August, just around the corner

Summer is galloping by. Full tilt. Allready the shadows are longer as we head outdoors after dinner, the four of us. The boys head to the sandbox. T and I grab our new rackets and giggle as we attempt volley after volley in the fading summer light. Around our heads halos of insects swarm; the air is mellow and smells of the honeysuckle and roses by the front door.
In the garden things are suddenly ready for harvest: arugula every single day, spinach, basil, chives, lettuce. I walk down barefoot, often followed by one or the other boy to harvest a colander full before lunch. The best salads begin with a simple vinaigrette, chopped fresh herbs, every green imaginable, and then whatever we have around to throw in: grilled trout, quinoa, carrot curlicues, tomatoes. I will remember this summer as the summer of fantastic salads.
And of changes.

Wild crazy wonderful changes.

Your comments on my last post really filled me up. I want you to know that. Each one brought new perspective, encouragement, thoughtfulness.

I especially loved this from V Grrrl, because it reaffirmed exactly what I believe:

I think a healthy family is one where everyone’s needs are balanced against each others, where family members recognize that everyone works together for the family as a whole, and that sacrifice and compromise are part of that process.

T and I and our boys all made a promise to each other about this upcoming year. It's going to be an all hands on deck kind of year, and all four of us are in. We're all going to try our hardest to do it the first time, follow through, pick up the slack, pick up the messes as we make them, remember to take walks, exercise, eat chocolate, laugh.

It's going to be such an adventure. I can't wait.

T and I have basically become adults together. We met when he was just turning 21, and in the decade that I've known him he's either been a student or working in the stock market and I cannot even begin to describe the relief and disorientation I feel at imagining him doing work that matters in the world; work that he loves; work for a salary. It will be a learning curve for us both to discover ourselves anew in these new roles. I imagine it will be all about patience and patience and patience. Also humor. And chocolate.

For the next month I'm working my way through the manuscript for A Field Guide To Now. It's exciting to finally be in it. Things are coming together. Art, words, ideas. I'm excited by the direction and beginning to trust the process now that I've had a few days strung together of consistent project time. (That last photo is a sneak peak at a piece of art that will go into a postcard.)

I'm curious: What are your plans for August? What food are you crushing on right now? What tunes are you loving?

Also: If you could hear just one thing that you need to hear right now, what would it be?

xoxo!

Saying Yes

The summer rain is falling slantwise against the open window glass. The sills are damp, the view a duotone of green and grey: foliage and clouds. In my new studio the window looks out on an apple tree, Norway beeches, and beyond the cloud cover, the mountains not so very far off. I’ve spent most of the morning here, working, and I love this new space so very much. I love how I can move from painting to words and back; how the book is taking shape now more quickly, my ideas knitting together from one day to the next. It's happening.

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Now for the news:

I will be going to graduate school full time, starting at the end of August.

It’s an MFA in Emergent Media (web and graphic design combined with the technologies and storytelling mediums that are emerging from the future.) It’s an opportunity for me to be at the forefront of field that is new and growing; and to shape a new career that is lucrative, creative, and complementary to what I already do. This has been in the works for a while...this shift...but I've said very little about it here because I didn't want to jinx, or speak too soon. Last year, doing part time work, discovered how much I was into this field; how I naturally had an eye for color and design, and for shaping a vision, or ad campaign.

It took me awhile to give myself permission to consider perusing a new career; a financially viable career; a fast-pasted, demanding career. (I've shared before how it has taken me a long time to shake off my father's altruistic expectations for me as a teacher. Whew. What a process!) It also took me awhile to dream up a career that would complement writing, maybe even sustain it, instead of detracting from it (as teaching has always done.)

So I'm in. I'm going.

Of course it is terrifying. Programming languages + me? Ha. Virtual worlds? Video editing? Pure crazy.

But I have never backed down because something is hard. And this is exciting-hard. It's thrilling.

