Already here

A little bit of photo booth goofiness for your Wednesday. It's how we started our morning, at the counter and on the couch smooching and giggling, me and my two boys. (Don't you just love Bean's little broccoli top?)

It is already mid June. I can't believe it really. How the time blurs once the days warm up. Buttercups are everywhere, daisies, the first wild strawberries in little glades at the edge of the woods.

The goose is broody. Bean stuck two hens eggs into the warm circle of her nest and there she sits, some patient instinct advising her to hunker down and wait for new life to happen.

The New Hampshire reds we got in the mail a few weeks ago are feeling plucky with a new set of rust colored feathers. They’re in an outside run now, scuttling about, catching bugs. They’re fun to watch. I love the way instinct summons chickenness for them. It’s evident in all the ways that they are: heads bobbing, peeping to one another sociably, grooming their new plumage, and to think they’ve never had a mother.

We’re so different, with our long babyhood, then childhood stretching out for years and years. I watch Bean learn new words. He repeats them, uses them in context. I am utterly enamored with the way he is right now: full of drawings and ideas. His pictures are jam-packed with action: wheels turning, light switches, fire hoses, robots, homes for little mice.

On his bike he’s become a daredevil, skidding to a stop, making dizzy loops around the road, cutting tight corners, riding over the bumpiest of potholes at high speeds. I love watching him ride. I love his yellow thunderbolt helmet and his lightening grin as he passes by, legs going at top speed. He is perpetually dirty this summer. Jam on his shorts, on his chin. Mud on his feet and grass stains. He goes through two sets of clothes a day, easy. Sometimes more.

In the garden we’re mostly done planting. Bean comes down with me in the morning while Sprout naps, and we get an hour or so in before we hear him on the monitor.

This year's crop: moon & stars melons, sugar babies, lemon cucumbers, zucchini, yellow crook-necked squash, potatoes, rainbow chard, yellow peppers, five kinds of tomatoes, purple cabbage, carrots, broccoli, radishes, four kinds of lettuce, spinach, ashworth corn, onions, parsley, dill, thyme, oregano, basil, rosemary, chives and sage.

As the short growing season heats up, I’ll be planting more flowers, more carrots, more cucumbers for pickling (DH has a ridiculous pickle habit). We never got our act together with the berries, but Bean and I have scoped out a copious patch down by the neighbor’s pond that we aim to visit in a couple of weeks.

We have fun in the garden. I made Bean a tepee out of slender logs. Then gave him a packet of beans to plant, and sunflowers, and pumpkins all around. Today while I was spreading straw he came down to the garden dragging a quilt to hang over the tipi frame. Inside is a quiet secret little boy space full of packed dirt and small rocks, a pine bow for a broom, a magic door. In his bouncy seat, Sprout watches, pleased as peas.

I realize lately that I haven’t written about Sprout much. I expected to have more to say, honestly. I expected it to be harder, to be more of a fight to adjust to life with two boys, but in truth it’s been a breeze. He sleeps. That’s the main thing. And I say this with utter awe and gratitude and reverence because Bean did not sleep so I know. But Sprout sleeps and he smiles and he’s trying to sit up already. He lies on his belly and watches Bean play with matchbox cars and he’s as happy as a little fat clam. He grins and he giggles when you zerber his tummy, and he mostly just feels like he’s been here with us forever. Four of us.

I know this post is all over the map. I've been working on my book every night after the boys go to bed, more words there, less words here I guess. But I have questions for you today. A little bit of informal research.

What does settling down mean to you?

How does marriage change you?

How do children change you?

If you could chose all over again (or if you have not yet chosen), would you stay footloose and single? Why or why not?

My Bean.

He is a delight.

He draws pictures of mice and their houses, of diggers, robots, pirate ships, tractors and us. In his pictures we have long arms and hold hands. We are bright colors, with long fingers. The grass shaggy under our feet, the sun a tangle of yellow rays at the top of the page.

His favorite pajamas are still the ones with colored hearts on them, but today he told me he didn't want to wear blue and brown plaid shorts to school because "people will think they look dirty." When he said this, I couldn't help but swallow hard. I am not ready. Not for this. Not for peer pressure and teasing, for worrying what other people think, for navigating friends and hurt feelings. It happens so fast.

In the morning he still runs into our room, his feet thudding fast on the hardwood floor, and then he's there between us, nestling close, his hair smelling like sunshine. "I love you," he whispers, stroking my cheek softly. Then in the next instant he is pulling the covers off me: they are a speed boat and he is careening around the sea, crashing into my shins.

He is a boy of a hundred expressions. He growls, grins, giggles, laughs. He cries at the sad parts in books, or when he thinks of the sad parts in books. He is thin skinned, sensitive, empathetic.

"Mommy, Will got hurt today. He fell off a bike." He told me after I picked him up from school. "Were you worried?" "I was nervous." "Did you help him?" "No. The teachers did. I kind of shut my eyes. It made me sad." I looked back into the rearview mirror to see his face. His eyelashes were wet with sudden tears.

He is currently obsessed with things that are "dangerous." Tornadoes, pirates, bumble bees, moose, alligators, monsters, and sharp knives fall into this category in his head. "Tell me what they can do," he'll say. And then when we half-heartedly list potential dangers he'll lean in conspiratorially and say, "What else can they do?" He wants the down low on danger, this kid.

He loves jelly beans, drawing with fancy pens, writing his name, summer, bare feet, being naked, playing with the hose, eating watermelon, anything chocolate, roasting marshmallows, keeping his vegetables separate on his plate, corn on the cob, matchbox cars, building with Legos, and listening to stories.

He is a kid who makes plans. He designs things in his head--pictures how many boards he'll need, and what size nails to build a particular object. He takes things apart and puts them together. He asks a 'hundred and eleventy' questions. All. The. Time.

He is my firstborn. The one who taught me grace and patience as a mama, the one who tempered my hurdy gurdy heart. And I want to pour every day with him right now into a jar of resin: keep him as he is, golden and filled with wonder. I love him so.

