August 9::Monday

Us, through the eyes of my friend Willow. It is somehow enthralling to see ourselves from the back--a view we will never have of ourselves; a glimpse of us more vulnerable maybe, always leaving wherever we are, turning, going, doing. I love this entire set. Loved the day filled with thunderstorms and an accidental perfect meeting with T right after he finished work.

August 7::Saturday

All about friends. The best of friends. (Miss you Jess.) Long walks to fields dappled with light; clouds above, laughter, the kind of honesty that comes from knowing someone for more than a decade; good wine and pasta with fresh corn, and chard, basil and tomatoes from the garden; the promise of Sunday bacon and a few more hours to watch my kids play with some of my favorite people in the whole world. (Also love that seeing my family through someone elses lens...)

August 6::Friday

A couple of snapshots from the festival of fools today. Tired, enthralled boys. (The first shot was a happy accident.)

What are the things you juggle? What are the balls that can drop, or the ones that are made of glass? (This man also juggled machetes twelve feet up in the air on a pole.)

August 5::Thursday

This boy makes me smile all day long. I snapped these right after his nap... when he was all sleepy and mellow still. Love his little bum in the air.

+++

Today was all about long walks and conversations with my best friend... Conversations interrupted by little boys asking for snacks and finding caterpillars and banging on drums. Conversations about purpose, about passion, about direction, about contentment.

About the difference between these three terms:

Self absorbed.

Selfish.

Self confident.

What do you think of when you read these words. What does each mean to you? How do your definitions change when you apply them to your best friend, your lover, your mother, your child?

August 4::Wednesday

Humidity; swimming in the pond; watching airplanes land at the airport observation deck; cherries and chocolate; what it feels like to be surrounded by your favorite people in the whole world.

August 3:: Tuesday

{Things from today: writing; lunch saved for me by my honey;
the kitchen counter cluttered with fruit. }

+++

Summer is slipping. Thunderstorms rut the roads and send lightening forking through the afternoon sky of late. Across the world, people sit bare headed without shelter in fields flooded with rain. My heart aches for them. Since becoming a mother the news is almost too much to bear. I don't know why this is, except I know now, how my sons' little round bellies mean everything to me. How the fragrance at the back of their necks is heaven. How their laughter fills me up. How I want everything for them. Every single thing. (This makes my heart ache too.)

We took a hike with friends along the river and came to a spot where a tornado must have recently touched down among tall pines: each trunk broken in half like a handful of toothpicks; the river was swollen and fat with rain. Ahead of us the boys leaped; carrying nets; feet bare. I didn't bring my camera: my hands were full with Sprout who is is a daredevil, a water baby: plunging towards the rushing water headlong, arms and legs covered in mud, in sand, in pine needles, in glee.

+++

T. starts his job tomorrow!

+++

How is your week shaping up?

August 2::Monday

Today: crushing on Leonard. (Really, it's a forever crush.) Makes me want to re-read Cities of the Interior. For some reason the two always go together in my head.

Today: a storm came crashing through; rain so hard the sills were wet in seconds. Thunder above the maples; sky the color of whipped wet ash. I always feel giddy in storms: equal parts anxious and delighted. After, the air was cool and the sky such a beautiful blue. Already evening comes sooner. Summer's ending.

Today: my very dearest friend in the whole world just booked a flight out to see me. This week. I am over the moon.

Today in no particular order: the best piece of writing on the web right now; the sweetest peach of summer; these photos; and this quote (from here):

Z is for Zoometry: Originally a term from zoology (pronounced zo-ology, in case you were curious), zoometry is the science of instigating and learning from change. This is the revolution of our time, the biggest one in history, and it's not just about silly videos on Youtube. One by one, industry by industry, the world is being remade again and again, and the agents of change are the winners.

August 1::Sunday

Starting the August Break today. Of course I'll be doing it my way: many pictures + a few words.

This month will be all about:
Dreamy summer light + cicadas + playing badminton after dinner.
Writing, writing, writing.
Wrapping up big summer projects for work.
T staring his job + me juggling both boys.
Finding out about school.
Taking pictures every day + sharing my favorites here.

What does August hold for you?

