BTV to PDX Day 5: Cheyenne to Ogden
In the morning Interstate 80, the only road west out of Cheyenne, was closed at the pass. Inclement weather and nothing to do but wait it out.
First we went for breakfast at a place that seemed afraid we'd miss the fact that its all about eggs. Every surface, wall, and menu emblazoned with sunny yolks and ovals. (Of note: the eggs were terrible.) Then we snatched a glimpse at Wyoming history at the museum, learning that eons ago Wyoming was a tropical wetland with magnolias and palms and swampy places. When the climate shifted, the slow magic of geology turned the swamps to coal, and the rest is history, as they say. Hello oil fields and coal mines.
I could have looked for hours at the beadwork moccasins and headdresses of the Shoshone and Bannock peoples, but the boys were more impressed with the enormous head of a bison and other artifacts from the time of the early settlers. Each one revealing both recklessness and bravery. Rifles, spurs, tin pitchers, whisky bottles, washboards, sheep wagons, pistols, chaps.
I keep wondering what the boys will remember, if anything at all. We took a photograph of them out front standing in the stirring wind, their backs to an enormous cowboy boot statue painted with every Wyoming emblem you can think of. The have those quirky big-kid grins on their faces, the kind that happen when you tell them to smile. What isn't captured is the way Bean kept poking Sprout in the ribs to make him giggle. What isn't ever pictured in any of the pictures we take, are all the snippets of conversations, the eye-spy games, the arguments, the annoying repetitive noises that one or the other of them makes to drive everyone nuts, or the way they say "I love you" to each other out of the blue. What's never in the picture is the sweet scent of the wide open space; of raw snow, of sage brush of stirring wind. After a moment of jostling in front of the boot we ran for the car, checking the road reports.
The Interstate was open, and loaded with snacks from one of those health food stores that smelled exactly the way every health food store of my childhood, we were off, the landscape changing before our eyes.
Up, up, into the thin air and blue sky of the pass. Tears came for me. I couldn't help them. The West feels like home in an inexplicable way. I was born in the bowl of the Rocky Mountains, and it's as if that high-altitude air and jagged geography indelibly stamped my soul.
In Laramie we found the best coffee of the trip; an unexpected win. At the counter, the pretty barista with a feather at the end of her braid, and a guy on the other side of the bar were discussing reincarnation. Outside, the wind never let up and the trains of the Union Pacific kept barreling past. Laramie. I kept thinking of the book I read as a kid: My Friend Flicka. One of the best books. It took place outside Laramie, I think, and in my minds eye I can see the herds of horses. The big thunderhead clouds in summer. The way things were.
Soon we were crossing the Continental Divide, marking the place where the rivers no longer run towards the Atlantic, and instead slip and slid towards the wild, untamed Pacific. We saw antelope run, and a lone coyote with its shaggy salt colored coat blur into the sage brush and sun.
Everywhere the hills were traced with the terraced zig-zags of cattle paths. Small ponds, dried in the sun, left salt-slicked circles in the planes. Birds swooped, bright among the purple blooms and blowing grasses. Snow fences hunched weathered in the sun, and at their backs the last of winter's white stuff, greying in the shadows. And then we were among the red-rocked land of Utah where the mountains suddenly towered above us, the heavens gathering close is the sun slowly set.
BTV to PDX Day 4: Omaha to Cheyenne
We woke to a violent storm. The sky the color of slate. Thunder rumbling low, and breakfast in one of those enormous mid-western diners where everything is super sized: the people, the waffles, the ice-cream scoop sized dollops of frosting on every cinnamon bun. I can't quite capture the disappointment on the boy's faces realizing that, "maple syrup" in the middle of the country means something made corn syrup and flavoring. Crestfallen, they both disdainfully opted for jelly on their waffles instead.
We looked for better coffee for the road, and found it at a little Blue Star Cafe, and good chai too, then merged onto the highway, winding out of the Omaha sprawl. Mega churches, and strip malls. Fast food franchises. Gas stations with signs so high you can see them for miles, and then wheat fields. As the morning wore on, the rain stopped. The sun showed up somewhere above the prairie, flirting with clouds forever huge. The kind of clouds you can't help falling into with your eyes. The kind that keep you awed at the window, as the world rushes past.
75 mph speed limits. 3-container big rigs. Field after field, widening and warming till the air wind-whipped and sweet. At a rest stop by a small pond we ran loops laughing. The boys, all three of them perched on the top of a metal gate at the edge of a field, so I could snap a polaroid picture (one of just a few we took along the trip, tucked into the glove box for safe keeping.)
My bangs like Farrah Fawcett's, in the unending wind. Crucifixes at gas stations. Cowboy hats at tourist traps. Every conflicted feeling about Buffalo Bill's fort, with it's 20-foot tall statue of some Native American chief. Oh this big country and the history that made it. The buffalo that were lost to greed almost as soon as we arrived; the first people soon after; their way of life forever obsolete. You don't believe it quite from a text book, at least not the way it's real suddenly, crossing the way the first settlers did through the wide belly of the country. Seeing the landmarks that kept them on course, and imagining the people who lived in this big country before them, walking with silent feet and eyes that could read the language of the clouds.
Now there are statues and arrowheads at gift shops and an ache in my throat I can't explain.
Later, when it's my turn to drive, the sky darkened again, and a cold, whirling dust storm barreled down upon us. The sky became violet then snow-gray. The car rocked back and forth as we passed semi trucks, both hands on the wheel, Wilco's drummer Glenn Kotche playing a wild set on Radio Lab. The temperature kept dropping until along with dust, there was sleet. Wyoming up ahead, and at the next rest stop word that past Cheyenne the interstate was closed because of weather.
Onwards. Arriving in Cheyenne around dinner time and wondering at the emptiness of it. The presence of Oil. The predominance of pick up trucks and freight trains. Mexican for dinner, the first authentic tacos in ages, and a Corona; then smuggling the dog into a non-dog friendly hotel in a quilt. Giggling. Jumping on the beds. Doing laundry. Dreaming.
