friday present: writing a map of love.

Today, I'm feeling thankful for so many things, I might just be all over the map. 

I love maps.

Though I don't love opening them up on street corners, which is how I end up finding myself lost / so often wandering. Which is how I ended up lost at the end of the world and eventually into the arms of my ever loving husband. Then with a baby already the size of a large banana somersaulting in my belly. (OK, This maps was a digression I truly didn't expect when I sat down to write this post.)

I love writing. 

{typewriter by squidart}

Because of where it leads the writer: surprising journeys. A lucky reader experiences reading as a journey, if the author has indeed traveled during the writing. I planned to write about family and friends and packages in some tied-together, perhaps meaningful, way. But here I am writing (rather self-consciously) about maps in the act / about maps and the act of writing. How writing is a map / the wanderings of a map in creation. In process.

I love synchronicity. 

{yarn by apryl lowe}

Even the smallest in-tune moments make my heart hop. For some reason, Serkan and I consistently sniffle at the same time. I don't know if it's the dry air, but I almost never breathe clearly here (yes, it's much worse during the pregnancy). So what used to be the happy sighs of a deep breath have turned into intermittent deep sniffle-like inhales. Ours coordinate several times per day (even more noticeably during an Uruguyan roadtrip). 

Sometimes synchronicity happens over greater expanses of space and time. Namely, a girl called Jen. The story can go way back to high school days. But she started reading my blog recently through another one of our high school friends: Elena. Let's just say, quickly, that most of high school was a traumatic dance through a landscape of mourning for me, so I remember shockingly little from those years. Memory is a fickle yet endlessly fascinating experience (and non-experience), no? I had few friends during high school, but I am pretty much still in touch with that small circle of people today, my beautiful amiga Elena, for example. One day through the surreal powers of Facebook, Jen contacted me. We've been writing ever since, and I look forward to each of our correspondences. We can feel how much we share in common, even without talking about it to each other. Sparkling kismet.

So, back to synchronicity. I just received an amazing little package of goodies from Jen: complete with dried cherries (yum!), a perfect coffeecake recipe, a congrats card addressed to Serkan and I, and our first baby onesies! I cannot stop looking at them. I haven't put them away yet, and every once in a while Serkan walks by them, smiles, unfolds the top one, embroidered with handsome, and we both muse over how small it is. 

{jen, thank you for the beautifulness, i'm so happy we re-found each other!}

Jen also sent me a lovely hand-crocheted scarf along with a beautiful letter about what crochet means to her. How her grandma taught her to crochet, and that after many starts and many years, she finished her first project (This part echoes my crochet story exactly, but I have yet to finish a project.) That creating pieces for others is her way of sharing her grandma's gift. Apparently, she started crocheting me a scarf the same day I posted about my most recent foray into crochet. How cool is that? I'm so thankful for our friendship, such moments of synchronicity and warmth.

I love friends. 

One might be tempted to say: I love my friends. But the truth is I love friendship. And I enjoy witnessing other people's beautiful bonds just as much as I cherish my own. It can be like watching a couple in love. You may be a satellite around one side of that love, but you don't have to be in the middle of it. I love reading about other people's friendships, even people I only know virtually in blogland. Faiza's big-hearted adventures with her beloveds comes to mind, as does the true love my dear friend Claire has found with beautiful Micaela. 

I do love my friends, too, of course. Each friendship has a different history, a different length, a different way of discovering one another, and all ways are wonderful. I've received a few care packaged from my loving and beautiful friend Nicole over the years. Way back in the day, when I first stepped foot outside of the U.S. to study in England, she used to send me handmade post cards and letters. The most recent care package is this lighthearted approach to pregnancy.

{thank you so much, sweet nicole!}

We giggled our way through Knocked Up last night. And I'm going to get started in on this book today. So far, the only pregnancy book I've actually finished is Ina May's Guide to Childbirth. I've dabbled in a couple of others, but feel ready to (and like I should) start reading books with more of a focus on baby nursing and sleeping.

I love family.

{tulips by ronaldo f cabuhat}

That is my family and the idea of family. I love how my friends and family always send their love and wishes to the both of us (and now to the two and a half of us). They have never met Serkan, yet they include him in all correspondence. For someone who has surreptitiously sought approval all her life (and often climbed all the wrong mountains to find it), I must say I get the family warm fuzzies to feel so accepted. Unconditionally accepted, which I now (experientially) understand. 

The huge package in yesterday's mail love picture was an anniversary gift from my dad and Carol in Wisconsin. The box weighed 21 pounds, so I was ordered to let hubby do the lifting. And oh my goodness, there was just a little bit of about everything in the realm of made in the USA food in that box...

{thank you!!!}

Coffee to last us till we return to the States; dried mangos, blueberries and mixed berries; real maple syrup; Krusteaz buttermilk pancake mix, instant pudding mixes and loads of other staples. Let's just say we're now prepared should a natural disaster head our way. This morning we ate fluffy American-style pancakes with real maple syrup for breakfast. And since I waited way too long to eat lunch, I whipped up some quick chocolate pudding afterward, because I needed something sweet to stop the shakes. (Don't worry, I don't normally let that type of hunger happen, especially not in this preggo state.)

I love you. 

Need I say more? Still quite a few emails and blogs to catch up on, but happily catching up this weekend, I am. 

And sometimes I love sevens.

{7 by jack vade}

These Friday thankfulness posts are typically 5-item lists, but I'm brimming this week! 

What are you thankful for this September?

{unattributed photos : unknown : please let me know if they are yours}