33 Months
When I say, “You’re my little guy†he says, “No I’m not, I’m you’re bunny, and I’m a little bit big.â€
When I skip a page in a story, or skim past a few lines to speed the process up he says, “No mama, you skipped a page.†And then he’ll go back and tell me verbatim the words I didn’t read.
He is obsessed with forts. The kind with quilts on the couch are best. Boxes also have his affection. And he loves his little back pack and fills it full of treasures. “I have a wallet, mama,†tells me. “With credit cards. I can buy food and toys.†He collects pennies and keeps them in a jar in his nightstand drawer.
He loves his new snow boots, but hates nearly every winter hat we have for him. He fights us about putting on his jacket every time. “I will wear a jacket tomorrow,†he says, with the hopes of avoiding wearing one today. He also tries this with nap time. “I already napped today,†he says, head tilted, eyes twinkling.†It is 10:30 in the morning. “I will nap tomorrow again. I do not need a nap today.†Yeah right buddy.
“I want to do it by myself,†he says about unzipping his pajamas, or taking off his shirt.
“I love you and I missed you,†he says every day when I get home and we crawl onto the couch to snuggle.
He patters into our room in the middle of the night, and in the morning his arm is wrapped around my neck. “Snuggle me, mama,†he whispers in the early morning light.
He loves to paint, and just this month he started drawing his first recognizable images: a bunny, a person, a digger. He loves his Etch-a-Sketch, and makes elaborate “castles†with stair-stepping patterns. He’ll work on it for a half an hour at a time, eyebrows furrowed in concentration.
When we’re outdoors he stops and cocks his head, “Do you hear that chickadee, mama?†he’ll ask.
When the first snow of the season was falling when he woke, he climbed up onto the windowsill and watched it, eyes wide and joyous. “Snow is falling everywhere, mama,†he cried. “It’s on the trees and on the roof and on the grass.â€
I am completely smitten. My kid is the coolest kid in the world.
I spent the entire day writing
And it felt good. So good to sink into the work, to get beyond the distractions, the internal rebellions, the anxiety. Things are starting to fit together, the synapses of the story becoming evident.
Tomorrow I'm making a cherry pie; and doing laundry. Tomorrow it's back to reality. But today was for words.
Do you have days like this that slip away into some place else? Like you never really touched down here? Today was like this.
First snow of the season
Driving home, three good songs on the radio and then perfect light. I couldn't stop smiling.
I pulled on my new snowboots, and dashed out the door with my camera thudding against my chest.
The light was so perfect it took my breath away.
A momentary break in the clouds, and pure gold.
Everything was silent except for the wind, and the light faded fast.
Still I was grateful, so grateful, to be in the right place at the time. With my camera.
Saved by a meme
I was tagged with a meme for 7 random things about me, and since it is Thursday night and I'm exhausted, but I'm stubbornly not quitting NaBloPoMo, a meme is all you get: * I'm a stomach sleeper.
* I feel guilty because I have never put photo albums together for either my wedding, or Bean’s first year.
* I have a weird, bordering on frenzied, dislike for any lettuce or leafy green that becomes black and slimy.
* I contributed to NPR for the first time this year, and felt very pleased with myself.
* I get nosebleeds in the winter time.
* I've been in bars, but I've never sat at the counter and ordered a drink or carried on a debaucheries conversation with a hot bartender.
* In high school and college I was a swimmer. In the past year I’ve been in a pool exactly once. This depresses me.
What are 7 random things about you?
NaBloPoMo is kicking my butt
I have nothing to write about today because anything I actually want to write about would take far longer than the 1.4 minutes I have left to post before bed. The time, where does it go? EVERY DAY is like this. I've been bucking against the idea of waking up earlier in the morning to write--but I just got my Pam deadline today, and I have to have a whole lot more written by Decmeber 2. So. Up early seems to be my only choice. Seriously, I want to know: how do you manage your day? Especially those of you who write--how do you work that time in? How do you make it all happen? I'm feeling kind of crazed about it all right now. I keep wishing I could wake up one morning and have time be the way it was back in high school, or even better, like when I was nine.
Remember that? The way it took forever to get to Saturday? The way the weekend lasted forever? The way an afternoon could be all day. What happened to that? What's with all the business? And holy crap, how is it possibly almost Thanksgiving?
