May 23, 2020

Halina and I saw a giant crack of lightening on our walk today. It split across the sky, cloud to cloud, intensely bright, with a edge of gray along its jagged line. You could feel it, too, a pressure. And smell it. A tang. Thunder came immediately.

Just an hour before, we'd been out in the sunshine gardening. Now we hustled back home and took shelter on our front porch. First summer-feeling storm and lots of porch-sitting going on up and down our street.

With the rain pouring down, Halina worked on her letters. She's writing a letter to each kindergartener at her school and recently started joining their Wednesday Zoom calls, too.

It must be hard, she observed. Kindergarten via Zoom. Unlike her grade, they aren't alone on the calls. Parents are with them. Sometimes just a set of hands gently sliding a chair back into the frame.

Halina and I stayed up late sewing masks tonight. She made the first one by herself, finding the pattern, cutting, pinning, ironing and using the sewing machine on her own. Which seems like a rite of passage.

Tomorrow night she promises to go to bed on time because I, at long last, have finished The Dutch House. We want to read more, so we've each decided to give the other a gift of some sort when we finish a book. Her bedtime is mine.