Ripe with sunshine, ripe with joy

Hello! I spent the morning in the garden weeding + harvesting: dirt under my finger nails; gold finches watching me from the rhubarb. Then I discovered these: wild blackberries along the garden fence and in the field beyond. I sacrificed my pretty knees for these (now scraped and scratched--there is nothing quite like a blackberry bramble's thorns.) But oh, so utterly worth it. How I love these morsels of wild sweet. They don't even taste a hint like the fat bland ones from the store. I cannot get enough. My boys stand in front of me their mouths open wide like baby birds. They can't get enough either. Their tongues turn purple and they giggle as I plunk the berries in. Ripe with sunshine; ripe with joy. +++

Today I spoke with the people from the program and we're in a holding pattern for another week to ten days (I'm counting on the latter.) So I'm smiling and letting go of expectations and looking forward to whatever comes. Everything is possible.

+++ Some things to share:

Sweet as a loon * This photo looks just like where I grew up. * Shona's little tree imp reminds me of myself when I was small...

I am totally smitten over this blog (especially the dreamy writing.)

And this quote (I found it here):

“Our wishes foretell the capacities within ourselves; they are harbingers of what we shall be able to accomplish. What we can do and want to do is projected in our imagination, quite outside ourselves, and into the future. We are attracted to what is already ours, in secret. Thus passionate anticipation transforms what is already possible into dreamt-for reality.” –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I hope you have a glorious weekend! xoxo!

With grace

Good morning! We are just about to head out on a long bike ride (so happy) but I wanted to post these photos. I am loving the morning light this summer... and playing around with focus. I'm so looking forward to The August Break (there are a lot of projects around here that need some serious attention and it will be lovely to just show up in this space every day with a few photographs.)

In other news, there is still no news. I am learning gradually, slowly, to just settle into the present and let it be. I have begun to see how the mind in limbo becomes a trickster; how worry springs up when there is nothing else for the mind to do. When in a place of uncertainty, it's like the mind wants to be productive, wants to be doing something, and so, for lack of anything better--the untrained mind defaults to worry, to distraction, to imagining all the ways that things might not work out.

I am trying to do this part with grace. Already, some things that felt like they took forever to happen are behind me now with certainty: T is starting his new job next week, for one. I remember how we both obsessed over that situation, how the worry felt like a plum in my throat, swallowed whole. So we'll see. I'm trusting now that the right things will happen; that this is my right life filled with early morning sun, and words to write, and small boys playing harmonicas underfoot. Also: I spent all of yesterday thinking it was Tuesday. Imagine my surprise to discover today is Friday. Has this ever happened to you?

A studio glimpse + a way cool anthology

Here are a couple snapshots from photo booth earlier when T. interrupted me unexpectedly. I had just finished this update. I often use photo booth for editing actually. I read to myself out loud, then play it back, while following along and making changes. It helps me focus on the text, especially if I've been working on a piece for a while. I also hear the little things that I slip in as I speak; the subtle nuance of an added word, a phrase, an emphasis. I like catching that ephemera. Especially for this book, where the pieces are almost prose poems, and images--both painted and imagined, mean as much as the words.

+++

Mostly, I wanted to share this with you tonight ~ three of my pieces will be published in Milk & Ink this winter. I am so honored to be among this group of incredible authors. Go take a peak at the Facebook page...there are some profound, delightful, heartbreaking and wonderful stories being shared over there. And the very best part? All the proceeds of the book will be going to the charity, Mama Hope supporting women and children in Africa. Awesome, right?

I am 32.5 today; he was 68 eight years ago

I remember the way the turkey vultures circled in the blue, blue sky, and the way the light moved across his room, casting the shadows from the paned windows, the cherry tree, the fence, across the pale wall. I was a different version of myself then. Twenty-four, living with T. in a two-floor rental by a hot pink liquor store in a crappy neighborhood in Connecticut. I was in my second year as a teacher in a charter school where cops would chase guys across the parking lot, guns drawn (drugs) and the Long Island Sound was two blocks from the school. T. and I had just gotten a dog; we’d walk him in the evenings to a graveyard down the street from our house. Everything already felt like it was at stake. I had no idea.

I'd started my first master's program that summer; a master's in Education. I remember exactly where I was sitting when I got the call: on a boulder in a field in New Hampshire. Above me, the full moon hanging low and round, and the air was sweet and heavy with the scent of blackberries and newly turned earth.

