Auld Lang Syne

It's New Year's Eve. The kids are sleeping, the dog barking at fireworks, the husband spending some much needed time enjoying a pint and a few Phish songs among co-workers after an excruciating week of work. And me? I'm sitting, breathing out the past year, waiting to inhale the next. Today in the bath with both kids I tried telling them about resolutions, about promises to ourselves, about reflections. What has this past year given us? What has it taken away?
And there is that defining emotion of this year; Grievance. There's been so many beautiful memories with my family that fill my whole being with warm joy and among them an unbearable, nearly unspeakable sadness that sits in my center. That tightens me up and keeps breaking me down. I've been thinking in terms of lists. The 10 best memories and then re-naming it the 10 most important moments because how can the death of someone so much a part of you not touch every other part. So in lieu of a particular list I'd like to say my blessings of 2011, not numbered, not some top ten but the overall state this year has left me in. Here we go....
I feel more blessed than ever before in my life, oddly enough. I have a kind of love that surrounds me that I can barely believe it. Their support, encouragement, kisses, hugs and care nourishes me and keeps me whole. From morning through night I am sustained by so many people. There's been shoulders to lean into and strong arms to hold me up and gentle laughter to keep me going. I give thanks for the love of family.
This beautiful place we call Vermont has new meaning for me now too. After witnessing the devastation nature reaped on this area and the kind of community action that arose in the wake of tragedy my sense of humanity was renewed. Everywhere I looked after Irene I saw help being offered in the form of food, shelter, physical labor. It was one of the most heartwarming moments of my life. I give thanks for being witness to compassion in the world.
This year I turned 30! I celebrated over and over with people that I love in beautiful places, in faraway houses over dinner and wine with family, at a beach in the fall with children half naked burying themselves in sand, with old, dear friends carrying new life in their bellies, on walks with champagne with my brothers, tag sale-ing after dawn just me and my boy. I brought in a new decade perfectly.
Although with that celebratory moment in life I've discovered new weaknesses in myself. A new found anxiety looms over me sometimes. Migraines coupled with a nearly constant dizziness has made me more aware of my own mortality. I'm afraid I've become accustomed to diagnosing myself with brain tumors. Oops. I give thanks for having a partner with a wonderful ability to deal with my neurosis.
So this leaves me with loss. How do I find a way to give thanks for that? Should I even try? I've found ways around it by saying I'm so grateful for her presence in my life. I give thanks that I was able to be changed and loved by her. I give thanks that I was able to hold her hand when she needed me most. Of course I'm thankful for all of that. But am I angry? Sad? Bitter? Yes, I'm those things too. Am I scarred by her death? Am I aware of death to an obsessive degree? Yes. But with the passing of this year, with the hope and renewal that a new day brings, a new year, a new number on the calendar I'll say I can exhale. I'll let something go, a little bit of sadness maybe. I'll open my heart or at least loosen my grip. I'll make some room for the beauty and the privilege and the hope that this new year brings. I'll welcome it with open arms. I'll love it before I even know what it means.

Popping the Pain Bubble

This has been a physically difficult year for me. I've had sporadic ailments throughout my life from seizing stomach pains as a child to migraines that started a few years ago and have literally knocked me down but now aches seem to be piling up. I've got a medicine cabinet getting fatter with unprounouncable prescriptions that could together kill a strong horse. Although I've had these issues here and there I've been blessed with an overall healthy life which I give thanks for all the time. The issue now is having these momentary breakdowns with two energetic, attention needing kids on my hands. This morning I was completely debilitated. I had a migraine that twisted me into a whimpering pulp of useless mother balled up tightly on the couch. I threw up. I watched Thatcher play with legos so sweetly and quietly until I dared close my eyes and got a large lego punch in the bridge of my nose. I picked up Tessa from school with dark glasses and a hat on. My choices today were to either medicate myself out of the pain and not be able to pacify Thatcher with nursing or to forgo brilliant western medicine for tea and hopefully some nap time. I chose the latter after giving my nausea medicine a go (success!) and half a muscle relaxer for the tension part of the headache (failure). We napped together this afternoon which required significant bribing and threatening. We soaked in the tub, read one million books, drank gallons of tea, drizzled dark chocolate over sugar cookies and snuggled. I let them take care of me too. And now they're in bed. I lay with this bright screen next to my little Minnow, recording a painful and somehow sweet day. Reminding myself it's not all rosey all the time. It's exhausting but coming out on the other side, suddenly free from the pain like I am now is euphoric. It's like labor in a way. That clarity, the relief, the sense of feeling fine. We don't recognize how important it is till it's gone. So there it is. Thank God for the release of it. Thanks be for all my blessings.