BTV to PDX Day 3: Chicago to Omaha
It took a half a day to leave Chicago, and after that it took even longer to find ourselves at the edge of the Great Planes, crossing into the wide expanse of prairie that is Nebraska. It wasn't what any of us expected. We'd been warned about boredom; about the endless flat expanse of field and sky, but none of us were bored. Even in the back seat, the boys seemed lulled by the wideness of sky and grass: Reading books and drawing pictures and watching the world go by. Lunch on the banks of the fast-moving Mississippi
Outside, the landscape was a soft and rippling quilt of grass and cottonwoods and creeks and farms with circular irrigation systems. The kind that from above make great round crop circles. Wheat fields, and also, genetically modified corn. Miles of it. Newly planted. The earth raw, the day ending slowly. Violet and vermillion for hours as we chased the sun west.
Omaha after dark, later than we'd planned. Carrying the boys in from the car. Falling into bed heavy-lidded and grateful to all be there together, and then waking early to hard-falling rain.
BTV to PDX Road Trip: Day 2
After the first day of ill-fated adventures and leaving the state we'd called home for nearly a decade everything became a kind of blur. The kind that happens around the edges of a photograph when you snap the shutter too quickly and the subject twirls in motion. That is what we were: in the motion of moving West. Each day we spent following after the sun, following until the sky turned to violet and then gathered up her skirts filled with stars, and then finding some small hotel to tuck into, our movements of unpacking for the night and packing again in the morning becoming more routine and efficient as the day wore on.
After the first day of leaving, a shift happened. We stopped being in the abrupt present tense of logistics that had held us so sturdily for months, and slipped instead into a more fluid state. I kept scattered notes in my molskeine, but never had time to sit with them, recording details in paragraphs the way I thought I might. Instead, I found myself simply becoming the journey.
I spent hours just watching out the window--or attentive at the wheel, and at night fell into whatever bed we'd claimed as ours for the night with fresh gratitude.
Here then, are the glimpses I remember.
Buffalo to Chicago
Bruce Springsteen singing Erie Canal. Crossing the uppermost corner of of Pennsylvania along the wide flat Lake Erie; so wide it looked like some gentle sea. The boys, rolling like puppies down the grassy hill at the rest stop. The sweet scent of petrichor, after rain began to fall. Bushes of singing birds at the rest stop in Ohio. Indiana slipping in and out of focus. Finding our way into Chicago after dusk and realizing immediately everything anyone has ever said about the city is true. It's intensity and grit reared right up to meet us: Drivers hurtling past in their cars, merging without warning, road markings and traffic signals taken more as suggestion than regulation. Humans hurtling across the intersections without warning, strung out, running recklessly. Pitbulls. Boom boxes. Bright lights. Dark allies. Sweet music. Fierce beats. All of it. And still, the city begged to be loved.
At night from the 19th floor downtown, the city put on all her finery for us. Lights glittering in the constellations of loneliness and companionship all up and down the glass-windowed high-rises, and in the morning, while T went for coffee and to walk the dog, the boys jumped in giddy glee on the soft beds and the morning sun flirted with the rooftops, and blushed, finding herself reflected in every window-glass.
For the boys everything was thrilling from that vantage point in the sky, but seeing Daddy walking the dog two blocks away--and then having him turn and wave up at them at just that very moment, that felt like magic. And then the parks and the waterfront and the Little Goat Dine with it's menu of brilliant collisions. It's above ground subways with trains clattering overhead to delight the boys. The smell of chocolate brioche in the air. The confused circles we made looking for just the right coffee shop. The biggest Whole Food's EVER. The overwhelm of it. The best fish tacos. Restocking on coloring books and sticker books and chapter books and mazes at Barnes & Noble, and then off, later than we'd planned to cross the width of Iowa.
BTV to PDX Road Trip: Day 1
The trip is a thing happening between the parenthesis of ordinary life, and when I try to remember, all there is are a hundred snapshots. Moments like sunspots. Brief, fleeting glimpses. The scenery and weather changing before our very eyes. Memories happening in 15-minute intervals between the constant motion of the car, the hum of tires, the music playing, chasing the sun West.
Before we left, we spend one final day packing. It was a day that felt like forever. It was a day of saying goodbye for the last time. Hugs among half-filled boxes and packing paper. Returning borrowed dishes, pawning off plants, and arranging boxes into the space-saving geometry of things stacked 12 feet high inside the U-Pack container that will move across the country with us, but on its own alternate route. It was a day that lasted until midnight., till the point of sore feet and stupid-humor, as we filled the final boxes and tossed the remnants of things that live in the secret, shoved places of a house. The contents of junk drawers. The objects stuffed into the cabinet above the refrigerator where no one ever goes. Two dozen candle stubs. A large plastic tupperware full of gin and bourbon and tequila we inherited with our second ever rental and have carted from house to house without ever using it, for god knows why. The box of two thousand wooden popsicle sticks. On and on.
The next morning we left from the in-laws over muddy roads, waving goodbye, tears fresh on our cheeks. The rest is happening. Now. In a blur.
This is some kind of record.
Day 1: Burlington VT to Buffalo NY
A stop at the Vergennes Laundry for chocolate croissants and espresso, the owners pressing a bag of gingerbread cookies and torrone into our hands as we left. Crossing the bridge across Lake Champlain. A goodbye of sorts, gulls circling overhead, and from the backseat the thrilled narration: “We’re on a bridge! We’re crossing a bridge.” All trip, Sprout has been in love with the bridges, of which there have been many.
In the Adirondacks the trees shifted from maples to birches and poplars. More pines. Clear streams filled with snowmelt. Trailers, with yards filled with the stuff that other people have garages for. Towns made of almost nothing: five blocks. A library in a low-slung cement building painted blue.
