We stayed at my parents for longer than I planned. They went to church early in the morning, and we decided to wait for their return and the promise of a big breakfast. I washed our sheets and sat on their back porch, where the morning warmed up but was shaded from the sun. They have a porch swing, and I’ve had lots of epiphanies sitting there over the years.

My dad made scrambled eggs with spinach and local bacon, which I ate one piece of. The reintroduction of meat into my diet is hit-or-miss and I have a lot of mixed feelings about it, many of which I think hinge on how many mixed messages there are about health swirling around our heads. My mom brought donuts from a new shop in Golden.

We picked up our grocery order on the way back into Evergreen, and weekends like these, where we are on-the-go and I’m solo parenting, I’m too grateful for the service to feel guilty about it. I spent the rest of the day handing out chores, washing produce and laundry, wiping down bathrooms. I did carve out real rest space mid-afternoon, which was disrupted by the loudest thunder I’ve ever heard in my life—and I grew up in the Midwest. The sun was out, but the whole sky lit up brighter anyway, and then there was a deluge of rain, which made a low rainbow right in my backyard. It rained three more times before I went to bed and I had to run the laundry through the dryer instead of putting it on the line.

Trevor came home and we started watching a new mini docu-series on Netflix, Live to 100, about blue zones around the world. It torments me—lives we can’t live or things we’re doing wrong, etc.—but I also love watching all of the beautiful centenarians smile about their full, vibrant lives. It reminded me of what I am trying to make here.