Catching up:
Doing: Whoa, it’s been one heck of a couple of weeks with both kiddos underfoot. Lots of sledding and cookie baking and general revelry. Not enough writing though. Or painting. Or time without the ruckus, giddy, non-stop noise making of two small boys.
Speaking of: Sprout is standing and almost walking. He's thisclose. He's hilarious. He plays hide and seek. He initiates chase games around the house and crawls pell-mell at top speed, then bursts into adorable peels of laughter. I tried to teach him to paint a few days ago--because I did with Bean at around this age, and it was an utter disaster. He ATE the brushes and got so frustrated when I'd take them out of his hand and try to turn them around so the bristles went on the paper. So not his thing.
Bean on the other hand is totally into drawing. He makes airplanes and houses with doorbells wired in to the walls. Tonight he drew a picture of our cat stalking mice. Each mouse had a lovely, loopy, curly tail. I can't really believe that he is almost five and suddenly all cool and adorable: a big+little mashup. Yesterday he said, "When I'm big I'm gonna build robots. I'm going to design one to be a remote control that I control--and then another robot that the first robot controls." He's like that. Totally coming up with the coolest things ever. An engineer in the making.
Reading: it's been haphazard at best this week. Mostly about the end of the world as we know it. Which really is rather unsettling . Though not entirely hopeless. I'm already thinking of what my garden will look like this spring.
Wishing for: a few solid hunks of time I can call MY OWN to get things crossed off the to-do list and sink back into writing and creating and feeling like myself again. Eating: I've perfected pizza dough and a really great bread recipe. I'll share both, but not tonight. Somehow it's bedtime already. Where did the day go?
+++ Wondering tonight: what do you worry about? What are your greatest fears--the big, worst-case-scenario ones...and the little ones that nag and gnaw?
Hibernating.
I'll be back soon. I have so many stories to share.... Just trying to get back in the routine of things... (First day back to school for Bean was yesterday.)
+++ What are you doing, reading, wishing for, and eating this week?
2010
I like the way the world looks now: tender, undercover, monochrome. I like the way this month starts off in sleep: the longest nights, the shortest days. I like the way we hurtle down hillsides on sleds; the way driving home from a New Year’s Day party with friends we saw five trees illuminated by the light of a car dealership, each branch crowded with the black silhouettes of sleeping crows.
I like how anything can happen before it does, now, at the beginning of a new year; and also looking back, considering the pulse and tremolo of the year gone by.
I like how it’s always possible to feel at the cusp of something grand at the start of a new year. Like there’s a chance for anything to happen, and everywhere all over the world people are throwing themselves towards their lives with renewed gusto.
People are picking words, and I like that. Looking back, I’d like to say that last year’s word was cocoon, because it was a dreamy, blurry, nestled year of slow motion, present tense stumbling; of new baby love and making ends meet. It was a domestic year. A quiet year. A year of sustaining; of inward growing. Now I'm ready for real action.
I want accomplishment and tangible returns. I want the satisfaction of crossing things off my list. Some years I've had heady, dreamy goals. This year it’s all about the down-to-earth and practical. It’s about getting things done. Enough of next year and sometime and when the time is right.
It’s the beginning of a decade. Time to get things started off on the right foot.
Non-negotiable: Financial stability, daily joy, and finishing my novel manuscript. The rest I'll put up on this year's list at the end of the month.
What is non-negotiable for you this year?
all I have
Tonight the air was still, snow fell, the fire burned, and I felt utterly small and stupid in the narrow little cocoon of my life. Tonight the sum of all my efforts thus far are two boys who wont shut up and a husband who has his own issues and a job I don’t (mostly) know how to do. The novel waits. The dreams wait. And already, I am half way through my life. This breaks my heart.
And then.
I go out with leftover noodles for the chickens. The air is biting, and the fresh snow clings to my boots. When I push open the coop door the light is on. The chickens are all on their roosts, bodies pressed together for warmth. I dump the pasta and watch. One by one they fly down. Awkwardly. Heavily. They thud to floor until they're all there and in a moment all the noodles are gone and they busy themselves drinking and idly scratching. The rooster, ever randy, seizes the opportunity, and the docile hens buckle beneath his weight. Everything simply is. The night. The cold. This small insignificant act of procreation. All of it.
One by one they return to roost. Each flying up to the lower roost first, then the higher one. They find their spot, hunker down, preen, tuck their heads beneath their wings. Gradually each chicken finds her place, and the rooster too. Finally they’re all there, on the roost, and suddenly in the cold quiet air I can hear them breathing.
