the blue yonder

My last post sounded pretty dire, didn't it? I didn't mean for it to. It was the result of too many days back to back of intense writing until 2AM in combination with a massive to-do list and a heap of uncertainty that brought out my most fragile, anxious self. But the truth is: this is a really exciting time for us! We're poised on the brink of reinvention, and neither of us really know what that will look like, but it will most certainly will include adventure, and learning new things, and redefining what matters, and the prospect of this makes me joyful.

In so many ways we've done things backwards from our friends and peers. We had kids first and made this place home before we we were thirty. Now we've got these two awesome kids and a whole universe of possibility and zero money and a heap of adventures just waiting to be had. I"m not just saying this. I am really (finally) at a place of throwing my arms wide open to the universe, ready to leap into the wild blue yonder; full of hope and abundance.

It's been an interesting process getting to here. When we first found this house, I was terrified of making a Home. Terrified of putting down roots and having something stake a claim on my soul the way I knew this place would. I've always said: what else? What if? When? I've always wanted the option of going, of travel, of doing something different. I've always, at the end of the day been a girl with a wanderlust affliction.

Now that I know who my kids are, and what they're like as little people in the world....I can imagine living other places with them. We're a pretty cool family unit, the four of us. T and I (despite his laundry neglect) work as a team almost seamlessly, and I've never had any one in my life who is more of a champion of my writing or a bigger fan of my art than he is.... We don't require a lot when it's all said and done, and if there is one thing that's true, it's our shared love for learning new things.

So.

Maybe.

Maybe anything at all. Maybe we'll stay here. Maybe we'll head to somewhere else. T. is excited by the prospect of different work in a way I could never have imagined him to be. It's like a weight has been lifted from him: and he's full of determination and enthusiasm, and we're all keeping our fingers crossed. (Cross your fingers too, will you?) Have you ever reinvented yourself? Changed an outlook, a job, a lifestyle, a location.

Also: A Field Guide To Now is becoming it's own adventure. It's SO CLOSE. Please help to make the funding happen (remember, it's all or nothing). I have a question for you about the book: what would you be drawn to more? A straight-up illustrated essay collection, or a book that also offers some little invitations to you about ways to be an explorer in the moments of your life, right now as it is? It would be so helpful to hear your thoughts about this!

Vanishing point

Everything couldn't be more uncertain, more tenuous, more questionable than they are right now. T. is thinking about quitting his job. It's been too many months of nothing. Shoestring hardly defines it any more. Is there a vanishing point?

Trying to push through and get this proposal sent today.

A million things converging. Exhaustion, for one. Worry. The way everything is heartbreakingly beautiful right now: wet and green and new. Snow still on the mountains; the red flush on the hills of the maple buds; swallows building nests above the bay windows; a clear, wide, empty sky; the piercing call of a circling hawk.

(Also, if you haven't, please go be a backer... it's getting close. )

worthy vs. frivolous

I am so interested that many of you also face this tug-of-war over worthy vs. frivolous, and I am wondering where we came by such notions? What voices define these words in our heads? Parents? Teachers? Friends? Books? I'm also curious about what comes to mind specifically for you when you think of these two words. What things in your life do you, without much thought or intention, deem frivolous or worthy?

frivolous (adj.) 1) of little weight or importance; not worth notice; slight. 2) silly

worthy (adj) 1. having worth, merit or value 2. honorable or admirable 3. deserving, or having sufficient worth

In then next minute write down five things that immediately come to mind as frivolous and then five more that you think of as worthy.

I'll share mine tomorrow too...

(right now, bed is calling. It was SUCH a long day. Did I tell you that my Mac died a horrible death this week? JUST as I am on deadline with everything? Ouch. Still recovering. Long story. Perhaps tomorrow?)

Go out and see

go out and see what is for oneself

notice stories trying to fly.

+++ What is your story today?

