The pictures I promised

Go here for the up-close versions & lots of notes. I had maybe a little too much fun with the writing the notes.

And thank you for the suggestions. I currently smell a tad like sauteed cabbage, but my boobs don't hurt as much... (Bean was down to one nursing a day--before bed, so it was a very gradual thing. Still. DH made some comment about bra/boobs being a "garden of eatin' " tonight. Let's just say I'm eager for this particular phase to be over. HOWEVER, Bean has been remarkable--sleeping--for the first time ever--all the way through the night, in his crib, willingly... they say when they're ready, they're ready. I guess he was ready.)

Also, we're going to Florida next week to hang out with my best friend. It will be Bean's first time on a plane. DH & I are virgins in the air travel with a small child department. More help please. What should I bring/do/be prepared for?

And now a quick recap of house progress: Every single room is full of boxes. My god, where did we manage to accumulate so much stuff? But the kitchen, oh it's so lovely. It begs to be used. So I have been. Grilled tuna stakes with couscous salad, banana muffins, soup... And I've been slowly, so very slowly, unpacking all the rest of the house too. Rediscovering artwork that's been packed for over a year, and precious vases, soft velvet pillows, and letters from old friends. But in between there is still the stress of feeling constantly addled: I cannot find anything, ever, when I need it. It's kindof making me nuts.

But then I go outside and sit in the sunshine and take pictures of bugs and play peekaboo with Bean, or walk in late evening with DH hand in hand through waist high grass watching the bats swoop over head, and it's all worth it. All of it.

Mamas, your expertise, please

So, I'm totally working on the picture laden post (I'm not just lolling about in the sunshine, picking armfuls of black-eyed susans and daisies, reading a really a really good book, and eating organic cantelope, I swear!) But in the meantime I have two pressing issues. Boobs & poop.

I need to know two things.

A) When you're weaning, how do you reduce breastmilk production? Bean spent his first night in his own room EVER last night. He woke up once, but went to sleep without crying, all by himself... and so we're down to the before-bedtime nursing and I'm thinking of cutting that out tonight. But I'm not sure how my boobs have gotten the whole weaning memo. Advice?

and...

B) When your 16 month old comes to you, pulling on his diaper and grunting after he's taken a poop, and when you say, "Did you poop?" he says, "Uh-huh" and points to the clean diapers, is it time to think about buying one of those little potties? And if it is, which? And then how to proceed from there?

I'll be eagerly awaiting your responses.

Don't think I've forgotten you...

It's just--WE MOVED IN. And my kitchen is gorgeous and it's summer and we just got back from all-day furniture shopping and licking peach juice off our fingers and I've had no time to post. But I will tonight. With pictures. Promise.

Summer

We blow a hundred bubbles one by one. Our breath caught up in the glycerin spheres that float up above the trees. Bean watches each faint rainbow circle as it drifts away against the backdrop of pale blue. It is the beginning of summer. Lazy afternoons in a plastic wading pool with a red rubber ball, with the smell of sunscreen slick on our skin. Days of short attention, and grilled corn; afternoon naps and magazines piled high on the coffee table. Popsicle days. Late evening ice cream stops in town. Firefly nights, lying on the lawn and kissing after dark.

A year here

A year ago, more or less, I started this blog hoping to find a reason to come to the page every day. I have. You. Thank you. For your kindness, your friendship, your encouragement, your humor, your beautiful art, your appreciation. This blog has become a kind of lens for me, allowing me to look from a different angle back at my life. Most months I have come to the page almost every day and given something up. Some shred of my day, some moment, some thought. And the act of writing it, and sharing it, has altered it. Like sudden small diamonds pressed out of the carbon of daily life, I’ve learned to see things differently through this process.

I could not have imagined this outcome. When I started writing here, I still felt like I was an imposter as a parent. I was still in a riot of shock that I was somebody’s mother, and this was the place I came to start exploring this new role. Now a year into the thick of it, scraped knees feel second nature. But also, I’ve found art again: my brushes, camera, keypad. I’m so grateful.

