Here’s the thing

My mother in law may have, most likely, found my blog. This blog. This place where I write obstinately and openly and whole-heartedly. This place where one minute I’m cold and the next I’m hot, where I fling wildly from one end of the spectrum of emotions to the other, and where I delve, deeply into whatever the present moment means. The thing is, plenty of people from my ‘real life’ read this blog. Some have obsessively googled their way here against my better wishes, and others have been invited because they get me, and they get that this place provides me with a kind of outlet and solace that my life otherwise doesn’t provide, and they give me space to allow this to happen.

But here’s the thing. My mother in law, though I dearly love her, isn’t someone who knows me deeply enough to create a frame of reference for what I write here. She doesn’t know how to locate the ore in what I write to true the compass needle north; to make what I write a part of a larger topography of meaning for my life. And also, I write here in a way I do not want to share with her, because inevitably, invariably, what I write here will then wend its way back into my life, misconstrued and out of place, in the form of worried queries, small questions, anxious phone messages.

So much spans the gap between us—faith, age, perspective—we couldn’t be farther apart in how we live and think and grow. Which isn’t to say that we’re not close, for we are, when we’re together, in a particular way. We hug and laugh, and she makes the world’s best coffee, and we talk about the latest Tom Cruise scandal, and rehash to it’s minutia every last adorable thing Bean did. And I love having this kind of relationship in my life. I love her easy generosity, her obsession with shopping, and the way that anything my kid does makes her entire day. But the thing is, there is still that vast uncharted territory between us, and it’s there because I need it to be there. It’s there because I am a deeply private person.

Okay, so maybe I’m an idiot to come here at all, having just made that claim. I can see how ludicrous it is to say that I come here to find solace and privacy—because, duh, the Internet is the antithesis of that. Right? I get that it is ridiculous for me to harbor the belief that a public blog is place where I can write and not have to watch my step, or watch my back, or create in endless detail the specific context for everything I write. But truthfully, that is exactly why I come here.

Since I started blogging, I’ve had visitors from Saudi Arabia and Hawaii, from Istanbul and Seoul. Complete strangers send me gifts. People I would never have the opportunity of knowing have become amazing friends, half the world away. I get nearly all my parenting advice from people I’ve never met in person. And yet, almost everyone who comes here, comes here with the knowledge that this small window looks in on the shape of my life, right now, today, and respects that. Most people seem to get that what I write will be as fickle as the tide. Up one day, down the next. That I’ll toss caution to the wind and say what’s on my mind, walking the thin ledge of risk, because I’m trying to reach out and touch the heart of something that is a little bigger than me; because I am hoping that some shred of what I write matters in a new way to someone else. Or so I’d like to hope. This is, after all, why I write here. Because the thirsting part of my writer’s soul wants to grab hold of even the smallest thread dangling from the tapestry of human existence, and make something with it.

So I’m not sure what to do exactly. Not sure where to go with this or how to proceed. The idea of giving up this blog is worse right now than the thought of being plagued by misinterpretation. And perhaps this is all good training wheels. Hell, if I write a book (and I will!) you can bet I’ll be running pell mell across the tight rope of risk, wearing nothing but pair of flimsy paper wings and the wildest grin you’ve ever seen, so I might as well get used to the feeling of being gawked at by the people I love. But I wish, for now anyway, that things could go back to the way they were. That I could write—without feeling like I have to answer for what I write, or explain it; and that the good news and the bad, is taken with a grain of salt, or several, and doesn’t immediately come back to me, via a voicemail. Alas, bridges always seem to be burning while the artist howls at the moon.

masthead

Time for a new masthead. I have no clue what I'm doing, but sometimes it is utterly satisfying to spend several late-night hours playing with photoshop. If I knew what half the tools did, just think how smokin' I'd be! Here are a couple of older mastheads that I've had up. Today: breakfast out, somewhere, because there is neither milk nor bread in our empty, empty fridge. Then to the craft store to buy frames for the last of my paintings to go up in the show, if I'm still allowed to hang them--tardy as I am with the whole thing. Somehow, I really did manage to forget all about it. Oh, and before I forget, check out the new gallery format I'm trying. Better. Not great, but better, right? Anyone want to design me a real one? Pretty please?