Goodnight Weather

Thanksgiving has come and gone, Christmas is nigh and it's barely winter here. The weather may be unseasonably warm but I still feel myself retreating inwards. Some mama bear instinct to take my cubs, pack on those pounds (an evolutionary bad habit) and burrow deep. Come out in spring, blinking, changed....rested.

What Does That Spell? Awesome

Yesterday Tessa asked me to read her some of my magazine The New Yorker. I made sure to pick out a bit of an article interesting enough to capture her attention for a moment but without any scary references. She kept saying, "These things actually happened?! For real?! They're actually happening?!" I was bursting with pride at her interest. Not actually in the words I was reading or the subject itself (an experiment in reversing a writer's typical formula) but in the idea of non-fiction itself. Here is a historian, I thought. A real journalist. A note-taker of life. She watches the world and us all. Comes up with her own analysis in her own time and presents it without bias (sometimes). She surprises me always. She's dying to learn how to spell everything. She can not see a word without wanting to shout it out letter by letter, ask what it is, what it means. She put magnetic letters together on the fridge yesterday carefully but without really forming words and read me a whole paragraph about responsibility. I love her craving for learning. She cheerleads her own name incessantly, "Give me a T! E! S! S! A! What does that spell?!" Sometimes too incessantly during a three hour car ride. But we find other words to chant. Other sounds to practice. I'm learning how to teach her to read which is incredible. Something I always wondered about. Her spongey brain sucking information out of the air, filing it deep inside. Using it to spit out, "my pleasure" after being thanked for a kind deed. She's still unsure of any kind of bad guys. While reading her strange old fairy tales I omit parts about people or even ogres getting hurt. They cast spells and ward eachother off with magic sand rather than swords. She's certain aliens haven't visited earth and if you start to talk about anything unpleasant she asks you to please not give her nightmares.

Of course, she's a huff-bucket lately too. This new found brain of hers swells and gives her some bad ideas as well. Like the readiness to debate me or Jason at every turn. A politician? No way! She'll always say she wants to be an animal rescuer when she grows up, she even has her own anthem already "I'm strong! I'm brave! I'm wise!" Yes she is.

Stop, Drop and Breathe

I'm trying to let my sense of time go and forget the worry of coldness and dark. Maybe it's the change of the season. The descending darkness making everything seem more rushed. The approaching holidays and the excitement (and secret horror) of the preparations they'll entail. But these days I've tried to keep from planning out my days beginning to end. I've been pushing my list oriented mind in an uncomfortable direction. One of simplicity in the moment. Without too many chores, errands, non-sensical wastes of time spent driving here and there to pick up essentially nothing. I've been trying to watch my babies grow. To see them. To look into Thatcher's sleeping face and his wide awake eyes, to know him better. To ask Tessa real questions and really listen to her answers. To follow them into the field, down the path, towards the woods. Yesterday they kept running, they didn't look back. I felt such pride that they knew I'd be there. Their sense of fearlessness is something I cherish and their intimate relationship with nature is priceless. Their screaming excitement over finding the last of the ice in the field, a cricket, a gift of a flower gone by. They don't know how much time they have left to their days, in their moments of play. I want to be here now like they are. I want to lie in the field with my family and let the seasons pass however they will. I want to be the field mouse who doesn't scurry.

Quotable Cute-tations

Just some Tessa quotes from the summer that I've been meaning to write down....

"Jelly sandwiches fill my belly with joy!"

"That cloud looks like a tea pot. Wait! Now it's a monkey!... with a horn!... and he's hitch hiking!"

