On very cold winter days, she sometimes lets herself imagine summer for a few brief moments. She closes her eyes and pretends that it’s the time of year when something shifts imperceptibly overnight from spring warmth to real heat. If she concentrates, she can summon it vividly enough that becomes almost tangible: Her skin practically smells like she’s just rubbed coconut-scented sunscreen onto her cheeks. Like her toes are already dusty with sand as she stands down by the dock.
Read moreS’MORES ICEBOX CAKE
On very foggy mornings, he rolls over and murmurs sleepily to her, “We’re inside a cloud!” before closing his eyes again. Fog rolls in often on the coastline, blanketing the ocean and horizon beyond, leaving the clapboard houses to the left and right of theirs awash in a delicate mist. Humid mornings, especially before or after rain, are a study in grays: dove gray clouds, silvery gray drizzle, curtains of pewter condensation obscuring the hydrangea bushes that have been aching to burst into bloom all spring and are now reveling in their seasonal riot of color.
Read moreFUDGY PECAN BROWNIES (GLUTEN-FREE)
It’s hot outside again—so hot, in fact, that she barely has any interest in eating the croissant she buys this morning. She takes it from the paper bag; it’s still warm from the oven and the heat of it has started to leave a moist imprint against the bottom of the bag. She tears off a piece from the end and a shower of flakes fall onto her lap, like a dusting of buttery snow. She sighs, and puts the croissant back down on the picnic table, where he grabs at it, almost toppling over backwards on his unsteady legs.
“Easy,” she chides him, and he presses the length of his body against her torso, sturdy and sticky with sweat already. It’s not even 9 AM but he’s constantly in motion, his small legs churning, his arms pumping comically at his sides.
Read moreSNAP PEA + PROSCIUTTO PIZZA
Yesterday, a friend wrote me to say he was moving back to the east coast after a few years in Los Angeles. I asked why, and he responded: “Loneliness? And I miss the seasons.” I can easily imagine feeling both emotions keenly if I moved somewhere far-away and warm. I know he meant them as separate items (loneliness for a happy clan of close friends who live back east and dreaming of the physical passing of seasons)—but to me, they’d be one and the same.
Read moreBLUEBERRY ALMOND CRUMB BARS
She cranes her neck, stopping so abruptly in front of a Barnes & Noble that a man in a sharply tailored navy suit and camel coat walking briskly behind her almost steps on the heels of her ballet flats (cerise suede from J.Crew, a pair she ogled for weeks in the window of the Fifth Avenue store before finally buying).
“Anna!” she hisses, grabbing her sister by the arm. “Stop, stop!” Her sister stops and looks around. “What? We’re still two blocks away, I just checked.”
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