Before the bun

My hair has been in a ponytail or a bun for approximately eleven of the last fourteen days. Nursing shifts, the archive project spread across the living room table, pottery sessions with Carmen — there is always a reason to just get it up and out of the way. So when I woke up this Sunday with genuinely nothing scheduled until the afternoon, I stood at the bathroom mirror for an extra minute and thought: I should just leave it down.

Before the bun

There is something weirdly hopeful about a Sunday with no agenda. I’ve been in resolution mode for weeks — the Margaret network coordination calls, the archive boxes, the Father’s Day weekend quietness that turned into a lot of reflection I wasn’t fully expecting. It’s all good stuff. But it’s been a lot of intentional, purposeful mornings. This one felt like a gift just because nothing needed to happen in it.

He said he was just walking by. Sure.

Jake apparently caught the necklace moment. I did not know he was standing there. He texted it to me with zero caption and I looked at it for a long time — not because it’s flattering, though it is, but because I look like I’m just existing, which is maybe the most accurate photo of me in months. The cross belonged to my grandmother before me, and there are whole weeks where I put it on automatically, and then there are moments like this one where I actually feel it in my hand and think about what it means to carry something. This summer has been a lot of that. Carrying things carefully. Seeing what they’re made of.