{my topography}

“Every day is a journey,
and the journey itself is home.”

–Matsuo Basho

(Check out the entire set on Flickr.)

Practice breathing in and then out and then in again with nothing else in your thought but your breath.

Practice walking down the road with your small boy, just looking. Bring your camera. See if you can see things differently, even though the road and each individual tree and rut have become familiar to you, now, finally after a little more than four years of living in this place.

Trespass onto the neighbor’s field and look back at the road you’ve been walking on. Notice how everything is different. From here, your house will look small and perched, like a storybook house up on a hill, white and gabled and distant, and for a moment allow yourself to be astounded by the way your legs have carried you all this way, down the road and out into this snowy field where the tracks of voles and fieldmice make fidgety paths between patches of dried grass.

Consider your legs and lungs and breath, and feel how together they have moved you to here: each capillary thundering in minute harmony; each muscle bunchy and sure beneath your jeans, beneath your skin.

Watch your son dash pell-mell ahead and then stop. Watch how your shadow overtakes him; swallow’s him. Hold your breath as you come up next to him and watch his breath rise in the air in a cloud. Together you will look to the tree line, one that you’ve never been to, on property that is not yours. Against the snow it will look abrupt and dark with a thick row of pines just visible over the slope of a snow covered knoll.

Look down. You’ve been standing on coyote tracks. In the dusk when you aren’t present they traverses this field, tongues lolling, breath rising in frothy clouds from their mouths. They’re close, even now. You can feel them. Just there, beyond the fields, somewhere in the woods, maybe asleep or maybe watching with yellow eyes, alerted by your footsteps and the sharp ringing sing-song of your son’s eager voice.

Remember how this is always the case: how the line between you and the wild is thin like the bit of thread you find coiled in your pocket. Your fingers tease it, wanting to know how it’s wound. This is always the way: you always want to know. The thread is yellow and snarled and comes from the windowsill in the room above the garage where you write. You picked it up in the morning meaning to throw it out, but kept it accidentally.

It was from this same window that you saw the foxes last week. The ruckus of the chickens alerted you, and when you looked out a fox was right there in the snowy driveway, so close you could see the way the fur on its chest was clumped with ice.

When you pounded your fist on the glass and began to yell, it looked up, right at you, but didn’t move a muscle until you ran down and out into the snow without your hat or gloves or jacket, boots unlaced, shrieking like a madwoman. Of course it ran then, though not far at first. Just to the top of the hill by the woods and when you followed after, another joined it—they’d staked the chicken house out for sure.

Remember how you felt your heart, hard and raw and pumping in your chest after running through the snow, hair flyaway, clapping your hands. Remember how their fur was rust colored and how when they ran, they became streaks of umber like twin contrails in a dream. Remember how they were so beautiful you started to cry.

Your eyes well up now too, as you bend down with your son to examine some marks where something struggled. Wing marks make fractal circles in the snow. The air is still. The sky is pale and filled with cirrus, and along the road starlings sit on telephone wires calling to one another and lifting and alighting in sudden unison.

Put the thread back into your pocket and take a breath. Take some steps towards the road over wind blown snow. Listen. Far away down the road two men are working on a silo. They have huge cranes and their tools make hard metallic sounds that travel to you in a certain rural morse code. Clink. Clink. Clink. Hold on to this.

In your fingertips you can feel your pulse as you take hold of your son’s mittened hand.

I’ll be back soon. I have so many stories to share…. Just trying to get back in the routine of things… (First day back to school for Bean was yesterday.)

+++
What are you doing, reading, wishing for, and eating this week?

In the coffee shop I watch, furtively, knowing what I know. The light is almost unbearably golden, slanting across the ecru walls, the burnished wood floor. They’re here again, at the table next to mine.

She fixes her long gray hair, wipes the crumbs from the table, leans back patiently.

After awhile she says, “Shall we?”

And he nods.

“Are you going to drink the rest of your coffee?” she asks, standing up, gathering the plates with croissant crumbs and the wooden stir stick, broken in two parts. The broken ends are sharp.

“Yeah I might,” he says, and reaches for his cup, holding it possessively as she clears. She smiles. She knows. She puts the dishes in the bin, walks back him. She puts her hand on the back of his neck. Waits.

He doesn’t want to leave. He avoids her eyes. Looks out the window.

She sits.

“Well.” He says, and then the word just hangs in the air, softly, like cat pacing back and forth between them.

Conversation is less important, now, for him. Just being here is something. Here in this room with people’s voices rising and falling, and the rush of cold air as people open the door, order warm drinks, sit, laugh. He is thinner. His ring—a thick band that matches hers—hangs loosely around his finger. He moves slowly, listens to her talking, turns his head to look out the window and the sun illuminates his face.

“Alright,” she says. “Two more minutes, and then we really do have to go.”

She points things out to him: the man who walks with heavy footsteps. The way the house across the street has reused cardboard boxes to gather up their leaves. They know people here. They say hello, and when he gives her a questioning look, she reminds him patiently, matter-of-factly, of who they are.

Then she says, “Ok” and puts her coat on.

“Alright, let’s go.”

She puts out a hand but he doesn’t take it. Instead he stands slowly, so slowly. His belt is too large now, and he clumsily beings to unbuckle it, his fingers stumbling.

