Gratitude

I have learned this year how to give thanks for small things. For the time between waking and getting up, when Bean looks out the window and I replay fragments of dreams. For the seven sips of coffee with milk and sugar in the morning with the "What's News" section of the Wall Street Journal. For the seconds of laughter that DH and I share each day.

I have learned this year how to gather these little fragments of joy like a handful of bright sea glass pebbles, and hold them close to my heart in the times of confusion and exhaustion. To remember the lighthearted glee of Bean giggling in the bath---hased by my washclothed hand around the tub, in the time when he is whining again, fretting from not enough sleep, or teething pain, or some other unnamed malady. To distill in my mind the sweetness of kissing DH, breath tasting of coffee, before he shuts his door for work, in the time when I my resentment that he can shut his door and go to work wells up in my throat.

I have learned to give thanks for where I am now, instead of wondering where I will be and imagining the gratitude I might feel.

Right now is good.

Here: where the forecast is for snow, the dog scratches at his collar, the heater hums, my husband sleeps on the couch beside me.

Now: in this house with my in-laws, where my father in law makes coleslaw and my mother in law rocks my baby pressed close to her chest for his entire hour long nap.

In this moment: with my hurt knee, and the paperwork still in limbo but almost final for the house (!), and my mother somewhere far away and my sisters somewhere else, and my friends still elsewhere

And for you: the people who I've grown close to through the Internet, scattered all over the world who make me feel sane, and beautiful and funny with your comments.

I am grateful.

We need...

We're making a run for it: leaving for Princeton early to visit DH's parents--TOMORROW instead of on Wednesday. We need a break: from house hunting, from teething, from early darkness in our too-small apartment, from neighbors. We need some time alone---together. We need some time to poke through shops for presents, to linger over coffee without having it nearly pulled into our laps, to canoodle without whispering. We can't wait to see our dog---who's been on long term vacation with DH's parents because our apartment is too small, and their yard is big and grassy. We can't wait to watch Bean with his grandparents who love him more than breath itself. And of course we're looking forward to stuffing with chestnuts and fresh cranberries and sausage; maple squash; arugula salad with walnuts and apples; turkey; garlicky mashed potatoes; and of course pie. We are big lovers of pie. Tomorrow we will put our final offer in on the house that has a corner of my heart with the frightful wall paper and the land where I can picture abundant gardens and a tree swing for Bean, and then we'll throw our hands up. We'll get snow tires put on the car, and buy snacks for the seven hour drive, and then we'll be off.

Blogging may or may not be limited for the next week. In the meantime, I leave you with a wee photo documentary from today:

Snowsuit weather.

Love is...(taken by DH.)

Up above us.

Still fountain.

Take off, then landing.

Waiting.

In between.

This one I took accidentally. I don't know what it is of, but it fits exactly how I felt all day today.

Small good things

I accomplished something nearly impossible today: I found a pair of jeans that fit my silly long legs!

I bought my first pomegranate of the season, and type with bright red juice staining my cuticles.

I went for a run in the cold for the first time all week. I've missed it. My body thrives on the rhythm of running and breathing.

I got an extra hour of sleep this morning---while DH read the newspaper and watched Bean.

I taught Bean how to sign *milk* this week---he caught on faster than I ever imagined he would---and it's made things so much simpler. We've avoided several typical meltdowns because he can convey what he wants.

I got a cup of Old World hot chocolate walking back from dinner out tonight. It's thick and rich and dark and unbelievably good, especially on a cold evening.

I decided to trust that the house thing will work out. And didn't think about it again all day.

First frost

Walking home I glanced skyward, and way, way up was the biggest V of geese I've ever seen, flying silently, deliberately South against a backdrop of grey. I stood still in the parking lot of the market, just watching them. People around me gave me looks. I couldn't help but think:how small we are, bustling about with our carts and our lunches. I couldn't help but think, what matters, really? Later our house offer was counter offered at a still too high price. More waiting. And talking. So much talking. I try to be patient, to think clearly. But my thoughts feel fractured like broken ice.

