a little practice

Carpe Diem!

2012-02-10T08:18:00.000-06:00

Another week swirls by, whirls to an end here. It's Friday morning and baby is asleep and preschooler is watching PBS and my coffee is cooled just enough. We've been up since 5am, a rather frequent occurrence here, and when I say "we" I mean "everyone in this house." For some reason the preschooler springs from what appears to be a very deep sleep the moment anyone within 50 yards of him opens their eyes. It doesn't take a scream from the baby or a clang of dishes. Just an open eye. It's like the breeze from moving eyelashes stirs him.

How funny: just when I would give nearly anything to have 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep (send me your offer, if you'd like to try to negotiate some kind of swap) he stops napping. Sleep -- which I would currently describe as "luxurious" and "exotic" and "a lot of fun" -- is a bummer to him. Worth crying about. It's time not playing, time not with people, time in which he might miss out something.

I am trying to see this both as a passing phase (his teenage self most likely will need to be dragged from bed, or at least that is what I am told) and also to appreciate this little guy's lust for life. He just can't rest, so eager is he to have experience things -- even if those things are 1) watching a diaper change, 2) watching me fumble around the kitchen for a coffee cup, 3) watching a little PBSkids, and 4) looking out the window to watch absolutely no one pass by because it's even too early to walk the dog.

It is not so early anymore, and now I'm hoping for a peaceful day around here with time to cook, maybe time to bake a little something, maybe some time to read the magazine that just arrived, and with some time to write. I've got a few things started, things that excite me enough that I can't wait to work on them. In fact, it was the thought of these projects that woke me -- before the baby, before the preschooler -- around 4:50 this morning. I thought perhaps I would have an hour or so to work on my own but those very thought bubbles must have made a little *pop* over my son's head, because he was ready for action before I could stroke a key. And then baby tossed, looking for a little snack, and preschooler saw that as evidence that it was time for breakfast and confirmation that we should indeed all get up. Three hours later, I'm pounding this out, certain that if I try to start anything more involved the babe will wake and/or the preschooler will ask for a snack and a game of Toy Story Operation. Bzzzzz.

It is hard to get things done -- the routine things, let alone the exciting things -- at this stage, but I know it's just a stage. Or I know that most of the time, and when I forget something usually happens to remind me. In the meantime, I think I'll work on scheduling some time for myself (not to mention some time for me and my husband to do something romantic and wonderful like have a complete conversation) even if the schedule is, at least for now, a little aspirational. And I'll avoid scheduling much in the early morning, as it will most likely be filled with diaper changes or breakfast dishes and the eager energy of my little one who just loves to be awake. He is seizing the day, every day, at the crack of dawn. I suppose there is something to learn from that.

sick and dirty

2012-01-31T15:29:00.007-06:00

I have two thoughtful blog posts (about the big picture and all things lovely and grand) started and saved as drafts, but they are not going to appear here today. Instead, I am going to use this opportunity to complain about my broken pretty-new-but-just-out-of-warranty washer, which is currently awaiting (behind large stacks of whites, goods, towels, and worn-for-ten-minutes-and-then-pooped-in sleepers) a critical and expensive part and equally expensive labor. Urgh. Complain! Urgh.

The undone laundry loads are a bit larger than usual for a Tuesday because of an unusual Monday. My poor little babe was sick. Nothing serious -- just uncomfortable and feverish and drooly and poopy, the sort of thing that a little baby in daycare with a preschool-aged brother is likely to get. Poor sweetheart. Two sleepless nights later, she is back to cooing and kicking and 98.6 degrees, and that is a relief. I am exhausted but her energy seems back to normal. If only my sorry washer pump had her verve! The sheets would be clean in no time!

Thankfully, today is the second of 40 degree days at the end of January, and the sun is bright, and I enjoyed a lazy walk around the neighborhood with the cooing, drooling infant strapped to my chest as the energetic preschooler tricycled gleefully through months-early puddles. And thankfully a kind neighbor friend shared her wonderfully spinny and drainy washer on Sunday night. Without that act of kindness the piles would be towers. I guess sometimes it even takes a village to fill the drawer with clean underwear. In return I gifted her with some homemade butterscotch- and chocolate-chip cookies, and that gift turned out to be a blessing, too; no one with my weakness for baked goods and power to rationalize should be left home with a glass jar full of them, even in non-stressful circumstances.

It is difficult to find perspective while wearing jeans encrusted with dried baby drool, while trying not to nod off in the urgent care waiting room, when the tasks of motherhood get a little sick and dirty. Some days are just harder than others, when mothering, when doing anything. Maybe I'm writing this to remind myself that a washing machine and a sick day are hardly great challenges to face. Lucky I am that these are my complaints.

And lucky that now I have a few minutes -- while my now-sick (yeesh!) husband watches PBS with the kids -- to microwave some hot water for tea (I'll spare you the details of the tea kettle incident) and collect my thoughts here.

Lentils: A Meditation

2012-01-22T14:18:00.005-06:00

I am making a big pot of curried lentil soup, and the house smells sweet because of it. In this, a brief window of freedom in my day (week, month, year), I am chopping carrots and onions, sauting them in oil, adding lentils and curry powder and water and broth. My baby rocks in her electronic swing and my preschooler trudges through the snow (we got some, a shovel-able amount, perhaps because of my last post bragging about a lack of the white stuff?) to a playdate at the neighbor's. I stand by the stove, stirring a very full pot.

Earlier today I fought with my four-year-old about nap time (I am not ready to let go of it, he apparently is). Not my finest moment. I wish I was all "peace" and "perspective" and "cuddles" as a mother, but sometimes I want so desperately to have a little time to write or pee or do nothing effective and productive at all, and sometimes I just wish we had more help, and sometimes I just can't play that game he wants to play again ... and then I fail. Or at least I don't score super high. Sometimes like during the nap argument. The argument he won. He never did go to sleep.

But then! An offer for a playdate! And I get this little spot of time. I would love to run upstairs to this perfect little nook and light a candle and ring a bell and sit in silence, finding my breath and watching my thoughts float up to the sky. I'd love to do that right now. But the baby swinging beside me wants to coo back and forth and this pot should be watched, so I'll stay here at the stove. Om.

The good man next door shoveled my walk this afternoon, when the snow ended and probably while I struggled with the four-year-old about sleep. The lovely family a block over is now hosting my restless son for Legos and pretzels and giggles, the makings of a great playdate. Such help. Such a gift. Thank you, village.

No moral here: just soup, a very big pot of soup at the end of a cold, snowy day. Sort of time spent alone, nourishing and refreshing time, and something to show for it. The lentils soften and so do I -- I feel more peace and perspective and snuggles already. Maybe he's just big enough to skip naps now. Maybe I'll try that "quiet time" routine. Maybe he'll start going to bed earlier? Thoughts like these swirl and I let them, carrots swirling in sweet, sweet broth. The baby coos and swings. And I stir this very full pot.

{published on Sunday, but written Friday}

The Patio, the Archives, and Me

2012-01-19T12:02:00.002-06:00

Today is very cold, which is normal for January in Minnesota, but of course this has been no ordinary year. We have been mild, warm even, for much of this season, and so the bone-chilling clear of today's air seems a bit harmless: days are already getting longer, we've passed the middle of January, winter at least will not be a seven-month endeavor here this year.

We have had mild temperatures and we've also had very little snow. Good thing, too, at least from my limited, uninterested-in-snow removal-and-snow sports perspective. Early in the fall my husband and I considered (as we've done for the past three years) investing in a snowblower, one of those really-super-nice-to-have-as-a-homeowner items that you hope you purchase only to have it sit in the garage corner and collect dust. But with fall came our wonderful, distracting baby, and we shoveled all but the immediate needs out of the way, and suddenly it was December and we noticed that all we had at our disposal was a shovel that is supposed to be good to your back. So far this year this is not a problem. The clouds and jetstream have been good to our back and the shovel is collecting dust. We -- ok, he, my husband -- has not had much to shovel. The driveway, the narrow walk, the front stairs, the square of broken stones that we call our patio have all been nearly clear all season.

Staring out the kitchen window at the light dusting of snow on our patio this morning, waiting for the coffee to kick in, I remembered that for a while I "unpublished" a bunch of old blog posts including one called "Patio Girl." So here I am, republishing it. The glimpse of warm green grass is welcome today, and my general unhandyness remains unchanged nearly two years after it was written, so it seems relevant. My thought was that it would be a way to post without having to write anything, but here I am, three paragraphs later, still chattering on.

The rest of the unpublished old posts are now back on the site in the archive, thanks to one press of the "publish all" button. Why start over? A clean start -- like lawn care -- may be overrated.

Patio Girl (written Spring 2010)

I have a complicated relationship with my yard. I enjoy walking barefoot on it on weekend afternoons or playing a round of catch on it in the evening. I love baking with my home-grown rhubarb, picking my lilacs, and slicing that first garden tomato. I care enough to insist that it is not dosed in chemicals for the sake of "perfection." But yard work? I just haven't been bitten by that bug. All around me, people look forward to digging in their little piece of dirt. To trimming the grass and the hedges and maintaining the flower beds. I'm just not quite there.

I sincerely appreciate all the hard work my partner puts into maintaining our modest city plot of land. If it's care were left up to me, perhaps the whole thing would have returned to native prairie by now. A cool idea in my head, but I don't think our neighbors would agree, and not very practical since my son is still small enough to be lost in tall grasses.

It rained this morning and I am filled with relief. If it were sunny and breezy and dry, I would have had to water the garden and the grass seed and the new tree and the potted herbs tonight while my husband works, and I probably would have forgotten to do so, and then something would have wilted and I'd have that blood -- or those crunchy, dead leaves -- on my hands.

I am a bit more of a "trip to the farmer's market and dinner at a great local sidewalk cafe" kind of girl. I can accept this. Still, I'll tackle my first landscaping project this summer -- the rock beds I've whined about here before -- as I continue to make an honest attempt at doing the work of home maintenance, as I continue to try to bloom where I'm, at least for the moment, planted. And I'll continue to love being in the yard, all nicely mowed thanks to my husband's work and dedication, as my son plays a round of something resembling soccer and while we enjoy a beer on our patio (which is really a small square of chipping old stones that can be charming if you try to see it that way) and when I remember to step outside after dark (now very late at night) to see the stars and the airplanes twinkling high above my little corner of the world.

And in an act of bonding -- as to learn about someone or something is to express a most genuine respect -- maybe I'll even look up the names of those plants alongside the house that thankfully need absolutely no special care and are thriving amidst my apathy. Whatever they are, they are my favorite.

this week I didn't cry over spilled breastmilk

2012-01-10T21:35:00.012-06:00

Really.

On Monday, the first day of my third week back at work, after successfully pumping 6 oz (whoo-hoo!) in the 15 minutes between our all-staff meeting and my check-in with a new employee, I accidentally pulled a bit too hard on the little tube that connects the pump to the bottle and there it went ...

I immediately began mopping up the breastmilk that was now running all over my desk with tissues (the only "linens" in my office space). I considered crying -- each ounce, each 15 minute pump-break so precious -- but the need to act fast and to not acknowledge what happened after unlocking and opening my door seemed to hold the tears at bay.

The milk spilled on a day, in a week, at a particular time in my life that is sort of a blur of
- nursing
- checking email (for work)
- commuting
- pumping
- checking email (for Groupon, the only thing that emails my personal account anymore)
- mopping up leaks
- changing diapers
- playing Lego alien spaceship with one hand while letting a teething a baby bite on the other (and yes, keeping the Legos far from the baby)
- craving carbs and eating them one handed (because the other is holding the pump/flying the Lego alien spaceship/being teethed upon/plucking out a blog post one letter at a time)
- posting a cute picture to Facebook and then rushing back again and again to see the comments
- nursing again
- looking for tights that match my skirt in the dark while I get dressed for work and try not to wake the baby just yet (and failing, like the day last week when I selected green instead of black and spent the day looking far more fashion-forward than I intended to)
- trying to have a conversation with my husband over dinner but really just exchanging a set of half-formed sentences and frequently forgetting -- after running to the kitchen for more milk/a napkin/the spaceship -- what the hell we were trying to talk about anyway ...
- all while trying to appear calm and together at work, and reasonable and caring at home, and sane at the grocery store (the only other place I go).

