{my topography}

The last farmer’s market of the season with pumpkins on the sidewalk, the tables heaped with squashes and knobby brussle sprout stalks. Already the lady who sells honey from her small batch of backyard hives is gone, and textiles—woolly hats and scarves fill up stalls where in mid summer sunflower bouquets and fancy heirloom tomatoes jostled for attention.

The sun, bright overhead against a backdrop of blue, makes the leaves shine golden even though the foliage season was a bust here, with a killing frost before the leaves could turn to crimson the way they usually do. We walk down to the lake with coffee and ham and egg sandwiches, still hot.

Bean, bundled in layers of fluffy fleece and mittens, screams furiously every time we add a layer, but naps contentedly as we sit together on the swing, kicking our legs and watching a hubbub of mallards quacking on the water. All the boat slips are empty now and white gulls perch on the power supply boxes.

Across the lake, a band of snow still on the mountains, but the air is warm in the sun. By midmorning we take a run, wearing shorts and hats and long sleeves. The edges of the path are slick and yellow with fallen leaves, wet from weeks of rain. Other runners are out. Everyone smiles as they pass, soaking up sun like lizards.

Downtown some shops have their doors open, and on the sidewalk a dog lolls, tummy up. Today teenagers are wearing wigs and bits and pieces of costumes. They walk down the promenade giggling, smoking cigarettes and looking self conscious. Yesterday the big parade brought throngs of kids dressed as cows, superheroes, witches and firemen and doting parents; tomorrow, trick-or-treaters are sure to come knocking at our door.

In the afternoon we take a drive southwest of here, to look at a farmhouse, then land, and lastly the town we’d maybe like to settle near. 180 years old with a gnarled apple tree out back, the farmhouse is a dream. A clawfoot tub, a laundry shoot, a huge hearth in the dining room. But as we leave we can’t help but notice how the unplanned urban sprawl has crept up: farmers selling acreage; subdivisions encroaching on the view.

A sunset for the first time in months, soft pinks spreading out across the sky like delicate gown hung up for airing. The waterfall pounding below the bridge in town sends whole trees over it’s crest. They gather at it’s base, circling, bumping up against each other like toothpicks. Bean stares wide eyed. I play with aperture, noticing the word Bean’s been saying all week on a sign on the window of an empty store.

We drive home in early darkness, daylight saving’s time has set us back. We talk together quietly as Bean takes a late nap. Stars are above us as we bring our things inside. We heat leftover lasagna and then eat pumpkin pie.

The amazingly talented Nichola gave birth to a beautiful baby girl on Thursday. Welcome to the world, Esme & congratulations mama!

Nicohla also organized a postcard swap last month and, being a sucker for foreign stamps, paper mail, and all things artsy, I was excited to participate. The only rules were that they had to be handmade and postmarked by the 31st. As usual, I’m cutting it close with the deadline. (In theory, though I finished them today! they won”t be postmarked until November 1st.)

I wanted each postcard to be unique, and yet similar–so I used the same media (acrylic and watercolor paints & a block print) and colors, but varied the theme for each as my whimsy dictated. I really had fun making these—allowing my paintbrush to follow my mind into abstraction. I also really liked the idea of including a fish print in each—because fish are sort of a signature art piece for me.

I would love to do another postcard swap—so if you would like to participate please let me know in the comments and I’ll email you with the details.

We’re in the midst of househunting—not for this year, but for next spring. A place with land—pastures, wooded areas, perhaps a stream. We moved north to find this—and today we spent a couple hours driving around and then walking out along trails onto land that we tried to imagine as ours someday.

It’s a bizarre process—trying to imagine something that doesn’t yet exist. You have to be half lunatic, half dreamer to survive it. Yet it also fills me with a giddy breathlessness as I imagine where my garden might go. Where a swing might hang from a tall maple for Bean, where we might sit on the porch in the morning with coffee watching wild turkies or racoons raid the seed below the bird feeder.

With each place we visit, the home I imagine is becoming slightly less a figment of my imagination and slightly more tangible. Click on the photo above to view a few of the sights from our rambles today.

Growing up, I bucked up against my mother fiercely. I felt similar to my father with my academic, intellectual habits: late nights devouring books and talking about ideas. But I almost felt scornful of my mother who was quiet and shy. She would ask me to keep my voice down in public places, and when we fought, she would use silence to win every time.

In many ways I simply took my mother for granted. She was just my mother—the one who cooked meals, and drove me places. It was only after my father died that I started to get to know the woman she really is. Perhaps she too began to know herself then, differently, finally out of my father’s shadow.

And, though I think my mother would say that she is still unsure of her own voice, after so many hearing my father’s, she is becoming someone whose words I admire. She observes the world carefully, noticing the smallest of things; constantly connecting the big picture and the small. Since Bean, I have grown to understand that her quiet attitude of giving and her selflessness came not from lack of self confidence, but from her vast love for her children.

Last night she wrote me this:

Ah yes, Christina, you are getting it: motherhood. Nothing prepares you for it, that is one sure thing. I cannot imagine that heart surgery is more intricate or painful than the push/pull of a mother’s being as it continues to form a womb around her child. A kangaroo pouch would be so much simpler! The gods give us women this incredible learning around compassion. Of course dads feel it too, but, I believe, in a different way. Their very skin hasn’t been stretched beyond belief leaving memory marks. Nor has their body carried the growing weight of a child. I think men in battle, caring for their wounded, must feel a similar stretching of their being—as buddies die or are profoundly wounded in front of them. Maybe that is why motherhood, and war, have existed down the ages. There are many ways to experience this selflessness. But becoming a mother is a trial by fire.

Nothing prepared me for this: the fragility and fiery protectiveness I’d feel when confronted with caring for my sick child.

Bean awoke last night about an hour after going to sleep—crying inconsolably, hysterically, till mucus ran in two small rivers from his nose. He cried hard and frantically, throwing his body about in my arms as I tried to offer a breast, or hold his hands under running water, or show him the cat—my usual ploys to calm him when he’s upset. But for a long while nothing consoled him—a long enough while enough for DH to call pediatrician and then make a trip to the store for children’s Tylenol.

Finally I put John Gorka on and danced with him, slowly, in the semi-dark of the living room lit only from the streetlights outside the window. Finally his breathing grew regular. He sucked in the last puckered sobs. His head dropped to my chest.

Then we sat together, his body pressed tightly to mine—wrapped in blankets in the rocking chair, and I rocked him until his body grew limp with sleep. And then I kept rocking, never wanting to let go.

Later in the night he woke again: crying, sobbing, wailing. Again I put the music on and danced with him till his cries turned to whimpers, and then I curled with him in the big white armchair in the living room, burrowed under a down comforter, listening to the music until he finally slept. I carried him to bed and he slept nestled up against the heat of our bodies, his small feet pressed into my belly.

He slept then until morning, and woke happy, with a running nose, wanting to be carried all day.

Nothing prepared me for this: the quivering feeling of guilt, when I look into his sweet sick face. What could I have done wrong? What small neglect?

By mid morning I realized I was sick too, and we napped for hours, our cheeks next to each other—his hair damp with sweat. And later, he was content to ride about in the sling on my hip—something he almost never does because he wants to be moving about, exploring, active, pulling up on things.

I’m not sure how to begin to comprehend the immenseness of this feeling: this love, this guilt, this exhaustion. And yet a part of me realizes it isn’t about comprehending at all. It’s simply about being there in the dark, dancing with my son up against my heart.