i'm gonna write a letter to my true love.

i've never felt so whole.

i wake up each morning teeming full

& i don't want anything

except time

&time

&time

with my true love.

birth days are the best days.

my sister carrie's birthday was this week. we celebrated early with bowling & fish & chips at jcw's.

(plus ice cream. wouldn't be a celebration without it.)

i love my fam bam. the more i grow up, the more grateful i am for them.

and the more i grow up, the bigger the fam gets. carrie's kids are the sweetest, smartest, most rule-abiding little kids. ike, who's five, totally has my back. when we go on bike rides, he makes sure i stay within two inches of the sidewalk so i don't get hit. or else he panics. he also chastises me for licking the spatula after mixing cake batter -- no aunt amy! it's NOT okay! you'll get sick from raw eggs!

(duh, his mother was a public health major.)

jonah is a little more crazy than his older brother. chase & i are convinced that while ike has reading time, jonah receives top-secret ninja training. you should have seen chase & jones sword fighting. at one point, chase was on the ground, jonah had claimed both swords, and was stepping on chase's arm while scissoring his neck.

they both love to wake me up by jumping on me, smothering my face in dirty socks, and insisting that i "EAT TRASH!!" as they pry my jaw open & force the contents of the garbage can inside my mouth. oh and there's always nerf guns involved. but ethan & noah got me primed for that.

gabe is less than year old, & he is pure sweetness. he has chubba cheeks & is sooo smiley. carrie taught me to get him to eat by waving m&ms in front of his face and spooning in the baby food while he salivates over chocolate. it's kind of a sad trick, but it works every time.

hanging out with them this summer has been such a riot. i'm gonna miss 'em.

like a seed down in the soil.

walking through the cobblestone streets of savannah, georgia, a few weeks ago, i was struck by our natural relation with trees as human beings.

thick spanish moss hangs from the knotted trees of the historic district, and it's hard not to feel something for the gnarled trunks & branches littering savannah.

trees are continually viewed as symbols of life.

witnessing the progress of a freshly planted sapling maturing into a fruit-bearing tree merits an awe akin to watching a child transform into an adult. trees count life like we do--their years are contained in the rings of their trunks. they sprout as the nurtured product of their ancestors, but eventually they begin to create their own fruit. their growth is affected by their environment; the soil they're planted in & the climate they're exposed to both dramatically influence a tree's development. even trees raised in extraordinarily similar conditions can twist & crook in extraordinarily different manners.

and there is something plain heartwrenching about a dead, barren tree.

one of my favorite books when i was younger was the giving tree by shel silverstein.

we've all read it.

we ache for the selfless tree who gives her fruit, her branches, & finally her trunk in an effort to please the little boy who grew up swinging from her branches & napping in her shade.

it's easy to empathize with her.

we already feel so close.

i miss new england's maples & oaks. i love watching their leaves turn motley reds & yellows during autumn. i miss sitting high in my childhood climbing tree in the backyard, reading books with a view over gorton pond. i miss pointing out the eyeballs on the birch trees on my way to school every morning.

i laughed when my dad started talking about plant spirits a couple weeks ago, but i'm starting to think he might've been onto something. there's life in the trees.

ocean of noise.

all those wasted lives in the wilderness downtown.

hope that something pure can last.

in a while.