Springtime boys

Trying to get focused (and it's not really working)

It’s been like pulling hens teeth to get words on the page here lately. Life is happening full tilt and I’m all over the map. Things are busting out everywhere: dandelions, rhubarb, fiddleheads, grass. We have allergies, Bean and I. We are a display of loud, honking nose blowing, in the morning We eat fresh bread with tahini and honey; drink lattes over ice; and make our way to the mail box, the four of us, Bean on his bike, Sprout on me, and our goose bumbling behind, orange feet fwapping the gravel. We foray out, Bean ahead of us, wearing his yellow thunderbolt helmet, knees going around as fast as they possibly can, sneaker to the pedal. He is a whir, a blur, a sudden mess of limbs splat on the gravel. He gets up, brushes the gravel off hands, grins, rides off chattering.

Along the edges of the road the grass is growing tall. Pollen everywhere. The other day Bean was covered head to toe in hives after playing outside all day long in the windy, pollen heavy air. The kid is still throwing us curveballs with his health. With everything actually. This is a new phase. FOUR. Years. Old. He’s a big deal. “Look how strong my muscles are!” He tells us, flexing his bean-pole biceps. “I’m a superhero!” he yells, as he runs to fetch a diaper for Sprout.

Everything is a big deal. Everything is confusing and complex and full of danger and delight and curiosity. Everything is worthy of negotiation. He has an opinion about everything. It’s exhausting, sometimes. It’s a totally different ballpark parenting a kid than it is parenting a baby. In some ways, it makes the whole baby thing a piece of cake. Things are simpler when they revolve around four things: eat, sleep, poop, smile.

Sprout is three months old and brimming with gummy grins. It happened so fast, these past three months. With Bean I remember practically crossing off the days on the calendar, waiting for the three months, waiting for a time when he would be less fussy and I would get more sleep, but with Sprout, the days have just slipped by. He is a sleeper, a grinner, a delight. He lights up when he sees his big brother. He coos. He rolls over (tummy to back) and grabs things tight in his hands. In his sleep he practices laughing now. His little rib cage rising and falling with giggles about things without words, smiles fluttering about his face like humming birds.

Bean is ALL BOY now, no shred or scrap of toddler left in him, except for in the secret soft scent of his hair when he wakes up from a nap. He draws detailed robots , and pictures of people with many toes and big smiles. He draws alligators and diggers and suns with bright rays and monsters with many teeth. He writes his name on everything. He knows all his letters. He is obsessed with things that are “dangerous.” “Beavers can be dangerous,” he tells me matter of factly. “Because look at their big sharp teeth.” Other things that are dangerous according to Bean: moose (they can step on you!), monsters, earthquakes, alligators, tornados, bears, and pirates.

When he comes downstairs from a reluctant nap (he still needs them, but fights every. single. one.) his cheeks are rosy, his nose snuffly with allergies, his feet bare. He curls up in the crook of my arm as I type, and notices that I don’t use my left thumb as I write. “Why?” he asks. He asks why about every little thing in the whole world lately, and it’s a challenge because somewhere in the human brain there is a bit of hardwired code that makes a person compelled to answer that word.

On our way back from our walk, we trundle up the driveway hauling Bean’s bike and two day’s worth of Wall Street Journals. We stop at the coop to collect a half dozen smooth eggs in pale blue and brown. The chickens are finally starting to grow in new feathers after molting and looking generally ridiculous. We have more chicks coming in the mail next weekend. New Hampshire Reds and ‘chocolate layers’ that supposedly lay gorgeous dark brown eggs.

Spring is in full tilt. The garden beds are tilled. I’ve jumped the gun and planted some seedlings, and got my comeuppance immediately: the thermometer dipped, and the poor melons, I’m afraid they’re not going to make it. I must have been afflicted by a case of severe optimism to think I could get away with putting crookneck and honeydews in the ground before memorial day. I live in zone 5b after all. Last frost date: May 25. Sigh.

This week I’m determined to get back into posting. I can't honestly put a finger on why the cat’s got my tongue recently. Maybe I hit the delete key too much? I’m editing two short stories, and my time to write comes at me like a bone tossed at a dog: whenever, wherever. I’m not always prepared to gnaw the marrow of new words. I need some inspiration!

What does spring look like where you are? Tell me things. What are you doing this week? What are you planting? Eating? Listening to? Reading?

How to hold these moments

I know that nothing lasts. I know that spring in this place, northward where the light is lingering now and the first dandelions fleck the lawn, will become summer before I blink. I know these days will pass, and I will look back, suddenly much older than I am, with a heart full of longing for the sweet scent of my son’s head after playing in his sandbox until noon and for the way each year we celebrate the first trillium, purple and secretive by the tumbling stone wall, with our own little giddy dance.

I will likely not remember this season’s heart full of ambiguity and ache. I will probably entirely forget how Bean has entered a new SUPER BOSSY exceptionally annoying phase this past week where he’s trying on YELLING and DEMANDING just to see how far he gets with that. (Not far, little man. Not far at all.)

I know this, and yet I’m still struggling with being right here in these moments, because damn, right here in these moments is an uncomfortable place to be sometimes.

I know they are not unique, these moments of stress and financial strain and oh damn, I’ll just say it, it’s spring and I’m feeling a little tethered by these two boys. I still don’t know how to take on the playground, or any trip for that matter that involves just me and my boys. I don’t know how she does it with her girl tribe and her positive attitude all the time, because right now nothing terrifies me quite as much as the prospect of being out somewhere when they launch into their perfectly synchronized meltdowns.

I need to know how you do this with two. How do you get two into the car and then back out of it—without a double stroller. How do you make sure the big one doesn’t fall off the swing at the playground or get run over in the parking lot while toting the enormous weight a car seat carrier or a baby strapped to your person? What do you do with the big one while the little one needs a diaper change at the bookstore, and the situation demands an entire change of clothing due to an apparent explosion up the back? Or, how do you possibly navigate something as civilized and pleasant as a story hour for the bigger one, if the littler one is present and possibly grumpy? Not to mention—shopping for a new pair of jeans? (He’s here, he’s there, he’s under every freaking clothes rack in the store, and oh joy, he’s managed to unhang eighty nine dresses, even though of course, he didn’t mean to.)

My solution thus far has been to stay home. Which is decidedly not a good solution. It is spring after all. Picnic baskets seem in order, and swinging at the playground and trips to the bakery for croissants. There is a consignment store for fabulous vintage jeans I’ve been dying to poke around in, and there are errands of the more mundane sort (the post office for more stamps, we’re out of Vitamin C, the chickens need more hay) that seem to pile up, never getting done. I’m floundering a bit. This two thing is hard. Not loving them, just having them. Together. Logistically speaking.

