Rainbows Under Water

we have been at home for a touch over two months now, like most of the world. i keep thinking of our days as  rainbows underwater. they're all there, beautiful, but with no real distinction of where one color ends and the other begins. the days feel like this, too. rainbows under water. i often joke that the way i determine which day it is, is by seeing neighbors roll out their rubbish for the next morning's pick-up. i joke, but it's true.

from morning until night, what remains is what has always been. there is coffee and white yogurt with granola, honey and sliced strawberries that leak their always-perfect berry blood. there are four growing limbs shuffling down sea-ship stairs, with warm morning breath and hair like garlic scapes. there is a sexy man, my beautiful man, eyes closed and graying, on the piano. the walls inside this home of white and black are roaring with life. i walk down the street to where we had parked our car and i can hear a brother calling for his sister upstairs. the bikes in the front are tangled into each other from a ride after lunch. warm, dirty, alive with childhood.

my half-moon belly is pushing inches from the waist of my skirts that used to button. one zipper on the side remains unzipped, tucked under, and still worn. maybe a month longer, maybe less. this belly is full and ripening. like buckets of summer cherries, like thick milk swelling into whipped cream. my mom asks for pictures of her growing third granddaughter. a shy pose with a cheesy grin is what she always receives. it is not easy photographing miracles. it is not easy always documenting heaven's currency.

she rests on the contours of my sciatic nerve and sometimes i am stuck in place for minutes that feel like hours. steve helps adjust me, running up to where i've paused. he rubs my lower back, both gently and firmly (like in everything), holding me in place, massaging my tailbone down into the back of my knees. he whispers in my ears and his beard sends chills down my sides. now, more than ever. his touch is a magic rose. it brings me back, every time. or rather: he does.

fiorella keeps running through the mud room to where i sit at the laptop  asking me to lift her into the loquat tree that dips into our yard. i can hear steve on his new saw and gus asking for help moving his wine barrel of strawberries. an hour earlier, the carrier dropped off the first item we ordered for our baby girl, a floral sleeper made for a body so small.

the sun has come out and she's calling me.

(another day at home, with them. another beautiful rainbow underwater)

Floral Onion Focaccia

 

earlier this week, my mom texted me a photo of some focaccia she had baked with sunflowers made of vegetables (bell peppers as the petals, kalamata olives as the pistils) and it was so beautiful and inspiring that i had to give it a try. and so this morning, i had my coffee and then devoted myself to a sunday afternoon in the kitchen and it was one of the most relaxing things i have done for myself in quite, quite some time.

if you have never ventured into trying your hand at bread-baking, focaccia is a beautiful introduction. it's essentially an italian flat-bread that requires little kneading, delicious olive oil and using your oily hands to make beautiful little indents that will carry flavor in all directions.

i used the onion focaccia recipe from Christine Ingram & Jeannie Shapter's book "Bread" and i don't think i'll ever need to use another recipe. the dough comes out incredibly moist (not dry and stale-like, like most focaccia i've had). i didn't need to add more flour or water when making the dough, which practically never happens in bread-making! and while the recipe calls for bread flour, regular flour was just as wonderful. i also opted for a cup of onions rather than a half-cup.

my husband would say i got "cute" with the design of the bread (he uses this term when anything normal has a bit of whimsy to it) and i so very much did.

for the vegetable floral design: i laid thinly-sliced asparagus and cilantro as the stems for the bouquet and red and white onions, bell peppers, kalamata olives and pepperoncinis for petals and pistils. my absolute favorite part was using capers as stem leaves ~ especially when eaten ;) i put all of these vegetables on raw and thinly-sliced and drizzled them in olive oil and finished with a heavy serving of sea salt on top.

i hope this inspires you to do a little "fridge dump" and make something really sweet out of such simple ingredients ~

ONION FOCACCIA 

by Christine Ingram & Jennie Shapter.

from the book: 

"Bread: The Breads of the World and how to Bake Them at Home"

Her.

it was a wednesday afternoon in january when i found she had landed from heaven safely in me and that her life on earth had begun. for months and months we held her life sacredly to ourselves, only telling a handful of loved ones, speaking of her softly, gently, as you would over a sleeping child or behind a fawn dipping into clover and mother's milk. her life felt too precious to utter so candidly into a new wild, wild world. one with a disease in the shape of a crown. one where a door handle into a bank, a cough, a tip jar outside of a mandarin stand, or a shake of your neighbor's hand could put your life in peril.

and so we tucked away. deep into the heart of our home and deep into the heart of this life, together. slow, slow mornings, french-pressed coffee, victory gardens, seed packets, walks (oh, all those walks) bike rides, movies, late night dinners, stove-top meals (for every meal), schitt's creek, candlelight,  hardware trips, waiting in cars, sewn floral masks, talks over roses and anemone bulbs and hyacinths, rising bread, laundry on the line, clothespins, market lists in cursive, watercolors, homeschool, ghiradelli dark chocolate and caramel squares, vitamins, appointments alone, turning on the news, turning off the news, muddy puddles, muddy boots, muddy hands, sigur rós, sour cherry plums, maple oatmeal, a seventh birthday, ripe loquats, lollipops, drinking from the hose, new cinnamon freckles, the eight pm neighborhood howls, hands on belly, lists of names (names said aloud, names written, names dreamt), kissing before bed (them, him, my hand on her home).

there's a woman two houses down tending to her tomato vine from her patio. she's wearing a violet shirt and all her flower pots are also violet. a favorite color, i assume. she waves from her sun-spot to me as i sit typing in mine. how beautiful it is to see someone tending to something they care about. how beautiful it is that she believes the tomato vine will bear its fruit soon. how beautiful it is to believe at all.

(twenty-one weeks of growing her.
twenty-one weeks of tending to her.
twenty-one weeks of believing in her. in me. in us)

Coming Home

it often comes down to this for me before i shut my eyes each night: did i give them enough of my love today? did they feel it? how can i give them more tomorrow?