The Last Sunday Journal: Issue 01

Staying warm and becoming more in January.

Welcome to the first issue of The Last Sunday Journal. Published on the last Sunday of the month, this newsletter will detail simple and cozy observations of our life in West Michigan. Pour yourself a cup of something warm and settle in.

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The baby in her kitchen counter lounger.

The snow falls gently for days until the whole month of January is under a blanket of white. Dan builds me a bookshelf in the cottage kitchen and I make a winter hydrangea wreath for the fireplace, which is always, always running; our dog and Eden watch the flames dance.

There are baked Italian noodles, rich soups, and deep dish casseroles heating up in the oven for each of our dinners. Since delivering Eden, our community of family, friends, and coworkers have prepared our meals. Their gifts of nourishment meant that Dan and I didn’t have to make a single dinner for the past eight weeks of winter; an enormous blessing that we still can’t quite believe.

My husband and daughter on the trail.

Dan walks Flora in the still falling snow and we take the baby for short hikes alongside Lake Michigan’s icy shore. The cottage has required constant upkeep: fixing frozen pipes, caulking cracked walls, redoing wiring and lighting and closets, building shelves and painting. We moved into our home from across the country only a month and a half before I gave birth, and there is still so much to do. When Dan is finished with his upstairs office nine-to-five, he kisses Eden and I, then starts his next shift of making the house better for our family.

An afternoon coffee.

Mother and daughter days.

This is my second month with my daughter. I have become a coffee drinker, a resilient night watcher, an observer of moments, and a librarian of her life: archiving, documenting. I spend my whole days with her, the marveling and exhausting and hard days of January.

Things like driving to the grocery store by myself, stopping to get a cup of coffee after our pediatric appointments, and being on my feet for longer than ten minutes are much less daunting this month. My body is healing now, my wild postpartum emotions are slightly quieting. I can see the light in the winter lighthouse from above the waves. Though, I’m still not sure how far away it is. It is there in the snow all the same…

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