A kind of prayer

Today I want to remember the way the orchids turn to the light; how heat waves rise from woodstove; and how cat’s purring vibrates up through my thin ankle bones where she has curled against my foot, the rhythmic whirring of her content traveling up my shin bones into the soft muscle of my calf.

Today I want to remember how tiredness makes me fragile; how I feel like something insignificant and slight, like paper tossed to the wind, and how I want to fold hope around my heart like a paper shield; a fleet of fluttering cranes.

What can anyone say now? What can we do except offer up what we have, and feel the way the urgency and tragedy as it fills up our own small lives with poignancy and grace and devastation?

Here, the world is softening; the swelling buds make the stark silhouette of twigs less distinct and edgy, and the hillsides are dappled with snowmelt and mud, and I’ll take hope wherever I can find it.

+++

Another way to pray.

Things stay the same even while they change.

Now we go down the muddy road

You can feel it on days like this: the way everything wants to run. Blood, sap, snowmelt, everything quickening and spilling over.

We go out because there is nothing else we can do. Staying indoors and getting work done is like trying to hold water in my palms; the boys slip out before I can stop them. Sprout barely has his boot’s on and Bean has run away ahead carrying a summer umbrella. I chase after carrying mittens, hats.

The big one is almost flying: wind catching the umbrella as he makes the turn. And from a distance his slight body has lifted off the ground.

I remember.

I once jumped off a toolshed as a girl. There was a wind storm. I held an umbrella high above me. It was the only thing I wanted: to fly. And it seemed so inevitable, so certain that I’d just lift off. I didn't hesitate at all.

I don’t remember falling. Though it’s certain I did because I’m here aren’t I? Or have I just forgotten some secret magic of childhood where flying is less impossible; where dreams blink in and out of reality just like shooting stars?

Now we go down the muddy road and everything is running quick, quicker: our feet, the snowmelt, the sap in every thick trunked tree and slender willow. Under the banks of snow at the edge of the road muddy water rushes: rivulets gathering and spilling, seeking downhill; seeking the eventual streambed, the pond, the river, the lake, the ocean.

The boys are soaked in seconds but giddy with the late afternoon sunlight and the softness of the air. They find sticks to poke in snowy holes; carve miniature rivers; make dams of snow.

Beneath our feet, slush the color of maple sugar. And though it is still long before the purple of crocuses;when I look up I can see the slight red fatness of buds on the maples. A swelling promise. Sweetness soon. And this weekend: daylight savings already.

Being Right (brained)

When I started snowboarding, I started with my left foot forward on the board. It’s the standard way to do it. Go to the mountain and you’ll see: almost everyone has their left foot first, and at first I didn’t even think to question it. Except that it was wild to try to get my brain to conform to the movement. For the first two times we went to the mountain I had to perform complex mental acrobatics to be able to get myself down the mountain. I had to visualize every single turn, and it felt strange and unfamiliar, but I couldn’t put my finger on what the feeling meant to me.

At first I thought it was just part of the process of learning this new sport. I’d ride the lift, fall off getting off, stand, clip my bindings and then begin my elaborate inner dialogue. I’d have to talk myself through each and every turn, as though I were translating the action to my brain from another language. And I’d make it to the bottom, baffled and astounded by the difficulty.

I’m not brilliantly coordinated by any stretch; but I am athletic and strong. And it felt strange to me that I couldn’t get beyond my own mind; that after two trips to the mountain I still couldn’t ride without extreme mental focus.

Then I talked to some friends who are boarders and one kindly told me to stand and then pushed me hard from behind.

I stumbled forward, right foot first.

“Ha!” she laughed. “You’re goofy footed. Try putting your bindings the other way around.”

I promptly got my bindings switched and the next time we went to the mountain the process was awkward, but already I could feel my body taking over. After a few runs, my mind grew quiet and my muscles began to lead: my body moving to it’s own remarkable choreography of balance and motion, my mind present only in the sensation.

Yesterday I was carving beautiful arcs down the mountain, and I could feel the way the motion was suddenly natural to me. Half down a run by myself I started laughing because everything suddenly came together for me: of course I’m right footed. I’m also right brained.

