Peace and grace

Yoga tonight. YOGA. I didn't even know this hole in my life existed until I was there in the little second story studio doing downward dogs and listening to the collective exhalations of twenty other people. "Think of going out into your life with peace and grace" the teacher said at some point, and I was suddenly, inexplicably close to tears.

Peace and grace.

Somehow my life has moved away from this drastically. The past several months have been about chin up, mind over matter, power through it, action.

And oh, how I've missed this: being quiet with myself. Simply that. Simply breath, and wonder, and feeling tears spring up suddenly from both relief and uncharted sadness. I've always prided myself in being tough and resourceful. I've always been someone with brains and enough street smarts to figure things out and when the going gets tough I roll up my sleeves.

And for years--whenever I intermittently practiced yoga--I always brought this attitude to it: power through.

But it was not about that at all tonight. It was simply about this: about considering breath, and karma, and returning to breath. Peace and grace distilled into the fluid motions of warrior to downward dog.

I'm going to try for more of that this summer....and I want to know, where do you find or bring peace and grace to your daily life?

How this began

Going through an old hard drive tonight I found this poem written May 5, 2004... three weeks before I'd find out that I was pregnant with Bean.+++

Today I heard that the Voyager satellite, sent up into space the year before I was born, is now nearing the edge of our solar system. Some scientists think it will encounter a shock wave, before going into the space beyond. My life feels like this, nearing it’s known edge, careening, orbiting, drifting off course around some other center I have not quite named or found, but feel. I expect to be thrown up soon, with force upon taking the risks I know I should take but do not yet understand. I imagine that amidst the white-hot vibrations of shock it will be the memories of things, the words and honey comb and lightening storms, that will cradle me. Giving birth, when the moment is right to a new self, among the nebula and stars. +++

I had no idea how spot-on I was. A poem, like a tear in the stage curtain of the present, and there I was behind it, peeking through.

I also found this, from August, 2009. A quickly scribbled note about a conversation with Bean:

"I fell from the sky mommy. I was a star, and I fell into your tummy." If you look back, can you find any inklings, notes, or snippets about the time when life as you know it now began?

evening|summer

As the sky grows dark, the twilight feels heavy like velvet, and sweet like licorice. Fireflies come out, and Venus too, above us blinking from among the pink and pale indigo of heaven. So far up, she twirls, casts off the sun’s bright light, and sends it back to us like a love letter; a secret message.

It's nearly dark and maybe we all make wishes looking up. We see fading contrails; the sky turning to night.

Bats swoop as we gather around the fire with marshmallows on hand-carved sticks; the boys run laps around the house then ask for seconds, thirds, their faces sticky sweet. Sprout eats corn off the cob, then goes docilely to bed, his hair smelling like vanilla and wood smoke; his arm hooked around my neck, a small piece of heaven.

We eat until we’re full then lull; find conversation; lull again. There are kebabs with pineapple and purple onions; fresh corn with butter; grilled nan; steak.; brownies for dessert; wine.

The kids head indoors and their laughter floats through the open window and yellow light spills each rectangle onto the bluing lawn.

I spill wine on my jeans, my feet are grass stained, the boys are covered with dirt and it is perfect. Guitar fills the night air with lilting notes; our faces are light by flame, thrushes call until the sun's long gone.

It’s summertime. Here, this, finally.

A story chameleon

I slip among the cushions on the couch with a book and the edges of everything else grows blurry. Reality becomes the story on the page. I am no longer here, even as outside things are moist and green, and the lawn mower thrums loudly as T. cuts back and forth across the grass. In the air beyond the feeder with it’s shiny red metal flowers, hummingbirds zigzag, lilt, swoop, defying gravity. I look up intermittently and the clock’s hands make no more sense than reading words in Japanese. Hours slide by. I don’t move. This is what happens when I slip into a book. I have no moderation, no ability to read a page, then leave off. It’s such a crush: this thing I have for words.

Story captures me so entirely it almost becomes a full body experience. I dislocate. My feet grow cold from staying in in one position so long, knees up on the couch by the window as the morning slides towards afternoon.

