Something to make it all better
Oh this is so good. It made everything slightly more right. Not to mention, Bean sat in front of the stereo just listening and grinning for more than a minute. Ahhh.
Summer's last moments
In New Jersey this weekend the air was still warm. The mercury crept up to the low eighties; summer's last heat spreading out across the lawn. We played with the dog. Watching him zing out in crazy enthusiastic circles chasing his rubber toy. A flash of apricot and cream, I remember when we picked him out. New in our relationship--together just a year. We'd just moved into our first apartment, and Zeus was the naughty pup who uprooted the flower boxes. Now he tousles Bean with loving licks and spends his afternoons under the coffee table, his body limp with relaxation, his eyes rolled back.
The weather was warm enough this weekend to lounge in a tank top on the grass. To wear sunglasses, feet bare. To run along the canal for miles where the snapping turtles sit in spring, on narrow logs in clusters.
With Bean under the watchful eye of his grandparents, DH and I got to do things we never get to do---mountain bike for long hours on rugged trails, hopping roots, and wide logs, riding narrow planked pathways over wetland mud where in the spring, skunk cabbages bloom. Riding around in his parent's sports car, taking curves fast and giggling, listening to 80s tunes. Walking around town hand in hand, late, under lamplight eating pumpkin ice cream.
The weekend went like an exhalation. Almost unnoticed. I've always wanted to catch exactly when the seasons change. For weeks now, I've been writing about the feeling of fall in the air. And being here, a few latitude lines south of home, I'm certain these warm days will be the last this season. Almost bitter sweet, I realize my baby will be running about solidly on his own two feet next year, this time.
Isn't this how it often is? Moments full of sweetness pass before we truly glimpse them? So often we dwell on the times of sorrow, when frustration or grief poke their strange faces into our nighttime thoughts. We've grown accustomed, somehow, to the frantic diet of agitation that our national media spews forth.
Today, with the rapid-action feature on our new camera, and our dog, we tried to snare a few of these bright breathless moments, mid air, before they vanished with the evening sun.
Click on the picture for a slideshow.
Illustration Friday: Escape
Fall is officially here today, on quiet feet like a cat. Flame colored leaves gathering in numbers on the trees; the sun setting earlier over the lake. During the day, intense heat still in the sun, shivers almost, in the shade. Pumpkins in the fields now are round full orange moons; the corn--higher than our heads.
I can't believe we moved here 4 months ago. A long and lazy summer of watermelon, and farmer's markets has slipped by. Bean is crawling now and I can run five miles without effort. DH mountain bikes regularly. This has been our escape--to move here. Such gratitude fills me when I contemplate the difference.
Bath dinosaur still life
Illustration Friday: Depth
Too often, we pull ourselves apart, seeing in our reflections a mosaic of discontent. We compare ourselves, compete, yet the starting and the ending point for each is vastly different. More than skin deep, beauty is a thing of wonder, of words, of intellect. The grace we bring to our work, the courage, the mess of gratitude, of sorrow, of moments, fills each of us differently. Why do we learn then, to make these shallow comparisons? Media pressing up against us from all sides, blurs our own internal voice, making us loose track of real depth, where it's found. In each of us, differently, wholly as we are.
Frye Boots
Taking note of small things
The last bright flames of flowers farmer's market this morning, gathered up into a whimsical bouquet. The air had a certain chill all day, a harbinger of shorter days, of early twilight, of southerly migrations.
Finally, after a week that felt slightly tumbled from it's own momentum and busyness, today was solace. A morning ramble through stalls of fresh goat cheese and honey, samosas, carrots stacked high, and golden squashes. We sat in the sun by the fountain to drink our lattes and eat freshly made croissants.
Later we watched black smiths bend hot metal--part of this weekend's ongoing art festival. They worked in perfect tandem, their hammers making pinging thuds in the crisp air.
True to my promise, I dug myself into a book for awhile when Bean took his mid day nap--Broken For You, by Stephanie Kallos, which is proving thus far to be eccentric, delightful, and well worded. It felt so good to soak up sentences. To be wholly transported into the world of fiction.