And soaking up all the goodness over at the Right Brainers Business Summit has made me realize: I’ve been approaching money and strategic planning and many other elements in my life much the way I was trying to approach snow boarding: from a left brained slant that feels utterly foreign.

Because it is.

I’ve been trying to work within a left brained paradigm. Spreadsheets, for example: they feel almost painfully unnatural to me. Linear organization has always felt lacking. I can’t wrap my mind around rows of numbers without some form of translation. I’m always drawing pictures and diagrams to make things make sense.

And I realize now that part of my unresolved relationship with money comes from telling myself certain left brained myths: that successful entrepreneurs are left brained, MBA, straight talking folk who crush on Excell; and strategic business plans and growing money can only be approached through crunching data.

Pam Slim spoke at the RBBS a few days ago and I found myself relating deeply to what she had to say.

Pam shared that she grew up in a rich neighborhood, but without a lot of money, and reflected on how this shaped her view about money for a long time: "Things are imprinted from a young age. I remember always hearing my mom worry about money. There were some things that were set in my psyche about money early on."

Such as “Good people make teacher’s salaries” and for a long time when she didn’t “want to be greedy” about asking her full worth.

But asking her full worth is what has enabled Pam to become an investor in the causes she is passionate about.

That struck a chord. I want to give more than just being in the trenches. I want to invest.

I also loved this little bit of advice that she gave: “Document your assumptions every month. You forget what your assumptions are and you can’t measure your progress and make adjustments unless you revisit your assumptions regularly.”

So. Here’s to documenting assumptions.

What are yours?

Money, Passion + Vision

I've been coming to some big smashing realizations lately about money: making it, growing it, attracting it, and managing it. And about all the crazy, peculiar attitudes towards money that I was surrounded with growing up.

I know, right? This is so not a subject I'd usually write about here, but that's part of my breakthrough. I've silently harbored all sorts of inherited attitudes and assumptions about money for long enough. I'm ready to slough off, dig deep, and start fresh.

See, here's the thing: I came from a family that was poor by choice. Crazy, right?

My parents were poor because they were committed to work with a higher purpose. They were altruistic, spiritually minded, and broke. Always.

We never had enough money for any frivolity: fashion was scorned (because we could not afford it;) after-school sports shunned (no money for uniforms of for the extra gas to drive me to & from practice;) and and people in our community who devoted their careers to earning high pay checks were regarded as selfish, self absorbed, egotistical, or worst of all: materialistic.

I didn't really question any of it for a very long time. In fact I bought it all. Hook line and sinker. I'd say things like "Money isn't important to me. What I really want to do is change the world." Or: "I don't really care about money, all I care about is making a difference."

And you know what? That's bullshit. What does it matter if you grow the capacity of your own soul immensely, if the isolation of poverty limits you to affecting only yourself? Even Pema Chodron and Ticht Naht Hanh leverage the significant sums of money available to them to extend their reach: affecting thousands upon thousands of people. It's money that makes it possible for them to travel; to speak at workshops, to write books, to act on their inner fire.

I've started to dig to the bottom of all this in part because I've found my tribe at the Right Brainers in Business Video Summit (which is awesome by the way.) And in part because I've been following Danielle Laporte for a long enough to feel like her approach is finally getting under my skin (in the very best of ways.)

I love her unabashed way of aiming for it all: for the tripple bottom line AND changing the world. She is both a humanist AND an entrepreneur. She gives like crazy; she is ethical, she is fierce. She is someone who who is growing her soul AND selling her soul.

This is big. To find myself here, facing all the strange ambiguity I have towards standing in my own power around money. It's complex, confusing, and awesome. What better thing could I be doing at the start of spring? It's time for rebirth and growth and transformation. Pow! Spring cleaning taken to the nth degree.

So of course I'm curious. Really curious: what were (are) the attitudes towards money that you grew up with? How have they shaped your world view? How do these attitudes influence what you do?

Do you believe you are worthy of making a fat paycheck? Do you feel like your creative work can be richly rewarded financially? What are your hang ups? What are your success stories?

What You are like at 6:

All legs and knobby knees, always outgrowing your jeans. Mood swings: sweeter than sugar, to darker than a storm filled sky and back in the span of an hour. Messes: a thousand snippets of paper strewn like snow; marbles always rolling off beneath the couches; legos wherever I step; erector set nuts and bolts never put back. Collections: old padlocks; post it notes in rainbow colors; the mailing inserts from magazines; stamps torn off of envelops.