"Why doesn't everyone have the same mama?"

First Days, First Floods

Today I escorted my big girl, blondie-locks to her first day of school at our local elementary. She seemed so carefree until it was time for me to leave and she broke down. There were tears and shaky hugs and it wasn't just one sided. My mama bear instincts were kicking and screaming saying "wait! no! not yet! it's too soon! it's a slippery slope! she'll grow up now! don't let her!" But of course I had to. And three hours later I was the very first parent there and she came smiling into my arms. The rest of the day was filled with stories and popsicles and walks in the woods. Life as we knew it will be interupted five days a week with a half silence but we'll work it out. Minnow doesn't know what to make of this space. For a while after she left he just ran circles yelling until he was too tired and crashed out for his morning nap.
Of course this whole world here is not so normal anyhow. Just two weeks after the worst natural disaster to hit Vermont in nearly a century our poor little state is still reeling. Hurricane Irene had a grudge with the Green Mountain state apparently and left her ravaged, flooded, roads and bridges crumbled, houses swept away in moments, lives taken, historic building gone forever. It's been a tough couple of weeks to try and figure out what to do for our most badly hurt neighbors. Our little town of Wardsboro and our neighbor Jamaica lost over a dozen homes together. Our once quiet back road to Jamaica has become the only real access to our town with National Gaurd humvees and disaster relief vehicles racing past every hour. Our neighbors at least have access and electricity but the roads are barely better than river beds. On the other hand spirits are bright. The whole state has put in so much effort to help. Neighbors taking in neighbors, strangers a month ago are friends now. Everyone is doing what they can. There are towns where people are hiking in and out for miles to get to work and school, to go grocery shopping. Church groups and businesses are setting up tents of free food, there are "free" stores for anyone in need, postings for free lodgings at farms and vacation homes. Our local food shelf had to turn donations away!
So although I was concerned that Tessa's first day might be a bit more frightening for the screaming army trucks and the sight of the house across from her school still half falling into the river I'm hopeful that like the rest of us she's resilient and this radiant kindness that is enveloping our state and our lives warms and protects her from even the strangest, most unpredictable happenings. I'm confident this will resonate in her and Minnow in years to come and help them develop into the kind of hardy, caring and compassionate people this state seems to produce so well.

Eden

It's too late to be writing this. Too late to be getting home from work and not going immediately to sleep. I will regret this in the morning, absolutely. But with a grainy bright gray projection on the screen of our monitor showing that rambunctious boy sleeping soundly still I have to take this moment in. It's after midnight, my God. I've thought each day of logging an entry and have failed. These kids are reeking havoc on ability to have a personal moment of reflection. But what do I do with that moment? I reflect on them. What do I do when I go to work? When I finally, after days and days, get out of the house? I talk about them. Every single chance I get. I'll leap through that door if you open it. Have a kid? Oh yeah! Me too! Two wonderfully quirky, weird, inquisitive kids that light up my life like the fourth of July. Seriously, as exhausted as I am lately I've been having such a wonderful time with them. Today, for example, we walked in the rain. Tessa found an orange salamander and vowed to keep it safe forever. Till she let it go in our garden. Thatcher let me know when it was time for a nap by pointing to the bed. We all got in a nap together. I couldn't sleep (for a while at least). Lying there in a perfect lovey baby sandwich. Cuddling, breathing, living. My mantra lately is "live". Just live life the way it's supposed to be lived. Lightly and with love. I want to stop carrying around guilt and exhaustion and irritability. Anger of any kind is useless (my dad used to say). Don't worry, be happy. Cliche yes, but oh so right. Tomorrow (today I guess) we'll play in puddles, catch salamanders, eat whatevers in the house and nap. Sounds like Eden.

Amen

I don't even know my name. I know my role and that is a happy, happy place to be. I know where the blackberries grow wild hidden in our yard, how to get my boy to give me a big, wide, growling kiss, how to get my girl to laugh and trust me to hold her head above water. Who knew I would know these things like my own heart? Who knew my life would be so full of wonder and beauty. Of simple, perfect moments. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I just wanna bang on my drum all day...

tomorrow's just a day away....

