Dreaming in the morning
I feel like I am a feather or a tumble weed; something blown about across the vast space of the night. The morning comes too soon. I haven't dreamed enough. I wake, go through the motions: coffee, eggs + toast, say goodbye to T and the big boy (whose birthday is tomorrow!) and pull out my laptop, intending to be productive. But I can feel the way everything resists. My mind still feels slight and suggestible and tossed about, and when Sprout goes down for a nap I crawl beneath the covers of my sun striped bed and sink into sleep again.
Except I don't feel like I am sleeping: I'm not gone entirely. I've slipped into an almost lucid dreaming state. At first projects replay on the inner screen of my mind: the code and the physical dynamics of an interactive piece I'm making spins in and out of focus; other things arrive as well, rotating, repeating, overlapping. The cat leaps up onto my bed and for an instant I am awake, in the room, and then gone again under the opaque sheath of dream.
This time I get up again, go downstairs, do things: except that I am dreaming. My body heavy beneath flannel. My mind testing the length of thread that I can follow through the labyrinth back to myself.
Eventually I begin to have vivid dreams: each one complete, like an envelope with a snapshot in it. In the last one I am standing on sand dunes by the water, holding the strings of five or six yellow and orange helium balloons. I ask the friend I am with to take a picture, and then I run and leap, and feel the way the air catches beneath my feet before I finally land; the water warm, the sand pebbled and golden.
When I do finally wake to Sprout calling, it's like he is calling me from the other end of a tunnel, and I can't just snap to. I trail myself. I feel the way the dreams still flutter like prayer flags. I look about the room expecting that I will be wearing the clothes I dreamed that I put on. My disorientation is almost physical: it has a weight and color to it. And then finally I am here again, in this body, bare foot, and stumbling down the hall.
I haven't been getting enough sleep and I think I'm running a deficit. I think I haven't been dreaming enough. Not metaphoric dreaming; real dreaming. This kind of dreaming that filled with irrational beauty and wonder and disorientation and utter belief in circumstances of disbelief. I can feel the way I need this dreaming time to be wholly creative. It's vital, but I can't quite put my finger on how.
I'm curious: what are your dreams like? How do they affect your creative life?
What I see when I blink
Last night I came home late from working on a collaborative project and slid beneath the covers to find the embering heat of my guy, dreaming. Now the morning is here again, too soon, jostling, clattering, and filled to the brim. I blink, and when close my eyes I see my life in snapshots, like sunspots, the minutes compressed to just these instances, mid air, mid action. My big boy with a voice that sounds like the bark of a dog who woke up at 3 am feeling like he couldn’t breath.
Blink.
The little one in a pointy Hannah Anderson hoodie and his brother’s Sambas running around with jam on his face and a paci in his mouth.
Blink.
Squirrels that have figured out how to leap from a stack of broken wooden lawn chairs through the gravity of air to the bird feeder, where they twirl with fat furry bellies exposed, eating seed with their dainty little paws.
Blink.
The startled chickadees who fly down to find these furry beasts their tails whirring, their cheeks chock full.
Blink.
Out the window the icicles taller than me; the sky bluer than the ocean; the clouds gathering over the mountain tops like the breath of dragons; the floor that has not been vacuumed in days.
Blink.
Everywhere I turn there are things: to be done, held, watched, waited for, unraveled, sorted, replied to, invented. This is life, mid motion, captured.
Blink.
More glimpses of winter moments captured here.
spark + blink
I feel like I am a forest fire; the way I move, the way I do, the way I am being in this life right now, this day, this week. The minutes are match sticks, my forward motion flint, the hours bursting into flame. Blink, the day gone in the heat of the moment.
Outside the snow is high above my head where the snow has been plowed to clear the narrow path for our cars to leave or arrive. I should be out shoveling, carving wider paths for our feet: to the woodpile, the chickens, the front door, but I am not. I am in the a state of perpetual mid-production; I am not in motion only when I am sleeping.
