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.

Study Time

Seeking peace, understanding, growth,  contemplation, unity,  and love.

Oh, and a win tonight from the U.S. women's team.

Til then,  growing my heart, mind, and one tiny human.

Please take a moment to appreciate the tiny post-it notes.

In My Element

The reality of being on Christmas break did not set in until this morning when no alarms went off, unless you count children.  Then I got to indulge in finishing Carter Beats the Devil -- between staying up stupid late to read, reading this morning over breakfast, and reading after lunch while the kids were sleeping.  Holy heck that is a fine book indeed!  I can't decide if I like that better than Kavalier and Clay.  This one wraps up more cleanly and enjoyably, but I like the very real painfulness of K and C because it feels authentic and like you can't breathe right for the last fifty or hundred pages of it.  There are more haunting images in K and C, but... well, I liked them both a lot and want to recommend them to people, but it takes the right kind of person to appreciate them, so I will be judicious with those recommendations.  Now what to read next?!?!?? 

Oh, and I left breakfast and reading because, in the process of cutting an apple this morning, I had three good ideas at once and had to write them all down or I'd lose them.  Caught two of the three, which is pretty good.  

And we ran errands and bought food to share with guests today!  And then two families with two kids each came over and played all afternoon!  We had a lovely tea party with fancy tea cups and saucers.  And it was so great to say, "Hey, just stay for dinner!  It's no problem!" and throw something good and healthy together and eat at the table and use the festive paper plates I bought and didn't use yesterday. 

Speaking of yesterday... I might have to murder this cat if she doesn't stop sneezing on me and lying on the keyboard... anyway, yesterday, we hosted three couples for dinner and busted out the good dishes.  .  I made breads (Jones was very excited and kept asking for more "home made bread" very clearly).  We averted a meat disaster successfully.  They liked dessert.  There was so much laughter and banter and goodness.  I liked watching the empty bottles collect on the table and the people sit back and stretch their full bellies.  

It was lovely to have the house filled with company two days in a row, to feed everyone and bring tea around, to hold other people's kids and smell new babies.  And more visiting tomorrow morning, which will probably bleed into feeding everyone lunch, which is beautiful.  

And tomorrow morning I'll probably make that baked oatmeal, but tweak up that recipe and ooooh whip up a caramelized pear sauce to top it off.  Yes!  With that good Greek yogurt from Mustard Seed.  Who am I kidding?  I fully enjoy prepping all this food and then I eat three bites and feel like I'm going to explode.  Ya'll are going to have to come over and get fat or this is all going to to go waste.  

My brain is so unrestrained and undisciplined today.  I'm just allowing it to roam in all it's hyperactivity.  Probably also part of why I feel so in my element-- because I'm up to my elbows in fifteen different ideas and actions at any given moment today.  

AND today was bright happy sun and warmth outside (relative warmth for Clevecember), so we went out and chalked before lunch!  

And after everyone left and the dishes and children were clean, Emilia and I drew and I made my best Elsa yet and Emilia made her best Anna (with crazy hair because she was jumping on her bed, in case you can't tell)

A night scene where fairies and princesses played on the stars and snowflakes, my happy Christmas message, part of a table setting, which doesn't capture the beauty of the whole table, but I mainly just want to remember that using the wrapping paper as a table runner was a fine idea.

And this is just one day.  The first day.  And there are many more days of break to come, so more naps, more creativity, wrapping presents!!!!!! and visiting and fifteen kinds of other good times.  There is so much writing and studying I want to do, too.  Oh my peas, life is full of joys.

To My Dirty White Gloves

I like this 500 words a day challenge.  This is day five for me-- I missed a day (thanks, stomach flu), but other than that, I've been writing more in my journal and here.  If I had fewer obligations, I'd be writing even more because it's kicked my writer's brain into gear.  If only I could just stop what I'm doing and write whenever the ideas came.  Some day....

Today, I just wanted to write a regular old post about my gloves, but it came out like this.

To my dirty white gloves:

Ambiguous mittens

Gray and gritty, the grime of ropes and coils

Chipped paint from playground metal

Caught between your fine-knit fibers

Your fingerless hobo state

Derailed if my bluster-hardened fingers can just

Gah just

Hang on

Get a grrrrasp of the

Uuuahhh cold little

White loop of elastic

That,

There,

Frees the mitten top to warm the

dancingest parts of my hands.

Dirt where you’ve made contact

With fences and handles,

Pressed pedestrian signal buttons,

Drummed on metal bleachers,

Scratched a nose,

Brushed hair away from eyes,

Sloshed coffee.

No longer crisp and ladylike,

You’ve taken on the dust-and-wind smell

Of all my coats.

I bought you to transform me into

A creature more ladylike and refined.

Instead, you have become slightly frayed,

Unmistakably soiled,

Broken in,

perfect.

Read a better ode to an inanimate object here.  Because Pablo Neruda is divine.  

Read the last poem I wrote here. 

Other reflections:

On Ellen this week, Jennifer Gardner referred to her post baby body as her "everlasting baby bump" and she called it by her three children's names.  I think that's pretty awesome.  Love me a little celebration of healthy women's bodies and all the changes they go through.  Full disclosure, I read about this on some news website while I was looking for Ebola articles.  I didn't actually watch Ellen.

This morning the wind was coming from the north -- not the first time this school year, but today was the first time the air smelled arctic.  Summer's been lingering in tree smells.  I picture it lurking in the shade of the oak trees in front of Sts. Peter and Paul.  It tucks itself up under the low branches, which are still a good twenty feet off the ground, and it curls up its feet, letting fall blow around beneath it.  I know the summer is waiting there, looking for the right time to leap down on us one last time before it blows away til next year.

So yeah, fall smells have been trading days with the tail of summer.  There have been a few salty, southern smelling mornings, too.  But today was barren, windswept plains and the grey of geese, snow snakes slithering down highways, and tall grasses bent under the weight of hard frost.

Seasons

The trees in the valley are green, but man, I can see them quivering as they try to contain the burst of color that's underneath.