{my topography}

Sugaring with the neighbors yesterday. I love their old-school, hand made set up. I love the sweet clouds of steam, and how everything feels hopeful and grand standing around the evaporator watching the sap bubble and thicken. Hours pass, easily, occupied this way. Bean was all helper this year. Carrying wood. Pouring sap from the metal tap buckets into the big plastic five gallon bucket to be filtered and poured. He even got to strike the match to light the fire up. This is his boyhood. This is what he will remember. This is why we are here, even though things are so tenuous financially right now that at any moment we might slip, and have to leave. So. This is why I’m throwing my heart into trying to make A Field Guide To Now. This is why there is a lump in my throat at night, when I can see how it might not reach that stupid enormous funding goal (that also feels so small.)

Last year ate our savings. Last year ate everything. This year, who knows? This year, the outcome is anyone’s guess. We could move. We could stay. It’s all up in the air, illusive as the steam, as tender as the first fat buds.

So that’s the truth. I want this life more than anything.

Also: You can win this painting.

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!

“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?

We made cinnamon rolls this morning: Bean measuring the flour out, his eyebrows getting dusted as the mixer kicked into high gear; going to gather eggs first. (We have an interesting flock this year: Aracunas, New Hampshir Reds, Cuckoo Marans, Barred Rocks and a Buff Orpington rooster.) While the dough rose in my favorite vintage Pyrex bowl, we started hanging lights: big fat colored ones, like I remember from being a kid.

Back inside it was all about tinker toys and cinnamon & brown sugar filling (with walnuts too) and leftovers for lunch. Hard cider. Turkey + cranberry sauce + coleslaw on raisin bread. (Of note: DH butchered our turkey this year himself. A Heritage breed, raised by a friend of ours.)

Later: A fire in the wood stove. Inclement weather, but the best kind. Going to get the mail wearing rain boot. Sprout trying to stand all on his own (and cutting two top teeth.) Then making pasta from scratch: the dough gorgeously golden with fresh eggs. Linguine never tasted better: served with Parmesan, sausages and swiss chard sauteed with garlic.

Finally, in the quiet of a post bedtime house: the crackle of logs burning in the stove, getting words down on the page uninterrupted. A glass of red wine. The cat curled at my ankles. Looking forward the inevitable sweetness of bed: the curve of his back, warm, and muscled against me in the dark.

There is something about October light.The way the skies are stormy and squalls blow in with snow flurries in the mountains and sleet sticking to the grass. The way V’s of geese and airplanes look like embers against the sky as the sun sets. The way every leaf becomes fire falling to the dying grass.

I took these pictures tonight, right at dinner, as the sun burst from under dark clouds. It was another long night again last night. Sprout might have an ear infection–that or he’s just in a new sleep phase and has discovered his ears (he was tugging on them a bit today.) I watched every single green digital number in the hour flip by from 3 to 4 a.m. and this morning I was no less of a mess than yesterday and yet somehow the day wasn’t all that bad.

It was a day where I tried to just let myself notice the small moments and breathe. Mostly I succeeded. And I cleaned the house. What did you do?

Tonight rain came from a sunny sky, and persisted. Big fat drops falling hard among the sunbeams. We went out barefoot, twirled, stuck our tongues out, turned grateful palms and faces towards the sky. Sun on our cheeks, and rain. Bean gathered water in a small cup for the fairies. Sprout giggled on the doorstep with me. And then all four of us watched in wonder as a rainbow made a sudden perfect arc before us.

…And we were right there, at the end of the rainbow.

These photos are best enjoyed BIG. Click & enjoy:

 

Hi Monday. What are you up to today?

There was 91% humidity when I woke up this morning. Clouds heavy and thick, threatening thunderstorms, then sun. A trip to the river is in the forecast today, for sure.

This weekend was all about out-of-town friends, hanging out around the bonfire in the back yard, roasting marshmallows and sipping summer beer. We spent the evening talking about heady, esoteric things like love and the evolution of technology.

