Birthday, Peaches and Planes in My Dreams

This coming weekend will be our first time as a household celebrating my sister, Lockbox' birthday together. We are planning in some serious shore time, a peaches and cream pie (recipe here!), sparklers, some read alouds, some late night chatting and some cozy mornings sleeping in. We are all still enjoying her presence so much. We'be set up some nice boundaries for personal space and responsibility which are preserving but I think our warm friendship is the most important factor. I have cool siblings. I feel lucky.
We havn't been peach picking in quantity yet. We got a small bag of white peaches from a farm but I aim to pick more like a bushel for canning, fruit leather and freezing for smoothies in the winter.
The garden is clipping along nicely with tomatoes ripening every day, our first cabbages ever and several sweet dinners of baby beets in our bellies. I am really hoping against hope that our sweet potato vines bear.
I have a mad yen for a free plane ticket. A good friend was having a baby shower in Colorado, my sister Foxy is nursing my beloved, tiny premature nephew along in Michigan and I also feel like I am kind of desperate for a small,  careless foray into vernal Vermont. Nobody has shown up with a magic ticket though so I might have to stick with dreamships for transport.
I painting the house madly!!! The trim is starting to look reliably white and glossy around the house. Feeling awesomely capable after charging the drill up myself for the purpose of home rescue.
Tomorrow I do laundry.

This Whole Motherhood Thing

There are times when being a Mommy is super, crazy fun. They are, I won't lie...pretty select times. Mostly its just a thing...like being a homeowner or being a wife or being a student. Not bad, not amazing...but decent. And sometimes it makes you want to gouge your eyes out with a spoon but that's for another time. Sometimes...there are real, genuine moments of idyllic happiness.

From time to time I wish I felt like motherhood was almost always moving and wonderful but it isn't, at least for me. Sometimes, I wade through Mommy-guilt about that fact. I think maybe "good moms" are the ones who always rave about adoring their children. Maybe even good moms are the ones who pretend they're perma-thrilled with their role. But then, I have a real penchant for honesty. I'd rather even my children know the truth. Being a mommy is really hard, its scary, its exhausting and its heartbreaking. Its not my most favorite thing in life. Its also very personal, and delicious and peppered with some of my most exhilarating feelings of success. I had no idea teaching someone to read would feel like climbing Mount Everest or that I would actually weep over the strenuousness of potty training. I am genuinely ridiculously proud of myself and the child when I cross the finish line on some Mommy-goal like that!!!!

Although mothering has been really feeding and exciting it also feels like a business I am a little loathe to make "my life" even though I am home full-time and admittedly not really a classic career person. Its a sticky business to make the care, feeding and emergence of a tiny handful of fully sentient and self-aware humans your life-work. I want to support them and encourage them and teach them but on some level I kind of want them to wear that label themselves, not me. I try not to encourage myself to "own" them and their development and instead to do all I can to enable them and to make myself my own life-work. I think there's a lovely, deeply personal, delicate piece to being a mother, there's also a lot of room for mismanagement, obsession, and forgetting who you are as a person and your responsibility to continue growing. And that's my soapbox for the morning. Happy Thursday!

2012, Diagnosed

It was a good year.

All years are good years.

I am trying to get less attached to ideas of emotional happiness and instead learn to see the fluid beauty in all things...even the rough things, even the stuff we are tempted to label and discard.

It is so alluring to kick 2012 out with a big heave ho and stamp it on the hiney as it goes with a giant red "FOR DISCARD" like a snubbed library book.

This was the year..... A had an accident with a bike and spent months in ridiculous physical therapy trying to learn to walk again after the official diagnosis of "bruising and small bone chip," it was the year we had such a plague of mosquitoes in our yard that we basically spent the second half of the summer indoors hiding, it was the year our shower started leaking through the dining room ceiling and we shifted to using the kid shower (still are!) while we saving up funds to afford a ceiling demolition, it was the year that I spent a week, heavily pregnant with my fourth baby teetering on the edge of a hospital bed holding my third son while he cried and pinning his arms down while nurses gave him i.v. meds, it was the year my cherished midwife was no longer practicing and I had to walk through this last pregnancy and birth without her care, and it was the year of illness after illness, the boys never all well at the same time.

But you know...there are so many sides to life. So many pieces to stories and so often, its all about your spin.

