My days and nights are often spent reflecting upon the events of this past summer. More often than that, though, my thoughts are distracted by very active children, a growing to-do list and idle browsing at night and they soon wander into obscurity, never getting much further than inside my head. While I think a lot about our angel Elise, it is still something I am not sure I can write about.
Part of me thinks I should so that I can remember the moments and feelings we experienced, but I am afraid that I might trivialize those moments. So, I hold back. Writing about my earthly angels and, recently, about our trip (more to come, I promise!) seems much easier and comes more naturally. And still, I am not trying to put on a show at Disneyland, this just seems the way for me to do it right now. I hope that in the meantime I will not forget.
While I was in Hungary I finished Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. I would like to write more about it some time and will start here with one of her many wise and mature lines (the girl was 19 when she wrote it!):
“Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.”
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This was my only self-portrait while in Hungary. I remember when Isabel was 18 months old I caught her standing on a tall ladder picking cherries from Grandma’s cherry tree just behind me in this picture. This time around, Isabel and Thomas grazed quite a bit, pretty much stripping all the grapes off the vines and picking apples that were not quite ready yet.