Shadow Self Returns From Camp

We just got home from our first legit camping trip as a family. We took the boys to the redwoods and pitched two tents beneath the huckleberry bushes and set up shop with our cooler for a pantry. Every meal was over the open fire or else cold leftovers, we swam in the river every day, picked wild berries and kept strict daylight hours. I wish I could say that I came home elated and freshened and all Walden 'ed up. I am afraid I actually came home desperately tired of stumbling out of my tent in the dark, groping for the door of my kids tent zipper and trying to shush whoever was waking before the whole campground was awakened, I was sick of scrubbing dishes in tepid water and getting them sort of clean, I was was exhausted from lighting fires to try to cook anything and I was dying to take a shower and peel off the filthy blue jeans I wore every day all weekend. There were brilliant memories and great times and we were all glad we went and are already planning our tent pitching next year....but still I have this secret disappointment. I didn't feel like I wanted to. I wanted to be alive in the woods and feel free and lighter, to come home inspired to live more simply and to embrace more of the world of a life between the campfire and the tent. Instead, I feel worn thin and so grateful to live where I do and when I do. Have I softened with old age or am I just realizing that I have not given this pampered shadow self of mine enough voice?

Frogs In The Sunroom

It was a good day full of sunshine and warmth and scratching things off my list that I have been meaning to do for years. Like catching wild frog eggs with my sons!


Frogs are hard to see...harder if you are between 2 and 7 and prone to wiggles. BUT...I persevered with my stillness coaching and we saw frogs. Several of them, mostly males of different colors, brown and green with touches of gold and black trim and one that was a dark russet orange. I also saw one female, pregnant with a big poofy clutch of eggs. She dived before the boys could follow my pointing finger.



I thought we were out if luck looking for eggs though. None. Not one cluster. And then I started seeing them, tucked almost into the leaves, visible when your head was tilted just so, sunlight hitting to surface of the vernal pond in a certain way. Like a cluster of black pearls just below the surface.



The boys were curious and amazed and each had to feel them and ask 40 questions because 20 is for slackers. We put one cluster off glistening eggs into a plastic Superman bowl and filled a juice bottle with extra pond water for later and took them home.



And now there are teeny, little frog babies growing in a fishbowl in my sunroom! :) Happy Thursday to me!

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Flower Cache

I think it is safe to say that we have survived. I drove, over a thousand miles by myself with four wild kids in a mini-van and made it back alive. The weather here at home is mild, all the mini-snowfall we had this past weekend has melted away to mud and the yard is filled with migrating juncos and robins. There is a pair of fawn colored wrens investigating the tree hydrangea outside the kitchen window for nesting. Yesterday when the boys and I settled back into our normal groove and went out for a pre-nap neighborhood promenade.

We wandered into a little forgotten section of our nieghborhood where a  scrub woods and a scruffy trail runs behind some of the houses, a favorite secret ramble of ours and we found Spring. How have I lived here two years still never seen this carpet of early spring crocus and snowdrops?????

WOW! I was open-mouthed and the boys were positively giddy. It was pretty tough to tear ourselves away and head back up the hill to our house for naps but I can guarantee that there were sweet dreams.We're gonna make it, y'all. I'm off to unpack the pea seeds in honor of St. Patty's Day approaching.

Mommy, Heal Thyself

Sometimes, life is just too much and I'm kind of blowing steam out my ears and afraid someone will talk to me at which point I will either explode or burst into tears...not that anything super horrible is happening.  I just need a little time in a safe place sometimes, a little hope and a little healing and some way to create some extra buffer space and margin for myself.

Image by tkw954 via Flickr

Historically, the woods where I grew up was my "safe place" where I went to recover and breathe again. There was a bottomless sort of solid freshness to the feel of a mound of moss under my fingers or the tinkling run of the crick at the bottom of our little valley.

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Once I no longer lived in a woods I had to extemporize. I would escape the pressure of campus relationship dramas, my roomate's eating disorders and the endless industrial pavement of the city and drive my little clunker around in aimless wandering spirals on little country roads north of town and south of town and east of town, wherever the sidewalks ended and the farmstands began. I'd roll the windows down and play loud music and sometimes stop to sit in a roadside ditch just to listen to the crickets sing around me.

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Then once I was married life got a little busier and I couldn't always dash off to drive off my worries but I discovered a greenhouse in town not far from where I worked and sometimes when a rough shift ended on a cold winter night, I'd stop at the greenhouse and dawdle my way through every single row and table, reading the names of different epiphytes and orchids, playing in the water the the table-top fountains they sold burbled and petting the ubiquitous greenhouse kitties. I don't know if it was the sound of moving water, the smell of growing things, the green haze in the air or the purring nudge of the resident cats but it always worked. I'd go back to my car feeling like I could walk again, like I wouldn't cry after all and like there was a reason to live.

Lemons as big as your head!

Maybe you think I'm crazy and shallow and even selfish, but that's how it works with me. The one last place that has been a haven in tough times (don't laugh!) is Panera Bread. Somehow everything is alright again when I am snuggled own in a warm booth, watching the fireplace flicker with a mug of coca as big as my head between my hands. I think I can thank my sister-in-law, Jane for introducing me to this particular form of healing. We spent many a chatty afternoon back in my college and post-college Michigan days noshing in the comforting glow of Panera after they built one right down the road from her house. Now Panera makes think of all those who love me and slow conversation and laughter and good times and there's also something very boosting as the perennial mommy-person who takes care of everyone else, in having someone else make me lunch and bring it to me on a platter (special perk of appearing at the counter with your arms full of babies) even if "someone else" is a guy named Jose who doesn't know me from Adam is being paid by someone else to make my lunch. Still. I'll take it. And it does come with a fireplace and a mug of cocoa the size of my head.

Giant green leaves. :)

Today I took the boys to Panera. (They pretty much always have to come along whenever mommy needs some healing.) I've discovered that Panera makes pb&j perfectly and that they serve these exciting little yogurt-in-a-tube snacks that Mommy never buys which are thrilling to my sons. We had lunch together, watched all the other people eating lunch and talked about them, snuggled up to the fireplace, and then bought a gingerbread man to split over our cocoa. Life was better.

The beautiful herb wreaths they were making while we were there today, all sage and bay and thyme etc. They smelled amazing.

Nib, wandering the aisles.

And then I remembered that there was a greenhouse I'd heard a rumor about that I'd been meaning to visit for some time...so we gps'd it and drove ourselves right over. There are actually about four greenhouses, a special one just for herbs, one with an amazing, lush lemon tree and one with an indoor farmer's market once a week (today, just by chance!). There are kitties curled up snoozing on the top of plant racks, there is that moist green smell that all greenhouses have and there are little corners where nobody is and you can just let your boys sit down on the ground and run the pea gravel through their fingers while you smell flowers and meander around fingering tags. The doors on each house close so there's no serious losing of the toddler and it turns out my boys light up just as much as I do when they walk into a greenhouse. We all left ready to come back again soon. I think I just found my safe place. If you need a little solace yourself and you happen to be in the area, this particular greenhouse is called Gilbertie's Herb Garden. So, I'm feeling better now, and our house is one jasmine plant and a few herbs richer and we have a place to run when the needle is on E.