Softly, rhythmically. Unexpected.
Inhale, exhale. I find my own breath rising up in a cloud on the cold air; synchronizing as I sit in the corner, and for a moment I am away from the noise of my boys, my house, the constant forceful repetition of the same small daily tasks. I wait, listening to them breathe until I can return to my life.
Then I do.
This is all I have.
More Snapshots
"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."--Annie Dillard
Maple sugar on the first snow of the season...
TEETH!
Our advent wreath with a little twirly mobile from Germany (a childhood tradition.)
Our first gingerbread house attempt this year. Bean cut out the templates and the dough. And mixed everything.
Bean was hilarious to watch decorating these. He was so careful with the icing... then DUMPED the sprinkles on.
Lots of snowflakes have been cut this year...Bean made this one entirely himself.
Bundled up. Getting ready to do our annual holiday photo...
PS: I'm sort of sick and am hating the general anxiety of Sunday night. There is always a to-do list bigger than my brain waiting for Monday. What's on your to-do list this week?
Boys & simple delights
I always pictured this, and yet I could never have imagined how it really is: life with boys. My house is always a ruckus. Things are always flung, spun, twirled, jabbed. Sticks are essential. So are rocks. Forts are made everywhere. The couch is a launch pad. Trees are dangled from. Boxes are magic. They become boats and cars and rocket ships; they are played in and fought over and sawed into with serrated knives.
Each morning I wake up to the full catastrophe delight of little boy energy. Inevitably I get a finger in an eyeball, or an elbow to the ribcage. “Mommy! MOMMY LOOOK!” But by the time I do, Bean has already dragged a giggling Sprout out of my room, down the hall and into his bedroom, where I can hear thumping and banging and more laughter.
Bean is growing tall. He grew 3/4ths of an inch in the past month! Sprout is standing on his own, cruising everywhere, cutting teeth. He is hilarious. He does things purposefully just to make us laugh. He loves to bang on things: pots, cupboards, boxes. He loves music. He loves his big brother, and he beams whenever Bean enters the room. But he’s also a tattle tale—already. He makes this particular fussy sound whenever Bean takes something from him, or even just gets close enough that he might take something from him. He is absolutely, one-hundred-percent a Mama’s boy.
My sweet second son. We’re so smitten for each other, and truthfully, every single day I still kind of wish he’d stay small for a lot longer. I love to snuggle with him. I love the sleepy moments just before I tuck him into his bed at night. I love when he first sees me after I’ve been gone for the morning. I love how he gets such a kick out of everything: standing, eating, sticking his hands in the dirt.
That said, I’m much less of a wimp with him. I want him to sleep through the night now. He’s huge (really: as in, 18-24 month clothing is snug on him. SNUG.) and he has no reason to wake up four times just to tap into a boob for five minutes, although I can’t blame him for trying. It must be nice, little man. Sorry to cut you off. So last night there was more fussing and less sleep as he adjusts to going back to sleep himself. He was indignant at first, but a trooper, and figured out how to find his pacifier & snuggle in and go back to sleep after a couple minutes of fussing. And already it was easier than the night before. By the end of the week I think we’ll be where I want us to be (as in, one or both of us will be getting five or six hours of sleep at a go!)
Aside from the whole sleep deprivation bit, which gets old, I admit, I’ve been having so much fun this month with my boys. All three of them. And even though money is tighter than it’s ever been, it is quite possible that I’m enjoying the holiday season more than I have in years past because it’s been all us, as a unit. Without the pressure to buy things—the holidays become all about shared activity, small rituals, adventures, crafts, and food.
We’ve already made a batch of gingerbread cookie dough; strung oodles of lights; and cut more than our share of snowflakes. Bean loves to do paper crafts. He memorizes the folds easily and delights with cutting each snowflake and then opening it up—each one a glorious surprise of symmetry and pattern. Sprout watches, delighted, trying to eat every paper scrap that falls to the floor.
Each morning we all look forward to the excitement of Bean scurrying out to see what the advent fairy has tucked into a little box for him: a tiny slinky, some balloons, a golden chocolate coin, a small crystal, silly putty, umbrella straws. It’s a lesson for all of us to remember: how much delight comes not from the actual gift, but from the suspense and mystery of each small box. It’s all about the ritual, the gesture of fun, and the small delightful moment of surprise. What are some things you do as a family together this time of year?