Trying to let it happen

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

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

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

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

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

A part of me

I remember my early childhood in vibrant action stills. The place, the smell, the color of the location are edge sharp in my mind. These early memories are not like later ones which are cohesive and linked chronologically somehow. Instead they are like pictures, snapshots in my head, often completely unrelated, just a few moments of pure moments of image and that is all. Like this:

I am four years old. The day is warm. It is late spring. Snow caps the mountains still, and the air is crisp in our mountain valley. My father has hired two Norwegian men to chop down trees on our land. Huge Ponderosa pine logs are everywhere, and my sister and I have made a morning of playing in the sawdust. I have brought my crayons with me and have placed their yellow metal box on a log, weighting down my sketch pad.

My sister and I are watching the men cutting logs. One man has bright blue eyes and he stops to talk to us, while taking a huge quid of chewing tobacco expertly from a tin he carries in his back pocket and lodging it in his mouth. My sister and I both want to try it, and Swen laughingly pokes the tin towards us, urging us to take a bit. We do, and the pungent sour nastiness sends us reeling backwards spitting and coughing. I hate the taste, but decide I still like to be around Swen.

By lunch, my sister is bored with playing outside, and follows the men towards the house, but I stay back. I love the sweet smell of sap warming in the sun, and everything sounds so quiet now that the ringing of axes and chainsaws have stopped. I walk back to the log where I have stashed my crayons.

On the cover of the crayon box is a drawing of a boy riding on a horse. I sit down by the log, planning to draw a picture really quick, before lunch, when suddenly I see a beautiful pulsing image. It is not inside my head, but not outside of it either. It lingers, and I am filled with absolute certainty. This is what god looks like: no edges, just pure form, and color. Maybe every color. When the image fades, I rush to pop my crayon tin open, and gasp.

My crayons have melted in the sun.

They are a mess of purple liquid, blurred with yellow swirls, dark green and red seeping through the higes at the back of the box. The picture stays inside my head. For days I try to draw it every day, but I can't quite get it right.

Today, the image remains almost as clear as when I saw it, yet it still eludes me on the page. Sometimes, I think I see it a Georgia O Keefe flower, in some fractal of the Mandelbrot set, or in Kandinski's color studies, but when I look again, it never is. After the first couple failed four year old attempts to capture this image on a page with color, it just became a part of me. It has defined a wedge of my world and made me unwaveringly certain that there is a spiritual world connected to our own.

Sunday mosaic # 3

The last yellow leaves came down in the wind today and the light has taken on a winter hue. I walk about barefoot before breakfast, gathering up CDs and ripped magazine pages that have been scattered throughout the living room like confetti.

Later we drive again to look at the house we're in a tizzy about. It's rather awful really, built the year I was born and decorated in the poor taste and color pallet of the late 1970s. Barn board on the walls, linoleum, wallpaper, and crappy kitchen appliances. But the land is so beautiful I gasp, looking out a the view.

Set up on a hill looking out over the Green Mountains, it is twelve acres of woods and fields, a small stream, old apple trees. My mind imagines space for gardens, chickens, maybe a pony. We spend at least a half hour walking about the house taking pictures, trying to visualize what it could look like if we put down pumpkin pine floors, knocked down walls, and pulled off the awful rustic siding.

Outside, walking up on the hill above the house, the air smells sweet like drying leaves. Old stone walls scissor their way through the trees; remnants of a different time when the fields were tilled by hand and people worked at a slower pace.

Bean has almost grown accustomed to drifting off to sleep in the car and waking up in a new place, on a tour of other people's homes. Today he plays with his echo in the empty rooms of the house, and copies the rhythm and pitch of our voices with his "uh-uh-uh-ings."

Before we started the process of looking we should have written a list that said: here the things that matter to us. But we didn't, so we get caught up in the moment, pulled about like body boarders in a rip tide. Standing on the terrace looking out towards the hazy blue lines of the mountains, all I want is this.

Later, after we make pasta and garlicky bread with friends for dinner, and then gorge ourselves on berry pie, ice cream and coffee, I sit at my desk nursing an overfull stomach and glum thoughts. I imagine the long weeks turning into longer months of renovations waiting for completion. I picture the dark sloped ceiling of the bathroom upstairs, and the strange, somewhat problematic two sided fireplace in the living room.

I picture us arguing the way we are now---over the little choices: the stove, the dishwasher, the colors for the walls, the very floorboards. I am not sure how much choosing we can take. The ability to make choices is the ultimate expression of human freedom. Yet it is the possibility of choice that invites guilt, fear, failure, risk. Taking one path, we leave the other unexplored. Committing to renovating here, means we cannot also build. My dreams for a decadent master bath put on hold again.