Because we packed late, we left without the lunch supplies we’d intended to bring and stopped too near the point of hunger at the first place in the next hole-in-the-wall no where town. In we trooped, the four of us. Exactly the kind of place you'd expect: paraphernalia on the wall from just about everything. Old bar jokes. Postcards. T-shirts. Newspaper clippings. Three other tables were occupied. Almost no one talked. There was no music. We placed our orders, pulled out coloring books and waited. And waited. And waited. The waitress came and went. Serving people around us until finally I asked, and she said, "Really, we've been slammed. Five tables came in at the same time." We waited. Finally, more than an hour later, we walked out. Bean burst into tears. Sprout fell asleep. We got greasy pizza. Bean walked around in circles devouring it on a grassy lawn. Later, everyone laughed.
We charted a route to Niagra Falls. We passed outlet malls and road signs for Albany and then for Buffalo, and finally for Niagra. We crossed the river, our eyes drawn to the place where, even from a distance against the city of Toronto on the other side, the spray of the thundering falls rises hundreds of feet into the air. The falls were what they are. Pale green and white. Water moving with unimaginable force, tumbling, hammering the rock below. Across the river, a ferris wheel and docked riverboats. Around us, people taking pictures. People smoking. People pointing. Walking back we passed a large family with all the women wearing burkas. Sprout duked away, scared until I described as gently as I could the way faith and geography and story all make up the reasons we are different, and then he was glad and turned and stared and stared.
Then the worst part. The part that seems so unimaginable I almost didn't want to write about it, but it's simultaneous hilarity saved us. Bean got a severe electric shock at an Indian buffet. There. That's the worst of it. It's true. It happened just like that. We circled around the tourist center of Niagra Falls, which was oddly vacant on a Thursday afternoon--before the beginning of tourist season. The Seneca Casino loomed large. India restaurants dotted every corner. We like curry and nan. We picked one where we could see the car from the window (we're sporting a big roof pod) and went in. Naturally, it was deserted. The kind of place with shiny clear plastic table clothes. Some kind of burgundy carpet. Floral patterns. And a buffet. A lone server greeted us, r's rolling, hands waving. "Where would you like to sit? You can have your pick."
The boys were hungry. Bean wanted to be in charge of his own plate, and somehow, serving himself a scoop of lentil dahl he touched one thing and something else at the same time: one metal buffet counter and another other one, maybe. We aren't exactly sure. Then he yelled. And flailed. And couldn't let go. T reacted faster than I, pulling him off the table, but not fast enough to prevent the indelible image of his convulsing face. I scooped him up. Held him closer than close.
His heart was like a humming bird. The owner rushed over when he heard our outcry. His alarm set off a ruckus of others all emerging from the back rooms, all talking at once. Someone offered to give us food "for free, of course" to go, but we were already pulling on our coats. All I wanted was to leave, faster than fast, my heart close to Bean's little fluttering heart.
He was fine, thank god. Fine, but terribly shocked and shaken. We ate at TGI Fridays, and after a strawberry milkshake and mozzarella sticks he revived to the point that he looked up at the TV's above us and said, "I don't get it Mommy, why would they show a Wendy's commercial in a TGI Fridays?" Apparently what I do for a living is rubbing off. Within an hour he was telling us about Silver Bullet Trains and Space Shuttles, talking a mile a minute as per his usual. It was late, and by the time we were at our hotel, we collapsed into bed only to find that Clover ate the shoelaces out of Sprout's Converse shoes and then threw them up in the night. (Something she has never done before, and never since. In fact, the rest of the trip she's been the perfect travel dog.)
Somehow though, in spite of the pitfalls, what we all were inclined to remember of our first day of this road trip are the moments of laughing and sweetness: Running at rest stops, hearing the thunder of the falls, watching Clover chase squirrels, taking family selfies, playing Big Country in the car, and watching as the landscape changed outside our windows.
Next up: Day 2. Buffalo to Chicago.
Leaving + Lucky
I feel so unbelievably lucky. Thank you to everyone who snatched up artwork. It was the fastest pay-what-you-can studio sale I've ever had. So fast in fact, that I had no chance to open it up to everyone. The good news: I'll be offering another sale this summer with lots more bird paintings (so much love for those, and so many requests!) and, just as soon as I get settled I'll be making a sweet postcard pack with gorgeous glossy prints of all the birds. That should be available at the end of May. I put some work up here, just for you to take a peak if you'd like.
It's been a week.
Wrapping projects, saying goodbye, and planning for things to come. I've been listening to this playlist on repeat, and periodically bursting into tears. The moments collide. Everything possible. Everything lost. Everything new.
Saying goodbye sucks. There are people here who are a part of my heart. People who make me smile every single time I think of them. I want them all to come West with us. (Maybe they will. A girl can hope.)
Because of the way spring break happens for the kids, yesterday was their last day of school. We've been the luckiest with their teachers. So good. So intuitive and skilled and heartfelt. The boys came home with goodbye cards and treasures from the year. They'll land in a new school, find new friends, chart new paths of course. They'll find their stride in summer camp. All of it. Still.
Their last day at this school felt precious and abrupt. Like it wasn't real. Like it didn't happen. Except there it is: a book from Sprout's class and teacher, "To the boy with the sunlight in his eyes." They know him well. Whenever he talks about moving he refers to our new geography in it's entirety. "To Portland, Oregon." It isn't a real place yet. The only place that's real is here, amidst boxes. He's found the packing paper and has turned it into a wide drawing surface: tall castles and taller trees.
Bean is off with his friends, saying goodbye in his own boyish ways. Playdates one after the next: biking and tree forts and inventions. Exchanging addresses. Mailing pre-emptive letters. It's only pretend-real to both of them.
"Mommy," Bean says with a playful gleam in his eyes. "I know that you and Daddy are the Easter Bunny."
I look at him: tousled hair, black and white checkered Vans, his skinny shoulders in a soft grey sweatshirt, his hands full of electric circuit board equipment. How is any of this possible at all?