You have a sweet tooth, and a soft spot for stories about gnomes and fairies and and anything magical. Your eyes get large and lost in the land of faraway. You listen with everything, drinking up stories. You fidget. You are stubborn. You take the easy way out except when it's framed as a competition or a teacher tells you to keep at it (then you always do.)

You snuggle. You wrestle. You like pizza and dumplings and requested them together with carrot cake for your birthday. You like looking at picture books and listening to stories read aloud for hours. You are teaching yourself to read and write. "I know how to write LOVE!" you proudly tell me. And you do. You write us all love notes, every day. We find them everywhere: stuck in things and to things; poked into pockets; folded into books.

Numbers are your thing. You just get them, almost without thinking. You put yourself up to new number challenges every day: doubles facts and multiples; adding and subtracting from small groups of things. "If we had three more," you say eyeing the egg box, "We'd have twelve," and if we had one more we'd have ten."

This winter we've started snowboarding and last week after we picked you up from your lesson, we did a few more runs, us following you down the mountain. And wouldn't you know? You went straight for the terrain: the jumps, the trail through the glades, the bumps. I followed after in awe, taking more risk than I would have done on my own.

And that's how it has always been, little one: you make me braver. You make me bolder. You make me want to take risks and dream big dreams. You continue to teach me daily how to be a mama; and also how to be my best self. You fill my world with light. I love you my sweet 6 year old.

What I see when I blink

Last night I came home late from working on a collaborative project and slid beneath the covers to find the embering heat of my guy, dreaming. Now the morning is here again, too soon, jostling, clattering, and filled to the brim. I blink, and when close my eyes I see my life in snapshots, like sunspots, the minutes compressed to just these instances, mid air, mid action. My big boy with a voice that sounds like the bark of a dog who woke up at 3 am feeling like he couldn’t breath.

Blink.

The little one in a pointy Hannah Anderson hoodie and his brother’s Sambas running around with jam on his face and a paci in his mouth.

Blink.

Squirrels that have figured out how to leap from a stack of broken wooden lawn chairs through the gravity of air to the bird feeder, where they twirl with fat furry bellies exposed, eating seed with their dainty little paws.

Blink.

The startled chickadees who fly down to find these furry beasts their tails whirring, their cheeks chock full.

Blink.

Out the window the icicles taller than me; the sky bluer than the ocean; the clouds gathering over the mountain tops like the breath of dragons; the floor that has not been vacuumed in days.

Blink.

Everywhere I turn there are things: to be done, held, watched, waited for, unraveled, sorted, replied to, invented. This is life, mid motion, captured.

Blink.

More glimpses of winter moments captured here.

spark + blink

I feel like I am a forest fire; the way I move, the way I do, the way I am being in this life right now, this day, this week. The minutes are match sticks, my forward motion flint, the hours bursting into flame. Blink, the day gone in the heat of the moment.

Outside the snow is high above my head where the snow has been plowed to clear the narrow path for our cars to leave or arrive. I should be out shoveling, carving wider paths for our feet: to the woodpile, the chickens, the front door, but I am not. I am in the a state of perpetual mid-production; I am not in motion only when I am sleeping.

I miss running outdoors; I lingering. I need some unwind time in a big way, but I don’t think it’s going to happen this week. There isn’t a single thing that can drop off the list of absolutes except exercise, intimacy, and sleep.

What do you do in the midst of weeks like this?

in this moment

Just stopping in quickly to say hello this morning with these photos from my sunny, sunny bedroom... and to nudge you to go play. Do one thing. Today. You'll be so happy. (Promise.)
I'm finishing a big milestone for the book today (later than I'd hoped. Typing with fingers crossed makes things difficult.) And it feels good and terrifying and true to my heart. I wish I could tell you more, but I don't want to jinx it.
Today I'm crushing on this sweet song.
Reading the archives over at Slow Pony Home.
And swooning over every single afternoon here.

Flirting with chance:: it's your turn

Hello lovelies, I had no idea so many of you would play along on my little game of chance. It was an amazing day, and a challenge to try to fulfill at least suggestion from almost everyone who commented and to document it in some way. But it was also so much fun.. It was an adventure filled with many moments of resistance and joy and delight. Here is my the interactive piece I did for the class project.