Fall brings days like this--wistful, lazy, but with a slight zing. We went running in the early evening, noticing many monarch butterflies on the milkweed along the edge of the bike path. And coming back to our neighborhood we found a new Mexican burrito place, and a lovely cafe, full of eclectic art, excellent espresso and live music.
It is so easy to become a creature of habit. To grow so accustomed to daily patterns of living that one is no longer actively aware of one's surroundings. Today I made mindfulness my mantra. I took the time to notice small things---to gather them up with my eyes and feed my soul wonder.
Today
Six full years today, DH and I have been together, and he came to me this morning with a box wrapped in coupon paper for juice and tied with a red ribbon. Inside a beautiful hand made silver necklace--just the one I would have picked. My smiles scatterd about the room like freckles. I am so in love with this man. Then a day spent watching cyclists race, crashes up brick pavement, speed, adrenaline, sweat. The sky was bright like a blue ceramic bowl over turned above us, filled with sun. A long nap with Bean tumbled between us in bed, awakening to the sounds of boys playing stick hockey in the street, and harmonica drifting up from a few houses down.
An evening spent getting to know new friends over shrimp and pasta, tossed salad, wine and trappist cheese. Laughing about what we were like in high school, so long ago, and now. Ready to sink willingly into the sheets, to press up against my husband's back, my little one nestled into my body's spooning curve. Then sleep, as the planets whirl and the night air falls in through open windows, bringing dreams.
Underwater reinterpreted
In the quiet of the bedroom, the air conditioner makes the fish hanging from above Bean's bed float in dreamy spirals. We lie together, just the two of us in the semi-dark, waiting for sleep to settle over his energy-packed little body. Waiting to just be in the moment, breathing.
Underwater
I woke up moody this morning, my body drenched in sweat, feeling off-kilter for no particular reason. Sometimes it's just like that. Everything feels slanted, thick, slightly smashed. And I couldn't shake the mood all day. Even after a nap in an air conditioned bedroom, an iced tea and a trip to the bakery. Tonight I dragged my unmotivated self to the pool for a swim, doing a just about a mile. Lap after lap, pulling through the water, my lips and nose and cheekbones periodically pushing through the surface for air. It didn't help that it was gray out all day, the air heavy with rain that hasn't yet fallen. Even up here, northwards by many hundred miles, the weather reflects the storm that's pounding Louisiana right now. I can't imagine the anxiety they must feel, wind surging up so hard. Water everywhere. The threat of everything being gone tomorrow.
The end of summer
Riding back on our bikes from the beach as the sun was slowly falling towards the mountains, I noticed maple leaves turning red. Autumn always brings introversion. A time to take stock of the way the garden has turned out after the growing season; the way my feet look, with a flip-flop tan line and a callous from my bike shoes; the way my soul feels after months of expansion. I'm a bit reluctant this year to give up the goodness of summer, though I love fall more than any other season: for its gathering, its harvest, the leaves like fire spreading up the hills. But fall, with its sheer flaming beauty is like a lover that you know you can't keep, and before you've really learned its secrets, it's already gone. Piles of graying leaves and twiggy silhouettes in its wake; and with it, an inner shedding. An hesitation. Moments of silence. Loneliness creeps back up to the surface of things, waiting for snow fall.
Retail therapy:
Aren't these wild? I want one... These 3 designs pretty much sum things up for me tonight. I'm feeling a bit edgy & intense. Ready for the weekend. Ready to skip the day's headlines that clatter down on my brain like small pebbles dropped from a high rise rooftop. I can't help every once and a while getting good and riled up about the state of global affairs, and particularly this country's involvement in certain middle eastern ventures that seem to be undeniably about oil, despite the politicking about democracy.
As I am, as she is
Went for a run this afternoon, in the late summer heat. 6 miles at about 7.5-8 mph pace the whole time. It was sort of a landmark for me, because I did this run at the beginning of the summer, way back when we first moved here three months ago, and I was terribly winded. Red faced, my heart pounding. I had to stop several times to walk. But today, I could feel the muscles in my legs responding differently. As though my body were saying, you were made to do this. This upright forward motion stuff works for you. I didn't stop once, and I never felt winded.