When I read I become unavailable, altered, distant. T. can ask me a question and I’ll look up moments later having absolutely no idea what he said. I am a story chameleon, becoming blue, or thrilled, or besotted with wanderlust at the story’s slightest suggestion.

I am almost unbearably suggestible when I read. Hardly a skeptic. I go to books to be altered. If the sentences are good, I’m a believer.

I just finished Breath by Tim Winton, and god, I love his stories. Raw, intimate, wild. Read the whole book in one sitting.

What are you like when you read? Also, what’s the most recent book you haven’t been able to put down?

Uneven

Oh my. I seem to have distressed a few of you (thank you for your sweet emails.) Things are just fine. Promise. Things have a way of turning out, even when sometimes they don’t (at least not in the ways that we expect or hope.) Tonight I mostly want to tell you this: when I show up here, it is sometimes with cool palms, and a quiet heart; each sentence following logically after the next. But other days I come with flyaway hair and muddy feet; my heart in a hundred directions; my words haphazard. In times like these, it’s about trying to put a finger on the pulse of this moment that matters. I want a record of the in-between-times. The times of limbo, of breathlessness, of waiting, of wanting, of fleeting wonder. These are the moments I want to look back on because these are the moments I forget.

Today the irises revealed sleek purple buds by the front steps, and I know that in mere months the summer that is just now blooming will be gone.

The leaves will turn the color of flame and rust and fall to the ground. Sprout will be talking (he already is saying words—a new one pops up every day now, in that two-syllable repetitive way that toddlers have of talking. Banana becomes “na na”’; water, “wa wa”) and all the things that are uncertain now will no longer be.

But just as surely as this is true, it is also true that new unknowns will crowd in, playing a forever game of musical chairs in my head.

+++

Today, this: the four of us in the garden, up to the gills with dirt. The season's first sunburn. Lemon ice water. An impromptu trip to the general store for milk & ice cream sandwiches. Also laundry. I somehow can never quite seem to get a handle on that.

blur

Diptychs are contagious.

Wishing I could show up here every day, but this week: everything has come pouring down. Highs and lows. Utter crazy, uncertainty, heartbreak, possibility, sweetness. It's almost more than I can stand, so I escape into the fleeting instant of watching an oriole swoop and land. Such sudden orange among the green. Yes my heart thunders. Yes to this life.

Still, I brim with impatience for all that is unfinished and unknown. My breasts still ache (no one tells you this about weaning, but it's not pain free. That is also an understatement, fyi.) My heart aches for things that are irrevocably different now (with people I love. Sorry about the vagueness.) My quads ache for want of use. I haven't been running much and miss it something fierce, but there are so many things now up in the air with the tilting, diving flight of the orioles that running comes last. It shouldn't, but there it is, a fact. Time isn't on my side this week.

Next week: JUNE.

When did that happen? How? Has anyone else felt like this year is plunging ahead at a vehement pace?

Tonight heat crowds the room. 90 tomorrow. The lawn is still unmowed (another thing fallen off the end of the priority list this week) and I am applying for things and chasing down dreams, and damn, I know I'm being vague but tonight it's the best that I can do.

Joyful fleeting things

Today I am giddy. A new pair of pretty red flats. A to-do list ACCOMPLISHED. An exciting, thrilling possibility waiting to be explored. SUN. A raspberry Italian soda + chocolate croissant. I am absolutely loving this song right now. Holding my breath. Finding four leaf clovers in the lawn. And reminding myself: what if there is no emergency?

So I'm weaning Sprout. He's the same age more or less that Bean was when I weaned him--and he was ready. He'd been nursing only at night before bed and in the morning upon waking... and my trip to the city was the perfect time to make the transition. He never even fussed. Just snuggled in with T. in the morning and went back to sleep--and now we have this lovely snuggle time in the morning when he's still all warm and sleepy and our cheeks press up against each other, and then Bean comes in and the three of us snuggle and chase the tails of our dreams while T is in the shower. That first morning time with both of my boys is often my very favorite part of the day.

But oh my. I have two little boys now, suddenly. It's the end of babyhood in our little family. Blink, and here we are, four of us, all bipedal, grass stains on our toes. I can't quite describe what it feels like to be here at this point. To know our family is complete, to know who my kids are, to be US. I always pictured this, but had no idea what I was picturing, you know?