Ready for his bedtime bath, Bean crawls away top speed into the kitchen, giggling as I chase after him. Then I think: THIS is what matters.

I'm happy in a tent. Happy with just my sleeping bag and the dome of heaven above me, starry and black. I was happy as a child too, in all the strange houses I grew up in that were never renovated until the month or two before we moved. It is so easy to forget this: that in the moment right here, now, happiness means hearing my son laugh, or eating the sticky sweetness of warm pie. Being present in the moment allows for a certain flexibility, that imagining into the future stunts.

DH pulls up a chair beside my desk. He's drawn floor plans. I can feel the warmth of his skin next to me as he explains the outlines he has drawn in pen. I like what he has drawn.

Fragile

Due partly to the fact that daylight savings time is something invented by adults, and as such has absolutely nothing to do with the natural circadian rhythms of sleeping that animals and small children follow, Bean has been waking up quite early this past week. There have been many early mornings when the sky is just turning rosy and he's ready to play and explore his world, patting our sleepy faces with enthusiasm. As a result, I've been more tired than usual---if that is possible---and a side effect of more tired is more moody. I've been moved almost to tears by practically anything this week. The tiniest things make me profoundly grateful, or sad, or awestruck, or lonesome.

Like seeing Claire Kramer's photography. This photo in particular made me sort of gasp, with recognition, loneliness and awe all at once.

Or this: Instead of doing the usual while Bean napped this morning (trying scatterdly to complete the too-huge list of things to do that always looms over my head) I sat down with coffee and a grilled bagel on the couch and read uninterrupted for an entire hour. I cannot describe the simple delight this brought---sitting in the sunlight, the cat purring at my shoulder, just reading The Sun.

Each month I devour it voraciously. Filled with writing that speaks to heart and intellect both, each issue leaves me wishing I could be more, do more, say more to affect change in the world. In addition to essays and interviews and brilliantly written prose and poems, each month readers write in about a given theme. This month's "Reader's Write" was "True Love" and nearly every entry made me swallow hard.

There are so many ways to love, and each is profound. Readers, scattered all over the globe and from all kinds of backgrounds wrote in about their idea of true love: sacrifice, grace, devotion, adoration.

I was struck reading each small story, by how deeply every person experiences his or her world---and how differently. I try to remember this when I am affronted by the immense distrust and fear our media spawns of "otherness."

I try to remember this when I look into my sons eyes, and then look into the eyes of the stranger I pass in the street. Then I think, "you are someone's child. Someone gave birth to you. " This is enough to keep me lifting my eyes to meet the eyes of every face I pass.

Sunday mosaic #2

The last farmer's market of the season with pumpkins on the sidewalk, the tables heaped with squashes and knobby brussle sprout stalks. Already the lady who sells honey from her small batch of backyard hives is gone, and textiles---woolly hats and scarves fill up stalls where in mid summer sunflower bouquets and fancy heirloom tomatoes jostled for attention.

The sun, bright overhead against a backdrop of blue, makes the leaves shine golden even though the foliage season was a bust here, with a killing frost before the leaves could turn to crimson the way they usually do. We walk down to the lake with coffee and ham and egg sandwiches, still hot.

Bean, bundled in layers of fluffy fleece and mittens, screams furiously every time we add a layer, but naps contentedly as we sit together on the swing, kicking our legs and watching a hubbub of mallards quacking on the water. All the boat slips are empty now and white gulls perch on the power supply boxes.

Across the lake, a band of snow still on the mountains, but the air is warm in the sun. By midmorning we take a run, wearing shorts and hats and long sleeves. The edges of the path are slick and yellow with fallen leaves, wet from weeks of rain. Other runners are out. Everyone smiles as they pass, soaking up sun like lizards.

Downtown some shops have their doors open, and on the sidewalk a dog lolls, tummy up. Today teenagers are wearing wigs and bits and pieces of costumes. They walk down the promenade giggling, smoking cigarettes and looking self conscious. Yesterday the big parade brought throngs of kids dressed as cows, superheroes, witches and firemen and doting parents; tomorrow, trick-or-treaters are sure to come knocking at our door.

