Each crisis will pass, as has the most recent one Caitlin went through. Living with a child who has chronic illnesses makes you focus on each day and how they’re doing within that 24 hour period. You stop thinking about whether they’re going to be “better” in the long term as you realize there is no cure for their disorders. Your universe shrinks to a day-long unit of time as you attempt to help them find their way through the world. Even the Big Bang resolved itself, although it’s never really done, is it?

There have been so many times I’ve thought about things I’d write in this journal, and then simply lacked the energy to commit them to words. Some of them are lost now to the disorganized junk shop that is my memory, others will bubble out over time.

I just passed my half-birthday – do other people think about this? About the date that marks the halfway passage in each year? The place where, when you were a child, you could proudly tack the “and a half” onto your age and no longer be stretching the truth. Now it’s the day when I realize that I’m on the downslide of this year, of this age, and I start thinking about myself as being one year older, so that it won’t come as quite so much of a shock when my birthday arrives in December.

So too, do I reflect on the approach of the summer solstice. It never seems right that the days should start getting shorter at the very beginning of the summer. They should continue to lengthen until we’re ready to begin the fall, adding daylight to our days all throughout the warm months. I start thinking about this in March when we pass into spring, and as the days go by, I measure their length against their matching date that is on the other side of June 21st. So at the beginning of May, when the start of summer is about 7 weeks away, I think of that date that will be 7 weeks after June 21st and realize that we’ll have the same amount of daylight on those two days – one in May, one in August – even though the August date will likely have us coated in heat and humidity. Strange, right?

There is a street in the little town near me that is lined with mostly large, mostly older homes that are all within walking distance of the train station, the library, the shops and the two small parks the town contains. I drive down this street every day on my way to and from work and wonder what the houses are like inside and think about buying one during a future downsizing phase of life. In the ten years or so that I’ve been using this street for my commute, only one house has gone up for sale. I imagine that desirable homes pass from one family member to another, never going on the market.

Within the past month, two homes, directly across the street from one another, have had For Sale signs placed in their small front yards. Both are made entirely of stone, one slightly larger than the other, and built in two very different styles. The last time one of these wonderful houses was sold, the sign went up on a Saturday morning and by the time I drove down the street again after having run a few hours’ worth of errands there was a SOLD sign proudly plastered over the top. This time, despite the very hot market for homes in my region, the one house has been open several times on a Sunday and I was able to go through it. (No good deed goes unpunished, however, as signing the guest book at the open house has brought a deluge of mail from realtors promising to help us unlock the untold wealth that is the kinetic energy held captive in our house.)