I’ve written so much about the endless tug-of-war that goes on in my head about being a mother and being more than a mother. About being an creator in my own right; a writer, an artist, a shaper of my own financial future. And about being a mother who gets down on the floor with her boys every single day: plays legos, wrestles, builds things, paints, reads stories, bakes bread. Of course I’m torn. When making this decision I thought of my boys in 18 years from now. I asked their future selves what they would think if I went for this, or didn’t. I asked them what they would resent more: me super busy through two years of their childhoods, or me unfulfilled and holding that resentment deeply.

The answer seemed clear.

They offered me really generous funding and I had to say yes or no within twenty-four hours (I applied late in the game, after deadline) and everything was topsy-turvy yesterday and the day before, deciding. T and I stayed up late, late, whispering about our futures and looking at calendars and daily schedules that seemed impossible to navigate. And then my inlaws and friends joined forces to say: we want this for you. We'll make this happen with you. (They are amazing.)

So I said yes.

I can’t believe where this year has taken me; us. It’s astounding. And awesome.

A quiet space

Here are some studio glimpses...I love it so.

And today I am trying to make one more hard, important, life-changing decision about career pursuits. It depends wholly on others: their help, support, time, etc. And it's about having kids and having a career, naturally. About pursuing graduate school now, or waiting. It's about feeling like time is slipping by (my time, and their childhood's both.)

It's about loving them hard: my boys with their sweet sticky grins and laughter and innocence, and about about wanting the best for the... and also wanting the best for me. It's about wondering if those are mutually inclusive or mutually exclusive.

It's about getting ahead or falling behind and about hopefully ending up right where I'm supposed to be.

(I'm curious what you believe: Does the universe have the outcome planned, or are we architects of the outcomes all on our own?)

Trusting, trusting, trusting.

Retrospective

Hi friends. How was your day?

I spent the day sifting through the artifacts of who I used to be. I moved my things into my new studio today (pictures tomorrow in the morning sunlight!) and spent hours sorting and perusing and riffling, and discovering again who I used to be.

Since I was twelve I’ve a notebook or journal of some kind more or less consistently, and today I leafed through several, re-reading words I no longer remember writing. It was a blast.

I’m not much of a diarist (though my earlier notebooks were certainly concerned almost entirely with boys and my relationships to them.) My notebooks usually contain the recordings of a haphazard, passionate life: words I've read and want to learn, conversations overheard, to-do lists, notes for poems, and sometimes the longer unravelings that write to discover what I am feeling in a given situation or moment. And oh, my twenties were abundantly full of feeling. Relationships coming and going; loves arduous, delightful, foolhardy, intense. And always the repeated question of whether I was pregnant or not (so glad that is no longer a question mark on the table!)

I was so holographic in my twenties; so changeable to whomever I was around. I was enormously influenced by certain men I dated—and while I’m grateful I didn’t marry any of them, I’m happy that I still know them all, peripherally, in the tender and distant way you can only know a former love, now become friend. They are all great men. Enormously talented in their own ways; worthy of the influence they had on me to be sure. Still, I was nearly transparent dating some of them: taking on their passions and pastimes the way water takes on the contours of the riverbed it travels through.

A couple of weeks ago I was chatting with a dear girlfriend of mine about turning thirty; about the angst you feel at the end of your twenties when you are told that the world is your oyster and you want to do everything you can to make sure it stays that way. You become preoccupied, maybe, with the way things appear (you check off certain boxes, perhaps: house, spouse, puppy, baby.) Perhaps you throw yourself into multiple activities. You maintain a bustling social life; commit to far to many things fearing that without all the hustle you’ll become a working stiff, a boring old married couple. Maybe you fear becoming that couple with the new baby who no one ever sees any more. Maybe you fear becoming the couple who have regular sides of the bed; who don’t talk over breakfast; who forget to hold hands in the grocery store. Already you are fixated on remembering what you used to be like when your were younger, in your early twenties, when all-nighters were effortless, and you could drink hard and not feel it the next morning (or when you had sex on the couch just because you wanted to, instead of because it was the only cushioned place in the house not occupied by a sleeping child.