And when I blink

And when I blink inside the slender twigs of trees, the memory of leaf, the silent code of blossoms bursting; and there is also this: the way the robin flies to here, to these still stark woods, her plumage rust, her song the everything that lifts my heart and when I hear her call from the kitchen window I cannot help but run to the back door, where I find the grass still hard with morning frost, and hesitate and then she warbles sweet and high in the crook of a birch, and again I learn how little it is that I know.

+++ Some tunes for the end of March, just for you. <3 Also: I've opened a little shop. Adding a few things to it daily. Prints mostly. Some originals too (soon.) +++ I can't believe it's going to be April so soon. Are you ready? What is one thing you want April to manifest?

Monday glimpses

The house was surrounded by fog today and the ambiguous weather of almost spring. We went for a walk; picked pussy-willows with dew-damp fuzz and rubbed them against our cheeks. Soft. Softer. The sky and the hills blended, things became smudged: now, tomorrow, what we hope for, whatever else we are beyond this day. Things became silhouettes of themselves: telephone poles, pigeons perched on wires, rooftops, the details blurred with moisture. The trees wore necklaces of water drops. Bean splashed in every puddle. I splashed in every puddle. Sprout wanted to get his hands in things: in the mud, in the wet grass, in the sky. He kept reaching up, clapping. The sky was white on white.

Down by the pond all four of us watched rocks break through the last thin slips of ice floating at the surface. Ice that looked like cellophane. It’s a favorite thing, always, for anyone near water: to throw rocks. To pick up a hunk of quartz and let it fly. Sprout squealed with delight. DH was reluctant to share his best rocks with Bean who teetered thisclose to the edge, among the stubble of last years cattails, his slender arms snaking out away from his body awkwardly with each triumphant toss.

So this was today: fog, and writing, and small boys under foot (an unusual Monday. Bean’s school was closed for in-service.) It was a day of corn tortillas with beans and melted cheese, and making paper tails (which we all gleefully wore) and fighting off a slew of tail attacking pirates with wooden swords and lots of shrieking. Miraculously, it was also a day of semi productivity. A few paragraphs written, edited, the boys occupied with large squares of newsprint and six dozen crayons (now strewn everywhere imaginable.)

So what if things are up in the air; in the end they always are, and this, this is my life. Boys. Writing. Sneaking kisses in the foyer while pulling on coats. Collecting blue and brown eggs from under the warm feathered bodies of hens. And taking a walk, all of us, to the pond and back, stopping a hundred times to look at the world. To be astounded by the water rushing everywhere, the puddles, the catkins, the mud.

It’s easy to forget today. It’s easy to think in terms of what didn’t get done (that list is always so long.)

What are five small things from your day?

Around here today

I felt like sharing a few photos of everyday things today. Some tunes I've been liking. A new place I've been collecting the things that catch my eye. Also really enjoying some of the new self portraits up in the Self Portrait Sunday Flickr pool~grab your camera and join in (you know you want to.)

And: we took Bean ice skating today--and it was, well, sort of a disaster. Like a wet noodle on ice. Maybe it's not his thing? Any suggestions (we did that push-thingy, it didn't help much.)

Finally: what music have you been listening to this month?

SELF PORTRAIT SUNDAYS: Wanna play?

A self portrait to start the week for a while... How to play: post a self portrait on your blog and leave the url in the comments here. I'll pick some of my faves to post over at the brand-spanking-new Self Portrait Sunday site. Tag! You're it.

a work in progress

It's been twenty days since I launched A Field Guide To Now, and in those twenty days I have been more intensely creative than I’ve been in over a year. I've been forced way outside my comfort zone. My word for the year was action, and this project has forced me to take action on behalf of my career as a writer and artist in ways I couldn’t have conceived of when I first took the plunge. I've had to learn how to query and research and push the limits of my ability to create at night after small boys go to sleep. I’m working on this book project, my novel, paintings, and a few other big projects that are under wraps with fingers crossed.

