{my topography}

Beneath the covers when the day first sets in, I’m not quite here, not quite anywhere else either. Hello, Monday. It’s already 6:03 and the night was a slapdash mess of wake ups. The teeth, they keep coming. Arched back wailing at 3:27a.m. for ten stagger-around-the-room minutes, searching for Tylenol, and then again at 5:06, too early and too late for more or better sleep.

I lie awake, face in the pillows, the thudding of my heart reverberates in my head. My breath moves my ribs up and down, up and down, but I am not here, not all of me, not yet.

Under the weight and softness of my stomach my wrist bones, carpals and metacarpals, are crumpled like soft bits of clay and as I flex my fingers, pins-and-needles set in.

Somehow our boys, both of them, are already in bed between us.

This morning I can feel the way I’m sort of pushing around at the outline of myself with my mind. Hello, day. Hello, memory. Hello, this life of mine. I feel myself begin, reluctantly to inhabit my vertebrae, lungs, buttocks, thighs; in the nick of time I roll out of the way. Bean’s at it already: making a pirate ship out of the covers. Sprout, miraculously stays asleep (of course, now after a night of it) and he is perfect, perfect, perfect here beside me. Rosy, tousled. His hair smells sweet like only him.

The day comes fast then: wooden slats of window shades pulled up; snowmelt; shower steam; the fragrant bar of French lemon soap slipping from my still slack-fingered grip; coffee. The boys are both underfoot (vacation until Wednesday) which gives new meaning to the phrase “work from home,” which is what I try valiantly to do, meeting four deadlines, non-stop screen time, CS4, phone calls, 37 emails, everything interrupted by the repetitive cacophony of BOY.

The day is gray, and the is light translucent and dull, but I like the way the thermometer climbs to 38 before 11am, and how on the south facing fields I can see bare patches where the grass pokes up. I’ve been looking at the trees for signs every day now: the buds are swelling with the secret lives of leaves that wait for chlorophyll, for sun.

Inside, the boys and I are barefoot, and I look at them and feel the fragile container of my ribs nearly snap open with the thunk-thunk-thunking of my little hammer dulcimer heart. Bean with his thin arms and messy hair and growing-in-crooked teeth and ski-jump nose, and Sprout, who has been trying to run from the minute he learned to walk and whose gait looks a wee bit like a cross between a high stepping horse and Frankenstein. Some days I hardly have words. I have two sons. I don’t think this wonder ever goes away.

And so without stopping it’s night already. We visit friends after work and arrive home late. The sink is crowded; the cat wants fresh water; the refrigerator needs to be cleaned. Instead I let the boys stay up another minute. Bean and I eat toast with cloudberry jam.  Sprout carries pot lids around the room. Nonstop, there went Monday.

How was your day?

PS–I have a super-duper exciting giveaway for tomorrow, that I can’t wait to share!

Five years ago tonight I’d just given birth, and I had no idea, no idea at all, how my life would be changed by the tiny baby with his big eyes looking up at me from a nest of warm cotton cloths on my chest.

All day I kept thinking about it his birth: how I labored for 2 hours; how I was walking through hard contractions on the back deck when the sun rose; how I remember seeing the way the buds on the lilac tree were fat, and how the air smelled like the beginning of spring; how I transferred to the hospital after about 18 hours leaving behind all expectations about home birth or what his birth would be like at all. When I recall either of my son’s births, my memory slips into this place that exists somehow out of body; beyond the periphery of pain or thought; to where things are blurred and thundering with the pulse of the moment, but somehow are dislocated, out of time. And so I blinked, and here he is. Five.

This boy with his sandy blond hair and huge green eyes and his thousand questions every single moment of every single day is 5. It’s such a heady, stupefying, astounding thing to have a kid and watch him grow up–and writing that I can see how it comes across as the most pathetic of cliches. But really: to watch your child grow up marks time’s passing in this utterly absolute way. Five years looks like this.

He’s intense, this boy I have. He didn’t sleep through the night for the first three years of his life. He’s allergic to dust and pollen and grass, and tugs on his shirts and pokes his brother. He is a knower. A thinker. A goofball. (Poop jokes are suddenly hysterical. WHY do boys find bathroom humor so funny? Why?)

He draws pictures of houses and vehicles and robots with wiring intact for doorbells and forklifts and motors. He plans how he’ll build things in his head. He talks about math without knowing abstractly that he is. The way numbers relate makes sense intuitively to him. He’s non-stop and funny and annoying. He is particular and bright and determined. He doesn’t like the spotlight, the center of attention, but he loves to shine and be the best.

