Coming Back

Tomorrow Moe is three weeks old.  I'm starting to feel more myself again physically.  The kids and I are fairly settled in to the rhythm of me being home with them again.  I showered two days in a row.  All good things.

So tonight, to take advantage of the gloriously windy warm night, I walked Emilia's invitations down to the mailbox.  Before I left, Chris said, "Be careful."  Good advice at nearly 11pm.

Detour.

All through September and October, I've been experiencing this strange deception in which I step outside (of school, a store, my car, the house) and sniff the air and think "Ah, I'm so glad spring is here!"  ...Then, soon enough, reality sets in and I realize that what I'm smelling in the air are the last gasps of summer and that any day now, winter will set in, cold in my bones.  Even in the snow and hail at Emilia's soccer game Saturday, I stood shuddering in denial.  I think, after the most trying and emotionally exhausting summer of my life, something in the back of my heart wants a do-over so desperately that even the scent in the air sends me running headlong into the deception that spring is here and summer is coming.  Either it means I get that magical do-over or it means that winter's already over and the next summer is coming.  A different sort of chance at redemption.

Tonight on my walk, the neighborhood was mostly quiet aside from the traffic sounds and the intermittent bursts of laughter and shouting from the new neighbors a few doors down.  I was walking alone for the first time since the baby was born.  Walking at night, my favorite walking time.  Walking with mail in my hand.  The streetlights in our neighborhood cast a warm amber glow on everything, making it feel cozier and safer. Things felt right at home, like everything was in its place.

I wondered if perhaps I was involved in another strange deception.  In the last two months, kids were shooting guns at the end of our street in broad daylight, our car was broken into in the middle of the afternoon, and once again we considered moving away.  But tonight, it felt so comfortable and peaceful to walk through my neighborhood alone in the dark, I wondered if we were wrong to consider getting out of town.  I looked around for an answer, but all I heard was the leaf song of the oak trees on the boulevard, the lush ocean-roar of their summer sound giving way to the raspy rattle of their browning foliage.

Moe

Moe's first little walk in the park!

First Walk of Spring

(Here's another post I wrote back in February or March-- once I opened the draft, the date changed to today so I don't remember what the original date was)  Anyway, I don't know why I never published it.  Flashback!!

Hi.  This is me. 

A tree fell right on top of our favorite spot to build fairy houses, which is cool because now there will probably be a ton of good pieces of bark to use for siding and shingles!

Gorgeous rivers in the wrong and perfect places.

 I felt like garbage with nausea and fatigue all day, but then I walked and played with the kids, took an I'm-gonna-hurl break, cooked, took another break to lie still for a half hour or so, finished up the pies, and the nausea is almost tolerable right now.  Almost.  I am proud of my sick self because I made pizza, a breakfast bake thing, Hungarian noodles (but I pretended I remembered the recipe instead of looking it up.  Turned out decent), and two pies.  Except the Crisco either got hot or cold at some point and the crusts came together weirdly.  We'll see if they past the taste test in a few minutes here. 

First Day Off

Up just after five.
Laid around enjoying sheets on skin.
Walked two miles (in a skirt).
Leaned in to my feelings.
Didn't put on my headphones after all.
Picked a Chinese dogwood flower and wore it in my hair.
Sat in the park and wrote.
Came home to chat with my early rising girlchild. 
Tea is on,  banana bread is toasting,  and it's not even 7:30.

So much to read!  Another post soon.

RAIN

Beauty is sun glinting off so many torrents of water rushing across the parking lot and down the sewer.  Rain water flowing through my sandals.

Walking, Sailing

Having a good raincoat is right up there with birthing humans, and making people fall down when they're ice skating using only my mind in terms of making me feel like I have some kind of super powers.

I think that part of me is in a nineteenth century sea captain's daughter.

I love the wind in my hair and rain (or sea spray) on my face. I feel really in tune with the sky, the wind. I keep my hair short or in a scarf so it is out of the way. I like ropes and I like tying knots. I like the hopefulness of bird song in the wildness of the sea. 

As I walked through the woods this morning, the moaning creak of trees debating whether to give into the wind felt like the creaking timbers of my father's ship

And check out this little guy:

Daily Gratitude

It's that time of year again-- posting my daily gratitude in a public place.  I forgot to start posting over the weekend, so please walk back in time with me a few days and then, if you are so inclined, please join me in sharing your gratitude for the world.  This kid wouldn't claim any kind of wisdom or great worldly understanding, but I can say that cultivating a more vocal spirit of gratitude makes a big difference for me.  It allows me to tune in to the blessings and tune out the sad trombones...although, now that I think of it, that womp wahhhh sound is something to be grateful for, too.

So here we go.

November 1st Daily Gratitude: Brothers, great company, stopping in the middle of party prep bustle to read about King Solomon, the Cleveland Museum of Art.