(I am also working part time, at a job that is pushing me to learn In Design and Photoshop, always under deadline. The child-free hours of my day are spent thusly: designing ads and view books and writing press releases. The rest of my day is spent juggling, with a single-minded focus pounding in my head like jungle drums.)

I am compelled, determined, wired, moody, thrilled, exhausted, inspired. When I sleep my mind is active in a way that is almost new to me. It’s frenetic and repetitive: gnawing away at the creative tasks I’ve left off from before bed. This past week I’ve begun dreaming of whales—and they’ve inspired some of the newest art for A Field Guide To Now. Here is a glimpse (in progress.) Incidentally, when I looked up what it means to dream about whales, this is what I found: Whale reintroduces us to our creative and intuitive energies to show us a talent we've forgotten about or haven't been aware existed. How spot-on is that?

I’ve had more coffee and less sleep; more wine, more sex, more dreams and less rhythm. I’m spending less time on laundry and dishes (and the house is in probable shambles because of it) and more time perched on the stool in my studio painting, with gauche on my fingers. Less time taking leisurely walks with my boys; more time trying to multi-task while they’re under foot.

It's made me think about my identity, about who I am and how I define that. For a while, after Sprout was born, I slipped wholly into the identity of mother, and felt my world narrow to the small, domestic orbit of that life. It was restful, to be there. For a while. Sprout was such an easy baby that I enjoyed his babyhood in a way that I never fully did with Bean—who cried more and was more needy, just as I was newer and more anxious at the whole mommy thing.

But now, Sprout is walking. Bean is 5. The house is littered with legos (Sprout holds lego helmets in his mouth like a chipmunk. I’ve checked his diaper but he’s never actually swallowed one. Go ahead call me neglectful. YOU just try to keep legos off the floor with two boys in the house, four years apart.) There is a constant stampede of activity and peanut butter sandwiches and glasses of milk that get spilled. The vacuum is out all day long. Money is tight. Bean has outgrown all his pajamas. Sprout is starting to say words.

And.

And in the midst of all this messy, simple, regular domesticity, I’ve begun to long fiercely for myself. For myself not as a mother, but as someone entirely separate from my children.

Truthfully, I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with the definition of motherhood, and now, more than ever, I am enjoying my boys and wanting to be distinct from them, in my own right. A writer. An artist. Right now my mind is preoccupied with the craft of writing, with images, and also about self-doubt, and longing…

How do you define yourself? Where does your definition of motherhood (if you are, or want to be a mother) shape you? What are the words you use to tell yourself the story about your life as it is at this current moment?

the journey

"Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home."

--Matsuo Basho (Check out the entire set on Flickr.)

hello, Monday

Beneath the covers when the day first sets in, I’m not quite here, not quite anywhere else either. Hello, Monday. It’s already 6:03 and the night was a slapdash mess of wake ups. The teeth, they keep coming. Arched back wailing at 3:27a.m. for ten stagger-around-the-room minutes, searching for Tylenol, and then again at 5:06, too early and too late for more or better sleep.

I lie awake, face in the pillows, the thudding of my heart reverberates in my head. My breath moves my ribs up and down, up and down, but I am not here, not all of me, not yet.

Under the weight and softness of my stomach my wrist bones, carpals and metacarpals, are crumpled like soft bits of clay and as I flex my fingers, pins-and-needles set in.

Somehow our boys, both of them, are already in bed between us.

This morning I can feel the way I’m sort of pushing around at the outline of myself with my mind. Hello, day. Hello, memory. Hello, this life of mine. I feel myself begin, reluctantly to inhabit my vertebrae, lungs, buttocks, thighs; in the nick of time I roll out of the way. Bean’s at it already: making a pirate ship out of the covers. Sprout, miraculously stays asleep (of course, now after a night of it) and he is perfect, perfect, perfect here beside me. Rosy, tousled. His hair smells sweet like only him.

