Trying to let it happen

We put an offer on the house today, and I'm wishing I could do like my cat: curl up, put my tail over my nose and sleep off the anxiety. Instead I try to gather my scattered self by drinking many cups of berry tea and sketching.

After we signed all the paper work and the realtor left, the song by Bill Withers that we danced to at our wedding came on the radio. We never hear it on the radio! An omen---but one we are unable to interpret.

Over stimulated by the time we got home, I was in desperate need of alone time. The sound of my son's teething-induced whining grated on every nerve. Tiredness crushed around me like broken pieces of glass.

In the cafà I ordered a toasted bagel with butter, and tea. I let myself unwind, drawing my paper cup, the bagel on the clear glass plate, the crumbs on the table. I took the time to notice the salty taste of each bready bite, and the sweetness of the tea. In the cafà window I saw myself, slouching. Outside, the silhouettes of people moving up and down the dark street, backlit by shop windows.

I am trying to be open to the process of rightness. So many readers have reminded me: what is right will happen, and I believe this is true. It is just so much harder live it than believe it.

This way and that

Anxiety has spread out across the surface of my life tonight, like the glaze a potter applies to a bowl. Liquid under high temperatures, then ridged when left to cool. So many things feel up in the air, suddenly. In transition, in motion. I'm finding myself dreaming, gasping, muttering. Longing for more sleep, for long, uninterrupted times in my studio. But mostly, I'm wishing for that the impossible: for vision that will let me know the outcomes of all the things started now. I'm wishing for certainty and feeling only chaos.

My sister was here the last four days, and it was good. Good to explore new ways of talking, of seeing each other: based less on the past, and more on who we are now. We both took risks to talk with honesty, to say things that mattered, to show small pieces of us that are less than perfect. Over peanut noodles and cheap wine we realized that the story of our childhood was one of comparison and never quite equals in the moment. Now we're trying for new ground, level to start with. Hopeful, unsure of where we'll end up.

My son has a rash. Red spots freckling his body like a dappled sunburn. The doctor says it's benign: the side effects of some virus he picked up. This, combined with teething has him terribly out of sorts. I spend my nights curled round him, trying to weave a cloak of protection with my breath and murmured prayers around his little body. My body aches with loving. I want to sleep. I want him to feel better. I want his teeth to be fully in his mouth. I'm a little on edge.

My husband and I spend the afternoons driving around the country side looking for houses or land to build. We have stacks of timber frame home plans, for-sale-by-owner ads, MLS listings. Each place we visit leaves my heart feeling like a trout pulled up by a reel. I flip flop: wanting it, then not. Imagining home, then feeling impossibly far from it.

This is what it is like: o plunge into the future. To take the next step towards things that matter to me, to my family. I know it is here on the edge, on the verge of new things, that the simple act of committing is more valuable than any crystal ball. I try to take a breath in, and let it go: trusting that the universe will move in response to my movement; that things will turn out fine.

Friday afternoon

We're in the midst of househunting---not for this year, but for next spring. A place with land---pastures, wooded areas, perhaps a stream. We moved north to find this---and today we spent a couple hours driving around and then walking out along trails onto land that we tried to imagine as ours someday.

It's a bizarre process---trying to imagine something that doesn't yet exist. You have to be half lunatic, half dreamer to survive it. Yet it also fills me with a giddy breathlessness as I imagine where my garden might go. Where a swing might hang from a tall maple for Bean, where we might sit on the porch in the morning with coffee watching wild turkies or racoons raid the seed below the bird feeder.

With each place we visit, the home I imagine is becoming slightly less a figment of my imagination and slightly more tangible. Click on the photo above to view a few of the sights from our rambles today.