The inevitable flow of time.
The way we move on: grow, and outgrow ourselves over and over again.
Here we go.
Studio Sale
Welcome to my third first-come, first-served, pay-what-you-can studio sale! I am so honored to have your interest for my work, and am incredibly grateful for your generous hearts and encouragement. Your support makes so much possible. Thank you.
UPDATED: Wow! Pieces have been claimed quickly. There are only a few left (some of my favorites, actually!). Check them out:
Elephant | Snowy Fox | Gorilla | Oriole
If there isn't anything you see that you want. Stay tuned. Sometimes pieces end up finding a second home :) xo/C
Early access sale ends on Wednesday, April 16th at 8pm, EST. At that point I'll open the sale up to anyone not signed up for my newsletter. The entire SALE ENDS when all the pieces are claimed, or on Thursday April 17th at 8pm(so I have time to ship everything out before we head off on our road trip!) PLEASE NOTE: I can only ship within the United States for this sale.
The biggest adventure: forever, then all of a sudden
The winter stayed and stayed. Snow came, then fell again with a vengeance, white, whiter, small hills gathering curbside. Softer snow layered with frozen rain and sleet. Our own glacial record, keeping the things we lost: A single mitten, pocket change, our sense of permanence, the feeling of home. It was the coldest year on record. Biting. Sharp. I spent from November until April in Sorrel boots; wore my grey woolen beanie hat indoors; stopped smiling at strangers (not for lack of interest but because it required too much exposure of cheek and neck). The days grew longer, but the cold lasted. And along with it, a growing, restlessness, a gradual anxiety; a realization that this, here, might not be enough anymore for many reasons. Some more complicated than others. The least of them being the weather, but the most acceptable to share about here.
In retrospect the universe was probably conspiring. In the moment it felt like everything skittered right up against the edge. Things happened slowly, then all of a sudden. It felt like it feels when you almost fall on black ice, but catch yourself just before and walk away, your heart still beating hard.
Everywhere else spring arrived. I watched on Instagram. People had cherry blossoms, camellias, daffodils by the arm-full. Here, it was snow or days of spitting sleet. Temperatures in the low teens. Hunched shoulders. Worry. The feeling of having outgrown our circumference. Uneven footing. A flirtation with change. The idea of moving West. An inkling. A passing remark here. A half finished sentence there. What-ifs showing up in my morning pages; the words “spend more time on the Pacific” in my 37 before 37 list; and then we started looking in earnest. Then we flew out, fell in love with the city of roses and bridges, saw friends, ate so much good food, interviewed many places, and T landed his dream job.
Or something. Something like that. Sort of. Minus the hundred thousand anxious moments. Minus all the things beyond our control. Minus the anxiousness stitched together to make days, and the logistical conversations we had over and over again on repeat.
Now of course we forget it all. We forget the way we hunched against the cold because today there is sun, and sun, and sun. People are using leaf blowers. The neighbor's parakeets are flirting. Cardinals are making nests. The lake is melting, and the are is warm enough finally to sit in shirt sleeves, grinning.
And We’re moving.
Bittersweet. Wildly giddy. Thrilled beyond words. Tired. Heart-achy. Delighted.
And it’s all happening now, this very minute. We leave in 2 weeks. Hello Portland.
Finally I’m moving back. The Pacific is whispering. A new bungalow on a new street. A city to fall in love with. New paths to chart. New stories to tell.
And before that, goodbyes and then a cross-country road trip. The boys. The dog. A route mapped through Chicago and Wyoming and Idaho to see some of this big country for the first time. I can’t wait and I’m not ready. I’m over the moon, and I’m sad to be leaving friends behind.
Needless to say: I have added incentive to make the studio sale happen. I'm finishing a few pieces, and scanning them all. Fingers crossed it will go live tomorrow. Maybe Tuesday. Like always, it will be a pay-what-you-can sale, but I'll be setting a minimum this time just to offset materials and handling. I make all items available to my newsletter list first--then open up whatever's left to anyone who happens by this little blog after 24 hours. (Fair warning, last time everything sold in less than 12 hours.)
Ok.So enough about that. Tell me everything you know about moving. Cross-country trips. Portland. Everything. Love, C
*Studio Sale + An Update*
[gallery ids="15593,15594,15598"]
Hello dear friends,
I'm so sorry I've been quiet here. Spring is gradually arriving, and with it, many changes and new directions that I'm excited to share, but can't quite share yet. I was traveling this past week, which put me behind schedule for when I'd hoped to have my studio sale at the end of March. But it will be happening mid April. (Jump on the list if you want first dibs.) There are lots of animals in this particular round--many pen and ink drawings and a few small canvasses. Lots of resurfaced original postcards.
If there is an animal that particularly speaks to your heart, let me know and I'll try to ink one up for the sale as well.
No promises, but when someone asked if there'd be a few red foxes in the mix, I got inspired and made a few sketches that I'm excited to finish.
Now that I'm back from traveling of course I got sick: A full-on head cold, paired with a stint of solo-parenting, and a tight project deadline. Oy. Still, the tiniest glimmers of spring around here have me giddy. It's been such a long time coming, so much cold, so many layers of snow I could hardly believe that after a few days of spring sun the ground is bare.
Soon, crocuses will show up among the litter of last year's leaves, and overhead in the tangle of bare branches that snare the moon every evening as it climbs the blueing twilight sky will become a riot of leaves and blossoms. Each year this happens, and each year, I'm in awe: That a seed unfurls into a plant; that bare twigs become the ruffled delight of greening leaves; that the light lasts longer and longer till the boys beg to go out after dinner and play and play well past when their bedtimes. I haven't the heart to call them in, until the final rays of sunshine slip beyond the edges of our world. Then they come, muddy kneed, smudge-faced, grinning like the rapscallions they are. It's been a long winter around these parts.
Tell me what you're up to, what spring adventures are underfoot, and if you've got something your heart is set on that you'd like for me to try to draw.
xo/Christina
A few things I've been up to lately
Hello friends!