I miss running outdoors; I lingering. I need some unwind time in a big way, but I don’t think it’s going to happen this week. There isn’t a single thing that can drop off the list of absolutes except exercise, intimacy, and sleep.
What do you do in the midst of weeks like this?
in this moment
Just stopping in quickly to say hello this morning with these photos from my sunny, sunny bedroom... and to nudge you to go play. Do one thing. Today. You'll be so happy. (Promise.)
I'm finishing a big milestone for the book today (later than I'd hoped. Typing with fingers crossed makes things difficult.) And it feels good and terrifying and true to my heart. I wish I could tell you more, but I don't want to jinx it.
Today I'm crushing on this sweet song.
Reading the archives over at Slow Pony Home.
And swooning over every single afternoon here.
Flirting with chance:: it's your turn
I want you know know that the best thing I rediscovered through this project was just how amazing YOU are.
You are generous, sensuous, playful, romantic, and thoughtful.(Yes, you.)
You nudged me stop and take care of myself and pause; drink warm tea, luxuriate in a foot bath (the first I've ever given myself), throw myself in the snow; dance, twirl. Mostly the whole thing pushed me outside of my comfort zone and made me contemplate when I started taking things so seriously.
I was struck by how infrequently I really allow myself luxuriate in the moment. My life has gotten so busy that I'm uber focused on tasks and projects most of the time. If I stop to linger, it is to browse through my favorite photography blogs, to read something, or to stare out the window. Text and images have become the only way I fill up this hunger for beauty that lives in my soul.
My fingertips and taste buds, tendons and feet were grateful to be remembered; to be used, engaged, made to move, revel, relax, reach beyond.
How often do you flirt with chance? When do you allow yourself to step outside of your ordinary? Do you allow yourself the chance of random conversations with strangers? Moments lingering over tea? What senses do you nourish throughout your day? Which do you neglect?
To thank you, I am sending you on your very own chance encounter mission this week. It felt so taken care of by you in this unexpected way. I am so grateful for the opportunities you offered me to dig into ordinary moments of my day, and to find in them so much beauty. I hope you feel the same.
HOW TO PLAY:
In the comments share a link to your blog with photos (and words) documenting your discoveries. One person chosen at random will receive an original tiny art piece in the mail, and I'll feature some of my favorite of your photos/posts later this week here.
YOUR MISSION: This os permission to allow yourself to play; to follow whimsy and to explore who you are in this moment.
1. Make yourself your favorite breakfast. Use extra butter. Cream. Real maple syrup. Bacon. Whatever it is that you love . 2. Buy yourself tulips. 3. Take 10 minutes and pin, tape, or post some images that you love to a wall in your workspace. 4. Go outside, set a timer for 4'33 seconds and just breathe and listen. 6. Buy a pint of raspberries. Stick them on your fingers like you did when you were a kid. Eat them one by one. Don't share. 7. Do something for a stranger: buy the person in line behind you coffee, pay a toll, fill a parking meter, give them a flower.... 8. Clear a space, get down on the floor and stretch for five minutes. 9. Dance to this song. 10. Take a self portrait, of your face, in good light. Revel in your beauty.
Document in some way. Ready. Set. Go!
The possibility of chance
Look what T gave me for my birthday! I can't wait to take some pictures: but the stakes are high. With only 8 pictures per pack of film, I want to find just the right moments. Hard for this girl who likes to squander photos: taking so many of everything, always hungry for the beauty that the image captures and reveals. Thank you all for your awesome birthday wishes. I am a lucky girl.
Check out the sidebar for my new list. 34 before 34. Yes, croissants made their way back onto the list., dreamy and unrealistic as they are. I've been crushing on all things French recently (including this lovely mix.) The trick for such a list is dreaming big and dreaming small. I like to think I do both. May the goodness manifest.
Today I need your help. One of my assignments for one of my classes this week is to inject an ordinary routine or day with chance--and to document the outcome in some way. Will you play along?