One more thing, Bean's second birthday is coming up in a month. I want to have a fun little shindig for some of his little toddler friends, and their parents, but I'm worthless at envisioning such events. Help. What are some good, low-stress, fun things to do at a two-year old's birthday? (There may not be snow...there should be snow, but the weather has been wacky this year!)

A new start

Before it melted, the snow was boot deep and crystalline. Now unseasonably warm rains have returned and the ground is slick with black ice at night. Above the bald mountains that rise up from the lake, the full moon was setting just as the sun was rising this morning, white and round like a plate against the pale tablecloth of pink and blue.

I’m busy again, but the past two days have been deeply satisfying. DH and I keep talking, and each time it’s getting easier and richer. We’re moving, not stagnant, and also we’re starting to train for a half marathon. Five miles at the gym yesterday, and then dinner all together. Ice cream with cherries for dessert, and Bean licking his bowl. We’re trying to be gentler with each other than before, and this is good.

I’m also back in the thick of creative work, which I love. Somehow I managed to forget I’m doing an art showing in a café and am supposed to hang my work this weekend, so now my studio is spread with frames and canvasses, as I scurry to prepare for the show. I like it this way, a patchwork of rectangles and brushstrokes.

A good way to start the new year.

Happy new year!

I cannot think of a better way to toast in the new year than to hurtle downhill on a sled. Wild, silly fun. Bean’s grin spreading like sunshine across his face. DH laughing, truly in the moment and content, just before he bites snow for the hundredth time. The heat of our breath rising up against the cold air, and in between our giggling, how quite the landscape is covered in snow.

I am ready for a new year. And if I had to distill my resolutions for this year into one pure wish, it would be this: to bring loving devotion to every single moment.

I'll probably write an uberlist over here, tomorrow. In the meantime, if you had to pick one thing for this year--one theme, one goal, what would it be?

Also, happy new year to all of you!

Merry & bright

A perfect sourcream apple cake, bright blue skies, an orange tractor with doors that really open, lick-your-fingers good sticky cinnamon buns, sleeping in so late, singing to the tree with real candels lit, Bean's face on at 6am on Christmas morning, tossled hair, kissing, watching Holiday at the movie theater, snuggled up with my guy, and wishing for snow. It was a lovely holiday. I hope yours was too!

Today I'm slated to clean my studio which is a ferocious mess of slick papers, gel medium, glue and stamps; and to wander downtown taking advantage of half-off sales, and hot chocolate.

Things that are good:

* Sucking on a maple lollypop while doing secretive artsy things. * Watching the neighbor kids put on a Christmas play in the barn with sheep and donkeys, and all the grown ups singing carols.

* Sipping hot cider and talking to neighbors while Bean raced around with a delicate waffle cookie clenched tightly in both hands.

* The row of metal snowflake lights hanging in our kitchen.

* The fact that today was the last day of school, and that tomorrow I will get to sleep in tomorrow with DH under the luxury of a double down comforter (so snug!)

*Plans for delivering cookies to our neighbors with Bean in the red wagon, tomorrow.

The view (and the most random, grumpy post ever)

Here are a bunch of photos I took the other night when the light was doing the most incredible things. On my way home the stormy sky was suddenly ripped open and sun burst through, right in front of the rain—creating the most remarkable and vibrant rainbow I have ever seen. Of course, I didn’t get the camera until after it had faded (rainbows never look as beautiful as they do in real life anyway), but I did walk out onto the cold damp grass to see raindrops hanging like bright jewels from every twig and branch.