In the afternoon we take a drive southwest of here, to look at a farmhouse, then land, and lastly the town we'd maybe like to settle near. 180 years old with a gnarled apple tree out back, the farmhouse is a dream. A clawfoot tub, a laundry shoot, a huge hearth in the dining room. But as we leave we can't help but notice how the unplanned urban sprawl has crept up: farmers selling acreage; subdivisions encroaching on the view.

A sunset for the first time in months, soft pinks spreading out across the sky like delicate gown hung up for airing. The waterfall pounding below the bridge in town sends whole trees over it's crest. They gather at it's base, circling, bumping up against each other like toothpicks. Bean stares wide eyed. I play with aperture, noticing the word Bean's been saying all week on a sign on the window of an empty store.

We drive home in early darkness, daylight saving's time has set us back. We talk together quietly as Bean takes a late nap. Stars are above us as we bring our things inside. We heat leftover lasagna and then eat pumpkin pie.

The amazingly talented Nichola gave birth to a beautiful baby girl on Thursday. Welcome to the world, Esme & congratulations mama! Nicohla also organized a postcard swap last month and, being a sucker for foreign stamps, paper mail, and all things artsy, I was excited to participate. The only rules were that they had to be handmade and postmarked by the 31st. As usual, I'm cutting it close with the deadline. (In theory, though I finished them today! they won''t be postmarked until November 1st.)

I wanted each postcard to be unique, and yet similar--so I used the same media (acrylic and watercolor paints & a block print) and colors, but varied the theme for each as my whimsy dictated. I really had fun making these---allowing my paintbrush to follow my mind into abstraction. I also really liked the idea of including a fish print in each---because fish are sort of a signature art piece for me.

I would love to do another postcard swap---so if you would like to participate please let me know in the comments and I'll email you with the details.

"Becoming a mother is a trial by fire"

Growing up, I bucked up against my mother fiercely. I felt similar to my father with my academic, intellectual habits: late nights devouring books and talking about ideas. But I almost felt scornful of my mother who was quiet and shy. She would ask me to keep my voice down in public places, and when we fought, she would use silence to win every time. In many ways I simply took my mother for granted. She was just my mother---the one who cooked meals, and drove me places. It was only after my father died that I started to get to know the woman she really is. Perhaps she too began to know herself then, differently, finally out of my father's shadow.

And, though I think my mother would say that she is still unsure of her own voice, after so many hearing my father's, she is becoming someone whose words I admire. She observes the world carefully, noticing the smallest of things; constantly connecting the big picture and the small. Since Bean, I have grown to understand that her quiet attitude of giving and her selflessness came not from lack of self confidence, but from her vast love for her children.

Last night she wrote me this:

Ah yes, Christina, you are getting it: motherhood. Nothing prepares you for it, that is one sure thing. I cannot imagine that heart surgery is more intricate or painful than the push/pull of a mother's being as it continues to form a womb around her child. A kangaroo pouch would be so much simpler! The gods give us women this incredible learning around compassion. Of course dads feel it too, but, I believe, in a different way. Their very skin hasn't been stretched beyond belief leaving memory marks. Nor has their body carried the growing weight of a child. I think men in battle, caring for their wounded, must feel a similar stretching of their being---as buddies die or are profoundly wounded in front of them. Maybe that is why motherhood, and war, have existed down the ages. There are many ways to experience this selflessness. But becoming a mother is a trial by fire.

Tagged

The incredibly talented Carla tagged me. I'm supposed to list 20 random things about myself and then tag as many people as it took minutes for me to write my list. I did play by the rules in that the list is random. It took me about 20 minutes to write however, so I'll not be tagging 20 people. Although that might be fun... 20 random facts:

1) Encarta's definition of topography: a study or detailed description of the various features of any object or entity and the relationships between them.

2) Things I'm into this month include: raspberry doughnuts, corduroys, chocolate colored sweaters, packages in the mail, beeswax candles, and wine with pretty labels.

3) I forget to eat and then get really moody and totally annoyed that I'm hungry.

4) I intensely dislike having to talk to people I don't know on the phone (except it was delightful to talk to Elaine, who has a lovely musical laugh, and who sounds just like I'd imagined: strong, wise, and insightful.)