I know it will all pass, and I’ll be grinning like a cat after a bowl of cream in four or five years when I can use both hands for carrying things like lattes and shopping bags, and my boys will be SO BIG. I know it will get easier, and I’ll take a not-so-secret glee in watching my currently childless friends whose lives seem divinely effortless right now, navigate these same first years with their own little ones. Because it just is the way it is. Littleness demands patience and selflessness and satisfaction in small things.

Guess what I'm figuring out?

Having little ones means showing up for parenting even when you don’t feel like it. It's not Bean’s fault or Sprout’s that I’m worried about money, or that DH and I sometimes climb a proverbial tower of Babel and are unable to say anything the other one understands, or that my pants are tight, or I miss my girlfriends. Because these days that are passing? These hours of bright sunlight and stormy afternoons; these rain puddles and duck feathers and muddy garden beds; these moments? These are their childhood.

Theirs. Short, fleeting, glorious.

So even though DH and I were both tired and preoccupied after going for a run yesterday (with both boys in the jogger and the sun warm on our backs) I went and got the little plastic terrarium and hiked down to the neighbor’s pond because I promised I would.

I promised Bean I’d help him catch a tadpole, and he held me to my promise, big-eyed, curious, eager. We went before dinner, and I tried very hard to just sink into our time together. The grass was scandalously green. There were soft catkins from the birches under foot, and mud, and sparkly rocks. We went barefoot, and in the pond the silt was soft. The reeds from last year's cattails were limp and brown and lumpy with gelatinous bobbing egg sacks.

I waded out, sun-warmed water up to my knees and scooped the jellied eggs. Polliwogs soon, we think. We also caught a newt. Still with gills. Its belly jewel like, spotted, yellow and green.

“I love you, Newty” Bean kept whispering later, as he sat at the kitchen table in glorious evening sunlight, drawing what he saw.

These moments, how to hold them? How do you hold them and let them be enough?

Oh restless heart, be still, be still.

pancakes & dumplings

He is on the mend. All your love after my last post meant the world to me. I laugh now at how worked up we managed to get ourselves. But then I stop laughing and am deeply, profoundly grateful. Google + parenting = not such a great idea sometimes. No? I love the Anna Quindlin quote that Julie shared so much.

Right now: At the kitchen counter after breakfast. He's eaten four pancakes after helping DH make them. Martha's recipe, which is the best. Fresh blueberries. On the windowsill the first spring peaches, from Mexico, but still. Out in the back yard robins are gathering dried grass for nests. The sky is overcast, rain threatening.

Bean climbs up into my lap and we snap pictures. A silly face, now a pouty one. We giggle in between. Both of us look rediculous. I am addicted to the sound of his laughter. I can't help it. I tickle him just to get a fix. I am so happy this kid is feeling better. The past two mornings he's woken up declaring "I'm HUNGRY." Love it.

Apparently he's playing catch-up. Today pancakes, last night two orders of dumplings at our local pacific islands restaurant. He loves brightly colored wooden masks they have hanging on the walls. I love the paper parasols hanging from the ceiling, twirling in the breeze of the ceiling fan. Outside people walked by in droves. He wants new flip flops. I'm already wearing mine. We're both bare feet people.

Right now: the dryer is on and Bean has obviously left quarters in his pockets. They clank about but we don't do anything about it. DH and Bean are making plans to go to the dump, then to rent a rototiller. Time to turn over the soil in the garden; though it's cold today and spitting. Likely we'll go out with gloves and rain boots anyway. Get really dirty. Bean will collect earthworms. Then we'll make hot chocolate and eat fresh bread.

Later, I'll share the recipe, and some photos of my beautiful two month old Sprout.

What are your Saturday plans?

Happy Happy

Happy Easter everyone!

Not catching any breaks

So, Bean seemed to doing better-ish. No fever, and a happy grin on his face. Then this morning he came into our room and was busy building a fort on our bed with his trains while DH showered and Sprout and I dozed nose to nose, and then suddenly he threw up. All. Over. Everything. And, um? I am so not okay with vomit. I know many mothers who say that it's different when it's their kid. But it isn't different for me. Vomit is vomit and it makes me want to vomit. Profound, right?

The only good thing to come from this morning was watching DH gently scoop Bean, shower him, and wrap him in towels. Thank god there are two of us, because the vomit doesn't make him queasy the way it does me, and he was a rock all morning. Gentle, funny, and comforting.

But really? When will the plague pass us by? Enough already.

***

On a completely different note, I have begun to bake bread and I am wondering if you have a favorite tried and true bread recipe to share?

The anatomy of worry

I have been silent the past few days because worry has crept up like fig roots in a well or vermin in the coop. It has been eating my quiet morning hours, and instead of writing I pace the house folding laundry and watch the rain turn to sleet. Fat wet flakes arrow to the ground. The sky is white. Tree branches glisten. The road is slick with mud eight inches deep. Cars get caught in the grooves and the only way forward is to cling to the wheel and not press too hard on the gas pedal. The mud pulls the car where it will. Oncoming traffic is a hazard. You just have to keep going. I remember when I thought worry was something you could avoid, like the flu, or falling off of rooftops, and the answers were easy and obvious, A or B. I remember a time before having this baby, or the other one, now a coltish four-year-old whose skin has become translucent with winter and illness.

It makes me quivery, watching him. His eyes are dark, and the glands in his neck swollen, just slightly. Fluid in his ears has become a perfect haven for repeated infection. He’s been sick for months, but last week was the worst. Recurrent fevers. Antibiotics are bullshit for this. Worry. We’re all doing the best we can; just trying to keep going.

“What?” He asks after everything, his eyes watching my lips move. “What?”

The world sounds like it is under water to him, and feels like it is under water to me.

This is what it is like: your heart out there beyond you, beyond your control, caught in the nook of a small boy’s fleeting smile.

I want him to be okay. I know he will be, eventually, and I could kneel and kiss the ground in gratitude for that. But still, it has been a long time. Long enough for his hearing to have temporarily diminished by almost twenty decibels. Long enough for winter with its carpetbag of ailments to have gotten under my skin.