I flew home the next day. Home to the place that I still associated with that word. My childhood home: the 6 acres of hilly Northern California land where I'd broken my arm, become a teenager, and yelled fuck you at my father, then ran out the door and down the hard-packed path to the barn, to the hill beyond where I always went in sadness. I was 16 when that happened, and he was strict in an archaic sense of that word: he expected me home by 10pm until I graduated; thought women looked best in dresses; counted on my mother and sisters and me to cook and generally keep the place presentable. I don’t remember the fight, save for the fact that he followed me and said: what if I’d left and those had been the very last words you said? (He was leaving for a trip that afternoon.)

I am painting the wrong kind of picture. He was formidable and peculiar to be sure. He was stubborn, foolish, and sometimes clueless (particularly about teenage girls and their boyfriends.) But he was also wise, funny, astounding, tender, and proud of me.

He admitted this before he died: I have no idea why I was so strict with you three.

Maybe in part because his father was a Lutheran minister; because he was one of nine. His own childhood was marked by obedience and hard work; berry picking to make the family budget, a paper route with a too-big bike before the age of 9. As a result he parented peripherally, often illogically. He didn't have much of a model. I'm not sure if this is a reasonable excuse. Who would I be now, if I had had more freedoms then, less boundaries, more team sports, less time spent doing work to earn free time?

I resented him at 16, certainly, but only with the kind of fleeting resentment that most teenager have for their parents. It didn't last. And even through those rocky years, mostly, I adored him. Adored the way he could fix anything; and also the way we could talk.

He opened up the world to me, with his ideas. He shone the flashlight, and let me take the lead. He asked me questions, then listened, and let me feel my way to my own truth. Up late, we’d sink in deep into conversations about Aristotle, Goethe, Steiner, Da Vinci, Saint John. He encouraged me to take risks too, to climb tall trees; to lie at the edge of cliffs and look far down; to sit on the peak of the roof and watch the sky.

I quit the program: knowing the rest of my summer would be utterly unfathomable, uncharted, disorienting. I wasn’t wrong. I lost my north star, my childhood home, my sense of who I had valued myself most to be: my father’s daughter. I’d spent my teenage years bucking up against his antiquated parameters and steep expectations, sure, yet as a result I’d become someone who felt confident with words and tools because of all the hours, years, spent by his side in dialogue, in partnership, his shadow, his helper. He’d taught me to use a weed cutter and a chain saw; to operate the table saw; use a hatchet, an ax, a maul; to drive in nails with a hammer, straight and true.

I was with him when he died today, eight years ago, on my half birthday. I secretly loved that he died the 26th; a day that we could share. It felt then as it was our final link; a secret handshake; a promise that I meant everything to him the same way he meant everything to me.

Damn.

How I wish it didn't happened that way at all. How I wish that he were alive still; that he could spend time with his first grandson, my Bean, who is so like him. That we could still spend nights up late, talking, or afternoons discussing the universe over Lipton tea and toast with cheese.

I look at Bean and see my father as a child. He has the same startling intellect; the same way with observation, with words, with plans. He understands numbers and machinery as effortlessly as if he came into this world knowing. And just like my dad, he’s exquisitely sensitive. Just the same: he’s smitten with hay fever; he wonders about god; he builds elaborate machines with Legos; he handles a carving knife with more grace and skill than most ten year olds, even though he’s only 5.

I wonder what grandchildren would have done for my father. Softened his edges, maybe? Let him slow down, linger, and enjoy without the intensity he brought to every interaction. Everything was a full-on discussion, an inquiry, a puzzle to be solved. Again, so like my son.

So like me too.

The things we take from our parents; the things we borrow, steal, keep unaware. The habits we hold on to, the ways we think, wonder, see the world. So much of who we are is shaped from what we received, or didn’t, from the people who raised us, who gave us love or failed in this enormous way.

I think of this now as I watch both my boys. My second, so like T. Sunshine, pure sunshine. Laughter always, smiles always. He’s action and play and physical finesse. He’s an athlete already, coordinated, sure footed, in love with games: with playing ball and peekaboo and hide and seek.