PS—Tonight we sat outside at the edge of the lawn where the last of the evening sun fell in large swathes of yellow on the grass. We blew bubbles, and watched them float weightless and dreamy through the light. Bean, his hands outstretched towards each swirly blue and rainbow orb. Me, shutter happy as usual. See ?

16 months

My dear beautiful boy,

The sweetness and heartache of watching you grow is almost too intense to bear. You will understand this someday: how your growing marks my growing too; your life making mine finite and fragile each day in a myriad of small ways. But for now you are content to ponder simpler things: bumble bees, and ice cream cones, the tick tock of the clock, the orbit of the fan’s blades.

Your life is the punctuation for mine. Sometimes is it like an ellipsis, certain precious moments with you stretch out forever across my heart. Like today with your first ice cream cone after you fell on the pavement and cut your face. Sitting in the evening sunlight outside under the giant oak, you watched me first as I liked my cone. Then your tongue followed, inquisitively, and then with eager pleasure, the sweet cream running down your chin and onto your shirt.

Other times, your growing feels like a parenthesis around my life, as things begin for you, other things end for me.

We’re just on the brink of weaning, you and I. And I keep waiting for the perfect time, caught up in the warp and weft of the bond that this act of sustenance has woven between us.

I never pictured nursing you even this long, and yet I have, going off of instinct and circumstance. And the circumstances haven’t been easy. This past month your molars came in. Four of them, and two more front teeth, all jostling through your gums at once, causing you to constantly seek the solace of my breast. Then there has been the problematic fact that we moved out of our apartment, and not into anywhere at the beginning of the month. You’ve tried hard to keep up with all the places we’ve been, but the changes have had their effect. You’ve started to cry often when we leave you with one or the other grandmother, and when you’re with me, like this week, you’d love to be ON TOP OF ME all the time, if you could. So I’ve put off weaning again and again, but I think we’re both at the point where we could be ready (maybe I am more than you.)

You’ve started drinking milk from your sippy cup this week—for the first time, and often now when I put you down for a nap in your crib, you’re wide awake and you put yourself to sleep. You nestle into the corner of your crib like a puppy and wake with the imprint of sheepskin on your face, your hair smelling of sleep.

We will most likely wean this month, after my mastitis clears up and we’re home in our new house. Though I’m ready—my body is starting to feel drained, and my sleep is restless at night because of you—a small corner of my heart harbors some sharp shard of sadness. A part of me I could never have related to or understood before I became a mother. The part of me that has so often since I had you, swallowed old words of judgment, finding my heart a softer place than I had known. When you nurse for the last time, you’ll not remember it. But I will. The solace of this intimacy we’ve shared will be forever contained. Like a parenthesis, joy filling up the space between it's beginning and it's ending.

Watching you explore the world makes my heart spill out about me like a melting popsicle, the sweetness of my love pooling at your feet. You run now. You climb incessantly, instinctively. You have incredible balance, navigating uneven surfaces with so much confidence. I watch you and I’m struck by how YOU, you are. You are determined, sympathetic, goofy, pensive, thoughtful, and curious, often in the span of a minute. You have your own fascinations, and inclinations. The other day I watched you dig in the dirt, and then seeing that the dirt had made your pants all messy, you brushed them off. This is something you didn’t learn from either parent, I can assure you.

You’ve begun talking this month, with more frequency, and giving sweet perfect kisses. You call sun glasses “goo goo goggles” after the character in Dr. Seuss on the page for the letter “G” and you say “tick tock” and “ding dong” with the a lovely little sing song intonation. You figured out how to blow bubbles—all yourself yesterday, and now you love to blow bubbles out in the yard, watching as the drift up into the sky, and when you’re hurt or tired you run to me, arms outstretched.

My arms are always outstretched towards you in return, my sweet boy.

All my love, Mama

Apparently I've been asking the wrong question...