Here we are. Two boys with impossibly long eyelashes, and thousand dreams like dandelion fuzz blowing on the wind. I can't even imagine this fall. Can't fathom what we'll be like by summer's end.

Yesterday I went down to the garden for the first time and was stunned by the knee high grass. In my absence the wild has taken over and reclaimed the little plot of land I've been tilling each season. Saturday: the garden and I have a date to get down & dirty. But my whole life feels like this--when I look back on the past ten years, it's exactly like looking at the garden suddenly verdant and overgrown with weeds and volunteers (tomatoes, peas) that I never expected, and yet there they are. It will be like this from here on out, won't it? Every decade faster than the last.

Tell me, what is fleeting and joyful right now in your life? What do you want to remember about today, this May?

A weekend away and the photos I did not take

The lilacs are fat; my boys cheeks are sticky with apricots; the lawn is overgrown. Today T. wraps his arms around me at the table. We sit side by side, plotting our next moves while our boys escape out the front door and head to the sand box together. We can see them from the window. They sit side by side in the sand; hair blowing back in the dandelion-down strewn wind. They giggle together, and seeing them this way makes everything worth it. They’ll always have this. I went to NCY for the weekend with a lovely friend whose sister has an apartment on the Upper West Side. I haven’t been to the city since Bean was tiny; and my camera battery died before I could foray out to take many pictures. So instead I offer this:

The pictures I did not take.

The green Central Park lawn strewn with picnic blankets, and above it two bright yellow balloons lifting up; floating beyond the buildings at the tree line and into the blue and cloud flecked sky.

The two girls with red hair ribbons tied around pigtails, running among the picnickers with a pink and blue kite on a short string; feet bare, knees skinned, the littler one stopping to just stare for a while at the bobbing improbable flight of the kite in air lifted by the sheer momentum of her sister’s strong brown legs.

The desiccated crumpled body of the baby blue jay on the sidewalk beneath a tree, legs drawn up, blue-gray feathers crushed into the cement; and the look of revulsion that the lady had, in her enormous black Prada sunglasses, dark skinny jeans and ballet flats, her skin pearly, her hair frosted, her stroller a Bugaboo Frog. She skirted the bird and shuddered, then walked quickly on.

My friend’s face; beaming with emotion that mirrored the sun yellow of his fleece, the two of us seeing each other for the first time in ten years (except in photographs). His profile against the backdrop of the dancing fountain at Lincoln square: curly eyelashes, dreads pulled back, a smile playing on his dark lips,

The view from 230 Fifth at night; an indigo sky and lights scattered like a diamonds in a jewelry box. The Empire State building right there, smack-dab, lit in green and yellow; potted palms, crowds, champagne. Hair blowing in the wind.

+++

I wore a wicked dress, you guys, and I looked amazing. Super heels, a tiny chocolaty shoulder bag, smouldery eyes. I had a few twenty-five year old boys in a state of euphoria and then shock when I spoke to them, then offered up my wedding band as proof. To further the short circuit in their minds I murmured this: “I’m a mom, too.” Best expression ever. Utter disbelief painted over sheer attraction. I couldn’t stop grinning and thanked them after they docilely hailed us a cab.

I needed this. I needed to encounter a part of myself I haven’t seen much of since becoming a mother. Wine, French food, a hot dress, crowds parting just so I could pass. Who doesn’t need a day like this to remind them of what they are?

As though everything that I am is contained in a composite shell of moments hauled about to contain the soft-bodied hermit crab soul that is mine. Right now it feels like I’ve clambered into some new place. Inside a Fibonacci spiral, the sound of the city comes rushing back. It’s endless traffic and hubbub and movement thrums in my eardrums still. Be still my restless heart. Still I am happy to be home.

An ending & a beginning

The world is suddenly green. The drenched trees lost their blossoms as quickly as they bloomed; petals fell like a party dress to the grass. Now everything flutters with the minute iterations of leaves. The grass is suddenly shaggy and surprisingly long; as though it’s from a Jack In the Bean Stalk fairy tale while hummingbirds zip among the rain drenched azaleas and lilacs fill the air with heady sweetness.