I want you know know that the best thing I rediscovered through this project was just how amazing YOU are.

You are generous, sensuous, playful, romantic, and thoughtful.(Yes, you.)

You nudged me stop and take care of myself and pause; drink warm tea, luxuriate in a foot bath (the first I've ever given myself), throw myself in the snow; dance, twirl. Mostly the whole thing pushed me outside of my comfort zone and made me contemplate when I started taking things so seriously.

I was struck by how infrequently I really allow myself luxuriate in the moment. My life has gotten so busy that I'm uber focused on tasks and projects most of the time. If I stop to linger, it is to browse through my favorite photography blogs, to read something, or to stare out the window. Text and images have become the only way I fill up this hunger for beauty that lives in my soul.

My fingertips and taste buds, tendons and feet were grateful to be remembered; to be used, engaged, made to move, revel, relax, reach beyond.

How often do you flirt with chance? When do you allow yourself to step outside of your ordinary? Do you allow yourself the chance of random conversations with strangers? Moments lingering over tea? What senses do you nourish throughout your day? Which do you neglect?

To thank you, I am sending you on your very own chance encounter mission this week. It felt so taken care of by you in this unexpected way. I am so grateful for the opportunities you offered me to dig into ordinary moments of my day, and to find in them so much beauty. I hope you feel the same.

HOW TO PLAY:

In the comments share a link to your blog with photos (and words) documenting your discoveries. One person chosen at random will receive an original tiny art piece in the mail, and I'll feature some of my favorite of your photos/posts later this week here.

YOUR MISSION: This os permission to allow yourself to play; to follow whimsy and to explore who you are in this moment.

1. Make yourself your favorite breakfast. Use extra butter. Cream. Real maple syrup. Bacon. Whatever it is that you love . 2. Buy yourself tulips. 3. Take 10 minutes and pin, tape, or post some images that you love to a wall in your workspace. 4. Go outside, set a timer for 4'33 seconds and just breathe and listen. 6. Buy a pint of raspberries. Stick them on your fingers like you did when you were a kid. Eat them one by one. Don't share. 7. Do something for a stranger: buy the person in line behind you coffee, pay a toll, fill a parking meter, give them a flower.... 8. Clear a space, get down on the floor and stretch for five minutes. 9. Dance to this song. 10. Take a self portrait, of your face, in good light. Revel in your beauty.

Document in some way. Ready. Set. Go!

The possibility of chance

Look what T gave me for my birthday! I can't wait to take some pictures: but the stakes are high. With only 8 pictures per pack of film, I want to find just the right moments. Hard for this girl who likes to squander photos: taking so many of everything, always hungry for the beauty that the image captures and reveals. Thank you all for your awesome birthday wishes. I am a lucky girl.

Check out the sidebar for my new list. 34 before 34. Yes, croissants made their way back onto the list., dreamy and unrealistic as they are. I've been crushing on all things French recently (including this lovely mix.) The trick for such a list is dreaming big and dreaming small. I like to think I do both. May the goodness manifest.

Today I need your help. One of my assignments for one of my classes this week is to inject an ordinary routine or day with chance--and to document the outcome in some way. Will you play along?

In the comments list one thing that you think I should do, find, see, taste, hear, smell, or touch tomorrow. Keep in mind these things need to be things I can do realistically within the scope of an ordinary day...but they should extraordinary or unusual in some way too! I will try to do everything on the list and document the results.

I have to say, I'm kind of giddy about this. I'm hoping you play along. I can't wait to see what chance encounters your ideas envite.

Happy Thursday!

A morning snapshot

So far this morning Sprout has.. ...pushed a stool over to the counter while I was in the bathroom, and started swigging maple syrup from the gallon jug. ...found a package of guitar picks and insisted on me opening them, giving him one, and then taking down a guitar for him to play. ...pushed a stool over to the refrigerator, selected a cup, and attempted to fill it with water (he succeeded. I then figured out how to implement the child lock feature. I'm not sure if I can figure out how to undo it.) ...tried to pour the remainder of the water out in the sink and poured it all over the floor. ...found a dishtowel and mopped up said spilled water, muttering to himself all the while. ....stuck a pacifier down his shirt and got it stuck in the leg of his pants. ...put on funny glasses (above) and made hilarious growling sounds, thereby uproariously cracking himself up. ....asked for foamed milk, and then a spoon to eat it with.