I didn’t mean to arrive here, at this wonderment at my sons. I meant to say: it’s my half birthday today. 32.5 and I'm at the brink of possibly going again to school, for the third time (remember, Sprout arrived on the scene unexpecedly the second time I enrolled?)

The past six months have been the best, and the hardest, and the most rewarding. I can only gape, wide-mouthed, at what the next six months will bring; nevermind the next eight years.

Who will I be when who I am now is my former self by nearly a decade? Tell me: who will you be?

Still between here and there

' It has been stormy the past few days: dark skies, fierce winds, rain at the slightest suggestion, then tempestuous blue skies all over again, and this, friends, is where I am at too.

Earlier this week I got news that financial aid for school may be a question and it's such a complex situation, our lives, our finances, the lot of it...and so here I am again, in limbo, opening my heart up wide to the universe.

I want to trust, to believe that all will be as it should; that things will align and fall into place. But oh, must it be this intense, this tenuous, this thinly threaded? Must everything come like the rains, abrupt and last minute, tearing down dead branches, and leaving everything rinsed and and astounded and green? This seems the way now, that things unfold around here.

So. A little more wondering.

More fingers kept crossed.

More breath held.

It's their busy time in the financial aid office, and so I don't get my answers any faster than anyone else gets theirs. Seven to ten days, more or less. Damn.

Will you cross your fingers for me?

Love, C

PS: I hardly have the words, for grinning, at how all your lovely offers for my art made me feel. THANK YOU. I'll be shipping the pieces tomorrow--and enjoying more space in my studio to create new things.

Studio Tag Sale

Hi! So since I move my studio to its new yummy location I've been finding bits of my art here, there, and everywhere, and I end up just sticking it on a shelf and not doing anything with it forever. Which is sad, really, since art should totally be up on a wall or enjoyed, right?

So I have this idea: I'm going to be offering a whole bunch of small art in a studio tag sale from now until the weekend. This is your chance to snag an original piece of artwork---at a price you can afford. There are some absolute FAVORITES of mine in this bunch! Some diptychs that will look so beautiful in frames... some little pieces perfect for kids rooms or kitchens.

Here's how it will work:
1. Take a look at the thumbnails of the the art for sale below. If you see a piece you love and want to have, click on that image and leave a comment that says SOLD on the piece's individual page. (First commenter to write "Sold" gets first dibs on the piece. Should they for some reason change their mind the piece will go back up for sale.)
2. Email me with your price---you pick a price you can afford and that you think is fair---and your address at christina@mytopography.com
3. I'll ship the piece out to you! Shipping will be approximately $5.50 for all pieces.
4. I may be adding more pieces as the day progresses, so stay tuned.
5. SALE WILL END FRIDAY NIGHT AT 9PM. SALE HAS ENDED

(All images of small pieces are scans of originals. Bigger pieces were rather quickly photographed clipped to my inspiration wire. Click image again on individual page to see larger.)

UPDATED 7/22: I've taken down the paintings that have already been nabbed! (THANK YOU to all of you who have given homes to these pieces!).

UPDATED 7/23: 4 new pieces added! Sale ends tonight. Now is your chance to snag an original tiny art piece! These four are absolute favorites of mine.

UPDATED: Thank you to all of you! I am so, so happy to be sending so many pieces of art out into the universe, and so grateful for your generosity!

xoxo! Christina

August, just around the corner

Summer is galloping by. Full tilt. Allready the shadows are longer as we head outdoors after dinner, the four of us. The boys head to the sandbox. T and I grab our new rackets and giggle as we attempt volley after volley in the fading summer light. Around our heads halos of insects swarm; the air is mellow and smells of the honeysuckle and roses by the front door.
In the garden things are suddenly ready for harvest: arugula every single day, spinach, basil, chives, lettuce. I walk down barefoot, often followed by one or the other boy to harvest a colander full before lunch. The best salads begin with a simple vinaigrette, chopped fresh herbs, every green imaginable, and then whatever we have around to throw in: grilled trout, quinoa, carrot curlicues, tomatoes. I will remember this summer as the summer of fantastic salads.
And of changes.

Wild crazy wonderful changes.

Your comments on my last post really filled me up. I want you to know that. Each one brought new perspective, encouragement, thoughtfulness.

