Hey Jude

Here are some more pictures of of Jude with the family. We are having the best time with this little dude.

Jude Michael Bunnell

Emily is busy recovering so I am maning the blog. Here are some pictures of the little man...more to come I am sure.

Once upon a time...

I was here. In Segovia, Spain. See? That's my head and Segovia. Together, as they ought to be.

It was two years ago, almost exactly, that I got back from Spain. I went by myself, for a month, right before Mike and I got married. A few days ago I inadvertently found the emails that Mike and I sent back and forth while I was gone. I lived for word from him. During the evenings alone in my small apartment off Manuel Beccera in Madrid, I turned on sappy music and looked at every picture of us together over and over. The time in my apartment after we had gone to the symphony to hear Rach 3. I'm still dressed up and Mike is (seductively, I can say that now) casual in a hoodie, his arms wrapped around me. The pictures of us posing on the lifeguard tower on the beach in San Diego when I first went to his family's homestead. The first time I attempted to surf. I look like I've been whirled around in an egg beater (which the ocean practically was that day). Mike asleep on the couch over Christmas break when he came to meet my family. Over and over. I dozed off to sleep every night with his picture by my head. A devoted fiance. This last week it was strange to reread our emails, to get a glimpse of our relationship two years ago. Our words were full of fresh longing and unabashed mush (although Mike now claims they were actually written by somebody else...I sent him a few choice ones to remind him of the gush, but he claims that he was at least self-consciously cheesy, if authorship could even be proven...which it cannot). Coming up on our second anniversary, I feel astonished that love changes--that as I pined for Mike thousands of miles away, I couldn't possibly imagine how love feels now, how it reaches deeper, grows broader, expands past old boundaries of seeming fullness. I have a sense that the fullness only grows more full, that the boundaries continually expand to new vistas, that the river continues to dive deeper and deeper.

Sweet Chaos

It seems appropriate that my current planner ends at the close of this month. Following June '09 there are only two pages for notes and then the blue, plastic cover. Fin. End calendar. Enter baby. End calendar. Enter paradigm shift, embrace unknown, introduce unquantifiable entity. Baby.

I vacillate between excitement to meet him, to leap into the beautiful chaos of tiny hands and tender fragility and, on the other hand, anxiety about not being able to plan, to jot down dates and follow the predictable cycle of my life thus far.

A few nights ago, Mike and I were on our evening walk around the block when he said, "It's odd to think that years from now we'll look back on our time here and feel nostalgic about our walks." On this particular night the air felt balmy and cooling after the heat of the day, the mountains covered in lush verdure, the falling sun streaming through the clouds. In the distance we could see Utah lake shimmering as we rounded our last corner. Is it possible to feel nostalgic in the moment? To feel simultaneously the sharp sweetness and the ache and tug of its loss with the fall of each step?

I've had anxiety about losing this--the evening walk. The green mountains. The simplicity of Mike and I walking side by side, hand in hand, talking quietly around our block. After a particularly difficult day yesterday when a well-laid plan slipped away, when baby was labeled a "complication," Mike took my face in his hands and said, "It will only get better. He will only make this better."

As I sit here feeling our baby move in my belly, I feel ready to leap into sweet chaos.

Stewart Falls

This past weekend, Mike and I spent some time up at the Sundance resort as I put on a conference for work. We could not have picked a more glorious location or time of year. Green verdure covered the mountains and the balmy breeze cooled us (just enough) from the brilliant sun. During some free time, Mike and I decided to hike to Stewart Falls. Although I felt massive, we waddled along and Mike used his uber-calming hypno-birthing coaching techniques to get me up the tough parts ("breathe in....breathe out....one foot in front of the other.....goood, you're doing great..."). The trail was vitually empty our entire hike and we felt like we were alone in Shang-ri-la. It was a lovely thing. Here are a few pics...

From Blossoms

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

- Li-Young Lee