I was so glad, looking back, to no longer feel that angst. To feel instead the grace that comes with sticking with things; with letting the edges soften a bit. As I said to my friend: it’s not about doing more, it’s about being more. Quietly, subtly, within the very small orbit of your ordinary, extraordinary life.

That said, when I turned thirty I had no idea how I'd feel now, at thirty two (and a half!--remember saying that when you were a kid?). I hated turning thirty. I can remember my optimism and anxiety cocktail perfectly. I was obsessed with the idea that I had missed the boat already (for becoming a writer and artist; for ever having an amazing body; for doing any kind of adventurous travel; for having a night life.)

I was sure that I was saddled for the long haul, and that in fact, it would be a haul. Thirty sucked. I was pregnant (and vomiting) and while things were fabulous financially, I hated my job more than I can even begin to describe. It unsettled me, and sucked the creative energy from me in a way that left me frazzled and certain that I would never amount to a single thing in the world. Then I turned thirty-one and had Sprout and quit my job and all of our financial security came tumbling down around me like an igloo made of sugar cubes in a rainstorm. Yet miraculously I began, last year, to see how being more means being in the moment. It means discovering the day, wholly, with joy and wonder, and living into it as wholly as possible.

I discovered grace in the midst of sadness; wonder in the thistle-sweet heart of despair. I grew disciplined with fitness, and found in push-ups and running the control I could not claim for the rest of my life.

Last year was unfathomably hard. If my twenty-five year-old-self could have seen last year she would have been terrified by th repetition (the laundry, the dishes, the endless responsibility of making food and enforcing bed times), the perpetual noise and lack of privacy, and the endless, endless worry. But she would have been missing the point.

I have a kind of tempered, hard-earned confidence now that I never had in my twenties. The kind of confidence that comes, trial by fire, through doing the difficult, painful parts of life. From giving birth; from loving two small boys until my heart could split like an overripe melon, revealing the sugary sweetness inside; from fighting and wincing and feeling small and reactive in my relationship and growing from it, to become richer and deeper, like soil made from the decomposed refuse of last season’s garden clippings. We lost a lot last year. A lot of security, a lot of known outcomes, a lot of comfort. Still, I gained a groundedness I'm grateful for. I traded muscles and determination for all the thinness and whimsy I had at twenty-five.

And I’ve begun to discover how contentment can come slowly with the unfolding of a day: with eating berry crumble and a frothy coffee for breakfast (surrounded by the hubbub of small boys); with folding sheets fresh from the dryer; with the sound of the oscillating afternoon fans and lemonade; and later, berry picking after dinner. Black raspberries are my favorite, for sure. PS:

Here are some summer tunes I've been humming along to.

Trail running

The first time I ran to be alone with my fierce pummeling thoughts, the anxiety in my chest, the tears slick on my cheeks. The first time I ran with my hair down, floating behind me like a mane, up the grassy shaded path, up, up the hill, up higher until the blue of the mountains in the distance were swallowed by the leafy canopy of forest. I ran until my mind narrowed to only this: to my feet hitting the soft mud of the trail, crushing wild daisies and fragrant grasses; to the sound of the stream rushing downhill beside me as I ran up; to the almost instant giddy feeling of freedom that bloomed in my ribcage as I ran hard until I could hear my heart in my ears, surrounded by maples and underbrush and the liquid warble of wood thrushes.

The second time we ran together, sweat slicked, quiet, quick footed. I ran ahead, dodging low-hanging branches and he ran after, following where my feet landed among rocks, missing puddles, leaping mossy covered logs. The second time I ran ahead, but not too far ahead, and often I’d turn to look and grin seeing him there just over my shoulder; and I’d grin also to myself, feeling my own ease and strength and I ran fast up the hills, muscles bunching and releasing through the underbrush, darting with agility between tree trunks and over fallen branches ahead of him. And this is something that we have always been: athletes together and it’s a thing that has often saved us, brought us back together, gathered us into the same moment.

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I want to do more trail running this summer. It’s a rush to pound up the single track traversed last by deer or the wild singing coyotes I just heard out my back door, and to leap in quick zig-zags on the descent. It brings my mind right to the moment, focuses me only in my breath and feet and muscles, leaves me empty of the impatience that has painted my recent days with tension as things unfold the way they should, though often beyond my control.