+++

This weekend big things are happening. A Field Guide To Now on Kickstarter is ending tomorrow. 28 hours left. (Become a backer if you haven’t. This is IT!)

I’m leaving on a weekend adventure today with my camera and some pretty shoes in tow. I won’t be here when the project time runs out, but I want to tell you how grateful I am. I am astounded, joyful, terrified, delighted, eager. This is such a big deal… and YOU made it happen.

Thank you.

xxxo!

what matters most?

...taking a risk or staying the course? ...defaulting to the familiar, or leap towards something new? ....financial security, or authenticity? .....trusting in the unknown, or attempting to engineer an outcome?

Happy Mother's day!

The way things go + some current crushes

Hi! I have so many things I want to share with you today. First, some crushes:

These luminous folder icons have completely revamped my desktop and seriously upped both my cool factor and organization.

These fabulous planers are also rocking my organizational world. I am so not an organized girl when it comes to creative projects. I see BIG PICTURE and details sometimes get sidelined. This in particular has really helped me to narrow my focus and get things done.

And I've been wanting to share this glorious camera bag that arrived in the mail a few weeks ago (I was the Shutter Sister's giveaway winner) and oh man... I can't even begin to tell you how lovely and awesome it is. It's big enough to fit my camera and everything else I schlep around, and pretty enough to make me look put together even when I'm not. (THANK YOU Maile!!)

These photos (swoon) and this blog.

Some news:

I was interviewed here and here this past week by two of the most amazing, inspiring women in the blogosphere.

Last night I put some new prints up in my little shop!

And at this moment: the weather is all over the map still. Rain, sun, wind, rain.

Everything is exuberantly green in the same way that kids color the grass in their pictures: GREEN EVERYWHERE. And while I love what green stands for (summertime picnics, gardening, bike rides, bonfires) I wish the apple blossoms could stay longer. In a single afternoon they exploded into full bloom with bees everywhere, each tree its own secret universe of pollen and petals, and then today, just a few days later, there are already as many petals on the grass as on the trees. So fleeting. So fleeting. Everything is this.

We hung out with the very first friend we made here last night. He was sitting on the porch across from our new apartment as we backed over the curb repeatedly with an enormous moving truck. I remember feeling utterly out of place among the scads of college kids with 7 month old Bean in tow and actual real furniture instead of futons, but M. walked over and said hello, and Bean thought he was the coolest person ever and we've been friends since. Now Bean is five and M. is moving to Austria for an unbelievably awesome job, and wow. Time. There it went.

There is no more of a tangible way to notice time's passing than to watch a child grow. This, and then this. SO FAST. I'm carrying on about this today because I get it this time. I get that these moments right now are the ones I'm going to look back on and say, oh, that was when it started. That's when we had no idea. (Sprout is still small-ish, but the next time I stop to think about it he'll likely be riding a bike. )

I've gotten the most wonderful emails from some of you about being at similar points of transition--and I so love them. I think it is incredibly helpful to tell each other these stories about how things begin. About the moments before beginning when all we're doing is imagining and waiting and things feel scary and at large (because they kind of are.)I want to hear more about these moments in your lives. What is beginning right now? What are you on the brink of?

An open doorway

Today, so many things seem possible. Blue skies, melting snow, joy.

At this very moment, I want you to share a dream that you want to see happen. If you could open a door and walk through it into any possibility, what would it be? One specific thing. Go!

Snowed in

18 inches of snow yesterday. Today: it's already 55 degrees. Forecast for the weekend? 75 and sunny. My brain is having difficulty computing. ALSO: we don't have power. Haven't for twenty-four hours. Which, truthfully, sucks quite a bit, especially since I work from home on the INTERNET.

Now I'm at a friend's house (she is a lifesaver) and the sun is shining and I'm popping in here to tell you that a guest post is up at Wishstudio that you absolutely must go read!

A weather gestalt

This is the view from the back yard today:

This was yesterday:

Ack.