The day comes fast then: wooden slats of window shades pulled up; snowmelt; shower steam; the fragrant bar of French lemon soap slipping from my still slack-fingered grip; coffee. The boys are both underfoot (vacation until Wednesday) which gives new meaning to the phrase “work from home,” which is what I try valiantly to do, meeting four deadlines, non-stop screen time, CS4, phone calls, 37 emails, everything interrupted by the repetitive cacophony of BOY.

The day is gray, and the is light translucent and dull, but I like the way the thermometer climbs to 38 before 11am, and how on the south facing fields I can see bare patches where the grass pokes up. I’ve been looking at the trees for signs every day now: the buds are swelling with the secret lives of leaves that wait for chlorophyll, for sun.

Inside, the boys and I are barefoot, and I look at them and feel the fragile container of my ribs nearly snap open with the thunk-thunk-thunking of my little hammer dulcimer heart. Bean with his thin arms and messy hair and growing-in-crooked teeth and ski-jump nose, and Sprout, who has been trying to run from the minute he learned to walk and whose gait looks a wee bit like a cross between a high stepping horse and Frankenstein. Some days I hardly have words. I have two sons. I don’t think this wonder ever goes away.

And so without stopping it’s night already. We visit friends after work and arrive home late. The sink is crowded; the cat wants fresh water; the refrigerator needs to be cleaned. Instead I let the boys stay up another minute. Bean and I eat toast with cloudberry jam.  Sprout carries pot lids around the room. Nonstop, there went Monday.

How was your day?

PS--I have a super-duper exciting giveaway for tomorrow, that I can’t wait to share!

PPS--Did you see? I made some pretty Field Guide To Now blog buttons. Please grab one, if you'd like & spread the word. 30% funding tonight is awesome. Who want's to be the one to push it to 3K? Just $35 away...THANK YOU Tahereh! What a great way to start TUESDAY.

Timing is everything, as usual.

ARGH!

So I left my laptop power cord at work this afternoon which means that my laptop has run out of battery juice and I'm left stranded in an all-PC household unable to finish the video component of the Kickstarter project I so very much wanted to launch tonight. I work almost 45 minutes away from where I live, so there wasn't really an option of clocking an additional 90 minutes (which ironically is about all the "free" time I have anyway)... and I called a friend who lives just a few minutes away but his Mac is older than my little Airbook and our power cables don't speak the same language. So alas, it will have to wait, and I'm going to have to settle for doing some non-screen time things including a run on the treadmill tonight, and revising the paper draft of the first three chapters of my novel that should have been sent to my mentor for revision two weeks ago. A tip I learned doing Nanowrimo this winter: email yourself a copy of your entire manuscript every so often. Or get a Dropbox account (aren't they cool? I don't have one yet, but am tempted, esp. after tonight!

That said, I'm going to clunk away on DH's keyboard for a few more minutes (it seems so HUGE compared to my laptop. I have no idea where to put my fingers. Kinesthetic memory is so interesting...) and share some things that have caught my eye lately.

First off, if you live in New England, I just discovered the best (almost local) tomatoes (second only to true back yard garden tomatoes in the summer!) They taste like actual tomatoes with that lovely biting, viney fragrance. Which is a dream in the middle of winter here... And because I'm pretty committed to local & non-GMO food, I emailed them to see how they grow their tomatoes, and got a prompt (and very awesome) next day email from Tim Cunniff:

"We do not use ANY GMO seeds, they are all done through traditional hybrid methods, cross breeding various varieties. We use an integrated Pest Management system that replicates a balance between beneficial insects like lady bugs and wasps to control white fly population."

Also agricultural: I just finished this book about a year in the life of this farm, and I loved how honest and detailed and raw the description was. I came away from it inspired to really put in a garden this year. And to figure out composting.

And now all kinds of random: Gorgeous photographs. An interesting take on digital media and all things literary and current. This whimsical and mysterious take on reviving paper mail. This way of thinking about the future...And this series about how to write a novel.

Off to do that now.

PS--I loved your links & replies from yesterday.

Good things.

