No homework happened tonight...only cakes

Brandy's cake (she's turning 21 whoot whoot!)

Nathaniel's cake

Matt's cake

Three birthdays, three cakes, all on one day. Baking these was the most delicious way to procrastinate studying for my midterms.

Picnic

Summer smells like sunscreen, chlorine and bug spray and it tastes of cupcakes. M and I have been waiting all year to have a picnic, and we made these little beauties...

They ended up looking a lot better than they tasted. We had many struggles with the icing, including the moment when the tube of it exploded, got on G's foot and she tracked blood red foot prints all across M's kitchen.

 After our lovely picnic in the park (complete with a checkered picnic blanket), we had a bunch of 'I love the world' cupcakes left so we went on a super secret delivery mission. We left the cupcakes on our friend's doorsteps - the plates had personalized messages written on them too.

Everything in a Summer Day's work.

Over and Out.

Little Prayers

Four over-ripe bananas sit in the fruit basket. Their yellow peels are speckled with deep brown spots. And so you say,

"We should make banana bread" because their perfect-meant-to-be-baked-bananas. You can already almost taste it.

But it has been a long week and your mother sighs do-we-really-need-to? You look at her, worn down and remember how much she has always already-done-for-you. It starts at birth and ends with cleaning the dishes from yesterdays party. We're always indebted to the mothers who already do-so-much.

"It just seems like a lot of work," she says, "and it's hot and that would mean turning on the oven"

It is hot. Sweltering.

"Alright" you say and smile. And it really is alright.

But then you hear a knocking on the door. A small tap, tap, tap. And a loud little voice calls out "I hear the t.v. on, I know they're there. Why aren't they answering?"

Mattie's mother calls out to him from their yard to stop, come back later.

You open the door. He smiles up at you from the 3 feet 6 inches of himself, a big grin. "This is from Beverley," he says, handing you a package all wrapped up in a clear plastic film.He runs back out into his yard.

It's a loaf of banana bread. From the neighbors.

and also maybe from God.

Summer Morning

The mulberries are ripe this time of year. Saturated with the dew, they're so plump and full they hang heavy on their stems. They drop off the trees and scatter across sidewalks. I think if I'd brought Tupperware with me on my morning walk, I could pick enough to bake a mulberry pie. 

Today, the whole sky feels plump enough to drop at any minute; fat raindrops down on my head. It's classic Ohio humidity. 

Summer is ripe as well - big and deep and cherry-purple. The hours are long and delicious - full of  possibility. I remember somewhat distantly that decay is implicit, and this abundance is not boundless. Before I know it, Autumn will have fallen and these mulberry trees will be bare.

Steak and Shake

We went to Steak and Shake Saturday evening. There's something about the stark contrast of the shiny white and black tiles with the red light up letters that makes me feel so retro. We sat in our booths and everyone ate milkshakes as tall as their faces; like they'd ever heard of a calorie count before. Carefree. Reckless. Ice cream and maraschino cherries.

Saturday nights are like that. Sickly sweet.

Sophie and I sat at the long counter on the stools that swivel. And we just spun and spun and spun until we were all spun out.

"Hey soph, do you want to lend me a quarter?" I ask, gesturing to the line of gumball-esque machines next to the window. I feel like there should be a jukebox. But there isn't, so we just stumble over - world all topsy turvy from our twirling. We slide our quarters in and turn the knob.

It's surprisingly satisfying, the quick turn of the wrist and hearing the click, click, click as your candy comes down. I got a grand total of five Spree chews. Each one a different color. And in the moment in seemed like the most beautiful happenstance in the world.

I ate them one by one, in rainbow order. And I let the melting of the corn syrup on my tongue be my music for just that little while. 

wo fangt dein himmel an? where does your heaven begin?

My heaven stretches tight around the world. It presses in stretched as thin a saran wrap around the sky.

It is the same heaven above India and my India, which exists in my grandfather's cooking, in the Bollywood films played in my brother's basement. My India exists my niece dances with her chandi and in the middle name of my new nephew, Elijah Akal Goldberg. Akal meaning in Punjabi not yesterday nor tomorrow; it is timeless.



My Heaven connects together my life like little threads running across and around my experiences. A thread is running from my kitchen in Ohio where my mother made crepes for breakfast, because my brother was learning French. It runs all the way to my brother and I standing in his girlfriend's kitchen in Boston where he taught me how to swirl the pan so the dough thins out across the pan. About a year later, Stephen married that girl. It connects to this moment now in another kitchen across the U.S. of another brother and his wife where I make crepes with my sister and niece in the early hours of morning.

Sometimes my heaven folds over it itself and gathers together. A lot of it has this weekend in Utah as all of my family gathers together to see the new baby.It's a groggy winter morning, but I am surrounded right now with that peace.