And maybe that’s what this is all about for me: being in control in a way that is finite and defined. Also, it’s just straight-up awesome. It's nothing like running on the gently hilly dirt road where our three mile run has become something so regular my mind dances off, seeking distraction from the repetition. If you can, if there is any way at all, grab your running shoes this week and go off road. Even for a short distance. Even for only ten minutes, or five. Run where the trail is uneven and unpredictable. Run where the woods smell sweet with leaves and summer. Run where the heat is lessened by shade; or among grasses waist high where you cannot see your feet. Run, and then tell me how it was. (I dare you.)

There is an art to this

There is an art to this. To waiting, to being present in uncertainty when moments are only whatever it is that they are until the next moments arrive.

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Today writing terrifies me. It terrifies me because of the way these stories last, the way we tell ourselves stories in order to be who we are, to become who we are becoming. It makes me ache, to see the small uncertain snapshot of myself as I am right now: here at the dining room table, in a room so humid the pencil digs into the soft pulp of the paper like a finger nail scratching at mosquito bitten skin.

Outside it is pouring and green and warm. Water drips from the gutters in irregular staccato and farther out the rain falls steadily with a rushing noise that fills the valley, the house, the sky with sound. Upstairs, in his crib, my son is sleeping, likely on his belly with his cheek pressed softly into the matted sheepskin he’s slept on since the day he was born. He’ll sleep for another hour and then wake and my day will circle about again, and I will become something less productive and possibly more real.

In thirty years what will these moments mean?

Today I re-read, slowly, meticulously, intentionally, every line Joan Didion’s piece, “On Going Home,” examining each comma, each particular use of parenthesis, each use of metaphor and observation, and found myself nearly in tears at this last paragraph, knowing as I know, that her daughter died at 39.

It is time for the baby’s birthday party: a white cake, strawberry-marshmallow ice cream, a bottle of champagne saved from another party. In the evening after she has gone to sleep, I kneel beside the crib and touch her face, where it is pressed against the slats, with mine. She is an open and trusting child, unprepared for and unaccustomed to the ambushes of family life, and perhaps it is just as well that I can offer her little of that life. I would like to give her more. I would like to promise her that she will grow up with a sense of her cousins and of rivers and of her great-grandmother’s teacups, would like to pledge her a picnic on a river with fried chicken and her hair uncombed, would like to give her home for her birthday, but we live differently now and I can promise her nothing like that. I give her a xylophone and a sundress from Madeira, and promise to tell her a funny story.

What can I promise? What do these moments hold?

tender.

I don’t want to write tonight, but there is nothing elseno solace anywhere except here with the blinking curser the darkness pulling close around the corners of the room and damn, I want to be like boho girl tonight: I want to be able to say that I’m experiencing tender emotions and am working through this gently but I don’t know how to do this; how to say this or to be gentle in this process of being wherever I am feeling right now.

I always feel like I need to have an answer and keep my chin up. I’ve somehow become so disconnected from my emotional life that all of this could be entirely hormonal and Id never know it was that time of the month.

The truth is days like this just add up—one small iteration, resentment, and minute heartache after the next and then wham! it hits like a stupid ton of bricks, and now, in these post Kickstarter days when everyone and their mother among my of ‘real life’ friends reads here, it feels…

Oh damn, the truth of it is I grew up in a family with a mother who struggled with depression; who was overtaken by her emotions; who became them, day after day sometimes, silently leaving the rest of us out—and I see myself in her some days.

And also this: my father always thought that my mother should chin up, and because my father was my favorite person in the world when I was a kid, I learned it well, and here I am chin fucking up.

Except I want to be the girl who can bring a little grace to this. I want to be able to say that I’m working through this stuff gently. I want, maybe most of all to say that I know how to be gentle with myself—but I do not.

I have no fucking clue.

I want the days back when I could write here without people from the context of my daily life wondering why I haven’t told them about whatever I’m writing here.

