Friday, April 4, 2025, 38.6*
Soleil wakes, pulls a cloud over her face not quite ready to meet the day. I see her differently this morning, in a different place, like seeing someone you recognize, someone you’ve seen before, but you don’t know their name. The sun will always be the sun, and the person has a name or is associated with me in some way. Soleil belongs to the sky; I won’t meet her in the grocery store. I will see the familiar there, people who work at the bank, the doctor’s office, the pharmacy. It is only when the person, seeing the question in my face, says, “I work at…” that the connection is made. Another piece placed in the puzzle of memory.
I have no memory of the water seen this morning between the trees, degrees off the corner post of the deck railing, water Soleil bathed in making it golden. At 7 last night walking in evening light, Soleil’s bath water invisible, I took pictures of the edges of water I could see calculating how far from, how close they are to me.
Before I’d ever been here, I decided to sell instead of live on this land. The realtor asked, not about the pond but why there was so much water close to the house. Downhill. That’s where water runs or goes or seeks and there are streams and springs and creeks. The lay of the land. Water likes it here.
For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land--
a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs
gushing out into the valleys and hills;
Deuteronomy 8:7
Photo: LJ Austin