5) I stay up way too late at night.

6) My second serious boyfriend in high school once told me to "Go downstairs to the kitchen and help my mom cook me a nice steak."

7) At the time I saw nothing wrong with his request. Now I'm mortified.

8) I was born in Colorado.

9) I have taken care of a boa constrictor twice in my life.

10) One of my favorite flowers is the Zinnia.

11) When I'm by water, I skip stones.

12) I can't paint without getting it all over my hands.

13) I can't eat popsicles without getting the juice all over my shirt.

14) I like Thai iced tea, Mango Lassi, Chai, and Mexican Hot Chocolate.

15) I don't like fresh figs, brussel sprouts, or okra.

16) I love going skinny dipping, especially at night.

17) I'm a bit of a magazine whore: I have a shameful amount of subscriptions coming to my house (Yes Jillian, that includs People!) but I rarely watch T.V.

18) I'm not afraid to admit I like froufrou drinks like zinfandel and wine coolers.

19) I have taken extended backpacking trips in Pueto Rico, France, Switzerland, Germany and the Pacific Coastal U.S.A.

20) I say prayers.

I'm tagging (if they want to play, or have already been tagged..): Blackbird, Melanie, Steph, Fuzzypeach, and Jill

What it's like

DH and Bean played and napped for 4 hours this afternoon while I got some real writing time in. I went to Borders, ordered an iced latte and a walnut cranberry cookie and plugged in my laptop next to an old man with a leather hat and a newspaper at the counter that faces out into the store. With Stan Getz on my ipod, and the background bustle of people coming and going around me, I was finally able to focus on my writing long enough to actually figure out what the hell I'm trying to write. I forget, until I have long stretches of time like this, what it feels like to really WRITE. To move past the snatched observations and the background twitter of my brain overloaded. At home, invariably, I distract myself. I get sidetracked into the minutia of crap I convince myself I need to do. But at Borders, where my worst vice is people watching, I more or less stick to what I'm there for: navigating the terrain of the story on my brain.

It's a crazy process. I feel like the blind lady I see around town often. She taps her way down familiar streets with hardly any hesitation. But when she comes to a crosswalk, or a change in pavement; a new flowerbox perhaps, or a heap of fallen leaves, she hesitates. Tapping the obstacle's outline with her stick until she knows its shape. Until she knows how to proceed.

Looking for the shape of words in autumn

I am fighting a deadline again for writing. A chapter in the book I can't imagine but feel compelled to write. I sit by my desk, sheaves from different drafts scattered round me like snow. I pace in my mind, restless with the slow process of imagining and believing that writing is for me. I want the ease of the paintbrush, the pencil. There, a leaf in front of me. Nothing is hidden. Every line revealed. Every shadow.

I should just throw myself a pity party and get it over with...

..Because my day has NOT gotten better. Just when things were looking up I had to go to the doctor to follow up on the mysterious disappearance of my IUD string. Turns out the whole damn thing has been gradually (over the past week) migrating south. So it needed to be removed. And then replaced. I'm sure I don't need to convince anyone how horrible it is to go to the obgyn. Nothing about cold metal down there, or the word SPECULUM is pleasant. But the one thing that can make that experience worse is definitely having an IUD removed and then replaced. Only one word remains. C R A M P. So now I'm eating Ben & Jerry's Mint Chocolate Cookie Ice Cream and watching my son eat a Plout (I'll be posting pictures of this later. So cute.) And contemplating digging a hole and climbing in with my pint of ice cream and my spoon.

The kind zippy exhaustion that caffine creates

has swept over me this morning. I woke up so many times last night I lost count, to the thrashing limbs of my baby boy. I recall saying FUCK around 2 a.m. when his pacifire, which he so dearly loves, could not be found. And this morning, burrying my head in the thick down of my pillows, reluctant beyond all measure to be awake. The day is already like the blurred air around a whirling dirvish. Of center. There is no excuse, no real reason for this jittery unhappiness. But things keep piling up.

Idiosyncrasies

Allison tagged me yesterday to name a few of my idiosyncrasies. Simply saying idiosyncratic is a delight, so I had to play along.

1. I don't put caps back on things properly. I set them on the tops of jars, but skip the screwing on step. This works fine for me. I've NEVER dropped a jar because of the lid not being screwed in, but my husband and countless roommates over the years have. I also rarely shut cupboard doors. This drives my husband mad.

