Sundown

Took my camera with me to the waterfront with the boys for a walk.

Got the skunk scent out of my cat with a natural enzyme spray: no tomato baths necessary!

Woke up today with a splitting headache. Now I have a fever. I can thank the kiddos at work for this one. I am so ready for warmer weather. For being able to throw open the windows. For anything other than ice storms. I so hoped to post something longer today--I was facinated by your comments about the idea of living 'perfectly' and wanted to write more about what I meant. About trying to live the way one always hopes one will---someday, although the doing of that in the moment seems to get put off for lesser (and greater) things.

But now that I'm sick all I really want to know is: what movie should I rent tonight?

Lists, naps, and a month of living 'perfectly'

I wake up from dreaming of the Arizona desert and a professor and his wife I don’t actually know in real life. The phrase “sand frills” sticks in my mind, something I’ve invented in sleep: as in, the canons and mesas give way to sand frills. It almost works to describe the way the sand is funneled and scarred with gullies and rivulets, flash floods scraping rivers into dry mud and red rocks. I wake up with an ear ache, the pain sucking at my right ear like altitude.

I slip away from the others, still sleeping: my small boy with his arms flung side to side like the oars of a rowboat, a contented sleep smile staining his face rosy; and my husband who was feverish last night and who wears and orange t-shirt and twitches inadvertently. It is the last day of vacation and I wake up mid day from napping with the sun slanting through the slits of the wooden blinds, dust motes rising and twirling in the air.

Yesterday I napped too, alone with the cats. Both of them curled nose to tail on the flannel. When I joined them, the apricot one chirped a welcome to me. At night she follows me around the house as I turn off the lights, bank the fire, get ready for sleep. She meows plaintively then, wanting one thing: a pinch of cat nip that makes her whirr like a summer fan and fall to the floor like a dervish in a state of ecstasy.

Today I wake up at 2:37 p.m. dreaming of people I don’t know. For the longest time, or what feels like the longest time, I am convinced that I do actually know the man, who in my dream was a professor, we both were it seems. I try to pull my mind from the shallows of near sleep, where thoughts dart like the shadows of trout, illusive and just below the surface.

Gradually I stir, hoping that if I move, inhabit my body again, feel my fingers and toes, I’ll be able to place him and his wife, dark olive skin, but I’m only more confused and the pain from my ear creeps down my neck. When I put my hand up to my throat I find the glands on that side are swollen. Everything participating in the purposeful choreography of falling ill just as vacation is ending, of course.

When I climb from the bed I move the covers, I move my knees, and my ankles and the soles of my bare feet make contact with the wood floor. I can feel the grooves between the planks. The round circles where penny sized tabs of wood cover screw holes. For a minute I sit there at the edge of the bed with the dust motes circling my tangled hair like a halo and am stricken.

I think of all the screws. Thousands, maybe a million, although I can hardly imagine what a million screws would look like, each one made of dark metal, machined somewhere in a plant in Idaho or Tennessee or Mexico or China. I am astounded considering all the people who contributed to my floor in this way: the workers in protective goggles and gloves sorting and correcting package weights; the fork lift driver; those at the shipping yard and at the hardware store, and also the men who likely knelt a million times or more to place each screw, thankful to have an electric or battery operated screw driver.

The floor is old, and when we bought the house, the finish was almost black with age. It didn’t gleam, and by the windows in my studio, a lot of water damage. Someone left the windows open more than once during a summer rain. Now it gleams, sanded and finished twice over. Our sweat. Our bending knees. My feet make contact with the floor. I pull myself to standing. I pull on jeans. I pull on a white terry sweatshirt that I’ve just put through the wash with a few tablespoons of Chlorox.

In the dryer I added a Mrs. Myers Clean Day geranium scented dryer sheet. The smell made me happy. It spelled clean and not cloying, though not natural either. The house is clean now, at the end of vacation. My life feels in order. I’ve spent the week putting things in order: paints on the shelf in my studio, carmine and cobalt and cerulean. I’ve scheduled things: doctors appointments, dental check ups, hair cuts, meals with friends. I’ve crossed things off my list: updated accounts, passport papers, green peppers and Irish oats and oranges for squeezing. On the bag they say “Take home and give us a squeeze.” Like some sort of huggable small trolls nestled together there in the orange webbed bag.

I’m reading Don DeLillo's book White Noise, and am fascinated with the way he uses lists to tell the story. Lists spiraling and deepening, a little the way Tim O’Brian did in The Things They Carried. This month, March, is a month of lists. It’s a month I’ve decided to live contentiously, focusing on the small things like replying to emails regularly and packing my lunch for work the night before. I get so outside myself, tilting towards the big picture, towards the hungry heat of my passions, that I forget to be here much, and here has a way of getting crowded and overwhelming as a result.