Sprout took his first steps on my birthday! He's been venturing out into the wide expanse of floor ever since and it melts me every single time I plunk him down on his little feet and he makes his way towards me hesitantly, grinning ear to ear. I wish you could all meet this kid. I am so smitten with him. I know that's all I ever say about him--but it's so true. He's so easy going and funny and laid back. When he makes it all the way to me he throws his arms around my neck and practically gnaws my cheeks off with drooly kisses and seriously: MELT.

Also: in the middle of making carrot muffins yesterday afternoon as a snow whirled past the windows the phone rang and it was the Red Hen Press calling! To tell me I won the June 09 Short Fiction Contest judged by Judith Freeman . AWESOME.

And: I am thisclose to launching my KICKSTARTER project. It's so exciting. I'm up to the gills in creativity, which makes me very happy indeed. My only barrier: TIME. I'm hoping I'll have it up tomorrow. Stay tuned.

+ + + Tomorrow I want to share a bunch of links with you of beautiful blogs and good things I've been eating & reading and enjoying for the past couple of days... And I'd love to hear about your favorites right now: what magazine do you love to read? What do you love to have for breakfast? What is one thing you're going to do this week that you're a little scared of doing? (That's right. Commit to that last one.)

xoxo!

Birthday retrospective

In the fields, ice glitters like fish scales snared in the stubble of corn. The river flooded its banks last week. A January thaw, and now the outlying fields are a morass of ice and sloughed off hunks of snow, stained black with silt and mud. The ground heaves. The ice breaks, and pitches up vertically among the mowed stalks. The winter light plays across it; unexpected iridescence.

In the summer corn grew tall here, and driving slowly with the windows down you could smell it: sweet and starchy; each ear growing fat in the secret shade of leaves and silky tassels. The river was brown and slow. The sun high; the heat supple.

Now the wind bites at my cheeks, and I bring steaming buckets of fresh water to the coop where the hens peck about listlessly among the litter. Spilled water on my jeans hardens to ice. Snow is in the forecast again. A sundog dogs the sun.

In the house, the air is floral and fragrant with scent of cooking fruit: pear-apple sauce. The stove is fat with embers. The cat is lazy. The to-do list is a hundred miles long.

+++

I wanted to launch my project over at Kickstarter on my birthday—but a storm the night before brought down a huge tree on our road (a pine with a glorious crown of roots almost two yards across--up-ended unceremoniously, smashing smack into our phone and internet line) reminding me how small we always are in the scope of things. And also: my inlaws drove off our ice-slick driveway and then managed to get our truck stuck too (trying to get their car out!) wheel-well deep in mud and melting snow... so the morning of my birthday DH and I spent a fun (really, it was!) hour winching vehicles out of mud. I love that we work so well as a team.

So here it is Thursday and on the windowsill are a dozen scarlet tulips from my guy, each one the fierce color of my heart. When the sun breaks through the clouds, they almost make me catch my breath. Each petal illumined, gorgeous, risqué, and utterly out of place against the backdrop of naked poplars and maples: a tableau of gray on gray against the cloud strewn winter sky.

First: a birthday list.

Second: I’m going to launch my project this weekend hopefully.

It’s going to be fantastic. With your help, that is. Truly: the only reason I would have ever dreamed this up is because of YOU.

Third: a birthday wish. I'm declaring my own personal Delurking Day. Say hi. Share: who you are, how long you’ve been reading, and one of your favorite moments in your day.

xoxoxo!

Going for it.

An Invitation A box of postcards. A handful of moments. A Field Guide For Now.

Part prose. Part mixed media collage. Part survival guide. Part adventure guide. Altogether: an exploration of the moments in life when everything happens and nothing does. Right now. Because these small, mundane, repetitive moments of laundry and dishes and leaving and arriving can also become the bread that that feeds our dreams and make us whole.

Launching on Kickstarter tomorrow.