Over the past two weeks, before I got here, I definitely whimpered once or twice, "Can it get any worse?" The answer is YES, you idiot. I have mastitis again. For a third time. The worst I've had it. Fever, soreness, the whole works. I'm ready to fully wean, but Bean has been more needy than usual, tossed about in the recent turbulance of our lives, and then there are those four pesky molars. So things have dragged on longer, and this is apparently how my body processes stress.

So much for long luxurious posts while I'm here (I have yet to write about what didn't happen with the marathon) and book reviews (I just read the Mermaid's Chair by Sue Monk Kidd--in a day. I devoured it.) Instead I'll be in bed. Hopefully I'll kick this by tomorrow & I can post some pics of Bean on his tricycle (he can't quite reach the pendals, it's a hoot!)

So while I'm curled up on the couch, I won't dare ask if it can get worse, because I'm starting to understand that it can, and probably will. But don't begin to think I'm depressing, because if you were here in person, you'd know an odd piece of trivia about me: I at a humor high point when I'm sick and/or miserable. Like after being in labor for 18 hours--the nurses were in awe. They kept saying, "We've NEVER seen anyone in such good spirits at this stage." I was cracking jokes left and right--and lord, I had an audiance (I think there may have been 14 people in the room when Bean finally showed his little self to the world). When things are clearly getting worse, I get funny. It's my survival mechanism. Which is actully pretty funny, because I'm generally not that funny at all. Oh dear. You see the state of my brain.

Sweetness

Respit

Bean’s bare feet fwap across the living room floor, zig zagging at random, humming a little tune as he goes. Outside the birds call and the sun has broken through the cloud cover, spilling light across the pine trees and wild grasses growing at the edge of the lawn. Bean and I are in New Jersey, three hundred miles from home. We slept together like foxes last night, his small body tucked into the curve of mine, our breath inscribing the turbulence of our dreams onto the air around us. When we woke, it felt hollow not to have DH’s warm and muscled back beside us, to rub up against, the fragrance of his skin enveloping us in early morning sweetness. But it was good to wake in a house with all the accoutrements of home: the coffee pot percolating, muffins on the counter, a washing machine and dryer, enough knives and spoons.

All day I allowed myself to linger, not quite ready to plunge into the business of doing anything. I felt like some mossy creature come out to sun, after such intense rain. Days of steady downpour left all my sneakers wet and my hair frizzy. Now in the sun, I am content to sit at the edge of the lawn watching Bean as he pokes a stick into a vernal pool full of dark slimy leaves and tadpoles. Then we find wild strawberries, plump and round as dimes, a freckling of red in a field of green. When I offer, Bean readily accepts, popping them into his mouth, then points to where they are growing, saying, “More!” “More!” in a lovely, soft, rounded ‘r’ way.

More than a handful of teeth are bursting through his gums: molars cresting like the tips of icebergs, incisors filling out a newly boyish grin. Not interested in eating anything today, his hands are in his mouth, or occupied with one or the other of his two handled sippy cups. He has been amazing through all these transitions—learning the lay of each new temporary home with only a minimum of fussing. Lately, he’s been coming to me wanting to be picked up. He throws his arms around my legs and holds on tight until I scoop him up and devour each of his round cheeks, whole, much to his squealing delight.

He’s such a different boy than two months ago. I missed his fifteen month letter, and here he is sixteen months next week, the days like a smudge across the page. Everything that was May is a blur of color and exhaustion in my head. The sudden lush emerald of the fields, the brown gulping of the stream high above its banks, the day in, day out toil at our house. Most different has been the way he’s suddenly grabbed hold of words. He names so many things now, earnestly, in his toddler shorthand, picking up the first syllable and vowel and repeating it, zealously pointing first at the thing he’s naming, then broadly around the room at anything that might add grandeur to his new found word. He’s so funny and expressive, it has been bittersweet to watch him grow and not be able to fully sink into every delicious moment with him, like I could today—poking sticks into a watery muck, and staining our fingers red from berry juice.

