July 30th 2022 It is Sophia’s birthday today. Her presence in this world was a gift. She is, and ever will be, a joy and a gift always. Swallows There were swallows at the cemetery today In winged canticle above me Each loop and circuit a shout of joy For the heaven that holds them So much blue, it enters the eyes and lives there afterwards With its song of sky and wings and light
July 30th, 2020 Another year, another birthday, unmade from life that should have been. Yet how grateful I am that you lived, my darling—that you lived in the world, and lived in it in such richness of inner being. You were so light in your step in life, graceful in every gesture, but deep is the impression left on those who see. The Snowflake and the Star Sometimes I feel I am akin only to the
On Birth Days July 30th. It is once again Sophia’s birthday. Twenty-eight years ago today, Sophia arrived in the world as she was to live in it: small and delicate in her physical frame, powerful in her presence. Amidst all the danger and drama of the moment, little Sophia remained completely composed at the centre of a whirlwind of confusion. The words the midwife whispered into my ear in the operating theatre have a
July 30th It’s July 30th—Sophia’s birthday. She would be 27 this year, but (as noted HERE) she will now always be 22—“forever young,” like Keats himself. Sophia turned 22 in hospital. The lovely photograph on the splashdown page of this website was taken on her 22nd birthday—one of the precious handful taken on that day which are made special not just by their circumstance, but by their truthfulness. In the previous weeks, Sophia had been
July 30th –Table Reserved