November 2nd Daily Gratitude: The fellowship in a group of women I know, driving alone so I have complete control of the soundtrack (and can sing like a madwoman), going back to Evolution Yoga after a too-long hiatus, and feeling God's beauty wrap around me and support me.

November 3rd Daily Gratitude: Crazy looking handmade dresses from the thrift store, having friends to talk to on rough days, ropes + yoga, laundry + Munk/Walking Dead, wordmath.

November 4th Daily Gratitude: Work days at work, guitar in the background (and how it makes my brain work so much better!), spontaneous thrifting adventures, a chance to teach yoga (that's a blog post in itself) walking in the wind, coming home to my kids and those hugs and that garden and playing outside, watching a large cardboard box cartwheel down our block in a beautiful way, and then watching my darling husband run across the street, dropkick it, roll over, rassle with the box, and bring it home for us to fill with leaves.  Laughing hard.  Play dough, bath time, Nora's constant talking, love love love is all around.

Post your own gratitude!

This is the Stargazer sculpture at the CMA

 

Steady study steady

This morning finds me in mourning and studying to steady my mind. Come ponder with me.


It helped last night, after everyone left, to scrub the coffee pot and the counters like I always did on my first night (or first morning) there.  I put on music, blasted the stereo like he always did, one or two clicks past loud enough, and we cleaned and sang and cried. Chris, Gracie, and I.  And we sang and cried and talked and cleaned.  This is all really hard.  And I am so glad we are staying there.  I'm so glad I can sit in  my spot here and my spot there and wipe this sink or sit in this chair and breathe in the smell of the towels and cigarettes.

Do you know he saved every card?  More on  that later.

I gotta walk now.  Gotta walk.

Here's some of what I was studying this morning.

First, from Plotinus, FIRST ENNEAD, SIXTH TRACTATE: BEAUTY


4. But there are earlier and loftier beauties than these. In the sense-bound life we are no longer granted to know them, but the soul, taking no help from the organs, sees and proclaims them. To the vision of these we must mount, leaving sense to its own low place.
As it is not for those to speak of the graceful forms of the material world who have never seen them or known their grace- men born blind, let us suppose- in the same way those must be silent upon the beauty of noble conduct and of learning and all that order who have never cared for such things, nor may those tell of the splendour of virtue who have never known the face of Justice and of Moral-Wisdom beautiful beyond the beauty of Evening and of dawn.

Such vision is for those only who see with the Soul's sight- and at the vision, they will rejoice, and awe will fall upon them and a trouble deeper than all the rest could ever stir, for now they are moving in the realm of Truth.

This is the spirit that Beauty must ever induce, wonderment and a delicious trouble, longing and love and a trembling that is all delight. For the unseen all this may be felt as for the seen; and this the Souls feel for it, every soul in some degree, but those the more deeply that are the more truly apt to this higher love- just as all take delight in the beauty of the body but all are not stung as sharply, and those only that feel the keener wound are known as Lovers.

That middle paragraph just hits me.

And from The Confessions of St. Augustine, some thoughts on fire and weight and love.  All things I also happen to distinctly enjoy.

Chapter IX

But was not either the Father, or the Son, borne above the waters? if this means, in space, like a body, then neither was the Holy Spirit; but if the unchangeable supereminence of Divinity above all things changeable, then were both Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost borne upon the waters. Why then is this said of Thy Spirit only, why is it said only of Him? As if He had been in place, Who is not in place, of Whom only it is written, that He is Thy gift? In Thy Gift we rest; there we enjoy Thee. Our rest is our place. Love lifts us up thither, and Thy good Spirit lifts up our lowliness from the gates of death. In Thy good pleasure is our peace. The body by its own weight strives towards its own place. Weight makes not downward only, but to his own place. Fire tends upward, a stone downward. They are urged by their own weight, they seek their own places. Oil poured below water, is raised above the water; water poured upon oil, sinks below the oil. They are urged by their own weights to seek their own places. When out of their order, they are restless; restored to order, they are at rest. My weight, is my love; thereby am I borne, whithersoever I am borne. We are inflamed, by Thy Gift we are kindled; and are carried upwards; we glow inwardly, and go forwards. We ascend Thy ways that be in our heart, and sing a song of degrees; we glow inwardly with Thy fire, with Thy good fire, and we go; because we go upwards to the peace of Jerusalem: for gladdened was I in those who said unto me, We will go up to the house of the Lord. There hath Thy good pleasure placed us, that we may desire nothing else, but to abide there for ever.

Field Trip

Nothing beats nature walks with the kids.

This very day

A small boy in plaid lags behind his mother unnoticed.   He is counting the deer in the field.  Unnoticed.

It is one of the most beautiful parts of my day.