Other people live temperate places where winter and summer are not equal, fifty-fifty, half the year. They live among trees that are not bare sticks until the end of May. They do not know how the summer sun feels like an addiction when it finally arrives with a frantic ruckus bursting of bloom and bush, blurring the memory of snow. But here, winter stretches out until it feels like forever. Until it is impossible to remember the color of new leaves, or sunburn, or a healthy boy with sun gold skin and bare feet, carefree, without congestion. Here, the light is weak and pale for so long the body hungers for it. The craving is vicious and intense.

I used to live in more temperate places, where the ocean wasn’t far and winter was more like a shrug than a death grip. I used to be single, then coupled, always self-reliant, defiant, determined. I used to imagine that the way you avoided regret was by plunging ahead; doing whatever it was that you thought you wanted without looking back.

I used to have a plan for everything. I remember, in fact, when plans seemed more real than the moment, and I harbored the idea of a self unaffected by the world. I remember really believing that if I played it cool, struck first, kept my bags packed, played hard, and kept my head up, I would always be ahead of the game and safe. I thought I could outwit the wolf, keep the poignancy of life biting me and leaving its mark.

I hadn’t dug in yet. DH and I hadn’t been together for all that long then. We lived in a small beach side bungalow with a yellow dog. The tides came in and left. Sometimes they came up high and an siren sounded and everyone would leave their houses and find their cars and drive them up to higher ground, to garages or further up side streets as the tide came licking up over the seawall, filling the streets with salt water and debris.

When we came back from a staying at lakeside cabin in the mountains where he proposed and I said yes, we found that fleas had infested our house. I remember unpacking bags in the laundry room; bending to pick up rumpled towels and bathing suits and finding that fleas had sprung onto my legs. We drove together to the store for those a couple of those toxic flea bomb canisters, set them off, and drove away again. Stayed somewhere else. Laughed.

Things could have fallen apart then and I would have shrugged. Picking up and moving on meant throwing my favorite pair of jeans into a bag with a couple of pens and a notebook. Sure, it meant heartbreak, I loved the man I’d just said yes to, but I could have gotten over it then.

It was all about staying in motion; keeping my open. I expected, maybe, to marry him, but I also expected that I might not. I expected the other shoe to drop. I never expected that my heart would know a love so fiercely beyond the tensile of that early affection that I would find myself here.

Now I look at him scrubbing a pan in the sink and want to sob. His back is to me, and suddenly he so beautiful I hardly know what to do with the moment. His muscles ripple under his blue cotton shirt. He turns, dries the pan with a faded red and white towel, places it on the stove, drizzles olive oil into it, and turns the gas flame on.

I wonder if we could have become this without our boys, without this place here that we’re trying to make year by year into a home.

Worry tempers the heart. Worry is the murder of crows in the tall poplar shrieking at the lone hawk that swoops, alights, preens. Worry, because now there is so much to loose. Because their small hearts are my responsibility, and Bean is still sick, and because no one has the answers (and antibiotics and allergies and preschool ailments have created a wicked sucker punch.) It is an unfamiliar anatomy, this worry. Like someone come to visit me in the pitch black, and all I can do is reach out and hold on, and let my hands discover its shape in the dark.

***

Boy Band

Words tomorrow. Tonight, simply this. These boys, they rock my world.

Finding my way to here

Photo by M.Brott The days soften. The scent of mud reaches our nostrils thawing beneath lacy layers of dirty snow. Icicles fall. My body is adjusting to eating scraps of sleep. In the middle of the night a headache fills the space between my temples, thrumming and groaning like some hungry wild beast, but in the morning there is just the window, the pale light, the rumpled sheets.

There is an hour then, between five and six when the light is changing from gray to yellow and the tall birch outside the glass is filled with birds, that I curl my body around Sprout, milk drunk after nursing. His head smells like honey; like rain on a summer afternoon; like something that is mine.

We lie like otters and dream. DH’s breath is warm on my neck. My feet press against his shins, heat traveling between us under the tangle of covers. I will forget so soon how this heat takes me by storm in the middle of the night; how I am suddenly drenched with sweat, thrash at the sheets, shove my ankles akimbo over the edge of the mattress. I will forget how my fingers blunder with snaps, milk soaking through my shirt; and how, sitting cross legged on the bed changing Sprout’s diaper in the mostly dark, my core muscles feel non-existent like my middle is composed of anemones winnowing in the gap between my ribs and pelvis.

Then, invariably Bean comes in just as morning is unclenching its late winter fists and the cardinals are marking their territory in scarlet song. Bean is a long-legged colt all of a sudden. He is full of giggles and kisses and knees. He comes in dragging his raggedy blanket and shimmies under the covers. Then the bed is a boat, a space ship, a racecar. We stagger to catch up: hot water, espresso, fried eggs.

***

In the late morning I pull on my chocolate polka-dotted rain boots and go outdoors with Sprout strapped to my chest. The snow is melting. Bean is carrying his hammer. DH has an armload of freshly cut two-by-four planks. We’re heading up the hill, our little family of four, through the woods where the ground is spongy and the snow is sometimes deep.

At the top of the hill, as far back in the woods as our land goes is an old tree. A sugar maple, struck by lightening, hollowed first by fire, then by termites. It is the perfect tree to hide in for a small boy. Bean calls it his “fort.” Last summer I would hike up with him and hoist him into the cool dark of the hollow trunk where leaves made a soft resting place and light filtered down in long dusty motes from above his head. Now, newly independent, he wants to be able to climb in himself so we bring wood and nails to hammer a rudimentary latter to the trunk.

Our pet goose follows us up the hill, and Sprout, tucked into the Bjorn on my chest makes whispering coos as he sleeps. He wears a blue and green hat like a little gnome’s.

The nails sing as they are driven into the wood. Ping, ping, pang, pong, pong. Some bend, encountering knots. The trunk is old. Only a few limbs will have bright green buds and leaves this year.

Later we cut across the snowy meadow past the sleeping garden, following the melting tacks of deer to our neighbor’s house. They are running sugaring lines today, drilling holes for spouts. The sap is running. We cup our hand under the spiles and taste the liquid. It is clear and cold and faintly sweet.

*** I go back to my notebooks from this same time during the early weeks after Bean was born and before, and am struck by how I’ve changed.