That's what it's like, and -- with a sense of humor about it all -- it's pretty good. It's chaotic and silly and I do have a rather large knot in the muscles in my lower back, but it's good. I say that now because both my little ones are sleeping and the lull of the "ocean waves" setting on the white noise machine-stuffed lamb in the cosleeper can be heard here at the computer. I would not have said that earlier when I was out for a walk and the older kiddo got off his trike and sat in an unknown neighbor's lawn, refusing to move because he no longer wanted to be on the walk. That was not pretty good. But we made it through, made it to a known neighbor's house where he played with a little friend (good) and some trucks until he ran into a tree (not good) and had to come home and rest (very good). Made it to now, this peace at the end of the day when the dirt on the bookshelf is no longer visible (love that darkness!) and no one is demanding a breast or a cookie. Everyone is fed and as far as I tell the house is in good order. Amen and good night. (Good, good, good.)

We are making it. Since my first day back at work, I told myself I would take it a week at a time. I am approaching midweek. I am making no great projections, I am not claiming victory. I am simply saying that we are making it. We have made it to the quiet of a Tuesday post-bedtime. There is breastmilk in the freezer to make up for what was lost earlier this week, and I'm laughing to myself as I think about the story -- and writing a note to myself to bring some towels and an extra shirt, just in case, to keep in my desk drawer.

I "joked" with a colleague that maternity leave is sort of like one of those retreats that cost a lot of money and make you get up early to do a bunch of hard work. I am going to extend that beyond maternity leave and now "joke" that all of parenting is sort of like that, except you don't get to eat in silence and you don't leave your hut after 10 days to go back to your advertising job in Manhattan. But otherwise I think it is probably very similar.

I didn't cry over spilled breastmilk this week. This retreat is doing wonders for my perspective on things. And that is very good.

Glow

2011-12-27T08:11:00.021-06:00

We shall find peace. We shall hear angels. We shall see diamonds sparkling in the sky.

- Anton Checkov

Christmas has come and gone. Even just two days after the big holiday, I can't help but feel that red and green looks out of place. Our decorating was rather minimal this year -- between a new baby and holiday travel plans, big trees and elaborate lights seemed unnecessary -- and what was once up is already down, packed away in storage containers in the basement.

That is not to say that I am happy to see Christmastime pass. I love the sparkly season with its undertones (if you can hear them beneath the noise about shopping, shopping, and shopping) of a quiet, expectant waiting ... waiting for a miraculous sort of peace. We had a lovely Christmas season here in our little chaotic house, all snuggled in together, tired but warm. And we had a great Christmas back in New York, visiting family and telling stories and eating the world's greatest pizza. It was hard to fly away from that -- the family, the pizza, the joy of a good visit with people who love you.

While we were away from our usual setting and while the children were distracted by cousins and aunts and uncles and a particularly adoring set of grandparents, I had some time to think ... to think about what I am waiting for, what I am hoping for, about the peace I crave. I love that about trips -- the distance from your own world and the time to think about it. There were no easy answers waiting under the tree on Christmas, all wrapped up neatly and tied with a bow; our adult wish lists are so complicated, aren't they? Once my every holiday-time desire could be dog eared in the JCPenney catalog.

As the new year looms, I am thinking about what it means - and what it takes - to live boldly and bravely. I used to think I knew the answer to that, but with more years and responsibilities, with children and a bad economy, it all seems a bit more complicated. I think sometimes I've stopped believing in my wishes, failed to notice all the gifts I've been given. This season and this trip east served up a good reminder ... the jeweled sky glows brightly long after the holiday lights go dim. There are angels singing if I listen.

the loan

2011-12-16T12:56:00.011-06:00

So yesterday, after waiting in line for about 30 minutes on my second attempt in two days to mail a few things at the post office, the computer at my station had a little glitch.

"Hmmm .... looks like we can't take credit cards for the time being," the polite, tired postal worker said. "I can take cash."

I racked up nearly a $40 bill for supplies, stamps, and postage for boxes. I rarely have cash on me and yesterday was no exception. A peak in my thin wallet produced about $9, change included.

"I don't have cash," I said, glancing back to the line that now headed out the door and around the building, and then glancing at my sleeping-but-fidgeting baby snug in her stroller.

Kindly, the postal worker rang the transaction as cash and handed me the receipt. "Come back by the end of the day with the cash," he said.

This was nice. It was trusting and helpful. It was still a challenge. I had this baby to haul with me, I had a preschooler to pick up at school. My husband wouldn't be home to help until after the post office closed.

Not feeling particularly cheery, I headed back out to my car, carrying the stroller down the stairs at the entrance past the many mailers awaiting their turn. I grumbled about the post office, complaining about their technology, complaining about my town and it's spread out services and the need to drive to the nearest ATM, and certainly looking like a very grumpy, frazzled mom. I got some sympathetic glances and I even met those with an annoyed eye roll. Not my finest moment.

I got to my car and found I was unable to open my door or the one by my baby's carseat thanks to a giant SUV parked too close to my little compact. More grumbling.

And then a woman I don't know walked up to my grinchy self and said, "I can give you the money so you don't have to come back. You can mail me a check."

She said it would be easier. She took out her wallet and handed me $40 and her business card. I started to cry.

"And I'll wait here in your car with your baby so you don't have to haul her back in."

I looked at her card. She worked for local churches. She had a kind smile. We talked briefly and then I left this sweet stranger with my baby and went inside to pay my bill.

I barged to the head of the line waiving the cash. People who had been there for 30 or more minutes smiled as I paid the polite cashier. He apologized. "Have a happy holiday," he said.

I returned to my car, to my sleeping baby and the kind woman watching over her.

"Thank you," I said.

"Merry Christmas," she responded, walking to her car as I got in mine. I went home and mailed her a check and a Christmas card to pay off the loan, and savored her gifts of a finished errand and a peaceful evening and a little bit of Christmas spirit.

art

2011-12-09T09:21:00.014-06:00

Wednesday was one of those perfect maternity leave days ... sunny, peaceful, fueled by a lovely cup of dark coffee and a delicious orange-and-chocolate scone from the co-op. My babe and I wandered through my favorite halls at the art museum and I did a little Christmas shopping at their fabulous gift shop. It was nourishing and delightful and I felt so inspired ...

Thursday -- yesterday -- was not one of those days. My babe got her first shots and spent the day fussy and uncomfortable. I spent the day worrying about her as I stood and swayed in front of reruns of Cheers and Friends, eating cold leftovers with my free hand.

This of course is the nature of parenting and living in general: glorious days beside challenging days, inspired moments followed by not-so-inspired moments. My mind went to some dark places as I wandered through my tiny, dirty house (I need to clean, but haven't had free hands, and now that I do I just want some time to write), worrying and stressing and worrying some more. I couldn't pull myself out of my fear, out of my funk ... I was as stuck in it as I was stuck in my house.

Today my baby is sleepy but more herself. I am relieved. It is so wonderful, on this sunny Friday morning, to see her smile and hear her coo. I am smiling and cooing a little, too.

I wish I could always maintain the inspiration, the general peace I had Wednesday morning, filled as it was with fresh baked goods and warm coffee and masterpieces in bronze and marble and oil, strolling my beautiful little creation through those lovely halls. I wish I could maintain that inspiration and peace or at least a little sense of perspective even when rocking back and forth, back and forth in the gray family room in our basement. I want to be a person -- a mother, a woman -- of grace.

I glimpsed from my perch in the glider in our living room the nearly full moon rising yesterday in the late afternoon. It was silver. The sky was gray blue. Dark, blank branches reached away from the frozen earth toward the deepening night sky. My tired little angel snuggled into the space between my shoulder and my chin and breathed her quiet and perfect and miraculous breaths. I didn't notice the beauty of it all enough at the time, but what could be more stunning, more inspired than the bright, almost-round glow of the moon on a still, cold December night?

Healing Waters

2011-12-01T09:28:00.002-06:00

I failed to do the dishes before my husband arrived home, and felt terrible for it. I filled the sink as he walked out the door but left it there, a pile of bowls and knives soaking in oil-streaked water all day. I showered, checked my email, shopped online for things I will not buy (like sexy nursing pajamas), and rocked, and rocked, and nursed, and nursed, and rocked, and danced, and wandered through my little house of chipped woodwork and dirty windows and scummy bathroom tile. I did nothing about the chips, the smears, the scum, just as I did nothing about the dishes. Long days with a sleeping then waking then eating then crying then pooping then sleeping baby drain my domesticity.

I failed to do the dishes and instead watched two and a half hours of Sex in the City in syndication, snacking on my son's Halloween candy and nursing my sleepy little girl as fabulous fake friends shopped for a single pair of shoes at a price that could ease the burden of this unpaid leave. I watched reruns filled with designer handbags, fizzy cocktails, and ladies walking through a big city all alone. I don't even pee alone these days and the commotion in my bed is of a rather different type ... night nursing every two hours, a sleepy preschooler who misses me most in the dark, my husband departing our crowded queen for the single with truck sheets downstairs. I don't want to watch women chase children, wipe spit off their shoulders, worry about paying the daycare bill. I don't want tips on removing water spots from sinks or inspiration for reorganizing closets. I want to gaze at a rosy cosmopolitan during my days dripping in breastmilk.

Not that this isn't glorious in its own way ... the slowness, the silence, the long snuggles, the complete lack of necessity for mascara, as the light of a hazy winter morning slowly turns into a hazy winter dusk. And I know that the slowness will fade into memory like the slowness that filled the early days with my now long, tall son. I know this, remind myself this, am telling myself this now.

Still I will choose Mr. Big over the big pile of dishes in the sink yet again tomorrow. When my husband arrives home, he can hold the baby and rock slowly and try to unwind from his commute while I drain the dirty water and fill the sink up with fresh warm suds, and play in the bubbles all alone.

rock on

2011-11-12T08:41:00.003-06:00

I spend quite a bit of time in the glider these days, staring out of our living room picture window. In the morning, I see the sun rise over the little capes that line block after block of our 1950s neighborhood. By midday, I see the streaks and smudges that should be cleaned from the glass. In the late afternoon, which is now dusk, I see the big Minnesota sky turn ten shades of purple that fade to gray. The past few nights, I saw the big round moon float over the trees.

Our little living room can be chaotic, filled with Legos and trucks and books and a floppy, tumbling, rumbling preschooler. Lots of chatter, of songs, some whining. It can also be completely still. Often MPR plays in the background ... you can hear a faint bit of classical music or the murmur of news. And then there is the mesmerizing sound of the rocking -- a little squeak, a little click, rhythmic and steady -- as I sit with my nursing or sleeping baby, as the preschooler plays and the symphony ends and the moon rises.

This morning, as I rocked and nursed the baby at 4am in that glider rocker, I tried to remember that someday I'll sleep again. Maybe never quite like I did before I had children -- someone's teething or sickness or bad dream, and later someone's date!, keep mothers up for years -- but at least in more than 90 minute spurts. And then I remembered this old entry on rocking that I wrote when the preschooler was a bit younger but well past the rocking-all-day-and-night stage. And that reminded me that it all goes by quickly.

I do not want to wish time to pass. I'm trying to learn, seated in my rocking chair, the bliss of what simply is now, imperfect and creaky and tired and a little messy and so very blessed.

From the Archive: Tonight I'm Thinking About Rocking
[Originally published 4.1.10]

Perhaps my task here is to focus on the daily things, the little rituals, that give rhythm to days and weeks, that create a little space in a busy life. The things I practice. And tonight I'm thinking about rocking.

Tonight I rocked my son to sleep like I do most nights, in the comfort of a glider rocker that we bought when he was a chubby little baby. Though some would say that my toddler son is too old for such coddling -- believe me, I've read all those sleep books -- I see it differently. He's an active, growing kid, but in the quiet of his room at bedtime, snuggled with a soft blanket, I get to cuddle him, my once (always?) baby, for a few still moments. He likes it, but I really I do it for me.

And, of course, I do it because it's what I know. My own mother rocked me until I went to kindergarten, I believe. The story goes that as I started school I told her she didn't need to rock me anymore, could simply tuck me in instead. By then, I'd rocked with my mother (in the bright lights of our small living room, packed with four older siblings and a father watching TV and talking without any regard to my sleep or lack thereof) in only a symbolic way, crawling off her lap awake to walk up the long staircase to my shared bedroom when it was actually time to go to bed. Clearly in my own childhood the value of the tradition extended beyond its usefulness as a sleep inducer.

At my house, rocking is a variation on this theme. After dinner, after dishes, after bath time, after stories or a bit of a TV or an outing to the store or the library, in the quiet darkness of his little room in our quiet little house, I get to hold my baby and rock. No words, nothing else to do, no way to multitask. His toddler tantrums over, the mess of a day lived (crumbs, always crumbs!) invisible in the darkness and shadows. The gentle rhythm of the rocker keeps time as he falls off to sleep. I feel his soft breath and hold his growing body. I utter something like a prayer that he stay safe and strong. And I feel the quiet, sometimes for the first time all day. And I take comfort, and he falls asleep.

the three of us

2011-11-09T09:44:00.002-06:00

While it may look like I spend quite a bit of time alone during this maternity leave, there is a voice in my head that does keep me company, though not always the pleasant kind. The voice, which I call "the mom I should be" voice, is actually a real bummer to be around. She's kind of a guilt-inducer, her advice filled with shoulds and laced with judgment ... as in "you should be dusting the living room while she sleeps" and "you should definitely work full-time when leave is up" and "you should definitely stay home full time when leave is up" and "you should not eat another M&M cookie when nursing at 2:30 am."