I miss DH in a panging kind of way, longing already for his hugs, his tender lips, his laughter. But for the both of us it is a relief to be this way: our little family spread over several states while our house progresses closer and closer towards completion. The kitchen is in and looks divine. So funny to have something that actually is human sized, rather than just bare walls and floors. The whole space seems different---less like a construction zone and more like a home.

Night gathers in the yard, bringing with it small rabbits eating clover in the twilight and a smattering of fireflies like small satellites zooming around the yard. Bean goes to bed without a hitch for the first time in over a week: a real bedroom with curtains and a bath with mama helps. Now I sit cross legged on the couch relishing the absolute laziness of my evening’s agenda: to write and ponder, sip tea, and maybe take a trip to the book store to browse the new nonfiction out this month.

Up, up, and away

Up to our necks in rain, that is. I cannot quite find the words to describe what 21 days of rain does to a person's psyche. Gag. Nor can I really describe how it exacerbates the misery of these final days of projects---washing out mortar buckets in the rain, carrying boxes in the rain, everything damp and chilled. So I'm off. To NJ to spend a week in a slightly more temperate place with DH's parents, while DH works solo on the house. Trying to keep "family" together is more of a strain at this point. He'll get more done without us, and we will be able to have all the creature comforts of a furnished house (my mom is still awaiting her furniture!) There, I'll have reliable internet and some time, so I can finally post some of the pictures I've been snapping, and regale you with all of the brilliant Bean developments that have been taking place. Of course, between now and then is a 7 hour car ride with a crazy Italian whose had a little too little sleep, and a teething beansprout. It will most certainly be an adventure!

Endgame

You know that song? How it goes and goes and goes and you’re only half listening and you think over and over again that it’s going to end? That’s how the past week has been. It has been a week, that, in the bigger picture of things is only a small collection of minutes. Yet it was one of those weeks that will be, at least for the next few years, indelibly imprinted on my memory: my very muscles bear the mark of it (new wrist muscles have sprung up, like Popeye’s, and my hands are so sore now I can barely make a fist.)

Last Thursday we moved out of our apartment in a blur of hours during which my mom arrived (she’s moving here—long story, for another day) with sandwiches and started vacuuming. Since then DH and I have not stopped—I haven’t had internet access for a week, let alone the time to check it. I haven’t read a newspaper, listened to NPR, had any connection with the world beyond my tiny one here in this rural town where we now live. It is surreal, living like this: working this hard, physically. Waking up every day with sore muscles, and going to sleep every night with a splitting headache from pure exhaustion. Bizarre to have moved out of our home, and not move into anywhere.

My mother has moved to an apartment down the road—and we have been staying with her. Sleeping on her living room floor and eating our meals off of paper plates. In between every hour has been filled with utter, all out work. We put down 1,200 feet of hardwood floor. Sanded it. Stained it. Listening 4,000 times to the pneumatic report of the nailer, the thwack of the wrist, the exhausting repetitive precision of selecting and cutting each board.

We’d go first thing in the morning, after coffee and croissants from the local coffee shop—only checking back in at lunch and bedtime to be with our Bean, who has spent the last two weeks sprouting four molars and two other teeth. Naturally he’s been struck with a fit of anxiety at our continual uprootings and leavings. He cries often when we leave, and sleeps pressed close to our cheeks.

My mother has been wonderful, jumping in with open arms to create a safe space for him, and I imagine, biting her tongue and keeping her “I would nevers” to a minimum. We could not have survived this week without her. And tonight my older sister was here from out of town—on a business trip. She stained the floor with me today, our conversation punctuated with Darth Vadar gasps from our respirators. And as the sky turned pink, we barbecued, our first meal here, though we’re still sleeping down the road.

