{my topography}

Carving pumpkins on the kitchen floor, then bringing them in the red wagon to light the drive. Take-out-Thai for dinner and then a flurry of costume snaps. A baby skunk, fur fluffy on his belly, and turquoise Crocs to walk the dirt road stretching between our house and the neighbor’s. We held his hands, one in each of ours, as we followed the bobbing light of the flashlight up to each door. Then watched him murmer the words, shyly at first. “Trick-or-treat,” and then “Thank you,” his small fist clutching each new candy bar with amazement.

Above us the stars twirled. We went to a half-dozen houses, and then down to the end of our road to look upon five hundred jack-o-lanterns, all glowing. His eyes wide in the dark, his face smudged with chocolate and wonder.

This morning called for errands in town. Warm cinnamon buns from the last farmer’s market of the season, and people watching in the rain. Returning home for a much needed two hour nap among soft white flannel sheets (with the cat at my feet) and then an afternoon cleaning in that wholesome, down to the nooks and crannies kind of way that is utterly satisfying.

Tomorrow we’re having a shindig with several dozen people. All good friends and neighbors. Cider, pumpkin carving, a rip-roaring bonfire. And though I can’t wait to have everyone in one spot, I’m way out of my comfort zone.

Throwing parties isn’t something I’m good at yet. I’d like to be. I’d like to be better at social things in general—and it was a resolution of mine this year to push myself in this direction. Being the Aquarius that I am, I’d prefer to be holed up somewhere creating, or with a few friends huddled over steaming lattes in a bohemian cafe. I don’t do new social situations with ease—or, more honestly, I don’t do anticipating them well. Once I’m actually in the midst of it all, I’m generally fine. I fly by the seat of my pants and hope everyone’s having a good time. But the residue of the ahead-of-time angst makes me nervy for the first twenty minutes or so of any new circumstance.

I look back on my quiet, almost cloistered home life as a child, and find my anxiety coiled there. We rarely had guests. My parents never “entertained.” Hence I really only have the random collection of fall-back experiences from my late teens and early twenties, and mostly those sucked. Red plastic cups of cheep beer, etc. But I’ve always craved more. I love people, and I love good food, and I love these in combination. Like a chapter out of an Isabelle Illende novel, I want my house to be full of the vivacious, bubbly, cacophony of voices and laughter. I want this to be the memory Bean has. Friends, always welcome. Dinner parties. Gatherings. Ruckus chatter under starlight, as people gather around a fire.

“Where is my mommy stone?” He asks, upper lip quivering. It is bed time. I’ve come to say good night.

Then he says, “I love you and I missed you.” He says this often, the latter almost automatically following the former; but it’s also something that must reflect the hunger his little self feels for mommy time. I’m not always available the way I could be—if I were wholly and exclusively focused on being his mother. Selfishly, I take time for me often. I write, I run, I forfeit controlling the circumstance of his days in exchange for time to do my own things.

Now we’re in the semi dark. He’s talking about the small stone I gave him when I went back to work this year. I told him it was a Mommy Stone with kisses in it, to rub on his cheek if he missed me. I don’t know why he’s suddenly thought of it tonight, and seeing him, upper lip trembling, I want to make everything immediately okay.

“I’ll find you another mommy stone and put kisses in it and have it ready for you in the morning,” I rush to offer.

“But how can I see the kisses? How do they get in there?” He is earnest, almost crying, and suddenly I’m over come too. I wrap him in the dark, kissing his cheeks a hundred times, tears suddenly, unexpectedly wet on my cheeks. “You can’t see them, you can feel them when you rub the Mommy stone on your cheek. Because I love you, and I put the kisses in there just for you,” I say.

“Okay,” he says, and then “I love you, I love you mommy.”

“I love you too, with my whole heart,” I whisper into the air against his cheek.

“I love you, I love you,” he says, his arms wrapped around my neck.