I can make no guarantees about where this post will go because I’m sick with an awful stomach bug—the second time this year, and I’m hating every minute of it. My head feels like it’s in a vice, and I feel utter anguish that I’ve left my class to some poor substitute the week before vacation. The kids are so excitable right now; we’ve discussed where Santa lives about a hundred times, and still, the conversation seems to wend its way there. As they terrorize the sub, I’ll spend tomorrow on the couch with Bean patting my cheek and saying, Mama, sick, or more urgently, Mama, get up!

I got whatever I have from DH who woke up yesterday morning feeling sick. To make matters worse, the garbage disposal chose yesterday to jam, which in turn caused the dishwasher to spew its backwash into the sink drain and the sink to start filling. Lovely, no? In a moment of flawless teamwork, a very feverish DH and I worked together to find and remove the pieces of broken plate that had fallen into it, and then, as he retired to the couch threatening to faint, I had to wrestle the darn thing back into place. Sort of like wrestling a greased pig made out of metal. I reinstalled it, to my credit (all kudos are welcome—it was the most disgusting, awkward, frustrating thing I’ve done in a long while!)

This is possibly the least festive I’ve felt at the approach of the holidays, EVER. We bought wreathes the other day, but besides that and baking cookies, our house is decidedly un-holiday like. Oh dear, I’ll stop moping when my stomach stops feeling like someone is excavating it with a child’s sized plastic bulldozer.

22 months

Dear Bean, As though your heartbeat were the metronome of my time passing, your growing marks my aging. You’re so big now, tousle headed and bright eyed. You stand mid-thigh to me. Two months shy of two years old, you carry rocks and cookies and other small treasures in your pockets. You are passionate about tractors and backhoes and mud and books. You take long walks with us along the muddy dirt road, stomping in puddles and pointing at birds. Recently you began speaking in sentences, stringing syllables together, like so many bright beads on the sea glass necklace of language, and it’s a wonder to hear what you have to say.

In the past two months, the trees have turned into skeletons of bark and twigs and on cold mornings you put your own boots on. You have learned to climb up onto the stools in the kitchen, and we spend many family meals there, the three of us in a circle of yellow light around the butcher block island, passing forks and trying to carry on conversations. With words, you now have the ability to express that you want specific things, right this second. Mama, more milk please. Mama, mama, mama, milk!

The past two months have been difficult though. Not because of you exactly—your beautiful smiles fill up our hearts with heady glee and wonderment—but because your presence makes our lives full to saturation. Since you, there have been few moments for downtime, and fewer moments when your Daddy and I have a chance to gather each other up in our arms and really look at each other.

Parenthood took us like a storm at sea. Together our small red boat of tenderness , we threw ourselves into the process of staying afloat, and have somehow lost track of who we are for each other. The compass of our life trued towards you; your needs so primal and huge pulled our hearts with fierce gravitational tug. But gradually over the past two months, as you’ve become less needy and more independent, we find ourselves trying to redirect the vessel of our love. Often, we find ourselves flailing about, clutching at the driftwood of who we were. So much has changed. The raw fibers of our selves have been stretched and pummeled utterly.

So the past few months have been drenched with moments where we face each other on the shore of our love and find ourselves unbalanced and hesitant at the edge of the rubble-strewn tide line that stretches out between us. Invariably, you are right there, asking for more noodles, or “Mama, read book, now” and we only manage jagged interjected sentences. Or it’s late at night, and you’re finally asleep, and we’re so exhausted that everything we say comes out slanted and biting.

It’s hard to be in this place. Here, where we can see how the routines that have grown up out of necessity, have made deep grooves across the surface of our lives and love. More than either of us would like to admit, things have become for granted. We spend days hip deep in the mud of surviving; arguing again and again about the things of daily life that accumulate with great banality and abundance day after day. The dishes, the bills, dinner, laundry.