Impossible. How can I not eat another cookie? I'm starving! It's the middle the of the night! This baby has nursed three times since "bedtime" and I want a snack! Just as it's impossible to work full time and stay home full time. And not to lean a little heavier than I would like to admit on PBS Kids for the preschooler or on frozen pizza come Wednesday night dinner.

She is, of course, the creation of well-meaning advice from diverse quarters (hence the often contradictory nature of her recommendations), of peer pressure and even marketing. She even comes a bit from early, outdated, inexperienced ideas of motherhood that I held long before I held my first baby. She is also a reflection of the desire I feel -- a desire I suppose is shared by most parents really -- to do this right. To be the perfect mom.

I thought I let go of my perfectionism a long time ago. Embraced my thickish thighs, dwelled amidst my scuffed woodwork, made peace my with tendency to overuse commas in my writing. I was wrong. I channel it into new things and the now thing is to be afraid of not making the right decision -- about one more episode of Super Why for the preschooler, about the great breastfeeding/bottle feeding debate, about work ...

... and even about how best to use the 45 minutes I have with free arms.

Right now the voice is saying "make the bed!" and "take a nap!" and "close that silly blog!" But I'm not listening to that voice, because it feels good to sit here and type a bit and try to find through the process the voice of the mom I am.

Deep down I know there is no perfect parent, no one way to do this, that maybe mine isn't the only family that occasionally exceeds their doctor's recommendation for preschool TV time and that lets the dust form a protective layer on the IKEA bookshelves, that there is no magical equation that works for every child and every family ...

The baby is stirring in the other room. Hopefully the soft crunching sounds of my mid-morning M&M cookie will cover up that voice -- that mom I should be voice -- when I sit rocking and feeding my baby in a few minutes so that the two of us can be alone, can have some peace.

To do

2011-10-24T13:43:00.000-05:00

It's Monday on maternity leave, a day that looks a lot like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. There is bliss in this as well as challenge. This morning as I nursed my sweet pumpkin, her ever-growing cheeks chomping away, I made a mental to do list: fold the laundry that has been sitting in the dryer for two days, sweep the kitchen floor that now crackles when I walk across it, confirm my son's swimming lesson times, look for Friday morning playdates, finish the novel I started at the end of my first trimester of pregnancy, discern my life's calling, get my eyebrows waxed ...

I couldn't write my to do list down because my writing hand was not free; little pumpkin was resting in the crook of my right arm. Add another item: write all of this down.

She nursed quite a while and by the time she finished and was all wonderfully full and drowsy, I too was ready for a nap. We spent a good part of last night awake together -- it was her idea, not mine -- and exhaustion from such nights catches me by mid-morning. Before I could write out the to do list, I was asleep.

Now in a few more moments of quiet -- she is waking in the other room, but not yet ready for a diaper change or another round of nursing or even to open her eyes -- I realize a little something about my to do list. It's really hard for me to let go of getting things done, even with a 2.5 week old and a preschooler and in the midst of a major life event. In the middle of the night, as I sit groggily trying to help her latch on and get the snack she is after, I actually feel pangs of guilt for not reading more, not using all this "time" to make my way through the great books I've yet to crack open.

And I feel bad that I'm not always dusting, that laundry sits in piles, that at noon the bed may not be made.

Parenting, especially parenting a newborn but really also parenting a preschooler, seems filled with lessons about the limits of to do lists. It would be dishonest to say that I don't sometimes miss the sense of accomplishment that comes from moving through the adult world -- a work day, a set of objectives, time put in, a job done. This is nurse, diaper, rock, repeat. This can be hard.

But this can also be splendid. It's a warm and lovely fall afternoon and we just strolled around, taking it all in. It was a quiet walk. Maybe later we'll have time for one more. It's something we might do, but I won't write it down anywhere. We'll just see how the day goes.

the young are restless

2011-10-23T16:10:00.002-05:00

It's Sunday afternoon and the preschooler has refused, for the second day in a row, a nap. The baby is sort of sleepy today -- as she should be. She was up all night, after sleeping all through the day yesterday. Sleep appears to be the way she handles guests at the house -- we had a steady stream of them Friday afternoon and evening and again through the day Saturday, and this tiny little one just closed her eyes and zonked out as friends and family admired her sweetness.

Come 2:30 am last night, however, she developed a desire to stay up, to eat and eat and eat, cry a little, poop a lot, and generally resist rest.

And so, just about 2.5 weeks after her arrival, I am today experiencing what I would call serious, serious tiredness. If she was not relying on me for food every 1.5 to 3 hours, I am certain I could sleep for days. Possibly until November.

In addition to remembering what sleep deprivation feels like, I am now also feeling the isolation that can come with being home and having a pretty darn hard time leaving it. I have managed to get out -- with the babe, sometimes with both the babe and preschooler -- but it's tricky and quite a lot of work. I'll get better with practice (though this crazy climate will challenge me with its onslaught of ice and snow just as I get the hang of it -- grrrrr!) but it's still quite new, and the baby is still so little, and sometimes leaving, even for a walk around the block, hardly seems worth the effort. I have to really force myself to get out of the worn, warm glider rocker, so comfortably perched near the NPR-tuned radio.

This makes me miss Brooklyn, where the preschooler was a baby. There no car seat or drive was necessary (or possible, since we didn't have a car); I just strapped him into a carrier and headed out to the park a block away, to one of the coffee shops, the main shopping street where I met my neighborhood mom friend L. and her son, born just days after mine, for window shopping, for iced coffee, for a little nursing on a bench in the shade. In my mind, in my memory, it was all very easy and comfortable. (Never mind that I of course only had one child to think about. And that my memories are probably based on that child at 3 months old, rather than 2.5 weeks. Never mind that. Let memory compare grossly different situations to justify feelings of nostalgia!)

I just plopped the baby into the sling and took a little walk here in our current neighborhood while the preschooler and his dad (who is also tired, of course -- though he gets more sleep at night he has to show up at work and be productive all week) are roaming through the neighborhood looking for treasures. It worked well. There is not yet any snow or ice and in fact it's sort of mild. The babe fell asleep, and I had a chance to move my cramped, curled body. The fresh air tasted good -- like crinkly leaves and fall rain. There aren't any shops and tea lounges and bakeries dotting the route as there were on the street just outside my Brooklyn door, but I don't really need any new clogs or designer iced beverages anyway. For now, I just need to get out of the house ... and to get a little more sleep.

---
A final note: as I sit to complain about being tired and a little stir crazy and homesick (again!) for Brooklyn, I do so knowing that I am lucky to have such complaints at the top of my list. Yesterday I read a really powerful piece from last Sunday's Times (yes, it took until Saturday to do so) --Notes from a Dragon Mom. It's a moving reflection on parenting a child with a terminal disease; ultimately it's a moving reflection on what I suppose it really means to parent. When I worry -- too much TV? inconsistent naps? no space for a piano and no funds for lessons? -- about these things that much of the middle class parenting world advises me to worry about, I suppose I am missing the point of being a parent. Dragon Mom's piece is an in-my-face reminder that ultimately my job is to love my little ones as much as I can. And that it's all so fragile. Maybe I/we focus on the other stuff -- the Tiger Mom stuff, the right way to diaper and the right kind of early childhood education -- to take my/our minds off that truth. It's all so fragile indeed.

Back to this practice

2011-10-17T08:54:00.002-05:00

After starting and stopping and starting and stopping, I'm back ... at least for the moment, until my sleeping little angel cries. For the moment, all is quiet and I'm relatively awake and I'm in need of writing to sort through things, which is ultimately why I have kept a journal for so many years and why I eventually started this blog. My ambition is less in the realm of literary achievement and more in that of general mental health. I am usually able to write myself toward a little perspective.

Perspective on this life, now so greatly changed by the arrival of a second little one in our house, our family. We are so lucky -- she is healthy and strong and arrived in relative smoothness. The 12 days since her birth have been a bit sleepy, have involved a great deal more bodily fluid than the days prior, have produced quite a lot of laundry that never seems to get put away ... and have been pretty delightful really. My nipples are sore, my back already rounded into that nursing "C" shape, my eyes way too dry to hold a contact lens ... but my four-year-old loves her (most of the time, and often with a bit too much cheek pinching, but loves her nonetheless) and she's working on building an extraordinary set of chins, growing growing growing, changing already, even in these early days. We have been blessed with generous gifts of food from family and friends, so while we are tired, we are at least well-nourished. Lucky indeed.

So I'm back to this blog, which I thought about changing -- refocusing somehow -- but have decided to keep just as it is. A spot for my little rants on my little life, mostly about my children and the laundry and how I feel bad that I'm not more domestic, my musings on how I forgot just how long and cold the winter is here, that sort of thing. Old posts may reappear and new ones will show up at random times, whenever my hands are free and my head is full.

I don't want to clean and I'm sick of waiting

2011-09-12T14:13:00.003-05:00

I'm back.

I thought about postponing this endeavor until after the baby arrives, as certainly her (we think her, unless it's a him, and then his) appearance in the world will change things in ways we can sort of anticipate and also in ways we most certainly cannot, and those changes will change me and what I think about and what I feel compelled to write about when (if?) I have a few minutes to think as I type right here.

I thought about it, but then decided not to wait. Mostly because I'm very impatient. And really all I'm doing right now is waiting. Waiting to dialate. Waiting for my water to break. Waiting to get this effort started. Waiting to transition from a large, swollen, overheated pregnant woman who cannot walk through an IKEA parking lot without seriously, seriously having to pee, into a mother of two.

Waiting, waiting, waiting.

I could fill the time. I could clean my house a bit better. I feel like I should do this, both because I was raised in a cult of clean, in one of those Midwestern households where the even faux-grapes in a basket on the kitchen counter are dusted every Saturday morning. I also feel like I should do this because to clean -- to scrub my bathroom tile with a toothbrush, or to chase the dustbunnies, stray legos, and snapped ponytail holders from under the bed -- would be an act of "nesting" and "nesting" is a sign of labor and thus perhaps by "nesting" -- perhaps just maybe it could also work in reverse -- and I could summon labor.

But I don't feel like cleaning. The house is tidy. It's fine. The spiders on the stairs are harmless and they've worked hard on those webs. Who knows? Maybe the bigger one is nesting for herself. Imagine the karma if I ruined that effort. And the dust in the living room provides a protective coating for my IKEA bookshelves, lengthening the life of those pressed-wood marvels. I say it's good enough around here.

So I'm relaunching this now instead, because I don't want to clean and I'm sick of waiting. With a bit of distance from this little practice, I think I figured out that the new direction I'd like to go here has less to do with what is going on in my life than with what I do with my life in each entry. Maybe it is hormones, maybe it is this awful weather (87 degrees and sunny with a light breeze may sound nice to you, but with 9 months of pregnancy padding it is like an inner ring of hell), maybe it is the fact that its been at least two months since I slept more than 3 hours in a row without having to pee, but I'm feeling pretty honest these days. Enough of this trying to always sound peaceful. The truth is far more complicated and interesting -- if a bit harder to write -- than that.

I would like to say I'll be back once a week but I suppose there may be weeks ahead in which that will be a very lofty goal. Let's say I'll aim to be back once a week, even if it's just to repost one of the better pieces from this blog's earlier iteration.

And with that, I guess I'll return waiting for this terrible weather to end (come rain! come clouds! come cool, gray, miserable Minnesota fall weather!) and for my ankles to return to their normal size and for my little expected and all that awaits us when she (or he) finally arrives.

Falling into Place

2011-08-24T12:51:00.002-05:00

We took a little drive this afternoon, just off to the neighboring city for a change of scenery, a new playground, a little lunch, someone else's neighborhood ice cream joint. It was peaceful and uneventful and the ice cream was pretty good. It's a lovely day with a hint of fall in the air, something that scares my summer-loving husband (so displaced here in the land of 8-month winters) but makes me pretty happy. Nights have been cool lately, so for the first time in several weeks I've actually slept pretty well, the slight chill of the breeze cooling my big round warm self. Even when I'm not pregnant I love the fall and get excited at the first signs of its coming. I love apples and sweaters and the smell of fallen leaves, and dimmer evenings and candy corn and fresh school supplies (even when unnecessary).