Tangent-worthy snapshots:
We made cinnamon rolls this morning: Bean measuring the flour out, his eyebrows getting dusted as the mixer kicked into high gear; going to gather eggs first. (We have an interesting flock this year: Aracunas, New Hampshir Reds, Cuckoo Marans, Barred Rocks and a Buff Orpington rooster.) While the dough rose in my favorite vintage Pyrex bowl, we started hanging lights: big fat colored ones, like I remember from being a kid.
Back inside it was all about tinker toys and cinnamon & brown sugar filling (with walnuts too) and leftovers for lunch. Hard cider. Turkey + cranberry sauce + coleslaw on raisin bread. (Of note: DH butchered our turkey this year himself. A Heritage breed, raised by a friend of ours.)
Later: A fire in the wood stove. Inclement weather, but the best kind. Going to get the mail wearing rain boot. Sprout trying to stand all on his own (and cutting two top teeth.) Then making pasta from scratch: the dough gorgeously golden with fresh eggs. Linguine never tasted better: served with Parmesan, sausages and swiss chard sauteed with garlic.
Finally, in the quiet of a post bedtime house: the crackle of logs burning in the stove, getting words down on the page uninterrupted. A glass of red wine. The cat curled at my ankles. Looking forward the inevitable sweetness of bed: the curve of his back, warm, and muscled against me in the dark.
Thanksgiving
Hi. Today I am writing. All week I've been writing. Hence the absence here.... which makes me sad/happy, as usual. I am stopping in though to say: thank you, thank you. What you give to me with your comments, your friendships here, your encouragement is something I cherish.
Today I am wondering (as I prepare for a kind of anticlimactic day tomorrow, now that both sets of friends who were coming to dinner have canceled due to the flu...) how do you celebrate Thanksgiving? Is it a holiday that you love? What makes it special? What ritual or tradition do you have that doesn't, maybe, entirely, focus on an enormous meal? I'm so looking forward to reading your replies as I feel like I really want to change this holiday up around here. I'm hoping for inspiration.
The temptation
...to eat him WHOLE is rather persistent. Can you blame me?
(And also: she's back. O happy day. )
Here & now
A week of friends, and bonfires and playing in the leaves. A week of making choices and getting on top of the laundry situation and soaking up back to back days of slanting shadows and mellow sunlight.
Now: Penguin Café on my headphones. Writing a novel makes everything twirl in my head.
Life is full, and there is a feeling of tenderness just below the surface. It’s hunting season. We put the light on in the coop to trick the sleepy hens to lay some eggs. In the dark we fold into each other and whisper, reconciling the smallness of today with the possibility that tomorrow will be great.
We’re all hugging ourselves in the dark; hugging each other; hungry for something. Or at least I am, he is. Lots happening in the present tense right now, but I miss being here.
What matters to you today?
When spooks and ghosts and robots are seen...
Bean's Robot costume, in progress:
Two words: foil tape. Love it.
Today, this:
What is it to feel unrealized, other than strangely exquisite? It is the soul's plea to matter. It is the exhausting submersion of caring for others, sometimes at the expense of our own creative spark. It is age and mortality settling upon us like a kneading cat, prodding us to Hurry up and do something. Make something. Be something.
From the exquisite, talented Kate at Sweet|Salty
It's this same voice in my head that drives me to do crazy things like declare my NaNoWriMo goal, and to long with my clunky, wanderlust heart to hang glide someday; live somewhere far from here; to keep doing things that terrify me, or are hard, or are brand new. Because if not this, now, then what? Tomorrow might be dust. Tomorrow might anything. But today, this. We hold it in our hands.
And also this: two cups of french press coffee + cream and a new friend = a very good thing.
At the coffee shop: almost a poem
She walks out the door ahead of him; long white hair blowing into her face as a truck barrels past. I watch as she turns back toward the door, and at first her face is carelessly content; then she sees him and her features soften almost imperceptibly. She looks up to where he’s paused there on the landing, readying himself to tackle descending the stairs. Does she know that he is dying? Does he? He has the same sparrow like grasp and yellow skin my father had when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The same hunched shoulders in a flannel shirt. The same slow deliberate effort to carry on with the minutia of the day. Coffee in a paper cup; the laces of his leather boots tied in double knots.
He holds the metal rail and takes each step at a time. Then he puts his palm on her shoulder, and they turn, go.
Unbidden, there are tears.
Across the street I watch a man in a wool jacket gather small bouquet of chrysanthemums and yellow leaves. At the edge of the park he pauses for a moment, then tucks them into the slats of a metal bench and walks on.