I've been so busy lately I haven't had nearly as much time as I would like to stop in here and share stories.
Here are a few things I've been up to lately:
:: Writing on Medium
:: Creating a new series of art pieces (this giraffe is one, in progress)
:: Planning a studio sale for the end of March (sign up if you'd like to get first dibs.)
:: Working on a few very cool client projects. I especially loved helping to launch this shop into the world.
:: Reading the Little House series out loud to Bean (and feeling very glad I'm not that kind of pioneer.)
:: Watching Sprout become an amazing artist.
:: Reading this book, and this one.
:: Listening to new music on Beats.
:: Writing every morning in a notebook (I've loved responding to these prompts though I haven't had time to share much here.)
:: Doing a 20 minute vinyasa routine every morning
:: Drinking tea (instead of coffee), skipping alcohol, going to bed earlier, and taking a zillion supplements... and feeling like my adrenals are saying thank you. {Hello energy! How I've missed you}
:: Walking out onto the icy lake with the boys (it still feels bizarre and precarious, but I love all the wide expanses.)
:: Making big plans.
:: Really hankering for spring (and we have many inches of snow in the forecast this week!)
What you've been up to this March? Crazy how time is whirling by these days.
Sojourn: The temporary state of now
sojourn |ˈsōjərn|
noun
a temporary stay.
Since December I've been doing yoga every week-day morning. Just a short, half hour vinyasa routine that ends with a few minutes of meditation. Every morning I show up, bend and bow, and discover my hamstrings are still as tight as the day before. Every morning show up, find my breath and focus my attention--and then loose it; find it, then loose it again.
Some days it's less of a struggle, other days it's more so, depending on how willing I am to take this sojourn into the present; how patient I am to sit with non-doing. Sometimes I count slow inhalations; other times I really am just there, in my breath; but many times I'm impatient, bucking up against the uncertainty of the now.
Without a clock, just breathing, time does it's own thing: Slowing to a maddening pace so that five minutes are an eternity of interruptions and distractions. The dog comes wagging. The boys wake up. The winter light glints through the chinks in the shades and flirts with my closed lids. Then all the worries I carry come crowding up, knocking their carpet bags and banging their shoes in the muddy entrance way of my mind.
If there were a clock, a countdown, a promise of what's next I could be patient I think. I could let go, sink in, and sojourn into the temporary state of now. But with the wide expanse of temporariness stretched out before me wide without a way to mark it's passing, each day I am challenged just to sit. To breathe. To be empty, and then to fill.
This has made me consider all the ways that I struggle with being in between, in the middle, in a temporary state of non-action, which is where I've been in my life quite a bit lately as we make plans and circle round them slowly, uncertain about a future that has yet to arrive.
I love this list of prompts so much, I've decided to join Amanda in writing every day as often as possible this month.
To be 5 years old (with gusto)
You turned 5 (last Thursday!) with gusto. For the week before your birthday you kept asking when you birthday would be and then counting down the days. At night you’d wrap your arms around my neck and hug me close, and whisper: “My birthday is in____days.” And I’d say, “It is” and rub your nose with my nose and stare down at him completely disbelieving.
Remember how the time between birthdays felt like an eternity? Remember that sweet feeling of anticipation that last nearly until you’d burst? Would that we could still feel that luxurious stretch of time, easy and slow with the salty sweet of anticipation like taffy being pulled. Now the days have a staccato feel: dominos tumbling one after the other in a rapid-action blur. They come they go in an instant. I keep thinking, wait, didn’t I just turn 34? How am I 36? How did two years possibly pass? Let alone 5. Let alone, my last, my baby is 5 and not a baby at all.
When the day finally arrived, you woke terribly early, and in turn woke Bean and you both came tumbling into our room. It was a school day, so there was less snuggling in our bed than might have been had it been the weekend, and when we all made our way out to the kitchen your cheeks were flushed and rosy.
On the table, crystals and shells around his plate, a fat rose in full bloom, a birthday card from Granny sent in the mail, and beneath the table, leaning against a table leg a present (the first of several) in rainbow striped paper.
“Oh my gosh!” you gasped grinning, your body practically vibrating with glee. Yet you sat down and slowly opened the letter, savoring every bit of the delight, the envelope, the card itself, the small packet of zinnia seeds she also sent like colored suns.
Even with all your gusto and volume, you have this remarkable capacity for delayed gratification, as though you really understand what the moment offers. How it’s here to delight you only for now, and then it’s gone for good.
When you unwrapped the stripes you found a a scooter, like Bean’s but smaller. You’d waited four whole days since Bean’s birthday, hoping. Next you were a whirl of speed; a streak of delight. Then waffles, then backpacks, then school, where your kindergarten teacher put on a puppet show in celebration of your arrival on this earth, and we sat there with you watching; watching you among your classmates, sort of reeling internally with wonder. Five feels old. It’s the last year of smallness.
Oh time, hold still, hold still.
In the evening you were beyond ecstatic to get the “pirate stuff” you’d asked for, and went around the house decked out in mardi gras beads and a Captain Hook arm, yelling at the top of your lungs. Fearsome with your eyepatch, and so darling I just wanted to keep hugging you even when you squirmed free, and when Nonna and Poppy gave you their gift, you literally pumped your fists in the air with delight: a long coveted lego set. Something about a museum break out. Good guys and gad guys of course. Escape vehicles. Fire hoses. You and Bean became so absorbed he had to be coaxed back to the table for the ice cream cake you’d begged for.
So many candles blown out to mark the start of a new year around the sun for you, sweet little one.
You are my teacher of gusto and joy.
At the cusp between wonder and fact
Tonight you made a fort before dinner: a quilt over two white kitchen stools, set up just so.
In went a metal tool box (your inheritance from my father) In also went your metal lock box: one you saved for and paid for yourself from the Barge Canal vintage shop on Pine Street where we go every so often, and you poke around, curious fingers in everything, always loving the things that come with lock and key.