Every day I go to bed thinking tomorrow I'll be a better mom. I'll be more patient. I'll sit down for longer and play a game with more concentration. I'll try harder. I'll be a better friend to my children. It's not that I don't think I try hard every day. I know I do. It's what I try hard to do that weighs on me. Is trying hard to keep the house clean important? Is trying hard to keep food stocked worth driving every other day the 40 minutes to the grocery store? Is trying to figure out naps worth the tears and the fits produced in my sensitive, clingy, changeling daughter?
Is being exhausted in the morning worth the only alone time I get by staying up too late at night? What's worth what?
I suppose everything has it's price. The house, the garden, my sanity, the kid's happiness. I'd like to think all of those things tend to eachother. But of course I've written a few sentences and my newly cribbed son is waking for the third time tonight already. I guess this blog is not worth the tears. Good night.

Sweet Space

For the past let's see nearly four years I've had to defend my staunch stance opposing the cry it out method. To be fair we tried a whole two nights with Tessa when she was about 8 months old but I think both nights lasted about 20 minutes when neither Jason nor I could take her shrieking, scared, lonely, confused cries anymore. I try and not judge anyone else's child raising tactics since we all do what we feel is best for our own children and our own sanity. Last week I couldn't take it anymore. After an entire day of a cranky fussing toddler clinging to my legs to be picked up and then squirming out of my arms to be let down over and over I brought him into the guest room downstairs, gently (and truly not out of anger but somewhat sadly and with more than a touch of resignation) I placed my dear boy in his un-used crib, kissed him on his forehead and walked out of the room.

Needless to say he cried. But he did not wail. He cried for a good 25 minutes until I once again lost my nerve and returned to him whereupon he cried louder and more angrily than he had the entire time he was alone. He was exhausted and bitter but he clung to me, scratching my face and pulling my hair. Drenching me in tears and snot and guilt. We tried again the next night for another 20 minutes and collectively decided as a family that this was not for us. Tessa was more than a bit relieved I think. She was very anxious to be of help to her traumatized brother.

So how is it 9:53 pm and I am alone upstairs watching a peacefully slumbering baby on a monitor and writing this all? A few nights of compromise. A little nursing, a little crying but with mama in the room holding on from the other side of the crib rail, turns rocking and then battery operated sounds of a recorded wave breaking over and over onto that static-y beach.

This space is so new, it's empty too but open and full of fresh air. A kind of peaceful air that comes with knowing I have time to myself to type a few words. To step into my own head and then go back to bed with them. Sweet dreams...

Trying

Tomorrow is Minnow's first birthday. A whole year has passed since he launched himself out of my body with the kind of determination that's becoming more and more apparent in his personality by the day. He's gone from a shrieking infant to a shrieking toddler in twelve short but exhausting months. As he runs the length of the kitchen and living room, legs still stout and stiff, mouth wide, two charging fists leading his way yelling a continual yell till he gets to you and guffaws. So proud of himself. So certain in what it is that he wants and when I fail to understand immediately what that thing is he shouts it out, twists and turns, trying with every inch of his body to communicate. I love it. I love his fierceness, his stubbornness, his undoubtable character. I love that he is already so much an individual and that I get to experience his making of himself. I get to be witness to his life. I am so blessed.

At the Celebration of Kristin's life saturday her mother spoke so eloquently of the blessing that Kristin bestowed upon her. To have been so lucky to have carried such a soul in her womb, to have grown with her, to have been given the chance to love and be loved by someone so special was such a blessing to her. In the middle of what will be her life's tragedy Maria spoke of being blessed. She was the strongest I've ever seen anyone and it shook me. It scared me that I may not be that strong. That I can't seem to find a way to lighten my heart. The idea of celebrating anything right now seems so difficult. I should be planning what kind of cake to make tomorrow, I should be wrapping a gift I've yet to buy, I should be humming happy birthday and remembering the beautiful moment I laid eyes on my Thatcher for the first time. And yet every thought I have is tainted with sorrow, with regret, with fear. I'm trying, I really am. I'm trying to be strong like Maria because I do recognize how lucky and blessed and fortunate I am to have these children to love. But death is hanging on my heart, it's strangling me every time I try to smile.

