{my topography}

This week’s theme made me pause. How does it speak to you?

So, here’s something about me: I’m shy on first meeting. No one believes me when I tell them that, but it’s painfully true. After the first introductions, I’m great.

Anyway, why you needed because: down the road a short distance live two teenage girls who I occasionally wave to as we drive past each other, or once in a while, pass running. They look like very nice girls–and definitely potential babysitters. And we NEED a babysitter. Like yesterday. Also, I’ve talked to their parents once or twice already (and mentioned that we’d love to have their daughters babysit–but nothing came of that casual suggestion.) So here’s my question–how should I go about approaching them about babysitting? Call? Stop by? When?

And also–what is the going rate for high school age babysitters? How late can you ask one to babysit? And in general, please provide any other babysitter tips you may have, oh Internets, I implore you.

… French toast with local syrup

…Freezing rain & sleet

….The power is back on (yesterday it was out nearly all day–a tree down at the end of the road)

…Reading Vanity Fair cover to cover

… Re-reading the underlined parts in favorite books

… Writing lesson plans for the week

…. Hibernating

What are you doing today?

I took the day off from work, feeling crumpled and exhausted and near-to-tears. Work, post-traumatic stress, and life in general, has me feeling more anxious and more depressed than I have possibly ever felt in my life. Mostly, it’s the whole post-trauma stuff, which seems to permeate everything else.

Because I am an optimist, a glass-half-full dreamer, it is unnerving to be here on the brink of sorrow. Doubt, like an unbalanced weight, threatens to pull me over the edge. And perhaps the worst part of this is I’ve always been a mind-over-matter type of person and suddenly I’ve come slamming up against the fact that I can’t just mind-over-matter this all away. My body has internalized the stress of it all, and I’ve been sick in this low-grade kind of way that has me always feeling thin skinned and raw.

So I took the day off and reveled in a morning all to myself—no toddler, no kids all asking for help in unison, no colleagues asking for favors—just me and some writing and a tall frothy latte.

Then I took a nap. It was that weird kind of sleep where semi-consciousness hovers close. Every few minutes I felt like I was almost awake, and, for a moment upon waking after an hour of sleep, I felt sure I had not slept at all. But I had, and the day outside had gone from grey to a perfect autumnal blue.

I took Bean in the backpack for an hour hike through woods, stopping every so often to listen to the sounds of the woods and smell the crisp autumn air. We’d stop, both of us nearly holding our breath, and listen to the sound of water, to the occasional crow calling overhead, and then, suddenly and more than once, to the report of a gun. Damn hunters. I sang softly walking along the spungy trail, not wanting to be mistaken.

Home again, DH and I immediately launched into an argument, that in retrospect had everything to do with the fact that I wanted to be taken care of and hardly anything to do with whatever puppet topic we pulled onto the stage. But later, after I’d left for town he called, and we talked until we came to some sort of understanding, and he met me there for dinner. It was cold out, and I was glad for my down jacket. We at kebabs and crepes from street vendors, and sipped creamy hot chocolate from the local chocolatier, and had a lovely time.

So I guess I’m stubbornly scrabbling out of the hole I’m in. It seems a lot like one step forward, two steps back, but there’s movement, and many exquisite moments. I am grateful for this—that I have not lost my capacity for joy.

(Here are a few pictures, still with the crappy camera.)

Letting Go

I open my hand and the hundred small birds of my heart
flutter out, wings rumpled from the tight fist I’ve carried them in.

They fall to the ground before flying up, knowing something of soil and grief.

I can’t shake this feeling now. Nights up, hearing the house move,
the small birds flit restlessly about the room, dreaming.

With dawn the birds fly up to the rafters where I cannot reach them.

Like a cold draft from the crack in the lintel
the day of the killing keeps creeping back in;
making my heart beat faster, unbidden.
All the things I tried to avoid by covering my eyes
at the movie theater again and again
rush up now, in the quiet moments
when I’m there in the dark
rocking my son to sleep.
Or in those other moments of ordinary things
wiping a dish dry, or standing
dripping wet after a shower.
There is nothing left for me to do
but dance off kilter to this new song
until I turn the floor boards to tinder
and the room becomes suddenly warm with compassion.

It snowed this weekend. The first flakes started to fall in long slanting streaks just as evening tucked the valley in. We were inside with a fire going, hanging pictures (finally) on our walls, listening to a Mozart symphony. The next morning, the world was white and golden: a patchwork of the last bright leaves on the trees, and snow in icy piles along the side of the road. Enough for a snowball fight, and full Bean snowsuit regalia. (My camera is still in for repairs. This one, alas, is crap. But you get the idea. It was pretty, and a mostly restful weekend except for an unidentified allergic reaction on my face yesterday. That, and it was about a week too short.)

I’m so happy Jeffery won on Project Runway! (My one tv watching obsession is hereby revealed.) I loved his couture dress, and that green striped dress with the exquisite detail. I could ever get up the guts to really let my hair down and dress my inner wild self, I’d wear his clothes. (Stop gasping. I know I never where anything but jeans, and an exciting day for me in fashion is a pair of heeled boots. But just imagine. I’m good at imagining.)