I’m mourning the anonymity I had once here.

I want to know why things are so small and so big at the same time. I want to know why men—most men anyways—always see things so impossibly literally and then walk away just when you want them to stay (though of course when they do return it’s the very last thing that you want.)

Sometimes. Tonight. Maybe.

So whatever. Bring on the concerned emails. Life just bites sometimes as it currently does and I don’t want to have to explain myself, and truthfully I might not know how to explain myself. Tonight I’m just sad, and hoping that when the morning comes I’ll feel better.

Peace and grace

Yoga tonight. YOGA. I didn't even know this hole in my life existed until I was there in the little second story studio doing downward dogs and listening to the collective exhalations of twenty other people. "Think of going out into your life with peace and grace" the teacher said at some point, and I was suddenly, inexplicably close to tears.

Peace and grace.

Somehow my life has moved away from this drastically. The past several months have been about chin up, mind over matter, power through it, action.

And oh, how I've missed this: being quiet with myself. Simply that. Simply breath, and wonder, and feeling tears spring up suddenly from both relief and uncharted sadness. I've always prided myself in being tough and resourceful. I've always been someone with brains and enough street smarts to figure things out and when the going gets tough I roll up my sleeves.

And for years--whenever I intermittently practiced yoga--I always brought this attitude to it: power through.

But it was not about that at all tonight. It was simply about this: about considering breath, and karma, and returning to breath. Peace and grace distilled into the fluid motions of warrior to downward dog.

I'm going to try for more of that this summer....and I want to know, where do you find or bring peace and grace to your daily life?

A story chameleon

I slip among the cushions on the couch with a book and the edges of everything else grows blurry. Reality becomes the story on the page. I am no longer here, even as outside things are moist and green, and the lawn mower thrums loudly as T. cuts back and forth across the grass. In the air beyond the feeder with it’s shiny red metal flowers, hummingbirds zigzag, lilt, swoop, defying gravity. I look up intermittently and the clock’s hands make no more sense than reading words in Japanese. Hours slide by. I don’t move. This is what happens when I slip into a book. I have no moderation, no ability to read a page, then leave off. It’s such a crush: this thing I have for words.

Story captures me so entirely it almost becomes a full body experience. I dislocate. My feet grow cold from staying in in one position so long, knees up on the couch by the window as the morning slides towards afternoon.

When I read I become unavailable, altered, distant. T. can ask me a question and I’ll look up moments later having absolutely no idea what he said. I am a story chameleon, becoming blue, or thrilled, or besotted with wanderlust at the story’s slightest suggestion.

I am almost unbearably suggestible when I read. Hardly a skeptic. I go to books to be altered. If the sentences are good, I’m a believer.

I just finished Breath by Tim Winton, and god, I love his stories. Raw, intimate, wild. Read the whole book in one sitting.

What are you like when you read? Also, what’s the most recent book you haven’t been able to put down?

Uneven

Oh my. I seem to have distressed a few of you (thank you for your sweet emails.) Things are just fine. Promise. Things have a way of turning out, even when sometimes they don’t (at least not in the ways that we expect or hope.) Tonight I mostly want to tell you this: when I show up here, it is sometimes with cool palms, and a quiet heart; each sentence following logically after the next. But other days I come with flyaway hair and muddy feet; my heart in a hundred directions; my words haphazard. In times like these, it’s about trying to put a finger on the pulse of this moment that matters. I want a record of the in-between-times. The times of limbo, of breathlessness, of waiting, of wanting, of fleeting wonder. These are the moments I want to look back on because these are the moments I forget.

Today the irises revealed sleek purple buds by the front steps, and I know that in mere months the summer that is just now blooming will be gone.

The leaves will turn the color of flame and rust and fall to the ground. Sprout will be talking (he already is saying words—a new one pops up every day now, in that two-syllable repetitive way that toddlers have of talking. Banana becomes “na na”’; water, “wa wa”) and all the things that are uncertain now will no longer be.

