Doing
1) eating sour cherries2) unpacking boxes in my office and finding: old magnetic poetry, nude pregnant pictures, squeezed out tubes of paint, and a passle of blank cards 3) panting in front of the fan (it's HOT here right now, and humid) 4) loading the truck with broken-down cardboard boxes to take to recycling 5) planning an evening of leisure with just DH: frisbee, perhaps, or a picnic 6) grouting the last of the tile and staining doors (a bathroom door would be devine) 7) removing the daily dead mouse gift our cat brings to the back door (why, why do they do that?) 8) making grilled cheese waffles for lunch (try it) 9) hankering to make peach pie 10) wishing I had more time to blog
Things I crave right now:
1) Having paint on my fingers and making things again. 2) Splattering paint on the page & blotting a wet brush on the corner of my terry robe. 3) Sitting in a bright oval of lamplight in my new studio, stuff still in boxes everywhere, and not minding when a little paint gets on the floor. 4) Eating dinner outside, with shadows growing long across the slatted table. 5) Licking my fingers after eating something sweet. 6) Walking with my guys after dinner along new trails; finding a pond with a topsy-turvy bird house on a pole, and an old stone wall from long ago. 7) This song. It has the perfect beat. Hearing it once is not enough. 8) The way DH has been glancing at me lately, across the room. In that kind of way. 9) Fresh sheets and fresh flowers in my bedroom 10) A clothesline mood wall like Mav’s to hang whatever strikes my whimsy.
What are you craving?
(Go on, you know you want to write a list!)
Running in the rain
I went running for the first time today since our move six weeks ago. It felt a bit like remembering how to bike again after a long hiatus: the synchronized action of my limbs following the kinesthetic blueprint of forward motion. I never wrote about not running the marathon, but I didn’t, and it made me sad for weeks. Part of the reason I didn’t run was because we moved THE VERY NEXT DAY, and that was entirely poor and ridiculous timing (what WAS I thinking when I scheduled it?) But most of the reason was because I developed a stress fracture during the latter half of my training program and despite dutiful trips to the physical therapist and cool green orthotics for my shoes, my shin would hurt excruciatingly for days after a run and eventually I was forced to weigh my options. Run the marathon and be injured for the summer or, skip it, move to our new with a wholly functioning body, and enjoy the rest of the summer sports that I so dearly love.
So I didn’t run, and then suddenly I was immersed in the massive project of unpacking in an unfinished house, and somehow six weeks have whipped by in a blur. But I’ve missed running. A little like a craving, a listlessness in my tendons at night. So today when I leapt off the front stoop and took off down our winding gravel drive, I was grinning.
It felt so good. And it felt so bad.
Do you know how much muscle tone you loose if you just up and take six weeks off of any regular exercise? A lot. Throw in weaning a baby, and the ensuing hormone restructuring, and it’s a sure-fire recipe for feeling the way I imagine sea turtles must, loafing their way up some sandy escarpment to make a nest.
A four mile run took me a lot longer than a four mile run did a month and a half ago, and afterwards I sat in the corner of the couch and begged for someone to make me a PBJ and a glass of milk because I couldn’t move. But surprisingly, during the run I was so distracted by the beauty of this place where I live that I barely noticed how unmistakably plod-like my gate was.
The wet air was fragrant. Everything is in bloom or fruit now: raspberries are ripe along the hedgerows, and elder berry blossoms, burdock, cornflowers, and Black Eyed Susans spread out across the fields like a thousand speckled suns. And somehow, the time mostly went by without my noticing.
It is inevitable I’ll feel it tomorrow. I’ve started to notice how my body no longer forgets the cumulative effects of the things I do to it each day. But there’s something of value in having one’s attention be focused on one’s body in this way: noticing it for the things it can do, for the way it feels, rather than simply for the way it looks. I’m ready for this again---especially after spending a week on the beach being all too aware of how I appear to the rest of the world.
(You know how the flight attendant always cautions that “your baggage may have shifted during the flight,†? Let’s just say this is a good way to describe my physical accoutrements as well, since Bean. )
"The moon, Mama!"
The smell of chocolate cake baking makes me heady. My friend’s birthday is this weekend, and I’ve spent the evening whipping frothy egg whites, melting dark chocolate and licking my fingers.
The house is quiet, in that way houses get at the end of the day when everything is put in it’s place and children are asleep. Outside an orchestra of insects trill, and across the room The Piano soundtrack plays. I haven’t heard it since high school, when I loved it with a sort of moody passion. Finding it again, the same feeling rises up. The drama and cinematic artistry of the movie moved me to tears, and the music still manages to slip into the small open places in my soul, in a way that begs for solitude and intimacy both.