In the comments list one thing that you think I should do, find, see, taste, hear, smell, or touch tomorrow. Keep in mind these things need to be things I can do realistically within the scope of an ordinary day...but they should extraordinary or unusual in some way too! I will try to do everything on the list and document the results.
I have to say, I'm kind of giddy about this. I'm hoping you play along. I can't wait to see what chance encounters your ideas envite.
Happy Thursday!
33
Today is my birthday. 33. It feels like it's going to be a big year. This past year was awesome, heart-wrenching, and amazing. It got the ball rolling for so many good things.
This year: so many more good things.
Today: so many things to do, including attending a first grade preview evening at Bean's school (marking another thing that fills me with wonder: I'm going to have a six year old in a month.)
Tomorrow: a little more downtime to share a new list with you. 34 before 34. I think I did pretty well on my list for this past year (on the right sidebar.) Certain things just stopped being as important (query letters), or realistic (like camping with a toddler or making croissants from scratch: what was I thinking?) The manuscript is in progress. Thursdays and Fridays are my writing days. It takes so much to birth a book. So many hours stitched together. I get antsy when I don't get the time. I love every minute when I do, although there are still days when the whole thing terrifies me and I procrastinate something fierce.
There is something wonderfully satisfying about making such a list. The simple act of writing each small or big dream down pulls them closer to realization. I am convinced. (Do you write yearly lists? If you do, I'd love for you to share.)
Love, C
At the window:: a morning poem
I am at the window eating oranges sent from a friend of my mother-in-law’s from Florida: the only place now in our country without some fringe of snow,
and they are sweet fire.
I suck the juice off my fingers, sticky and grateful as fat white snowflakes fall again toward the earth beyond the glass.
I am still not tired of watching.
Still not tired of the way the world is now, like a line drawing in graphite, all gesture, all movement, all white on gray on white;
and so I watch until I feel things settle within like snow, softly
I watch, till the blue jays arrive in the lilac bush for the oily seeds I put out at the feeder and my soul drinks up their color: blue on gray on blue,
and the sweet round fire of the orange,
and I am sated.
A morning snapshot
So far this morning Sprout has..
...pushed a stool over to the counter while I was in the bathroom, and started swigging maple syrup from the gallon jug.
...found a package of guitar picks and insisted on me opening them, giving him one, and then taking down a guitar for him to play.
...pushed a stool over to the refrigerator, selected a cup, and attempted to fill it with water (he succeeded. I then figured out how to implement the child lock feature. I'm not sure if I can figure out how to undo it.)
...tried to pour the remainder of the water out in the sink and poured it all over the floor.
...found a dishtowel and mopped up said spilled water, muttering to himself all the while.
....stuck a pacifier down his shirt and got it stuck in the leg of his pants.
...put on funny glasses (above) and made hilarious growling sounds, thereby uproariously cracking himself up.
....asked for foamed milk, and then a spoon to eat it with.
I love him.
Circling
I stand by the heat of the wood stove, circling the present moment in my head like a dog preparing for sleep. It’s snowing again, although dawn was bright and clear: the truest pinks and the most pale persimmon clouds. Now everything is back to white on white, and the bird feeder needs filling.
Today I am torn by what I want to be doing and what I ought to do. All morning T and I attempt conversation, fail, and attempt again. At the root of it: we miss each other desperately. We both want to fold into each other’s arms and have an afternoon just us in a café somewhere, but instead there are boys, and homework, and book work, a party tonight, and so the day ends up mostly being about adjacent circles rather than concentric ones, and in our longing we miss our mark, push each other away, and feel the distance more acutely.
If only I could stitch all the moments together today, I’d have a quilt of him to wrap around my shoulders now as I write. Him, in Sorrels in the driveway pushing the snow blower into knee-deep snow; him on the couch, buried under the lot of us this morning, all trying to tickle him and make him laugh; him cleaning the downstairs bathroom toilet, shirtless and muscular after a workout.
Now he’s taken the boys and gone on errands in spite of the snow falling harder, and I wish I could have gone with him, but reason and responsibility and the off kilter awkwardness of our morning convince me to stay instead.