Timing is everything
Hi Monday. Apparently I hit publish last night before bed, and this odd collection of urls and lines of text went live yesterday night sometime. Oy. ( I'm glad you liked my 'experiment,' Denise.)
I did want to share all sorts of things I've been crushing on lately though, including these poems, and enough gorgeous pink blooms here to almost make me weep. Also, this inspiration to play around with some stenciling. (I've always had a crush on Banksy.) And this artist's interpretation of the "Missed Connections" section in the paper, which is where I go, too, when I'm looking for a new story.
Speaking of a new story, I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. You all remember my failed attempt in August, I am sure (which was kiboshed by a heaping helping of freelance copy-editing.) This time? No excuses. I need to get this story out of my system. I need to get this story on the page. I need to see my words accumulate following NaNoWriMo's instructions:
"Do not edit as you go. Editing is for December. Think of November as an experiment in pure output. Even if it's hard at first, leave ugly prose and poorly written passages on the page to be cleaned up later. Your inner editor will be very grumpy about this, but your inner editor is a nitpicky jerk who foolishly believes that it is possible to write a brilliant first draft if you write it slowly enough. It isn't. Every book you've ever loved started out as a beautifully flawed first draft. In November, embrace imperfection and see where it takes you."
So basically, it's ON, November.
Also, I got a part time job at a place that is very close to my heart--doing something I've never done before, with lots of opportunities to learn new creative things like In Design which will, in part, help to pay for my writing habit. So this coming month it's all about time management and balance. A week or so ago, at the suggestion of my very dear and very organized friend, I watched this lecture on time management, and I'm inspired to try to keep a time log this week to attempt to become more aware of how I spend my time. I'll likely be posting more on this at the end of the week..
This week is all about getting ready for Halloween around our house. Carving pumpkins. An obscene amount of foil tape and a pretty cool robot costume in the works. It's also about finishing two short stories and getting an essay submitted so that I have a clean plate for November's novel insanity.
What are you up to? Where do you think you spend your time? Have you ever kept a time log? Where do you know you need to become more efficient?
Morning Poem # 6
Patience is granular like sugar, and every child hungers for it the same way that tongues crave sweet, darting out from parted lips, darting like small boys into traffic or towards sharp sticks, always used with the poorest of judgment (which is also how wars begin)
and if it had color, it would be milky and soft, and quite the opposite of the vermilion rage that springs with sudden heat and sting like a rash along the slender, tender curve of a throat provoked for the hundredth time by the lollygagging, jelly-boned determination to find exactly where the line is drawn;
and it is feeling the clean hard click of teeth meeting and words held or shoving fists into pockets or maybe after gripping a sticky palm a little too hard, it is to inhale again softly and notice the way the chickadees have returned to the woods, and how the light is mellow like honey in a jar
Endpoint + Ladybugs
The ladybugs have arrived. They come every October, en masse through the slanting autumn light, their small vermilion exoskeletons plunking into the window panes, flitting through briefly opened doors, gathering at the corners of the ceilings in every room. They come like clockwork, when the days are short and the light is like amber in a jar, before the hard cold. They bring promises, nostalgia, delight. Bean bursts into laughter as they land on his pants, his hands, his shoulders. He extends his arms carefully, watching them crawl about then lift off, their small buzzing wings carrying them in drunken zig-zags towards the house, where they seek dark nooks to overwinter. Their arrival marks the end of autumn and the beginning of the long season of snow and cold and boots and socks at the door.
Things are ending now, and beginning. When I wake up the valleys are blue and soft with mist, and the last yellow poplar leaves twirling to the ground make my heart ache: such a certain, gorgeous loss. Which is how I feel now, at the brink of things: new community, new friends, new work.
I want to say that it feels like the end of an era, but I’m not sure what I mean. Just that things feel like they are starting to be different. And it's good. But also, change is always awkward and slightly devastating, even if its just something temporary (a trench coat left hanging at by the door after the wearer has gone ahead wearing something startlingly bright and full of promise.)
There's always that moment of hesitation, a glance backward, even as I'm plunging on ahead.
I miss, for example, the days when I was new here, when I had such a voracious voyeuristic enthusiasm for sharing my life and reading about other peoples lives. Those were the days when this blog was my lifeline to a reality I'd thought I'd maybe lost, having just had Bean and moved north to a place where I didn't know a soul. But now, four, almost five years later, every day is filled with little boys and writing, work, and new friendships, and life has somehow begun to shift more and more off the screen and back into the three dimensions of day-to-day.
