learning things
I want to feel like I am living down into my feet, but today I make it only as far as my spine: curved, contoured to chair after chair, listening, scribbling notes, my mind compressing and applying information as flexibly as I know how. It’s an all out pummeling to be submerged like this on Wednesdays: 6 hours of class, everything entirely new. Like learning to moon walk, or speak Japanese, that is what it feels like to dive into RAW and HTML and CSS; acronyms becoming little dog-eared tabs of meaning in my mind.
And then to switch gears from web design and theory, to making pizza and nuzzeling sweet little boy heads.
Over warm apple crumble I’d pulled together out of sheer will power Bean said, “I love Nonna more than I love you, Mommy. Just a minute more, but I do.”
Oh, to find the quite open space to be there with him then. To hold that moment open without filling it up with my own small hurts. I couldn’t help but turn away, picking at a fingernail, eyes smarting.
So this is showing up, this is what it’s like to throw yourself towards the day with the urgency and grace and inexperience of a dancer learning new material. Some moments I feel like I am defying gravity: I hit all the deadlines, I take copious notes, my mind is a perpetual shower of sparks while I am vacuuming the kitchen floors. Other times it’s about falling hard: the way my eyes feel blurring from so many consecutive hours of screen and classroom time; the way my boys see me for less time some days than they do their grandparents.
Tonight the house smells like baking apples, and I read the boys stories in the semi-dark of their bedroom. Then I come downstairs to where the house is humming with stillness. I want to fold like an origami bird, wings to body, head tucked inside a fragile crease of paper and sleep, but this isn’t about folding. No, this time, this year, these moments, are all about learning to fly.
How to take a walk
Watch your little one take the steps down from the door confidently, carefully, the hight still a challenge. Watch him run then, gleeful towards the grass.
Pull your mind back to this: to the gravel on the road; to the clovers in the grass; to the sky above, spread with gathering clouds. Watch for birds. Watch for unexpected delight. Find a wild apple tree and shake it until the small hard apples rain down. Pick one, the pinkest one, and rub it on your shirt until it gleams. Tae a bite. Sweet, tart, fragrant. Offer it to your little one who will be reaching for it eagerly. Watch his delight.
Go to where the road forks and look both ways. Follow your feet. Go wherever. Go slowly. Instead of feeling impatient, look for four leaf clovers. Look for yellow leaves. Look for birds on wires. Look for flags, wind, wires, wings.
The point isn't about going far; or about exercise; or about anything except this: you, outdoors, with your little one. Offer to hold hands. He might take your hand in his, grabbing two fingers at a time, or he might dash ahead, curls flying in the wind. Either choice is the most joyous thing in the world. Follow the road. Follow your your heart, there, ahead of you in blue pants and a red shirt and little sneakers. Watch him discover what it means to run. Watch how he stops, starts, stops, and finds wonder in everything.
Stop to listen. There is wind. Maybe you will hear the sound of traffic, airplanes, windmills, woods, plastic bags rustling; kids calling; horns; quiet. Listen for the quiet. Hear it between the moments of sound. Wait for it. Wait until you've heard it enough to make your heart feel full.
Stop for pebbles. See how many colors you can find. Watch his delight as he finds one, just right, white, the size of his small fist. Watch as he squats down and picks it up.
Here, this one is for you.
Discover just how fun it is to put rocks into your pockets. Go ahead. Try it. Find one. Put it in your pocket. Let your fingers become accustomed to its surface and edge.
Look for beauty. Keep looking. Find it everywhere. {more...}
small discoveries
At some point there will be enough hours and I’ll know it, but for now Photoshop is like sliding down a rabbit hole into an alternate reality where everything reacts and responds in arbitrary, brilliant, and unexpected ways.
I spent the whole day occupied in this way, siting at my long white desk, sheaves of paper sketches spread around me like snow, making images, digital and graphite both.
Outside the weather has turned decidedly autumn like, and today the sky was the kind of gray that makes me moody, and it’s that time of the month where everything seems blunt or sharp depending on the circumstance, and chocolate really is the only solution.