I was just twenty-seven. Living in the suburbs. Commuting. Newly married. Every day l imagined a parallel life. Me in a little bohemian flat somewhere above a grocery on the Upper West Side. Thrift store teacups and lampshades, a futon mattress on the floor, nights spent in smoky cafes, up headache late by choice. I was always hankering for a life I believed was more exotic than my own. There was always escape route folded in my back pocket; the bags of my heart always packed and waiting at the door.

This should come as no surprise.

I come from restless women. My grandmother fell in love with her cousin, and, forbidden to marry him, left England on a steamer, broken hearted. She met her husband on that voyage: a German farmer from a good family, and though they traveled around the world together on a honeymoon that lasted fourteen months, sipping tea from brass bowls in Tibet, and drinking camel’s milk in the Egyptian desert, she never really allowed him, or the life he had to offer, to measured up.

I can picture her at the kitchen window looking out at the red dairy barns tucked into the softly rolling Appalachian hills, rinsing plates and resenting every one. She wore stockings and pea coats, when neither was practical; drank afternoon tea from china cups; wrote hundreds of sonnets. Hers was a life of sighs. Before she died she burned most of the poems she had written.

Before Bean, before here, before this, I could never picture myself settled. Houses terrified me. Staying put terrified me. And it was a terror I had learned by heart, handed to me in the blueprints of how to be inked by my mother and her mother before her.

My mother, never quite content, always moved where my father asked her. First to a cabin high in a bowl of the Rocky Mountains where she hung my diapers to dry in subzero temperatures, then carried them indoors, flat as boards to thaw before the woodstove. Then to a house on the hill among dangerously flammable eucalyptus in the Los Angeles suburbs where the Santa Anna winds would make the carpets ripple, and smoke from wild fires obscured the San Adres Mountains. And finally to a low ranch with metallic floral wall paper on a winding macadam road in California wine country where the grass was green in January and dead by April. The seasons were Rainy or Dry, and in spring tractors would spray yellow clouds of pesticides onto the grapes.

Somehow deep within my bones I memorized this message: houses were discontent. Settling meant just that: settling for something, for something less. I distrusted the process of committing to growing a life and growing a family because I assumed it would make me like my mother: restless with regret for a life she had never had and could never quite imagine.

But somehow I managed to say yes to it, despite the bucking of my heart. I have a good man, and maybe this is partly why the terror has gradually been dissolved by joy. Knowing I was like a spring-broke filly always threatening to run, DH promised, and promised again: we can go anywhere, and will if we need to. This place is just for now, for the time being.

But in the time being, I have begun to spend the time, being.

*** It is early evening and upstairs DH and Bean are napping. Everyone is trying to catch up on sleep whenever they can around here. Bean spent the night at his grandparents and didn’t go to bed until nine. When he came home today his huge eyes were glassy and the skin below his eyes was pale and almost purple. When he looks tired like this I want to scoop him up and tuck him into the pocket of my heart. My little boy.

On the couch, I sit with my legs up, Sprout on my chest, his fuzzy head pressed to my chin. I am smitten. Even in the moments when his crying makes me crazy I am smitten. I had no idea this would happen. This love. This wild contentment.

Bean is 4

He's four, and going to be a big brother any day now. It kind of takes my breath away. Instead of a letter, here are his responses to an impromptu interview done on his birthday. *** Favorite color: purple, pink, blue, red Favorite candy: chocolate, all of the candies at the candy store downtown. Favorite game: Scrabble, my circuit board. Favorite food: Macaroni with nothing else (what he means by this is "no veggies". Favorite fruit: mango Favorite piece of clothing: My “I’m with the band” shirt. My Hawaiian shirts. My pink striped shirt. Favorite music: jazz Favorite time of day: morning Favorite time of year: Summertime—because I get to go out with nothing on. Favorite meal: breakfast and dinner Favorite kind of chip: potato chips Favorite animal: platypus Stuff you don’t like: I like everything. Except I don’t like broccoli and I don’t like tomatoes Some letters you know how to write: I A B E W R O V U Y C T L M What’s your brother going to be like? I don’t know Mommy. I haven’t seen him yet.

*** 4 Year old thoughts:

“Every day people ride a rocket up to the sun to check it out. They have a hose that goes way, way, way inside the earth. It pumps up liquid that turns into fire to start the sun if it needs starting.”

“Thunder foxes come when it is night time and it is thundering and lightening. They are so big they can pull Daddy into the water and blow a house down, but they only blow houses down where nobody lives.”

***

He draws diggers and cranes and people with ten fingers and suns with green dots in the middle because “that’s how it looks and when you look at the sun. When you see the green dot you have to look away.”

*** For his birthday he requested pancakes for breakfast; having Daddy help him build stuff on his circuit board; a camera (he begged for that one for months!); 'fancy' drinks with dinner; and a shark cake. Bonus: his aunt & uncle sent him a remote control car. Yeah. The boy is spoiled. But it's his last birthday as our only. And he was giddy and full of wonder and delight all day.

This love

Bean is sick. Since starting preschool it's been a nonstop barrage of sick all winter--for him, for me, for everyone in our family. It makes my heart ache whenever he's sick. I want to just wrap him up, snug him into a pocket like a kangaroo; keep him close. Right now he's next to me on the couch breathing faster than usual, eyelids heavy. My little boy. ***

On the way home he looked out the window at a passing church. "Who lives in that castle?" he asked.

"That's not a castle," I replied, "It's a church."

"What do they do there?" he asks, earnestly, his question empty of irony.

How do you answer this to a four year old who hasn't gone to church? It's not that I don't want to bring him--it's that I haven't found a place that feels right, that feels free and expansive and generous and un-dogmatic.

I grew up with so much faith in my house--my father was a minister in fact, in a small esoteric church whose brand of Christianity was at once both utterly progressive and utterly archaic. Religion saturated everything my family did in some way: from church on Sunday among a forest of adult knees and elbows; to the way we celebrated holidays, or said grace over meals, or prayers before bed.

On one hand this certain web of faith held me, buoyed me up, carried me through childhood with a certain cyclical rhythm that was satisfying and uncomplicated. On the other, it made me feel like a pushpin stuck into a map. You are here, this is the way--the right way--possibly the only way. Rigid, certain, definite.

