{my topography}

He sits on the lawn amidst heaps of brown oak leaves giggling wildly at the dog. Tomorrow we leave before the sun comes up. Today, his Nonna scoops him up, and carries him off for a nap. Such sweetness. Such sheer delight. It’s been good to be here where the December sun is mellow and warm, and someone’s always ready with open arms to play with Bean. But we’re ready to go home to a house waiting with late-arrival packages, tivoed Project Runway shows, and the simple routine of just us.

Yesterday, after many phone calls, it was confirmed: the house will close—later rather than sooner—but it will. The mortgage rate will stay the same for another month (big exhale), and in the meantime we’ll have a chance to ski a couple times, gather paint samples, and visit kitchen showrooms.

Yesterday Marilyn reminded me to visualize the positive, and last night I read this post, and decided simply to say YES. To trust, to breathe, to be thankful. Looking at Bean, his entire face dancing with grins, how can I not?

I use Indian ink waterproof pens in my notebook, following the contours my hand chooses randomly, letting the day’s weight fall away from me. I let crazy whirling color happen. A mosaic of possibilities is always waiting to unfold. Every possible outcome awaits.

The bitter sweetness of the day began while parking the car in at the Italian market in Philadelphia. DH got a call from the real estate agent. The house closing which was slated for next week has been put off—for weeks possibly—because the sellers don’t want to be inconvenienced. I tried to let the news settle as I looked out the window at people passing: a lady with strawberry blonde hair and a boy in a baby stroller; an old black woman with beautiful eyes, burgundy lipstick and misconfigured teeth; two Italian men both wearing dark wool coats and laughing. And it all seemed suddenly bland.

A hard pit of disappointment pressed up against my solar plexus. I unbuckled Bean and scooped him out of his car seat. I walked a block back and forth waiting for DH to call the sellers to try and renegotiate the date, but came back negative. The seller said she doesn’t want to be inconvenienced. SHE DOESN’T WANT TO BE INCONVENIENCED. Really. Who says that when they’re trying to sell a house? Who? Tense and deflated I snapped at DH in front of the in laws right inside the door of a bustling café where everyone was ordering up lattes and cannolis. With even poorer form, I passed Bean to DH and walked out of the café. I hate it when I’m like that. But sometimes all the racket of this little clan of concerned family makes this worse, not better.

Again I walked up and down the block, past pigs heads hanging in the window with their eyeballs stuck open, the upside down pheasants with their feathers still intact, and the crates full of chard and tomatoes and fava beans. I couldn’t quite get a grip on myself. I wanted to be angry at DH for being tense—but I knew I was being just as tense. I wanted to be angry at DH for having a strained interaction in front of his parents, but I knew I’d caused the interaction. Feeling belly up and angry I sat outside the café with my camera trying to find the color and vibrancy I had expected from the day. Within minutes joined me, and after batting words around for awhile I was able to articulate my fear: what if we loose the house entirely? He heard me and cupped his fingers over mine.

Trying to soak up a city in a leisurely manner with seven people is a ludicrous expectation. Just finding a restaurant took walking back and forth the length of the same block several times and much hemming and hawing. Finally we ate at bistro where the waiter also seemed to be the cook and the host. The pepper and sausage sandwiches were fair at best, but the mood loosened as Bean sucked down linguini and rubbed sauce onto the tablecloth. After the meal we walked the length of the market, poking into spice shops and cheese shops, laughing with shopkeepers and eating aged balsamic vinegar with ricotta salata cheese, and espresso.

On the way back the sky broke open just above the city, gold against gray. So beautiful it took my breath away. And yet I couldn’t get a picture through the rearview window because Bean kept grabbing at my lens. I’m still trying to get the hang of this photography stuff. Sometimes the lens picks up something more exquisite than I notice with my bare eye, and other times the image that I see—the whirling of school children playing in a park, or the fire of the sun melting down around the dark silhouettes of buildings—looks washed-out and brittle compared with the way they really are.

Girl on bike.

Looking for upbeat.

Phasants in the window.

Mural of a faroff place.

Self portrait in the car.

Click here for a flickr slideshow of more pictures from today.

As I lie in the semi dark with my son waiting for his breath to settle into the rhythm of sleep, I wonder about the bigness of his small self. So much more than the tiny bundle of limbs, soft and warm curled in the nook of my arm. One look into his big beautiful eyes and I find myself swimming in the wide pools of his spirit.

It amazes me that something as vital and natural as sleep is something we have to learn. Of course, there are the times when exhaustion overcomes him and he sinks, sack-like into a deep sleep wherever he is. But on a nightly basis letting go of his body—surrendering to the tide of sleep is not something he knows—I must teach him how to still his active little body. Find a rhythm. Breath in sleep.

Each time his body works itself through a sleep cycle, the neurons in his brain send him the busy active messages his body is reading all day: stand, stand, stand, they say. Reach. Climb. Walk. Before I come to bed he sleeps in his crib, and usually I hear him cry out at least once. I come to find him awake in the dark, standing. Then I nurse him, hold him close, allowing the tide of my breath to wash over him, carrying him back to the world of sleep.

Sometimes in these long moments with him in the dark I realize that I am at the cusp of one of the mysteries of being human. Wonder saturates me each time he awakens, trailing the stardust of dreams, a smile blooming at the corners of his eyes.

