Eight Months: Remembering

Eight months. Two-thirds of a year. A seemingly very long time. And yet, like last month, the 13th has snuck up on me again. I have not spent days thinking about it coming up, dreading its arrival. I’m sure that in time, the 13th of any given month will feel like just another day (and I’m not sure how I feel about that). For now, though, I do like taking a special day just for remembering, although like last month, I’ve already done a fair bit of remembering in January.

I’ve written before about how special a place the National Arboretum is to us, how special it was to Hudson. Some of our best memories with her, and certainly many of our best photos of her, were made there. Last January, on the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, we had a beautiful sunny day here in DC, with temperatures almost up to 60. Ed and I were both off from work, daycare was closed, and we took advantage of the gorgeous weather and headed to the Arboretum. We tooled around the Capitol columns, the Asian collection, and the dogwood collection (the spot where we sprinkled a small portion of Hudson’s ashes on her birthday), and just enjoyed being together, as we always did. These are some of my very favorite photos from our trips to the Arboretum—I’m so fortunate that Ed is such a good photographer (far better than I, as you can see) and that we had invested in a good camera about six months before Hudson died.  Otherwise, we wouldn’t have these precious images of our sweet girl, ones that I think capture her essence, especially her seemingly old soul, in ways that other photos of her may not.  I’m just going to post them all here and not bother culling them—as I’ve mentioned before, when the number of photos we have suddenly became finite, each and every glimpse became a precious one, no matter how similar it is to the one before it. 

God, we love this one.  Ed now calls it her “grumpy face,” and is so happy with the real moment he was able to capture here.  This is a not a face we saw often, though, I can tell you that.  

This is such a great one, too. Our child was nothing if not facially expressive. 

I have no idea what’s in her hand here.  I’m guessing a rock or a piece of mulch. But whatever it was, she was very interested. 

And who knows what she’s pointing at here?  Most likely a bird.  She loved everything about being outside. 

Just aching for you, my sweet girl, and wishing I were sitting here plowing through these old photos only in order to plan for pictures of you with your little brother in these same special places in a few months.  I love you so much, beautiful Hudson.