In O Magazine, someone wrote an article about “A Month of Living Perfectly” and I laughed, because it was my idea, the very thing I said to DH. “What if we spend March living the way we always say we want to live? No waffling.”

He nodded over toast. He wasn’t really listening to me. It was the end of February and the snow had numbed his brain. It keeps falling, by the way, falling nearly nightly. Making the woods white and glittering and the driveway slick when it melts and then turns to ice in the dark. But now March is here, and I’m going ahead with my proposition, ready, set, go.

If you were to live “perfectly” for a month, what are the top five things you would do every day?

Inspired.

I'll be back by the weekend.

Fairy dust and climbing shoes

Another really long day. And then, the best thing ever. We started our climbing class tonight, and as an early birthday present DH got me a new harness and shoes. In between trying on pairs of shoes--and while waiting for the sales guy to dig through his inventory for my size--I picked up a climbing magazine and leafed through it. Then, while reaching to put it back, this little gift was sitting right there--where the magazine had been.

I've always adored Rosa for doing this kind of thing and have secretly wished I'd someday be the recipient of a little random bit of whimsy. But to find it today was simply perfect.

I was so exhausted, bummed out, and feeling defeated in general. Let's just say it was a looong day.

So we went climbing and it was glorious, and now I have a little magical bag of glittery gold fairy dust and I can't stop smiling.

And so the week is gone

I've been sick. A major yucky head cold + fever combo that has left me wimpy and whining watching re-runs on TV. I hate being sick. Especially around the holidays. To distract you from the abundant LACK of posting going on around here, pretty pictures: My boys whispering in the early morning light, while I got up, snuck downstairs and slipped something into Bean's advent box.

Breakfast this morning. The thrill (yes, it really is) of going to the coop and getting freshly laid green or blue shelled eggs has not warn off. Talk about fresh.

The kitchen, post breakfast. The penguin's name is Snowflake, and Bean is in love with him.

Feeding the sheep & lamas is a regular weekend activity. I love the lama's eyelashes, and the way the barn always smells sweet with hay and is warm with animal breath. Our neighbor's always put on a full nativity play in their barn every year. All the local kids act out the parts, and everyone sings carols and eats cookies & goes sledding afterwards. So fun.

Getting the newspaper on the way back from our walk. We sled down to the bottom of our drive, then pull the paper up.

My little mischief maker, "helping" me make Christmas cards.

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.

Ready, get set...

In nineteen different places today, all at once. The sky is blue, but winds are roaring up our valley making the birch leaves show their silver underbellies. By my computer on the bar in the kitchen are a row of ripe peaches. Outside hawks are calling. It's getting ready time: laminating folders and organizing books, every random hour spent at school in preparation for a new passel of kids. Also trying to find the right things to say to Bean so that he understands that our routine will be changing. We've had such a fun summer: taking rambling walks and playing on the back lawn. Here are some pictures from our walk yesterday evening.

Chicken coop in the evening light.

Goldenrod is waist high in the fields now.

Bean & his red wagon.

Wild grapes, ripening.

Slug love.

I love ferns.

Overgrown mailbox.

Bean in the green.

Jewel weed.

Autumn's first red.

Tuesday Notebook

Kneel down, hold the ground in your hands or reach up and hold meteors in your glance as they plummet through the dark night. Be thankful.

***

This morning the air felt scrubbed clean after last night’s rain. I went bleary eyed to my studio, pulling on one of DH’s t-shirt sand a pair of old sweatpants, with the intention of doing some art. I’ve been so bombarded with words lately that they’re starting to feel smaller than usual. More one dimensional. I sit down to write and always feel like the words I get on the page are somewhere at the surface of what I want to say, but no where near the heart. So I’ve decided to do some art every day this week. Little pieces. Messy, real. Maybe getting at some of the depth of emotion I’ve been feeling.

Simply: I spent the weekend house hunting with my inlaws and the experienced left me awed, drained, curious. People live their lives in so many different ways, and their homes carry the expression of their lives so deeply. The timbers gradually soak up the emotion of day to day interactions, the windows, the corner tables, the hues on the walls all start telling a version of the life story of the people who dwell there.

But mostly, I left grateful that we've found this place up on our hill. I stand at the window of my studio looking out and my heart fills. The ember red of the little barn/chicken coop we just renovated; the dusty ocher of the blowing meadow grasses; the first hint of red at the tips of the maples; the sweeping view. I feel at home here in a way I never have felt anywhere before, and it is a hungry feeling of wanting to sink in. Be more present here. Take more walks. Notice.