This is me doing my long lanky leg thing in the dual mirrors in my inlaw’s bathroom. I’ve always been told I’m a bit of a gorilla because my legs and arms seem to be disproportionately long in comparison to my body. And to capture a reflection of myself, in a reflection of myself, I had to do a fair amount of contorting. Like trying to write using a mirror, I kept bumping into walls expecting my body to be going in the direction of my reflection. Sometimes I feel a bit like this, especially after not having a minute to myself in a house full of second generation Italians, a first generation Korean and a baby—-as though the different pieces of me bump up against themselves, and at the end of a day all that’s left are a few disembodied thoughts that don’t quite sum me up, but almost do.

Other self portrait bloggers are here

Awake with the first light of morning spreading its way through the opaque curtains. Bean in his red footie snowman pajamas nestles into the nook of my neck for one final snuggle before announcing his desire to roust the world and investigate every corner of it.

DH and I pass him of to his grandmother and take a shower like we used to in college, together, bumping elbows, kissing, grinning. We join the others in the kitchen with damp hair and pour cups of coffee. I make scones, crumbling the butter with the flour until it feels like wet sand. A sprinkle of cream and raw sugar on the top of each will make them sweet and brown in the oven.

Later everyone is on the couch opening presents almost simultaneously. It is a blur of red and patterned paper. Bean gets a little Radio Flyer wagon and his grin couldn’t be wider when he figures out how it works. He spends the rest of the morning as a battering ram, pushing the cart around the room at a careening pace, grinning from ear to ear. All the unwrapping leaves me breathless, and Bean exhausted. By 9:30 we curl up in bed again. He naps, and I look out the window, watching blackbirds and wondering about the remarkable warp and weft that makes family.

In the late afternoon DH calmly descends upon the kitchen and pulls together an exquisite meal almost single handedly: turkey breast stuffed with prosciutto, sage, apples and rosemary; garlic mashed potatoes, sautéed asparagus, cran-rasberry sauce, and sausage stuffing. I put some funky French street-performance inspired music on the stereo, dance with the baby, and make a salad with red leaf lettuce, pomegranate, asiago cheese and apples.

There are of course the moments of raised eyebrows when the siblings-in-law act the way they always do: condescending and critical. But we leave it at that, diluting the tension with the fact that we are together. This is family.

By dinner Bean is in the throws of teething agony—his second top tooth is cutting through. During dinner he sits in my lap and bangs his spoon on his highchair which he refuses to sit in. I gulp my food, feeling guilty. A late dinner has put us past his normal bedtime. I run the bath, but forget to stop the drain so all the hot water runs out. I remember in time to get two inches of luke warm water in the bottom of the tub, but Bean doesn’t seem to notice—- he’s too obsessed with the full length mirror along the wall of the tub and kisses his reflection.

By the time he finally is asleep my throat hurts and I make tea. Days like this fill my heart to bursting with the ups and downs of being a part of the small group of people that make me whole. With the tug of longing for my own family: my sisters, my mom. With the wonder at my small boy who suddenly has four teeth and is almost walking. With wide love I have for DH, who can still after seven Christmases make me giddy for this holiday just by association.

The years fold on top of each other like the pages in an accordion book, each one nearly obscuring the last. Tonight we decorated the tree with ornaments from DH’s childhood. Bean’s eyes were wide with wonder, and he tried pulling on the strings of lights.

We spent the evening watching old home movies from when DH was small and eager, hoisting his parents out of bed before the first morning light to unwrap heaps of presents. Crazy how his parents have the same voices twenty years later. How they say the same things. How some things never change. And then we wonder: is this how we’ll still be?

I try to remember my own Christmases growing up. I see snapshots. Glass bells and red balls. Real candles on the tree. Christmas morning pancakes. Taking turns to open just a few presents, and then saving more for the remaining days of Christmas. Singing carols around the tree in the semi dark of dancing candle light.

I try to remember my parents, and gather only scraps. The warmth of my father’s chest as I sat curled up against him singing carols. His eyes like bluebirds in flight as he guessed the content of each present. My mother making gingerbread, her hands holding the wooden rolling pin. Her eyes tearing up at a certain German carol that reminded her of her own childhood traditions.

DH and I imagine making Christmas next year in our new house. Snow on the ground. Good food. We laugh trying to imagine how Bean will remember us after years there. What will we look like to ourselves when we look back on the blurry video footage of NOW?

The clock is about to chime bringing tomorrow. Another Christmas with some small nook of my heart still filled with wonder at that bright Christmas star that led shepherds and wisemen to the birth of an incredible being. But it is also filled with a flood of love—for the people I am with, and for those I’m missing across the country.

Merry Christmas to all of you wonderful blogging folk who have filled my life with so much humor and brilliance and beauty and snarkiness and joy!

Another 7 hour car trip to New Jersey survived. Forty degree weather, and scads of starlings whirling through the air like synchronized swimmers. Sun over brown fields of cut corn stalks or new subdivisions. Traffic thicker than a swarm of bees. We are here, with family. Bean’s doting grandma has already snuck him at least half of his presents. DH and I got to sleep in until ten. And yesterday we picked out a tall tree, haggled for the price and hauled it home on the roof of our car. As usual, I brought my camera. Happy Christmas Eve!

Flocks of wild birds.

Empty greenhouse.

The xmas tree bailer.

Paulo loads the tree onto the car.

At home Zeus brings me a stick.

Sometimes painting is like this: moments of clear, vivid emptiness where imagination takes hold and wanders. Then, it is about allowing something that already exists to be. About being open.

I know all things are like this: parenting, writing, making love, communicating. And I know that most of the time I make it more complicated than it is. I convolute things by adding clarifiers, making preemptive sketches, planning in advance.

It is hard to trust the possibilities of imagination. Harder still to trust that what I imagine is possible.

The Best of Blogs is doing their second annual awards soon. I’m doing lots of nominating. Check out the categories & vote. It’s fun.