As an adult, it didn't quite fit--nor did anything else. I feel closest to God in the middle of nature; when the sky is the color of melon and ice and opal; when the grass is wet with dew; when, sitting very still, I am witness to wild animals speaking to each other or shooting stars falling.

"They talk to God," I answer.

Bean is quiet for a moment. Then he says, "Do they see God there?"

"No," I say. But then I change my mind. "Maybe they do."

Who am I to say? Who is anyone? As Rumi says, 'There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth."

Bean nods. "God is in all of the churches."

Now it is my turn to nod. "You're right," I say.

"But I can't figure out if God is a he or a she," he says almost as a question. Then after a moment. "I think its a she."

I exhale. On the telephone wires above a faded red barn, pigeons, silhouettes against the paling sky. "I think you're probably right," I say.

*** We listen to Feist, side by side in a pale circle of light. His fever climbs. He falls asleep. All I want is to stay home with him tomorrow, to hold him close. He is fitful. Wakes. Turns to me, eyes glassy, lashes long. "I love you," he whispers.

This is the part you can't even begin to convey to someone who isn't a parent. This, this breathless wonder, this enormous love.

Big questions, small boy

Will the sun burn out?What about when we die, will it burn out then? Will our truck and our house still be here when we die? Is Rudolf real? Is there someone inside the computer that makes it do what you want it to do? How did the baby get inside your tummy?

*** Anyone have any ideas how to answer the last one in particular? I told him I'd get back to him tomorrow...

Stubborn

What do you do when your almost four year old refuses to: A) EVER blow his nose under any circumstances, especially when he desperately needs to and is suffering from a head cold

B) Wear a sweatshirt/sweater even though it is already in the thirties here and COLD

C) Eat anything offered to him including any and all foods he used to willingly eat

Because right now Bean is doing all of the above, and it is making me crazy.

Three years old

Dear Bean,You are three this week. Three, and around you everything is a little tornado of delight. When I came home from a week away and slipped into our comfy king sized bed, you were already there, curled among the flannel sheets, nuzzled into my pillow. I kissed your cheek and you smiled, a dreamy sleep smile, but still one of contented recognition. Later, you woke to find me next to you and threw your arms around my neck, “Mommy” you sighed. “I love you so much.”

In the morning we made blueberry pancakes, and stacked them on your plate with a star candle, flickering brightly. At your place, I put the rocks I’d collected hiking on trails winding along the desert outside Zion, Utah. One smooth and round, sparkling with tiny bits of glitter, like a star-filled sky. Another, a small bit of petrified wood, found on the muddy trail outside of the park where the group stopped and ate apples and chocolate and almonds while the desert sun soaked into our skin.

You pay attention to everything around you now. Never missing a subtlety of expression, you listen to your daddy talk stocks, and when we asked you how your day was going, you shrugged mournfully, held your hands up in the air, palms up, and said: “My stock is going down; it went all the way down under the floor." Then you grinned like an elf and added, "But it came back up.”

More and more I notice you paying attention to text—everywhere you notice letters—the ones in your name, and also others. When I was gone, I left you a small present for every day I was away. One was a counting book, starting at 10 and going backwards. By the time I came home, you knew all the words, and pointed to each number identifying it correctly. Like me, I think, you are a kid born to learn. I’ve always been voracious this way. Always full of wonder and hungering to learn new things, and I’m glad this is something we share.

I missed you while I was gone, in a bewildering tender way: I kept thinking wherever I went that I’d forgotten something. Still, I was thrilled to go. I hope you understand this. We napped together today. I needed to catch up on much needed sleep, after a week writing, my entire being thrumming like a tuning fork with inspiration after being with such an amazing group of writers.

When we snuggled under the covers, you whispered, “I missed you so much, Mommy,” and gently kissed my face again and again. I said I missed you too, but that it was good for me to go, because it made me happy and you nodded.

I watched you all day today, content to let my orbit grow small around you after a week of airplanes, content simply to be your mother. Remembering three years ago, labor long, spring temporarily bursting in the Connecticut suburbs where I circled the deck working through contractions. Remembering the disorienting blur of new motherhood, your small body no longer a piece of mine. On your birthday we spent the day doing things your way: walking along the waterfront checking out trains, playing with cars and cranes on the floor, and giggling. Lots of giggling.

Adjectives that describe you right now: inquisitive, persistent, curious, determined, intelligent, astute, perceptive, silly, playful, intuitive, and observant.

I’m so proud to be your mama. I love you.

33 Months

33 months old, and he says, “Mama, do you think Kiwi birds eat kiwis?” and then giggles.

When I say, “You’re my little guy” he says, “No I’m not, I’m you’re bunny, and I’m a little bit big.”

When I skip a page in a story, or skim past a few lines to speed the process up he says, “No mama, you skipped a page.” And then he’ll go back and tell me verbatim the words I didn’t read.

He is obsessed with forts. The kind with quilts on the couch are best. Boxes also have his affection. And he loves his little back pack and fills it full of treasures. “I have a wallet, mama,” tells me. “With credit cards. I can buy food and toys.” He collects pennies and keeps them in a jar in his nightstand drawer.

He loves his new snow boots, but hates nearly every winter hat we have for him. He fights us about putting on his jacket every time. “I will wear a jacket tomorrow,” he says, with the hopes of avoiding wearing one today. He also tries this with nap time. “I already napped today,” he says, head tilted, eyes twinkling.” It is 10:30 in the morning. “I will nap tomorrow again. I do not need a nap today.” Yeah right buddy.

“I want to do it by myself,” he says about unzipping his pajamas, or taking off his shirt.

“I love you and I missed you,” he says every day when I get home and we crawl onto the couch to snuggle.

He patters into our room in the middle of the night, and in the morning his arm is wrapped around my neck. “Snuggle me, mama,” he whispers in the early morning light.

He loves to paint, and just this month he started drawing his first recognizable images: a bunny, a person, a digger. He loves his Etch-a-Sketch, and makes elaborate “castles” with stair-stepping patterns. He’ll work on it for a half an hour at a time, eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

When we’re outdoors he stops and cocks his head, “Do you hear that chickadee, mama?” he’ll ask.