Two nights ago we sat in lawn chairs on the driveway looking up at the bowl of stars, partly obscured with stars. Meteors with glimmering tails streaked across the dark. It’s a place I could be for a while, I think. Among the maples and the beeches and the goldenrod that has grown chest high in the lower meadow, where the coyotes and the owls nightly call.

Do you have a place that makes you feel at home like this? A park, a city street, a vast swath of land that's yours? Or are you thirsty with longing like I was for years before here?

And also, who wants to do some art with me every day this week?

The start of August

Peaches with juice spilling on the soapstone when we cut them; blueberries fat and sweet; cinnamon swirl toast from the farmer’s market, hot with butter. Summer mornings make me happy. We sit around sipping coffee, flipping through various papers, making each other laugh. It’s been an entire week of sunshine. This means: I’m finally starting to look tan; the chicken coop has been painted red; the grass is starting to look dry.

With the first of August I slipped back into accomplishing mode: tearing through lists of things that have been lingering all summer and forcing myself to return to the page to edit work that has been lingering, troublesome as a hangnail since June. I also snagged a fun writing job I’ll be telling you more about very soon; and am crossing my fingers that another piece of mine will be showing up in Mothering in a month.

More good news? My inlaws sold their house—and will be moving up to take care of Bean in a few months. Whenever they’re around, I always notice Bean’s language skills skyrocket: Nonna never stops talking to him, and he’s smitten with the both of them.

To celebrate, we’re going camping with Bean on Saturday! His first real trip. We’re packing life vests and sunscreen, marshmallows and hotdogs. In the mail, a glorious four-person tent arrived and when we set it up on the lawn, Bean was ecstatic. Of course I will take nine-million pictures and foist them on you.

The crickets have started their tremolo, indicating that summer really is winding down. August is the hottest month here, but already the first yellow leaves have appeared, and monarchs are gathering on the milkweed, roadside. Next week I’ll head back to my classroom, painting bookcases, sorting papers. I had my first classroom dream last night. I always have them in August before I meet my new class.

What’s in store for you this August?

can't help myself: a picture post

The garden, underway. Sore arms & DH has a sunburn. Bean played all afternoon with his tractor in the newly tilled dirt. A long way before raised beds and fence posts, but closer than we were. So good to be outside. So good to have a man who, because he know's my heart is set on having a garden, spends all day wrestling the brute of a tiller about. :)

I'm heady with delight. With fragrance. With blooming. Everything plunges into growth come the end of May. The short growing season makes everything feel even more astounding and vibrant and urgently beautiful. I cannot get enough.

(real, up-close pics are over at flickr.)

Day by day

Saturday: It hit me in the middle of the night, up again, one more time, because of the small inconsolable wailing and flailing of a sharp elbow having, night terror dreaming, teething Bean, that I was officially one step away from going insane.

I told DH as much, in a whimpering whisper, having already burst into tears at least once between the time I got home and the time I went to bed, and the next morning he let me sleep in. Until 10:40. When I woke up on my own accord, stretched a leisurely stretch, and basked in a hot shower.

At 7:30 he took Bean and went to breakfast and Home Depot and to the coffee shop for freshly roasted beans and the market for a list items we’d run out of, and he left me with the entire bed to myself, with all the covers and the pillows are fluffed just so and the slatted shades drawn so the room stayed wrapped in yummy semi dark but the window was open to let the sweet fragrance of spring waft in.

I was beaming all day.

Sunday: Some people probably (no, definitely) will think I am strange because I derive a great amount of joy from doing yardwork… But I really do. I’m always happy when I have the weedwacker in my hand, it’s loud whine drowning out any stray thoughts, so that I am simply there in the moment, watching the grass and leaves fall in swathes. I spent the morning doing this in the lower meadow, cutting a huge square where we plan to till for a garden, while above me, on the lawn, DH circled back and forth with the mower, Bean perched on his shoulders. Watching them together like that always makes me burst into smiles. Bean clutching two handfuls of DH’s summer-curly hair, both of them grinning wide as they make the turn nearest me, waving.

Then we started on the chicken coop, which, after several debates (not all were pretty, either) we concluded would best be made not in a new structure, but in our existing “barn” shed that once housed a horse before we came to own it. The floor is entirely being reclaimed by nature, but the walls are stick-built and sturdy (ha! knock on wood!) and the roof seems to still work in spite of the moss growing there (or perhaps because of it.) We spent several hours cleaning out all the left-over planks of flooring we’d tossed there hurriedly last spring around this time, when we were frantic to be finished with flooring and could not yet fathom living here.

