Evergreen

It is pouring rain. I have a stomach virus from four babies at my preschool that shot diarrhea out of their extremely small bottoms like miniature canons all day Friday, one by one they went home, bellyaching and cleaned head to toe each time the diaper didn't work for a living. Friday night we used a gift card and went to dinner at California Pizza Kitchen and picked our Christmas tree. It was my favorite kind of night to pick a tree, slight rain and cold but not windy. We stood in the rain for an hour picking the tree and then waiting for the thick stump to be sawed and the tree to netted. Mr. Curry pulled the entire tree manfully over his shoulders and carried it to the car. The boys tied up Lola with tree floss.

Lola gathered a small tree branch end and named it Ever, which happens to be ( so far ) at the top of the list for Girl names if Mr. Curry and I are so lucky to have another baby. Ever Elizabeth, the Elizabeth being after my Grandma Elizabeth who passed away a few years back. It is essential for me to hear and feel rain. When I was a child if I was afraid, I would sneak out my window and hide underneath the big bushes and trees in our yard. I did this when it was raining. The kind of fear that darkness, rain and trees bring a child is a pure fear. It is not the same as fearing your father. I stayed in the rain and inside the leaves and I felt embraced by the world and it's cycles and fears and beauties, and that feeling took root in me and has remained a crucial part of myself ever since.
When it rains I take the family on a rain-hike at least once. We go into the canyons that Mr. Curry and I played in as children and hike in the pouring rain, mud, tree, dunk our soaked feet in the swollen river and fall and slip on the banks. It is a cleansing ritual and something to remind us we are alive. And we are together.

In Other News, Nie has a series of articles about the plane crash and all that follows which I highly recommend reading here. I am sure ( although it has not been said ) that the young reporter who has done all this research and personally followed Nie through her trials is planning on writing a book, and I will be first in line to read it.