We are at sitting at the butcher block kitchen island. There are jammy knives and the remnants of scrambled eggs on cream colored plates in between Ball jars of markers, snippets of paper, and an Elmer’s glue bottle without a cap. We are making things, or more accurately, he is. Specifically, he is making a chart for what he needs remember before heading out the door in the morning to first grade. (Did you catch that? FIRST. GRADE. !)

Now he looks up from coloring, and sees that I’m looking at a slideshow of photos from Hurricane Irene. The damage in the southern part of my gorgeous state is devastating. Roads entirely washed out, dairy barns under water, the corn stained with mud up to its silken ears, businesses destroyed. His eyes grow wide as he leans on his elbows across the table, looking at a picture of a road that looks like it is made of fondant icing instead of asphalt, rippling and soft where it isn’t under water.

“I wonder why God decided to do this,” he says, with the same thoughtful tone he uses to ask about why or how something is wired, or engineered; as though there has to be a perfectly rational reason behind this too. And then he says,

“I thought when God made the first rainbow it was a promise that he wouldn’t wash the whole world away again.”

I stop clicking through the images and look up, straight into his beautiful big-eyed face. His eyes are green and brown like the late summer fields. He has glue on his fingers. He wants answers.

Bible stories aren’t something that come up around our house much. While I am deeply spiritual, I find religion hard to share with my sons: the boxes of formal religion feel too narrow, the definitions too finite for the inexplicable, glorious forces that make this green earth, this miraculous universe, these complex human beings that we are with tendons and marrow and breath and the capacity to torture and make love, to hoard and meditate, to pray and kill and consume. How can there possibly be a single story that is big enough for this?

Still, in this moment I want to say something to him that makes sense. That reassures. That explains. That offers something tangible to this sweet boy of mine who has somehow heard the beautiful story of Noah’s arc and held it in his heart, lightly, gently, as truth. And maybe it is. Who am I to say? I have only been here on this earth a very brief while. Thirty three years doesn’t feel long enough to make any kind of claims.

I shrug slightly, and say, “I wonder too.”

I can’t explain global warming, or how we’re all directly a part of this picture. I don’t tell him how there are worse things than farms with roads torn out by floods. Lybia, Sudan, Somalia. What I know is this: That to love this greenly leafing earth matters. And this is how I know how to pray, outdoors, touching the ground, running barefoot down our newly graded road, which is what we do, eating wild grapes that stain our fingers, and gathering pinecones, each with its miraculous Fibonacci spiral. Yes. This is wonder. This is the only way I know to make any sense at all of anything: to be right here, touching the ground, finding quarts pebbles that sparkle like stars.

This is the last week of my semester. Then a little more than a week to work on my book flat out before projects for the next semester already resume. Cannot believe summer is almost over. Bean has a loos tooth. Sprout has started talking in complex and lengthy sentences all of a sudden. My book is almost done. Time = flying.

What have you been up to?

xoxo!

Today is many things. It is my half birthday. It is the day my father died nine years ago. It is a day of lavender mountains at sunset, of queen annes lace in the fields fluttering like cut-out snowflakes, of crickets chirring their endless message: that summer is on the wane.

It is also the day that Cookie S. Fish died. This morning he was still swimming, barely. We don’t know why his brief life was so fleeting.

Maybe he was old from the start, when we carried him home in a plastic container at the beginning of the summer. Maybe the heat wave we just had was too much for him: indoor temperatures were in the low eighties for nearly a week. Or maybe inexplicably, it was simply the right time for this tiny collection of gills and bones and fins to die.

Whatever the reason, when T saw that he was dead, we were eating raspberry sorbet after dinner. The boys had rosy mustaches. Bean paused mid spoonful, and looked at the tank with wide eyes and said,

“Maybe can burry him and write a sign that says Cookie Sandwich Fish so that we know where he is.”

“Ok,” I said, “we can do that.”

“What, what happened?” Sprout asked. “What happened to Cookie Fish?”

He scooted off his stool and climbed up by the tank.

“What happened to Cookie Fish?” He repeated. “Why he not up der?” Why he not up a da top?”

“Because he died,” T told him, tousling his hair.

“Dat make me sad,” he said softly. Still looking at the tank.

How he could even know that it was sad, I’m not sure. It’s the first time anything has died in his small life. His brother was still scooping raspberry sorbet, the reality of what had happened hadn’t yet fully hit him, and T and I were both rather neutral. We didn’t say that it was something to feel sad about.

Sprout just gets things like this. I’m not sure why. He been like this from the day he was born. I can’t explain what I mean, except to say he’s always been incredibly tender and loving. He’s always been exceptionally dialed into our emotional states. He is soulful, and loving with every cell in his body.

After dinner I carried a small shovel up to the rocky bank at the back of the house and dug a small hole. Bean carried the tiny tank out, and suddenly he was in tears. I helped him pour the tank water and pebbles and the small blue fish into the hole, covering it with more pebbles, and then a smooth flat rock.

Bean began to sob, and if sensing his brother needed some space, Sprout backed off, and quietly occupied himself exploring along the rock wall while I held Bean. T and I both told Bean that he’d been a wonderful fish owner, and that we were proud of him.