I feel good running now, after doing it almost every day for three months. Even though my ankle still hurts from an injury earlier in the summer, and I feel my knees, sore, after the end of every run, my mind loves it. Something has fundamentally shifted for me, and I think it has to do with being able to run outside, along water, under sun and the blue dome of sky. Past railroad tracks, factories, sailboats, people. I like getting from point a to point b with the momentum of my own body.
But it also has to do with the fact that for the first time in my life I have the time to focus on this part of myself. I would never have imagined this is where I'd be after having had a baby. Before Bean I could never imagine that my life would TRULY be better with him. Isn't that strange? I was very reluctant about becoming a mother. We weren't planning yet to be parents---because both of us imagined the baggage of responsibility to be so great.
But it isn't like I imagined at all. These moments of closeness and joy and running. And I know I'm lucky. I know it's not like this for everyone, and it is hard for me to share this gratitude, because I don't want it to come across like a slap in the face. But sometimes it comes across this way regardless. Especially for my younger sister, who grew up with a congenital bone disease that has left her, 22 surgeries later, severely limping, with hip dysplasia, sometimes in a wheel chair.
And this has been such a strange thing for me to try and wrap my mind around. The gratitude I feel for my life, juxtaposed by the bitterness she sometimes says she feels, seeing my life. I carried her, when we were kids, all over the place, piggy back. I felt responsible for her. Protective. Angry that she couldn't escape the encumbrance of her disability. Angry that things weren't the same for her as they were for me.
Now we're both adults, and we're extremely different. Growing up in a family that never played together, we didn't learn how to take things lightly, to laugh, to have a sense of humor. Instead we were nurtured in a culture of competition. Always, it seemed, our mother was indirectly comparing us, out of some misguided effort to get us to see each other's strengths. Instead, we ended up seeing our weaknesses and feeling small because of them.
I haven't felt competitively towards my siblings for years; since we were kids, really. As an adult, I really am only competitive with myself. I love breaking my own records: academic, athletic. I don't even know what 'winning' would look like, against the people I love.
Yet somehow, because of the way we were growing up, and because of the huge physical disparity between us, it's hard to be grateful for the ease with which my limbs now move in these sports I love without feeling guilty.
Somehow I want it to be okay for us, to be different. For me to run, to celebrate my running, without making her jealous---without making her hurt or feel small. Our lives, our worlds, everything we know practically, except our memories of childhood, are different. And I want this to be okay. I love her desperately, just as she is. I wouldn't want her to change. I wouldn't want her to be more like me. The way she is: passionate, impulsive, stubborn, disabled, artistic, is perfect.
Can we talk about moth balls for a minute? Seriously, Internet, who uses moth balls, really?
Who? You might ponder? My UPSTAIRS NEIGHBOR'S MOTHER, that's who. But she doesn't use them in airtight containers to kill larval moths that might be munching through her cashmere, which I suppose would be a perfectly acceptable use for known carcinogens, nooo, our neighbor's fucking mother was using mothballs to KILL SQUIRRELS.
That's right. She put mothball flakes in a trail all along the outer edge of their porch, "because the squirrels won't leave our deck furniture alone."
Of course, their porch is directly above our kitchen, and when the mothball flakes fell, they came right down onto the basil plants we had in our open window. But worse than that, was the sudden and horrifying smell that permeated our house gave both of us headaches. And, oh yeah, by the way, we have a 6 month old baby. Who does stuff like that, really?!
When I accosted her, she said the City told her to use mothballs to deter the squirrels. What??? Her poor daughter, who is very nice, and who makes exquisite baklava and has an adorable smile and a bumper sticker on her blue VW Bug that reads "Support Organic Farmers" was of course, mortified when we knocked on her door.
I printed out information about how toxic mothball fumes can be and couldn't help shoving them into her hands, despite the fact that she was already groveling with apologies. "If I don't keep an eye on her, I have know idea what she'll do next," she said, eyes rolling. "I'm sooo sorry! I would never put chemicals like that into the earth."
Can I just say that her mother DOESN'T EVEN LIVE HERE DAMN IT! But she's here all the time, arriving with carloads of stuff, and moving furniture around in the middle of the night. And, worst of all people, she listened to Vanilla Ice ON REPEAT at 3 am. For an hour. I hate this lady.