And fall ... well, it's so nostalgic, isn't it? And my history-focused soul loves that nostalgia. To me, nothing is more evocative of pasts and places lived in, longed for, and loved than the fall.

They say -- who exactly, I'm not sure -- that there are three significant places in a person's life: the place you are born, the place you live, and the place you love. If you, like me, move around a bit, I guess this is a mutable list. Maybe even without movement the latter changes at different points in life. It's an interesting little tidbit to ponder, as I did yesterday while walking around the quiet little lake in our neighborhood, a space I love both for its underdog status (it is not the flashier, parkier lakes of this lake-filled town) and its extraordinary quiet -- rarely do a I pass a soul as I make my way around it -- juxtaposed with the sound of airplanes overhead and a highway just beyond a looming retaining wall. That little lake represents the best part of here, the place I live: a simple, accessible beauty, a certain kind of peace. So there it is: the place I live.

The place I was born is a small town on the western Minnesota prairie, a town encircled by corn and soybean fields -- big ones that mean big business. The town has changed a lot in my lifetime but the landscape, the setting, remains constant ... and that setting is something I still frequently crave. There is a part of me that has a deep love for "empty" spaces, that feels at ease in the wide, flat open, that loves nothing more than a dramatic sky and a constant wind.

I married my husband in the autumn in my small prairie town, on a glorious -- if a bit too chilly for my open-back dress -- day. It was perfect. And we moved to the city where we now live in the fall, on perhaps the last nice day of that season. I seem to remember that the moment that the moving van pulled away, it started to snow, and nothing thawed for months and months and months thereafter. We were sort of iced into our new place immediately. Fallish memories color my impressions of the place I was born and the place I now live.

And the place I love? Well, Brooklyn I suppose, that most romantic of boroughs. Our little neighborhood was a world onto itself and everything we needed was just a short walk away. I spent a lot of time in Brooklyn thinking about being somewhere else -- often, thinking about being where we are now -- but that's something I have to remind myself, because now it seems like it was just one fabulous little stroll through a great, storied city, bustling with people and energy and possibility, along uneven stone sidewalks dusted with crumpled leaves.

My fondest memories come from the first few months of my son's life (the late summer, and then the fall) spent strolling through the neighborhood on my own or with a friend. They -- probably not the same they first mentioned above, but rather another they all together -- say you always love the place where your child was born. Maybe that's at work in my love of Brooklyn, too. I became a mother in that city. I became other things to ... more than any other place I've lived, I came into my own there. For a small town girl from the wide open, I took to the gritty chaos pretty easily. And I miss it, as one misses home, proving that home is a very complicated place indeed.

Whenever we return to NYC for a visit I walk past our old apartment. I tear up a bit at the site of the sage green curtains we left behind, still hanging there in the living room window. I think of all that took place in that little space, can imagine standing with my tiny little boy in my arms, looking out at the brownstones and crinkly-leafed trees as I danced that precious soul to sleep with a little New York breeze blowing the cotton curtains.

My next little expected should be born here, so we'll see what that does to my relationship with this place where I live now. Should be born here in the fall no less, and I look so forward to holding her, to dancing with her, as I gaze out of our windows onto the wide street in front of our house as fall's leaves roll along down the road.

Working It Out

2011-08-11T05:45:00.005-05:00

My mother went back to work when I was six weeks old. Went back to work at the business that she co-ran with my father, the business they started together about five years before any thought of me entered the picture. When they started the business, things were simpler. Then they only had four kids.

I've been thinking about her experience a lot lately as we prepare to bring child number two into our lives, our home, our everything, and had a brief chance to discuss it with her when she was here a couple weeks ago.

Until she and my father very recently retired, my mother worked full-time (which for most of my life included not just Monday through Friday 8-5, but also Friday evenings and Saturday mornings). That said, it was the family shop, and I had a small play space in the back for the Friday evenings and after school stretches when she was without childcare. I stopped by after school before I headed to the next door YMCA for swimming lessons. When I was sick, she often brought bookkeeping home and watched daytime TV by my side. She could come to conferences and plays and other school day events without cashing in vacation time. Home and my parent's work blended quite a bit in my household. (And isn't it interesting that their business was about homes? More on that another time.)

She had a few other things on her side. I grew up in a small town. Her commute took about 3 minutes, and that was with a stop by my school -- situated as it was right between home and work. Until I was in school, I had a babysitter who came to the house, did a load of laundry here and there, could mix up a meatloaf if necessary, all for a total pay that would shock and awe my contemporary urban working parent friends. And I had older siblings -- four of them -- who cooked mac 'n cheese on Fridays nights and played with me while Mom and Dad worked, who cleaned the kitchen and bathroom and kitchen on Saturday mornings, who generally helped out around the house quite a lot (and a lot more than I ever did).

I have early, fuzzy memories of Mom heading to The Store (the family business never needed a more specific name around our house) after making sure I had my Cheerios and was suitably dressed, as well as of a beloved babysitter (even as she watched soap operas and made seemingly endless rounds of hot dogs for lunch) and adored siblings who cared for me in her absence.

Talking to her now, I know very well that she had to work when I was six weeks old and each day thereafter because sustaining the business and the family depended on it. I also know she enjoyed it, or at least most of it a lot of time, and that when my parents sold their store she looked back very proudly at her business and career.

And I know she would have liked a few more weeks at home when I was a baby, maybe longer. She said she just knew the babysitter could not feed me and get me to nap in just the right way. She said she cried the whole way to work. I suppose I cried a lot then, too.

Her circumstances were very different from my own. She did the best she could, and I guess that part of the story sticks with me the most. That's all we can do, really, as moms, as parents, trying to do the right thing for our kids, our families, ourselves -- work it out, make it work, the best we can.

Perspective

2011-08-05T03:55:00.002-05:00

Even when a good deal of the change in one's life is quite positive, it can be challenging to adjust and adapt and be patient with all that is unknown and uncomfortable and new. I suppose all change also involves loss with its tinges of sadness. It can be challenging, and it is right now, as we deal with the heat and with a particularly busy stretch and with a lot to do in the next nine weeks (a bit less actually), and with the myriad of changes from jobs to room organization to family expansion. Right now it all seems like it might be too much, but I think that is just because I'm lacking perspective.

(And maybe because my ankles are puffy. But mostly because I'm lacking perspective.)

I've been seeing a lot of midnights -- and later -- recently and not quite by choice. I am uncomfortable at night and sleep does not come easily. And once my back or hips or full bladder -- or more pleasantly, the soft tumbles of my little expected -- wake me, there is plenty on my mind to keep me wide awake in the dark. There is, I suppose, I gift in these quiet nighttime moments. Not only might they be good practice for the sleepless nights to come, but they afford a few quiet, dim minutes alone after busy days.

Earlier this evening, I started reading How to Practice by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. We have a houseguest, so I couldn't sit in front of the TV and watch Project Runway. Turned out to be a good thing. I am already challenged to think about and then address how often my own attitudes and actions add to what he calls suffering and I would more specifically define as chaos, stress, and dissatisfaction. What if I could act with more grace? More grace toward others? More grace toward myself? What if I gave out more kindness and less judgment?

Tonight, at this late (or shall I say "today, at this early") hour, I need to write what I need to hear: that we will move through this period of tension, that rooms will be set up and routines reclaimed, that someday again the air will be crisp and a breeze will blow through our open windows. That I can and will practice living more gracefully and keeping things in perspective at home and work and -- most significantly -- in my ever-wandering mind.

Photo: E.G.

Swimming with Dinosaurs

2011-07-25T11:18:00.007-05:00

Yesterday -- a warm, bright Sunday -- my energetic four-year-old craved the sun. He played in his tiny backyard pool with Daddy and then, as I emerged groggy and stiff from an afternoon nap that he decided to skip, begged for a trip to the wading pool at a nearby park. He pulled on his trunks all by himself while I grabbed sunscreen and a towel, packed up his new plastic t-rex and stegosaurus. I strolled him over, eager to place my swelling feet in the water.

Sparkly blue pool, sparkly blue sky, lush green all around. It was after 3 by then, so children all over the neighborhood were waking from naps (children who took their naps, anyway). The pool quickly filled. My son splashed and waded and ran, jumped into a rather vigorous game of catch with a slightly older kid, and checked in once in a while. He tossed his dinosaurs in the pool and tossed them back out. Meanwhile, I sat in the shade on the pool's edge and experienced a rare moment of cool. Seven months pregnant in a record-setting hot summer, I do not often feel anything of the sort.

I am trying -- trying, trying, trying -- to remember that these last weeks will zoom by quickly. Trying to stay focused on getting things ready, getting things done. Trying also to rest and take it easy, maybe even spending a few minutes here and there pondering this rather momentous thing underway. I am trying also to slow down, to not always be doing things on a list, to simplify when I can, to take on less, to focus more. Always trying anyway.

But the heat is getting to me -- even though we (I) spend so much of the year complaining about being cold. My rings are growing tight. My ankles are growing thick. And I'm exhausted by the thought of rearranging furniture even as I am so very, very eager to finally set up a little spot for my expected somewhere in my house. I'm getting kind of tired and ten weeks -- the length of time to my due date -- seems quite long. Still lots of calendar pages away, even as my back aches from swaying so far forward for this growing belly. And I can't sleep.

I don't want to complain. I'm so lucky to be here, at this stage. I'm so hopeful and excited for this child. I'm just a little tired.

Anyway, the splashing and fun ended after about an hour, and my beautiful boy climbed back in his stroller for the ride home. Sunny, little wind, pretty quiet in the neighborhood. Nice little walk. I parked the stroller in the yard and he refused to get up; moments later, my husband pointed out that he was asleep -- sitting up in his stroller. Something that hasn't happened in years. He napped for a couple of hours -- late for a nap, but it was the weekend, and he was tired, and what's more delicious in the summer than falling asleep at will? -- there in the shade of the garage, in the (relative) comfort of his stroller, his dinosaurs resting in the basket beneath him.

Beautiful boy

2011-07-17T22:41:00.004-05:00

It has been a wonderful day ... my son's 4th birthday, a lazy, very hazy and crazy hot Sunday of fun and play and friends and of course time with our little family, and all I seem to be able to say is that I am so grateful for that child, my sweet little love, and for the many good people all around us -- then and now. Tonight I am wistful, remembering (or trying to) what it was like to see my baby and hold him for the first time, and remembering (or trying to) all the sweet and powerful and mundane things since then. Tonight -- on this very hot night -- I am simply grateful for and overwhelmed by my funny, silly, sweet sweet beautiful boy.

Tissues

2011-07-05T10:18:00.007-05:00

Well, I'm just a weepy mess lately. Blame hormones, blame the heat, blame some of the stress that my family has been under as we navigate the never-easy territory of life planning. I can even blame strep throat, as this morning the little cotton swap in the doctor's office confirmed that I am now the third in my family to fall victim of that scratchy bacteria. I have teared up - and sometimes more - at all of the following in the past several days:
- A New York Times magazine article that is decidedly not sad
- A 4th of July parade that was neither sad nor particularly poignant
- The sight of my son splashing in a large, fun, playful kids waterpark (also in the category of "not sad")
- A discussion about insurance (which can seem terribly complicated)

And just this morning, as the fabulous PA at my medical practice was feeling my swollen glands, I teared up again in response to her question, "So do you miss New York?" Her question prompted by our discussion of where I was four years ago, which was Brooklyn, which was waiting for the birth of my son. It's almost his birthday, so of course I'm thinking back to those last few weeks of preparation, when I didn't know that he'd have such lovely golden hair or such a sharp smile or such a knack for learning and then remembering every Star Wars character ever.

The day before he was born, I took a walk from our tiny apartment to the natural food store in an adjacent neighborhood to pick up some milk. On the walk up, someone stopped me to tell me that I looked lovely. While I read the back of various teas in the nicely air conditioned store, another woman patted my hand and said I looked just beautiful. Finally, on the walk home, a mother -- leaving her beautiful brownstone with two grown children -- stopped to say I looked like I was absolutely in bloom.

In reality, my ankles were swollen to the point of having creases. My belly was huge, my hips were loose, my gait was beyond a waddle. I'm certain I was sweating, not glowing. Perhaps they could see that something amazing was about to happen. And they stopped what they were doing to offer a little encouragement. Only after my water broke and I labored at home and we took a giant Lincoln Town Car with no suspension to the hospital and I labored more and that beautiful little baby entered the world did I stop to think at how their collective words were perhaps a prediction of the wonder ahead.