2. I have really, really long legs compared to my short little torso. Hence, I never have pants that fit quite like I would desire. Sometimes too long, but mostly too short. It doesn't help that I can't be bothered with special dryer settings, or with, god forbid, hanging a special pair of pants over the shower rod. So everything goes on one setting, sometimes to my nicer apparel's chagrin.

3. I can get obsessed with a new favorite food for like, three or four weeks and then can't touch it. Last winter, I loved orange juice. I had it every morning, and every other time I was thirsty practically for about two weeks---even tossing in pineapple-orange, and mango-orange for variety. And then, one day, I couldn't even look at the stuff. Can I just mention how INSANE this made my husband, who kept dutifully buying orange juice for another two months before he realized that there were SIX UNOPENED CARTONS OF O.J. already in the fridge.

4. I like things SWEET. I put 4 raw sugars in a grande latte. I eat honeycomb by the spoonful, and drown my pancakes in maple syrup. That said, I don't really like candy at all, except Swedish fish on occasion, sometimes jelly beans. Chocolate on the other hand, doesn't really qualify as candy and is in my book, a food of goddesses.

5. When I sit at my desk, or in a chair anywhere really, I like to pull my knees up to my chest. My feet are always resting on the seat of the chair, and as long as the weather permits, they are bare.

I am tagging anyone who wants to play.

Studio Friday: Tryptic

I like Studio Friday because it's a peak into other artist's studios. This week's project was to show "three of a kind." Oddly, almost everything around my desk comes it twos or fours or singles. And I sat stumped for a long time before I realized my desk, a second-hand goody inherited from a deceased friend of my husband's parents, has three deep drawers. I replaced the handles when I got it—the old ones were gaudy and ornate. And it suits me fine.

This is my studio: Along one side of the dining room in our small apartment. Red walls. My desk is nestled below a built-in china cabinet with old leaded-glass doors. I keep them open, and use packing tape to affix notes and quotes, to-do lists and receipts to the glass. Into the latch hole I have stuck two drying maple leaves---the first that I picked up this season, fallen to the sidewalk, vermilion and gold.

I use the shelves in the china hutch for books. I stack my books both ways: spines facing up, and horizontally. And in front of them, mugs and jars with brushes, pencils, pens. An orchid my husband gave me on my birthday, no longer flowering, but still with waxy oblong leaves sits on my desk.

Everywhere, heaps of papers, books, magazines, paints. They spread out in circles around me, like the rings in water after a pebble has been thrown in. I am at the epicenter.

Things I keep within reach: my laptop, my camera (A Nikon CoolPix5000, Jillian, since you once asked), a bar chocolate (this yummy raspberry kind by Lake Champlain Chocolates), my favorite volumes of poetry (The Rag And Bone Shop of the Heart, edited by Robert Bly, Inland, by Pamela Alexander, A Tree Within, by Octavio Paz, and The Complete Poems of e.e. cummings) a bouquet of dried roses from my wedding, and my address book (a Metropolitan Museum of Art item, with irises on the cover).

Things I keep in my desk drawers: Lots of stationary boxes---now filled with scraps, pencils, magnetic poetry bits, glue, staples. A small metal wind-up toy. Silver embossing powder. Thumb tacks. Quarters. Packing tape. Bank statements. Vintage postcards, sparkly ribbon, thread. An old wallet. Burt's Bees raspberry lip balm. Sharpies.

Since starting this, it has begun to rain out. Hard pebbles of rain falling against the open screens. The night air comes in cool. Tomorrow I will paint I think. Tonight I try to paint with words.

Artifacts of ourselves

On Friday, the minute after I posted, Bean woke up, still fussy, still with huge brontosaurus tears, inconsolable, needy. It was a long weekend. We're adjusting to a possibly teething, much more active little guy, and it's been a bit of a crash course. The house is finally quite tonight. The first time all weekend I've had down time--away from Bean, DH or friends, who often stop by now that we live in a neighborhood of people who share, among other things, our passion for outdoor sports and good food.

I went for a run this evening with Bean, and felt myself gradually shifting back towards my center. Bean napped for my entire five mile run, despite the fact he'd cried hysterically when we tried to put him down to nap beforehand. And as I ran, feet thrumming against the uneven, slightly damp pavement, I got to thinking about how having a child makes you examine your own archeology, as it were.