So it’s been one of those weeks where I have not fallen asleep, I’ve crashed to sleep. Where I’ve consumed more coffee during each day than I usually do over the course of five days. Where together DH and I ride the wild, deranged roller coaster of exhaustion induced giddiness and moodiness. The best part has been our time together---laughing as we nail, singing to the radio, stopping for nooky on a quilt under the trees in the backyard. The worst has been the way we stagger into each other verbally when we’re this tired. The way things don’t make sense the first time, and we talk ourselves into a lather trying to be clear.

And then the things in between: the coyotes last night laughing at the moon. A whole yapping pack of them, their ruckus barks and yips bouncing through the valley below. Or the wildflowers growing thickly now in waist high grasses in the meadows, and the quince blossoms, white and delicate amongst two inch thorns.

We are so close, yet the work keeps stretching out beyond what we can grasp. I try to breathe, and to drink in the moments when Bean wraps his arms around my neck, or when DH and I take a break at the local snack bar and share a milkshake on the steps. But there are times when I feel like crying. Times when I’m angry with tiredness. When nothing makes sense any more. And I cannot wait for this time to be over.

Exhaustion

18 hour days. New muscles in my wrists. Thousands of square feet of paint and flooring. More rain. I'm so tired I could almost sleep standing up. Polyurethane fumes, and the report of the pneumatic nailer over and over again. Last night listening to the radio at 2:30 am we realized we've become their target audiance: depressed, financially strapped, and awake doing things we'd rather not be doing.

But somehow we keep putting one foot in front of the other. Friends came and helped us move the big stuff and left us with maple candy and red wine, and soon the floors will be dry and we'll be able to sleep early and deep wrapped in the sound of rural silence: a chorus of frogs and owls welling up. Tomorrow we'll be sleeping somewhere else. Not sure where yet, but somewhere.

Saying grace

Gratitude that the rain has stopped, at least for now. That sun, hot and bright, is pouring down on the fields of dandelions and lilac hedgerows. That my body, sore as it is, allows me to do this: to keep these hours, to tile, to rip out the ugly bathroom vanity upstairs plying it with a sledge hammer and crowbar, delicately so as not to destroy the wall. That my inlaws have been here all week, caring for Bean, making meals, helping to paint. Gratitude at looking up and seeing a bowl full of dark ink and stars spilled out across the heavens.

Gratitude at driving the washboard bumpy road to the house and seeing a fox slink into the high grass almost every evening, a wisp of orange, a fleeting hint of wildness.

Gratitude standing under the apple trees and hearing the hum of a thousand bees, the air pulsing with their honey-gathering vibrations.

Gratitude that today we start flooring, and that when the inlaws leave my dearest friend and her boyfriend are coming to help us move.

So much to be thankful for, even now when every muscle in my body aches. When my head zings from lack of sleep. When, as I type, I can feel tenderness in all the tiny ligaments in my wrists and fingers.

This process is something like labor: there is no alternate way out. We must simply make do. Confronting each day and moment with everything we can give, and trusting we’ll get there. Now, only a handful of days.

Self Portrait Challenge #2: An introduction

The furrows between my brows have gotten deeper this month. No time to breathe, uncoil, rest. Everything is push-pull, pell mell, full throttle. More than can be done, must be. And every off color remark, every comment that could be recieved as criticism, IS.

In this picture, my eyelashes are wet from tears. Haphazard, overtired tears. Hormonal, exhausted tears. Tears because of nothing I can remember today.

We're living off of large cups of gas station coffee, purchased on the way to the house, and determination. I dream of sleep, of a dry basement (many of my paintings were ruined), and SUN (it has now rained for a week and a half, non-stop.)

So this is a different introduction. Another side of me, careworn, frowning, furrowed, exhausted. One more week, and then we move--even though we won't have a kitchen yet.

Frenzy

DH and I have realized that we really, really, need super powers to finish the house. Baring that possibility, it won't be finished when we move in. So we're at the point of creating priority lists: we need a shower, washer, dryer, toilet, sink. We need floors. Currently we have none. GAAHHHHHH! Here are some pretty pictures to distract you while I work.