I am not saying "I miss New York because people there once told me I looked lovely." I'm just saying that I have some lovely memories of July four years ago, and lovely memories of life in New York, and in stories about my son's birth the two collide. I remember someone telling me once that "you'll always love the place where your baby was born." Maybe that even explains why I cried at the parade ... the parade here in our now-home, where our little expected is expected to arrive.

Two-thirds Full

2011-07-01T09:33:00.003-05:00

I can be a bit of grump, a bit of a pessimist. I’ve noticed this lately: much of the small talk I make is critical of the weather, of our #@&*#$! government shutdown (though who can blame me here!), of my house and my city and even myself. Often the criticism is cloaked in some humor, that self-depreciating sort, but the edge of a glass-half-empty sort of person is certainly there.

I wonder a bit if this is inborn – if there is some gene in my swirly little DNA string predisposing me toward this – or if it is learned, and either way I am hoping that, with some meditation and/or effort and/or magic tea, I might turn it around. I’ve read that optimists live longer and healthier lives and I know that they tend to be a little more fun to hang around. Even slightly funny complaints get a little old – for the audience and the issuer. Sometimes one just kind of wants the grass to be green enough on this side, you know?

I’m just beginning the third trimester of this pregnancy. If all runs on-time, according to average gestation and those fun little circles with months and days that OB’s keep on their desks, I’m two-thirds of the way through this pregnancy. My belly is bigger and I know the baby is, too, as her kicks are now noticeable not only to me but to those who might take a few moments to stare at my moving shirt. I read that she is probably about as long as an ear of corn now, which seems like a perfect little length for a Midwestern fetus on a hot, hot day in July.

Seriously hot. Feels like 105 degrees hot, with hazy yellow-gray sky and warm wind. Last night, lounging under the ceiling fan with my swollen feet elevated, I spent time worrying about how it is all going to play out – work and finances and space allocation and my son’s transition to big brotherhood and my own transition back to infant motherhood and my baby’s health and my own health and even the $)#*&$@! government shutdown. I worried that there are things I should be doing that I am forgetting to do. Worried that the state of Humphrey and Wellstone is a thing of the past. Worried that maybe things are not going to be ok. Worried, worried, worried, with thoughts spinning as fast as our outdated ceiling fan. (See! I did it again. Didn’t just say “ceiling fan.” Definitely didn’t say “blessed ceiling fan, which keeps our room so cool.” Had to criticize it, despite its whirling wonder. )

And then she kicked me.

And kicked me again, and kept swimming around in what I can only imagine was some sort of fit of joy. It tickled, and then she kicked low and I suddenly had to pee.

I am delighted, when I let myself be so, by this little expected dancing in my belly and by the changes she will bring. I am scared … but even more I am hopeful. I know that hope alone doesn't ensure a bumpless road or an easy labor and it certainly doesn't write a budget that combines cuts with taxes on the rich. I know that. But maybe it provides some comfort or motivates right action or inspires gratitude or makes the day a little better. I will still worry, but I want to focus a little more on hope.

When I woke up this morning, my little boy blew raspberries on my belly and talked to the baby, and my husband snuggled beside me for a few extra minutes to feel the baby’s movements and savor the breeze from our blessed ceiling fan, which kept our room so cool even in this heat. I couldn’t help but feel that the glass is actually something like two-thirds full. Let’s see if I can keep that in mind for a while.

Things really do sometimes fall apart, but ...

2011-06-20T12:17:00.008-05:00

Amidst the poetic lounging and warm, tender moments of gratitude yesterday -- captured in another one of my blog posts that portrays me as balanced, focused, at peace -- was this:
- mysterious blotches on just-washed laundry, possibly caused by a quite-new, highish-end washing machine that is just about to lose its warranty, and
- a missing pin in the newish umbrella that is supposed to shield our modest little patio from late-day sun when we eat outside.

These are not huge issues. No one's life is threatened, no great sadness has descended upon our house, these are not dire tragedies. I know. But they are annoying. And they illustrate something that most of the time I like to ignore: things -- as in material stuff, particularly the household kind -- really do fall apart. And then you -- or in this case, I -- need to fix them or replace them or take care of them in some way, even if I'd rather read a book.

And this fact makes me wonder -- or perhaps better said, leads me to admit -- that I am not the most domestic of individuals. The challenge involved in detecting a laundry malfunction is enough to make me want to put the house up for sale (as I threatened to do before my husband, a more measured soul, recommended I contact customer service first). I don't want to deal with it. I'll do the laundry -- and make endless references to it in this humble blog -- without many complaints, even taking satisfaction in the completion of such a quotidian task, but once there's a snag -- or in this case, a series of mysterious blotches -- I toss my hands in the air, leaving the plastic basket and the folded towels it contains to drop on the floor. Makes me miss the days of Mike, our Brooklyn building's super, who kindly set our mouse traps and changed the too-high recessed light bulbs. Almost makes me miss carrying loads of laundry down Court Street to the Yemeni laundromat/luggage store/travel agent where, a handful of quarters later, the laundry was at least stain-free. And if there was a problem? Like the big washer third from the door that didn't drain? You just avoided that washer, told the young man at the desk when you made change, warned your laundering neighbors.

My husband, MacGyver of a man that he is, fixed the umbrella in time for dinner, a dinner that featured an assortment of fresh vegetables from the glorious farmer's market downtown. It was delicious. The night was perfect for sitting outside on our little patio, too. So another shout out, this one post-Father's Day, to my husband for keeping his cool and doing the little things required to put stuff back together when it starts to fall apart.

A repair person is coming this week. I'm hopeful that the spots on my new fabulous orange skirt are removable. It is sort of nice to toss in a load of laundry without passing 30 or so people in the process, if the laundry works. I guess we'll keep the place for now.

The Force

2011-06-19T08:43:00.007-05:00

It's Father's Day, and my husband and son are building podracers with Legos on the living room floor. Lovely to overhear the discussion. They have bonded over Star Wars over the past few months. It's their thing. I never (have to) read the Star Wars books at bedtime -- I still get to read the good ones about Knuffle Bunny and Curious George. The Star Wars books are for my husband to read, since he knows the names and can explain the scenes and shares at least some of my son's excitement about starfighters and that sort of thing.

We've had a busy month, featuring many visits from and to family, some business travel for my husband, a hectic time at work. My son has also undergone some change, as he moved from one preschool room to another, the new room filled with bigger kids and new teachers and optional nap times. He's skeptical of the switch. The intensity of all this busyness has worn us down a bit, even though a much of it (the visits, for example) has been good. And we're starting to make some plans and arrangements for our little expected (now about 15 weeks from due date!) though some arrangements are paused while we make a few decisions about work and life. The coming of a new baby certainly prompts some serious thinking about the way one allocates time and resources. Certainly prompts some serious discussions that ultimately try to get at what is most important, what really matters, what it is all for. I have yet to get a single thing out of the baby closet in the basement (the small room where bins of my son's former goods are stored) or to purchase anything new. We have yet to move one single item of furniture. And yet I can feel how everything is on the verge of change (very good change, very wonderful good change, but change nonetheless). The baby's kicks are visible now if I sit still enough. The baby is making herself (we think herself, unless it's himself, which is possible given the slightly unclear read of the ultrasound) known, one little punch at a time. It's a very full time around here.

Outside of my belly, it's been a gray and humid weekend, rainy off and on. Quiet for the first time in months. We've done laundry -- and more laundry, and yet more laundry (Should I make this a blog focusing on meditations about laundry? I fear it is sort of becoming that already!) -- and cooked and shopped and cleaned up and felt a few moments of stillness. I (almost) finished up a couple short pieces I'm writing for a new publication (very exciting) and have had some time to read. We went swimming at the Y. Very needed time. For Father's Day, my husband asked only for a weekend with nothing going on. I was thrilled to give the gift.

They are still quietly building podracers. Legos and The New York Times -- my boy's favorite toys -- are spread all over the floor. I will go switch yet another load of laundry. We have hours and hours until Monday, until the busy preschool-and-work-hustle begins, until there is more business travel, more hectic work days, maybe some decisions to make. It is still quiet outside and gray, and I'll take it the silent sleepiness of it. I'll hope for a long day with nothing much going on, here at home with my husband, wonderful father and knower of all things Star Wars, so grateful for him and this family and this time and for days just like these.

Is that your duck?

2011-06-03T06:41:00.008-05:00

For a short stretch of my walk from the parking lot to the office yesterday morning, I was joined by a duck. The mallard just happened to be heading in the same general direction as I, and so the two of us waddled together along a cement path that cuts between a rather lovely lawn until we neared a busy intersection where we encountered bikes and cars.

There I was asked by a passer-by, "Is that your duck?"

"No," I replied. "We just met. She's nice though."

The weather's been lovely and summer is now underway. My son refuses to wear anything but shorts and sandals, and his bedtime has creeped later and later along with the brightness. It just doesn't feel late when the sky is still bright. Summer suggests to me a real slowing down, a feeling still lingering I suppose from my childhood. I either grew up before the practice of overscheduling kids' time was implemented or too far from where such a thing was taking hold for it to make much of a difference in my life, and so I had vast hours, days, weeks, months to fill with ... whatever. Warm mornings crept by, hazy afternoons at the city pool or the shallow lake's beach did too, and nights -- tired from sun and wind and biking and swimming -- seemed to go on and on and on. I think of dirty bare feet, sunkissed cheeks, watermelon juice dripping down my chin.

It just hasn't been that way in years of course, as even teenage jobs at the mall and the 50's theme restaurant cut into the unstructured, wide open of those early summertimes. Now days pass where my schedule and daily practice are hardly, if at all, changed by the season. That strikes me as a little sad here where winter is so all-encompassing and long and hard: shouldn't absolutely everything be different when the days are 90 degrees and the sky is light from 6am to 10pm? Shouldn't we perhaps do something serious to mark this? Like shut down the state? (There are actual discussions about shutting down the state, though not to revel in this glorious, fleeting season. Perhaps I best not float that as an option in these trying budget times.)

Maybe we should require everyone to meander around one of our wobbling bodies of water each day. Maybe we should require everyone to wiggle their toes in the grass daily, too. To don big sun hats in the midday warmth. To stay outside as the birds grow silent and crickets pick up the tune and the night sky ever-so-slowly deepens its blue. To open the windows so the ever-present wind, smelling now of the last lilacs, can tickle our bared arms. To sit down and take it all in. To slow way down, to get outside, to notice that it's summer now. Or to take a walk with a duck, if there's one around to walk with. These are not things we get to do here in February. Or November. Or April. It makes sense to do them now, while we can.

There's the challenge, right? To do what we can now, while we can. Because days go quickly and seasons pass and all that stuff that old people and greeting cards say over and over, redundantly but wisely. Something to think about as I waddle downstairs and get ready for another day.

A Little House

2011-05-23T16:16:00.012-05:00

I said goodbye to my childhood home this weekend. My parents sold the place and are moving to a different house in another part of town. Before all the belongings were boxed up and cleaned out, Mom and Dad had us all over for a last cookout in the backyard. It was chaotic, as gatherings of 22 people tend to be, but nice to be there.

I'm trying to decide how exactly I feel about this. I quietly wandered through the upstairs on Saturday night and tried to take in the smell. Tried to remember what I wanted to remember in each room. Three of the four small bedrooms up there were mine at one point as I rotated around, following the vacancies created by siblings moving off to college. As a little girl, I shared the biggest and warmest of the upstairs bedrooms with my sister K. We slept together in a double bed for much of the time though for a while had bunk-beds hauled up from my Grandma's. When L. moved out, I took over the small room with the big yellow, green, and orange flowers, filling it with Barbies and Anne of Green Gables books, but I was rarely able to sleep in it. Having my own room was scary, so I often crossed the hall back to K's double bed at bedtime, laying beside her as she did her high school homework. Then shortly before K. went to college, I moved to another bedroom, got to pick out new wallpaper and bedding for it. Picked stripes and soft pastel flowers. The wallpaper remains. I slept there for several years until K. got married and truly freed up the warm room where I started. Then I moved over. I just hauled out the last box of yearbooks from that closet, just took the last framed picture from its wall.

Earlier on Saturday evening, after I finished my brat and coleslaw, I said my goodbye to the yard of the crazy long nights of youthful summers. The swingset only recently disappeared, though dips in the grass provide reminders of where our feet dragged from the swings. There is a big tree in the center -- it is taller than the two-story house -- that I remember as stick, perhaps because I have a picture of me posing next to K. and our puppy in front of the spindly thing. I should look for that picture. I know I have it somewhere.

