Laid up
I woke up at 5:30 with stomach flu. NO, IT ISN'T FOOD POISONING, or everyone else would have it---and I'm the only one who had to run to the bathroom this morning where I sat in agony on the loo. I've been floating in and out of a feverish haze all day. The real reason I'm posting however, is that I spent most of today away from my beautiful baby and I missed him something fierce when I finally dragged myself out to the living room. And you know what? He missed me back! He reached his arms out and grinned and chuckled and just about ate my face of with his version of kisses. It is as though I'm watching him grow at light speed today. Suddenly he seems so big: eating mostly solids (soup and sweet potatoes spoon fed by his nonna). Just in a heartbeat during our visit here he has learned to stick his tongue out and wave 'bye bye' and 'hi.'
I'm writing about it because I'm not sure it's really happening--as feverish and miserable as I've been today. I'm looking forward to coming back to what I've written when I'm better--to read it like a postmark. This happened. Because right now I'm pretty much just whimpering and wishing I could fast forward.
Gratitude
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.
9 months of wonder
Dear 9 month old Bean, You have now spent as long outside in this big world as you did inside my stomach. It's a pretty cool place here isn't it? You have learned so much about your world since you arrived. Every morning now, you wake up, pat our faces and crawl over us to the window sill by our bed. You love to look outside:at the people passing by to work or school, at the garbage truck coming to pick up the jars and cans from the blue recycling bins, at the squirrels whirling up and down the trunk of the tree. You stand up on the bed with your hands on the glass, watching all the action and cooing. Then you play with the alarm clock: carefully fingering all the buttons with your thumb and forefinger.
You seem so big to me now, it is sometimes strange to look at you and realize you are still so small--I must seem SO TALL to you, way up above, when you crawl up to me and reach your arms out, asking to be picked up and hugged. You have started calling out "mama" and "dada" with unmistakable purpose and consistency now--and each time you do, we become jello.
This month you turned into a rascal: crawling away from us at top speed when you know you're headed to off-limits territory like the kitchen or bathroom. Giggling when you hear us calling after you, and squealing when you hear us come up behind you to scoop you up. You love to play wild and silly games now--tossing your body backwards while we're holding you in our arms, so you can see the world upside down, or playing airplane with daddy. And you love, love, love to pull daddy's CDs off the entertainment center--throwing them one by one with a crash onto the floor.
It seems you have also discovered that certain things do not belong in your mouth: and you spend all of your time trying to put them into your mouth. The pages of magazines especially catch your eye, and you shove ripped shreds into your mouth furiously when you see us swooping in to stop you. Invariably, you giggle and attempt to squirm away as we try to fish the pieces back out of your mouth. Why, my lad, is this so funny? It's PAPER.
Incidentally, though your intake of paper seems to have increased, your overall food intake this month has decreased---although you're willing to try just about any food we offer you. It seems, that because you have developed a finely tuned pincer grasp, you are obsessed with using it to feed yourself. Unless the food we're offering comes in a finger food version, you're just not interested.
Your FIRST TOOTH has cut it's way through your gums (much to everyone's night time dismay for several nights in a row!) last week, and you're now very interested in using it to gnaw on everything. It's still just a thin bumpy white line on your gum, but baby it's SHARP. You have been lovely about not bighting my boob, but you have not applied this same courtesy to my chin or fingers.
This month you got sick and my heart turned all to liquid watching you with a fever. Your eyes grew large and dark, and you just wanted to be held. When we finally gave you Tylenol, to relieve both the teething pain and the fever, you perked up, but broke out in a rash of red spots that made us very worried.
When you got better you tackled the task of standing unassisted with new gusto. You've started LETTING GO, trying to balance all on your own: and took your first wild, free fall steps towards Jess the other day when she was here visiting, her arms reaching out wide for you. It makes me gasp every single time.
At your nine month check up the doctor said that when you can stand for thirty seconds or so at a time, you'll start taking your first real steps OUT INTO THE ROOM, away from me. I have no idea what my heart will do when this happens.
I love you so much, my little one!
Love, Mama
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.
Self Portrait Tuesday: A part of me
postcards recieved
I recieved the last of the postcards from the sawp Nichola organized. I was amazed at all the delicate stitchery---all but two had some form of sewing. It's easy to impress me with sewing. I have hilarious memories of learning to use a sewing machine in seventh grade. Our project was to make a nightgown. My best friend, whose mother makes dolls for a living, sewed the most exquisite nightgown imaginable. Little Peter Rabbit buttons, pleats, even hems. I made mine by laying out two layers of fabric and cutting out a shape that roughly resembled a gingerbread girl, and then sewing up the sides. My hems went haywire. My final project, a hideous costume that I tried to revive with too many buttons. I also remember talking the entire class, and sassing the teacher who I was sure didn't like me. She called me a bitch to my face and sent me out. I told the principal. I've never touched a sewing machine since.
From Nichola, in Australia.
From Suzy, in Japan.
From Shelly, in Australia.
From Natalie (who is 11 and doesn't have a blog), in England.
From Sarah, in Australia.
From Robyn, in Tulsa.
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.
