candy...

esmé's teacher told the class that they could only eat one piece of candy last night. that she'd know whether they had more. you should've seen esmé's smile fade.

she had three. but she didn't enjoy the second and third pieces at all. and this morning, she asked me to look in her eyes and tell me if she looked cracky-crazy. tell the truth, mom. she ordered. super worried.

i'm so tempted to tell her she's allergic to reese's peanut butter cups so that they can all belong to me.

{it very much reminds me of my mom telling me i was allergic to cigarettes, pot, cocaine, any other drug that could possibly come my way in college, and beer and wine and shots boys would someday want to buy me. also, probably premarital sex.}




my heart can't explain what a wonderful halloween we had, so i won't even try. all i will tell you is that i feel hungover-lucky today.

october is always a hard month. it's the month my sister died, and i feel her more as the season changes than any other time of the year. the trick or treating, the rainbow-colored trees, thanksgiving and christmas and new year's coming...it was all her.

the girlies laugh at me because my tears fall so easily this time of year. esmé says i feel sorry for everyone, but i think i just feel sorry for me. i am pretty selfish, you know.

or else maybe i just see what everyone else is enduring, too, and i can feel their feelings in my bones. i prefer that to the whole selfish thing. or maybe i don't.

my sister wrote me a note yesterday and said something about seeing lin in everything lately. she has so many stories that i don't know that i wish she'd start a blog just for me and the girlies three. she's a much better writer than i ever will be {and i am not just saying that. everyone who has read her words knows it like truth.}, but was also blessed with a big fat brain that eats numbers like candy, so she has a real job in chicago. i envy her. she probably envies me.




anyway. have i told you that she was the gracie to my sister lin's lillie? do you understand that? and i am clearly the esmé to them both.

so she wrote a line smack in the middle of a mail that is still killing me.

...when life was good and simple and lin used to ride no-handed down the hill and bite off chunks of green apple and hand them to me mid-bicycle ride so i wouldn't break my capped front teeth.

and wow. if there was ever a definition of love - wild and easy and thoughtless in the most incredibly thoughtful way - to me, that would be it.

p.s. i only wrote today because she asked me to write today. see my gimme bar for photos.