All in all, it was an imperfect place, but perfect is terribly overrated. Despite what HGTV might lead you to believe, a home has very little to do with countertops and finishes and rooms that may or may not be labeled "great". A home has everything to do with warm and un-air conditioned summer nights spent sleeping with siblings on the living room floor. With the porch, a small and narrow room never containing much comfortable furniture, where we used to gather around my piano as I plunked out Christmas carols to the best of my two-years-of-lessons ability. The stairs I ran down only to stop and check myself out in the house's only full-length mirror ... and then check myself out again. The small light always on by the front entry. The yard surrounded by bushes with room for cartwheels and croquet.

But alas the home I said goodbye to has been leaving, has already left, even before this weekend. It has not been the sight of most of our recent family gatherings. The memories I revisited this weekend are already a bit yellowed from time.

A house, even one lived in for decades and decades, is simply a setting for the stuff that matters -- the relationships, the mishaps, the stories. A house can matter only as much as the living that has filled it. It was not the pattern of familiar wallpapers or the smell of laundry, cleaning products, and dust that put a lump in my throat the other night, but all the things I remember within those papered walls, all the days and years that played out amidst that certain scent.

I left my childhood home for the last time during a big thunderstorm -- wind and rain and even small hail -- carrying the last box of my things. It was too wet and windy to stop and stare and the tan house with black shutters quickly grew blurry in the rain as we drove away.

Go Slowly Well

2011-05-04T18:52:00.007-05:00

Things are changing. Tonight it is hot after months and months of very, very not-hot weather. All of sudden it's summer, and isn't that the way it always is? All of sudden something everything is different. The air is heavy with humidity, the yards look lush, the days are long. It is easy forget sometimes ... sometimes things can feel so stuck. Everything changes.

Today a picture arrived in my inbox, a quick snapshot of a dear friend in Brooklyn holding her tiny lovely little baby girl. Baby's eyes are closed; she just days old and must be entirely overwhelmed by not being surrounded by water, by not always hearing her mother's heartbeat, by breathing air -- things you and I no longer notice. Mom looks so happy and tired and amazed. Nearly four years ago now, I was in my tiny Brooklyn apartment, holding my overwhelmed, tiny new baby with happy tired amazement. Now he wields a light saber (red, it had to be red) and a bubble gun, running barefoot through the freshly mowed grass of his small city yard, knees bruised, fingernails lined with dirt. Glorious, isn't it? Some of the days that filled the past four years were terribly long. There have been dark stretches. But in the light of this warm -- actually, it's really quite hot -- night, it all seems to have gone so fast.

I'm just about 20 weeks along now. Each week a little rounder, perhaps more due to an increased desire for baked goods and full-fat dairy products than the still very tiny little being swimming in my belly. I am excited and anxious and nervous and hopeful -- all those normal feelings for a pleasantly expectant mother, I guess -- and I am also, for once in my life, not in a hurry. I want all to go well. I want all to go well. But it's ok if it goes well slowly. I want to savor these nights when I can snuggle my baby-now-big-boy to sleep, when he still fits on my lap in the rocking chair, when there aren't hungry little cries calling me away.

This weekend I took a walk around the modest little lake that is nestled in our neighborhood. I can't quite cruise around at my usual pace, the short unpaved footpath at the lake's southern end requires a bit more concentration now that my center of gravity has shifted. I had to take it slow. I stopped for a few minutes to watch as two turtles glided toward the shore, their tiny heads carving through the otherwise still water. It was warm and I was so glad to be there.

From the Prairie

2011-05-04T10:49:00.011-05:00

The past week was a busy one that included two trips to Iowa. One for my aunt's funeral; one, a few days later, for a family gathering and my niece's first communion. Lots of driving through the prairie, lots of Iowa, lots of time with family, lots of rituals. Lots to write about.

I made one of the journeys on my own, cramming many hours of driving into a 24-hour trip to remember Aunt E. How interesting it was to pull up to that one small town church and see so many people gathered, people who share my cheekbones, smile back with the same smile, look my way with the same eyes. People -- cousins, aunts, uncles -- I haven't seen in a decade or more. As a woman in my mid-30s, I am rarely greeted with "you've gotten so tall!" or "you're so grown up!" but I heard those phrases over and over that day from the relatives re-congregated. There was small talk -- where do you live now? what do you do? -- over ham sandwiches and potato salad in the church basement. After the funeral, I had a few minutes to share stories with my brother and one of my sisters. We remembered many of the same things about youthful gatherings with E's family. We drew many of the same blanks, too. The whole experience reminded me that I am a part of something ... something I don't often consider. It made me feel rooted -- not only with my own siblings, chatting as we did after the event -- but in that corner of Iowa where many generations of my family made their home, where my parents started.

Since I made the journey there on my own, I had lots of time to think on my way back to my now-home, on my way back to my own family. Over the past several years, as I have lived once again relatively close to my childhood home, relatively close to most of my extended family, I have had a chance to experience, think about, and question the power, the significance, and even the limits of family. I think I have come to understand that the connections I value most exist regardless of time and distance -- and that the distances I sometimes feel have little to do with miles. I couldn't have learned this any other way. Only here could I have come to understand this. I guess I could say I feel at once more connected and more free as a result.

For now, I'm grateful to have the opportunity to show up to events that for years I missed, unable to fly home for every weekend gathering or sudden occurrence. I am grateful that hours after returning from one corner of Iowa, I loaded my family into a car and headed to the other, this time for something more joyful and sweet. We played and ate together, snapped pictures of my beautiful niece M. in her lovely dress, looking so proud and so grown up. It was almost 8 years ago that I flew from Massachusetts to Minnesota to attend her baptism. I guess I didn't miss everything while I was away.

And now, again, I'm back to an ordinary day, midweek, in the midst of my everyday life, brightened a bit by the wearing of my now-favorite dress and some much needed sunshine, thinking about where I was last week and where I've been before, about where I come from and places I might go, knowing and understanding that home is always a bit of a mystery and never quite a place.

Branches

2011-04-25T13:51:00.007-05:00

My mother's sister E. passed away last night, on Easter Sunday. It was not unexpected but even anticipated death is not easy. I was not close to this aunt though I do have some lovely memories -- some that I think are based on photographs rather than remembered experiences. Aunt E.'s family had trailer by a lake not too far from where I grew up, and my large family made frequent summertime trips to play and picnic with her large family there. At least once, on a hot August night, we picked sweet corn directly from the big, towering stalks in one of the vast fields that surrounded her farm. I loved playing with the exquisitely unfamiliar Barbies, stored in a closet and once belonging to my much-older cousins, that were carted out so I'd have something to do while my mom and her sisters chatted, cigarettes and coffee cups in hand, at E.'s kitchen table.

I'm afraid that's about as much as I know. My mother, of course, knows more, and this death is very painful for her. Painful because she loves her sister and painful because her death does not exist in isolation.

My mother's is a very large German Catholic family. No tree could hold all the branches when assignments were given in elementary school, so I always resorted to family lists. Outlines really. Spanning multiple pages. Mom grew up as the youngest child of nine (there would have been 11, but two died as babies), and her siblings procreated with the zeal of their parents, marking me the youngest of fifty cousins on that side of the family alone. Yep, I'm #50. The baby indeed. When there are that many aunts and uncles, all married, all with children, who then go on to partner and raise families of their own ... well, there is quite a crowd. I believe my bloodline represents a not insignificant part of the Iowa population.

But with all those lives come many deaths, many in the past few years. My mother has recently said goodbye to several of her older sisters and brothers. All that mourning can make a person weary. I hear this weariness in my mother's voice and know there is no easy comfort, save perhaps to have her family around her at this time.

One cousin reported that my Aunt E. called one of her now-departed sister's names, reaching her arms toward something only she could see shortly before she passed.

It's mysterious, really, the power of family. I know, of course, that there is no individual definition of what it means to be family, what it feels like to be family, what family does or is. But after a quiet Easter spent with my husband and son, playing and cooking and brunching and napping and feeling overwhelmed by love and grace, and then after hearing this news, the mystery of what binds us -- what makes family, family, and why that matters -- is very much on my mind, if somewhat unresolved.

Play

2011-04-14T17:13:00.004-05:00

My colleague M. just shared some interesting insight on the importance of play in our adult lives. Play? you ask. Play? Who has time to play? Who even remembers how to play? Play is for people without laundry to fold and last fall's leaves to rake!

I used to love to play. I played by myself quite a bit -- the youngest child, quite a bit younger than my siblings and without many kids in the neighborhood -- my imaginary friends (a rather large cast) joined me in the backyard for theatrical performances, endless rounds of "house", and occasionally even a pretend church service. (I was raised very Catholic and it only made sense to throw a Mass into the imaginary universe from time to time, casting myself, of course, in the improbable role of presider.) I played in my basement -- an unfinished, gray, and sometimes watery space -- played school, played roller rink (there was enough space, when still measuring under 4' tall, to glide around on skates), played restaurant. I played Barbies. I played art gallery. I played library. When my older sisters were gone to work or better yet to college, I played clothing store with the stuff they left behind. Rhinestone prom jewelery sold for thousands of dollars!

I did all this playing after school, or on weekends, or during those luxurious, hot summers that seemed to shuffle by in my youth (and have all too often just blown right past me in my adulthood). I played at recess, too, to shake up the monotony of a day in a desk.

You probably did this stuff, too. Right?

And now? Well, I'm grateful that my son -- who plays earnestness and rigor -- has introduced some play back into my life. Knights in shining armor join us at the dinner table. Garbage trucks pick up and then dump out "trash" -- often composed of washed but still unsorted socks -- around my laundry pile. Even a trip to the grocery store turns into a game, as we take time to point out the things we're hoping to find in our upcoming Easter basket. All too often I'm busy thinking about what I need to do next -- the dishes, the next load of whites -- and I fail to enjoy the play he brings into my day, or worse yet I hurry it along. I insist we keep on walking when he wants to stop to pick up more sticks or another pine cone. Then I get home and think about how much I wish I would have stopped a little more along the way.

I suppose this little endeavor is one bit of grown up playtime. So is dinner prep, if I approach it in the right mood. And singing along to the radio on the commute home. I'm on the lookout for more opportunities to play a bit each day.

Thanks, M., for the inspiration.

Little buds on trees and other wonderful things

2011-04-07T09:19:00.007-05:00

For the longest time, I didn't think this day would come. Alas, it did, and here I am, looking out the window at a matted-down, green-and-brown lawn. The snow -- gathered, piled, pushed around through an unrelenting winter, even by Minnesota standards -- is gone. Folks, it's spring once again.

The oft-stated we here in the North Country really appreciate spring because we have to suffer through so many months of bitter cold gets a little old when you hear it over and over, but deep down I know it's true. A few weeks ago, I could hardly take the garbage out -- I was just so tired of that certain chill that seeps past even the fluffiest down and polartec-i-est fleece and invades the bones. Running errands or driving to work was twice the bore, as the drudgery of the task was compounded by a gray and icy landscape, uninspired, dirty, drab all around me. A walk? For pleasure? Out of the question.

But now I can hardly stay inside. The sun is out, there are tiny buds on the trees, and even the rhubarb is sneaking out of the garden soil for a look at the bright blue sky. My son enters the house for dinner with mud-stained knees and dirty fingernails. His trucks and shovel are out in the yard and the sandbox is open for the season, and even a new episode of Calliou can't lure him from the lawn and the daylight and the blessed fresh air. (I'm very glad this is so.)

Extra daylight highlights my smeared windows. Perhaps a weekend project will be to get those all polished up. (Let me note that this makes me very grateful for a small house with few windows.) Even my usually-reluctant-to-do-home-care self feels a bit excited about a project that will involve being outside. Walks to the park are back on the post-dinner agenda. Tuesday evening's outing reminded me how much I love the swings.

So I'm reminded as I don light colors and Mary Jane's san socks, that seasons change, sometimes a bit later than one would like, but they change nonetheless. Even a Minnesota winter doesn't last forever.

--

I've been largely absent from this blog for the past few months, not only because it's been cold and I've been grumpy about the cold and I couldn't imagine that you would really want to read me complain endlessly about the cold, but because it's been busy. I've restarted my writing group Parents with Pens, and we're off to a good start. (You can read about it a bit on the wonderful Ms. Kate Hopper's MotherWords blog.) I also co-taught a workshop at The Loft on writing from artifacts with my colleague and dear friend Rebecca. It was a good time. If I've not been doing much writing, at least I've been meeting to talk about writing!

But lately, perhaps because of the buds on those trees and the newly exposed grass, I've been a little inspired. I find myself waking early with a head full of ideas. Since I am not able to print a transcript of those thoughts (I suppose some graduate students in a small lab at a major university are currently developing a tool that would allow me to do so, but I don't know them and it will be years before I upgrade to that technology), somehow I need to carve out the time and space to transpose those early morning musings to actual writing. A task for spring. Along with window washing, of course.