I’ve been interested in exploring this thread interaction lately, since I wrote this post. I'm fascinated with the way people navigate the in-betweens and daily happenings. Neither hilltop nor valley, but the places where things even out and we’re just in it, doing our lives, side by side. There isn’t always grace in these moments, or courage. Often tiredness paints the whole picture a bleaker hue than it would otherwise be (and today this is most certainly the case.) Living with someone and loving them never ceases to be startling to me; unexpected, delightful, or painful to the point of wincing.
So this is my life. I always grin when I say this in my head, encountering myself in present tense, inside this moment (now: at my desk with cords strewn everywhere in the silence of a house now empty of the boys that fill my world. So this is my life: and I am so grateful I get to share it here, and show up, and find the threads of your stories too in the comments.
I am so interested in all your responses to my last post about blogging (thank you!)
I’d love to know: what are a few of your current (new) favorite blogs? Where do you creep, peruse, become inspired?
Today, I am loving this beautiful piece by Pixie. This is awesome. These images caught my eye.
And this.
The medium
What's different? Do you think that blogs are dying? Sharing about Sprout potty training seems off topic now, oddly. Even though today involved a Sprout + poop + the destruction of his brother's legos story that I'd tell you if we were in person, and I wouldn't have thought twice about sharing it in 2006. Is it just because he's my second and my focus is elsewhere--or is it because the topic doesn't fit the medium any longer? I can't decide.
So I'm curious: what kinds of posts/blogs do you love? What holds you and keeps you coming back?
+++
Second semester has started + I'm getting back in the swing of things.
Some inspiration this week:
Crushing on this mix (good for writing to.)
Twyla Tharp's Creative Habit
And this project (I'm so hoping to knit this into the upcoming weeks. Love, loving all the beauty in this pool.)
Taking this as a challenge. Planning to share my answers here this week.
What does your day look like right now? What are you inspired by in this brand new year?
How to love someone after eleven years:
Wake up. Shower, fumble for the hair dryer, grab a load of laundry before heading downstairs. Find his face across the room over a skillet of eggs; find his eyes, and meet them. Feel how his smile fills you up like good bread. Fill the washing machine, add soap, press the illuminated buttons and wait for the machine to start. Walk away, walk back, keep walking until you encounter the warmth of his back. Reach out for him even though things are unresolved and will be unresolved again. Wrap your arms around him and press your body close until you can feel his heat through your shirt; through his.
Say only a little until after you have had coffee. Pick and choose between complaining and being heard. Notice the things that you love: the way he makes you maple lattes and kisses the boys heads always and again and laughs and the silliest of their jokes. Eat eggs fried in a cast iron skillet with the pancakes he made from scratch while you showered. As you dressed you could hear your little one asserting: “I do it, I do it” (his first true three word sentence.) The pancakes are made with cornmeal and buttermilk and tenderness.
Fill the bird feeders and make small talk until you are present in yourself and the torn edges of sleep have been brushed aside like cobwebs swept. Then laugh. Then say what you need to say, and listen as he says what he needs to say.
Learn to ask questions that don’t assume answers.
Questions that are empty like a jar before rain. Questions that offer neutrality: how can I help? What do you need? How do you feel?
Learn to ask yourself these questions too.
How do you feel?
What do you need?
How can you help yourself?
Let the spinning orbit of your day pull you in: finding snowgear for two children and leaving and arriving; buying gas and water and Cliff bars. Kicking snow off your boots. Laughing in line at the lifts. Across the table over rootbeer and salty fries find yourself reflected in his gaze (again and again this is the way it goes.) Find your heart spread across the surface of his words, spreading out like ripples in the lake of his laughter. A decade feels short and long, just as days often do. Reach for his hand and feel his pulse.
unfamiliar familiar
This is where I always slip: where the snare of expectation catches me off guard and I’m unaware that I’m expecting anything until it doesn’t happen and my feelings are dashed.
