It has been on my mind now for 433 days. Just shy of 62 weeks. Some 15 and a half months. Ever since I wrote that little story of counting time.

We fail so often to realize it–that those rough seasons are a part of a bigger picture. A bigger season. A season of age. Of days, weeks, months, years.

They are small and bright green and gangly; long limbs zig-zagging beneath them and holding them up— not even an inch tall.

The barista yesterday, as he took my order he commented that it was beginning to feel like fall outside. I didn’t know. I told him that back home it is sweltering hot yet. So very different.

“We goin’ on a date, Mommy?”

I back out of the driveway onto an unfamiliar road, and set my GPS to a park we do not know. I’m praying for a mountain view.

Exactly when I decide to turn the alarm off and sleep in, whatever that means for a mom of three boys four and under, the baby begins to cry. He wants breakfast. And I am the only one who can deliver.