I especially loved this from V Grrrl, because it reaffirmed exactly what I believe:

I think a healthy family is one where everyone’s needs are balanced against each others, where family members recognize that everyone works together for the family as a whole, and that sacrifice and compromise are part of that process.

T and I and our boys all made a promise to each other about this upcoming year. It's going to be an all hands on deck kind of year, and all four of us are in. We're all going to try our hardest to do it the first time, follow through, pick up the slack, pick up the messes as we make them, remember to take walks, exercise, eat chocolate, laugh.

It's going to be such an adventure. I can't wait.

T and I have basically become adults together. We met when he was just turning 21, and in the decade that I've known him he's either been a student or working in the stock market and I cannot even begin to describe the relief and disorientation I feel at imagining him doing work that matters in the world; work that he loves; work for a salary. It will be a learning curve for us both to discover ourselves anew in these new roles. I imagine it will be all about patience and patience and patience. Also humor. And chocolate.

For the next month I'm working my way through the manuscript for A Field Guide To Now. It's exciting to finally be in it. Things are coming together. Art, words, ideas. I'm excited by the direction and beginning to trust the process now that I've had a few days strung together of consistent project time. (That last photo is a sneak peak at a piece of art that will go into a postcard.)

I'm curious: What are your plans for August? What food are you crushing on right now? What tunes are you loving?

Also: If you could hear just one thing that you need to hear right now, what would it be?

xoxo!

Saying Yes

The summer rain is falling slantwise against the open window glass. The sills are damp, the view a duotone of green and grey: foliage and clouds. In my new studio the window looks out on an apple tree, Norway beeches, and beyond the cloud cover, the mountains not so very far off. I’ve spent most of the morning here, working, and I love this new space so very much. I love how I can move from painting to words and back; how the book is taking shape now more quickly, my ideas knitting together from one day to the next. It's happening.

+++

Now for the news:

I will be going to graduate school full time, starting at the end of August.

It’s an MFA in Emergent Media (web and graphic design combined with the technologies and storytelling mediums that are emerging from the future.) It’s an opportunity for me to be at the forefront of field that is new and growing; and to shape a new career that is lucrative, creative, and complementary to what I already do. This has been in the works for a while...this shift...but I've said very little about it here because I didn't want to jinx, or speak too soon. Last year, doing part time work, discovered how much I was into this field; how I naturally had an eye for color and design, and for shaping a vision, or ad campaign.

It took me awhile to give myself permission to consider perusing a new career; a financially viable career; a fast-pasted, demanding career. (I've shared before how it has taken me a long time to shake off my father's altruistic expectations for me as a teacher. Whew. What a process!) It also took me awhile to dream up a career that would complement writing, maybe even sustain it, instead of detracting from it (as teaching has always done.)

So I'm in. I'm going.

Of course it is terrifying. Programming languages + me? Ha. Virtual worlds? Video editing? Pure crazy.

But I have never backed down because something is hard. And this is exciting-hard. It's thrilling.

I’ve written so much about the endless tug-of-war that goes on in my head about being a mother and being more than a mother. About being an creator in my own right; a writer, an artist, a shaper of my own financial future. And about being a mother who gets down on the floor with her boys every single day: plays legos, wrestles, builds things, paints, reads stories, bakes bread. Of course I’m torn. When making this decision I thought of my boys in 18 years from now. I asked their future selves what they would think if I went for this, or didn’t. I asked them what they would resent more: me super busy through two years of their childhoods, or me unfulfilled and holding that resentment deeply.

The answer seemed clear.

They offered me really generous funding and I had to say yes or no within twenty-four hours (I applied late in the game, after deadline) and everything was topsy-turvy yesterday and the day before, deciding. T and I stayed up late, late, whispering about our futures and looking at calendars and daily schedules that seemed impossible to navigate. And then my inlaws and friends joined forces to say: we want this for you. We'll make this happen with you. (They are amazing.)

So I said yes.

I can’t believe where this year has taken me; us. It’s astounding. And awesome.

A quiet space

Here are some studio glimpses...I love it so.

