let lemons be angry

so S said, but she could remember this:
"for i know the plans i have for you," says the Lord,
"plans for good and not for disaster,
to give you a future and a hope."

And so she has remembered what's important. Still with hair in her eyes and a lot of attitude.

And T was there, taller but tamer, eyes still drifting up softly. I heard from A that she likes a boy and he likes her back. I think she will turn out just fine. Knowing that makes me very comforted, because two years ago I let her insecure tangled mass go up the bus with knotfuls of worry.

I saw LH too, still verbally ineloquent, but affectionate with her smiles.

They will all turn out fine. My heart is full and yellow.

---

We kayaked and made rafts within the dotted lines of white balls. The water was reservoir water and it tasted of nothing. The children had more fun capsizing the kayaks and bobbing in the water while adults tried to pull them up. I sat on the jetty with A and the fifteen-year-olds and wondered what it must be like to enter a home at the age of fourteen.

The boys were tiny, as tiny as I thought they had been years ago. But the angry ones were smiling and asking for second hamburgers, with ketchup over cheeks that I thought was too cute to wipe away.

I asked about all the children I knew, and from snippets I have a picture in my mind of everyone being a family that learns to look out for each other.

---

So this valentine's day was, as t.rex says, "like a ball of love."

Yesterday my father bought me a pair of running shoes, which are actually the first I've had in my life. I've always had the kind of school shoes that can't do much. I like to run because all too often I sit in too stagnant a solitude, and running puts the scenery in my control again.

The children, reservoir water, the shoes.

All these random elements, strung together loosely by what we call chronological time, are fitting together like missing pieces that I've been looking for. I feel ready to run.