I love him.

Circling

I stand by the heat of the wood stove, circling the present moment in my head like a dog preparing for sleep. It’s snowing again, although dawn was bright and clear: the truest pinks and the most pale persimmon clouds. Now everything is back to white on white, and the bird feeder needs filling. Today I am torn by what I want to be doing and what I ought to do. All morning T and I attempt conversation, fail, and attempt again. At the root of it: we miss each other desperately. We both want to fold into each other’s arms and have an afternoon just us in a café somewhere, but instead there are boys, and homework, and book work, a party tonight, and so the day ends up mostly being about adjacent circles rather than concentric ones, and in our longing we miss our mark, push each other away, and feel the distance more acutely.

If only I could stitch all the moments together today, I’d have a quilt of him to wrap around my shoulders now as I write. Him, in Sorrels in the driveway pushing the snow blower into knee-deep snow; him on the couch, buried under the lot of us this morning, all trying to tickle him and make him laugh; him cleaning the downstairs bathroom toilet, shirtless and muscular after a workout.

Now he’s taken the boys and gone on errands in spite of the snow falling harder, and I wish I could have gone with him, but reason and responsibility and the off kilter awkwardness of our morning convince me to stay instead.

I’ve been interested in exploring this thread interaction lately, since I wrote this post. I'm fascinated with the way people navigate the in-betweens and daily happenings. Neither hilltop nor valley, but the places where things even out and we’re just in it, doing our lives, side by side. There isn’t always grace in these moments, or courage. Often tiredness paints the whole picture a bleaker hue than it would otherwise be (and today this is most certainly the case.) Living with someone and loving them never ceases to be startling to me; unexpected, delightful, or painful to the point of wincing.

So this is my life. I always grin when I say this in my head, encountering myself in present tense, inside this moment (now: at my desk with cords strewn everywhere in the silence of a house now empty of the boys that fill my world. So this is my life: and I am so grateful I get to share it here, and show up, and find the threads of your stories too in the comments.

I am so interested in all your responses to my last post about blogging (thank you!)

I’d love to know: what are a few of your current (new) favorite blogs? Where do you creep, peruse, become inspired?

Today, I am loving this beautiful piece by Pixie. This is awesome. These images caught my eye.

And this.

How to love someone after eleven years:

Wake up. Shower, fumble for the hair dryer, grab a load of laundry before heading downstairs. Find his face across the room over a skillet of eggs; find his eyes, and meet them. Feel how his smile fills you up like good bread. Fill the washing machine, add soap, press the illuminated buttons and wait for the machine to start. Walk away, walk back, keep walking until you encounter the warmth of his back. Reach out for him even though things are unresolved and will be unresolved again. Wrap your arms around him and press your body close until you can feel his heat through your shirt; through his.

Say only a little until after you have had coffee. Pick and choose between complaining and being heard. Notice the things that you love: the way he makes you maple lattes and kisses the boys heads always and again and laughs and the silliest of their jokes. Eat eggs fried in a cast iron skillet with the pancakes he made from scratch while you showered. As you dressed you could hear your little one asserting: “I do it, I do it” (his first true three word sentence.) The pancakes are made with cornmeal and buttermilk and tenderness.

Fill the bird feeders and make small talk until you are present in yourself and the torn edges of sleep have been brushed aside like cobwebs swept. Then laugh. Then say what you need to say, and listen as he says what he needs to say.

Learn to ask questions that don’t assume answers.

Questions that are empty like a jar before rain. Questions that offer neutrality: how can I help? What do you need? How do you feel?

Learn to ask yourself these questions too.

How do you feel?

What do you need?

How can you help yourself?

Let the spinning orbit of your day pull you in: finding snowgear for two children and leaving and arriving; buying gas and water and Cliff bars. Kicking snow off your boots. Laughing in line at the lifts. Across the table over rootbeer and salty fries find yourself reflected in his gaze (again and again this is the way it goes.) Find your heart spread across the surface of his words, spreading out like ripples in the lake of his laughter. A decade feels short and long, just as days often do. Reach for his hand and feel his pulse.

unfamiliar familiar

This is where I always slip: where the snare of expectation catches me off guard and I’m unaware that I’m expecting anything until it doesn’t happen and my feelings are dashed.