And today I am trying to make one more hard, important, life-changing decision about career pursuits. It depends wholly on others: their help, support, time, etc. And it's about having kids and having a career, naturally. About pursuing graduate school now, or waiting. It's about feeling like time is slipping by (my time, and their childhood's both.)

It's about loving them hard: my boys with their sweet sticky grins and laughter and innocence, and about about wanting the best for the... and also wanting the best for me. It's about wondering if those are mutually inclusive or mutually exclusive.

It's about getting ahead or falling behind and about hopefully ending up right where I'm supposed to be.

(I'm curious what you believe: Does the universe have the outcome planned, or are we architects of the outcomes all on our own?)

Trusting, trusting, trusting.

Retrospective

Hi friends. How was your day?

I spent the day sifting through the artifacts of who I used to be. I moved my things into my new studio today (pictures tomorrow in the morning sunlight!) and spent hours sorting and perusing and riffling, and discovering again who I used to be.

Since I was twelve I’ve a notebook or journal of some kind more or less consistently, and today I leafed through several, re-reading words I no longer remember writing. It was a blast.

I’m not much of a diarist (though my earlier notebooks were certainly concerned almost entirely with boys and my relationships to them.) My notebooks usually contain the recordings of a haphazard, passionate life: words I've read and want to learn, conversations overheard, to-do lists, notes for poems, and sometimes the longer unravelings that write to discover what I am feeling in a given situation or moment. And oh, my twenties were abundantly full of feeling. Relationships coming and going; loves arduous, delightful, foolhardy, intense. And always the repeated question of whether I was pregnant or not (so glad that is no longer a question mark on the table!)

I was so holographic in my twenties; so changeable to whomever I was around. I was enormously influenced by certain men I dated—and while I’m grateful I didn’t marry any of them, I’m happy that I still know them all, peripherally, in the tender and distant way you can only know a former love, now become friend. They are all great men. Enormously talented in their own ways; worthy of the influence they had on me to be sure. Still, I was nearly transparent dating some of them: taking on their passions and pastimes the way water takes on the contours of the riverbed it travels through.

A couple of weeks ago I was chatting with a dear girlfriend of mine about turning thirty; about the angst you feel at the end of your twenties when you are told that the world is your oyster and you want to do everything you can to make sure it stays that way. You become preoccupied, maybe, with the way things appear (you check off certain boxes, perhaps: house, spouse, puppy, baby.) Perhaps you throw yourself into multiple activities. You maintain a bustling social life; commit to far to many things fearing that without all the hustle you’ll become a working stiff, a boring old married couple. Maybe you fear becoming that couple with the new baby who no one ever sees any more. Maybe you fear becoming the couple who have regular sides of the bed; who don’t talk over breakfast; who forget to hold hands in the grocery store. Already you are fixated on remembering what you used to be like when your were younger, in your early twenties, when all-nighters were effortless, and you could drink hard and not feel it the next morning (or when you had sex on the couch just because you wanted to, instead of because it was the only cushioned place in the house not occupied by a sleeping child.

I was so glad, looking back, to no longer feel that angst. To feel instead the grace that comes with sticking with things; with letting the edges soften a bit. As I said to my friend: it’s not about doing more, it’s about being more. Quietly, subtly, within the very small orbit of your ordinary, extraordinary life.

That said, when I turned thirty I had no idea how I'd feel now, at thirty two (and a half!--remember saying that when you were a kid?). I hated turning thirty. I can remember my optimism and anxiety cocktail perfectly. I was obsessed with the idea that I had missed the boat already (for becoming a writer and artist; for ever having an amazing body; for doing any kind of adventurous travel; for having a night life.)

I was sure that I was saddled for the long haul, and that in fact, it would be a haul. Thirty sucked. I was pregnant (and vomiting) and while things were fabulous financially, I hated my job more than I can even begin to describe. It unsettled me, and sucked the creative energy from me in a way that left me frazzled and certain that I would never amount to a single thing in the world. Then I turned thirty-one and had Sprout and quit my job and all of our financial security came tumbling down around me like an igloo made of sugar cubes in a rainstorm. Yet miraculously I began, last year, to see how being more means being in the moment. It means discovering the day, wholly, with joy and wonder, and living into it as wholly as possible.

I discovered grace in the midst of sadness; wonder in the thistle-sweet heart of despair. I grew disciplined with fitness, and found in push-ups and running the control I could not claim for the rest of my life.

