#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

“And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game”

— Joni Mitchell, "The Circle Game"

Balmy in the red woods under clouds. Everything damp. I run through mud, calves and ankles blackened and Suzi’s blonde paws too, so I make her rinse in the brook at the end of our run. This birthday of mine keeps giving. Family dinner with Frank and kids, a cheerful, happy night of chatty togetherness, and my son, thirty now, has wrapped my present (delayed in the mail), in a big bag: it’s a framed print of the lyrics from the song I sang him to sleep by for years, tucking him in bed, or any time he was sick or in need of some comfort: Joni Mitchell, The Circle Game. My goodness, he does this, what a gift giver, finding the way to honor something I gave him and show how it mattered and still does.