But just as surely as this is true, it is also true that new unknowns will crowd in, playing a forever game of musical chairs in my head.

+++

Today, this: the four of us in the garden, up to the gills with dirt. The season's first sunburn. Lemon ice water. An impromptu trip to the general store for milk & ice cream sandwiches. Also laundry. I somehow can never quite seem to get a handle on that.

blur

Diptychs are contagious.

Wishing I could show up here every day, but this week: everything has come pouring down. Highs and lows. Utter crazy, uncertainty, heartbreak, possibility, sweetness. It's almost more than I can stand, so I escape into the fleeting instant of watching an oriole swoop and land. Such sudden orange among the green. Yes my heart thunders. Yes to this life.

Still, I brim with impatience for all that is unfinished and unknown. My breasts still ache (no one tells you this about weaning, but it's not pain free. That is also an understatement, fyi.) My heart aches for things that are irrevocably different now (with people I love. Sorry about the vagueness.) My quads ache for want of use. I haven't been running much and miss it something fierce, but there are so many things now up in the air with the tilting, diving flight of the orioles that running comes last. It shouldn't, but there it is, a fact. Time isn't on my side this week.

Next week: JUNE.

When did that happen? How? Has anyone else felt like this year is plunging ahead at a vehement pace?

Tonight heat crowds the room. 90 tomorrow. The lawn is still unmowed (another thing fallen off the end of the priority list this week) and I am applying for things and chasing down dreams, and damn, I know I'm being vague but tonight it's the best that I can do.

Joyful fleeting things

Today I am giddy. A new pair of pretty red flats. A to-do list ACCOMPLISHED. An exciting, thrilling possibility waiting to be explored. SUN. A raspberry Italian soda + chocolate croissant. I am absolutely loving this song right now. Holding my breath. Finding four leaf clovers in the lawn. And reminding myself: what if there is no emergency?

So I'm weaning Sprout. He's the same age more or less that Bean was when I weaned him--and he was ready. He'd been nursing only at night before bed and in the morning upon waking... and my trip to the city was the perfect time to make the transition. He never even fussed. Just snuggled in with T. in the morning and went back to sleep--and now we have this lovely snuggle time in the morning when he's still all warm and sleepy and our cheeks press up against each other, and then Bean comes in and the three of us snuggle and chase the tails of our dreams while T is in the shower. That first morning time with both of my boys is often my very favorite part of the day.

But oh my. I have two little boys now, suddenly. It's the end of babyhood in our little family. Blink, and here we are, four of us, all bipedal, grass stains on our toes. I can't quite describe what it feels like to be here at this point. To know our family is complete, to know who my kids are, to be US. I always pictured this, but had no idea what I was picturing, you know?

Here we are. Two boys with impossibly long eyelashes, and thousand dreams like dandelion fuzz blowing on the wind. I can't even imagine this fall. Can't fathom what we'll be like by summer's end.

Yesterday I went down to the garden for the first time and was stunned by the knee high grass. In my absence the wild has taken over and reclaimed the little plot of land I've been tilling each season. Saturday: the garden and I have a date to get down & dirty. But my whole life feels like this--when I look back on the past ten years, it's exactly like looking at the garden suddenly verdant and overgrown with weeds and volunteers (tomatoes, peas) that I never expected, and yet there they are. It will be like this from here on out, won't it? Every decade faster than the last.

Tell me, what is fleeting and joyful right now in your life? What do you want to remember about today, this May?

A weekend away and the photos I did not take

The lilacs are fat; my boys cheeks are sticky with apricots; the lawn is overgrown. Today T. wraps his arms around me at the table. We sit side by side, plotting our next moves while our boys escape out the front door and head to the sand box together. We can see them from the window. They sit side by side in the sand; hair blowing back in the dandelion-down strewn wind. They giggle together, and seeing them this way makes everything worth it. They’ll always have this. I went to NCY for the weekend with a lovely friend whose sister has an apartment on the Upper West Side. I haven’t been to the city since Bean was tiny; and my camera battery died before I could foray out to take many pictures. So instead I offer this:

The pictures I did not take.