A birthday questionnaire:
Favorite color: green, pink, blue
Food: pizza pasta and roll-ups (burritos) from school. I also like granola. Write that please.
Favorite fruits: mangoes, and only on occasion I like ants on a log.
Dessert: ice cream, peanut butter cookies, chocolate cake, pie and all good stuff.
Toy: my Plasma car, my desk, my scissors
What you want to be when you grow up: I want to be an astronaut and an airplane driver and I want to build robots that actually work and I want to tell people how to get the titanic up from the bottom of the ocean and I want to be a computer maker. That’s it. Sprout will be the same as me.
Favorite thing about Daddy is: that he does stuff with me on my circuit board
Favorite thing about Mommy: that we can snuggle and you let me draw on your phone sometimes
Favorite thing about your brother: he’s a jelly tub.
Favorite animal: seal and octopus; NOT dogs. I also like fish and sharks.
Favorite time of day: Morning, afternoon, and night. Night is my not good time.
Favorite candy: licorice and chocolate. Ice cream bars. Popsicles.
Favorite clothing: I don’t know. I really like my red shirt with a pocket up top and my overalls and my goose tag (lapel pin of a loon.)
Favorite games: Circuit board. Sledding. Soccer outside.
Favorite music: violin and guitar.
Stuff you don’t like: The bottoms of asparagus. Taking naps. Tomato. I like broccoli now.
What do you wonder about: I wonder about being in college
What makes you sad: I’m only sad when I’m hurt.

Today on the way home from school we stopped for a raspberry danish and when he took his first bite the yummy raspberry jelly was a surprise and he said, “Oh mommy, when I bit into this I was just so delighted!”

My boy, through and through. I love him so.

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He’s also one of the reasons I’m going for this.

I did it. Days of mapping out details and collecting information and editing video clips (whoa, no small thing!) and finally, here it is. A Field Guide To Now.

It kind of feels like giving birth. A lot like it in fact: the risk, the unknown, the realization that it’s all beyond my control even though I’m going to give it every single thing I’ve got.

It’s the first time I’ve ever taken a leap like this. Plunged with a fluttering heart towards a dream.

Please support this.*

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And also: I have two birthday boys this week! Bean’s birthday is the 16th and Sprouts four days after. This is the week that has changed my life, twice, momentously. It felt so utterly right to launch this project today. (Still. I’m nervous.)

xoxo!

*Things are tenuous financially, and this would make a huge difference. Please Share this project with everyone you know.

Doing: Whoa, it’s been one heck of a couple of weeks with both kiddos underfoot. Lots of sledding and cookie baking and general revelry. Not enough writing though. Or painting. Or time without the ruckus, giddy, non-stop noise making of two small boys.

Speaking of: Sprout is standing and almost walking. He’s thisclose. He’s hilarious. He plays hide and seek. He initiates chase games around the house and crawls pell-mell at top speed, then bursts into adorable peels of laughter. I tried to teach him to paint a few days ago–because I did with Bean at around this age, and it was an utter disaster. He ATE the brushes and got so frustrated when I’d take them out of his hand and try to turn them around so the bristles went on the paper. So not his thing.

Bean on the other hand is totally into drawing. He makes airplanes and houses with doorbells wired in to the walls. Tonight he drew a picture of our cat stalking mice. Each mouse had a lovely, loopy, curly tail. I can’t really believe that he is almost five and suddenly all cool and adorable: a big+little mashup. Yesterday he said, “When I’m big I’m gonna build robots. I’m going to design one to be a remote control that I control–and then another robot that the first robot controls.” He’s like that. Totally coming up with the coolest things ever. An engineer in the making.

Reading: it’s been haphazard at best this week. Mostly about the end of the world as we know it. Which really is rather unsettling . Though not entirely hopeless. I’m already thinking of what my garden will look like this spring.

Wishing for: a few solid hunks of time I can call MY OWN to get things crossed off the to-do list and sink back into writing and creating and feeling like myself again.

Eating: I’ve perfected pizza dough and a really great bread recipe. I’ll share both, but not tonight. Somehow it’s bedtime already. Where did the day go?

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Wondering tonight: what do you worry about? What are your greatest fears–the big, worst-case-scenario ones…and the little ones that nag and gnaw?

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”–Annie Dillard

Maple sugar on the first snow of the season…
TEETH!
Our advent wreath with a little twirly mobile from Germany (a childhood tradition.)
Our first gingerbread house attempt this year. Bean cut out the templates and the dough. And mixed everything.
Bean was hilarious to watch decorating these. He was so careful with the icing… then DUMPED the sprinkles on.
Lots of snowflakes have been cut this year…Bean made this one entirely himself.
Bundled up. Getting ready to do our annual holiday photo…

PS: I’m sort of sick and am hating the general anxiety of Sunday night. There is always a to-do list bigger than my brain waiting for Monday. What’s on your to-do list this week?