I’m writing about this because someday you’ll be tall and you’ll be shaving, and also, because someday you’ll be in love and you’ll be trying to figure all this out for yourself. I’m also writing about this because I want you to understand how loving travels the full arc between passion and deep despair, and how a lot of the time you’ll find yourself somewhere in the middle of it, flailing like a fish, one moment in the sweetest water, and the next on the harshest sand.

Just now, as I was writing you and Daddy burst into my studio, full of morning excitement, ready to do things with the day. It’s 10:30 am, the weekend before Christmas, and there are cookies to be made, and shopping to be done, and decorations to be hung. Daddy wraps his arms around me, and right away you climb onto my lap, grabbing first at the pencils on my desk, then going for my keyboard. In the three minutes you are in my studio, you scribble in my notebook, collapse my easel, and climb onto the futon, wanting to be read Good Night Moon. You are like a sudden rip tide; when you’re present, you fill the room up and make it impossible for me to do anything but swim with the current, keeping track of the horizon in the distance.

But I’m grateful for this. For the struggle of it. I realize how easy it would be for me to succumb to simply letting life change me gradually and unintentionally, were it not for the latent urgency you bring to my life. When you woke up two mornings ago, I carried you into our room and tucked you into bed between Daddy and I. There in the dark, while both of us were trying for a few more minutes of sleep you began to sing, ever so softly. Suddenly I realized you were singing all the words to the lullaby I sing you every night. Go to sleep, you sang and stroked my face, and goodnight, and tomorrow will come soon. You sang so sweetly and off key, but you had every word right, and I could feel my heart start thudding with sudden awe. You learned to sing over night, and here I am barely able to get around the width of my ego to say I’m sorry when I’ve hurt your daddy unintentionally, or when I’m so tired that I have nothing to say beyond the superficial.

I opened my eyes and realized you were watching me as you sang. This is what I mean about urgency. You’re watching me. Being your mama I am reminded daily, again and again, of our need and our capacity to grow, to learn, and to become.

I love you, Mama

Mama, get out

Bean spent the weekend with his Daddy in NJ, leaving me to a blissful empty house to finally get some serious writing done. Six hours at a stretch, uniterrupted. Going to bed in the wee hours of morning and sleeping in. Time to actually revise what I write. Oh lordy, it was good. But man, I missed those two! On the way home tonight, DH called and then put me on speaker phone so I could talk to the little guy. I told him how excited I was to see him and how much I loved him, and DH said he started grinning, and then looked at the phone and in a plaintive voice said, "Mama, get out."

Needless to say, I kissed every square inch of his face when I got to finally pick him up and snuggle with him tonight.

In the midst of it

Flecked across the page, the doorway of my heart, wide bands of color from a horsetail brush, a blade, an inkpen. It’s so easy to be hurt. So easy to withhold even the smallest scrap of willingness to travel on, past the point where words were slung about with careless grandeur. Past where the hurt started, reasonably or not.

I can see my shadow here: my ego eclipsing my own generous spirit. But this is what marriage is, isn’t it? To be shown again and again what we fear to look at the most in ourselves. So easy to call it out, to place the placard of blame on the other standing there, shoulders hunched forward, defensive and yelling. So hard to breathe out, and accept how very small our goodness is, when we’re backed against a wall. To say something, anything, that reaches out like a white flag or a bowl full of alms.

Winter longing

The cold has finally arrived. “Come on,” it says, “hunker down.” It sends us snuggling under comforters, or to the couch to curl around a book, sipping green tea from a tall mug, as its long fingers creep in under the lintel. It gathers around the window glass, leaving hooray etchings where condensation lingered not long before. The fields are finally dusted with snow---after weeks of off-kilter weather; and all day, in spite of the sun, wondrous, dizzy snowflakes drifted slowly earthward. Not much accumulated, but enough to feel like winter might really arrive. Enough to exhale and feel like though we’re close, we haven’t pushed off over the brink yet. I put on an extra sweater, and though I my feet are cold, I know that I am lucky.