Sometimes even then I don’t know what I want. Sometimes I just can’t say what I’m hoping for, and it’s one of those times, back at home in the small world familiar things that are my life: fat snow; hazelnut shells in a bowl; T beside me at the table eating curry + chicken the fire flickering behind us; the boys after their bath with damp hair and new pajamas; marbles rolling around on the floor; laundry to fold.

I don’t expect the vulnerability I feel until I feel it. It’s jet lag maybe; hormones; whatever.

“We’ve known each other for eleven years, it’s safe to say I know you,” he says.

We’re in bed, lying stiff like boards, shoulder to shoulder. It’s not an argument really, and yet it is.

“I just want to feel like you’re curious about me still,” I say, not really knowing what I mean.

And yet it’s exactly what I mean.

We're so familiar we’re unfamiliar some days.

And sometimes it’s easier to give in to the laws of physics; to push away; to walk away; to look away. Equal and opposite reactions.

Tonight we move our shoulders towards each other in the dark. A small concession, but the night is already half gone.

Everything is invented

{Maria Kalman}
I love this. Oh yes. How true it is. The opportunities we make for ourselves; the parameters we define, achieve, exceed.

How many times do you find yourself circling in the small circumference of your day: your world defined by the limitations of work, by small children with sticky hands; by whatever it is that you see as the perimeter for what is possible?

“There are so many things that you’re told you can’t do. So many things that can stop you. You can either be like the elephant that is hobbled it’s whole life—so it doesn’t know that it is free once the hobble is removed, or you can do things your own way. You cannot live a life of fear.”

The woman telling me this is the flight attendant on the last of my three flights. She is beautiful, in her late forties, with milky chocolate skin and sparkling eyes. She wears a flower diamond ring on her finger, and her eyes light up when I ask her if she’s ever been sky diving.

“No,” she says, “but it’s something I’m thinking of doing. I’m afraid of heights.”

Then she tells me, “I went parasailing in Mexico and it was incredible. The air was fresh, and the world was so quiet up there above the water. It was like I was an angel.”

I can’t help grinning. I love that every single assumption I’ve had about this woman has just been shattered into a million pieces.

“Hang gliding has always been on my bucket list,” I tell her.

And she looks at me then, head tilted to the side, and in that moment we both get it. We’re two of a kind. The kind of women with bucket lists; with wanderlust; with adventure bursting from the drawers of our hearts.

“What is the number one thing on your bucket list?” she asks.

“To publish the book I’m working on,” I tell her and her eyes light up.

“I’ve always wanted to write,” she says.

So I say, “Tell me. Tell me about your life.”

And so she tells me how until two months ago she worked as a successful registered nurse. How she climbed the rungs of success in her field; spent her career traveling: starting a hospital in Nicaragua, bringing medical supplies to villages in Africa; exploring the streets of Rome.

“Resilience is about being able to change,” she tells me, when I ask her how she got from that to this; to being a flight attendant.

“Change is what makes people thrive. It’s when they get stuck in the same patterns for too long, when they’re afraid to change that they become unhealthy.” And because she wanted more wanted more balance in her life, she quite nursing and became a flight attendant.

I want to ask more, but the plane is already in its descent. We exchange email addresses, and she smiles as she presses hers into my hand.

When the plane hits the runway with a thud, I'm still smiling.

Yes for resilience. Yes for adventure. Yes for living your life without fear.

+++

What do you believe is possible? What would you do if limitations didn't exist?

Flight + Fruition

It was fascinating to start the new year in the sky. To watch the curve of the earth appear below, as the plane lifted off, at once heavy and weightless as it cut the clouds and traveled upward improbably into the wide expanse of atmosphere above the earth.

It’s a wonder to feel the way anything is possible this very instant, always and again.

Right now.

Today.

In this new year.

I left before dawn, after the requisite security line removal of belt and shoes, jackets, laptop and toiletries laid bare for the world to see, and then no coffee because the kiosk was closed, I was off. The sky was ink, the runway lit by lamplight, the cabin dark.