Springtime Rivalries

The hills are stained varying shades green now. Above the bay windows, swallows build messy nests. All day they swoop in with bits of things in their beaks, building. The lawn is shaggy with dandelions, like a thousand yellow suns scattered carelessly across the small cosmos of the grass. The boys roll about in it like puppies. Sprout delights in sticking each furry yellow blossom in his mouth and making silly faces. Bean asks for dandelion necklaces and drops handfuls of crumpled flowers at my feet. I kneel, looking for four-leaf clovers, and within seconds the boys are there tumbling into me, their bare feet stained green.

Spring feels like a thing for sure, but then T. checks the weather and discovers SNOW in the forecast.

“What? Come ON!” he says emphatically from his office.

From his location crouched at T.’s office door where he’s repairing the Lego pirate ship he’s constructed Bean says: “You don’t need to be so agitated, Daddy.”

I cannot THINK of the last time I used the word agitated.

But it’s such a good word, isn’t it? And him using it is a perfect snapshot where Bean is at now: five years old, suddenly mischievous, and entirely a boy who lives in the world in his head. He loves words like I do. And stories. We tell them all the way to school every day. Cliffhangers make him howl in reproach….and of course I love to end the story just at the juiciest part, to be picked up the next day.

My favorite time with him lately has been first thing in the morning when he comes into our room when T. is in the shower, and Sprout is still asleep, and I’m in bed still, dreams fluttering against my still-closed eyes like light-drunk moths.

“Hi Mommy,” he’ll say, scooting in beside me. Then we rearrange our arms and legs just so, like a set of nesting bowls, so that I’m tucked entirely around him, my nose wedged into his cheek. He smells like sun and vanilla and sleep. His own sweet little boy fragrance that I know I’ll crave when he’s tall and lanky with pit stains and peach fuzz on his cheeks. But the real reason I love this time in particular is because he’s still sleepy and his busy little mind hasn’t kicked into overdrive yet (which is his modus operandi the rest of the day: “why? why? what? why? how?”) and he’s so tender then, and small. The rest of the time, well, there is a certain point—that starts at about age of three, maybe—where personality takes over, and personal stature no longer aptly describes the person that a child is. He might be small still, but he fills up a room.

And speaking of, can we about sibling rivalry, a wee bit?

Bean and Sprout are exactly four years apart, and while this works well for me (in the sense that I would have entirely lost the contents of my mind all over my life like a bag full of spilled raisins had I had them closer together) it creates a particular dynamic between the two of them, that is interesting, at the very least. Basically: Bean is either annoyed by Sprout’s endless curiosity and desire to touch and hold (read: destroy) anything Bean is constructing... or he is TRYING to annoy Sprout by grabbing him by taking things away from him, pouncing on him, or otherwise inhibiting Sprout's stalwart and determined attempts to go ANYWHERE or do ANYTHING unimpeded.

Truly. I expected competition. I am the middle sister. I am familiar with competition. But boys. They’re just so different. They’re not about head games. They’re about TACKLING and taking things and needling.

Lately it has gotten worse. Sprout has become his own darling remarkable little self of late, and this new development in his personality has somehow dramatically upped the annoying behaviors towards him from Bean. Which is not to say I don’t get it—because I do. Bean was an only for four years, and now suddenly he’s having to share the spotlight with a little PERSON who is utterly hilarious (his one goal all the time is to make us laugh) and ridiculously cute (he discovered TWIRLING today! A twirling baby is pretty much the cutest thing EVER) to compete with.

The thing is, I’m never quite sure what to DO in response to Bean’s little needling behaviors. Sometimes he’s flat out mean: he’ll squeeze Sprout’s hand hard, or intentionally drive a toy over his foot, and when we catch him he’s remorseful, but not really so very much. And it irks me. Especially because Sprout is just such a love. All he wants is to be next to his brother, and he’s so utterly trusting and playful.

What do you do? Ignore the tussles. Time outs? What? Given that they’re four years apart, Sprout can’t really have consequences even though sometimes that would be the logical thing—at least in Bean’s head. And saying “sorry” isn’t really an action of apology.