I love conversations like these that loop and spiral and press at the edges of what we know. We talked a lot about the state of the world, about the future, and about power. I am very interested in the idea of power right now. It’s a theme that keeps coming up in my new novel, unbidden and determined to be there on the page.

What do you think it means to have power (and how is this different than to have money)?

This gorgeous daily record by the author of Lobster & Swan. Isn’t it a great idea? I think I may steal it, and try it out in my moleskine this week. I always see images I love, and never end up doing anything with them. Nothing some paste & a date stamp can’t fix, apparently. In a similar vein, this ’savings account’ of daily inspiration is also absolutely lovely and full of goodness.

Hi. Wednesday. There was sun today for the first time, literally, in weeks. Tell me this, Internets, is it sunny where you are? And if so, is it often? I’m starting to get itchy feet. Hankering to be somewhere else maybe. Some place with more sun, more… I don’t know. If I were foot loose and fancy free I’d be tempted to do this. I’ve always wanted to write a story about big rig drivers. Cool, right?

Really though: do you love where you live? Tell me about it!

Also today: lots of revising and forward progress. Writing is a crazy making profession for sure. So much terror and doubt is there, every day, waiting in the margins, in the click of the space bar. During breaks today I was inspired by her beautiful aesthetic. And also this breathtaking art.

This super cool journal also caught my eye today. I love when image and story and news and ideas collide. It’s how it’s like inside my head.

Speaking of things that get inside my head–I loved reading this story in particular because it reminded me somehow very much of The Year of Silence by Kevin Brockmeier in the Best American, which was originally published here. I wish I could find a link for you to read it online–because then you’d see what I mean about these two pieces connecting. This picture in particular, of Sao Paolo stripped of visual pollution is just what I pictured when I imagined a city stripped of sound. It’s serene and calming and yet…I like a mess, which is why I liked how Brockmeier’s little piece ends immensely.

And finally, because I adore lists and am a total sucker for good food, Travelers Lunchbox delighted me so much today. Particularly this list of all foodie lists.

My short list of to die for food off the top of my head: cherry pie, pasta from Mezzaluna, lime gelato in the Piazza della Signoria, affogato, oysters with white wine and garlic butter.

Runners up: root beer floats, hot chocolate from Quebec served in a bowl, majool dates, fresh raspberries, steak frites, unagi sushi, raspberry sorbet, licorice, dark dark chocolate, caramel apples, dry packed scallops, Oh lord, I have started something I cannot stop. What are your top five and your runners up?

The chick is a frail collection of feathers and fluff. Its feet are the size of a sparrow’s. Its wings flap uselessly, and among the grasses, it is no higher than the smallest clovers. It frantically follows the goose everywhere. She doesn’t get it. She is harried, and runs. Leaves it cheeping pitifully in the middle of the green lawn and lifts into the air with her huge wings, flapping towards the galvanized tub of water that we fill for her. She plunges in, water falling off her feathers like glass beads.

The chick cries for her, its down growing damp in the dewy grass, but when we take it indoors, offer it the warmth of our hands, food, fresh water, it refuses and cries mournfully and loudly for the goose.

I want desperately to get involved, rescue it, and fix whatever is wrong. I also want desperately to do away with the entire thing. The chick. The goose. The whole business was a disaster from the start. Something I didn’t think through or consider when I let the broody goose sit on stolen eggs, and now here we are.

The chick is unbearably loud with its cheeping. You can hear it through the closed windows. The goose is louder. All morning it’s a back and forth as the tiny little thing tries to follow its mama about. She knows it is her baby, maybe. She makes soft throaty noises when its near. She lets it sleep on her back after she’s through with preening. But she steps on it just the same, with her huge orange feet.

Somehow, improbably, it has survived four days. The days seem inconceivably long. It seems impossibly small. I brought it indoors and kept it in a box where it was warm for a while, when I saw that it could no longer follow her about in the rain drenched grass, but it drove me crazy with its pining.

Finally I lured the goose back to the nest with another egg—we had confiscated the others that she stole. And though she doesn’t get how to care for the chick, really, she is a sucker for eggs, going immediately to the nest and plopping chest first onto the soft circle of hay I’ve made. Her instincts only half intact. I get it.