Another good thing? I have off the next two days, and am thrilled to have time to hang out with my little guy, and make food, and play with friends, and in genral, catch up on life. Bean seems to have been missing me big time tonight. Every time I’d stop rocking and prepare to put him to bed, thinking he was sound asleep, he’d roust himself and say “grock! grock!” I didn’t quite get what he was saying at first, but then I realized it was “rock!” as in, ‘keep rocking me mommy.” And so I did, humming songs in the dark, and feeling emotions rise and then ebb away as my mind gradually stilled.

Here’s to quiet moments, good wins, and long weekends.

My camera, which over the past year has become something like an extension of my eye, is in the shop for repairs, and already I’ve gone bumbling around the house twice looking for it, forgetting it’s not here. It mysteriously started giving me ‘error 99′ messagesm and I am mourning it’s absense. So much to capture with the lense right now. T rain-slicked backs of the water buffalo down the road; the trees, almost leafless, and bending in the wind; the moon like a splash of milk against the gray tablecloth of the stormy night sky.

I’m also struggling this week to process the issues that have surfaced around all the school shootings that have happened recently–the one I was in, and the others. I’m trying to find a context for forgiveness, and trying to understand the purpose of such violence and evil–if there is indeed a purpose. I find myself grappling with faith. On one hand, I believe deeply in the intrinsic spiritual nature of the universe, but on the other hand, I feel like the weft has been pulled out from the tapestry of meaning that I’ve constructed over the past twenty years. I’m left with shreds, and faith is a poor medium for mending rent cloth.

One thing I know: that there is a remarkable power in forgiveness. I’ve written several posts about the connection I see between forgiveness and generosity. To forgive is a profoundly generous act, and I try to live by this daily, in whatever way I am able. Yet it is hard to have this be enough, when all around me people place blame, point fingers, become angry. I don’t know enough about Ghandi, but I’m thinking about him tonight.

In my house, the person who teaches me endless lessons about mindfulness and abundant love, is my son. He’s so fun and wild and sweet. His smile is still unadulterated and pure as sunshine–no alterior motive, no secondary list of items to accomplish with his grin. He simply is.

Tonight, it was just the two of us at home with the wind whipping rain into the windows. We painted before bed. I recently bought new tubs of acrylic paint, and used the lids from each container for him to dip his brush into. He made a wild mess. A glorious blur of streaks and color, all over his hands, the page, the floor. I love watching him do this–watching as he tries the color, or explores the way the brush spatters paint.

Being with him asks me to be more. Maybe being a mother it isn’t the entire reason, but it’s part of the reason I keep coming back to this hard stuff again and again, trying to make meaning, to grow beyond the very small boundaries of my self. Or maybe, being a mother has simply ripped my heart wide open, so I feel everything a little more.

Dear Bean,

You were perfectly behaved. You sat in a little yellow race car chair, and only winced when the hairstylist sprayed water on your hair. Afterwards we celebrated with a vanilla milk and an oatmeal-raisin cookie as big as your face. And just like that you left your baby self behind.

Now we’re in a whole new era of things: aiming for the potty, three word sentences, chasing games, and copying everything anyone says or does.

This month you’ve gained weight and grown taller. You reach for things on the kitchen counter now, and you say “thank you” (ta-woo) and ask for “more.” You also seem bigger because with the change of season, you’re wearing snug Thinsulate boots, fleecy hats, and wooly sweaters. The extra layers have not stopped you however, from your new found love of running fast down hill, your arms akimbo, the wind blowing in your hair.

Everywhere on our hillside cinnamon and yellow and vermillion leaves lie in heaps along the edges of the road, and in piles against the old stone walls that zig-zag through our woods. You fall into them, and laugh. You ask to be lifted up to pick apples with both hands, and then you eat them all the way down to the core.

Inside, you play with your new ride-on-top fire truck, and want to be like our cat. When she eats, you throw yourself on your belly next to her dish, and pretend to eat like she does. She isn’t so fond of this, but tolerates it until your adoration for her forces you to throw your body upon her.

In four months you’ll be two. This seems less miraculous to me than a year ago at this time, when I was first contemplating having a 1 year old, and you were on the brink of walking. Somewhere along the way we’ve gotten the hang of being your parents, and we’ve finally learned that your every wail or flushed cheek doesn’t always signify the worst case scenario. People tell me that two is Terrible, and that you’ll become the master of Button Pushing. But I’m not convinced. You are a pretty cool kid, most of the time.

Yes, you do throw perfect jelly-bodied temper tantrums. You melt to the floor, and wail when you don’t want to do something. You know how to shed gigantic crocodile tears. But you also know when we mean business, and you listen. You are sunny natured and easy going. You love to laugh. And somehow, remarkably, you are NEATER THAN YOUR PARENTS.

(Please remember that Daddy and I really will never mind your obsession with putting shoes away, throwing scraps of paper or dust bunnies in the trash, or closing left-open closet doors.)

Love, Mama.