Thank you for a first playdate with the ladies from the Irving Street story-time at a house that was just as small and messy as mine. For the delight in finding little details that were strikingly familiar - the same floor pillow in the living room as the one beside my own couch, a pamphlet on the kitchen counter from a church I often attend, and an overly emotional six-year-old whose face I never actually saw because she was in her bedroom having a massive tantrum for the entire twenty minutes after she came home from kindergarten until I left. (Thank you for that last detail in particular, a timely reminder that I am not alone in all this.) Thank you for new friends in the hood, for meeting people by absolute chance who you end up having a surprising amount in common with - how this doesn’t happen all the time, but happens at all the right times and often when you need it most.
Thank you for Orest offering to accompany Karina while she bought a bed off craigslist. For coming home from Gywneth's house to find Emma and Solice running up to the front gate to let me in and Karina and Orest talking politics in the living room. Thank you for walking to the park with Vicki and laying on a grassy hill-side in the sun with Julian and Tula crawling all over us like small animals. For the girl at the playground (nine years old? ten?) who made a bee-line from her parents car to where Vicki and I were sitting. Who immediately tried to pick up our babies and then proceeded to show us all the ballet moves she knew. And for Vicki, standing in the grass demonstrating fourth position when the girl couldn’t remember what came next.
Thank you for Karina staying on the phone with me this evening until I felt like myself again, for Moses who came home wearing new swim goggles and a snorkel that remained on his face for over an hour, his raspy breath fogging up the plastic tube. For that little rush of joy that creeps in when you start to move your body to a song even when you don't feel like dancing, as if just to spite you. And thank you for hot jello after dinner tonight, which still tastes exactly the same as it did sitting around a campfire with my parents and brother twenty-five years ago.