Sometimes even then I don’t know what I want. Sometimes I just can’t say what I’m hoping for, and it’s one of those times, back at home in the small world familiar things that are my life: fat snow; hazelnut shells in a bowl; T beside me at the table eating curry + chicken the fire flickering behind us; the boys after their bath with damp hair and new pajamas; marbles rolling around on the floor; laundry to fold.
I don’t expect the vulnerability I feel until I feel it. It’s jet lag maybe; hormones; whatever.
“We’ve known each other for eleven years, it’s safe to say I know you,” he says.
We’re in bed, lying stiff like boards, shoulder to shoulder. It’s not an argument really, and yet it is.
“I just want to feel like you’re curious about me still,” I say, not really knowing what I mean.
And yet it’s exactly what I mean.
We're so familiar we’re unfamiliar some days.
And sometimes it’s easier to give in to the laws of physics; to push away; to walk away; to look away. Equal and opposite reactions.
Tonight we move our shoulders towards each other in the dark. A small concession, but the night is already half gone.
Everything is invented
{Maria Kalman}
I love this. Oh yes. How true it is. The opportunities we make for ourselves; the parameters we define, achieve, exceed.
How many times do you find yourself circling in the small circumference of your day: your world defined by the limitations of work, by small children with sticky hands; by whatever it is that you see as the perimeter for what is possible?
“There are so many things that you’re told you can’t do. So many things that can stop you. You can either be like the elephant that is hobbled it’s whole life—so it doesn’t know that it is free once the hobble is removed, or you can do things your own way. You cannot live a life of fear.”
The woman telling me this is the flight attendant on the last of my three flights. She is beautiful, in her late forties, with milky chocolate skin and sparkling eyes. She wears a flower diamond ring on her finger, and her eyes light up when I ask her if she’s ever been sky diving.
“No,” she says, “but it’s something I’m thinking of doing. I’m afraid of heights.”
Then she tells me, “I went parasailing in Mexico and it was incredible. The air was fresh, and the world was so quiet up there above the water. It was like I was an angel.”
I can’t help grinning. I love that every single assumption I’ve had about this woman has just been shattered into a million pieces.
“Hang gliding has always been on my bucket list,” I tell her.
And she looks at me then, head tilted to the side, and in that moment we both get it. We’re two of a kind. The kind of women with bucket lists; with wanderlust; with adventure bursting from the drawers of our hearts.
“What is the number one thing on your bucket list?” she asks.
“To publish the book I’m working on,” I tell her and her eyes light up.
“I’ve always wanted to write,” she says.
So I say, “Tell me. Tell me about your life.”
And so she tells me how until two months ago she worked as a successful registered nurse. How she climbed the rungs of success in her field; spent her career traveling: starting a hospital in Nicaragua, bringing medical supplies to villages in Africa; exploring the streets of Rome.
“Resilience is about being able to change,” she tells me, when I ask her how she got from that to this; to being a flight attendant.
“Change is what makes people thrive. It’s when they get stuck in the same patterns for too long, when they’re afraid to change that they become unhealthy.” And because she wanted more wanted more balance in her life, she quite nursing and became a flight attendant.
I want to ask more, but the plane is already in its descent. We exchange email addresses, and she smiles as she presses hers into my hand.
When the plane hits the runway with a thud, I'm still smiling.
Yes for resilience. Yes for adventure. Yes for living your life without fear.
+++
What do you believe is possible? What would you do if limitations didn't exist?
Flight + Fruition
It was fascinating to start the new year in the sky. To watch the curve of the earth appear below, as the plane lifted off, at once heavy and weightless as it cut the clouds and traveled upward improbably into the wide expanse of atmosphere above the earth.
It’s a wonder to feel the way anything is possible this very instant, always and again.
Right now.
Today.
In this new year.
I left before dawn, after the requisite security line removal of belt and shoes, jackets, laptop and toiletries laid bare for the world to see, and then no coffee because the kiosk was closed, I was off. The sky was ink, the runway lit by lamplight, the cabin dark.