It takes more effort to dig out of my own head space on days like these: to inhabit family life without the residual layers of mood and intellectual momentum. Still, there were lovely moments: French toast with maple syrup from our neighbors, cuddling with the boys on the floor, taking a walk down the road with Sprout in the wagon, Bean holding my hand, T's arm wrapped around my waist. Every single day I fall in love with my boys more. All three of them.
Today I wanted to share a new mix of music I’ve been absolutely crushing on: A soundtrack for making things.
Also into this project: Love 146. And this awesome, awesome site: Arbutus Yarns I love, love, love discovering your sources of inspiration. What are you crushing on lately?
almost a list about today
There were things, hours, chocolate graham crackers, kisses, tears. There was a walk down the road stalking birds on telephone wires for an art project (I've been inspired by this theme. Do you like the new header?) There were storm clouds and hours spent reading, Ong and Havelock and Surowiecki, and pages filled in my notebook ideas bursting like sparks.
There was an afternoon self portrait session when the light was temporarily good. Three self portraits are due in another week, in deferent mediums, and I've settled on a theme I think, of how we occupy ourselves in this illusive way: we are beings being. I feel this particularly as a mother--the way so many different piece of me are occupying the same space with myself. Does that make any sense at all? I am interested in the way we converge with ourselves, and are at odds. The way the words mother | writer | artist | designer don't necessarily overlap in any kind of orderly way.
There was giggling on the bed, snapping more photos, twirling, and heading for the door. There were white rocks found and stored in pockets. Wild grapes eaten that stained our lips. Birds caught in flight, in pixels. Birds in silhouette, black over blue.
There was an evening sky filled with pink, and fallapart tired boys and more tears and bedtime snuggles, and then T and I found each other on the couch, soaking up the light, soaking up each other, our fingers running lightly along each other's limbs.
Now there is night, windows are mirrors, lamplight makes circles and words fill the page.
Tell me about your day... I love reading little glimpses into your worlds.
an unexpected rescue
It wasn’t the way I expected it might happen; in fact, I didn’t expect it at all. In the back seat the boys were eating peanuts and chocolate graham crackers, on the way home from picking Bean up at kindergarten. I was thinking absently about school projects; about this book that we are reading this week, and about how it’s maybe true: you do know. Yes you.
And then we were on the dirt road, going around the corner and I could feel the way the mud grabbed at the tires of the car. I wasn’t driving fast. Slow enough that I could slam on the breaks and the tousled maple-syrup scented head of Sprout barely tugged forward at all.
“What, mommy, what?” Bean asked.
But I was already out of the car. Like that: like instinct, my body moving before I could think about what to do next.
In front of me: a car entirely flipped over, roof to the ground, in a ditch, on a rock, windows shattered. Smoke threaded its way from the broken windows.
There was a girl inside, alive, and I felt my heart want to explode with relief. Alive, and secondly, her neck wasn’t broken. She was dangling from her seatbelt, her feet were stuck, her face smooshed into the roof of the car. She had already called 911 (I am guessing here—but I am pretty sure she was on her cell or texting when she crashed—because she wouldn’t have been able to locate her cell phone if it hadn’t have been in her hand—everything was strewn everywhere among the broken glass.)
She was shaking, and I could feel my own body quiver with adrenaline and empathy. I asked her if she could move. I asked her if her head hurt. And then I carefully, carefully pulled her legs free. And she was totally unable to help me—she just shook and sobbed. She hung upside down until I reached around her and unclipped her seatbelt and then she collapsed into my arms.
She was 17. Gorgeous pale skin, freckles, smudged mascara. I held her until she could stand.
And all she could say over and over again was: “My parents are going to kill me.”
No, sweetie. They will be happy you are alive. I wrapped her in an animal print blanket we keep in our trunk for impromptu picnics and I brought her to my car. Other people stopped. One man had stopped while I helped her to get out. He was too scared to help. Afterwards he said, "You should have a medal." But it’s really not like that at all: I am a mother. There wasn’t anything else I could do.
So I kept her warm and kept her from hyperventilating, which she was slipping towards several times as she panicked about her parents. She called her work first. Then her mom, lastly her dad, who came, tall, thin, without a smile and stood beside the state trooper answering questions before he finally turned to me and said, “thank you for stopping.”