Car pictures
Took a drive in the late afternoon to see some houses edging the small college town we're into. Still indecisive about buying or building, we met our agent to look at two farmhouses, both too near the road. Strange to walk through other people's rooms, fingering their door knobs, opening their closets. Hanging behind the basement door in the first house was the cleverest little retro tool set. Made for a woman the hammer and screw drivers were small in size with sparkly plastic handles. All the way I kept gulping the landscape up with my eyes. This is why we moved here. This is why we're trying to make it home--despite the long uncertain process of finding what that might look like. I brought the camera, and took a couple shots out the window as the light changed from winter sunlight to dusk, black crows flying up from the fields in flocks, startled.
traffic light
plowed field
dairy farm
yellow house
river bank
sunset
windmill moon
Mohawk grins
Bean is on the mend, it seems. He spent the afternoon flinging CDs off the entertainment center shelves, one at a time, giggling with delight as they crashed in a puddle of plastic cases around him. One little sharp tooth has (finally!) cut through, and the spots are fading...and last night he actually slept for more than two consecutive hours.
Small things, big things
After I got out of the shower this morning, the house was quieter than it usually is. I came into the bedroom and found my boys had gone back to sleep: my husband curled around our son, their cheeks touching. I tiptoed out and reveled in the early morning quiet, making French toast and herby omelets. Watching the cats loll in the checkered sunlight on the floor. Taking the time to breathe; to notice the faint smoky haze across the room, making the light streaming through the window appear in falling rays.
I've been thinking lately about how each day is filled with choices that are momentary and small, yet when viewed from a wider angle, have an impact on a far greater scale in my life, and in the lives of others. Taking time the time to notice these small things---or not. Breathing deeply, in the moment---or forgetting to. But also choices like these: buying milk from the local organic dairy, instead of from huge national conglomerates that pump their cows full of hormones, or eating the small bumpy heirloom apples grown here, rather than the smooth skinned ones trucked in from across the country.
So often, I find myself reacting rather than consciously choosing. When tired, pushed to blurry limits, it's easy to forget to live with active intention. But since moving here, to this place where people stop when the light is GREEN to let a pedestrian walk across the street, I've started to make the daily effort. It matters. Every day matters.
When they woke up, my two guys looked so scrumptious I wanted to devour the both of them whole: pillow cheeks, rumpled hair, sweet smelling and drowsy from sleep. And because it was still early, we had time to eat together, giving thanks. Outside, I could hear geese calling, migrating south high up in the windy sky.
This way and that
Anxiety has spread out across the surface of my life tonight, like the glaze a potter applies to a bowl. Liquid under high temperatures, then ridged when left to cool. So many things feel up in the air, suddenly. In transition, in motion. I'm finding myself dreaming, gasping, muttering. Longing for more sleep, for long, uninterrupted times in my studio. But mostly, I'm wishing for that the impossible: for vision that will let me know the outcomes of all the things started now. I'm wishing for certainty and feeling only chaos.
My sister was here the last four days, and it was good. Good to explore new ways of talking, of seeing each other: based less on the past, and more on who we are now. We both took risks to talk with honesty, to say things that mattered, to show small pieces of us that are less than perfect. Over peanut noodles and cheap wine we realized that the story of our childhood was one of comparison and never quite equals in the moment. Now we're trying for new ground, level to start with. Hopeful, unsure of where we'll end up.
My son has a rash. Red spots freckling his body like a dappled sunburn. The doctor says it's benign: the side effects of some virus he picked up. This, combined with teething has him terribly out of sorts. I spend my nights curled round him, trying to weave a cloak of protection with my breath and murmured prayers around his little body. My body aches with loving. I want to sleep. I want him to feel better. I want his teeth to be fully in his mouth. I'm a little on edge.
My husband and I spend the afternoons driving around the country side looking for houses or land to build. We have stacks of timber frame home plans, for-sale-by-owner ads, MLS listings. Each place we visit leaves my heart feeling like a trout pulled up by a reel. I flip flop: wanting it, then not. Imagining home, then feeling impossibly far from it.
This is what it is like: o plunge into the future. To take the next step towards things that matter to me, to my family. I know it is here on the edge, on the verge of new things, that the simple act of committing is more valuable than any crystal ball. I try to take a breath in, and let it go: trusting that the universe will move in response to my movement; that things will turn out fine.
Serious
Teeth coming in and a night of very restless sleep. Today pensive. I am blown away, watching my son, at the complexity of his emotional life--at only eight months. He has started anticipating our actions in response to what he sees us looking at. He reads our faces like an emotional roadmap. But today I felt like his mood was all his own, solemn, wanting to be held. A day where the world must have seemed very large to him.
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.
Sunny day
I put Bean in the backpack and went on an urban hike today. We went down along the waterfront, where the old railroad tracks used to be, and along the wetlands where wilderness is reclaiming the pavement. I took pictures and felt heady in all the sun and wind. Bean talked the whole time, cooing and singing, and then slept on the way back. I was so pleased with how some of these turned out, I had to upload them straight here rather than posting them as a slideshow on flickr first.
A view from above.
Graffiti art on the community boathouse.
Dog silhouette.
Lake waves up close.
Once a parking lot.
Bringht sky.
Graffiti art on an abandoned railway car.
Connections.
Migration.
NOVEMBER'S LIST
Some things I’m into this November:
Writing, and sketching my little moleskine notebook.
Hanging out with the other hapless writers in my writing group and swapping the chapters we’ve written for critique.
Machine washable merino wool yarn I’m using to knit Bean a baby blanket.
Classic toys, like the ones found here.
Buying cross country skis.
Organizing a postcard swap and getting paper mail.
Sending out query letters.
Taking black and white pictures.
House hunting.
Baking bread.