"But what if the negative things are true? What good does it do to let go of the truth and inhale lies?�

Those were words I wrote yesterday, words I�ve been thinking lot lately. Lemming reminded me that she knows where I am. And she said this:

��you�re not inhaling lies. You�re inhaling grace.�

It struck me as a very beautiful thing to say. Grace, that place where we forgive ourselves for our trespasses (I�ve always found the trespasses against us much easier to forgive). Grace is something easily forgotten, less easily accomplished. Grace is something I associate primarily with religious things that I tend to ignore. They make me uncomfortable.

* * * * *

AJ and I spent the day wandering around running errands and trying to make them entertaining. We spent an hour sorting out his room and an hour at the library this morning. We came home with about as many books as we can carry. AJ had finished three of them before we even got home. He walked into a bench in the lobby of the library, as he couldn�t remove his face from his book . I�m reading a book I�m feeling a bit that way about myself, at the moment. It�s one of many review copies circulating around our house, a lovely fringe benefit of being married to a writer who occasionally writes book reviews. The book is a first novel by Michelle Wildgen, one of the editors of Tin House, entitled You�re not You.. You can read the summaries at the link. Any attempts I would make at summarizing the plot would not do it justice. If I had read a plot summary, I probably would not have picked this book up. But it is a book of astounding observation and infinite subtlety. A beautiful and riveting read.

After lunch and a nap, AJ needed distraction. It is hot and soggy. AJ turned down the idea of spending the afternoon at the pool. Instead, we grabbed the list his school had sent us and went shopping for school supplies. I hadn�t really thought the stores would be set up for back to school already, but AJ�s eyes lit up when he saw the back to school section, much as mine would have done many years ago. Bins full of pencils, glue sticks, scissors, erasers. A whole wall of markers, shelf after shelf of notebooks and folders. He fingered everything, stared in fascination at the aisle of supplies for outfitting one�s locker in style. He selected a silver, zip around case for his supplies. He picked a notebook with a basketball on the cover. We threw piles of pencils and markers and glue into the cart. We found the red and blue folders he needed. Finally, he solemnly selected a pencil sharpener shaped like a tiny globe. We had just read a book about a girl who took her globe pencil sharpener on a rocket ride to outer space to see if it really looked like Earth (it did, but there were no lines dividing the countries on the real earth � a subtle humanitarian message that is, I think, lost on AJ who hasn�t ever considered that people might not all be created equal).

After we were done, we stopped for Icees (AJ had his favorite blue raspberry flavor that leaves the corners of his mouths blue for hours afterwards), picked up Thai food and some videos and came home for a quiet evening at home. My husband is working, I am reading and writing and dozing. It is peaceful except for the occasional yelling at the Sox-Yankees game.

I tucked AJ into bed an hour ago. He was still talking about his school supplies and also about the prism and paper for sunprints that I ordered for him today. �I�m so excited to go to kindergarten,� he said as I kissed him goodnight. �It�s okay that everyone�s nervous on the first day of school.� �It�s more than okay,� I said. �Everyone�s a little nervous about new things.� �Yeah,� he said, �but I�m going to have so much fun.�

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