This was also the year.....I discovered eating grain-free/sugar free and thus shed a shackling depression, the year we met our gentle, fourth son in an amazingly quick and smooth birth, the year we hauled basket after basket in from our garden laden with peas and lettuce and tomatoes and our first ever watermelons, it was the year I finally took an interior design class, the year A picked up Spanish in his spare time, the year we celebrated surviving an entire decade of marriage together, the year we visited Hawaii and swam under a waterfall with our children, the year we picked the first fruit from our mini-orchard, and the year we made it back to Michigan for a family reunion on my great-grandparents farm, the year we brought home two furry little guinea pig sisters to live with us, the year I had a painting up in a real gallery and then sold a piece to a genuine member of the anonymous public, the year a Raleigh  policeman went out of his way to help find my stolen phone and restore my faith in cops, it was the year we were graciously mega-loved by friends in our homeschool group, neighbors and church when hard times did hit, it was the year we had a huge flock of daffodils bloom by our front door.  This and so much more...

I want to always look for the ripe, warm, flavorful bits in my experiences...even the things that feel bitter at first bite. So here I am with the winter light slanting across the floor and a round cheeked baby on my lap, on the brink of a whole new story. This year, whatever it brings I hope for more awareness, more open-eyed seeing, more love, more unity with side portions of vision, and dreams, and spine tingling to boot. Here's to 2013, doubtless, a good year!

Life Audit

Time for a bit of big picture, self-inventory. Its always good to know where we are exactly. Alison at BrocanteHome, one of my favorite blogs, calls this a Life Audit: part list, part reflective essayettes. Lets have a go, shall we?

One, Two, Three....GO!

Today I am: Hiding from the heat, holing up in the air conditioned public library and any other handy cool location trying to keep the heat rash down on the baby and minimize the whines from the big kids and the mommy.

Feeling:  Hot. Also Pretty happy! I'm losing weight, feeling much more emotionally stable and ready for the next phase!

Reading: Good Calories Bad Calories (brilliant and important book, completely rocking my world apart!!!!) and for fiction fun, Chalice.

Eating:Steak on the grill, local, raw milk, and a few baby red potatoes from our garden doused with fresh parsley and swimming in butter.

Planning: The last details of the playroom's reorganization! An encouraging reveal coming...

Dreaming:Of our trip to Hawaii to visit Miq and Penny, coming up this fall. Reading guidebooks happily and plotting all the possibilities. I am imagining fresh fish, amazing coffee and pineapples to kill for not to mention swimming with sea turtles and sunsets over white beaches. Bring it on!

Wishing:For central air. A spends all day in a giant air conditioned icebox of an office and comes home loosening his collar and soaking up the heat and I am sweaty and grouchy and dehydrated and incredibly unwilling to hear in my presence his bitter words about the modern wonder that is zoned cooling. Boo! So much for my desire to live an authentic, salt of the earth, old fashioned existence.

Doing:A lot of plant watering. This killer heat has been making things grow like crazy but also makes keeping up on the fluid end a big, big job. Tomatoes require a lot of drinks, y'all!

Working: On getting back into the swing of normal life. Potty training, my daily chore list, teaching reading, using my menu planner...etc.

Celebrating: The loss of Ru's first tooth! Hooray for this super cute milestone. So heartwarming to see how incredibly excited he was about that first real wiggle after so much waiting and waiting and waiting for it to finally happen to him.

Grateful For: Babygates. I never really thought I'd be saying that but there it is. Nib has morphed into the kid who never listens, doesn't  come when he's called and is always speedily getting into something...albeit with a glowing smile on. I sure loves me a little control sometimes.

Tomorrow I will be: Having a home day, catching up on laundry and sweeping the second floor clean...and please, God, please...enjoying some cooler weather? 

This Month I need/want to...

• Finish painting the kid bath.

• Find the book we lost from the library.

• Get the kid clothes sorted out and stored properly.

• Eat more corn on the cob.

• Attend the local music festival!

• Store or give away the potato crop we harvested.

• Take Ru out alone for an outing.

• Start my yoga class again! (yay for six weeks postpartum!)

  There you have it. My life at the moment in a little nutshell. Wanna show me yours?

Poetry Friday: A Dance Poem

Happy Poetry Friday everyone! I'm sharing a poem with you today that I wrote about dancing. Half of my "high school career" was at a performing arts charter school, an experience that really molded and encouraged my inner artist (not that it was exactly closeted anyhow) and helped me think of myself as part of the art world. One of the things that was most unique about high school in our building was that gym was replaced by everyone taking dance class together. We studied all kinds of dance from swing to modern to African with ballet influence and we performed for the public and for our parents and friends. I miss dance. After we married A and I studied privately with pair of ballroom instructors and learned to rumba and cha cha and waltz together. We quit when we moved out of Michigan. I think from time to time now about taking a class or going out to dance night event someplace but my current craving is just the see a dance performance. I want to see something live with thundering energy and swirling movement and the breathtaking moments that are lifts and dips and the human body in amazing, planned motion.