So I add guilt to this mourning mix. I'm sorry Minnow that your first birthday is singed with my sadness. I'm sorry Bean that I can't give you the attention you deserve, my mind is a million miles away but this love doesn't leave you for an instant.

My Soul Mama

This week I lost one of the most deeply loving people in my life. I can't write it or say it without feeling such a deep ache it makes a hole inside and threatens to drag me in. I can't look at my kids without thinking they'll never know her. I can't think about anything at all except her. I've been obsessively checking facebook for other people's pictures of her. It's the only place I can keep seeing her. We've been friends for something like 15 years now, half of which we haven't spent much time in eachother's physical presence. Although she always managed to be there for the important moments; my babyshower, my wedding party. That never stopped us from constantly texting and emailing "love you mama" or "miss you soooo much". Kristin was a hard girl to pin down. She always had lots going on in her life and I know I've been guilty of the same procrastination. Of course I always just felt like she would be there. That there'd be time to catch up. Last wednesday, April 6th, the day before she began to get sick, she wrote to me. Before she threw up over and over and her insulin got out of hand. Two days before her sugar shot up to 1000. Before she collapsed on the floor in front of her mother and father and boyfriend. Before her mother performed cpr for 10 minutes while the ambulance raced not fast enough towards her house. She wrote "MISSYOUSISTER>>LOVE YOU SO MUCH". I never wrote back. I read it and I didn't respond because there was no urgency to. Because I could write the next day or the day after that. Because I could text her the next week that I was coming down for Easter. And probably because I was upset she hadn't shown up two weeks before for dinner with me and Kelly. She had had to work. Last friday when I got home from doing god knows what I got a message from her sister that she was in the hospital and to call. She told me the morning's events and though I cried in immediate fear I really believed she'd be ok. Jason got home and I walked a few miles to the chapel up the street. I lit a candle and I prayed. The bible was open to Isaiah 50:9 "awake, awake". Kristin was unconscious but from what I could gather I thought it was from being so heavily sedated. The next day I drove to Connecticut, deposited the babes into my mother's care and drove to the hospital. Her mother, Maria, her father, Tim, and her sister, Karin, comforted me. They held me and told me it would be ok. I gathered myself in and said of course it would. When Maria and Tim led me into her room I was unprepared. Kristin lay on a raised hospital bed, no blanket, just a gown and tubes and wires everywhere. Her body moved with the bleeps and blips of machines. Her eyes were forced from her head. I held her hand, kissed it and then collapsed into it. Her parents stood by her, her mother talking to a tactless social worker. Later, I left the hospital, the world where people stay in limbo for an eternity. Waiting for results they'll wish they never recieved. Wanting it all to end but clinging to the pain of life and it's simple threadbare balance. Outside it was sunny, and cool. A dream world where people put money into parking meters and made tuna sandwiches. Where Kristin was supposed to be lying in the grass somewhere smiling or driving with the windows down singing to some old school Jeff Buckley or some new up and coming band she was reveiwing for work. I didn't want to be out of the hospital. I resented the world without her and I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt being in it. I returned to the hospital the next day and the day after. Every time there was worse news. The cat scans were bad. She had undergone hypothermic therapy to basically freeze her brain to prevent further damage and now they were warming her up. Her body had a hard time maintaining it's temperature. She couldn't breathe on her own. When Karin called me to tell me it looked like she suffered severe brain injury my mother had to hold me like a child. I couldn't breathe. It was the beginning of the end of hope. Monday I arrived back and was for the first time able to spend time alone with Kristin. I whispered to her as I stroked her black straw hair that I wanted to cuddle in a bed with her and my babies. I wanted so badly to hear her voice. Her laugh. I wanted her to grab me towards her and hug me like she always did, so fiercley loving. I held her hand and then rubbed her feet and legs. I tried to lay down beside her a little but there were too many tubes. The neurologist was giving her parents and boyfriend the news that the last mri came back and there was nothing left of hope. They had promised we'd have till friday but now... Her parents went to the chapel and I comforted Eric. Covered in blood from a nose bleed he got from crying too hard. I held his hand and felt his world just disappear. That night was Kristin's last in this world. I give thanks I was able to say goodbye, to tell her how much I loved her, to be a little bit more of her life's story. I hope she heard it all, I hope she still does. I've been reeling these days with pain like I've never felt and whoever said time heals all wounds never new Kristin Anderson. The passing of these minutes makes me ill. It feels like I'm being swallowed by a tide that taking me farther and farther away from her. There's no lesson here. No satisfying end to this. Just another way to make me face this loss and process it. All I can keep saying is I love you mama. I love you and I miss you soooo much.