Thankful
…I am thankful for my small, “a little bit big†boy who every single day astounds me. He’s become sweeter, if that’s possible. More thoughtful. The other night, I sank into DH’s arms, sobbing with exhaustion and overwhelm. “Don’t cry mommy,†he said, and then put both hands on my face and tried to move my cheeks into a smile. Tenderly. Earnestly. And I smiled.
…I am thankful for my guy: broad shouldered, full of laughter, driven to make the best life possible for our family; and for the way he’s always game to take the leap with me—to plan for living in Europe in two summers time; or to put up with and support the certain crazy of my writing life. I am thankful for his topaz eyes, and for the fact that he could stop, when we were arguing and wrap me in his arms despite the sharp edged words I’d flung towards him that were hanging in the air.
…And also for my brilliant sisters; my girlfriends; the way my cat curls up to nap at my hip as I sit on the couch; the way the sun falls through our dining room windows; for our wood stove; for morning lattes, kisses, Project Runway, dark chocolate, Bean hugs, books, and you.
A mini photo documentary of my day:
Another morning to myself. Sitting in the sun at the table writing with the cat.
Re-reading shreds of story, and trying to figure out a better system for filing story ideas, works-in-progress, etc.
Back from a run. Downward dog.
Listening to good tunes on my iPod while soaking up the sun. Post run cool down.
Making a post-run smoothie. Frozen peaches, raspberries, strawberries, wheat germ and yogurt.
The work you love and the work you do
A day to catch up with myself: the boys left early to install soapstone counter tops at the inlaws house. I slept in until after 10 a.m. I’m not sure when I last did that. It felt unbelievably good. I woke up to sun splashed across white flannel and the cat purring and sang in the shower. I had breakfast alone by the woodstove in the dining room, reading Heat and eating bacon, eggs, toast, and a peach-raspberry smoothie, then headed outdoors. I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. The sky was bright blue, and the last golden leaves were floating down. I cleaned the chicken coop, relishing the work.
As I scooped debris from the floor I pondered how within the scope of my life there are different kinds of work. So many of you responded yesterday with job worries, and these resonate with me: with my longing to be doing something else (specifically: writing full time.) It seems as though for so many of us, what we do, and the work we love have become disparate, cleaved out of necessity.
What is the work that you love? For me it is a dozen things: wearing leather gloves and stacking wood; raking leaves; turning soil. It is mowing grass, cutting branches, planting seeds. It is spending six hours back to back writing. It is waking up when the sky is stained pale pink, to scribble in my notebook. It is putting paint on a canvass. And also, some days, it is greeting the faces at the door, eager, curious, exalting. But most days it is my job. The thing that pays the bills. The thing I am good at. The thing I put 100 % of my energy into every day. And yet it doesn’t fill me up the way it used to; my solar plexus is too full with longing, with words that never make it to the page.
Five random things today
I want to write, but cannot make my fingers agree with me. Bullet points are easier. Five random things I did in the past 24 hours:
* Tried on almost every single shirt or sweater in my possession and found all to be lacking in one way or another. I hate that.
* Taught first graders about the two body parts of a spider (abdomen and cephalothorax)
* Cried in my husband’s arms in bed from sheer exhaustion and overwhelm (being there in those arms—the best thing that happened all day.)
* Tried to skip a page in Beatrix Potter’s Jemima Puddle Duck while reading to Bean, but got in trouble because he seems to know every freaking word. Of every book we own. Time to get new books, I think.
* Took a walk in the cold wearing a powder blue down jacket and woolen hat. It’s starting to feel almost wintry here.
What did you do today?
Whimpering
I had a day from hell, that seemed like it would never end. And I have a sore throat and am PMSing. Does whimpering count as a post?
First person!
Bean drew a picture of a person today. See? The long legs. The shoes. Up top is the body and head all rolled into one (could that possibly be the way he sees us? His tall mommy and daddy with our long legs and our heads way up high?) There were also, at least while he was painting, blue for the eyes and red for the mouth, but they rapidly became blurred. The long arm going off the page is holding an "orange race car."
Sitting on the kitchen floor and watching him paint made my night.