I’d love to hear your experiences with sibling rivalry, and about any ways you've found to parent around or through this gracefully.

the blue yonder

My last post sounded pretty dire, didn't it? I didn't mean for it to. It was the result of too many days back to back of intense writing until 2AM in combination with a massive to-do list and a heap of uncertainty that brought out my most fragile, anxious self. But the truth is: this is a really exciting time for us! We're poised on the brink of reinvention, and neither of us really know what that will look like, but it will most certainly will include adventure, and learning new things, and redefining what matters, and the prospect of this makes me joyful.

In so many ways we've done things backwards from our friends and peers. We had kids first and made this place home before we we were thirty. Now we've got these two awesome kids and a whole universe of possibility and zero money and a heap of adventures just waiting to be had. I"m not just saying this. I am really (finally) at a place of throwing my arms wide open to the universe, ready to leap into the wild blue yonder; full of hope and abundance.

It's been an interesting process getting to here. When we first found this house, I was terrified of making a Home. Terrified of putting down roots and having something stake a claim on my soul the way I knew this place would. I've always said: what else? What if? When? I've always wanted the option of going, of travel, of doing something different. I've always, at the end of the day been a girl with a wanderlust affliction.

Now that I know who my kids are, and what they're like as little people in the world....I can imagine living other places with them. We're a pretty cool family unit, the four of us. T and I (despite his laundry neglect) work as a team almost seamlessly, and I've never had any one in my life who is more of a champion of my writing or a bigger fan of my art than he is.... We don't require a lot when it's all said and done, and if there is one thing that's true, it's our shared love for learning new things.

So.

Maybe.

Maybe anything at all. Maybe we'll stay here. Maybe we'll head to somewhere else. T. is excited by the prospect of different work in a way I could never have imagined him to be. It's like a weight has been lifted from him: and he's full of determination and enthusiasm, and we're all keeping our fingers crossed. (Cross your fingers too, will you?) Have you ever reinvented yourself? Changed an outlook, a job, a lifestyle, a location.

Also: A Field Guide To Now is becoming it's own adventure. It's SO CLOSE. Please help to make the funding happen (remember, it's all or nothing). I have a question for you about the book: what would you be drawn to more? A straight-up illustrated essay collection, or a book that also offers some little invitations to you about ways to be an explorer in the moments of your life, right now as it is? It would be so helpful to hear your thoughts about this!

Vanishing point

Everything couldn't be more uncertain, more tenuous, more questionable than they are right now. T. is thinking about quitting his job. It's been too many months of nothing. Shoestring hardly defines it any more. Is there a vanishing point?

Trying to push through and get this proposal sent today.

A million things converging. Exhaustion, for one. Worry. The way everything is heartbreakingly beautiful right now: wet and green and new. Snow still on the mountains; the red flush on the hills of the maple buds; swallows building nests above the bay windows; a clear, wide, empty sky; the piercing call of a circling hawk.

(Also, if you haven't, please go be a backer... it's getting close. )

a different kind of validation:

"Oh,"  T. said yesterday as we were both stumbling over the HEAPS of laundry on the floor upstairs, "I guess you actually really DO a lot of laundry." YES. Yes I do. (And it's been a point of contention, I might add.)

But this week: not so much. In fact not at all actually. And it SHOWS. Our house looks like a bomb was detonated somewhere in the vicinity. Housework has dropped off the very bottom of the to-do list, to be returned to sometime when this proposal is done, and life returns to normal speed.

By then I may have a hunchback (I have discovered I have terrible desk posture) and my family might have been devoured by mutant laundry heaps. Alas. (Or T. could just do the laundry. Perhaps he will?) (A confession: I love every single minute of this bleary-eyed, up till 2am, creative, messy process.)

Today i need...

Today I need you to remind me that the many hours and the messy house and the hunched shoulders and the dark circles under my eyes will all be worth it. (It will, right?)

Because I'm at that point with the proposal. THISCLOSE.

I have a headache. It's been raining all day. The birches look dramatic with their new chartreuse leaves blowing against a cement sky. Crows keep flying past with bits of things in their beaks. I've had too much coffee. And all my dreams were about my book.

+++

(If you haven't,please become a backer, ...even for the very smallest of amounts...)