New directions
Re-reading previous posts I caught a glimpse of my own inner static. I've been restless the past two nights, feeling on the brink of things. Wishing I could feel like I've already rrived, but instead feeling very much like I'm still in the process.
I feel like I'm spiraling towards creative potential that I've only just recently encountered and this process sometimes leaves me zinging and uncertain.
When I first had my baby boy, I was still in work mode, anxious, over-zealous, stressed beyond belief. I worked up until two days before he was born, full time, as a second grade teacher to a class of urban, highly needy and very diverse kids. They sucked me dry. Each day, taking the train home, with my hands cupping the dome of my stomach, I would wonder how I could continue to spread myself so thin, and continue to be happy.
I felt deeply exhausted throughout the winter. My last trimester was spent inadvertently skating across parking lot ice, wiping runny noses, trying to be present in my daily life. I felt scattered, taking the concept of multitasking to a new level: I never had a moment throughout my day when someone didn't need me, or rather, when six people didn't need me.
To some extent, I have always been like this: throwing myself full-force into life. I give, and give, and give to people---and especially to the kids I teach. It has often been hard for me to gauge how much energy I was giving out, and harder to keep enough in reserve for myself.
And had I not gotten pregnant, and instead continued teaching, I am fairly certain that I would have gradually drained myself on some deep, irretrievable level. I would have become someone different as a result. Someone slightly jaded, with a layer of gray sorrow washed over the fiery gusto I have for life.
Yet, I did get pregnant, and because of it, a new sequence of events unfolded, bringing me here. Because of my son, we moved to this city that I love, on the lake with the rolling blue mountains bordering another country. Because of him, I have learned how to be patient again, in a new way.
I have started to learn how to simply BE. Because this is how he is: totally present, in the moment, needing my attention. My body is still his geography. His tiny hands snatch at my hair as he nurses, grunting with satisfaction and I cannot rush him. I cannot be in two places at once in my mind. When he is awake and in my arms, he demands me to be wholly there with him.
And though I'm sometimes totally overwhelmed by the end of the day. (Sometimes I can't take any more hair pulling, or shrieking, or spit up, or flailing, and pass Bean off to DH unceremoniously in the midst of putting him to bed, and rush to hide in the bathroom or at Starbucks for a few moments: just to have some space to myself.) I have also benefited from the SLOWING DOWN OF THINGS in my life.
I have begun to allow myself to be creative in new ways, and am opening myself quietly, daily, and with intent to the possibility of new directions. In a way it seems I am learning to navigate with a new inner compass.
Stuck spinning
In college I took several classes with an English professor who is a fairly well published writer. She was off-beat and funny and sincere. A lesbian and a recovering alcoholic who'd grown up in the red-neck south, she could make swearing sound like praying, with her soft drawl. She could make any story sound good just by reading it aloud. And she had a way of saying things that were totally apt. One day she came to class a little late, a stack of papers sort of falling out of her bag, a giant to-go mug in hand. As she sat down she said, with a slow grin,
"Y'all know what a tractor looks like when it's been tipped over and it's wheels are just spinning and spinning around and the mud is kind of getting everywhere? Well, that's how I feel right about now."
That's EXACTLY how I feel tonight.
What will it be?
I spent my day writing lists that didn't get accomplished. I napped early with my baby, because of a restless night (I think he's teething) but it was a fitful nap, due to caffeine and the fact that my brain wouldn't turn off. I felt anxious and fruitless today, filled with worry that in becoming a stay-at-home mom, for now, I am giving up some part of myself irrevocably. And then I remembered that I wanted to take this year to write, and to make something of my writing. Which resulted in a new wave of terror and guilt.
I'm not sure if I'm scared of writing something that is actually successful, or never doing so. And I wonder if I'll never find the time. (It took me the span of four hours to read that article in Vanity Fair about Aniston that the media is quote happy about, because of all the damn interruptions that inevitably occurred). But I know one thing. My mother is almost 60 and because she raised three kids, she now has no career, no professional skills, no "calling" and she wishes she did, and I couldn't bear that.
But today I wonder if I will I somehow slip down a rabbit hole and become that nobody, if I stay at home? Or can I, like I dream on better days, do both?