A Wild Undiscovered

My disposition is feeling the gravitational pull of the sun and it's rays are just beginning to bleach out winter's negativity. Yesterday I took the kids and dog on a hike. Minnow sqwuaked the whole way up and down as Beanie, Percy and I panted. We drew in the new world re-imagining itself in waterfalls and patches of moss. We sat in the middle of the path and dug our fingers into last year's leaves. Bean asked who put that log in the middle of the path. I told her it fell. It just simply fell over because it was old. I didn't feel the need to add the word dead. It fell because it was old and the wind pushed it. The wind was stronger than that huge tree. I watched her as she thought about it and then proceeded to clean up the path. I waited for another question and when it didn't come I let her be. It's such a short time when the world can seem undiscovered. When we can make of it what we will. I don't want to answer all her questions before she asks them. I want her to root out her own genesis of the world. Before the world forces it's version of life's story upon her.

Rock Me Mama...

These kids have been rocking my world to pieces lately. I've been so tempermental it scares me. One moment I'm a horse giving a lift to two squeeling riders and the next I'm a monster telling my daughter to just "puhlease just listen!". It makes me cringe with guilt when I hear Tessa say "I just can't take it anymore!", a term obviously picked up by her awful mother. But honestly, lately I can't. I can't take this bleak, bone chilling winter any more. I can't take chasing after a running 11 month old attempting to eat insulation that's hanging out of our completely wrecked kitchen while a three year old screams and whines and demands god knows what in the background. Getting them dressed takes literally hours. Thatcher will not lay down to be changed. Tessa will not let me brush her hair, ever. Their needs do not cease. Why should they? They're children. That's their essence, right? Growing and developing requires things be it light and water or books and mud pies. Mostly it requires patience and that I'm afraid has become a scarcity around these parts. Jason's back is out of commission these days and my brain resembles a bad eighties tv ad for drug addiction. Our poor daughter comes up with statements like "let's stick together" during dinner time. It's enough to make you cry right there. Or throw up. But then things would just be worse and there'd be another mess to clean up. I requested books through our local shoebox library the other day one being "Dr. Sears' Discipline Book" and the other "No Cry Sleep Solution" and the elderly librarian looked at me and point blank said "oh dear, why don't you just use your common sense?". Seriously. She said that. I thought I would throw up. Again. But I explained in a completely calm and sane way (the opposite of what I was internally experiencing which pushed my boundaries of repression to their limit) that I just needed a few new ideas.

So how does it happen then that I lay here at night looking over at my baby boy, missing my wild girl in the next room and feel that I've won the lottery of life? How do I end every day with a breath of thanks whispered up to the universe? A prayer that life keeps rocking me and my family like a wagon wheel always? That we learn to roll over these frost heaves and slip through these muddy ruts unscathed? Rock me mama anyway you feel.... Oooh mama rock me.

Hiding

At the moment I am hiding in the bathroom. No lie. I didn't lock the kids up somewhere nor are they clawing and crying at the door, I'm not that bad. Beanie is watching a show and Minnow is taking his quick morning nap. I have but five minutes to myself after I jump in and out of the shower; the only thing making me feel like a living person. Brushing my hair and teeth help too. If I happen to have a second to use the fabulous Burt's Bee's Wild Lettuce Toner I'm in absolute spa mode. Shikai Yuzu lotion on my feet? I'm transported back to Burlington. Loomis Street sitting on the couch by that big back window. Lounging, black coffee cooling on that little wooden whale table, NPR, oats and soy milk, computer without Facebook. Fearless squirrels travelling back and forth on the other side of the glass. Working that lotion onto my chapped feet, my biggest concern of the moment. How to condition my feet better? Hmm... Forget it. Bike ride, off to the gym, a vegan scone from Stone Soup, coffee from Uncommon Grounds, Sevendays, the Crow, work, make a bunch of money, guilt-free midnight nachos at the Pub and Brewery with Jason, beers, sleep, wake up, repeat. Ahh...