The past few days have been filled with sun drinking and wave kicking; long enough away from home to miss it. And it has also been one of those milestone weeks for Bean, who has taken to everything here with wide-eyed wonder: the lizards with their bright red throats, the delicate hibiscus, the sleek bellied otter, the ocean’s waves, the shells, the snakes, the endless sand.
I find myself staring at him (like I always seem to,) trying to mark in my head exact moments: the way he knelt on a big chair at the table, and ate couscous all by himself with a spoon last night; how he ran wildly, willfully, eagerly down the shore towards a flock of rosy-legged ibis today, carefree and confident that we would follow; or how tonight, getting ready for bed, he kept pressing his small palms to my lips for kisses, and then turned them so I could kiss the backs of his hands, and then his wrists and elbows. Over and over again he wanted this ceremony of affection, and over and over again I complied, my heart filling with a feeling beyond sweetness, beyond sorrow, beyond joy, but made up of all three.
I used to feel entirely one with him---the border between his self and mine, a mere distinction of skin. But now he has started to really become his own self---choosing to ignore me when I call him, fighting to do things without help, or asking for things with specificity and intention.
Each week, each month as a mother, it is necessary to learn a new choreography of love. And now in this dance there is a delicate space between us; space that he fills with his giddy twirling, his wild happy limbs, his smile, his troubled pensive frowns, and his many new words.
“Moon, mama!†he says now, pointing up at the sky. And there it is, the moon bright and clear, against the evening blue. I feel my heart skip a momentary beat in wonderment: he has just claimed the moon for his own, for the very first time.
Upon arrival
Sun drunk, I remember how much I love the ocean. To be pounded over and over by salt water, to feel sand, rife with shells under my feet. In the back yard, a pond with possible alligators, ibis, herons. On the beach, sea turtle tracks like swirving half moons up the sand, marking the way to round nests of eggs. Giddy to be around a woman I love this much---who also loves Bean and DH, and even giddier to walk out the door from lunch to see the space shuttle shooting up into the sky, suddenly dissapearing beyond the blue. Tomorrow more time to write and post, and some pictures of the long legged birds, the hundred lizareds, and Bean frollicking on the beach. Happy 4th!
Mapping home
It’s been a busy week: tumbling through these strange days of weaning, unpacking, and packing all over again for vacation. The fact that I’m not necessarily an organized person flares up in times like these, and I find myself circling the house every morning looking for my hairbrush, or trying yet again to remember the last of ten items on one of my many mental lists. But despite the small specks of chaos that continue to dance over the surface of my days, things are falling into place, and home has begun feeling like just that. Home. I’ve had the hankering to cook here: grilled tuna and couscous salad, vanilla waffles, banana scones, barbecued chicken and corn on the cob, hearty soups. I love sliding pots over the smooth soapstone of our counters, and finding knives and measuring spoons just where they should be.
Every day Bean, DH and I go for ambling walks: imprinting the geography of our land onto our souls. Learning by heart the location of the many apple trees, the small creeks, and the thick carpet of wild strawberries in the high meadow at the back of our land. We visit the sheep and donkeys down the road; walk through chest high grasses and daisies to a thicket of blackberries, just starting to swell and ripen; or sit out on the newly mown lawn in the evening to watch the bats zip about, backlit by a pastel sky.
My heart has been longing for this kind of solace: for this connection to a place. This sense of belonging. And now I drink it up daily, gulping with a certain disbelief. Eager at once to know everything about this place, and to never be done exploring.
From the driveway, the moon looked like a chip from a teacup wedged into the piece of sky between the V of our roof last night, and across the meadow and along the tree line, fireflies were blinking like a hundred small stars in a universe of grass. And when we went to bed—DH and I pressing into each other, reacclimating to being just us in bed, coyotes started to howl, high-pitched and wild, from the nearby wood.
What it is
He swipes the paper with a bold stroke of red, thick as jelly, and looks up, checking for my grin. Then a smile alights softly on his face, like a playful cat, matching my own. So here we are, in this moment of pure joy. All previous frustrations, tantrums, exhaustion, entirely obliterated by this bright happiness.
Each day I learn this, again and again: allowing someone to make you happy is the ultimate forgiveness. Allowing a small gesture of joy or tenderness to pool in your heart, again and again and again, even when things have come up short. To open, even after words have zig-zagged like blistered arrows across the room and leaving dark trails of hurt across the heart; to allow a small fissure for pleasure to split sorrow in half like a opened melon, this is forgiveness.
*** PS--the theme over at Mama Says Om this week is forgive, go check it out.
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.
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
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.