The green Central Park lawn strewn with picnic blankets, and above it two bright yellow balloons lifting up; floating beyond the buildings at the tree line and into the blue and cloud flecked sky.

The two girls with red hair ribbons tied around pigtails, running among the picnickers with a pink and blue kite on a short string; feet bare, knees skinned, the littler one stopping to just stare for a while at the bobbing improbable flight of the kite in air lifted by the sheer momentum of her sister’s strong brown legs.

The desiccated crumpled body of the baby blue jay on the sidewalk beneath a tree, legs drawn up, blue-gray feathers crushed into the cement; and the look of revulsion that the lady had, in her enormous black Prada sunglasses, dark skinny jeans and ballet flats, her skin pearly, her hair frosted, her stroller a Bugaboo Frog. She skirted the bird and shuddered, then walked quickly on.

My friend’s face; beaming with emotion that mirrored the sun yellow of his fleece, the two of us seeing each other for the first time in ten years (except in photographs). His profile against the backdrop of the dancing fountain at Lincoln square: curly eyelashes, dreads pulled back, a smile playing on his dark lips,

The view from 230 Fifth at night; an indigo sky and lights scattered like a diamonds in a jewelry box. The Empire State building right there, smack-dab, lit in green and yellow; potted palms, crowds, champagne. Hair blowing in the wind.

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I wore a wicked dress, you guys, and I looked amazing. Super heels, a tiny chocolaty shoulder bag, smouldery eyes. I had a few twenty-five year old boys in a state of euphoria and then shock when I spoke to them, then offered up my wedding band as proof. To further the short circuit in their minds I murmured this: “I’m a mom, too.” Best expression ever. Utter disbelief painted over sheer attraction. I couldn’t stop grinning and thanked them after they docilely hailed us a cab.

I needed this. I needed to encounter a part of myself I haven’t seen much of since becoming a mother. Wine, French food, a hot dress, crowds parting just so I could pass. Who doesn’t need a day like this to remind them of what they are?

As though everything that I am is contained in a composite shell of moments hauled about to contain the soft-bodied hermit crab soul that is mine. Right now it feels like I’ve clambered into some new place. Inside a Fibonacci spiral, the sound of the city comes rushing back. It’s endless traffic and hubbub and movement thrums in my eardrums still. Be still my restless heart. Still I am happy to be home.

what matters most?

...taking a risk or staying the course? ...defaulting to the familiar, or leap towards something new? ....financial security, or authenticity? .....trusting in the unknown, or attempting to engineer an outcome?

Snowed in

18 inches of snow yesterday. Today: it's already 55 degrees. Forecast for the weekend? 75 and sunny. My brain is having difficulty computing. ALSO: we don't have power. Haven't for twenty-four hours. Which, truthfully, sucks quite a bit, especially since I work from home on the INTERNET.

Now I'm at a friend's house (she is a lifesaver) and the sun is shining and I'm popping in here to tell you that a guest post is up at Wishstudio that you absolutely must go read!

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!

a different kind of validation:

"Oh,"  T. said yesterday as we were both stumbling over the HEAPS of laundry on the floor upstairs, "I guess you actually really DO a lot of laundry." YES. Yes I do. (And it's been a point of contention, I might add.)

But this week: not so much. In fact not at all actually. And it SHOWS. Our house looks like a bomb was detonated somewhere in the vicinity. Housework has dropped off the very bottom of the to-do list, to be returned to sometime when this proposal is done, and life returns to normal speed.

By then I may have a hunchback (I have discovered I have terrible desk posture) and my family might have been devoured by mutant laundry heaps. Alas. (Or T. could just do the laundry. Perhaps he will?) (A confession: I love every single minute of this bleary-eyed, up till 2am, creative, messy process.)

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?)