Of course I'm trying to forget that this time is sandwiched between years of complete loss of identity, breakdowns with no bottom, dark holes of loneliness. Life was not so perfectly uncomplicated for long and even when it was weren't we feeling map less? No course set, anxious for life to really begin?

So here it is. Days in and out full of exhaustion, stress, kisses, dirty diapers, bedtime stories, bubble baths, tears, whines, first steps, heart shape waffles, allergies, bumps and bruises, hiding in the bathroom from it all... Stepping out and examining the current chapter, looking back and forward again. Breathing. Smiling (sometimes through tears). Opening the door and running towards the sound of your own life. The one you wouldn't trade for anything in the world. Thankful for all the different seasons of your crazy life. Thankful for a few minutes to hide. Thankful for this Yuzu lotion.

A Bit of Melodrama...

Survival Skills by Kay Ryan

Here is the virtue
in not looking up
you will be the one
who finds the overhang
out of the sun
and something for a cup.
You will rethink meat;
you will know you have
to eat and will eat.
Despair and hope
you keep remote. You will not
think much about the boat
that sank or other boats.
When you can, you sleep.
You can go on nearly forever.
If you are ever delivered
you are not delivered.
You know now, you were
always a survivor.

..........................................................................

Now, I'm really truly not comparing motherhood to being shipwrecked or insinuating my life is straught with substantial difficulty and that I am, in essence, a survivor of something more than the common cold but..... Damn. This is hard. (I always feel the need to tag on "but I love it!" to a statement like that. My mother guilt kicking in full effect, like admitting hardship means not taking pleasure in every single moment equals bad mom. The same way my mom says "just kidding!" when she slips that things might not be perfectly peachy. It's in our genes.)

Well these days I'm overflowing with honest to goodness exhaustion. These days are not long they are endless. This season is not difficult it is impossible. I do, I hate winter this year. I hate the sickness that circles our home and paralyzes our lives. I hate the negative degree weather that I can't step foot out in. I hate the three feet deep snow with it's ice crunch crust that traps me six feet into the backyard. I hate the two foot long icicles dangling from our roof daring us to step forth. But more than the weather I hate being a wimp. I hated more than anything being sick this week and helpless. I hated calling Jason and begging and then demanding he come home and help (and then hanging up. He did come home.) I hate watching these babies get sick every month. I hate being negative when I'm generally a hardcore look on the bright side-er. The sun will come and melt this snow (and this frozen unenthusiastic heart) and I will walk! Walk for god's sake outdoors again. For now I survive it. Keep my head down if only to lay my chin on top of a perfect little head. Or two.

Immersed

Here it is. Bleak mid-winter again. Well, almost I suppose. We're only in the beginning of January for God's sake so realistically we've got months ahead of us. What used to be a time for contemplation and quiet soul searching has become well.... cabin fever mania. Cabin cholera you could say. Or not. Either way my opinion of this isolation changes by the day or by the hour depending. I love the sight of the snow, the quick burn of it against my cheeks as I race out with my babes loading them up in a car packed to the roof in extra gear. I love the idea of snow shoeing with Minnow on my back and Bean being pulled along behind in a sled. I love it just as much as I love all my ideals of parenthood in Vermont. Right now Jason's fulfilling my ideal so I can sit inside with a glass of wine and a toddling (!) 8 month old by a fire. He's out there with Beanie, both of them covered head to toe in layers and layers of gortex and fleece lying in the open snowy field staring up at that perfectly star filled sky. Perhaps the wolf moon is out tonight. Perhaps I should feel a tinge of guilt for not being there but I don't. I need this moment because it's one of the few I'll get. I need it to know that they exist. That life can be quiet and reflective.