“So it wasn’t because of me?” He asked.

“No, no honey. You did everything right.” I assured him. Because it’s true. He was awesome. He changed the tank water, and fed him the requisite number of pellets and not a single extra, and he watched him every day. When the fish was well, it would respond to Bean putting his finger on the tank. It would swim up, following the movement of his hand.

“I want to get that crystal rock there, and put it on his grave,” Bean said.

He’s been through this before. One of the amazing blessings of being in a Waldorf kindergarten for two years is that he’s gotten to work on a working farm every week. There, they celebrate and honor the lives and deaths of the animals. It’s a gift to have those experiences, I think. Because it gives them some tools to later turn to, when grief will find them as adults, and it will.

As he wrote on the crystal rock with a sharpie, sobs still coming, I felt my own hot tears on my cheeks.

We’re never ready to lose the things we love.

After T and Sprout had gone inside to brush teeth, Bean and I stayed on the back stoop.

“How come it took so long for him to die Mama?” he asked me, looking up at the sky above us.

“Because his spirit was taking a while to let go of his little body, I think.” I said.

“People are like that too,” he said. “Our spirits don’t want to let go either.”

“I think your right,” I said.

“But I think for fish and for every animal, and for people too, there is a time that’s the right time to let go and then your spirit knows.“

He looked at my face earnestly.He’d heard me talking about my dad while T and I were making dinner.

“Do you still miss your daddy?” He asked.

“Yes, I still do.” I told him.

But it’s different now. Nine years is a span of time that has transformed me. I wish that I could talk to him now because I see bits of him in who I am becoming. He’d be so fascinated by the program I’m in. We’d have the best conversations about it. And he’d be proud, I think, that I’m finding my voice as a writer + artist. That this is my calling now. That my book and art and stories are coming to fruition.

I carry Bean inside.

His legs are suddenly so long. They wrap around my hips, wiry and muscular.

This is time passing. These boys. This love. These moments.

We made chocolate chip cookie dough just for eating after dinner tonight; then wandered along the paths T just cut through the meadows. So many flowers. Grass up higher than the boys’ heads. Bats swooping low above us. Sundown making everything golden and lavender.

This week was good. It was beyond needed: to have some time with my three boys. To write. To rest. To run. To recalibrate a little.

++

Sprout is suddenly, finally, talking in sentences. “My hands are filfy, Daddy!” he said tonight, holding up flour covered palms after rolling dough out for chapattis with me. Unlike bean who talked in sentences at about 18 months, sweet Sprout has taken his time. But now, in just the last week or two is words are tumbling out nonstop. He makes all of us happy. From the day he was born he’s had this buddha presence: he is calm and centered and joy-filled and it rubs off on everyone around him. Bean adores him, even though they fight endlessly over ownership of insignificant objects: long sticks, particular crayons, certain books, matchbox cars.

Bean is all elbows and long legs. He rides a his new bike with gears and hand breaks like a pro, and gets up with aplomb and bravery when he takes a spill on uneven terrain, blood often running down a knee. He’s decided wants to grow his hair long. For now we’re kind of rolling with it. We lovingly call him mop-head. He wakes up with a tangled shock of semi-curls, and lures Sprout out of bed, and then the two of them come find us. It’s still one of my favorite times of day, then, in those first moments of morning when we’re all there together, still sleep and warm and trailing dreams.

++

The manuscript is now a complete draft. There are some rough chapters, but everything is there now, in place, in sequence, and my mind can hold it all at once. That’s been so hard: I can’t really explain it. There is something about the linear medium of the computer that makes it really challenging for me to see all the parts as a part of the whole. I went to UPS today and printed the whole thing at 1.5 spacing with wide margins for marking up. It’s about an inch thick, and made things feel real in a way that they haven’t until now:I’m writing a book. Really. Truly.

Now, if only I can stay in the groove when I get back into the swing of things at school + work.

+++

PS: I’m craving some new summer tunes. Do you have any suggestions?

Hello friends.

I’m finding this so restful: to notice the small things of daily life and to share them here with you.

We’ve been keeping a jar of markers and fresh paper at hand for quiet times, and today had many moments where the boys just sat and colored. I love the way Sprout is learning to draw: circles first.

I made some fresh peach preserves yesterday with some not-so-great peaches. Just a little sugar + water + a hint of vanilla and they cooked down into something lovely to have on biscuits this morning.

Today was all dappled with sun and shade. I love the way the field grasses blow in the wind.

While I was writing Bean and T made a sign for our nightly visitors. Bean has since observed that perhaps he needs to add a checklist to clarify exactly what makes a skunk a bad one. We have several this year. We always do. T has twice encountered them in the coop, though they’ve yet to spray anyone. Still. Bad skunks take note.

Manuscript progress today for sure. It is wild to be working on something this big. It terrifies and thrills me in turns. I’ve decided to focus on just finishing the manuscript. Once it’s in, all my backers will be rewarded (with a little extra surprise in addition to what they signed up for) for their patience. Until then, I imagine I’ll be pretty quiet on that front: creating beautiful chapters.

What are you up to this week?