Filling Up and Spilling Over

S and J hard at play

It feels like weeks since I've had a moment to sit down and think, to wake and not start galloping through the day, to read and savor other blogs. It's summer and vacation time, a time when my rather solitary life gets turned inside out in a delightful way. This past week the older grands, (S is 11, J, 9) were here at the cottage. We started each day early and ended late, filling the hours in between with bike riding at the park and swimming in my brother's pool. S is a champion swimmer; J showed me the strokes that earned him the "most improved swimmer" in his class.

We harvested tomatoes from the garden and put up quarts of pasta sauce, dug new potatoes and ate them boiled and fork-mashed with homemade butter. We ate our meals in my screened tent, read books there after swimming and before dinner, played after-supper games of croquet and turned the dining room table into an ongoing crafts space. We made popcorn drizzled with chocolate. (S studied the Mayan culture in school and learned that cacao and corn were two of their staples.) "Why not mix them?" she asked, all innocence and ingenuity. We filled bowls with the concoction, sometimes adding a second drizzle of caramel, and ate it while we watched a movie before bed.

They are gone now, off to NYC for the weekend with their parents. They will return Monday, gather their sleeping bags and pillows, the pictures and potholders and bottle cap art they made at Memere's, and head back to their own lives. I miss them already. Miss the noise and the laughter and the constant chatter, the hugs, the sharing of food and love.

I also cherish the quiet, the whole mattress to myself again, the time to sit and think and write. My life is like an overflowing cup, all the things I love best spilling out and spilling over, setting me afloat in a wash of delight.