Oh, and one other thing. I do have a little project underway, a project scheduled to arrive in early October. I'm expecting. Expecting a baby. The belly bump has emerged in all its round glory and I'm hopeful and excited. Spring has arrived, full of promise.

The Drill

2011-01-18T23:28:00.005-06:00

So I have this role I play, around the office and out among friends, as the unlikely homeowner. The one who should have stayed nestled in her tiny Brooklyn apartment, the super just a few doors down, ready with a call to come and place mousetraps or to fix a torn screen. I include, somewhat unfairly, my husband in this little schtick, making sure to mention that neither of us can confidently handle a saw (and that we don't even own one). Then I usually name two or three household projects that need attention (here I'm understating reality) and then I crack jokes on how useless we are at attending to them, perhaps again referencing the super back in Brooklyn that I so dearly miss.

This role is funny because many of the people I play it in front of cannot relate. In fact, their do-it-yourselfness is outright humbling. These are people who want to do the demolition before giant home remodel. They see a leaky pipe, read a book, and give it a go, actually intending to fix the problem themselves. Some even know how to build a garage! My goodness ... I can't even apply that blue tape straight enough to paint the trim in our bedroom! I consider it a huge victory that I spraypainted our house numbers to match our new exterior light. (A light, I might add, that was installed by an electrician.)

Ok, so it's not a role at all. It's a true story.

But there is a bit of hope. Probably none for me directly; my greatest use will be "keeper of the list of recommended handy people, plumbers, etc." My husband has certainly gotten a bit handier and seems to enjoy some things. He can grow a good garden, for example, and did some lovely landscaping in the fall. (To remind yourself how useless I am in the yard, you might want to re-read this earlier post.)

But the real hope rests, as it so often does, with the child.

Tonight my son received a belated holiday gift (long story, good intentioned senders, nice surprise on a cold January night). It contained, among other things, a drill. A toy drill, in need of two AA batteries. BZZZZZZZ. While I did dishes and baked up an apple cake (ah! finally I've hit on somethings I'm good at!), he "fixed" my cupboards, my stove, the table, and even my shoes. I'm a fixer guy, he told me as worked diligently to restore order.

Well, that little toy drill is not going to do the work that my kitchen needs -- I am thinking new custom cabinets, a sleek and efficient dishwasher, fresh countertops, tile backsplash -- but this is not about that toy drill. This is about the promise that perhaps someone in this house will not only have the skill to do some handy things around here but also the interest! Wouldn't that be something? Listen, if you could maintain a house by baking, writing short columns, and reading Mary Oliver, this thing would be the gem of the street. But you can't. My interests do little to support this home ownership endeavor. But my son's ...

In the meantime, he is asleep downstairs, cuddled not with a teddy or blankey but with a drill. And soon I'll cuddle up next to him, in a room with unfinished trim work that needs a new light fixture, to dream.

The Holiday Parade

2010-11-03T21:48:00.014-05:00

Halloween this year was not a day, but rather a season, featuring a good two weeks of Halloween-related activities that at least helped justify the modest cost of my son's store-bought costume. Yes, I am that mother who lacks the creativity and/or know-how required to make a good costume out of what we have tucked away in a drawer or box. I do not trust my ability to create a convincing robot out of miscellaneous cardboard boxes and foil or to adequately dress a scarecrow. In my lame attempt to allow my son to participate in his school's pumpkin decorating contest, I dug out a Sharpie and drew a face on a small organic squash. While it came out much better than expected, he refused to bring it to school, which was wise. I'm no artist. And the competition in that contest was fierce.

So yes, we had several occasions on which to dress up for Halloween this year, so many that by Halloween night the cheap little costume was a big ragged. In previous years, I purchased gently used items but this year -- to honor my son's request to be a firefighter -- we took the cheap box store approach. That said, with a bit of tape he was good to go for the evening, gathering more candy than he should eat, candy which I should certainly bring to work, to the kitchen of thieves, so that I don't eat it either. I did make those birthday resolutions about fewer "cupcakes" and by that I also mean fun size Skittles and mini Twix bars.

And then of course the night ended and the nearly-shredded costume found its way to the back of the closet as we tried to scrub the tooth-eating sugar from his teeth, and it was bedtime and then Monday and suddenly it's Wednesday night, well into November. In the meantime we've had an election (I don't want to talk about it) and full days of work and school. Halloween is over. But do not fear! There are red and green M&M's filling the aisles! Judging from the decorations at said box store, where I returned this week on some stupid errand, it's now Christmas and will be for about two months.

Stories in the Back of the Fridge: Lunch Lesson #3

2010-09-28T09:21:00.008-05:00

I have spent some serious time -- far more than it could ever possibly be worth, really -- looking for an "angle" for this blog. You know ... what's my thing here? As I sit considering options -- moving back to Minnesota, the reality of yard work, what it's like to love a preschooler who loves trucks -- the universe appears to be guiding me toward a deeper exploration of something, or should I say somewhere, else.

That's right. An unfortunate evident takes us back to the interdepartmental kitchen.

You see, yesterday someone took my Diet Coke. Now I have fallen victim to the petty theft that apparently runs rampant in the fridge that my office shares with the department across the hall.

When I left it there yesterday morning, it was the only Diet Coke amidst a few cans of seltzer and one abandon Mountain Dew, the rest of that cool cave filled with plastic- and foil-wrapped disks, reusable plastics of questionable safety, foul-looking salad dressing bottles and unclaimed pats of butter.

After a long -- let me tell you, it was LONG -- Monday at work, I stopped by that humble fridge to grab my soda, my modest treat, my chemical-filled fuel, my little pick-me-up before my Monday night class. With a little sugar substitute, caffeine, and artificial color in my system, certainly I would find important and compelling things to say around the seminar table, offering fresh insight on our shared reading to the wonder and amazement of my instructor and peers. But -- gasp! -- it was gone. The shiny can that I hid behind a black insulated lunch bag disappeared. It had not been pushed to the back or tossed into one of the sticky side compartments. It was not in the crisper or the meat drawer.

Granted, I did not write my name on the can ... but unlike, say, a sandwich I assumed that the fridge's users would know if theirs was the only can of Diet Coke in the fridge or if instead it was the dripped-over bottle of Newman's Own Ceasar that they were after.

I understand: people make mistakes. We all occasionally tear the corner off the wrong the sandwich. (Right?) But this does not appear to be a mistake. I had fretted over my kitchen missteps, concerned that I was the only blockhead capable of mistaking a colleague's lunch for my own, only to find far more sinister problems abound under that fluorescent light.

Some lessons learned. Keep your sandwich close, your Diet Coke closer. And another: probe deeply, fearlessly into the interdepartmental kitchen in your life. The stories simply keep coming, there for the taking, like an unmarked soda after a long day at work.

Lunch Lessons, part II

2010-09-13T21:40:00.016-05:00

Ok, so I'll confess: it wasn't the first time something like this has happened.

Last winter I ate an unmarked burrito.

It was there, in the freezer, just as the one I brought a few days prior had been. Rolled off there to the side, leaning against the half-empty ice try. No Sharpie had touched its plastic; the only name on its label was Annie's.

Truthfully, I'm not sure I ever checked for a proof of ownership. I assumed it was mine. Turns out it was not.

Mine contained cheese and beans. The one I ate -- in entirety, unlike last week's peanut butter sandwich -- was cheese-free. I did not notice the absence of cheese when I ate the burrito, which perhaps speaks to a shortcoming in the food product all together (sorry Annie). I did not give it much thought until the following day when, as I filled my coffee mug with fair trade organic coffee purchased by our office coffee collective, I saw the note, written in black magic marker on a piece of printer paper, taped up on the freezer:

Please do not eat other people's food. Someone awful and inconsiderate and not nearly mindful enough ate my burrito. (Ok, so I don't quite remember the exact words, but it was something like this.)

The note was signed by T., a staff member from the other office on our floor, the office that makes our kitchen an interdepartmental one. I'd passed her in the hallway. We had never talked and possibly never made eye contact. I sent an overly dramatic email apology. She responded kindly and took down the sign. I offered up my still uneaten burrito, buried somewhere in the depths of that frost-encrusted freezer, perhaps behind the frightening dish of microwavable sag paneer. She must have dug it out before replying: Thanks, but I don't eat cheese.

I guess some people notice everything.

I swore off the freezer, never returning for the brick of a burrito that no doubt floats near the back now, a little time capsule. Last week I swore off the fridge. I'm now dining on apples and craisins (local, from Wisconsin) and other packable, room temperature-friendly items, and am considering eating larger breakfasts. I pack my little work bag each morning as though I'm going on a hike: nuts, seeds, dried fruit. I'm probably drinking more than my fair share of the fair trade organic coffee, which adds to my general nervousness about this whole affair. I've put on some unwanted weight in this desk job -- perhaps this is an invitation to address that issue. If only there were time in my work day for hikes!

Oh, and it's a reminder to be more mindful, to pay attention. The details -- what kind of burrito is it? Where did I leave my sandwich? -- that I too often miss. Yeah, that too.

Lunch Lessons

2010-09-08T14:01:00.012-05:00

Today I learned an important lesson about living mindfully, about being in the moment and paying attention. I did not learn this from a wise teacher or guru. Didn't learn it while sitting in meditation. I did not come across it while reading or trying to pray. Cast out such spiritual approaches to this key life lesson! Today I learned about paying attention when I ate my colleague's lunch.

The lunch, a sandwich, sat on the top shelf of our interdepartmental fridge. It was wrapped in foil, as my daily sandwich often is. The fact that it was sitting under a bag of grapes -- something I didn't (and don't ever) bring -- did not register with me as a this-is-not-your-sandwich clue. I just moved the grapes (somewhat annoyed that someone so carelessly layered their fruit on my lunch) and grabbed the shiny silver square. I picked up a napkin and headed back to the quiet of my cube, in which I planned to scarf down that sandwich while reviewing a file.

I sat down. I unwrapped one of the top corners of the sandwich. It seemed thin, but I reasoned that four hours of refrigeration might somehow compact an otherwise well-stuffed turkey with cheese. I ripped off a corner and popped it in my mouth.

Mmmm ... peanut butter. The smooth sweetness was a nice surprise.

Wait, I didn't bring peanut butter.

I wondering what to do as I chewed my stolen bite. Do I rewrap this ripped up sandwich and return it the fridge, propping the grapes on top and hoping that the rightful eater doesn't notice? Do I throw it away -- in a garbage basket two floors up -- and play dumb when someone sends an email to the rest of the office looking for their PB & J? Do I find its maker and apologize, trying to convince him or her that my hands barely touched the thing and that my mouth didn't touch it, really, really it didn't? The bite stuck to the top of my mouth, a bit of evidence unwilling to be swallowed.

I used a butter knife to even out the edge. I rewrapped the assaulted bread. I grabbed a neon green post-it note and a pen and walked back to the kitchen, passed open-doored offices and a group of colleagues at the front desk, as coolly as possible.

I opened the fridge. On the bottom shelf, behind half-eaten Chinese take-out and a tower of Yoplait, sat my sandwich, in a translucent baggie, ever-so-clearly announcing its turkey-and-cheese-on-whole-wheat contents.

I vowed to be more mindful of things in my daily life. I have long been aware that this sort of not noticing is a problem.

I wrote a note: Dear Peanut Butter Sandwich Owner ...

I folded the neon green sticky note and tucked it into the now very crinkly foil and put the grapes back on top. I grabbed the turkey sandwich from the bottom shelf and tried to walk back to my cube -- again past the front desk and past the open doors of my colleagues (hungry colleagues, no doubt ... one of whom was just waiting for the moment when he or she could unwrap that foil) to my desk, trying to appear innocent and unnerved. I could smell my guilty peanut butter breath with each inhale.

I will pay more attention, I will slow down, I will pay more attention, I repeated over and over in my head as I stared past the file I meant to be reading.

The good news is that the PB & J owner has a sense of humor about these things (and three kids, enough to not easily be grossed out by the prospect of someone else touching her food). I found her only after my guilt ate at me enough to make it impossible to eat my turkey. I left the untouched plastic bag on my desk as I walked office to office, cube to cube, seeking the one who was waiting for JIF and jam. I hoped to get it right immediately so that I didn't have to tell my story to everyone. How embarrassing to be known as the food raider of the office! I guessed wrong on my first seven tries. Everyone at work now knows I ate someone's lunch today. I figured I might as well tell you, too.

Midcentury Popcorn Stars

2010-08-05T08:59:00.012-05:00

As I was laying on my bed last night, watching the ceiling fan (it can be quite meditative), it occurred to me that if rolled jeans can stage a comeback, my textured ceilings could soon be an asset. Sure, we could hire someone to do the work of creating something smooth and modern where now there are small bumps. But what if, in just a matter of months, textured ceilings become the must-have room element? They are certainly no worse than the tightly-rolled cuffs I sported (as did you, admit it) years back. And there is nothing about a textured ceiling that makes your hips look bigger.

