Odd Vent

(A picture of Tessa's new pajama pants I fashioned out of an old hippie skirt to show I am not as useless as the following post might lead you to believe).

One of my favorite things to do when I'm feeling restless is rearrange my life somehow. Sometimes it's just a picture here to there, sometimes I take down an entire room of wall paper or sometimes I just swap out the comforters. This trait is genetic and it comes to me from my mother who is an avid, some might say obsessive, re arranger. Her house will look completely different from year to year, season to season even. I grew up in not four different places but probably 50. I loved it, my dad and brothers not so much. I think it sparked my interest in travel, in trying new things and my insistence on change. My childhood bedroom went from sunflowers to floor to ceiling collages to dark song lyrics painted all over in the space of a year. I felt like I could change myself whenever I wanted to, all it took was a little paint or a big shopping spree to SA.

So these days, these long often lonely winter days trapped indoors when I yearn to give away all my second hand clothes and start fresh, when I want to buy a gallon of Athens blue paint and start in on a room the reality hits me, in the impossibility of it all I sulk. I move a bed resentfully. I get the kids to help me organize every single craft supply into separate mason jars. I change which towells go in which bathroom. Honestly, it gets pathetic.

But all I have really wanted to do for a few weeks now is buy a pair of earrings. Seriously, it's a change that small that I've given into. I have exactly in mind what I'm looking for and I want it and the absurd difficulty of that kind of task makes me want it more. This feeling of wanting something just for myself is almost painful, it's so coated in guilt. To buy something, not make it, not craft it with the kids, but buy it. The frivolousness of it all. I feel like a real housewife of Connecticut. Not Vermont because if I was of Vermont I'd be melting down old iron from the torn down barn and welding it to maple leaf inlaid glass to make my own earrings. Nope, I want to go shopping. I don't want a yoga class or to go for a hike in the woods (I do but not with the same kind of obsessive zeal). I want a store to spend money in. (This post has been completely high-jacked by crazy Kirsten, btw.) Not much money mind you. Like $10. Maybe $15 if I go totally crazy.

Hoo. Wow. That was weird. Gotta go. The kids are restless. Craft time!

Winter 2011-12

The fillings of our winter.

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.