Self Portrait Tuesday: Reflective Surface # 1
Taken in low light, at night, indoors. This is my hands holding the lense of my camera--reflecting into the lense of another camera and blue ceramic bowl on the table. It was nearly an impossible shot---but I wanted to try because it says so much about my new found interest in photography. I am discovering a new piece of me, still blurry, reflected in the images I take with my camera.
Weekend Mosaic
A weekend full of grins with snowflakes falling on our noses. Lunch at a little French Bistro, good chai at the local coffee shop, long conversation. I’m still relishing every moment that’s she’s here today—and trying to hammer out a dozen pages for the workshop tomorrow in the gaps in conversation when we listen to Horowitz and she sinks into a soft armchair with a book. So for now I leave you with a mosaic of little moments. Snowsuit weather. Playing on the couch. Shopping for ornaments in the local arts boutique. Several high-scoring rounds of scrabble, and bright winter skies.
Talking toay
Ripe pomegranate seeds eaten over the Scrabble board. Looking through camera lenses at each other, a bunch of digital geeks. So good to have her here today, tomorrow, the next day. She's brought pocket full of reassurance, sunbeams, laughter with her from the West.
Illustration Friday: Blue
Early winter before the snow starts falling, when everything is cold and grey, and darkness swallows up the world, always makes me sad.
Today I just can’t seem to shake it. All the giddiness of yesterday, evaporated like the almost-snow in the air. The immenseness of the fact that we moved here just over a half year ago and I’m still grappling with finding the time to find friends makes me feel terribly alone today. It doesn’t help that I’ve been stricken with an unusually fierce bout of procrastination and self doubt.
My writing sits and lurks at me from the screen, like a couple of pickled eyeballs in a jar. It taunts me. I can’t finish a paragraph further than I’ve already gotten. My workshop deadline is next week and I know I won’t be finished.
I hate days like this. Wanting attention, but not to give it. Wanting alone time, but wanting good company even more. Wanting something decisive to happen, but still in limbo with just about everything.
Sundog, snowbelt and other compound words that mean home
We spent four hours at the house yesterday, with the inspector. We peered into every dusty corner, poked every possibly leaky length of copper pipe, tested spots on the ceiling and floor for moisture, pushed through heaps of insulation, and came up with nothing. This is one of the few times when nothing is good in life. Nothing at a house inspection is the opposite of disappointment.
Of course, there were small things: the house is exactly as old as I am—-built the year I was born—and neither of us are entirely dent free. But I like to think we’ve both aged gracefully. The house is in a snowbelt—-it snows up in that particular little mountain valley more than in the surrounding areas—-and was built to withstand the wind and snow, with it’s stone front facing the open valley. The roof will need replacing in a year or two, and the odd window latch needs fixing, but overall it’s in excellent shape. Which is about how I feel.
Since having Bean I’ve started to notice that I look older in the mirror in the morning. I have a small scattering of smiling lines, delicate and barely there, spreading out at the corners of my eyes. And the dark circles under my eyes—that I’m genetically disposed to (my father always had them), seem to have gotten darker, and more permanent with each short night of interrupted sleep. But I’m also leaner than I’ve ever been and stronger. I can run out in the cold for miles, and love it. And I’m not obsessed with being young forever. I’m grateful to finally be old enough to know better: to not always run bull-headed into things, putting my foot in my mouth. Old enough to finally have a smidgen of experience under my belt about this house business.
It is the second house we will have owned, and I’m hopeful that it will be the last for a long while. Long enough to put up a tree swing, and figure out which kinds of heirloom apples grow on the sunny slope outside the kitchen window. Longer. Of course, nothing is set in stone yet—the closing won’t happen for another month or so, and until then things are always up to the universe. But the day we signed the contract I saw a bright gleaming sun dog in the sky, and just when I saw it, DH walked into the room and the two of us just stood their grinning at the rainbow smudge at the edge of the snow clouds.
We grinned because with every significant move we have made, we’ve seen some form of rainbow. When we decided to rent an apartment together in Manhattan for the summer while I was still in school, we saw a rainbow—huge and bright in a stormy early summer sky. When we singed the lease on a little beach side cottage—which took us away from the humdrumness of our suburban second floor apartment in Connecticut, we saw a rainbow. And when we signed the contract on our first home, again, we saw a rainbow. The timing has been uncanny. Just in the moment of committing, the universe moves to respond.