+++ Thoughts? +++ (I am so giddy and nervous and excited about this--can't you tell? Also, you're support means everything to me on this one. So many of you have nudged me about making some kind of book, and while the novel is in progress, THIS is something that you will be able to hold in your hands.)

Hindsight and then some

Where have I been? To be honest, I’ve been busy taking myself too seriously, with an enormous cold sore on my lip, that’s where I’ve been. I’ve discovered that I’m quite prone to becoming rather preoccupied with the outcome of my life and days. It’s foolishly easy to sit in the dark in a rocking chair with my baby attached to my breast, wondering, is this the sum of now? Is this what I intended when I was twenty-one, more sleek, more plump, more inflamed with ideals?

The truth is also that the cold sore on my lip caused quite a rash of vanity. I didn’t want to go out of the house, stupid as it is. I could feel it prickling up on my face last Friday night, the irritation starting at the thin pale line between pink and cheek. It bristled, as cold sores are wont to do, into an enormous festering thing and quickly I felt felled by my lot. Seriously. All week I’ve had this thing on my face and I had to go about my life driving Bean to and from school, attending meetings, meeting deadlines. A friend said, unthinking, “Oh my god what happened to you?” and I wanted at once to weep with self pity and also to laugh hysterically because dear lord, it’s just a fucking cold sore and I should get over myself. I almost have.

And also: how seriously we take ourselves in our small lives. And still there is a wild striped stampede in my heart rocketing towards whatever is still out there to be mine.

Even in the dark I feel it as I am rocking my second baby, my last one, who is nursing with gusto, his little hands moving about, clutching at my skin, my shirt, my hair, my lips. There is something utterly elemental and mammalian about these moments that we share. He’s drinking me in, his hands memorizing my soul, my teeth, the slack skin at the backs of my elbows, my hair which has grown long now, down below shoulders. I need to remember to sink into this, to let go, to let things be more. The imperfect has never been something I sought after; now it is always mine. Each day bridled with the bittersweet of knowing all that my heart knows.

Life is the wild startling flight of chickadees, the softness of my boy’s cheeks, the salty smell of my husband’s skin against my lips, the dishes in the sink, bread dough soft and punchy in a bowl rising by the wood stove, icicles, each one sharp and glittering, dripping as the temperature warms. And life is also knowing that I have this while someone else is hungry; and also that I long for things I do not have; and also that each day is short, too short, and sleep still consist of fragments torn from the blurry cloth of night.

Someone said in the comments awhile back that I don’t seem to be happy, and when I read this I was struck by how narrow the perimeter of that word is. Happy. It feels neither big enough, or small enough to contain all that is in my heart.

Still, its true that it’s been one of those weeks, and in fact it’s been one of those years—and by that I mean that I’ve been preoccupied a great deal here with the day to day, and also with a pervasive feeling of not getting as far as I need to with my life; not doing as much as I should or whatever. The thing I kind of keep forgetting and then bumping into again and again is the fact that I had a baby this year, and really, that is a big fucking deal even though its something that happens all the time to nearly every woman, and most of them are not nearly as lucky as I am with their lot, if you think of all the women in Iraq or in the Indian slums or in China or Sudan. Having a baby is derailing in the best and worst ways. It splinters your heart and your objectives. It makes you become, and also destroys small (and possibly shallow) parts of who you once were. (Who was I at twenty-one anyway? What did I want?)

How we measure our lives is so strangely, imperfectly, foolishly, relative. My life this year has seemed particularly small to me some days, and sometimes I want to sob because of its smallness. On these days my dreams become thunderous and sharp against my ribs inside my heart. But who am I, really, to feel anything beyond the gift of this life? So I have a fucking cold sore and spent a year raising young boys under significant financial stress. So. Fucking. What. It all seems small when you think of Haiti. Or Afghanistan. Or what life must look like behind the crazy political and literal barbed wire curtain of North Korea.

So that’s where I’ve been: feeling kind of sorry for myself because I’m turning thirty-two in another week and I’m not sure about the whole success bit—what it means, or if I’ve achieved it, or if it even matters.

