{my topography}

I’ve been feeling empty word-wise, and it almost feels like a betrayal. Flat screen, flat words; the keystrokes brittle and familiar as I pound out paragraphs. Especially here, I feel a new emptiness. The recent combination of less comments and more visibility has made me hesitant to write about the small mundane things in my life that I’ve filled posts with before. I’ve started to wonder if people care what my days consist of, the moments packing in one after another until the bushel basket of each day is full to overflowing.

Maybe it’s a feeling of overextension. I’ve written so much from my point of view, I feel like I have nothing new to say. It’s the end of summer here. Leaves on the first of the sugar maples are turning fire engine red and burnished orange. We’ve had a few damp days, humidity hanging in the air until afternoon thunderstorms send the moisture raining down in sheets.

When we walk in the meadow, insects scatter. Fat grasshoppers, praying mantis. I’ve been looking for monarch caterpillars to bring into my classroom and at first thought they’d made cocoons early and had already metamorphosed and flown south; no sign of them on the milkweed clustered along the edge of the lane down to the pond. But looking closely I found some, so tiny they were barely visible at all. Just as long as my pinky fingernail is wide. Little horns and stripes, eating holes stained white with milk on the fat green leaves.

I gathered them up, a dripping milkweed caterpillar bouquet, and carried them home. Now they’re eating their way through leaves and leaving poop at the bottom of a glass jar on my windowsill. Tomorrow they’ll travel to school with me; and soon, they’ll grow accustomed to the eager eyes and hot breath of children. So will I.

See? This is all I have to say. Summer has done me in. I’m languorous and scattered. In my studio I’ve started a new canvass, several feet wide. I have more energy right now for color, for wild brush strokes and the haphazard following of whimsy that paint provides, than for the record keeping of my days. I’m thinking though that with this exhaustion of my own perspective fiction will come easier. I find myself looking forward to when I can sit down to write through another lens, a different window. To hold open the doorway to another person’s heart, though invariably, it leads back to the corridors of my own. But I haven’t had time yet to sink into even this.

My new routine hasn’t taken shape yet. I need a week, or two, to fall back onto the trampoline of early morning writing and jam-packed days. Until then, I’m all over the place, trying to get other things done. Stacking a woodpile, replanting azaleas, buying paint to redo the livingroom in sunny acorn.

And because I’ve been lackluster about posting and even more so in commenting on all of your blogs, there’s been a lull in this small corner of the interweb and I miss your comments, your snappy, snarky, encouragement. Perhaps all this to say, I’m ready for summer to be over? Ready for a shift. A new direction. I’m not sure. I love the sun-drenched days, and I feel nervous about winter. But I feel like I’ve slipped down a rabbit hole, having sunk so entirely into the present of my days.

Back to waking up when the sky is stained pink and the birds are loudest. Back to those first blurry moments of dawn, watching my guys sleep nose to nose like racoons. Back to work. And definitely not into the swing of things yet. I’ll resurface soon. Please don’t go away.

Just now as I sat down to write, Bean came up to me with a dishtowl. He’d been playing with his digger in the kitchen. I’m in the livingroom, sunk deep into the comfy white armchair, my feet up, sun slanting in through the bay window where I keep all my potted plants.

He said, “I gonna clean your feet, mama.”

And then he gently wiped down my feet and legs with the towel. He then proceeded to tenderly kiss my legs and ankles. Hovering especially over my ‘owies’–the small scars from recent and not so recent encounters with blackberry bushes or bike pedals.

I had no idea love could feel like this.

Stupid tabbed browser windows. A whole post deleted. Full of good sentences, including cookie crumbles and random ramblings. ARGH!

Spent some quality family time the past few days. Downtown, eating nutella & coconut crepes on a park bench, people watching yesterday evening. The day before we were there running errands, and ended by ordering iced chocolates from the local chocolatier shop, and then stopping to watch a motley group of b-boys (break dancers) put on a show. Totally awesome. Bean loved every minute.

Today we passed more than an hour of time in a local greenhouse/garden center that has a lovely little cafe with tables among the greenhouse plants. Nothing like eating a fresh mozzarella, basil and tomato sandwiches under hanging baskets of bromeliads by a quoi pond. Made a mental note to self: go here in the middle of winter, often!

I love days like this where we’re all together, getting things done, and then we tangent off into something unexpected. Little spontaneous bursts of delight. Most of the morning was spent at the tile store—we’re building a hearth for our new woodstove, to be arriving in a few weeks. It will be fire-engine red, and toasty. Cannot wait.

