I HAVE NEW BOOKS!

I have new books---five in all.   One for the first two-months-plus-one-year of LAWN TEA, (2008 and 2009), and one for each complete year since.

The first and longest, for in those days when I didn’t know how to post pictures, the posts were all words, and wordy they were.   This pink one with the Fleeing Fairy on the front must weigh five pounds.

I’d long dreamt of having the pages all in one book, then perhaps it might take two, and when I finally got it all keyed in and to the printer, there were FIVE.   They sent me tracking numbers, and I suppose I thought that the final message might jump right to “Out for delivery” on that very first day, for I signed in probably every twenty minutes for hours and hours, just to check the progress.  It was so silly, treating it like a baby due and overdue, and so long awaited that I was nagging the clock to spin.

The green one is a lot of Spring and Summer, with great excursions around blocks and parks, and long lawn-sprinkles and flower-waterings, with a special small yellow tub good for an afternoon’s play in the shade. 

Number Three is a lovely purple, with the same butterfly-and-thistle header photo I’ve had since Day One.  Chris made it on Kit’s birthday years ago, in a lovely park in Tennessee, as we awaited their arrival to celebrate with us.   The refreshments, oddly, were not Birthday Cake, but watermelon—--a plump beauty which Chris had “iced down” in a huge black garbage bag with ice from the hotel dispenser.   We ate dripping hunks of the juicy red on a big concrete picnic table, with whole eons of tiny plastic animals and reptiles and dinosaurs surrounding us in the shade.

I have a picture of Kit running toward me as she got out of the car, and neither of her feet is touching the ground.

And so they appeared at the door, those flat packages of mere cardboard and strap, with a heft to them of slick paper and purpose and WORDS.   I cannot imagine how many are IN there, and who on Earth must have sprayed all those tidbits and tomes out into the atmosphere.   It’s Family and times and travels, people and places, cooking and reading and gathering and just BEING, with their own “Diary App” in the mix, to chronicle our days and doings, as well as memories of other times.   

Number Four is the cheery yellow of a later Summer, another visit, when another birthday burgeoned castles and Princesses and a Dragon.   Which swallowed one of the young Royals, who was miraculously saved by Gracie, whose quick-thinking Heimlich burped Cinderella right out, to great cheers and requests for “Do it AGAIN!”

And Number Five, the last so far, is from this past year---smaller than the rest, for I was most remiss in posting for a great long while.  The picture was taken at our Christmas Tea in December, when Sweetpea and her Ganner had been out for the evening to see “FROZEN,” and returned just in time to help distribute all those dozens of cookies.   They had burst down the stairs with a cheery “We’re HOME!” and a swirl of cool air and rosy color.

Just a sample of the pages: 

All this smooth, bright-papered largesse was a Birthday Gift from Chris and Caro, and is such a present as I never expected, never imagined to happen.  But they’re here, and did not arrive squalling, but as happy to see me as I was to hold them.    It’s lovely to have them done at last, and to share the Happy with all of you.