He didn’t hug his daughter. He didn’t reach for her or stroke her hair or tell her he was happy she was alive.
How does this happen? How?
My boys meanwhile were so good. They sat in their carseats for 45 minutes—because the first responders and then the EMTs treated her in my car before finally taking her to the hospital. Bean watched everything quietly, unafraid, wide eyed. He was in heaven watching the firemen come and clear the way for the car to be towed. (The smoke was from the airbag, thankfully.)
One fireman, seeing Bean, went and got both boys Junior Firefighter medals from their truck. Bean was over the moon proud.
I drove home slowly, grateful, grateful. And it was a peaceful, mellow afternoon of story books and me doing design work and Bean drawing next to me at my big long desk (while Sprout slept.) Oh how I love them, my sweet, sweet boys.
Also: What is with texting while driving? Why do people—and particularly teenagers do it? Also: her seatbelt saved her life. I have no doubt about that at all. If you have teens or know some, tell them.
Blur and beauty
So Wednesdays are the longest days for me around here now. Two studio classes with so much awesome my brain basically explodes by the time I'm through at 5pm. Then the long drive home where I can feel my body practically humming still with the energy of thought. Like a whirring halo of ideas that glisten over the surface of my skin. It really feels like that.
I'm grateful for the drive; for the almost forty minutes (with evening traffic) to pull myself out of my mind. To reconnect with my muscles, breath. It's a good transition time so that when I get home I can melt to floor level where Sprout comes to find me, folding into my chest. He strokes my bare arms with his little sticky hands. "Hi mama. Hi."
This is the hardest part and also the riddle: not being around him all day, even though when I am around him all day I long for exactly what I have now--heady intellectual conversation and artistic challenge.
Why must this be so?
Tonight T was out late, so it was just me and my two boys after their grandparents left. We said grace, ate polenta with cheese and sauce, giggled a lot. And then already it was about teeth brushing and diaper changing and bedtime and now more than ever I want to sneak in and kiss their faces. Am I missing everything by not being here every day to police the endless tussles over toys; to clean up the endless messes; to catch their endless smiles? No. That can't be. Their lives are rich with grandparents and Bean is in Kindergarten (!) and oh, how I love this crazy intense busy mind expanding stuff of being in school. Little by little I'll be posting a few more tidbits over here if you are ever interested in following along. I'm also on twitter pretty regularly, sharing all the inspiration I'm finding daily. Like this (so fun!)
It's starting to feel like fall here. The garden has reached that prolific wild state of neglect and bounty. There are potatoes with a thousand sleeping eyes waiting to be dug; crickets still in the evening; the first yellow and red leaves. Something I'm going to try very hard to do on the days when I don't have class is to get outdoors for small snippets of time. There is nothing more restorative than walking under the open sky, or lying in a field of tall grass, or feeling the wind hard on my face at the top of a parking garage with a glorious view.
after midnight | in the morning
There is a quiet now that I’m unused to. The way the house almost hums: the ambient noise of all the things we use all day, plugged into their sockets, sleeping with green blinking eyes open. The baby sleeps; the boy too, spread-eagle on his bunk. I can hear them breathing. Outside there are crickets in the dark, calling with their stick-legs sawing legs for summer to last a little longer, and also to have the of encounters with a mate.
It’s 1am. My mind is a hive of whirring thoughts. Heidegger and his mysteries coupled with all the things I do not know about how to make a video capture of my screen, or how to alter images the way I see them in my mind, and there are also things about aperture and chance and promise. And this: what will I do when the day comes fast and hard and I’ve had only five hours of sleep, backing up against a handful of other nights with barely six. How not to take the world personally then?
+++ I wake up with "you are the best thing... that ever happened to me.." running through my head in loops and I can hear the boys downstairs clattering, laughing, fighting over the fire truck. My husband has let me sleep in some, and when I slide into the skin of my waking self I feel still, like the hive of bees swarming through my limbs, each finger quivering slightly, and the thoughts I went to sleep with are still there, like a trace of sugar on my lips. I remember, I gather, the thoughts coming faster, too fast until there are words before sentences.