I held my breath: waiting for the feeling of air catching under the wings. I used to love airports. They meant adventure and freedom: Italy, Germany, New York, Puerto Rico. I loved the bustle, and energy I felt at airports, the way everyone was coming and going, the expectation and possibility that was almost palpable in the air. But now the world of airports is defined by orange alerts and leaving. Leaving my two sweet boys and T, who woke with me and carried my bags to the door and kissed me softly on the lips before I left for a week to visit my sister and her new sweet little baby boy.
In the air the earth grows small and spectacular at once. The land stretches out in an intricate pattern of rivers and mountain ranges overlayed with the persistent geometry of human life: grids of roads and fields and buildings that look, before dawn like twinkling circuit boards; light bordered by dark, by deserts, by lakes, by the black of pine forests and mountain ranges, white-capped volcanoes rising up above the clouds.
Three flights later I was in Oregon, circling then landing next to a field of grazing sheep. Live oaks, and mossy sycamores; hills steep and rolling under wide West Coast skies. I walk out into the bright afternoon sun disoriented by the time change, and hug my sister who looks beautiful and tired and happy all at once.
It stuns me to realize how I’ve already forgotten how newborn time is alternate to the reality of the rest of the world. How time is defined by the moments of feeding, and the moments of sleep in between. How life exists entirely within the circumference of doing nothing but holding the baby, and doing small things: running the dishwasher, or righting coats on the rack; the world soft and quiet and wrapped in the cocoon of a now that the rest of us forget, caught up in the plummet and pull of a faster pace.
I’ve already forgotten the way this is everything. Small sighs, milk down your shirt, toasted cheese, and the gift that is five consecutive hours of sleep. It’s a time out of time: the moments of falling in love and being split open. It is the beginning of everything.
I sit with my nephew in the crook of my knee and write; body memory returning, time traveling backwards to that newborn time with Sprout, new and warm and dreaming.
I try to explain how this is now and then it’s over, forever.
+++
Last year my word was action.
And it was fulfilled again and again with steps taken and decisions made towards a life more fulfilling, sustainable, and full.
It was an incredible year: T quit his job and found new work that he loves; I went back to school and launched A Field Guide To Now (still holding my breath on this....More (good) news and rewards—finally—to be sent out in February!) and my boys learned to play together: moving through the house in a tornado of action, transforming couch cushions into forts and blocks into castles.
This year my word is fruition.
Fruition (n.) 1) attainment of anything desired; realization; accomplishment: 2) enjoyment, as of something attained or realized. 3) the state of bearing fruit.
Yes.
+++
I loved reading your comments in your last post; loved to feel the force of your intention being put out into the world. I'm so looking forward to what this year brings. To the adventures, the discoveries, the things that will come to fruition.
Manifesting (+ a giveaway!)
In one of the pines along the drive, a Rhode island red; I scooted in among the sharp twigs, collected her akimbo wings and splayed yellow feet, then pressed the plumpness of her soft body up against my chest. She buried her face in my hair, and I could hear her breath coming fast and steady. It always surprises me to hear birds breathing. Like the sound of wings; fluttery, raspy, faint.
Today Bean is building a cardboard box fort with the empty boxes from Christmas and Sprout is napping after smashing his chin on his brother’s bunk bed, and coming up with a mouthful of blood. Today there is a broken glass jar pushed accidentally off a windowsill. There is laundry in haphazard stacks; strawberries cut lengthwise in a bowl on the counter; marbles scattered across the slightly sloping floor.
Today there is the chapter outline of my book waiting for me like a jigsaw puzzle shaken in a box without a lid. My desk is strewn, my fingers already stained with white paint and gel medium from setting up a few paintings for later work.
Today is almost the end of the year. The last day. And this is my messy, ordinary, glorious life. I am so grateful.
It’s been an amazing year, and you’ve helped to make it so. Truly.
Today I want to know: what your words and dreams are for the year that will begin tomorrow. One word, or a list. What do you want to manifest?
I believe in this. I believe in it deeply. I have found again and again and again that the things I ask for manifest when I ask clearly, when I put my greatest, deepest wishes into the palms of the universe to hold.
