for "ingathering sunday," our first back at church since june. our church, like many unitarian universalist congregations, goes on summer break for the months of july and august and reconvenes after labor day. 

this is my home church---the one i grew up attending---and i always feel sentimental about coming back in the fall. because so many things are the same---the sun streaming through the high windows of the sanctuary, filling the room with brightness, the congregation mumbling along to some piece of complicated, unfamiliar music chosen for the occasion---it's easy to miss that things are changing, too: i listened to c. whispering and shifting on her mother's lap in the pew behind me and remembered that we first came to this church on ingathering sunday 1985, when i was exactly the age c. is now. (when i got home i googled a 1985 calendar and found that we first came to church exactly 28 years ago today.)  i met c.'s mother here a year later. things change so slowly that suddenly, without realizing it, you're 32 and you're sitting with your son, who's busily clacking his plastic measuring cups on the floor of your pew, in the room where you were once a little girl whispering and shifting in your mother's lap.

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for roo, who is seven months old today and whose handsome face is beginning to mature. i realized, as i was taking his monthly photo, that i could see what he's going to look like when he's older. a shock, to be able to imagine him so clearly.

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for the simple joys in life: i caught the last half of "love actually" on TV tonight just as audra got home and spontaneously decided that finding a christmas movie on TV out of season constitutes a loophole in my strict "no christmas movies outside of december" rule. we stayed up late to watch it while eating velveeta shells and cheese and had ourselves an hour of silly, fattening perfection.