Heidegger. Oh my. Have any of you read Heidegger? The piece I was working through last night was called "The Question of Technology" and oh, how his circular, mysterious sentences thrill me. I am a girl for whom philosophy speaks truth. I'm versed in this. The way words, when traced to their origins reveal certain truths. I love it, even as the questions themselves make me uneasy.
I keep meaning to show up here in a more reasonable way: with a complete story, with a real update--of all the things and thoughts and ideas that have filled my days, but I can't seem to yet. So the fragments will have to do. The snippets, whenever they come, making a patchwork memory of these moments.
Noise and light
I bump into things. I walk in a slant. The sky is overcast and moisture holds onto the air like something desperate and weak. I wake up and my days are smattered with sparks of conversation: I live with three boys, two of whom can talk, the third, almost, each day his words becoming clearer. And even without words, it doesn’t matter: they make themselves clear. They yell and grunt and sneeze and exhale air quickly and with irritation through their teeth. They grab things, push past each other, point, reach. Outside are flickers and crows, calling the way such birds call: abruptly and then silence, each instance of sound a purpose, a communication with the wet leaves and the semi dark and within it, the other feathered hearts of similar birds, their dark wings folded, claws holding damp branches.
If I listen, I can hear the apples falling, and my fingers moving like a hailstorm across the key pad, a clatter like water on a metal roof, and downstairs: “No, no, get down. What is it with you boys? That’s enough of you, go play with your toys!” And then there are pots that clatter and his words don’t last.
On the road there is traffic and I can hear it, a rumble, gravel crunching, the sound of someone driving away, and in my heart, blood pounding with everything: heat, love, regret, delight, irritation. In the apple tree a solitary urgent finch cheeps, cheeps, cheeps. Above the cloud cover in the quiet sky, there are jets crossing, trailing contrail and higher, satellites, without sound, no atmosphere to hold the rumble in, no small thing to contain the noise of their velocity traveling through the dark among the lighted memory of stars.
I linger where it’s quiet, reluctant to go downstairs to where the littlest is making a racket with wooden sword, the bigger one has some small toy he’s tinkering with, discovering what makes it’s lights flash in the dark. Then he counts his quarters, four by four until he gets to seven piles and he comes to tell me, I have seven dollars, a shadow at the doorway. A shadow, everything, bearing sound, until the light begins and spreads.
I need your help!
First of all, a little bit of giddiness: I must just have pause here to say how THRILLED I am to be in an MFA program.... To have weekly artistic assignments in multiple mediums I have never explored. To be engaged in daily discussions about how ideas and words and images shape who we are. YES. Indeed. It's been such a long time coming and it feels incredibly incredible to be here finally. So awesome. Now that that is out of the way, because you are all reflective and brilliant and generous and truly amazing, I have a favor to ask. I need your help. 5 minutes of your time and a little bit of your brain to be exact....
One of my first assignments is to explore some ideas around design--and to create some type of presentation based on that exploration. I've decided that because my art and writing has come to life here on this blog through my interaction with you--that I'd like to ask you a few questions and then turn your answers int a super cool mind map representing how you collectively think about the answers to these questions.
I need your info by Friday at the latest...All that is need is a one or two sentence response to each of the following questions. (You can leave a question blank too, if you want..)
What do you get by being a contributor? My undying gratitude--and a a glimpse at the final product (if you'd like.)
UPDATED: Thank you to everyone who contributed. I can't wait to figure out how to represent your awesome responses. xoxo!
an impossibly possible project
I feel like I am in the looking glass, slipping towards an alternate view of everything that I know, everything I can imagine, be, do.
I’m wearing a blue dress and it’s just me and the quiet and then, eventually, NPR as I wait at the stoplights and I want everything to feel the way it does tonight: full with opportunity, yet not saturated with the stress that will inevitably come as deadlines press and the hours cannot hold enough. Right now, anything feels possible. This is always the way things are before you begin them. You can be anything, right up until the moment when you try.
Then it’s all about sweat and grit and talent. I’m not leaving any room for doubt.