It seems like it’s been such a long, long time since that time of nailing floor boards and longing, our days painted with worry and exhaustion. Here we are, a year later, and I’ve planted rose bushes along the front of the house and scattered native wildflower seeds down the bank and found purple trillium growing along the old stone wall at the edge of our land. A year, and everything is different.

Bean spent the evening zipping around the wide expanse of our kitchen and livingroom floor on his bike. A few weeks after we bought it, he can now steer and pedal like nobody’s business. He’s getting reckless in that little boy way: looking over at us and grinning while he steers in entirely the opposite direction. He rarely falls. It will be a different story on the packed dirt of our road, but inside, where the floor is smooth and the way unobstructed, there’s no stopping him.

Monday: Before 7 and the sky is gray and I’m huddled in my bathrobe smelling the heady scent of lilacs that my sister picked and brought to me before she left (I miss you!) and listening to the birds calling back and forth. We have a pair of Orioles. Bright orange and black brushstrokes fluttering across the canvass of green woods. The first time I saw them, I held my breath.

Breathing space

Snowmelt dripping

Tattered clouds

Setting Sun

Snow angel

Evening light

Walking home

Wanting to dream

My eyes ache tonight, from crying and laughing both, and I’m on the verge of being sick. I spent the weekend away with a close friend, talking over sushi and Japanese beer, about the way things really are. How everything in my life right now is like a delicate broken china cup, held together with dime store glue, and the tea is very hot.

We went rock climbing. I haven’t climbed since before I was pregnant, and my mind and body marveled at the sudden feeling vertical; instinct sending rapid telegraphs along tendons, muscles quivering. My heart thrumming in my chest, chalk on my palms, and then swinging out into open space at the top of the wall before the belay down. It felt good to simply say, I don’t know. And also to say my heart is breaking, but that I’m hopeful. Very hopeful.

Because this is true. I am. And I have reason to be. We’re talking now, daily, and part of what we’re talking about is what really matters. Sometimes it feels a bit like walking through the odds and ends of furniture and relics in an antique store looking for a particular set of silver spoons, but we’re finding things we didn’t know we wanted or cared about at all.

And it’s hard to say what it is we really want. We thought this was it: on this land, in this house, but somehow we’re drowning here. Debt swallowing up our love, and our freedom both. And also, because though we dreamed of this: mossy wooded trails and apple trees and kind neighbors, we never thought to ask ourselves when we wanted this, and what else we really wanted in our lives.

So we’re starting over, and asking this: what really matters? And our answers shock us both. To see the night sky in Australia. To bike together across Europe. To travel through the west with Bean and hike the mountains there. To shout out into the vast space of the Grand Canyon. To work on a coffee plantation in Central America. To spend a month on a sailboat. To teach in a foreign country. To have another child. To write. To publish. To live a life rich with experience.

Startled, we look at each other from opposite ends of the couch. Maybe we want more than this, here, right now. Maybe we need more, to keep us whole.

And also, when I came back after a night away, hugging him, pressing my head into his chest in that place right under the curve of his chin, I felt like I was home.

Preparing

Bean and I spent the day outdoors under wintry skies. Alternately stacking wood and lying supine, our faces soaking up sunlight as it shone through torn clouds. Bean loves to lie like this, head to head with me, watching the clouds pass. The trees at the edge of the meadow made a crown of twigs at the periphery of our sight. Then we rolled down the hill, listening to crows call overhead.

Later, when we were hungry, I brought out a thermos of milk, graham crackers, peanut butter and honeycomb and we made sticky sandwiches and ate them on the grass. Bean tiped his head all the way back to drink from the tall flask, milk dribbling down his chin; a mustach of white spreading wide with his grin.

We’re hosting thanksgiving this coming week, and Bean and I dragged fallen branches from the woods and heaped them high in the upper meadow—for a bonfire with friends and family gathered round. DH does most of the cooking around our house—because he has that innate sense of which flavors go together, and can work calmly in the kitchen under pressure, without a recipe. I’m content to be the sous chef, watching him wield knives.

What are you planning for thanksgiving? Any good recipes or traditions to share?

1st snow

It snowed this weekend. The first flakes started to fall in long slanting streaks just as evening tucked the valley in. We were inside with a fire going, hanging pictures (finally) on our walls, listening to a Mozart symphony. The next morning, the world was white and golden: a patchwork of the last bright leaves on the trees, and snow in icy piles along the side of the road. Enough for a snowball fight, and full Bean snowsuit regalia. (My camera is still in for repairs. This one, alas, is crap. But you get the idea. It was pretty, and a mostly restful weekend except for an unidentified allergic reaction on my face yesterday. That, and it was about a week too short.)