This year has hurtled by me like the herd of wild horses I once watched be rounded up in the tiny French costal village of Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Like them, the days have whirled by, nostrils flaring, eyes large with terror and adrenaline. I was nineteen then, and lithe from a week of rock climbing and sleeping under stars. I remember how I could feel the horses hoof beats reverberating in my heart.

Things were slower then, than now, when instead of measuring my growth by cliffs climbed, or cities traveled, I have the small miracle of a boy who grows each day, and sends love smashing across my heart like that stampede. I look down at my hands and see how a fine filigree of wrinkles are spreading out across my knuckles. I hold my son’s new palm in mine.

Its funny to feel like I’ve been waiting for winter, but somehow that’s the truth. I’ve been waiting for the inevitable stir-crazy introversion that occurs after days and days spent inside looking out. I’ve been waiting for when the time is right gather myself up, and to sift through the collection of artifacts that my soul has become.

And we're done

NaNoBloPoMo is over, and I'm so ecstatic that I can go back to being frivolous and lazy and completely irresponsible about posting. I've also decided that because it became my posting art form this month I'll leave you with a list of things I hope to accomplish in the next few weeks. To make me very, very happy (or utterly jealous because you're all sick overachievers) post your lists in the comments. 1) I think I need to go to blog rehab now, to recover from all my crappy, inconsequential posts. To that end, I'm craving returning to my notebook for inspiration. I want to make quick sketches & line drawings, and collages this month...and I want very much to return to the art of writing in complete paragraphs. Yes, I want that very much.

2) I want to send out holiday cards before December 23 when I usually do. I have a crush on getting mail, but I'm so bad at sending anything these days. It doesn't help that my mail box is at the end of our very long driveway, and the only times I drive past it are either when I'm balancing a cup of coffee and a toasted bagle on my way to work, or when I'm clinging to the wheel with both hands, out of utter exhaustion, on my way home each day. I could walk, you might think, but that generally involves a little Bean who is given to pretending he is incapable of walking at the most inconvenient times (like when I'm holding a large armful of mail and really have to pee.) But the truth is, I just suck at sending mail. Envelopes sit on my counter unstamped. Letters get lost in the car en route to the post office. I can't be trusted to send anything on time, except, possibly (and rarely) things of critical importance.

3) When Bean pulled my shirt up and his entire baby hand disappeared into the soft expanse of my stomach, the reality finally hit today. I will not survive the holidays without becoming a truck, if I don't get back into a routine of regular exercise. As it stands, I have already become (according to Bean) a particularly pleasant lump of dough.

4) To that end, I went on a run tonight with DH. At night. In the dark. By flashlight. And I want to beg all of you to try it. It is fantastic to run in the dark, without all the visual distractions, and the thudding rush of your blood rising up like a song in your ears. Also, when we got we gave the flashlight to Bean, and he had the BEST TIME EVER running around the dark yard pointing it at things. Remember flashlight tag? So fun.

5) Lastly, I'd like to finish the mammoth stack of books I now have by my bedside. Like a workout habit, I need to reinstate a few moments in my day meant just for reading. I miss the dreamy other-worldliness of reading for hours, and the way it almost immediatly has a positive affect on my writing, like a I.V. of brilliance to the arm.

What do you want to do before the solstice arrives?

Tag

I was tagged by the beautiful Boho to write about 5 things that I haven’t already told you… hmm…I’ve already told you more than is decent to tell, but here goes. 1) I was six when I first kissed a boy.

2) I love drawing free-hand maps of the world. I love to draw the blue water pressing up against the tiny irregular shapes of the islands and continents. Drawing maps reminds me how both miraculous and insignificant we are, in the scope of the cosmos.

3) If I were to entirely reinvent myself and be someone completely other than I am, I’d be a veterinarian or a midwife or both.

4) If I could learn anything right now by osmosis, it would be to do the meringue beautifully.

5) I live each day with intolerable delight and great terror, simultaneously: I grew up somehow believing that I am capable of anything.