I have the feeling that I will be coming here often with words; with the little scraps of thoughts I invariably carry around in my head; with the wonder of all of it, and the terror too. I’m the only one in the program with two small kids. The only one living at the end of a long dirt road thirty minutes away. The only one nearly bursting with words for a book. It will all be possible, right?
If there was ever a time this blog had anything to do with balancing motherhood and a creative life, it will be now, for these next two years. I'm thinking it should be my new byline: My Topography: An Impossibly Possible Project.
{grin.}
I want to remember this: just before parking for class tonight I watched a middle aged couple, both blind, navigating the sidewalk together, their bodies a dialogue of halts and movements, their dark glasses reflecting the setting sun. They held each others arms, each tapping out a path for future steps with a long white stick. They encountered the park bench, a tree, and navigated around these obstacles with a kind of faltering grace. Without sight, they were wholly devoted to the task of being present in the moment of walking.
The only place I can be is right here, encountering the unexpected with joy.
I also wanted to tell you that I'll be posting links and inspiration and essays about emergent media and design here. (But I'll also be taking full advantage of all your awesomeness here. Stay tuned. I have a project already in the works that I need your input on.)
August 25:: Working Together
WORKING TOGETHER
We shape our self to fit this world
and by the world are shaped again.
The visible and the invisible
working together in common cause,
to produce the miraculous.
I am thinking of the way the intangible air
passed at speed round a shaped wing
easily holds our weight.
So may we, in this life trust
to those elements we have yet to see
or imagine, and look for the true
shape of our own self by forming it well
to the great intangibles about us.
~ David Whyte ~
August 24:: Treehouse
Today I said yes.
Yes, and a pile of wood destined for the dump became a flying boat fort. He built it nearly half himself. Singing, hammering, adding knobs and buttons and tubing and the appropriate tree fort signs. And then he came in for lunch and over rice with tamari and avocado slices he drew this absolutely awesome self portrait.
"Why is it white just around your head?" I wanted to know.
"Because I'm sticking my head through the hole in my treehouse, and there is space between my head and the hole. Don't you get it, Mommy?"
And then I did get it. I love the way he thinks.
August 23::uncertain ordinary (and a list)
Hello there.
I hardly know where to begin tonight. I’ve been playing tag with the delete key. Typing words, then flitting over with my pinky finger to delete them all, and again. It’s a peculiar choreography of indecision and exhaustion: the day was full of talking. Some days are like that, full with friends and family in such a way that the quiet becomes slender mortar in the chinks between the noise, and I want to creep away and scribble little quiet notes onto bits of imaginary paper and slide them into the slight hesitations between hubbub and bustle, between making bread and taking phone calls, meeting a final deadline for work (that job is through now, on to the wild blue yonder of freelance + being a full time student) and sharing lunch with a friend and her wee ones, all the while circling about wiping counters and trying to pinpoint exactly where I am in space.
I am not sure where I am. That is the truth. With this sprained ankle, I haven’t been running and I’ve lost that sense of forward motion that I have when my feet move down the dirt road, the sweet scent of grass drying thick in the air and the crickets singing, every night louder. But it’s not just because I cannot run. Things have been out of the ordinary for so long I no longer really have any memory of what ordinary is.
Uncertainty, on the other hand, I know something of that. This year has pummeled me so often with last minute curveballs and second chances and unexpected offerings that I’ve started to develop a new set of reflexes. I’ve learned to duck and bend, to bow in prayer, to hold my breath and then release it, and then to wake up and carry on with the day without knowing where it will end despite the fact that every ounce of me craves control and certainty and sure outcomes. I’m beginning to understand that we never really have any these things, though sometimes with more resources (time, money, etc.) we successfully concoct elaborate facades that allow us think we do.
But for now it is about this. About facing the uncertainty and saying yes, and saying yes again. It’s about counting up the little things each day and finding the utmost joy in them: the white cat crossing the bridge with a black mouse in her mouth; the red cows chest deep in clover; the corn, taller than my head now tassels waving against the blue, blue sky; the fat four-leaf clover I found when I looked down today at the edge of the field; the apples turning golden and pink and red.
It’s about just going, slowing, being right here with this life. Being.
I’m terrible at it, but I’m learning. I’m learning that it’s okay to never be finished. I am learning that the real blessing is about not being finished.