And somehow this feels bittersweet.
How do you make these things coexist, reconcile, balance in your life?
8 months old
Dear Sprout, I owe you a love letter big time, but somehow every time I sit down to write about you I end up staring at the page and grinning and I never get more than a couple of sentences written.
Somehow I can't seem to put into words how utterly smitten I am with you. But I am. Over and over again. You are the best surprise I have ever had, hands down.
I'm so happy you picked us. I'm so happy you are here.
You are crawling. You have two teeth. You are pulling up on everything, always standing, always trying to get to wherever your big brother is at. You are HUGE. 95 percentile. 12-18 month clothing. And it's not all chub, either. The nurse had to re-measure you at the doctor's office today because she didn't think she'd gotten your length right. You are just shy of 29 inches.
You say dada and mama now. You giggle. You reach up to me to be picked up. You crawl after me all around the house. You love to eat, and you want whatever we're having. You put everything in your mouth.
You are (almost) always happy. You spend entire days smiling. You hardly ever cry---but you have perfected a lovely indignant grunt/squeal to let us know when your big brother is squeezing you too tightly.
I haven't written you letters every month the way I did with your brother because I am in utter stunned shock at how time is whirling by. I cannot fathom how you got to be this big.
I loved you from the moment I met you. I loved every single minute of you as a newborn. I've loved every phase you've entered, even with the sleep deprivation (and the short term memory loss) that invariably occurs as you go through growth spurts or cut new teeth.
As a baby, your brother taught me how to be a mother. You are teaching me daily how to mother with grace and delight.
I adore you. I adore you.
Happy eight months, little dude.
Love, Mama
Learning to fly
We make paper airplanes. A fleet of them tossed into space after dinner, twirling, looping, landing on the hardwood, on the couch cushions, on the edges of ledges and windowsills. Our hearts on our sleeves, laughter filling the living room, as the cold autumn night crowds in around at the windows and Sprout chases after each one, newly crawling, hands going fwap, fwap, fwap across the floor. This is my life, I think. These boys, these moments. What does it matter that I’ve missed a deadline I wanted to meet, or that tiredness makes me stupid some mornings? Everything that really matters is in this room tonight. “Here, I’ll show you how fold one,” I say to Bean, not really believing that he’ll be able to follow my lead, and remembering second graders I’ve taught who have burst into tears with frustration, not able to follow the same sequence of folds.
“Really?” he grins. Then he sits on the floor with a stack of paper, his legs folded behind him on the floor like a little frog.
He watches intently, copying every fold.
First a rectangle, then the nose folded in to make opposing triangles, then the whole thing in half, then the wings folded down. Symmetry and sequence matter now. He breath is shallow, intent.
“Let me try it again,” he says after we toss our new planes high and watch them land. Sprout squeals in delight. A candle still flickers on the dinner table. Night is here, making the window glass into mirrors that catch our grins.
I watch him as he makes another, all himself. The entire sequence of steps folded from memory, after only being shown twice. And his plane flies beautifully. It lifts improbably, air pushing up under the flimsy paper and carrying it up to the ceiling before it swoops down, twirling in arbitrary circles before landing at his feet.
His grin is bigger than the room.
My grin is bigger than the room.
This boy, this beautiful boy of mine, teaches me so much. He challenges me at every turn to grow, to become more organized, more intentional, more prepared. He is my mirror, revealing the fragile and haphazard parts of my being that dangle and drag like dropped stitches. Where I am weakest, this is where parenting him forces me to grow the most.
I can’t coast, parenting him. He never gives me the chance to sit back on my laurels and get comfy. He questions everything. He is always pushing me to the edge of my comfort zone. He’s a kid who seems porous to me: the entire environment saturates his little being. He soaks everything up. Watches everything. Asks about everything.
He sees a thing once, and remembers it, classifying it with other similar things: the makes of cars, the inner workings of tractors, street signs, logos, maps. He has a particular obsession with learning new words and he insists on using them again and again until they blend into his daily vocabulary. Words like scenery and astounding, and investigate.
He is never content with the simple answer. He is always full force, full throttle, determined. He is fragile. He is allergic (to dust, grass, pollen, pets.) He is picky. He is persistent. He is easily overwhelmed by sensory stimulation. He exhausts me.
And I’m starting to get it: this boy of mine might be one of the most profound teacher’s I’ll ever know.