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.
Concerning all acts of initiative there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and endless plans.
That the moment one definitely commits oneself then providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred.
A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way.
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Begin it now. ~Goethe
So. What do you wish to begin this year? What is the wildest, truest thing that you want to have happen?
Leave your answer here, or link back here with a post on your own blog, and two of you will be the (random) recipients of these pieces of orignal art!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
(*Leave a comment by midnight, January 1st, 2011 to be eligible for the giveaway.)
UPDATED: I selected the winners using the random number generator at random.org. CONGRATULATIONS Ashley and KitKat! Please email me with your address & I'll ship these off when I get back next week! xo, Christina
beautiful words + wondering:
Yes. Answer this. What do you want the universe to manifest?
And some words today to bring you closer to an answer, or inspiration, or delight:
Everything is going to be alright.
{I want today to end with a chunk of progress made on the chapter outlines for the rest of my book}
The best part of my day
Right this very instant slushy rain is falling hard and downstairs, at the kitchen island my boys are playing drums on an array of kitchen implements. They are loud, they are ruckus, they are delighted with themselves. Bean is singing along at the top of his lungs in his thin, sweet, off-tune little voice. Sprout is mostly quiet except for when something is taken from him, and then he hollers as loud as he possibly can.
These boys are the sweetness and marrow of my life.
Every morning T wakes up at about 5:30 and when Bean hears him, he comes skittering down the hall to our room and crawls into bed with me while T showers. Often, as the water starts to run, Sprout wakes up and calls, and T brings him to me, and so I doze in magic. One sweet tousled boy head on each side of me. They root around beneath the covers and snuggle in. And I dream, drift, wake, nuzzle in. It’s my favorite part of the day often: these first moments of barely waking with my boys, when we’re all trailing dreams and dozing.
When T is showered, they follow him downstairs for eggs, toast, and frothy milk and I shower alone, drenched with warmth, with the fragrance of soap, with a few moments all to myself.
Then, always, the day begins. Today: gray on gray on gray. Crows make dark silhouettes among the trees. A squirrel knocks snow from the sleeping branches of a spruce. Birds come and go at the feeder; and outside in the snow bank where Bean and I built a fort yesterday afternoon, water drips silently as the snow melts.
Tell me: what is a moment in your day that you spend with the people you love? What's it like?
Also: go watch this.
in the morning
Snow dresses the world in magic when the sun shines. Frost makes fractal whorls on the glass panes of the windows in the garage, and snowflakes, each one spectacular and individual, glint and sparkle across the wide expanse of field where tracks crisscross, revealing other secrets: the paths of squirrels and foxes going at dusk to the stream.
Today the mercury is shy despite the sun, and breath catches sharp in our lungs and rises up in steamy clouds. Today the boys are home. The house is filled with their clatter, laughter, disagreements, and small storms. They leave behind a trail: marbles, blocks, honey, bread crusts, airplanes. They wear at my patience. They fill me with delight. They are, always and again a lesson in living right now. In shifting gears abruptly. In being here. Right here.
Some days it’s not where I want to be. Some days, like today, I feel myself longing for the unremarkable quiet of an empty house. Instead there are sticky fingers and boys still in pajamas. There is spilled cat food, and snow melting in puddles at the door, and boys who want the things that sustain them: attention and stories and be seen.
And so I do. I turn to Sprout who is climbing into the chair beside me, and press my face into his warm head. I get up from the table and carry my empty cup to the sink; gather things to make bread dough. Rinse my hands. Wipe the counters clear.
Together we will knead the bread and then place it in bowls in the sun. It will rise there all morning in the warmth, and then we’ll shape it into loaves, spreading it with cinnamon and sugar. I’ll let them lick their fingers and I’ll turn the oven light on. They’ll press their faces against the oven door and look. They’ll wait for the timer to ring and then eat slices of bread, fluffy and warm with melting butter for snack.
I’ll let this be the present: warm bread and sticky fingers and sun.