Last year was unfathomably hard. If my twenty-five year-old-self could have seen last year she would have been terrified by th repetition (the laundry, the dishes, the endless responsibility of making food and enforcing bed times), the perpetual noise and lack of privacy, and the endless, endless worry. But she would have been missing the point.

I have a kind of tempered, hard-earned confidence now that I never had in my twenties. The kind of confidence that comes, trial by fire, through doing the difficult, painful parts of life. From giving birth; from loving two small boys until my heart could split like an overripe melon, revealing the sugary sweetness inside; from fighting and wincing and feeling small and reactive in my relationship and growing from it, to become richer and deeper, like soil made from the decomposed refuse of last season’s garden clippings. We lost a lot last year. A lot of security, a lot of known outcomes, a lot of comfort. Still, I gained a groundedness I'm grateful for. I traded muscles and determination for all the thinness and whimsy I had at twenty-five.

And I’ve begun to discover how contentment can come slowly with the unfolding of a day: with eating berry crumble and a frothy coffee for breakfast (surrounded by the hubbub of small boys); with folding sheets fresh from the dryer; with the sound of the oscillating afternoon fans and lemonade; and later, berry picking after dinner. Black raspberries are my favorite, for sure. PS:

Here are some summer tunes I've been humming along to.

Lovely things

Hello. Here are a couple glimpses from around our house today. My new studio, in our former third bedroom, is almost done. T is building a glorious built-in very simple, extra long desk for me along two walls. Finally, for the first time in my life I'll have enough space to write and do art....to spread a chapter out, or to leave a painting in progress and not have it compete for space. It's also the first time that I'll ever have a studio that isn't also doubling as a guest bedroom (T's former home office will become that space...) I am thrilled. Thrilled about having a space that is calm and pretty and mine all mine.

I can't help but feel a little outnumbered sometimes around here...as the only girl among all these loud boys (except for the cat!) I've just had this conversation with Bean who dashed pell-mell into the bathroom this morning, interrupting me as I was attending to a few stray eyebrow hairs:

"Hey little man, you can't come into the bathroom when Mommy's in it unless you're either bleeding or vomiting from now on, okay?"

"Why?"

"Because Mommy is a girl and girls totally deserve uninterrupted bathroom time."

"Why?"

"Hmmm... BECAUSE I SAID SO."

Oh yes I did.

(His drawing above is of "plans" for crane that can work at night and has multiple hooks.)

While T has was sanding and painting and hammering away upstairs, I spent the morning de-stoning little local sour cherries to make some sort of delight. I made the recipe up, and it's just divine:

For the crust: A little more than 2 cups flour (I used a cup of fresh ground whole wheat--that is a bit coarse and nutty and oh, so delicious) About 1 1/2 sticks butter. About 2 tablespoons cold water (You might need more if it's not 90 percent humidity!)

For the filling: Almost a quart of sour cherries, de-stoned About 1/4 cup sugar 2 tablespoons corn starch

I spread the dough into the pie plate without rolling it out first--because of the whole grain flour it was very crumbly and broke easily. After filling with cherries I folded the extra crust over the top and baked it at 425 for the first 20 minutes or so, and then at 375 for an additional half hour. Scrumptious. Bubbly. So good. I'm guessing it will be even better for breakfast *wink.*

Lastly, I just wanted to tell you that your comments on my last post absolutely filled me up with joy. Thank you. It's a beginning of so many things that are new and tenuous and optimistic.

xoxo! C

Manifest universe

I hardly have words for the feeling of this sweet exhalation. Yesterday, after we had given up all attachment to the outcome, T. was offered the job he wanted most. He is over the moon, and I am not even sure how to begin to put words around what this means for us.

This past year, shit, it’s been so hard people. I don’t even know how to describe to you how hard it’s been. How uncertainty has become the tint through which we’ve looked at everything. We questioned everything: our lives here, our house, even some days our marriage. It has been a year of retooling and rediscovery for both of us. We’ve taken huge, crazy, wild leaps of faith towards the things we love and believe in. Towards new careers, towards a new way of living (leaner, closer to the marrow of things, but happier too, in the long run.)