It’s about having more to do.
Does this make sense at all?
As I gear up for school this week, which feels just as foreign as it would feel to be saying that I am heading for heading to Antarctica or the moon, I have no expectations, only happiness tucked into my pockets, and wonder, and a little trepidation too….and I would like very much to hear what new music you are listening to (so I can make some new mixes for driving) and also what is inspiring you right now.
Mine:
This blog. And this one.
This poem.
This artist.
Some music
A piece of clothing (or a few)
Your turn. : )
August 22: decided
So I am going.
It's for certain. Even though things will be tight, tight, tight financially. And also time, it will be a figment, and invention of imagination, a delirium, a dream. Who cares? I'm going. A full time student, this year, this week. I'm giddy. Happy. Content. Terrified.
I didn't even imagine this last year, now.
It's been such a year.
A year of big huge changes. Of beginnings. Of this: every day I face uncertainty on the page and keep going. I put my words here, and here, and here again, around the moments that I am trying to say. It isn’t arrow straight or clear, but it’s got a pulse, and it keeps unfolding, like something new and wet, or something very old and furled and fragile, and I keep waiting, and showing up, fingers crossed, with more determination in my rib cage than I’ve ever had for anything. This book is happening. There is no other way.
And now school too. Complete reinvention. The beginning of so many things.
Have any of you done this: full time school + full time parenting + full time writing?
Full, full, full.
{big smiles}
A love letter::1.5 Years
I have been wanting to write you a love letter for a long time now. 18 months more or less. Since the day I met you to be exact.
The first thing I did was count your toes and fingers. Then I kissed you, still new, still wet, still scrunched and red and purple. Oh how I loved you in that instant. Irrevocably. Utterly. The very first thing you ever felt in this world was me; my skin, my beating heart beneath it. We looked at each other for forever. You were content in that moment, and in this world still you are content; filled with laughter and delight.
Now you arrive in my room in the morning with your hair invariably tousled and softer than corn silk, your face radiant with smiles. I lift you into bed, and while your big brother is dressing himself in some outfit involving numerous Hawaiian prints or plaids, you lie with your head resting on my chest, and hum a little song. We begin nearly every morning like this, and you smell like heaven.
Next you climb up the mountain of pillows to look out the window at the world below us; at the dawn becoming day; the purple mountains; at the sky spreading with early morning light. Often when your brother comes to snuggle in, you join him, pressing your cheek against his cheek, grinning, cooing. How lucky he is to have you, spilling with affection, as the one who adores him above all else in the world.
I’ve been wanting to tell you a hundred things, wanting to snatch a moment to write them down, and here are some: you play with balls with sheer delight: tossing and catching as though sport is a thing you came into this world knowing. You lift up your shirt and point to your tummy to be tickled. When someone hands you a doll or stuffed animal you hug it instinctively, and carry it around tenderly, rocking it in your arms.
You play peek-a-boo, hide and seek, and a hundred other games of your invention with your brother or by yourself, contentment surrounding you like a halo of bees around the sweetest honey. You stack blocks, and jump from precariously high places with more ease than I ever imagine is possible for someone your size. You are coordinated and physically adept. You climb both up and down our steep staircase; you sit at the stools by the kitchen counter without assistance; you drink your milk or water only from a glass (refusing sippy cups entirely.)
You eat independently and willingly: tomatoes, chicken, corn on the cob, tuna, PBJs, Indian curry, peaches, anything. You love cookies, fig bars, milk, berries. When you are eating something and you discover something you’d like to be eating more—you simply remove whatever is currently in your mouth and hand it off to me. Thanks little dude.
You cannot help but smile. You smile at everything, always. You have begun to say words: mama, daddy, mooah (more), ba (ball), wa wa (water), no, oh nooo!, uh oh, uh-uh (what we say to you when you are doing something you should not be), papa (your grandfather), nona (grandmother), though words have come slower to you than they did to your brother, just as drawing isn’t something you are naturally drawn to: you want to eat the crayons or paint your hands with markers instead.