Oh, and did I mention, it's STILL raining? The basement in our apartment is under 8 inches of water...along with all of our boxes in "storage." When it rains, it pours, right?

Tile and grout, like a trout

So it's been RAINING for days and days here. I'm growing gills. The fields are slick lakes, flooded with rain. The road a narrow ribbon snaking between shimmering expanses of blue. Every available hour is spent at the house. No time to sit back, put my feet up, write. Bean turned 15 months, and I've been composing a post about this in my head, packed with the immense unbounded gratitude I feel at having him in my life, but it hasn't made it to the page. Nothing has, though my computer (after repairs were done in safe mode) seems to be behaving, which is a huge sigh of relief.

The downstairs bathroom has tile! Today, grout. And pictures. I'm bringing the camera today.

The way imagination happens...and, a new painting

15" x 30" mixed media collage.

Here are some up-close shots.

***

Of course, the good ideas always hit at the least convenient times: in the shower maybe, when I’m out on a run, or just drifting off to sleep—any place far from pen and paper. I know why this happens. My mind will start to dislocate then, slipping out of the present and into the luminous space between what is real and what is imagined.

Then, images like bright sun spots start to dance across my internal page. Sometimes I’ll see an entire picture, as though the bulb on a slide projector were suddenly flipped on and the scene dances towards me on the particles of light. Other times I get only a slight inkling. A whisper of theme or color, wending it’s way into the chinks of my busy mind, catching my attention the way the tiny rainbows do, that scatter out about a café, refracting light from the diamond on a lady’s finger as she raises her cup to sip café au lait.

For days after I get an idea, I’ll carry it around in my mind like a pocket full of sea glass, carelessly fingering each smooth shard a hundred times. Then in an evening after the house is quiet and my baby is asleep, I’ll pick out a canvas, and begin, smudging the page with dark blues or pale ochres and white. I cannot remember a time when I didn’t know the colors of the rainbow—nor can I remember not knowing how colors blend: my young fingers holding stubby beeswax crayons already understood that bright yellow mixed with emerald would make the chartreuse hue perfect for drawing new foliage.

Color always comes first, for me, followed by shape and the juxtaposition of realistic sketches and collage. It is rare that I am able to put into words what I will paint before I do. Even when I think I know exactly what I want to draw, I also know it will be different from what I’ve imagined when I’m through. This is the secret I am always learning: painting is about the unexpected, the crazy, haphazard, willy-nilly, process of imagination, and it cannot be defined or controlled.

Each time I come to the canvass with my brushes, my pallet thick with paint, and my heart wide open. Then I follow with bold marks the wild flight of my imagination through some internal landscape of wonder.

***

PS--I've added this one to my gallery.

I just said the following phrase:

"....but you know that 98% of my daily happiness comes from my laptop," and then I gasped, because I really just said that. And because it's true. I use my laptop more than any other tool: for writing, photo editing, web stuff, music. And tonight after I came out of the bedroom from putting Bean to sleep, it had gone and fried itself. Just like that. Nothing works. It will start, but refuses to run any programs. It sounds like a jet preparing for take off. And me? I'm like an old Datsun spinning in deep mud without it.

So anyway, I'm typing on DH's computer. I hate his keyboard (it feels HUGE because I'm used to using my laptop keypad), and it's in his office, being used all day, so until the situation resolves itself, I'll be forced into an internet sabbatical. Probably I'll be feeling the effects of this more than you will--but still. Feel my pain. Whimper with me.

Soundtrack of my heart

Sound • track: a thin strip at the edge of a movie reel or videotape on which sound or the soundtrack is recorded

At the edges of my mind there is a narrative, a song, a whisper, a laugh, a sob, a steady pulse. Even in the wildest times, the times most pressed with worry, when there is little air and even less time for reflection, if I listen, I hear it. In the place between the reality of every day, and the wonderment of dreams, is the thin strip of lyrics, the soundtrack that plays out across my consciousness, defining my world.