I know I get caught up in this a lot—even with just simply posting here. I trick myself into this mindset that I always have to write something relevant, and this year has been one of many quiet moments and a lot of angst about making ends meet, and so without meaning to I’ve stopped noticing the small things, stopped writing about how the world makes me feel full to the brim with it’s beauty, always, nearly every day.

This makes me sad: I’ve recorded less about Sprout by a long shot than I did about Bean, and I wish that it weren’t the case since I’ve loved his babyhood so entirely—even more, in a way than I did Bean’s because it wasn’t fraught with the same angst about each phase of babyhood. I want to get back to writing down the simple things because for one, my short-term memory is shot, and also, because it locates me in my life in a simple and wholesome way that I love. Writing down the day is like finding myself on a You Are Here map, even if the map is small and crumpled and only consists of a few shaky lines delineating the floor plan of my kitchen.

When the decade started I was twenty-one and eager and I didn’t actually put much thought towards concrete goals. What did I expect? If I were really honest, I’d have to say that I didn’t have a fucking clue what I to expect from my twenties. And in the end, maybe it doesn’t matter much at all, because as Kurt Vonnegut says, “Be patient. Your future will soon come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are.”

And also, even if I did have expectations, they wouldn’t have included heartbreak or shock (expectations never do account for such things.)

I couldn’t have imagined how aching and pell-mell and urgent my twenties would be. How life would hit hard and fast, with loss and surprise, each event following closely upon the heels of the last. I became a teacher. My father died (as I sat with him.) I had a baby boy (unplanned.) I got married. I helped to gut and rebuild a house in a unfamiliar city in an unfamiliar state. I was in a school related shooting. I began working with an author I admire immensely. I was nominated for a pushcart prize. I was accepted to graduate school twice and derailed both times because of topsy-turvy life events. I had another baby boy (unplanned.) I quit teaching. I couldn’t have put my finger on any of it, really, which leaves me reeling. Bracing. Shit. Tomorrow I’ll wake up and be forty-two and what will I be saying then?

Now I feel wide-eyed and tenuous. This is my life. These moments, fragrant and tender with my baby’s soft head against my breast. He slips into sleep, and I look into the dark towards the pale outline of the window where snow falls outside.

+++ PS: I'm having fun painting the zebras. (This painting is for sale, by the way...) PPS: What did you expect? How has your life measured up?

2010

I like the way the world looks now: tender, undercover, monochrome. I like the way this month starts off in sleep: the longest nights, the shortest days. I like the way we hurtle down hillsides on sleds; the way driving home from a New Year’s Day party with friends we saw five trees illuminated by the light of a car dealership, each branch crowded with the black silhouettes of sleeping crows.

I like how anything can happen before it does, now, at the beginning of a new year; and also looking back, considering the pulse and tremolo of the year gone by.

I like how it’s always possible to feel at the cusp of something grand at the start of a new year. Like there’s a chance for anything to happen, and everywhere all over the world people are throwing themselves towards their lives with renewed gusto.

People are picking words, and I like that. Looking back, I’d like to say that last year’s word was cocoon, because it was a dreamy, blurry, nestled year of slow motion, present tense stumbling; of new baby love and making ends meet. It was a domestic year. A quiet year. A year of sustaining; of inward growing. Now I'm ready for real action.

I want accomplishment and tangible returns. I want the satisfaction of crossing things off my list. Some years I've had heady, dreamy goals. This year it’s all about the down-to-earth and practical. It’s about getting things done. Enough of next year and sometime and when the time is right.

It’s the beginning of a decade. Time to get things started off on the right foot.

Non-negotiable: Financial stability, daily joy, and finishing my novel manuscript. The rest I'll put up on this year's list at the end of the month.

What is non-negotiable for you this year?