Like peguins
I hate that I get to the point where some remarkable super woman part of me has managed to sort, organize, file, and accomplish, and I'm just rounding the corner on being "ahead," when then the week catches up with me again. I hate that on any given day I can never really accomplish even half of what I’d like to.
I know deep down that this moment, right here on this couch, matters. Here, in a circle of light surrounded by the dark of the sleeping house, with my breath and my anxious heart, this is what matters. Here, with my feet tucked up under me and the steady clacking of the keyboard, my fingers fluttering to create words without conscious effort. Here, longing for sleep. This is what matters.
But I get hungry for days where everything feels sorted out and accomplished. Where there is time to come home from work and take a walk outdoors; time to do some yoga, or run; and mostly, time to write. Each day I don’t write I feel a terror rising in me. What if I never get this down? What if all I can ever do are fragments? But each day, the demands prioritize, like jostling penguins. I’ve heard that they’ll do this at the edge of an ice burg: push and bump until one or two penguins fall into the icy water below. The rest stand watching—waiting to see if the ones they pushed surface and swim about or are devoured.
I keep picturing some graphic organizer, some chart, something that could synchronize and streamline the crazy that is my day—but even if it were—even if I could remember and coordinate all the things I need to accomplish, it still comes back to this: the hours run out. The clock’s hand crawls steadily around the face. Night fills my body with a craving for sleep, and then, too soon, the alarm clicks on.
Because it's Monday
And because I can't eek out anything more than this, I'm wondering what you're top 10 favorite foods are. Foods you can't live without. They can be entire dishes--or individual ingredients. Mine: pomogranets & mangos chocolate coffee fresh salad (especially with micro greens, sprouts, etc.) grilled cheese & tomato soup cheddar, manchego, and chevre baklava sushi french toast + maple syrup avocados
(not necessarily in that order)
Runners up: honeycomb dates coconut tom ka (Thai soup) pad Thai bacon omlettes
I will not die an unlived live
I read through your comments and what resonates most is this: wait to have a second child until nothing else seems right. There are so many different ways to look at the same picture, tilting and turning the image until it fits what we imagine for ourselves. It’s the imagining that matters. The taking of steps. The risk in doing so. We can never really know where our life will take us. The outcome is more illusive than four leaf clovers tucked among the grass. We cannot be sure we’ll be at the right spot to pluck them up and pocket them—cannot for that matter be sure that we won’t gather an armful of lilies instead. It’s the attempt that matters.The effort that goes into charting the course and then leaping into bright blue space.
Right now this feels right: my small family of the three of us, tucked away here on a hilltop at the end of a long valley. We’re just getting the hang of us. Here. Last year was like a bruise, with so much energy scattered helter-skelter that we’re still just hoping to make it through the winter, gathered around our wood stove, drinking coffee over breakfast.
I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of failing or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance, to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom, and that which came to me as blossom, goes on as fruit.
Dawna Markova
One or two
On a run, we talk. It is a good time for talking actually. The conversation makes the strain forgettable. In between words, pauses long enough for breath, and for making things intentional. We run past open meadows and woods where the leaves are piled high and brown. The sun is warm on our backs, but we wear woolen hats. We talk about the things we’ve always wanted. About the dreams we have. Living in Europe; graduate school; a life where we can look back each day and say we lived it well and fully. It’s easy to dream and forget to leap. To stand at the top of the cliff, and get lost looking down, without ever stepping off, and then there’ll be the day we’ll look back and regret.
“That would be the summer you’re supposed to be pregnant with another baby,†he says, of two summers from now. We’re talking about living in Europe—a part of a graduate degree program I’ve been accepted to, and have decided to attend. I feel my stomach flip flop.
When I pick up my friend’s baby, he fits perfectly into my arms. My body remembers that rocking motion (a side-to-side movement I grew so accustomed to, that for month’s I’d catch myself standing in line at the grocery store, or the bank, swaying.) I bring my lips to the softness of his downy head instinctively. Motherhood is in my bones.
And yet, I have a fierce, anxious longing to do more than this. I’ve come to this other passion slowly, like an embering fire. It hasn’t been a direct route, like Karen Russel, who at 26 has already published an acclaimed, original collection of stories. Writing for me has been more like a slow aquifer, bubbling to the surface with greater and grater force with each year’s passage.