Jeans aside, I'm choosing to think of our textured ceilings as "vintage", possibly a "retro" feature of our little place. I will call them "period ceilings" and may claim that they've been carefully preserved in their original appearance. Perhaps, given the year my home was built, I could somehow tie them to Mad Men, claiming they are Draper-esque.

We will not tackle the unpopcorning of the main floor this year. Maybe not next. Because I'd rather take trips -- go sleep under New York ceilings, for example. Because I would rather buy books, maybe take a class or two. Because perhaps this year Draper-esque ceilings will become all the rage. And because my vintage ceiling can be kind of fun to look up at, at night with the ceiling fan twirling by. With a lamp below, I can almost imagine it's a sky full of retro stars.

Home

2010-07-25T21:57:00.006-05:00

I just walked up the stairs in the dark -- dark outside, with no lights on upstairs or down -- and as I did so it occurred to me that it is a really wonderful thing to begin to know a place well enough to be able to walk it without any lights ... to know it by the creak under foot, the slight dip in the wood, by that small imperfection near the end of the rail. Even my restless self can appreciate this familiarity.

Past

2010-07-09T11:39:00.012-05:00

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." - William Faulkner

I always used this quote to open the "history through literature" courses I taught a few years ago. It always seemed a haunting, and challenging, and perhaps unacknowledged truth. Armed with a grad degree in history, I appreciated this line's nod to the relevance of my field of study: Not only did history exist, it still is. What I just spent a couple of years doing (I stopped with a MA) matters.

I started to think about this quote recently, now far removed from the seminar table, the monographs, the primary source research, the collection of other peers busy researching some little piece of human folly or triumph in decades or centuries behind us. I wondered about it as it relates to my life and to other lives around me. Do we dwell as much in our history as in our present? Is our past never over?

A humbling experiment: I occasionally dig out my box of old journals. I have kept a diary since I was 6 and journaling has been my cheap therapy every since. [At some point I disposed of some of the books filled with teen angst. My brother told me I'd regret tossing them out; I have yet to feel bad about that action. I'm not sure I could deal with my 8th grade self as documented by my 8th grade self. The memories -- increasingly hazy, always set to bad rock ballads and smelling of fruity hair spray and involving another fight with a "friend" -- are bad enough.] In entries scattered about throughout the volumes of moleskin and spiral-bound and illustrated journals that fill a big box, I'm revisiting the same themes, at times the exact same questions, and -- more relevant to this discussion -- I always seem to be rehashing certain key events in light of new experiences or knowledge. Perhaps the lost teen journals would be filled with prototypes of those themes and questions, buried in between resolutions to start a new diet and grow my hair long.

I've recently started reading the personal papers of my late aunt with the thought that perhaps I can somehow tell her story. Her life was extraordinarily different than mine -- different eras, different settings, remarkably different choices. But as I humbly make it through these pages she left behind, I am in awe of two things: first, that she wondered, in her own personal musings, about many of the same things I do (we all do?) about calling and purpose and next steps and relationships and what it all means and if we got it right and when/if/how we'll know if we did. And second that she revisits so much of her past as she records details of the present and muses about the future. She thinks back, she aims to resolve, she attempts to correct, she tries to make sense of, she feels haunted and inspired and defined by her past, page after page.

So I don't know. I want to think of now and what's to come, to imagine myself as forward-thinking, forward-moving, free of what came before. But, on the other hand, I was attracted to the study of history for a reason ... and I think that reason has a lot to do with just how much I meditate on the how, the why, the when of what's behind me, as an individual, as a part of this world. The more I think about this, the more I find wisdom in that line and return once again to where I started.

At least this new project reminds me that I am not alone in my tendency to dwell and feel and experience not only now but then, even now.

Stormy

2010-06-30T16:24:00.012-05:00

The past few days have been sunny, mild, beautiful, suitably warm in the afternoon and just a touch cool in the morning. Perfect days really. But this weekend was stormy. Really stormy. And during the rumbles and gusts of the first night's storms, I was nestled in a candlelit yoga studio with a few very nice strangers for a yoga and writing workshop. We were in the midst of a most restful restorative practice when the tornado sirens blew. We pulled ourselves off our mats and pushed our bolsters and blankets aside, rushing to a center room (there was no basement). There, huddled around a massage table, we exchanged a few stories of storms past and sent texts to our families in basements back home.

I have always feared storms. As a child I headed to the lowest level at the slightest sign of severe weather. Growing up on the prairie, I was well aware of the damage that could come from steamy temps and high winds and towering cloud puffs. Now, after years away from the Midwest, I kind of enjoy the rush of adrenaline as the radio reports watches and warnings, as the sky grows dark, as the radar map blinks its bright colors, even as I still want to huddle -- with my family and my laptop (for my son's baby pictures ... I gave up on albums) around me -- in a subterranean space until the sky clears.

The sirens did not last long; the worst of the storm went north. We returned to the practice. The wind continued to whip. The rain pounded the metal roof and echoed through the studio. Lightening added frequent bursts of sparkle to the otherwise dim room. Some around me appeared to even out their breathing, to actually return entirely to the practice. Part of me, on the other hand, remained a bit on edge.

We moved from the restorative practice to a few simple, rather meditative writing exercises, prompts to get back to the sounds and sensation of the yoga we moved through. When I put together the workshop, I worried that the prompts may not elicit many interesting images. The night's severe storms ensured that was not the case. Participants wrote some lovely little pieces in our short practice and I wrote write along. At the conclusion of one writing exercise, I noted I am tough to calm.

I appreciate the peaceful sun of today, but isn't it interesting that I'm not writing about this pleasant afternoon? About this flawless blue sky and dancing breeze? About the perfect temps and the lack of bugs? Even though the last purple-green cloud blew eastward days ago, I'm still writing about the storms.

[Photo by EG]

A Quick Note on the Day after Mother's Day

2010-05-10T22:09:00.009-05:00

Mother's Day came and went. We were all sick, sniffling, snuggling, making the best of it. A day of naps is nothing to complain about.

We were sick today, too, but by this evening everyone here seemed a bit perkier. We've been eating loads of fruits and veggies, of ginger and garlic, drinking our tea and water, resting, taking it easy. I think we're on the upswing.

Tonight, after I put my son to sleep and while my husband slept on the couch, I sat on my bed eating Cheez-Its from a toddler snack bowl and reading yesterday's New York Times. No sound save the rain tapping on my window. A single lamp and the flowers from my family on my nightstand.

So perfect. I wouldn't have even known how to ask for the gift of that moment, but it is exactly what I wanted and needed.

I'm still sniffling, but I feel very cared for, very nourished. It was a good Mother's Day indeed.

Warm

2010-05-07T12:10:00.005-05:00

So I understand there is a chance of snow -- yes, SNOW! -- this afternoon, this May afternoon, here in Minnesota. Hmmm. April saw temperatures soar into the 70s and now, one calendar page later, we're regressing. I'm hoping the rhubarb and lilacs are hearty enough to last through this cold snap and that this cold snap is quick to pass. I just bought brightly colored nail polish for sandal-clad feet.

Right now it is raining and gray. A nice day to be in lamplight, to be indoors, to don a sweater and warm socks. I'm already picturing an afternoon at my desk with a warm, creamy coffee. I have visions of a family movie night, snuggled together under a thick blanket made by my grandma. This is not all bad.

I expect to hear soon from friends in warmer or more predictable climates. For some reason, these folks love to contact the Minnesotan they know and marvel about weather. I hear a little joy in their voice (or read it between the lines of their Facebook post) as they say "Saw you're getting snow ... gosh, we just went to the beach and my shoulders got pretty tan!" I vacillate between changing the subject and trying to change their not-so-inaccurate views of the weather I live with here. I rarely do well at either. So tonight, if they call or post, I will ignore it. I'll turn the phone off, I won't log on. I'll reach for a big fist full of buttered popcorn and snuggle into the warm covers. I'll wait to respond to their message until its sunny and my windows are open and I'm drying sheets in the fresh air of the backyard.

And soon enough I suppose I'll be writing with comments -- perhaps even complaints -- about the heat and the humidity, sounding like my mother.

I'm awed by how much I talk about the weather since moving back here. I'm even a little awed that I'm posting this entry about weather. I'm so Minnesotan today, writing about this May cold rain that might turn to snow, dressed in my warm and practical clothes, about to head out in my coat so warm.

(Note:

Last times

2010-05-04T20:42:00.007-05:00

I'm not the first to write about this. In fact, I just read about this somewhere, but tonight my head is hazy -- blame allergies, blame an exceptionally long Tuesday -- and I can't remember where.

What I'm getting at is this: there is something very bittersweet in the last time we do something. Perhaps I'm ahead of myself, but I think I've encountered a last time with my son. For two nights now, he's decided not to rock to sleep but rather to lay in his own bed with me sitting beside him, patting his back a little. That means that Sunday evening may have been the last time I rocked him. That means (as I already know, of course) that my baby is not really a baby any more.

My heart breaks a little when I think back to other last times, some representing something much more final -- the last time I talked with my grandmother, a last good weekend before a long-ago bitter break up, the last night in my childhood bedroom when it still was my home.

Tonight's realization: my son is growing up, gaining independence. He needs me differently than he did a year ago. This is good and healthy and normal. I'm a little proud. This differs in many ways from the other lasts I listed above. But my arms feel a little empty, and as I watched him close those beautiful eyes and nestle under the covers, I had to refrain from picking him up just to hold him and rock with him for my own sake. He may be able to sleep without rocking, but I'm not yet sure I can.

The Bunnies, II

2010-04-20T10:23:00.003-05:00

We caught a glimpse of one baby bunny, carefully but ably following its fluffy mommy across the alley last night. Perhaps the others were hiding in the hostas.

My son has moved on to other fascinations -- the rhubarb growing, branching out on the edge of the garden. But my husband and I miss that nest of baby bunnies, snuggled there together in a bed of rocks.

The Bunnies

2010-04-18T14:23:00.006-05:00

Last week we discovered, nestled in the rock bed behind our house, a small little nest (is that the right word?) of baby bunnies, four of them. When we found them, their eyes were still closed, their ears matted against their head, there little huddle covered expertly with fur and a few of last year's leaves by a mama bunny now far from the scene. My son fell in love -- they're so cute, he'd say. I tried to maintain a reasonable emotional distance. I could imagine how the story might end.

We checked on them several times a day. We pretended to do it because our son wanted to. My husband began to say, they're so cute. I began to, too.

Last night we returned from a walk to the park to see a neighbor cat nestled in the rock garden. My husband quickly scared it away and ran to check on the babes. All four are here, he assured us. We went to bed worried. This morning, when he returned from a dawn bike ride, there were only three.

Now, they are bigger than they were when we first met them. It's possible one hopped away. It's also possible something very Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom just happened in my backyard. I understand this is all quite natural, but I find it very sad just the same.

Unless of course it hopped away, and then it's good I suppose that one is ready to leave the nest.

Midday today: only two remain.

Do we blame this cat? This cat who was suddenly in our yard though we've never seen it before? Or did the older sibling set an example and they are all getting ready to hop around here?

My little one asked about the missing bunnies. They hopped away, my husband explained confidently. Probably with their mommy.

I hope so. Mama bunny, my thoughts are with you.

Through the Prairie

2010-04-05T16:12:00.007-05:00

Yesterday my husband and I drove home after Easter dinner with my family. It was sunny and warm and we flew through the prairie. There's no traffic on the first 2/3 of the journey from my parent's rural town to our home in the only city around here, so one can easily become convinced that there is nothing but space in life, just wide open space. The toddler, complete with chocolate drool from the last bunny he beheaded before we hopped in the car, snored as we talked. Talked for three hours. That's the length of conversations from early courting -- from the "I want to convince you to love/want me" stage. And all that open space went to our heads.

We talked about the times we've been the most happy (as individuals -- this wasn't couples therapy), quickly noting that the things that we think we should want (a remodeled kitchen -- granite, stainless, the works) don't seem to be what we really crave.

And with empty fields on our right and on our left -- it's too early yet for the farmer's to plant -- we wondered a little together how we got to where we are, feeling a bit baffled by a few very, very wrong turns, even as our snoring, chocolate-faced toddler reminded us of the inexplicable, overwhelmingly wonderful gifts we've been granted along the way.

There was actually a time I believed that there was a right way.

Even as we entered more urban environs and hit traffic, the sky, wide and blue, made everything and anything still seem so possible.