When my youngest was born, nearly 18 years ago, my brother had a new cell phone that had a camera. I didn’t own a cell phone then and didn’t predict I ever would. Who wanted to carry a phone around with them?

Turns out, my brother had forgotten his phone, anyway.

I could rhapsodize about how many phones and how many laptops have now passed through our house, the zillions of digital images and words, but really…

This is the most amazing blossom season. In the late afternoons, I read beneath an apple tree while petals fall, the pollinators hum, the spring crickets creak on. The first crop of dandelions has already morphed into gossamer globes of seed. How fast this passes. Sometimes, waking in the night, I get up and read. I am now beyond those baby waking nights, no longer so hungry to rest. Jays bicker over something I’ll never know. The day slips along.

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair…

— Matthew Arnold