Now

Two weeks ago my daughter got married. The week before, we sat together reading recipes for flower arranging. The nerves had to land somewhere.

On the day, my husband and my son walked me in. My son, in a fitted suit. Thirty years old. Still handsome. My husband on the other arm. The room was already full when I got there. The man I have not been married to in twenty-eight years was at the far end of it. We were polite. Twenty-eight years is a long time to be polite for, and we managed.

Then my daughter walked in on her father's arm. Nearly six feet tall in three-inch heels. A classic gown. Wearing the pearls my husband bought me. The first-look photograph has her now-husband almost on his knees, and the rest of us — bridesmaids, my sister, me — in various states of being unable to keep it together.

The new in-laws calmed themselves with custom monogrammed drink cozies. I tried not to judge. The day was bright and unreasonable. The dance floor was four of us, to a playlist of nineties club music my daughter had snuck in for me.

A beautiful and terrifying day. For her. Yes, for her.

Then a week in Costa Rica with my sister. The Arenal volcano. Dart frogs the colour of warning. The toucans declining to appear. The best massage I have ever had, on a wooden deck, in rain, to the sound of howler monkeys. Came back to find the dishwasher exactly where I left it.

Back at the desk. The website I had been rewriting kept rewriting itself. The booking flow on it is becoming a small live demonstration — the visitor talks to the bot, the bot calls the calendar, the calendar answers, nobody leaves the page. Building the thing the company tells customers it can build.

The wedding has not yet ended in my head.

Currently impressed by: how cleanly joy and grief can share a venue.

Currently failing at: stopping. The off-grid week did not, apparently, take.

Currently reading: Richard Powers, The Overstory — carried out of the Costa Rica airport and still unopened. Onyx Storm, the book I meant to take there and forgot, is done now; the forgetting is what started this whole run. I came home and bought a stack. The Spear Cuts Through Water. City of Last Chances — finished, and it never told me why the Reproach became what it is. I still hope it never does. Yarros doesn't conclude until September, so the tree book is up first.