When the first snow of the season was falling when he woke, he climbed up onto the windowsill and watched it, eyes wide and joyous. “Snow is falling everywhere, mama,” he cried. “It’s on the trees and on the roof and on the grass.”

I am completely smitten. My kid is the coolest kid in the world.

Two and a half

Dear Bean, I've missed five months of letters, and somehow you're two and a half and an utterly different little boy than you were. Here are the things I want you to know about yourself at two and a half:

You talk, all the time. You wake up in the morning, pressed into the nook of my neck after having pitter-pattered into our bed in the middle of the night, and you immediately start talking about diggers, or trains, or whatever fascinating thing it is you were dreaming about. After fetching your own underpants and t-shirt and shorts which I help you put on, you trundle downstairs, talking a blue streak. You help us make breakfast, talking. You know how daddy's espresso machine works, and you always want to press the buttons. We let you, most of the time, and I have no doubt that by the time you're tall enough to use it, you'll be making better espresso than I can.

Because you're always underfoot, always wanting to help, we regularly offer you the option of vacuuming the kitchen while we make buttered toast and porridge. You are an expert vacuumer. It was an early love. Remember?

You never miss a beat. You listen to us talk, and you pipe up with entirely relevant bits of information, often startling us, because we don't expect you to be paying any attention at all, fools that we are. You know when we're talking about something that might involve you getting a treat or a toy. You know when we're upset. You remember everything we promise.

You know every possible kind of construction vehicle, and have radar vision for spotting them blocks away, through thickets of trees, on side roads, wherever. You daydream incessantly about "getting in da digger and turning it on." And you tell me often, "Mama, I want a digger and a biiiiiiiig road to drive da digger on."

When we found a Mighty Motorized Tonka backhoe at the second hand shop for $8.50, your hands could not be pried from it. When we brought it home and as it moved slowly across the wide expanse of our living room floor, its little red light flashing, its engine whirring, your eyes grew wide and a slow, exquisite, mischievous grin spread from ear to ear. You played with it all night.

You love books. You sit for long stretches of time (long being an utterly relative term, especially when you are two; but twenty minutes is a fair stretch of time by anyone's clock) and 'read' books. You look through each one cover to cover, sometimes telling yourself the story, sometimes telling other stories to accompany the pictures on each page. You recognize many letters, and you know that the words are those black inky squiggles that move across the page. You point out the letters you know on shop windows and signs. You beg to be read to. When I say I'll read two, you say "Maybe three?" When I say, "Okay three," you say "Four?" When I cave, you get that sly look on your face and say, "Five books? You gonna read five books!"

Right now you really like Blueberries for Sal , and the other day when the two of us were furtively filching berries from the neighbor's raspberry patch, I realized you were sing-songing, "Kerplunk, kerplunk, kerplunk," as I dropped each berry into our little purple pail. You also like Hugs and Kisses, which has become a regular naptime read, and Dig, Dig, Digging.

You love to paint. A week ago you painted your first representational drawing: of mama. A wide sweeping round circle. Two red dots on either side for ears. A mess of blue for my eyes, and orange for my mouth. Wild bits of yellow and brown for my hair.

I love that you like painting. That you ask to sit in my studio with paper spread out about you, and you get quiet and thoughtful and have real ideas about which colors you want to use and which are your favorites (yellow and orange, currently.) You also try to pretend write. You tell me you are writing your name, and Mama and Daddy and Bandit. You draw perfect circles, straight lines and elaborate squiggles. Perspective in your drawings does not exist. The broad brustrokes of cat, a chair, and a face are piled atop one another.

You are a runner, a climber, and most recently a serious biker. A few months ago we picked up a two-wheel bike with training wheels. So tiny, it doesn't even have back breaks. It took you about a month to get the hang of steering AND pedaling, and then off you went in a whiz. Now you ride down our dirt road in a snap, and on tarmac, you're lightening. I have to jog to keep up.

When daddy and I are working you're always close by: climbing as high as we allow you on the ladder (to the third rung) and balancing on the newly nailed joists. You love the highest twisty slides at the playground. You dream of being able to hang from the monkey bars like a "big boy," and you have better balance than I do, when you fall. Especially when you tumble off your bike, you fall with grace, and rarely get hurt. This, my dear, is something you most definitely did not inherit from me. I was the kid who, if my small high school had had such pages in our yearbook, would half received the title "most likely to trip." Your daddy on the other hand, is the hottest thing in the world on ice skates.

You are potty trained. It's been almost a month of dry in the morning diapers (except for on the mornings when we keep you up late, and then you sleep in later than usual) and the rest of the day you wear underpants and tell us when you need to go. You went through this brilliant phase a while back where you were pretty into the whole idea of going outdoors. Often it was the only way to convince you to go, and sometimes you'd take it to the next level: leaving poop for daddy on some interesting locations (On top of the lawnmower in the garage. Yes you did.) But now, at two and a half, you're done with diapers and you know when you need to go, and you can hold it while we do the mad dash for the potty.

It is divine. The whole poop wiping thing is a zillion times easier. You do a lovely little yoga pose, presenting your bottom to be wiped, and I adore you because of this. I was never one for the whole poop-up-the back adventure that diapers were so fond of creating. And the best part? Now before naps or bedtime I tell you to go upstairs and go potty and climb into bed, and you do it, without help. You put your underpants back on and everything. Okay. I know. Not even you will be remotely interested in this by the time you can read about it, but wait. Someday. When you have a kid. You'll know why I've devoted a rather lengthy paragraph to this accomplishment. Basically, you totally rock, kiddo.

You, my sweet boy, are thoughtful, kind, and heartfelt. When daddy or I get hurt, you run to us with kisses. You tell us "I love you," us twenty times a day. You want a million hugs. You are a snuggle bug. You are still an awful sleeper, but it's significantly better than it was. Every night you wake up around midnight or a little after, and for a while it was really killing us: having to stagger into your room to comfort you and eventually haul you back to our bed. But then we put a little star light above your bed, with a switch that you can turn on yourself, and now at night when you wake up, we here you whimper and then sigh. And then click. Click. As you try to turn the switch on. And then a sudden pale glow coming from your room and a pitter-patter of feet, and then you're crawling into bed all sweet smelling and snuggly, and it's perfect. Also, you've been sleeping until 7:30 which is quite nice.