Look

Monarch.

Purple stars.

Leaf lace.

Rock.

Fall on its way.

Bark.

Moss in fallen log.

Field flowers.

So much goodness

Sweet cantaloupe for breakfast, like golden crescent moons on our plates, and tonight a dinner party with our neighbors. Red wine by the glass full, thai noodles, chicken grilled to perfection. Laughter and unexpected ease. Our neighbors are amazing people. The kind of people I always wished I had as neighbors, but never believed really existed. The kind who say: come over to my house any time, grab a beer if I’m not there or borrow my tractor. The kind who are professional chocolatiers (no kidding, they make amazing tuffles and live just down the road), mechanics, doctors, and athletes, who sit us down and tell us where the local swimming holes are, who to call to get our brush cleared, or how to handle the local skunks (walk right by them, pretending they don’t exist & they won’t spray.) The kind who make authentic German strudel, or go for 25 mile 'casual' Sunday bike rides. Yeah. That kind. How did we get this lucky?

The taste of dirt.

Spring is all about mud in these parts. The roads are thick with it, and around the edges of the lawn are patches of soaked ground, perfect for poking sticks into or finding pebbles, and Bean has fallen in love with DIRT.

Where my heart finds home

When my heart begins to flutter like the fins of a hundred small fish with worry about the things I cannot control, I seek out wild places where words no longer matter. Where language is the drip of snowmelt, the rat-a-tat-tat of the early woodpecker, or the calling of the chickadee.

Today I explored a small corner of the several hundred acres of woodlands behind our house.

With Bean in the backpack I begin to climb, feeling his weight transfer to my hips. Soon I hear the thrumming of my heart in my ears, my cheeks flush hot, and my lungs find a new cadence as I as I move. At first Bean’s small voice rings out clear among the stands of trees, branches still bare save for snow in nooks between limb and trunk, but soon he grows drowsy with the steady side-to-side movement of my gait, and drifts off to sleep. Then I hear his tiny breath whispering softly above my head.

I smell snow, metallic and sharp, and the tang of newly cut wood where someone has come before and cut away a tree fallen across the path. After a while, I’m not anywhere else. Just here, balancing on small stones to cross rushing streams where the water runs clear and cold and sparkling silt gathers in pools on the mud below. Just here, where everything is still, save for the dripping of snow melt falling from trees and the trilling of an occasional bird. Just here, where my muddy tracks cross the tracks of wild turkeys, then field mice, then a vole’s. Many tracks I see are partly obscured in the slush, their edges melting.

I come to pool after pool of water, each like a piece of amber with last autumn’s leaves glowing from below the surface. Snow fell yesterday here, and everything is saturated, slippery, muddy. Sometimes my shoes stick and as I pull my foot away, the mud sucks it back.

All around me is forest. Above me: a halo of delicate branches. A filigree. A vast network of capillaries: twigs running with sap, buds just forming everywhere. Most of the trees are young—small enough to wrap my arms around, wrists overlapping; but some maples have been here longer—their trunks burly and split open, their gnarled branches reaching up thickly into the sky.

After a while I turn my attention to the worry in my bones and find it has melted with the snow. This is now. This is all I have. Moss adorned with water droplets, new shoots of green pushing up through wet snow. Here my heart is home and this is all that matters.

(p.s. I am feeling better—thank you for your kind thoughts. A day of rest was seriously needed. I may have spent most of yesterday asleep. I'm not sure. :)

Also, more pictures are here.)

Weekend sweetness

Syrup making in an outdoor evaporator, old iron spiles, sap dripping into galvanized buckets with lids to keep the squirrels out. Standing around with people we barely know (our neighbors to the west) it feels so easy to be ourselves. To laugh, to throw the slimy tennis ball for their spaniel, and lick syrup from a paper cup, still hot, unselfconsciously. We share conversation the way two friends might a sandwich, snatching juicy bits here and there while Bean crawls about on the wood pile and gets licked by the dog.

“Doggy,” he says, over and over again. “Doggy.” And we can’t help but laugh with wonder and scoop him up. He’s starting to talk!

All weekend a friend has been visiting, and our house is full of the quiet harmony that occurs when someone you love is around. An extra set of hands. Dishes done. She laughs at all my husband’s jokes and and Bean adores her. Between us we've probably had six bars of chocolate. And in the moments in between everything else, we’ve been sorting out our souls over cups of tea or red wine , talking until we’ve gathered many bright words like handfuls sea glass.

Hair cuts today (I got bangs—see above), and playing in the late evening sunlight at the waterfront, chasing Bean about the lawn and drinking up the light.