Now you and your brother lie on your bellies, or sit cross legged, your heads bobbing up in the quilt. You light the room you’ve made by flashlight, and haul in 8 ball, assorted legos, and Honey Honey, your faithful alligator who has become your steady companion since we moved.
Honey Honey first arrived in a green box when you were four, in the upstairs hallway of our house at the end of the long dirt road. The box was on the old sewing machine table that we’ve since given away.
It said: Hello, I’m Honey Honey, and I’m here to go on adventures with you.
Before she arrived, you talked her often. You told me who she was, and how she could grow in the bathtub. You told me how she was magical.
Then she was there.
You’ve never doubted her magic---in the sweet, fearless way that children are about their beliefs. You know, and you don’t know—and you want to stay that way, at the cusp between wonder and fact.
You're wise enough to protect the magic that you love by not questioning too fiercely how the magic happens. Once, you left cookie crumbs on a small plate beside your alligator, and came back moments later to find them completely gone. “Ah ha!” you said.
I thought you’d call one of us out for nibbling them up, or possibly say, “See! That proves it!” but instead you said, “She likes cookies!”
Proof was never the point. You were simply interested in her dietary preferences.
In actuality your Honey Honey might really be a crocodile. She has a crocodile smile, but, to be sure, I’ve never been an expert on either. All I know is that she fits in the palm of my hand, and that the word FLORIDA is printed on her belly along with a set of numbers you declare is her birthdate and birthplace.
Who am I to argue?
Twice, she’s been eaten by the dog. Not eaten all the way—but had parts mangled. The first time it was her feet and tail. You cried and so I promised I’d bring her to the doctor, and she was gone for a week, and even more days after that you said, “Why is it taking so long? Is the doctor’s office busy?”
I said “Maybe there is a hippo in front of her in line to see the doctor. Hippos are big.” And I say something about how bandages take time to heal and you look terribly serious.
When she comes back, her feet and tail are, in fact, a different color: browner this time, than the green they were before.
You’re so glad to see her, you carry her on a string around your neck.
When we moved away from the only home you ever knew this summer, she rode with you like that, on a string around your neck, close to your heart. She was the only thing steady and for certain among the jumble of boxes and the bitter sweet confusion of grown-up conversations then.
There were tears, there was the ice cream truck, a new neighborhood, new bunk beds, and fields forever lost to you. Had we stayed to see you turn nine there, you would have claimed those fields this summer. Made them your escape, your wild home, your solace. But there it is: the edges of grown-up life and grown-up needs crowd in around you. You don’t have any control. You are probably only vaguely aware of the whys and hows. Commute time doesn’t mean much to you, nor does the word “work” which is one of the perpetual mysteries of childhood.
You and your brother talk about “daddy’s work” and “mommy’s work” but when I ask you to explain what that means you say things like: it means going to a place and being on the computer all day; and you go someplace where they pay you for something that you do. True enough. The ache of what those things mean, and the glory are both completely lost on you. For this I’m glad.
Yours work is that of growing tall. Of navigating the fine and fragile line between innocence and curiosity, between wonder and science.
What is true is wide and deep.
Fairies still inhabit the forests at the edges of the this truth, and the sky is filled with stars. “Up there,” you tell me, “in the stars, that’s where I came from before I came here.”
Yes, I nod. Yes. Nine years ago you came here from the stars and made me a mother.
At bed you can’t find Honey Honey. You crawl back into your fort on your belly, looking everywhere, your urgency increasing.
Daddy and I wait. We’re ready for this part of the day to end. Ready to kiss you tonight and to find, in the quiet of lamplight, the company of our own thoughts without interruption.
Your voice betrays your worry. “Where did I put her?” you ask, shimmying out, and inadvertently shining your flashlight in my eyes, as you inquire. I crouch down and peer into your small world of quilt and semi-dark, feeling with my hands along the edges of things.
“Think back,” I say. “Where were you with her last?”
Soon enough you look on your dresser and find her just where you left her, there among your other treasures: microscope, spy binoculars, batteries, Lego ships, quarters.
Your gladness rings out, “Here she is!” You kiss her tenderly, then kiss me harder, wrapping your arms around my waist.
You come up to just under my chin now. An inconceivable fact. Almost every night as we lie on the couch, and I read out loud to you, I cannot help but marvel: you were a baby. My first baby.
“You fit just here on my chest. How is that possible?” I say out loud.
You say, “I still do.”
Then you curl yourself against me, folding your flexible limbs up small, smaller, until you are contained right there, beside my beating heart and I can wrap my arms around the all of you.
“Yes,” I say, kissing your hair. “You do. You always do.”
37 before 37
Here's to the glorious possibility of another year here on this beautiful Earth.
My annual birthday list -- This year it's all about self-care and creative focus and play. I'm especially committed to #3, #7, #19, and #31.
1. Strengthen my core.
2. Visit as many museums as possible. 5, minimum.
3. Work slowly and steadily on producing pieces for publication. Let that work inform the slow and steady work of writing my second book.
4. Attend a writing conference.
5. Start swimming regularly again.
6. Spend time on the Pacific ocean.
7. Morning writing, daily.
8. Yoga, daily.
9. Make time to read the Sunday Times in its entirety once a month.
10. Make a driftwood mobile with Bean + Sprout.
11. Write a love letter to each of my boys.
12. Make a sock elephant with Sprout.
13. Read at least 52 books this year.
14. Buy a record player.
15. Make + give away survival packs for the homeless.
16. Send pretty cards for no reason.
17. Finally watch The Godfather.
18. Go to the circus.
19. Make time for doing absolutely nothing.
20. Let miracles happen.
21. Find a mentor.
22. Be a mentor.
23. Set Bean up with an international pen pal.
24. Get a facial.
25. Use a standing desk.
26. Take a paragliding lesson.
27. Go on 12 super sexy dates with my guy.
28. Spend some time out doors everyday.
29. Finally host an interview series on my blog.
30. Paint at least one of big canvasses I’ve had in my studio for years.
31. Get 8 hours of sleep every night.
32. Spend an evening star watching my guy this summer.
33. Have a picnic with friends.
34. Learn a new water sport: kayaking, paddle boarding, surfing.
35. Hike more, with friends.
36. Go bright blonde for a while.
37. Spend an afternoon on a sail boat.
And, and, and, and...
