A Sudden Jump!

What a very strange thing it is to open up my own blog and see that it is almost exactly two months since my last post and so much has happened in our life without any notation.

We are no longer New Englanders! We've taken a leap, pulled everything together madly and flown to the other coast. We are now official residents of Northern California. It's so strange to say that we no longer live in that big house in Connecticut and that it also feels completely natural.

Moving like this (we still don't have any of our things beyond suitcases with clothes) and we haven't sold our house yet and we still don't have a new homeschool group) is a little jarring to consider but ultimately very freeing. It's light and open and full of nothing binding. I cried and agonized and kissed the house and friends goodbye and then just leapt. I am astonished at how perfectly at home I feel in our new home (a little one bath, one story cottage) and how "Friends To Get To Know" keep piling up warmly in my Contacts list (everyone seems to know someone that I need to meet).

This is not to imply that everything is ideal; we are camping out in the house with no beds or chairs or other fancy goods. The cottage comes with no dishwasher and although we've been here for three weeks without a washer and dryer (on order!) and there's not much in the back garden besides dry California dust around a giant concrete pad and some fruit trees. The window screens are torn, there's ivy climbing up inside the walls of the garage and the time difference is a lot tougher to negotiate via phone calls than I anticipated.

But still....still things are lovely. We are happy and warm and lucky and safe and having all kinds of adventures. This afternoon, for example, on our afternoon walk around the neighborhood my boys dragged home a giant banana leaf to play with! A banana-frickin-leaf!!! It's amazing.

That's our new place!

There are pink and yellow and red and orange rose bushes in the front yard that bloom more every day. When I had a sore throat the first week we were here I made myself lemon honey tea with fresh lemons off the tree by the kitchen door. A pair of doves just raised three babies and launched them from the back patio. One bathroom is unspeakably easy to clean. It's real and zany and fabulous! I recommend adventures, every time. Viva California!

Now, The Best Time of Year

Summer is waning. We are still wearing t-shirts and tank tops but we're keeping our sweatshirts handy and most mornings I pull on jeans before I run down to start the coffee maker and level off the chicken feeder. The garden is all seedy and disreputable, the support stakes are leaning tiredly and the borders grown over with grasses chickweed. I am starting to make lists of autumn bulbs and think about where to park the chicken coop for winter. Its a season of stripping down and organizing, busily strapping on our routines and making labels for everything.

This weekend we had A's youngest brother visiting us. He has just moved to our coast and is going to be living in Boston for the next couple of years so we celebrated with an inaugural visit together filled with every good thing.We had late night discussions, morning coffee, road-tripping, beach walking, garden tours, a tea party and many a book discussion. Ru was so enamored of his uncle after a weekend of his excellent company that he got up early this morning and lovingly made him a dozen cookies to take with him on the train. Love feeling so rich in family and seeing how feeding belonging and a sense of connection is for my children. They just bloom under it all, like so many little seedlings.

I was still chewing on all the goodness from the weekend and needed a meditative but energetic project. In a fit of caffeinated enthusiasm I spontaneously attacked the pantry after breakfast. I pulled it all apart and scrubbed the shelves, dusted out all the stray onion skins and found all the glass canisters that are empty and need refilling in the bulk department. I put a little drip of wintergreen oil in it and when Ru came in the room looking for me he said, "It smells like root beer in here, or fall spices or something." I was telegraphing autumn through the house, telling everyone including myself that it was time to switch modes. The squirrels in our garden are whittling the sunflower heads down to sawdust and carting away anything salvageable that shows up on the compost pile within minutes and there I am, playing squirrel in my own pantry, dusting off the spaces for extra onions and squashes and potatoes. I can feel the change coming and the mourning for the blazing, high summer with and orchestra of crickets that threatens. I keep forcefully working on now. Right now it is not Autumn, as good as it sounds, with its chimney sweep appointments and hickory nuts and dusky evenings filled with silent, falling leaves. Now is now. We've passed the peak of summer. The days for sun tan oil and perpetual barefeet, we are in a magical time with 80 degree afternoons and chilly mornings with tea cups on the back step. We hear the cicadas singing and most of the garden needs nothing more than a lot of deadheading. The sprinkler still wants a little use and there are nubbins of sidewalk chalk calling to be turned into dusty rainbows on our front walk but the starlings are visiting in flocks sometimes, just to shake it up and bring all of us to the window to watch their random robot walking and their bright yellow bills stabbing the lawn. Now is always ephemeral and more specific and perfect than any seasonal cliche and always the most important thing is to be paying attention, listening with our whole selves.

 “In this moment, there is plenty of time. In this moment, you are precisely as you should be. In this moment, there is infinite possibility. ” 

― Victoria Moran, Younger by the Day