In bed just before sleep; in the car driving the half hour stretch between our house and apartment listening to jazz on VPR; in the shower with hot water running in rivulets between my shoulder blades where wings would be, if I could fly; or standing at the stove stirring soup, I hear it. This is when I tune in to the words that slip edgewise into the conversation I keep with myself. The things I hardly say out loud, or never. The things of intuition and inkling, that shape my drive, my fears, my love.

Right now I’m trying consciously to tune in. It is hard to do. The dialogue is illusive and when I try to pin it down, it is as though static is lacing the airwaves. When I listen closely I hear this: below the joy of being offered a job I’m excited to accept, and beyond the worry of finding a daycare program for Bean that will nurture him, is the battle cry of my creative self begging not to be abandoned with these upcoming changes.

It is startling to find myself here, on the brink of so much change, again. It’s been just over a year since change tore through our lives like a river in flood, redistributing everything, shifting our very geography, altering our sense of home.

Last May we were packing our house in CT and trying to imagine what life here would be like. I remember sitting at our kitchen table (I loved where it stood, in a nook off the kitchen with a big bay window facing the backyard) looking towards the living room, the hall, the front door, noticing with sudden clarity and attention how familiar those angles and rooms were were. Noticing the quality of light on the tiled kitchen floor; the Prapluie-Revel umbrella poster between the front windows, the jars of sugar and rice on the counter, and wondering how it would be not to call that space “home.” Our first real estate investment, a noteworthy stamp in the passport of adult hood.

This May everything is different, and yet we’re packing again. On the brink of moving to a place saturated with promise. Like honey comb, drenched with sweetness this house is drenched with our hopes, our longings, our dreams. Everything in it bears the mark of what we have become: a family.

This time, as everything shifts; as the river fills with spring rains and floods its banks, and the shape of the valley is forever altered, I want to be more conscious about holding on to the things I’ve grown to love: my artist self, my writer self; my camera’s lens, my runner’s thighs. Looking back I’ve started to see how easily these things slip to the margins of my life, when other louder more demanding things push to the fore. This time I want to keep an ear to the ground, attune to the beating of my heart. This time I need to remain whole, even as my life divides.

The Swan Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air - An armful of white blossoms, A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies, Biting the air with its black beak? Did you hear it, fluting and whistling A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall Knifing down the black ledges? And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds - A white cross streaming across the sky, its feet Like black leaves, its wings like the stretching light of the river? And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life?

--Mary Oliver

A post mostly of pictures

Carefully pressed into the small nooks of my mind are thoughts waiting to be shaken out, like sheets after a winter’s storage in cedar scented drawers. I’m aching to tell you about a painting I’ve finished, to let down my hair and write wildly, with gusto. But not today. Today, my mind feels like the fine shards of slate that sheer away from the main piece, exposing layers of mineral color; patterns variegated and delicate. Too much in too little time, still. Every moment at the house, now often with Bean in tow (and like the trooper he is, he plays with wrenches and ratchets in the Pack&Play, narrating to himself softly in babblespeak.) Yesterday, the rollercoaster of sheer delight: the job. A first grade position at a school very near my house; abundant with professional development, resources, support. I can see this next transition---shifting back into the mode of teacher, but with the newly gained clarity, patience, organization, and rest that this year off has afforded me. I can imagine loving the daily challenge, the vibrancy of full-force ahead involvement, the laughter and camaraderie of colleagues. And graduate classes. Finally.

But today dawned drenched with rain and dark, and with the weather came other somber thoughts: finding Bean a just right morning daycare program (DH can pick him up at noon every day) looms now more daunting than any job search ever did. How do I do this? What should I look for? Ask? Say? (Advice please.)

Sunday I’ll get to write, and finish another painting—but tomorrow, it’s all day at the house again. We’re painting, and during our breaks, we saunter about inspecting the wild thicket of green and blossoms everywhere. Here, I’ve kept you in suspense long enough. Some pictures:

Oh--and and I absolutely HEART you all for all the sweetness of last post's comments.