You're it. What are five things you haven't told about your self?

(And because they are all attempting NaNoBloPoMo, the following lovelies have no excuse but to write...A writerly rebel, an amazing wannabe, a lovely blog vixen, and a perfect peach)

5 things I would write more about, if I were not utterly exhausted:

1) Your awesome list ideas rock. Thank you a zillion times. I have never, ever purchased any legit holiday gifts before, oh, December 23, and though that may not change this year, at least I now have no shortage of good ideas! 2) I pierced my ears over the weekend. This was a HUGE deal. My dad never let me pierce my ears as a kid, and for years and years since then I refrained from doing so, first out of an odd deference to him, and then because it made me more unique NOT to have pierced years. Recently however, it dawned on that wearing a gorgeous pair of dangley earings makes an otherwise unimpressive outfit chic and lovely, and I am all about things that make me look good without actually requiring effort... so I went with my most favorite girlfriends in the whole world and got holes in my ears. I cannot imagine what my dad would say if he were alive still. It felt somehow like a childish act of rebellion, and maybe it was. Who knows why we suddenly get the urge to do things?

3) I made the most delicious gingersnaps tonight. Also a random urge. I used fresh ginger, and without a recipie, figured out how to crystalize it. Am I not a domestic goddess? (It's okay, you can lie.)

4) I have been so exhausted at the end of the day I have done no writing, and am feeling utterly guilty about that--especially as deadlines are gradually approaching. But...

5) I stumbled upon an absolutely wonderful book that I've been carrying around with me everywhere and relishing.

A little help, please

What might one give a guy this holiday season? I need some ideas...both for big gifts and tiny ones (Dh & I are uber cheesy; we exchange little treasures every day of advent--a tradition left over from my childhood). I always hate myself when it's December 23 and I haven't thought of anything and end up opting for sweaters. What are you contemplating for the men in your lives?

Afterwards

An entire week of goodness. Time with long-time friends. Pedicures and walking bare-toed down cold cobblestone to share coffee. Browsing jewelry stores. Trying on dresses, the three of us to a dressing room, and then twirling in front of the mirror. Toasting with champagne and eating pomegranates. Laughing. A lot. And soaking up time with the in-laws also here, as the best babysitters ever. So much fun, chatter, intellectualizing, giggling, cooking, strolling, enjoying. Now that everyone is gone, the house seems hollow and big, and Bean fell apart at every gusset, over-stimulated, teething, and off schedule. We’re all ready to find our rhythms again. To get back to the things of daily life: showering before bed so my hair doesn’t turn to icicles in the early morning frost; planning out lessons; replying to an overcrowded email inbox that has sat untended for days on end. It’s a shock to the system though, to go from such heady days to this, yet I find myself craving downtime.

Because sometimes there are no words for joy.

Thanksgiving goodness

Such a great day with good friends and good food. A mid day run in clear cold air. Antique Lennox china on the table and fresh flowers. Hours on the couch lounging, post dinner, with wine in hand. Always a grown up to chase Bean around the house, playing peekaboo behind the couch, twirling in socks, laughing wildly. A walk after dinner under stary, stary skies, counting our blessings and giving thanks while watching shooting stars trail through the dark. Then hours spent talking in only the way good friends can about all the things that matter deeply and can be rarely said. So thankful.

5 Things I enjoyed today

1) My two very best friends in the whole wide world arrived on my doorstep today, bearing flowers and hugs. 2) The pure bright sunshine of today, and the way the clouds spread out perfectly at sunset in ribbons of red and pink against the blue bowl of the sky.

3) Dinner where everyone was talking and laughing and listening and eating all at once.

4) Making pumpkin pie late at night, and going to bed with its spicy fragrance wafting through the house.

5) Watching Bean lie down in the bathtub and kick and splash.

What are 5 things you enjoyed today?

He is utterly obsessed

With wearing our shoes. Remember these? They're being put to great use these days!