Image via Wikipedia

I think I need to get on my local community calendar and find a local dance company to go see on a date night. This is getting bad. But in lieu of that I am clicking play over and over on this beautiful but short film of a ballet performance/fashion show. The female dancer is Janie Taylor and the male lead Justin Peck, both dance with our own New York City Ballet. We're a lucky crowd here in the metro area. Janie's clothing in the piece chances every few seconds, all the outfits are the work of the designer Chloe, and she's modeling the spring and summer line from 2011. I love Janie's hair and the fluid, amazing movement that dancing with it down creates.


Downright swoony, right? On to my poem.

 Music In My Body

When I was a little girl we danced in the kitchen,
Polkas on the linoleum, skipping past the sink
My Sunday dress hopping with my curls.
We went to square dances and I learned the
Internal swirl and bop of an allemande left
And bought my first pair of fragrant jazz shoes,
Leather curled like a crepe about each foot.
My second dance teacher, a warm sapling woman
All dark arching brows and shining seal's hair
She told me once to use proper posture in the car
"Sit like a puppeteer is dancing you from the roof."
I attended prom and shambled through the odd, close
Shuffle of a slow dance with my buzz-cut boyfriend.
And then I toured colleges and chose the Baptist one
Where I was smuggled into a hopping, underground
Swing Dance Club, all covert big band heat and zow.
I was at a wedding a year later, doing the macarena
When I overheard an old man say behind his hand,
"Those Baptist girls sure can cut a rug, eh?"
I married a man who was my ballroom partner
In the community dance class we took together
We trod on each other's toes and wrestled for the lead
Dancing our first, silent round of couples therapy
Now we have three little boys, all avid pint-sized swingers
And we hop and slide around the kitchen together
And I feel, as we do the twist in front of the sink
That I'll arch like Martha Graham into my golden years
With my foot pointed ahead of me, still following
That steady stream of music in my body.

Image via Wikipedia

 So, that's my life's story in dance, or at least some of highlights. Good thoughts. I am sometimes asked if I'm a dancer and told I move like one. I doubt I really give off fluid ballerina vibes but something about me tells people that I like beauty of movement and that is a pretty good deal. I don't think of myself as a "dancer" per say. I was never any kind of star in the dancing circles I was in, I was afraid of being lifts since I was a big of a heavy girl for most of my adolescence, I was a little shy and a kind of wallflower socially and I didn't have perfect graceful instincts like some of my close friends. I've never danced a solo of any kind. I do have to say though that writing this poem really made me think about how much dance has been a part of my story and history. We don't have to be stars in order to sparkle. To say that the only ones who are dancers are the leads is cheating all the rest of us who just love to move. I'm a dancer.

If you want to take in other people's entries for the week, feel free to hop on over to Teaching Authors, today's host blog for Poetry Friday and take a look at what else is being represented. And have a great weekend! I'll be right here, with my toe pointed, on Monday.

Vital Life Insights

In my plan to savor my own life experience and really accept age and the passing of time and wisdom and not just smooth skin and young energy...I have just made a new step forward. We, all of us, are learning things, all the time....lessons that are our own little gold nuggets that slowly compile to create wisdom. I think it's a shame that we never really consciously examine what we've learned and what we are learning and turn each nugget over in our hands, really looking at it and really feeling it between our fingers, appreciating the things we have learned through hard won experience.

I used to be a big journaler, never really consistantly the every-single-day diary scribbler, but consistant enough that I've filled several lined books with reams of accounts of "what I did today." I don't journal that way anymore. I'm glad that I did it because it got me started: I wrote, I thought, however shallowly about my life and my self. These days my journalling is more expressive and more insightful and much more useful, I use my journal to sort out my insides and plot life in ways that count and make sense.

All my classic lined page journals.

My current journals (I have two at the moment, one for writing and one for visuals) are a little out of the box. This is what journalling looks like for me right now. I'm often answering questions, making lists, making bold statements and writing down my hopes and small healing reminders to the tattered, quiet bit of me inside.

My visual journal

My written journal, in a sketchbook.

This week I decided to start making a list of my major life insights in my writing journal. We all know there are certain trite bits of wisdom (however true and meaningful) that could pepper any individual's list, but what I'm talking about instead are the things that feel vital to you right now. Personal insights: things that have to do with your own individual thinking and pondering and feeling and reading. Here are some good ways to dig them up if nothing is coming to you.

