What a winter. Drifting and white, deep and insular. The weeks have scattered like crumbs. I can remember bits and pieces but not the whole more than a mood. We were just so homey this year. The season has seemed so long and it's still not over. The last storm has refreshed the blanketed field and as I type, with children warm in the tub, it's beginning to flurry again. I don't even pay attention to the forecasts anymore. It's expected to be cold, sometimes bitterly, sometimes not. We go out when it's not biting, we stay in when it's not worth it.
Tessa has fallen into the habit of school days and Thatcher into the rythm of a single child during her absence. We stay put except for grocery trips, our weekly voyage to the outside world. I'm becoming a hermit of a mother and I feel myself burrowing deeper and deeper. Luckily, the world has come to us and we've had visitors most weekends. After months of endless sickness we were able to communicate in person without being communicable with our germs. Ugh. The memory just brings the scent of vomit to the air. Shiver.
We've tested science experiment after art project after scone recipe. Again and again. The kids have climbed and launched themselves off of every precipice in the house. The couch has little to no spring left and I have promised myself to never, ever buy a grey monochrome sofa again. Oh well, it's covered in sleeping bags and pillows. Now it's "long john trail" and they're penguins dashing down on their bellies.
Tessa is clearly the leader and Thatcher doesn't mind. His vocabulary is expanding to include "Tessa, no! Me jumpy!" My favorite is "happy bunny! hoppy bunny!" It's great. Tessa has found her voice apparently at school too. The other day I picked her up and she was singing, at the top of her lungs, from the steps of the school with the other sixty something kids lined up for the bus, a song she learned on the bus ride to sledding day at Stratton Rec.,"this girl is on FIRE!!!!" She's walking on FIRE!!!" The kids were entertained, the teachers laughing hysterically. I didn't know what to do. It was amazing and awesome and nothing I would've ever done in my entire life. It was a moment when I realized that she would always be braver than I could imagine and that for her it didn't even mean anything about being brave or strong or confident. It just meant she was happy and she was just fine with showing it.
Of course, there's been days that were too secluded. Days I spent every other 10 minutes checking things out on the computer. Obsessing over blogs and people's lives I've never even met. Comparing my house, my parenting decisions, my style. Wondering when I'm going to leave the house and be a part of the world again. Have a conversation with someone without kids running circles screaming. Be outside for more than 1/2 hour at a time. Plan a trip and really believe it'll happen. I just have to work on one thing at a time. At this point it's meditating on spring, on warmth, on sunshine, on light. It's finding a moment to tip tap my thoughts down.