I see myself in my son. He's starting to be so purposeful in the ways in which he interacts with the world. He's cognizant now of cause and effect, and has discovered that HE can affect the outcome of something. He is active, curious, and ready to laugh. Yet he is also stubborn and determined. Like me as a girl, when he gets wound up, crying hysterically, water sooths him. I wonder now, as he's becoming an active participant in the world around him, what lessons I'm inadvertently teaching him, simply by being myself.

What do I affirm, or negate with my daily actions? My choice of words, the way DH and I interact, the places we go, taking Bean with us in the Bjorn or running stroller, how do these things all affect him? The tracks we make with our daily living, grow apparent in his big eyes, in his laughter, in his tears.

I once read an article by a mother who had wisely observed that her elementary aged daughter mimicked her patterns of speech and tone of voice. At the time I remember thinking how as a teacher I noticed this as well---my entire class of third graders would pick up certain mannerisms or idioms I frequently used. Like chameleons, children take on the color of their world.

I realize that my son watches me intently and often. He beams up at me when he sees me looking back, and then contentedly turns back to his toys. But he often stops to watch me adjust my hair, or sigh. He notices when I grow tense, and his body tenses too.

All this to say, after a long weekend of too much tenseness. Of fussiness and aggravation and short words, I realized something small, yet huge. I need to take space for myself regularly and often. I need moments of quiet, where I can paint Bean's bath dinosaurs, or sip a glass of wine, eat some dark chocolate and finish my book.

It feels selfish and obtuse to insist on this time. Yet without it, I find my inner landscape feels shaken like a snow globe. I scatter myself carelessly, pounce easily. And Bean absorbs this, his whole being noticing these

Gathering up the pieces

The morning was unassuming enough. Out of routine, because of the rain and the fact that Bean woke up nearly an hour earlier than he usually does. No morning walk, but cinnamon toast instead. The newspaper. Coffee. The essentials were all there. And Bean took a nap, like he normally does, but woke from it suddenly, fussy. And then the day went careening off kilter. Bean gradually fell apart. As did I. One of those days where darkness seems to fall early because of the weather; when the house feels hot and tight. My body pent up and sluggish from having missed my runs for three days in a row.

Refusing to sleep, Bean skipped his second (typically long) nap and then screamed hysterically when either of us tried to lie down with him; to cuddle, to offer a boob, a pacifier, a warm body to curl up against. Of course, he seemed to know how thin my patience was.

DH and I kept shooting each other looks. DH trying to remain on the periphery as though it were MY duty to deal with Bean.

"You could ask me for help," he said.

My skin prickled with angry heat. "You could ask to help," I replied.

All either of us wanted was some solitude and down time. This is what makes parenting so hard. The fact that you can't just take space when you need it. I tried. DH, readily apologetic, made me tea, while Bean crawled in forlorn circles around the coffee table, alternately bursting into tears or grins depending on whether the cat walked by or not.

I wolfed down chocolate chip cookies, sipped tea and tried to read a chapter in my book while the two of them sat on the couch opposite me: Bean pushing all of Dh's buttons by repeatedly dropping his teething cracker under the couch.

When DH and I get sucked into self pity, we're both fools and we know it. The situation is beyond us. Neither of our faults. We know this. Yet we can't seem to help ourselves from lashing out. Acting morose. Bean was exhausted, over stimulated, inconsolable. Teething perhaps, or simply off.

Finally I drew a bath, and we all spent the next 45 minutes in the bathroom trying to regain our humor. Bean and I in the tub, chasing his wooden spoon. DH sitting on the tile with a dolphin washcloth tickling Bean and making him giggle. And everything was better.

Bean nursed for a long time then, and fell asleep making little whistling whimpering noises with his breath the way he did when he was a newborn. It's likely he'll be out for the night. There is still time for a swim, for making pizza with potatoes and Italian sausage, for drinking the bottle of wine we picked up at the store earlier. For laughing on the couch, finally watching the indie flick our neighbor recommended.

But oh the agony of getting to this. Like broken pottery. Shards everywhere. The mosaic can happen. But seeing the bigger picture is sometimes so hard.