Blessings

Boys & simple delights

I always pictured this, and yet I could never have imagined how it really is: life with boys. My house is always a ruckus. Things are always flung, spun, twirled, jabbed. Sticks are essential. So are rocks. Forts are made everywhere. The couch is a launch pad. Trees are dangled from. Boxes are magic. They become boats and cars and rocket ships; they are played in and fought over and sawed into with serrated knives.

Each morning I wake up to the full catastrophe delight of little boy energy. Inevitably I get a finger in an eyeball, or an elbow to the ribcage. “Mommy! MOMMY LOOOK!” But by the time I do, Bean has already dragged a giggling Sprout out of my room, down the hall and into his bedroom, where I can hear thumping and banging and more laughter.

Bean is growing tall. He grew 3/4ths of an inch in the past month! Sprout is standing on his own, cruising everywhere, cutting teeth. He is hilarious. He does things purposefully just to make us laugh. He loves to bang on things: pots, cupboards, boxes. He loves music. He loves his big brother, and he beams whenever Bean enters the room. But he’s also a tattle tale—already. He makes this particular fussy sound whenever Bean takes something from him, or even just gets close enough that he might take something from him. He is absolutely, one-hundred-percent a Mama’s boy.

My sweet second son. We’re so smitten for each other, and truthfully, every single day I still kind of wish he’d stay small for a lot longer. I love to snuggle with him. I love the sleepy moments just before I tuck him into his bed at night. I love when he first sees me after I’ve been gone for the morning. I love how he gets such a kick out of everything: standing, eating, sticking his hands in the dirt.

That said, I’m much less of a wimp with him. I want him to sleep through the night now. He’s huge (really: as in, 18-24 month clothing is snug on him. SNUG.) and he has no reason to wake up four times just to tap into a boob for five minutes, although I can’t blame him for trying. It must be nice, little man. Sorry to cut you off. So last night there was more fussing and less sleep as he adjusts to going back to sleep himself. He was indignant at first, but a trooper, and figured out how to find his pacifier & snuggle in and go back to sleep after a couple minutes of fussing. And already it was easier than the night before. By the end of the week I think we’ll be where I want us to be (as in, one or both of us will be getting five or six hours of sleep at a go!)

Aside from the whole sleep deprivation bit, which gets old, I admit, I’ve been having so much fun this month with my boys. All three of them. And even though money is tighter than it’s ever been, it is quite possible that I’m enjoying the holiday season more than I have in years past because it’s been all us, as a unit. Without the pressure to buy things—the holidays become all about shared activity, small rituals, adventures, crafts, and food.

We’ve already made a batch of gingerbread cookie dough; strung oodles of lights; and cut more than our share of snowflakes. Bean loves to do paper crafts. He memorizes the folds easily and delights with cutting each snowflake and then opening it up—each one a glorious surprise of symmetry and pattern. Sprout watches, delighted, trying to eat every paper scrap that falls to the floor.

Each morning we all look forward to the excitement of Bean scurrying out to see what the advent fairy has tucked into a little box for him: a tiny slinky, some balloons, a golden chocolate coin, a small crystal, silly putty, umbrella straws. It’s a lesson for all of us to remember: how much delight comes not from the actual gift, but from the suspense and mystery of each small box. It’s all about the ritual, the gesture of fun, and the small delightful moment of surprise. What are some things you do as a family together this time of year?

Here & now

A week of friends, and bonfires and playing in the leaves. A week of making choices and getting on top of the laundry situation and soaking up back to back days of slanting shadows and mellow sunlight.

Now: Penguin Café on my headphones. Writing a novel makes everything twirl in my head.

Life is full, and there is a feeling of tenderness just below the surface. It’s hunting season. We put the light on in the coop to trick the sleepy hens to lay some eggs. In the dark we fold into each other and whisper, reconciling the smallness of today with the possibility that tomorrow will be great.

We’re all hugging ourselves in the dark; hugging each other; hungry for something. Or at least I am, he is. Lots happening in the present tense right now, but I miss being here.

What matters to you today?