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.