Out of context

It was a kind of out of body, out of context experience that put me back in touch with myself in a way I didn't expect... starting with driving the 3 hours alone in the car, no radio, just me and my thoughts. I haven't spent three hours alone with my thoughts in a long, long time (when was the last time you did that?) and then spending a night alone in a shady paint-peeling hotel (that looked way better in the pictures. Last update: 1984.) Then getting pampered: a beautiful haircut + highlights, and someone to show me how to pull together a look that reflects my inner AWESOME more than a hoodie and jeans and flipflops which are my daily default. (By the way: Clinton Kelly is even sweeter and funnier in person than on T.V. and he's a genius at what he does. Truly.)

And instead of letting myself continue to feel silly (which was my first feeling) or embarrassed (a close second) I decided to let go of all negative feelings and soak up every moment of two days all about me. It was revealing: I don't give myself a lot of down time in my life, and I need to more often. Also: I have a hang up about things being frivolous vs. worthy that seems to permeate all aspects of my life...

Is fashion superficial and frivolous? Maybe it is. Or maybe not. (What do you think?)

One thing I learned: it feels good to know you look good. And to know that who you are on the inside is accurately reflected on the outside for the world.

Discovery #1: My inner supermodel loves bohemian + a little edgy + athletic. (Pretty flowy tunics + leather + a men's white tank.) Also, I don't think I ever gave skinny jeans the appropriate credit they deserve (FYI: they are made to STRETCH. So nice.)

Discovery #2: brown mascara with blue eyes. GENIUS people. I had no idea.

Discovery # 3: the key to rocking any look is BELIEVING you look incredible. Because then you do. Pretty much a rule for life in general, don't you think?

Tomorrow: back to things. Including finishing the proposal for my book. And work. And running. (I've missed it big time the past few weeks.) But maybe also: just a little more time for me. (Don't you just love Anne Lamott?) Curious: What is something you have a hang-up about?

Then & now and yes

Yes

It could happen any time, tornado, earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen. Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could you know. That’s why we wake and look out–no guarantees in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning, like right now, like noon, like evening. ~ William Stafford

(Found this poem here today.)

+++

Do you ever go back and read your own archives? I do. It's a little like opening a time capsule seeing Bean small, and me, whatever way I was then.

Today I looked back for the very first self portrait I ever took, at the beginning of Self Portrait Tuesday (before it became Self Portrait Challenge)...

I 'met' so many incredible gorgeous bloggers through those weekly challenges.

The funny thing about blogging is you don't get to SEE the people you read unless they are generous with you, unless they share this too, their faces, their work-worn hands, torn jeans, sunglasses, knees, braids, laughs. And I like seeing these things... and sharing them... which is why I'm doing these Sunday portraits...and I hope you will too.

Another thing from going back through my archives is seeing how memes used to fly around the blogsphere all the time. Now, not so much. I can't put my finger on it, but I do think something has changed in the way that people blog and share (or maybe it's just me?) I've read some interesting posts about this recently. About how there is less community or intimacy or something...and more business now. Maybe? Do you feel this? Sometimes I do. And so in the spirit of sharing more:

4 random things about me right now:

* In the morning when I first wake up I feel myself dangling like a marionette somewhere just beyond my body. It's almost painful to be pounced on, or touched much in this state, and the arrival of small boys in my bedroom (with their inevitable elbows and knees) is always a bittersweet thing (I love the way they smell when they first wake up.)

* I got an email in my inbox on Friday telling me that I'm the Albany, NY winner for this. (I entered only because of the NYC shopping spree.) This is hilariously perfect (and a little embarrassing.) I am a good candidate: I only wear jeans. I am baffled by makeup. I have no idea what to do with layers. Or knee high boots. And I need a haircut. (I thought twice about posting this because it's just so... not me...and yet I'm totally giddy about it.)

* I just got this book and this one in the mail today. I wish I could get books in the mail every day!

* I lose sunglasses always, and yet I can never seem to figure out where they go when they're gone. It's not like they fall off my head...or I leave them on the roof of my car (though I have, and watched them get smashed.) They just disappear. Hence the sunglasses self portrait to celebrate a new cheap pair.

+++ Your turn. 4 things. Also, be brave this week and take a self portrait... you can hide behind your shades. Post your photos here, or in the Self Portrait Sunday Flickr pool.