I held my breath: waiting for the feeling of air catching under the wings. I used to love airports. They meant adventure and freedom: Italy, Germany, New York, Puerto Rico. I loved the bustle, and energy I felt at airports, the way everyone was coming and going, the expectation and possibility that was almost palpable in the air. But now the world of airports is defined by orange alerts and leaving. Leaving my two sweet boys and T, who woke with me and carried my bags to the door and kissed me softly on the lips before I left for a week to visit my sister and her new sweet little baby boy.

In the air the earth grows small and spectacular at once. The land stretches out in an intricate pattern of rivers and mountain ranges overlayed with the persistent geometry of human life: grids of roads and fields and buildings that look, before dawn like twinkling circuit boards; light bordered by dark, by deserts, by lakes, by the black of pine forests and mountain ranges, white-capped volcanoes rising up above the clouds.

Three flights later I was in Oregon, circling then landing next to a field of grazing sheep. Live oaks, and mossy sycamores; hills steep and rolling under wide West Coast skies. I walk out into the bright afternoon sun disoriented by the time change, and hug my sister who looks beautiful and tired and happy all at once.

It stuns me to realize how I’ve already forgotten how newborn time is alternate to the reality of the rest of the world. How time is defined by the moments of feeding, and the moments of sleep in between. How life exists entirely within the circumference of doing nothing but holding the baby, and doing small things: running the dishwasher, or righting coats on the rack; the world soft and quiet and wrapped in the cocoon of a now that the rest of us forget, caught up in the plummet and pull of a faster pace.

I’ve already forgotten the way this is everything. Small sighs, milk down your shirt, toasted cheese, and the gift that is five consecutive hours of sleep. It’s a time out of time: the moments of falling in love and being split open. It is the beginning of everything.

I sit with my nephew in the crook of my knee and write; body memory returning, time traveling backwards to that newborn time with Sprout, new and warm and dreaming.

I try to explain how this is now and then it’s over, forever.

+++

Last year my word was action.

And it was fulfilled again and again with steps taken and decisions made towards a life more fulfilling, sustainable, and full.

It was an incredible year: T quit his job and found new work that he loves; I went back to school and launched A Field Guide To Now (still holding my breath on this....More (good) news and rewards—finally—to be sent out in February!) and my boys learned to play together: moving through the house in a tornado of action, transforming couch cushions into forts and blocks into castles.

This year my word is fruition.

Fruition (n.) 1) attainment of anything desired; realization; accomplishment: 2) enjoyment, as of something attained or realized. 3) the state of bearing fruit.

Yes.

+++

I loved reading your comments in your last post; loved to feel the force of your intention being put out into the world. I'm so looking forward to what this year brings. To the adventures, the discoveries, the things that will come to fruition.

Manifesting (+ a giveaway!)

Today there is coffee from three hours ago, milky sunlight, and feathers strewn telltale on the snow. The neighbor’s dog: a black, curly, stupid thing came again, her tongue lolling, killing hens. I chased her in socked feet across the snow, shrieking. Then pulled on boots, and called my friend who came with his quiet farmer hands, and his shotgun (just in case) together we found the hurt birds, and the scared ones.

In one of the pines along the drive, a Rhode island red; I scooted in among the sharp twigs, collected her akimbo wings and splayed yellow feet, then pressed the plumpness of her soft body up against my chest. She buried her face in my hair, and I could hear her breath coming fast and steady. It always surprises me to hear birds breathing. Like the sound of wings; fluttery, raspy, faint.

Today Bean is building a cardboard box fort with the empty boxes from Christmas and Sprout is napping after smashing his chin on his brother’s bunk bed, and coming up with a mouthful of blood. Today there is a broken glass jar pushed accidentally off a windowsill. There is laundry in haphazard stacks; strawberries cut lengthwise in a bowl on the counter; marbles scattered across the slightly sloping floor.

Today there is the chapter outline of my book waiting for me like a jigsaw puzzle shaken in a box without a lid. My desk is strewn, my fingers already stained with white paint and gel medium from setting up a few paintings for later work.

Today is almost the end of the year. The last day. And this is my messy, ordinary, glorious life. I am so grateful.

It’s been an amazing year, and you’ve helped to make it so. Truly.