I have the day off and I’m gleefully miring my way through an inconceivably long to-do list. I have yet to figure out how to accomplish my every day life and everything else that needs to get done.

The biggest thing I’ve accomplished: completely reorganizing and painting my studio. Last year sometime, in the middle of the winter, under a blanket of depression, I painted my studio a pale blue, which felt like a bad idea almost seconds after the last coat was applied. Without meaning to, I began to use my studio space less and less, until I would go for a week or two without ever entering it.

This affected me on a subconscious level. I felt creatively terrified. Performance anxiety corroded any attempt to splash color across the page or really sink back into a routine of writing. Without a space I felt comfortable in, I resorted to writing at the kitchen table, in the midst of the hubbub of daily life, and routinely sabotaged my own efforts even there, buy skimming through my favorite blogs, or trying to keep up with the voracious demands of my gig over at Parent Dish.

Somehow the entire month of September (and nearly all of October) was swallowed by the murky creature of un-ambition. All summer I was entrenched in the rich sensory beauty of the outdoors; of leisure; good food; good novels. Then fall arrived with the first nip in the air and the hillsides turning orange, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. My syncopation was jagged and blurry; like a scarecrow trying to dance. Somehow with the shift in seasons I stopped doing all the things that I love: running, writing, art, and instead became (maybe necessarily) submerged in the fabric of work.

Headlong there, in the classroom, participating in the daily alchemy of turning eighteen individuals into a working group of learners; time spent watching spiders eat grasshoppers in the terrarium; and writing stories about magical shrinking potions. Time spent tying shoes and counting shells and navigating small sorrows. Time spent feeling nearly exhausted every afternoon; always empty, hungry, anxious.

And then I came home a few days ago to an empty house (Bean and DH were out running errands) and despite feeling hungry and grumpy, I decided to pull on my running shoes and head out in the perfect autumn sunlight for a run.

On the way back, passing a long field that follows the road for a good stretch, a small pony saw me running, and cantered up to the fence and then ran with me. I stopped and petted her tousled mane, and then continued, delighting in the unexpected equine attention. And then I realize: I was no longer either hungry or grumpy. My mood and body had been off kilter because I’ve been so out of rhythm. My soul misses running, it seems. Just as it misses moving through steady sun salutes on my yoga mat on my sunny studio floor.

So in the past few days I feel like I’ve come back into orbit around the quiet fire of my inner self. I’ve started running again, and I want to do it nearly every day. My body needs to move, just as my mind needs the quiet emptiness of one foot falling in front of the other along the gravel road.

So I’ve cleaned my studio and tackled my to-do list, and finally feel like I’m at least leaning towards a place of balance. Not quite there yet, but at least facing the right direction now.

As I write, thousands (really!) of lady bugs have migrated to our house. They are landing on the windows, twirling through the hazy autumn air in their bumbling flight. Do they hibernate? What are they doing here? Some say lady bugs are good luck. I’m content to imagine that they are.

Tonight, while painting my studio, I pushed a box that bumped a table that bumped a shelf on which our portable phone sat. The phone arced through the air and landed I THE BUCKET OF PAINT. No joke.

I spent the next twenty minutes cleaning it with q-tips. It still seems to work.

Okay then.

My studio is now a yummy golden pumpkin color. While the paint dries I’m eating dried mango strips and espresso chocolate while my cat is curled at my elbow. The woodstove has made the house toasty. Rain is spattering the windows. Dark noses in at the glass.

How did you spend your day?

Or something.

This week has been hectic, and I’m grumpy that I’m turning into one of those depressing post once a week bloggers. I love coming here and finding all of you and your comments and your stories, and I have a zillion posts that I write in my head… you know how it is.

This week though, in particular, has been like a bizarre synchronized swimming competition and I’ve barely had time to come up for breath. It shouldn’t really be so hectic–my in-laws have moved here (and though they don’t have appliances so they’re here all the time for meals, they help A LOT with Bean and such) and my class at school has finally started to come together as a group. There have been no more incidents of scissor throwing or wailing or refusals to say, sit in a chair, or come to the meeting area, and today a parent came in and built an exquisite terrarium for us.