So we’re all bubbly tonight because we walked the isles of Home Depot for an hour, talking cabinets and soapstone and appliances. Sometimes, I want nothing more than to be able to STOP talking about our plans. Sometimes it seems it’s all we talk about of late. But tonight it was fun. We were on the same page: imagining sap maple floors and the kitchen open to the sunny dining room.
This is where we picture Bean growing up: spitting water melon seeds, building tree forts, climbing trees. It will be home to him, and it will be where DH and I will reach middle age. It feels silly and magical and solid to picture us there, older. I try to do the fast forward thing in my head that nature shows do, to demonstrate a plant’s life cycle or the changing of seasons. There we are, on the front deck we have yet to build, looking at the mountains with our morning coffee.
Till then, we’ve got months of renovations. Months of demolition and salvage and drywalling, and we’re bound to go crazy more than once. But tonight when I think of the sundog house in the snowbelt, I feel giddy and peaceful the way I feel after a long journey. I am imagining home.
ODE Magazine
Progressive, pragmatic, and full of ideas that matter, ODE is a magazine with an optimistic edge. Though it is sometimes funny and always well written, I don’t come away from reading it with my mind at ease. Each issue makes my head spin. I read to be made more conscious of the choices and beliefs I bring to daily life. I read to discover ways I can affect positive change in my community.
From an article on Non-verbal communication strategies developed by Marshall Rosenberg came these ten points, which I promptly cut out and taped to my wall.
1. Spend some time each day quietly reflecting on how you would like to relate to yourself and others.
2. Remember that all human beings have the same needs.
3. Check your intentions to see if you are as interested in others getting their needs met as you are in meeting your own.
4. Before asking someone to do something check to see if you are making a request or a demand.
5. Instead of saying what you don't want someone to do, say what you want the person to do.
6. Instead of saying what you want, say what action you'd lik the person to take.
7. Before agreeing or disagreeing with anyone's opinions, try to tune into what the person is feeling and needing.
8. Instead of saying "no" look at what need of yours prevents you from saying "yes."
9. If you are feeling upset, think about what need of yours is not being met. Think what could you do to meet it, rather than about what's wrong with others or yourself.
10. Instead of praising someone who does something you like, express your gratitude by tellng the person what need that action meets.
Baby, it's cold outside...
The theme this week at Mama Says Om is cold. I'm having fun with this one.
Back to normal operations, or: sleep is for the weak
Buisness as usual: finding magic even there
We came back late Sunday amidst rain falling warm against a crust of snow, and spent the first hours at home unpacking and sorting through mail. By the following evening, we finally felt caught up on all the little things that make a home run: the floor was vacuumed, the plants watered, bills paid, phone calls returned, and we had a moment to step out into the early falling darkness of evening. The air was cold and the night slightly windy as we made our way downtown. As we turned the corner between tall buildings, we saw it: the cobble stone pedestrian walk bordered on either by trees and shops was lit with thousands of little white lights. Every tree, twinkling softly. It was so beautiful, we just stood there, our mouths open.
Then we made our way for toasty slices of chees pizza and hot chocolate and sat in front of the gigantic spruce at the top of the block, sparkling in a myriad of colors. Bean's eyes were huge and round like small deep inkwells reflecting the lights. He grinned wide when the wind blew the branches. And from somewhere, Carol of the Bells was playing softly.
Remembering the texture of moments
I'm feeling mostly better today, and tomorrow we're our way back north. Towards our small, busy apartment; towards the unfinished business with the house and work; towards heaps of christmast cards that need mailing and cookies that need baking; towards snow; towards days without the joy and distraction Bean's grandprarents bring to his life. But also towards our morning ritual of a walk downtown and coffee; towards our cat's soft purring; towards friends; towards home. Already the walk along the the canal on Thanksgiving day is just a collection of snapshots. Memory. Autumn, still clinging to tree branches. Canada geese in droves along the edges of the water.
self portrait. windy hair. up close.
concord grapes against concret.
autumn still lingers. leaves like bright flames over water.
a tangle of grass seeds like delicate jewlrey.
bird berries.
burgundy leaves. some small insect's feast.
tree berries. sliver and knobby against dark water.
bird's nest. lonley and dark in the twigs against the sky.
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.