• Revisit old journal entries (if you journal) and look for recurrent themes.
• Think about the things you're talking about all the time to your spouse, your children, your best friend, your mom...vital bits of wisdom are often things we're so struck by that we talk about them over and over while digesting.
• Think about someone who bugs you a lot and ask yourself what they are doing that you would never do, write that down and look at it. Is there some life insight there that you can gather up?
• Look around you at your bookshelves and remember, as you spot particular books, important things you learned from them.
• Think about a painful life experience you've had. Are there any life lessons you can say you learned through it?
• What did you trip over lately and then you say to yourself "I sure thought I learned that a long time ago!"
• What do you consider to be the most important things your parents and your spiritual community have taught you?

So....there's some prompts to get you going. I'd love to hear what you're all learning at the moment, feel free to share in the comments.

Here's what's on my list so far:

1. Christianity, and maybe all of life is about LOVE...and nothing more.
2. We are all failures who are valuable.
3. All personal connections/relationships in life are good and of value.
4. I need respect.
5. Morning headstarts are the key to sanity.
6. Kindness earns you love, respect comes via achievement.
7. All emotions are valid and need to be looked in the eye and accepted, even the big scary ones.
8. Beauty is important for my vibrant health.
9. Junk food addiction is passive suicide.
10. Generosity is very important.
11. Repetition=Skill
12. Anger, unaddressed becomes bitterness.

 What has life taught you through experience? Dish it out!

I Do Love A Fair....

We took a coupla years off, but we finally made it back to a country fair. I consider the fair (and by the fair, I do mean...whatever fair I can get myself to in short order!) to be a quintessential part of summer. It doesn't feel like we can let the golden days go and feel that we've really had September without a night on the midway, a twirl on the ferris wheel and a good long stroll through the exhibit barns.

I love the fair because it seems like such a tall order seasonal tribute, everybody's best produce arrayed in proud rows, pies brimming with fruit, and all the livestock fed to the gills and curried within an inch of their lives. The best of the summer, yea the year...all arranged in rows and barns and heaps for our vicarious, positive group think enjoyment. Makes me very happy.

Then there's the bit about how it is a celebration of many of the ideals I hold dearest: do-it-yourself chutzpa, artistry, salt-of-the-earth goodness, homespun pride, old fashioned plummy fabulousness. It makes me want to go home and can loads of things, really buckle down and learn quilting, reel my clothesline in and out a few times just for the shear pleasure and sit sighing down amongst a stack of dreamy someday hopes that have to do with embroidery, handmade baby clothes and finally knitting a sweater myself.

The boys couldn't remember going to fair (its been two years) and so they were asking on the way over and over, what exactly was it we were going to see? Was it like a circus? Is it a store? Will it be like the zoo? They were racking their brains for anything comparable and trying to be that this wasn't some ugly mommy trick to haul them into a place where you sit still for long periods of time.

I am happy to report however, that we all enjoyed ourselves, even little Nib who made fabulous milage out of his sunny grin with pretty much every passing farm wife. My personal favorite part of the fair this year was my own solo trip up the ferris wheel as the sun was beginning to set over the rolling Connecticut fields. There could be very few deeper pleasures in the mommy life. Such a lovely run, round and round the big wheel, swooshing along smoothly, peaking over the green fields and clicking my camera at the dizzy blur of lights and color over the rolling landscape and waving down at shining little boy faces.

Storybook Series

Just sifting photos today and noticed this wonderful set of shots that Ru took of his little brother reading his favorite book of the moment. I love that his big brother thought this was a good subject, I love that he's so absorbed that he's reading standing up, I love that we see him through the handle of the broom and framed by the cupboard he's standing next to, I love the way the book moved up and down in the shots, I love that you can see me making dinner on the counter behind him and I love the myriad little expressions he makes under the story's spell.

Love the way he's absorbed in the back cover page here and letting the story bits fall open also digging the inquisitive angle of his head.

Something serious here...

Love the furrowed brow sticking out over the book

Focus on the book now....his little head is blurry background...cute, cute.

Cute little jolly emotion here

Get a load of that cute little bit of hair sticking up...and those tiny fingers curled around the cover

Having children is such a wonderful business. Its super fun to watch them "become." I love watching to see what shapes they unfurl into. Its like those little gel cap, sponge animals we played with as kids (did you play with those?) that melt away on contact with hot water and slowly uncurl and then Tada!!! You can see that your red capsule was a hippo! So cool! I feel like I did when I was five with my chin up over the edge of my grandma's bathroom sink, watching to see what the capsules I've been given become. You know all the shapes are good....but golly...who knows what they'll be! The fun is in the revealing. I love watching Ru learn to love photography and seeing through his eye when I upload his pictures, I love seeing Dee pick favorite stories and watching what special bits he loves and why. Its just really darn cool watching my boys be them! I can't wait to see what Nib becomes. Maybe he'll be a little red hippo! You never know! Mommyhood is cool like that.