I watch her with empathy and contempt. You stepped on your baby, you stupid thing. I want to scream at her, as for the tenth time I waver, decide to intervene, scoop the chick up, offer it water from a jelly jar lid. But just the same, I reach for her, and stroke her long shaking neck. I know what it feels like to want to just fly away.

A little bit of photo booth goofiness for your Wednesday. It’s how we started our morning, at the counter and on the couch smooching and giggling, me and my two boys. (Don’t you just love Bean’s little broccoli top?)

It is already mid June. I can’t believe it really. How the time blurs once the days warm up. Buttercups are everywhere, daisies, the first wild strawberries in little glades at the edge of the woods.

The goose is broody. Bean stuck two hens eggs into the warm circle of her nest and there she sits, some patient instinct advising her to hunker down and wait for new life to happen.

The New Hampshire reds we got in the mail a few weeks ago are feeling plucky with a new set of rust colored feathers. They’re in an outside run now, scuttling about, catching bugs. They’re fun to watch. I love the way instinct summons chickenness for them. It’s evident in all the ways that they are: heads bobbing, peeping to one another sociably, grooming their new plumage, and to think they’ve never had a mother.

We’re so different, with our long babyhood, then childhood stretching out for years and years. I watch Bean learn new words. He repeats them, uses them in context. I am utterly enamored with the way he is right now: full of drawings and ideas. His pictures are jam-packed with action: wheels turning, light switches, fire hoses, robots, homes for little mice.

On his bike he’s become a daredevil, skidding to a stop, making dizzy loops around the road, cutting tight corners, riding over the bumpiest of potholes at high speeds. I love watching him ride. I love his yellow thunderbolt helmet and his lightening grin as he passes by, legs going at top speed. He is perpetually dirty this summer. Jam on his shorts, on his chin. Mud on his feet and grass stains. He goes through two sets of clothes a day, easy. Sometimes more.

In the garden we’re mostly done planting. Bean comes down with me in the morning while Sprout naps, and we get an hour or so in before we hear him on the monitor.

This year’s crop: moon & stars melons, sugar babies, lemon cucumbers, zucchini, yellow crook-necked squash, potatoes, rainbow chard, yellow peppers, five kinds of tomatoes, purple cabbage, carrots, broccoli, radishes, four kinds of lettuce, spinach, ashworth corn, onions, parsley, dill, thyme, oregano, basil, rosemary, chives and sage.

As the short growing season heats up, I’ll be planting more flowers, more carrots, more cucumbers for pickling (DH has a ridiculous pickle habit). We never got our act together with the berries, but Bean and I have scoped out a copious patch down by the neighbor’s pond that we aim to visit in a couple of weeks.

We have fun in the garden. I made Bean a tepee out of slender logs. Then gave him a packet of beans to plant, and sunflowers, and pumpkins all around. Today while I was spreading straw he came down to the garden dragging a quilt to hang over the tipi frame. Inside is a quiet secret little boy space full of packed dirt and small rocks, a pine bow for a broom, a magic door. In his bouncy seat, Sprout watches, pleased as peas.

I realize lately that I haven’t written about Sprout much. I expected to have more to say, honestly. I expected it to be harder, to be more of a fight to adjust to life with two boys, but in truth it’s been a breeze. He sleeps. That’s the main thing. And I say this with utter awe and gratitude and reverence because Bean did not sleep so I know. But Sprout sleeps and he smiles and he’s trying to sit up already. He lies on his belly and watches Bean play with matchbox cars and he’s as happy as a little fat clam. He grins and he giggles when you zerber his tummy, and he mostly just feels like he’s been here with us forever. Four of us.

I know this post is all over the map. I’ve been working on my book every night after the boys go to bed, more words there, less words here I guess. But I have questions for you today. A little bit of informal research.

What does settling down mean to you?

How does marriage change you?

How do children change you?

If you could chose all over again (or if you have not yet chosen), would you stay footloose and single? Why or why not?