What have you all been up to? Do you have any favorite little places to go that bring you delight?

Every year the fledglings learn this: at some point the nest of twigs and thistle down and the blue ribbon from last year’s presents is not enough. The dappled rustling shade of further branches beckon. The wide arc of sky, streaked with wind and sunbeams becomes a daily siren song. And then the day arrives when they must make a willing leap into the empty air despite having never flown before.

It feels like this, linking my writing over at Parent Dish to here. At once both terrifying and certain, it has always been the natural order of things. The work of showing up at the page here was always with this is in mind. Writing here was an attempt stake out a claim on behalf of my writing within my own heart. A way of saying yes, this is possible, this is the future of my longing.

You have to start somewhere to get to somewhere, and this is where I began, words running long across paragraphs, photographs, no-post days.

It’s incredibly vulnerable to think that more people from my ‘real life’ and my work life will inevitably find me here and find the archives of fights with my husband, the heartache of winter longing, the sallow listless words just before spring, and the posts filled with poop and wonder and breastfeeding that have been my personal history as a new mama.

I didn’t have to link here. Yet not doing so felt like it would be a cop-out. The finch opting to hop about on the forest floor instead of taking flight. It would have reeked with self doubt, not to stand by what I’ve written. The many thousand words here are deeply personal, but also good. I’m proud of how this almost-daily practice of finding something to say here has shaped my writer’s voice in a new way. Your comments, and the emails I gratefully receive, have given me the first inkling of audience, and also courage to say more. No point stopping now. No point hovering at the edge of the quivering twig.

In nineteen different places today, all at once. The sky is blue, but winds are roaring up our valley making the birch leaves show their silver underbellies. By my computer on the bar in the kitchen are a row of ripe peaches. Outside hawks are calling. It’s getting ready time: laminating folders and organizing books, every random hour spent at school in preparation for a new passel of kids. Also trying to find the right things to say to Bean so that he understands that our routine will be changing. We’ve had such a fun summer: taking rambling walks and playing on the back lawn. Here are some pictures from our walk yesterday evening.

Chicken coop in the evening light.

Goldenrod is waist high in the fields now.

Bean & his red wagon.

Wild grapes, ripening.

Slug love.

I love ferns.

Overgrown mailbox.

Bean in the green.

Jewel weed.

Autumn’s first red.

Kneel down, hold the ground in your hands
or reach up and hold meteors in your glance
as they plummet through the dark night.
Be thankful.

***

This morning the air felt scrubbed clean after last night’s rain. I went bleary eyed to my studio, pulling on one of DH’s t-shirt sand a pair of old sweatpants, with the intention of doing some art. I’ve been so bombarded with words lately that they’re starting to feel smaller than usual. More one dimensional. I sit down to write and always feel like the words I get on the page are somewhere at the surface of what I want to say, but no where near the heart. So I’ve decided to do some art every day this week. Little pieces. Messy, real. Maybe getting at some of the depth of emotion I’ve been feeling.

Simply: I spent the weekend house hunting with my inlaws and the experienced left me awed, drained, curious. People live their lives in so many different ways, and their homes carry the expression of their lives so deeply. The timbers gradually soak up the emotion of day to day interactions, the windows, the corner tables, the hues on the walls all start telling a version of the life story of the people who dwell there.

But mostly, I left grateful that we’ve found this place up on our hill. I stand at the window of my studio looking out and my heart fills. The ember red of the little barn/chicken coop we just renovated; the dusty ocher of the blowing meadow grasses; the first hint of red at the tips of the maples; the sweeping view. I feel at home here in a way I never have felt anywhere before, and it is a hungry feeling of wanting to sink in. Be more present here. Take more walks. Notice.

Two nights ago we sat in lawn chairs on the driveway looking up at the bowl of stars, partly obscured with stars. Meteors with glimmering tails streaked across the dark. It’s a place I could be for a while, I think. Among the maples and the beeches and the goldenrod that has grown chest high in the lower meadow, where the coyotes and the owls nightly call.

Do you have a place that makes you feel at home like this? A park, a city street, a vast swath of land that’s yours? Or are you thirsty with longing like I was for years before here?

And also, who wants to do some art with me every day this week?

Eating french toast, house hunting with the inlaws, listening to the crickets, chasing the chickens (we think one is a rooster) out of the flower beds, counting down the days (eight) until I go back to work, planning hikes, planning big art pieces, thinking of tie-dying (has anyone done it? tips?), thinking of re-painting my studio (again), and scheduling a massage. What are you doing?