I'm ready to let go of and.
Between the first of the new year, and my birthday (on Sunday!) a ritual of mine is to go back through the previous year's notebooks--capturing story blueprints, noting recurring patterns, and discovering hints and whispers of dreams that bear new significance in the light of reflection—in preparation another year’s journey around the sun. My notebooks (nearly always Molskine) are where I record everything: notes from client meetings, sketches, dreams, lines of overheard dialogue, to-do lists, memories, ideas, glimmers. Whatever my mind stirs up, I capture it there on the page.
The work of looking back is an opportunity to connect the dots, tie off old threads, and begin anew. Disconnected notes from months apart suddenly tell a singular story; certain to-do list items are easily crossed off, while other’s linger providing insight into where my sticking points and resistances might lie; and recurring themes emerge though I rarely notice them in the moment, too caught up, as I often am, in the act of doing.
Without realizing it, I was probably dealing with adrenal fatigue for most of last year, yet I never allowed myself to listen. I’d tell myself—there on the page, I feel exhausted in a cellular kind of way. I just need sleep. I just need to be outdoors. Then I’d ignore it entirely and keep right on pushing.
What’s interesting is how and where that little word creeps in. And.
How again and again, in trying to sort out what I really wanted to be working towards, where I should focus, or how I should proceed, I’d begin begin with singular declarative truth: just write.
But then I’d keep listing. And this, and that, and that, and, and, and.
Like an archeologist sifting through the artifacts of my own soul, I looked for evidence elsewhere and found it. Lists weren’t the only places and showed up. And was insidious.
I used it chronically, to the point that I regularly lead sentences with and; knowing full well I was breaking the rules each time.
What I never realized how this habit also revealed a character trait. What I never understood that my overruling grammatical norms with irreverent and hygiene, was symbolic of how I would chronically overrule my limits.
And overextends.
And says: don’t just do one thing, do many things. And says: one thing isn’t good enough, be many things. It says: You don’t really have to make up your mind. It says: you can do it all—this and that. It says: add a little more to your plate, and a little more. It says: have your cake and eat it too. Be this and that, bread and butter, now and later.
I’m ready to let all that go.
I’m ready to let go of contingencies and extraneous details and distractions that easily pull me off course and blur my focus. I’m ready to have this year narrow to the simplicity declarative sentences.I’m ready to lean into the power of committing to singular goals, one at a time. I’m ready to edit, revise, refine. To be. To write. To strengthen my core.
I’m ready to let go of and.
How about you?
This post is part of the Let it Go Project: a collection of stories leading up to a beautiful releasing ritual, hosted by Sas Petherick on January 30th. Find all the details for this free event + join us here.
Learning to exist at the edge of the unknown
I wake up wanting wildness; wanting the long view; wanting to be somewhere at the edge of what I know. I can't explain it. It's feels exactly like hunger, and even after breakfast it is still there, gnawing in the pit of my belly, and so we go, all four of us.
We take chocolate and walnuts, and chai marsala tea. We wear boots, and layers and our warmest gloves. We drive North, to the Champlain islands, to where lake meets sky, the water frozen into a smooth wide sheet till it blurs, yellow and milky at the edge.
The boys have the right approach. They pile into the car ready for adventure, and climb out when we park, curious, wide-eyed, already running towards whatever they will fine. The unknown is an invitation, a lure, a wild promise.
For T and I it's harder. It requires effort to shake off expectations and preoccupations, and the ground is icy and uncertain beneath us.
My breath catches where my breastbones join.
The boys run ahead, propelled by innate curiosity and instinctive balance. They run out onto the ice following sled tracks, unafraid, reckless in their abandon to know whatever this is, this ice, this world at the edge, this day, this newness of now.
For them, sliding is play. Falling too is it's own wonder: a flirtation with gravity. A chance to be airborne and to come down again, hard and certain, but without the pain of height and the thud of inflexibility. I watch them as they fall, over and over on purpose. Running, they hurl themselves knees first toward the ice, then slide out ahead in a graceful uncontrolled arc, yelling with glee.
I yell warnings after them unheeded, and feel afraid I am of this. Of what I can't control.
Without planning, I've arrived exactly at the wild edge of the unknown that stirred me from sleep like a hunger, though when we left the house I didn’t for a moment picture it like this: ice as far as the eye can see, with fishermen dotting the horizon. We slip-slide past the holes they've left, drilled drilled down into the quiet dark, where Lake Perch swim slowly through still water without sun.
The boys want to poke their booted toes in; I imagine hypothermia. My voice snaps fiercely in the cold air. They look surprised. And when we come close to the shore, they walk along the lake’s broken lip where the cattails rattle, and as the ice cracks and bows under their weight, they laugh with glee and stamp harder. I bark warnings, imagining them sinking under.
So here I am, learning to exist at the edge of the unknown, where my fears rise up again and again. I am afraid what I can't control, of the things I do not know, of outcomes that aren't certain, of edges I don’t know how to trust.
It takes a long time for me to realize why I am here, skating on dark ice; how these these moments are exactly the metaphor I need.
My breath catches. I release it.
Out there, on the wide open of the icy lake the fishermen silently sit on over-turnned buckets, not moving at all.
Their stillness is a kind of knowing I must learn. Their patience quiet and long.