Watching T. quit his job filled me with giddy helium hope and terror both. I’ve hated his job (as an equities trader) for years, but last year was the hardest, the most crazy, the most tormenting with little income and such high stress there was a perpetual knot in my solar plexus from the worry of it.

Quitting my job (teaching) filled me with equal terror, though the thought of returning to the bureaucracy of the public school system at this current juncture in history where testing has become the paramount measure of worthiness and success, and true, creative, passionate learning is sacrificed daily and without question for hours spent at desks, also filled me with dread. It’s a bittersweet thing for sure to leave teaching behind (I love igniting that spark of discovery in kids, and continue to be passionate and fascinated with the ways that kids learn) but it also feels amazing to have taken huge steps towards my forever dream of being a writer and artist.

One of those steps was the book you helped me to start this year. It became a lifeline, a promise, a validation. Now it has become a motivation to carve out writing time in a way that I have never been able to do before: to claim it as my work, valid, true, meaningful, important.

But it has been so hard. So hard to sit and write when I felt like the dance band on the Titanic, as my whole life hovered precariously close to financial incapacity, to loss, to impossibility.

Really, it was a lot in a year: the economic collapse, a new baby, quitting both our jobs. That’s the recipe for crazy, right? It seemed irrational to us too, and yet we are a passionate team, the two of us. Even when we came thisclose to separating because the daily pressure kept increasing and worry became an ugly mask that deformed many of our interactions for weeks at a time, at the core we work together in a way that is solid and passionate and determined.

And so we hunkered down and stared at uncertainty for a while.

That’s where I’ve been.

Staring at uncertainty. Helping T. with his job search. Pretending I’m writing much more than I am (because I’ve been too preoccupied to really sink into it all.)

And then he found a job that he was so excited about. In sustainable energy. In business development. A job with a future, with learning, with potential, with possibility. And he applied; interviewed three times, leaped through numerous hoops, felt golden, hopeful, great. And then. Static. For days, weeks. Two weeks of utter silence on the other line and waiting here that felt like a slow motion heart attack.

We waited.

I got into a graduate program I am thrilled about. (Much much more on this in a separate post once the details have been figured out.)

We saw the most spectacular rainbow either of us have ever seen, right in our front yard. Bright, hopeful, and we kept our fingers crossed. (Each time we’ve made a big change, we’ve seen a rainbow.)

Static.

We redecorated our entire upstairs. Moved rooms. Built closets. Painted. (My new studio is a glorious thing, still in progress, to be finished hopefully by Monday—just in time for some serious productivity.)

Two weeks later we gave up. There were other possibilities. Less interesting, less in line with his dreams, but we began to try to tell ourselves those stories instead.

On Tuesday we took an impromptu trip to Montreal to escape the 100 heat by spending a languorous afternoon trawling the isles of lovely, air-conditioned Ikea (love Ikea.) When it was cooler we meandered the waterfront, and kept the kids up late, past their bedtimes for ice cream and playing in the fountain and pink sunset skies, and drove home under a heaven full of stars.

We painted my studio. Ultra white. (Awesome. I am so crushing on white right now.) We talked about starting in again. Looking, waiting, feeling out other options, connections, networks. We told ourselves and each other that we could make it. That we would.

We believed it.

Because if there is one damn thing we’ve both learned from this crazy hard year it’s this: what we’ve got between us, and in our little family of four is priceless. It’s everything. And while uncertainty made our tongues taste like nickels and our hearts flutter and our tempers flare, in the in-between moments, everything is so good.

Good like the roses blooming plush and sweet by the front door; like the blue and brown eggs we crack into the skillet for breakfast that we eat all together, the four of us on stools around the kitchen island; like evenings mellow and warm, playing badminton on the front lawn while the boys dig in the sandbox or chase each other about the lawn; goodness suspended in the golden moments of the present like amber.

Still, it’s been hot. Prickly, sticky, heat rash hot. And the waiting felt like forever. It became forever.

Minute after minute of forever.

And then finally they called and said he was their top pick, that he was just who they wanted.

Yes.

I’m almost uncertain about how to face this new day without that uncertainty hanging over my head. A year and six months of uncertainty, and finally, the beginning of really effing awesome new things.

Thank you universe.