The Year of Self-Inflicted Terror

I have never been super good at facing difficulty and ponying up to failures or possible failures. Man, I'd like to kick that one! This year I am planning to expose myself to lots of things that scare me, work hard on things that seem insurmountable, chip away at jobs that take a looooooong time and seem like they will never end and learn to hear and handle and use criticism.

Whew. Its a big year. 

 My focus word for the year is "Grit." It feels really good and I have lot of ideas for making it happen.

One thing I am doing, for instance is planning to take surfing lessons. I love the ocean and I really like to swim (although, I am not any kind of proficient) but surfing looks terrifying. The major deep water, the being out so far away from any help or land, the giant board that could clobber you silly, the Godzilla strength surf, not to mention the social intimidation of trying to hang with the tanned and the muscled. Long Island has a surfing school and I am plan to enroll. Lucy tells me she will come too and I plan to push through the shakes and the hesitation and learn to surf. This is the year. I  will do tough things.

I also plan to organize, purge completely and beautify our hoarders stash of a basement. I am telling you guys this so that I will have public accountability and will feel like I have called myself out. I'm gonna sort through all the boxes of junk and random papers and old photos stuck together. I'm gonna take load after load to Goodwill and the dump and jam things into our recycling bin until they won't fit anymore. I will have systems and know them. I will look all my ridiculous mess in the eye and I will stop doing it. When company comes I will not run madly around shoving everything into a box or a bag and then throw it on the scary heap in the basement. I am done. This is the year.

Its gonna be a good year. I'm excited. 

Also, I am heading off on these challenging, scary adventures with so much in my corner. I have good books, pretty spaces, certainty that I can do it and an adorable baby with the cutest static halo around.

 

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!

Growing 32

I have begun my 32nd year. 

There are 32 teeth in an adult's mouth naturally...should his wisdom teeth grow in straight and strong. I am here standing beginning my 32nd year and watching my baby get his first two teeth at exactly the same time. I feel like I've cut quite a few ivories myself this year in the development of my character and personal growth.

This last year has been a year of big spiritual understanding for me, a year of dreams, a year of finally feeling like I grasped some shred of motherhood, a year for cracking open myself and understanding pieces of humanity and myself that have puzzled me for ages. It has been my maiden voyage into the role of educator, a year of discovering nutritional health and healing and a confirmation of my household as a place where multiple men will be born and come of age. I feel wiser this year, more hopeful, rooted, and more pleased with who I am becoming than ever before. I am letting go of fears I never knew were poisoning me, opening my inner door to hope and love and freedom of a richer kind and learning  the beginnings of what it means to say no from a place of deep health and warmth and positive energy.

He has two teeth!

Newtown happened on my birthday this year and I've had more than one person tell me that they are "so sorry" this happened on "my" day. While I understand the sentiment I feel in some ways like it is also appropriately emblematic. Life and growth don't happen when things are simple and peaceful. Those are time for reflection and soaking in warmth. True strength is made perfect in weakness and true beauty is only shown in contrast to broken ugliness. I'm not asking life to hand me trouble or sadness or calamity but I am expecting that what God gives is my intended spiritual exercise and I am slowly learning to unclench my fists, look for love and resist nothing...even the things that need to change.

Roses...which came to the door for me from my parents and sisters. Love with petals on. 

As my state heals I am praying for growth in the healing.... for love to abound and out of it for people to find hope and peace and great vigor. Life is a miracle, however speckled with pain and darkness....the bright glimpses in between are shot through with incredible stuff that I lately can't even express because it is so beautiful and I increasingly feel so lucky to be a part of it all. 

This Was The Summer of.....

Just thinking a little tonight about the cool fall weather we've been having and how official the end of summer feels suddenly. It was a good summer and it seems healthy to process it out now that its about to become a file in the memory bank. How would I label the last few months if I had to define what made this summer unique, what would that look like.

How about this:

It was the summer of.......

• our big house purchase
• the epic cousin visit
• nightly ice cream in little ramekins
• much painting
• the family carpool
• the iPhone
• learning to sumersault
• the big hail storm
• Frog and Toad
• Mason Jennings and Michael Franti
• my last year in the twenties
• our third son
• long swims
• the perfect bruschetta
• my favorite flip flops
• truck-stop pancakes
• Daddy's ciabatta
• iced coffee
• long stories
• silly words
• my new bloghost
• the great, hot July
• old suits
• the fair's return
• neighbors
• Grandpa's riding mower

Lots of wonderful memories in all those little labels and a heck of a lot of poetry too, without meaning it at all. They actually would all make great poem titles. I keep meaning to write more and always struggle with titles. Huh. Kind of inspiring. Good old lists.

Forgotten Flowers

I started packing yesterday and managed to get four boxes shoved full of books, labelled and strapped with tape. I am trying to pack the books by category since that's how I try to shelve them. Yesterday, I packed a box of A's religion texts, children's storybooks, theatre scripts and books and finally a box of nature tomes. Most of our nature books are garden books (though of course not exclusively) and this made me suddenly think of our garden! Poor forgotten thing!

I have been a very inattentive garden owner this year. Between travel, hot weather, baby arrival and buying a house I've been all kinds of distracted or unavailable. So, today I wandered out and gave it a smidge of attention. Here's a little summary of a few of this year's first time successes which you have to know are also some degree of hardy since they performed virtually unaided.

My new white hydrangeas which I bought last year.                    Dinner plate dahlias! So pretty!

                                     And okay....so this wasn't a first time success...last year was but, truly, I cannot get enough of the much maligned and yes, somewhat over-used Shasta daisy....they go and go and go...and come on...they're daisies. You can't have too many.

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I grew hollyhocks! Been wanting to for years...such a pretty grandmother's favorite flower

                               ....with such cool buds! Love how they look like tiny green buttons.

Look at that sweet little campanula...balloon flower is an extremely cute thing folks.

And phlox! Yay! They smell amazing, and they're such a standard. Makes me very happy to announce that this year finally was the first year that the local rabbits didn't managed to munch it to the ground before it bloomed! Woohoo!!! Me: 1 Rabbits: 0

And Then He Was Four

 Well, it was a positively gorgeous weekend, blazing sunshine, honest-to-goodness hot weather at points and bright blue skies. Not a bad way to celebrate turning four!

We went into the city and strolled around, enjoying the cheery feeling of New York in the spring, took in the circus, bought sidewalk churros and "smelled the flowers." (just like Ferdinand)

Then on our way home we stopped at the local skate shop and A won Coolest Dad of the Year by buying Ru a genuine skateboard, deep desire of his heart for a year or so now. He was a pretty happy boy.

We rolled into our own parking lot in front of our unit and found birthday packages on the stoop to carry indoors with us...and then on to birthday cake, music, present opening and jolly well-wishing birthday phone calls. He slept pretty deeply that night.

And now he's four! Four! I can't believe it! For his birthday he got a camera, a skateboard, a pair of sunglasses and some gardening tools (among other things).

I have suddenly reached the point at which my children start accumulating their own "stuff." We've largely been free of that until now. There are assorted toys and books but nothing of any great quantity belongs to either child, just their special animals they sleep with pretty much. I am going to have to figure out where individual kids special belongings can live. I am not prepared for this...time to mentally and physically re-arrange for the kid stage instead of baby/toddler world.