At home we have a toasty warm new wood stove, and the hills are turning to burnished red and saffron. When we take walks in the afternoon we walk through armloads of fallen leaves the color of gems, freckled with rainwater. The rooster has begun crowing. The skies at dusk are purple like the stain of a grape, with gauzy gray clouds smudge across the mountains. It’s a good time of year. Time for apple pie, and café au laits and pumpkin cheesecake ice cream.

But I still have this feeling; like a dervish. Twirling, my feet barely touching ground. I know the real reason is that I haven’t connected back with my writing for several weeks now, and the threads that connect me to the stories I’m constructing have become fine and tenuous like spider’s webs. But every morning I wake up still tired, and every night I go to sleep with my mind a kaleidoscope of fragments. I have forgotten the geometry of being divided in this way: mother, writer, teacher, spouse.

In a conversation with my mother yesterday, she was saying how so many women she knows are on a quest to find the true things that they love. A calling. A direction. A depth of purpose. I laughed, relating my own woes. Mine has never been a lack of purpose or direction or enjoyment, it’s always been a lack of time.

“If I could do every day twice,” I said, “then maybe, just maybe I’d get everything done that I long to do.”

How about you?

We took a weekend trip. Just us. Two. Without the little scampering sweetness we’ve created. It was the first time, since him. The first time to loll about in bed, taking advantage of uniterrupted time spent both horizontal and unclothed. And also, time to laugh and sip martinis at the open bar (we went to a wedding) and to tear it up on the dance floor. Time to giggle and eat ice cream and walk hand in hand. Time to watch mallards landing on the Delaware River, and the fog lifting. Time to poke into ecclectic hippie shops and glass blowing galleries and cafes. It was, simply put, an amazing weekend of rediscovery. We have so much fun together. He rocks my world, still. More now.

We’re a dozen cars back from the stoplight and we’re waiting. They’re up ahead, in the moving van. I’m following after with a car load of dogs, their tongues hot and wet, breath clouding the glass. I have the windows down. Its evening and the shadows are long across the pharmacy and the auto parts shop, stark rectangles of concrete and illuminated signs. Up where we’re supposed to turn, lights are flashing, red and white. My heart leaps up, an unquiet fish in my chest.

We wait. I feel my head pulsing. I’ve had no time to decompress; to let my shoulders fall, while sipping a glass of water on the back lawn, or sit down at the keyboard for the daily comfort of words. No choice today but to be right here, waiting, with the yellow lines on the road, and the certain crumpled metal up ahead.

There are more ambulances now, and a fire truck. On a stretcher, someone. As I realize this, my eyes are suddenly glassy. I imagine my baby boy there and in a heartbeat, my resentment for any time it’s taking melts away. I whisper out into the twilight air, fragrant with exhaust and dog breath and doughnuts being made across the street at the bakery.

I’m caught there, waiting for the light to change or for someone to direct me around the crumpled cars, folded like paper into each other. Briefly, our seconds overlap. My moments become snarled like a burr in the weft these moments here. These moments that will define for someone how things will always be different.

And then the light does change, and a man with a reflective vest and two-day stubble waves me on, just as another ambulance pulls into the space where my care idled; the air invariably still warm with exhaust; the asphalt bearing the heat of my tires. I go.

But for them the moment continues. It stretches out like taffy or silly putty, until it has become unbelievably slender. For me, time suddenly bleeds bleed forwards again. Like a river or an avalanche temporarily parting around a boulder before merging again. Along the side of the road on the sidewalk, girls on the rugby team at the University run in packs of three and four. Their legs are bare and golden in the sun, ponytails bouncing up and down. In the sky an airplane prepares for landing, the setting sun turning its metal belly into a sliver of fire in the pale evening sky.