You have the best giggle in the world. You sleep, easily, effortlessly.. This was something I never wanted to write about because I feared jinxing it; feared that it would change; but no, it’s just who you are. We put you in your crib for a nap or at bedtime and you simply go to sleep, humming to yourself softly. You sleep for two or three hours back to back. You are easy going in every way: even teething only results in a fuss here or there, and you only cry if you are hurt or if your brother takes a toy away from you. Really. You hardly ever cry. Mostly you laugh. You smile. You climb onto your red radio flyer wagon and stand—not holding on—and surf back and forth and grin with glee.
I guess the truth is I expected you to be like your brother, who was all intensity from the minute he was born. (This morning when he came in to snuggle with us after dressing he was already talking, telling me about how to tie different kinds of knots. He’d pause every so often to visualize, then gesture with his slender hands and he described the images in his head. And this is what he was always like. Intense, articulate thought. He squirmed, wiggled, fought sleep. He cried often, and still to this day gets upset more easily than you. My sweet firstborn: so thin skinned and aware of the world.) I guess I couldn’t fathom that you could be so entirely different, so entirely your own little self from the get-go. But you are, oh you are.
And you blessing. I love you so. I love you, I love you, I love you.
August 15::The only way
This is what I will keep saying, even when things seem impossible, or impossibly hard, or just straight terrifying, or daunting, or uncertain. Over and over, yes.
Two phrases in my head today (the second one makes me giggle):
"There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way." ~ Wayne Dyer
And also: "If you're going through hell, keep going." ~ Winston Churchill
August 14:: Country Fair
Still on the August Break and posting every day over at flickr.
Yesterday we went to a country fair. Fun. Sun + sun, livestock, lemonade, maple cotton candy, ribs, tractor + truck pulls, pig races and rides. Sprout's first carousel ride = total glee. An awesome day, except: my gimpy ankle and the long drive home.
Today I feel nostalgic for summer, even though it's here still. I hate that it's ending. I'm not ready for the yellow leaves that are already on the ground; the cricket songs; the shooting stars. I want the live long light and languor of July a little longer. Although the peaches now are making me smile, and the promise of apples soon. Today the sky is pale, pale. The color of sun on cement; the color of white with shadow. The color of a day slipping by with wind in the trees. I want to nap. There are things I must do: two chapters, an InDesign project, always a to-do list. Two weeks more of summer and then who knows. Everything upended, likely. Everything different. I don't remember how to be in class. Don't know, yet, still, if I will be. So it goes.
How are the last weeks of your summer being spent?
One more lesson on the things I cannot control
Here is the truth: I was a certified swim instructor for years. I have taught every kind of person to swim: a 2 year old; an elderly woman; a teenage boy who only spoke Chinese; an autistic 4 year old who would sink blithely, fearlessly to the bottom of the pool if I so much as blinked. I was a lifeguard for years. In California. At a water park and at hectic health club pools where kids would do the deadman’s float just to addle my brains.
Simply: I love the water, and I’m good in it. I can tread water for minutes; swim a mile at a reasonable pace; do the butterfly; snap a flip turn; float forever.
But teach my kid to swim: this, somehow I cannot do. More...
Interlude
Running last night, after a day that felt so very long, I tripped and sprained my ankle. Damn. It was shockingly swollen immediately, but our awesome neighbor who is a doctor said it wasn't a particularly terrible sprain (thank god) and that it will take about 3 weeks to heal.
Hi universe. How are you? Oh, what? You haven't noticed that I have a lot on my plate this month huh? Well I DO. So can you please ease up a wee bit? Thank you very much.
August 10::Tuesday
I am permeable and split wide open like a summer melon overripe with the sweetness and sun and with all the things that are still unresolved.
I am like a diver, on a cliff with a blindfold leaping on promise, daring to dare.
I am girl caught in the morning light, caught by the beauty until I can hardly exhale, wet hair dripping, light slipping golden and honeyed across the floor.
I have just exactly these superpowers: I am a questioner, a seeker, a storyteller, a finder four leaf clovers everywhere; I am brave; I love the ones I love to a fault; and I find my salvation day after day among the pebbles on the path, the spider’s weaving webs, the sun rising and then setting in a sky filled with rain and contrails and wonder.
What are your superpowers?