I love my son wildly, and am grateful for his little satellite self, orbiting my days. But I’ve just started to feel like things are possible again. Life beyond the insular circumference of a baby’s needs. I imagine a sibling for Bean. But when I really examine this image, I find much of it is a composite of expectations. Everyone I know has had two or more kids. I grew up in a family of three. I don’t really know any onlies, and people ask me regularly when I’ll have a second.
As it stands, it’s a matter of timing. A matter of putting one dream ahead of the other. People say siblings born close together are happiest—they have each other, and all that. But I can’t imagine this now. I can’t imagine the constant rush. The never enough hands. The diapers in addition to the night time worries of a toddler. I can’t imagine never being able to sink back into the couch with a stack of books, to read to a wide-eyed eager Bean with no interruptions. Nor can I imagine giving up this wellspring of focus and direction that I've come to in my writing. Maybe I could do both. Maybe, especially if they were far enough apart in age. Maybe if I had a two-book deal in the works. But now?
I can picture a second. I can picture being pregnant again, and a part of me wants that chance. The first time I was caught so off guard, the whole nine months passed in a blur of coming to grips. I’d be able to do it more gracefully now—and also those first crazy months. I’d be less terrified, more confident in the certain joy of hour of melted moments spent staring at a newborn’s face.
But as much as I can picture this—and even want it—I cannot imagine it now, or next year or the year after. Huge, in the front of everything else, is the desire to write, to publish, to make this into my career. And I get these things, still, I am uncertain.
I want your thoughts on this. If you’ve had kids—why have you had more than one? How did you decide the timing? How did it affect the scope and outcome of your dreams?
Trailing
I skip work and sleep in until ten. My body has felt like a Duchamp painting the past few days, in too many places at the same time. When I woke up the sun was flooding the room, and I lay in bed, surrounded by soft white flannel, and watched the dust motes dance in the light. When I wake up, especially when I wake up late or from a nap, I feel like I am trailing myself for a few moments. I startle easily then, and prefer to move slowly, to linger where I am still fluent with the images of my dreams, before language ripples the surface of my mind like someone throwing a handful of pebbles into a serene pond.
I made my way to my studio where lady bugs still seem to linger—one or two greet me each day on the windowsills, moving about as the sun warms their shiny beetle backs. I wrote for an hour or so, feeling the zinging of anxiety rise and fall in my chest. What if it’s not good? What if I can do better? What if I can never get past the point of beginning, or the halfway? Then I’d move to my yoga mat facing the sun, and bring my attention towards my tight hamstrings and uneven breath.
By noon, I went running. Some days I wish every day could be like this: mired into the thick of the work I love most, yet able to be flexible and active midday when the sun makes the air fragrant with the smell of dry leaves and damp earth. I came back determined to gather focus, and to pursue what I want (to write fulltime) with more clarity. I’ve been waiting for this to happen. This shift away from summer’s dreaminess and early autumns tumbled wonder. Like waking up, it takes me a while to shift gears towards productivity after the sensory world I inhabit when the fields are green and the air is rife with the fragrance of ripening fruit and the busy humming of insects.
NaBloPoMo Redux
It's that time of night where I feel my bones become heavy, and I can neither make myself get up and go to bed, nor do anything constructive here at the keyboard. The stories are mostly tatters anyway, but I'm using this month of NaBloPoMo to really hunker down and write. I've been thinking about spending more time capturing the 'glimmers' of every day. The small shreds of story I overhear; the scenes that present themselves. Usually I overlook them, trusting my faulty memory to hold the small bits of scene in place until I wearily find my way to the keyboard. But it never turns out that way. I end up never sitting down. So for me this month will be one of recording details; glimmers; taking note of the small, unremarkable, bright shards of day that become story when wedged back to back. It will be a record of autumn turning towards winter: the hills washed suddenly gray with the first hard rains. The field in the morning dusted with frost. The dry heat of the wood stove filling the kitchen with snug warmth, and the moon as big and perfect as a dinner plate rising up golden over the crest of the hill.
What do you want to take note of this November?
Trick-or-treating for the first time
Above us the stars twirled. We went to a half-dozen houses, and then down to the end of our road to look upon five hundred jack-o-lanterns, all glowing. His eyes wide in the dark, his face smudged with chocolate and wonder.
