to do with how the world perceives you. What matters is what you see. Your body is your temple, it’s your home, and … you must decorate it.

From "Are you beautiful?" on Everyday Treats.

Four planets will cluster together

Above you the cosmos are working on a heavenly act, planets
pulling together past great distances, as far as the length
of a fingernail to your elbow, which seems not far at all.
But to the cells of your body it's the great unexplored wild,
and traversing that distance is a heavenly act on its own.

Tonight Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Mars will
lace together and encircle the neck of night,
and be bright amid the black. Tonight you will
travel the distance of an arm, and back again, and
it will take the second of a heartbeat, the celestial forever.

Forest spirits.

It's storming when I leave work, raining hard, thunder rumbling every few seconds, lightning flashing somewhere in the near distance. I've got my umbrella, so I stand in the parking lot and revel in it for just a moment, taking it all in: the deep gray, the low clouds, the cool wind.

And then dread. The dog. The dog will need to go out and pee, as I'm sure she hasn't done that all day. She also hasn't gotten the exercise she needs. What will we do? Wayland isn't home yet, so I will need to take the girls out with the dog. It will be wretched. The dog hates the rain and it takes forever just to get the girls out the door. Plus dinner needs to be made and I have no idea what it will be.

When I get home I swallow the rising swell of stress rolling over me and ask the girls if they want to go for a rain walk. YES, they exclaim, enthusiastic. We don't worry about shoes or raincoats; we just head out the door in 20 seconds flat. A new record.

I anticipate Violet being afraid of the now more distant rumbles of thunder. She isn't. I think Mad will be cold in her shorts. She isn't. I think the dog will refuse to go outside. She doesn't. The girls both just run through the river of rain raveling down the curb, kicking up water, shrieking with joy. The dog tries to pull me faster down the street.

When we hit the trail I'm actually relaxed and the girls are no less joyful, running full tilt to puddle after puddle. Madeleine runs to me and ROARS, and here comes the stress - I think she's going to pretend to be a jungle cat, which always freaks Violet out, but instead she says, "I'm TOTORO!" And Violet laughs. "Are we forest spirits?" I ask. YES! We bend down and raise up from our knees, extending our arms high into the air, roaring the whole time. We are helping the trees to grow, here in the rain. Thunder rumbles and I laugh. "Maybe we can control the storm," I say, and we all roar at the sky.

The dog finally pees and we make it to the bridge, where we look at the spiderwebs tattered and heavy with droplets of rain, illuminated from behind in gray light. The girls run the course of the bridge - we have it all to ourselves in this weather - and look for spider egg sacs tucked into corners. We see all sorts of bugs taking refuge from the rain on the underside of the bridge railing: spiders and aphids and even ant lions.

"This is wonderful," I tell the girls as we head back home, and we are smiling. We talk of warm baths, cozy PJs, and soup and honey bread for dinner.

Life is just this good sometimes, and so surprising. All that dread and worry I felt driving home evaporating in just a second, stepping out into the cold rain, embracing the gray skies and the moments this rain afforded us, three fearless forest spirits controlling the elements.

If I had an orchard.

"Do you ever feel like you're failing yourself?" I ask Wayland. It's nearing midnight and he's mostly asleep, so he pulls himself out of a half-snore and mutters, "Sometimes."

"I think that lately -- that I'm failing myself," I tell him as I walk back into the bathroom to take my contacts out. "I'm not being what I should be." You are what you should be, my brain pulls out of a half-snore to mutter at me. I tamp it down. "But that's okay," I say. "It's a challenge. I can take it."

Like I tell Violet to say out loud every time she falls on a hike and starts wailing, no matter how severe the injury (it's never severe): "I am ROCKING this trail." I urge her to say it, and remind her: "You fell because you are going for it. You are ROCKING it. And you got that fall out of the way, so now there won't be any more falls."

I'm lying to her because of course there will be more falls. There are always more falls, literal and metaphorical. She falls again not five minutes later and there is a small scrape on her knee. A little blood. She does the open mouthed, full body sob. "Violet," I remind her. "You are ROCKING this trail." And she sucks in a breath. "Yes!" She exclaims, turning the tears off almost immediately. "I got that fall out of the way! I'm getting my falls out of the way!"

It's a good lesson, I decide, and not a lie, exactly. You go, you fall, you get up. That fall is out of the way so you can get ready to repeat the process. Is that what life is? Falling down, getting up. Getting up, falling down? Is life more getting up or falling down? I think it's the middle of that, the comma between the phrases, the pause between highs and lows. Keeping balanced when gravity and inertia are working against you.

My problem is not that I am failing myself, it's that I'm in a pause, seeking the high -- when the pauses are what to seek. Where to stay.

It's maybe why this song "Helplessness Blues" by Fleet Foxes basically kills me dead. It's a song about living in the pauses. "If I had an orchard/I'd work 'til I'm raw/If I had an orchard/I'd work 'til I'm sore."

You go back, but it's never the same.

An odd morning. Monday, gray and dark and cold. Constant rain and distant rumble of thunder. I'm tired, Mad is tired - the whole family is tired because we got a dog from the shelter and the transition has been a little bumpy. Not to mention our daughter who wakes easily during thunderstorms. I wake up to the news that Osama bin Laden has been killed, and that Americans are rejoicing. This makes me uncomfortable - it feels gross that scads of people converged upon the capitol just to celebrate a violent death, no matter whose death it was. Humanity, you know? Life is sacred, or it should be. And so I would hope that a death like this would be met silently, I guess. With pale faces. I don't know. I'm not mourning the guy, but this was ugly business, through and through. And to cheer it on -- well, it's just gross.

I don't know how to shape the day into something better, but I'm working on it. We'll start here, with "The Heron and the Fox" by Little Scream. It's sparse and beautiful. And kind of lush, too.