You know you’re at the market too much when the cashier comments on your new haircut.  This morning when I ran in for a few sweet potatoes and cheese, Bernadette (yes, I know all their names) complimented me.  My hair is now up to my chin.  It was semi-impulse, though you might say I’ve been building up to it.

As I have hinted at, the past twelve months were really terrible.  Hacking off my hair felt good, as though I was leaving behind the damaged ends of every dark day, each split heart and fractured feeling.

If I were a different kind of person, I’d probably tell you exactly what happened. You’d either read with great interest, gasp, or get bored.  You would definitely thank your stars it wasn’t you or your family.  You might feel bad.  And maybe someday I will write about everything in specifics.  But maybe it’s also just enough to say we are starting fresh now.  The losses that accumulated this year won’t ever disappear but they will fade.  The electric green on the branches, the egg-yolk forsythia, the spring birthdays, and puppy; all new.

Part of rebuilding for me is taking stock of small pleasures, those moments in parenting or life or cooking when you feel full and happy.  When Julia writes and reads aloud a book she’s written all by herself.  When Jamie compliments Daniel without any trace of irony.  When Daniel hears Elton John’s I Guess that’s Why They Call it the Blues and picks it out on the piano.  When Will climbs between me and my husband and grins like he’s won the lottery.  When the daffodils open.  When the sweet potato slices brown just so and the broccoli sandwiches made to order come out gooey on top and crunchy on the bottom and we all sit around the table with nowhere better to be.