If I could, I'd keep you at two-and-a-half for another whole year. People warned about the terrible twos, but I love you this age, when a count to five ends most tantrums and the thing you want most in the world is to understand how everything works. Thank you for being who you are. Every day, you make me smile, you make my heart feel like it is made of helium, you make me grateful.

Love, Mama

25 months

Snow is falling again, though last week the grass started to show, barely green, in muddy patches in the yard. The temperatures were in the fifties and the creek running through the meadow down our road, was swollen with snowmelt, its blue-black water spreading out across the snowy expanse of buried grass like a bruise. Now, they’re calling for three feet of snow—tonight—and the mud on the driveway is frozen in stiff tracks.

More snow means more days spent clambering into boots and mittens in our slate-floored entryway, which is interminably heaped with outer things, jackets hanging three deep on every hook. It means more fights with you about wearing your fire-engine-red snowsuit; more pell-mell chases around the living room to capture you, half squealing with delight, half wailing in frustration. It means the mourning doves and starlings and jays and chickadees that you delight to watch gathering at our feeder by the dozens, will huddle tonight in the pines, heads tucked deep into the downy warmth of their bodies. It means that spring, certain in it’s coming, is still not here.

Do you remember spring, little one? Do you remember how the dandelions plunge up from the verdant green, like a thousand bright yellow suns across our lawn? How suddenly in the span of a month buds are everywhere, and throngs of insects, and the shrill, vibrant chorusing of peepers in the swamps?

We bought you a new pair of red rubber ladybug boots today, because mud season is just around the corner, and though you haven’t truly experienced it yet, mud is certain to become one of your favorite things.

Tonight the wind whips around the north corner of the house, howling, low and soft. Upon hearing it earlier, you looked up with wide eyes, and said, “Daddy, what dat?” Now you’re snug in your crib, curled on your sheepskin wearing red stripped pajamas, and we’re hoping you’ll sleep till morning, but the past few weeks have been iffy in this department.

Sleep deprivation is by far the worst part of being a parent. It feels a little being pushed up against the chain-link fence by the bully at school; the lunch-money quarters smooth and round in your closed fist, unwillingly and suddenly exposed. You have no choice. You give them up because that’s what being asked of you; because if you give in quickly, the way your hair is being pulled and the way the back of your neck is being pinched by the silver chinks of fence will likely ease. For now.

When you cry at night there is nothing we can do except reply; go, be there with you as you squirm about, sleepy and disoriented, calling, “Mama, Daddy, where are you?”

Then you say, your nose snuffly because you’re sick, “Need a hug. NEED A HUG.” So we go. We hug you. We take turns, feeling the cold creep up our legs, and a splintering ache begin at the backs of our eyes. We take turns rocking and singing, coaxing you to sleep. Begging you. Or sometimes, when we’re so sleep-stupored and staggering, we carry you to our bed, where inevitably you sleep perpendicular to both of us, thrashing, your feet in my jugular, your head pressed firmly into the crook of Daddy’s neck.

The past few months you’ve woken up more often at night, and I think it’s because you have energy left to burn. Your wiry little body was made to run. Some days, when the thermometer doesn’t pass zero, you don’t get outside at all, and running around the house leaves something to be desired and many things out of place.

This month of winter after your birthday, has also brought delight by the spoonfuls. The world of imaginative play has suddenly opened wide for you, and you play with blocks and cars, building houses and navigating to stores that sell only chocolate and ice cream for breakfast (you little scamp.)

And we read.

We sit snug on the tan couch in the living room, your body pressed against mine. It is the same tan couch I lay on in Connecticut when the midwife first pressed her Doppler stethoscope to my belly and we heard your heartbeat fast and strong like a rushing flurry of wings. Now we sit on it together and read, book after book, you pointing everything out in the pictures and turning the pages, me reading aloud the same stories again and again until I’ve nearly committed to memory every line of your favorites. You love stories now, not just identification books, or books with simple verses. You attend to the characters, and get anxious when they are trouble and laugh with glee when something silly or funny happens. You count, you sing, you talk. All the time.

I can’t wait to spend spring with you. To hear what you have to say about taking hikes in our woods and digging with wooden spoons in the mud. I can’t wait plant a garden with you and to order baby chicks in the mail. You’re such a cool kid now, talking in complete sentences; talking a blue streak. You ask why and what and when a zillion times.

Even when I’m exhausted, I can’t wait to spend every single day with you.

Love, Mama

2 Years Old

Happy Birthday Little One,

You are two today, bright eyed and full of laughter. When you woke up this morning, you called for Daddy, and he brought you to bed between us, where you snoozed dreamily for another hour, content in a cocoon of love and warm breath between us. When you woke for the second time, we sang happy birthday to you, and you grinned your sunny grin, your bottom incisors just cutting through your gums, and said, “Make birthday cake?”

Birthday cake is what turning two is all about for you. Especially when it’s made with chocolate frosting. You call it “Chocit iting,” and tonight the three of us made your cake together: your great grandmother’s pound cake recipe with chocolate cream cheese frosting and fresh strawberries. You licked the batter off the whisk, and the icing from your fingers, and when it came time to blow out your candles—two, and one to grow on, you took the job quite seriously. Your eyes were so large, in the semi dark. Your breath so full with two year old wonder.

You have become such an incredible person this year, full of inquisitiveness and delight. You want to understand how everything works, you can use a real screwdriver correctly, and reprogram every possible item in our house with buttons (the thermostat, by climbing up onto the back of the chair; my laptop; daddy’s computer; the answering machine...) You are a nature lover, a collector of small quartz rocks and tiny acorns. You are tender, and you hate see me sad. You reach out for us now, saying “Hug!” when you want to be wrapped tightly in our arms, and you gather up your stuffed animals and cars and trucks and even picture books, to give them hugs as well.

It would be okay to have you stay this way for another year: so sweet and rosy and full of wonder, despite your temper tantrums which mostly leave Daddy and I hysterically laughing. You delight at the world. “So pretty,” you say, noticing the moon, the setting sun, the rising stars, with your arms outstretched, and eyes wide. We love you so much, your daddy and I, despite the fact that having you has stretched the fabric of our love for each other in a hundred new directions. You make us laugh a zillion times a day, and make us stop and ponder too, how great a gift our life is.

Love, Mommy

Birthday photoset here.