For Lucy

***wrote this post last week but never got around to uploading pictures and hitting "publish"...

We're having a nice Easter Week, but everything feels too fast.  I want to push pause, I just can't find the button.

You've been in school every minute and you're having a great time.  But I miss all the things we would be doing if you were home!

A few years ago, your dad and I postponed our Easter celebration to the end of Spring Break instead of the beginning.  It worked that year for various reasons and I loved (loved, loved, loved) having time to build up to and soak in the meaning of that most beautiful of holidays.  I wish the stars were aligned to let us do that again.

But since they're not, I'm trying to savor the *few* moments in our lives that seem unrushed and unfragmented.  Like the evenings we snuggle up together in The Secret Garden.

 "There is Magic in there - good Magic, you know."

We have four chapters left.  And they're some of the best.  I've loved reading to you and Spud (although he mostly munches or sleeps through those evening sessions).

The Secret Garden is the first book that I remember loving.  Grandma Packer read it to me when I was about your age and home from school sick.  Her Yorkshire was brilliant.  And although I was was fairly uninterested by the first two or three chapters (like you), I was just thrilled with the rest (like you).

Hopefully we'll finish up this weekend.  It is, after all, the perfect Easter read.

And hopefully you'll read the book again.  Maybe in sixth grade or so.  Maybe again in tenth.  Maybe you'll make your husband sit through the story shortly after you're married.  Maybe he'll roll his eyes a little, but maybe he'll sport a pretty impressive Yorkshire accent himself (and maybe he'll sing along to the musical soundtrack so beautifully and so unabashedly that you'll know he's a true convert.  Deep down.)

And then maybe, someday, you'll read the story to your little girl.  And you'll delight in the familiarity and cry over all the parts you never really understood before.  No doubt you'll love the way your daughter listens attentively and begs for "just one more chapter!!!"  And maybe, in the midst of that reading, you'll relate to Colin's yearning to conjure up and tap into the powerful Magic of his mother's garden - to study it, and ponder it, and figure it all out. To feel it deeply.  To savor and be strengthened by it.

Oh, Lucy, I hope your whole life will be just drenched in all of that beautiful, spring Magic.  (And I hope your school break next week will afford us more minutes to soak it up together!)

Love you, my Little Lamb

(We unearthed that tender little piece of my soul from storage a few days ago, too.

And I love that you love it and read it every night and arrange it carefully on your bed every day.

Already you seem to recognize: that's the Magic.  I hope you''ll never forget!!)