Wearing thick parkas with fur close to their cheeks, they watch the small hole at their feet for signs of life. Sometimes there is a flicker. Once, twice, they pull in a fish. But the point isn’t that quick action; that flick of wrist and tug of line. Waiting is. Waiting, until even that ceases to be the point, and they simply are. Being. Hearts beating a steady thunder under layers; breath gathering in the stillness above them, signaling a silent gracious prayer: to be alive. To be alive.
Learning things about self care
In these weeks between the 1st of the New Year and my birthday on the 26th, I always strive to clarify my intentions, and imagine what I want to manifest in my next year’s journey around the sun. This year that's looked like going back through all the notebooks I kept: five moleskins in all, and several smaller ones too.
I feel a bit like an archeologist, sifting through the artifacts of my 2013 self; tracing the plot lines and inner narratives that in the moment never appeared connected, but from the vantage point of a year out, there are evident constellations.
I've found notes that, like the most distant stars, indicate the faintest outline of my new book. Each set of randomly scrawled sentences appear now in obvious relation to the others, like the shimmering Pleiades for me to pursue across my imaginations’ uncharted dark the way Orion does after the Seven Sisters each night.
And There are other notes, often repeated, where I tell myself to slow down, to rest, to listen to my core.
Yet I never listened, and followed instead the uncompromising rule of “should.” Pushing far past my limits because it was my default; the only way of being I'd ever known. But oh, there is so much to that fine phrase:
Less doing, more being.
And with the diagnosis of adrenal fatigue and a gluten sensitivity finally answering just exactly why I’ve been waking up as exhausted as I went to sleep for the past year, I found myself faced with a new urgency to take a different course of action:
Saying no at least as often as I say yes. Protecting downtime like the sacred thing it is. Clearly mapping the expectations for projects, and only doing as much as necessary, even if more could be done. Going to bed early, when I first feel tiredness come on instead of letting myself slip into the loop of aimless Internet wanderings, or pushing to finish a project. Coming face to face with "good enough," and letting that really be enough. And then sustaining my body by eating gluten free, without coffee, and instead of running hard daily as I once did, doing yoga first thing every day after writing morning pages.
It feels unfamiliar and strange and terribly vulnerable to be attempting these daily acts of kindness towards myself. And it takes everything to quiet my monkey brain that tells me it is weakness to need this kindness, this self care. Yet I do.
I taped this David Allen quote to the bathroom mirror as a reminder:
You can do anything. Just not everything.
And still. I’ve had the hardest time trying to write about this journey here. Somehow it feels both tender and silly and yes, weak; as though I am in some way admitting defeat. I’ve begun a hundred posts, only to delete everything and start again. Yet I also feel like sharing this work of reclaiming balance and learning to live less forcefully will be useful. I learn from the process of reflection, and also from what you share in return here at the page.
Tell me about self care. Teach me what you know.
Weekending
I pull the shades open to find rain spattering against the window-glass, then dive back under the soft-polka dotted coverlet, homing to the warmth T radiates. For a while we lie this way, just breathing. From here only the crowns of trees are visible: a crosshatching of black and white, a tangle of rain-drenched twigs against the milky grey of the early morning sky.
Eventually, I switch on the light beside my pillow, and T unfolds from bed. I've been crushing on the beard he's grown over this winter, and I can't help but smile watching him on jeans and a sweatshirt. Soon the warm place that he left has been filled by Clover, her sweet yogi-self pressing against me, tail wagging. I tousle her velvet soft ears, and when we've sufficiently greeted each other she curls into a ball, and keeps my feet warm as I write.
T brings tea, and from the next room over I can hear the boys in their room chattering in the perpetual way they do, and I fill page after page in the yellow legal pad with whatever comes to mind until the half hour mark, when I put my pen down, refill my tea, and head to the yoga mat with T for a half-hour morning practice.
This has been our ritual every morning for the past week, and I love what it's done to set my mornings right.
It's been my goal this year to build simple routines that sustain my core. Rituals that soften the edges and simplify the moments and reduce some of the stress I find all too easily creeps in.
Another ritual is simply to let the weekend be what it is best: a time to rest. Instead of filling it in with doing, I'm practicing doing not so very much. Sitting all morning with more tea in the big white chair by the windows watching the rain while Sprout puts out fires in the play castle he's set up across the room, and then heading to the studio after a snack to make some new art, Sprout in tow while Bean hangs out in his bed reading and organizing collections.
I would so love to hear about some of your weekend (or week day rituals!). Tell me: what makes you feel whole, and simple, and quiet, and good?
2014 : The Year Of The Horse
Hello friends!
I'm so happy it's a new year! 2013 was hard in so many ways, and filled with bittersweet moments.
2013 was one of the most exhausting, turbulent years I've lived through. I felt like we were all at the fragile surface of our lives; so many of us anyway. Reminded of our mortality, pressed to ask hard questions, reach for new horizons, and confront limitations real or imagined.
I always feel like I get a secret extra window of time to set intentions every January, with my birthday happening at the end of the month. I've been cocooning, and dreaming and quietly working my way through all the notebooks and journals I kept over the last year, to find the plot line that lives below the surface, and set goals for this new year.
2014 is the year of the horse, and for me the zebra particularly comes to mind: as symbol of individuality and balance. Yes, that’s the kind of year I’d like 2014 to be--one of individuality and balance. As such, I’ve chosen the word CORE as my word for this year.
Going into this year with a wee bit of adrenal fatigue, I'm committed to focusing on building my core literally and metaphorically. To being selective and smart about the projects and partnerships I take on. And keeping a clear-eyed focus on the things that are most essential, that sustain, and fund creative energy rather than drain it.
It took me a while to find just the word to act as a guide, a focus point, and a filter: helping me to zero in on what matters most.
So glad to be back. I've missed this space so.
Tell me: what are you focusing on this January?
A Year In Pictures
A look back at what 2013 looked like for me in pictures.
I'm so glad Elizabeth inspired me to take time for this reflection. Looking back for a few iconic photos from each month made me remember so many forgotten moments; so many bright glimmers and funny circumstances and laughter and adventures.
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