Today I want to know: what your words and dreams are for the year that will begin tomorrow. One word, or a list. What do you want to manifest?

I believe in this. I believe in it deeply. I have found again and again and again that the things I ask for manifest when I ask clearly, when I put my greatest, deepest wishes into the palms of the universe to hold.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.

Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and endless plans.

That the moment one definitely commits oneself then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred.

A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Begin it now. ~Goethe

So. What do you wish to begin this year? What is the wildest, truest thing that you want to have happen?

Leave your answer here, or link back here with a post on your own blog, and two of you will be the (random) recipients of these pieces of orignal art!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

(*Leave a comment by midnight, January 1st, 2011 to be eligible for the giveaway.)

UPDATED: I selected the winners using the random number generator at random.org. CONGRATULATIONS Ashley and KitKat! Please email me with your address & I'll ship these off when I get back next week! xo, Christina

beautiful words + wondering:

Yes. Answer this. What do you want the universe to manifest?

And some words today to bring you closer to an answer, or inspiration, or delight:

Begin here.

So, how are you?

Everything is going to be alright.

Three little (big) words

{I want today to end with a chunk of progress made on the chapter outlines for the rest of my book}

The best part of my day

Right this very instant slushy rain is falling hard and downstairs, at the kitchen island my boys are playing drums on an array of kitchen implements. They are loud, they are ruckus, they are delighted with themselves. Bean is singing along at the top of his lungs in his thin, sweet, off-tune little voice. Sprout is mostly quiet except for when something is taken from him, and then he hollers as loud as he possibly can. These boys are the sweetness and marrow of my life.

Every morning T wakes up at about 5:30 and when Bean hears him, he comes skittering down the hall to our room and crawls into bed with me while T showers. Often, as the water starts to run, Sprout wakes up and calls, and T brings him to me, and so I doze in magic. One sweet tousled boy head on each side of me. They root around beneath the covers and snuggle in. And I dream, drift, wake, nuzzle in. It’s my favorite part of the day often: these first moments of barely waking with my boys, when we’re all trailing dreams and dozing.

When T is showered, they follow him downstairs for eggs, toast, and frothy milk and I shower alone, drenched with warmth, with the fragrance of soap, with a few moments all to myself.

Then, always, the day begins. Today: gray on gray on gray. Crows make dark silhouettes among the trees. A squirrel knocks snow from the sleeping branches of a spruce. Birds come and go at the feeder; and outside in the snow bank where Bean and I built a fort yesterday afternoon, water drips silently as the snow melts.

Tell me: what is a moment in your day that you spend with the people you love? What's it like?

Also: go watch this.

here in this life

It’s snowing hard from a pale sky, the kind of snow that makes me grin and want to cry at once: it’s so beautiful, white on white on white.

And I’m back in my life again, after a hiatus of days, weeks, the intensity of a semester behind me and in a few days, Christmas. Family, and plans to make croissants from scratch, and bleary eyes on Saturday morning at 5:30AM when the boys will inevitably wake, eager and wide-eyed with wonder.

The past two nights we’ve watched old movies: Miracle on 34th Street and It’s A Wonderful Life. I’ve never seen either one, and oh, how I love them both. Nostalgia is a funny thing, isn’t it? It’s something inherently human, isn’t it? To want and long for what’s gone by. It’s maybe one of the things that defines our humanity. Our awareness of the past tense, just like our awareness of the future plant’s us squarely in the very fleeting, very mortal moment of the present.

In this moment I’m wearing torn, paint spattered jeans instead of a carefully fitted dress. I’m here in this present of my life, and out the window blue jays and cardinals gather in the lilac hoping for seed. Streaks of blue and read against the landscape of brown and white and gray. By the end of winter their colored plumage is something I cling to in a monochrome world; everything drawn out: the time it takes to leave or arrive an almost endless choreography of outerwear.

Today it’s the solstice. The wondrous darkest day, half a year away from when the light lasted until nearly ten and the fields hummed with crickets and danced with fireflies at dusk.

Tonight we’ll light candles at dinner and sing. We’ll hang the prisms that the Advent Fairy brought in the windows to make the light dance on future sunny days, and maybe we’ll go sledding, all of us on the toboggan hurtling down the driveway in a flash of laughter.