And just like that she reaches to help him—right there in the middle of the room she unbuckles his belt and cinches it tighter. Then she tries to help him with his gloves but he takes them from her. Slowly he puts them on his hands.

It takes a long time for him to get down the stairs. There will come a time when the stairs are no longer possible. A time when they will stop coming. But it’s not today. Today she pulls her sunglasses on. Turns to him, smiles.

I can’t shake this feeling: we are always losing things. Loosing each other. Losing light. Losing the our memory of the way things are right now in this moment. We are frail without tenderness, without the fleeting golden light, without coffee, without the warmth of each other’s hands.

…And now all three of my dearest girlfriends are married. The four of us climbed trees and talked Rilke and Kant in college. We ate ice cream by the pint, barefoot on the fire escape; skinny dipped, hiked to an island with swans, cried, laughed, and cooked and shared endless meals together. The end of an era.

The start of another.

Glad to be back home. This month was non-stop. I spent the day folding laundry, setting goals and writing to-do. Bean has an ear infection. Sprout has two teeth. I have a lot of things to get done. Tomorrow it’s go time.

To be a child means living wonder,
without knowing wonder is a concept, an abstraction.

I was a star before I fell down into your tummy, Mommy, Bean tells me. We’re on his bed, the blue Hawaiian print sheets in a rumple, the lights dim, twilight outside.

Everyone dies, he says but we don’t stay dead. We go up to heaven and then we come back down again as a new baby.

First off, I very much loved reading about your media habits the past couple of days. I have continued keep a record of what I’ve been consuming media wise, and I think that it’s made me much more conscious and thoughtful about my choices… I’ve decided to keep the record going over at twitter. It seems like the perfect, if not slightly ironic venue for such things.

But before I do, I want to share with you some of my favorite links from the past couple of days:

Firstly, Elizabeth Strout’s essay “English Lesson” in the Washington Post this week is fantastic. She is such an amazing writer to me. Her characters are so real, nuanced, subtle. She deserves every ounce of praise for Olive Kitteridge, which was my favorite book I read last year.

Also, I am giddy with the discovery of the Washington Post’s Summer Reading Issues from years past. I am sure everyone else on the face of the earth has already devoured these stories, but until now they have somehow escaped me. Delight. I cannot wait to read all of them (I have not yet.)

Also, speaking of the Washington Post, if you don’t read Gene Weingarten you should. This piece made me sob when I first read it. This one made me nearly die laughing. Also, because things seem to work this way in my life, his piece this week explores the various glories and follies of tweeting. Ah-hem.

Now, without further ado, some family updates (a.k.a, my camera is fixed people. Prepare yourselves for some seriously photo-heavy posts to come!)

First off, have you met Bob, our rooster? Bob, Internets. Internets, Bob. He is named after this book.

Here is the new batch of girls who have finally figured out how to do the free-range thing, thus saving us more fruitless attempts to catch them whilst thrashing our legs on sharp pine boughs.

And here is newest member of the poultry bunch: the chick that the goose hatched. It’s name name is Twitter. Bean named it. I swear he knows nothing of my current media obsessions.

And because I cannot stop staring at my beautiful boys:

Also yesterday, because it was raining and we were bummed because we were supposed to go to this amazing parade to celebrate the umpteen hundred years of our city’s existence and instead had to stay home to avoid being drenched and bedraggled, we had a dumpling party instead. The four of us. Fancy frozen drinks for everyone and homemade dumplings using this recipe.

While we were frying up the dumplings we had pandora on, set to a Madonna quick mix (which turned out to be the best movin, groovin, bootie shaking tunes ever!) The storm was right overhead with lots of serious thunderclaps. For dessert we made chocolate pudding with fresh strawberries and watched the Tour together on the couch.

What have you been reading, doing, and eating this weekend?

Things that I loved about today: figs & raw honey, a four mile run (!) and a swim in our neighbor’s pond. Oh how I love to swim…and somehow I had forgotten this. I don’t know why it’s taken me three years to go and jump in, the surface rippling green, bluebirds swooping about. How I love the soft feel of the pond bottom underfoot, the way the water is soft on your skin, the way the bubbles rise up when you kick. Bean and I have gone every day this week. We lie like otters on the little wooden dock, and then we swim.

He doesn’t know how to swim yet, but he’s becoming more daring: leaping from the bank into the water into my arms. His grins, his chattering teeth, his little muscled torso nearly break my heart. He is so lovely, so beautiful, my son. My firstborn boy, so big now: learning to swim.

On his bike he is a terror. He’s been riding without training wheels for months and now he purposely seeks out the washed out, steepest places on the driveway, the bumpiest pot-holes to ride over full tilt. He’s a mountain biker in the making: the way he skids to a stop, leaps off his bike, swings back on it, all the while grinning, mud splattering up the back of his shirt, his yellow thunderbolt helmet the perfect statement.

Boys. Even though I imagined boys I couldn’t have pictured this. The delight and silliness of little boys. The way they play together makes me nearly swoon with pleasure. Bean seeks out Sprout, he wants to be near him, next to him. He ‘reads’ him books, acts out entire narratives with matchbox cars, sings endless little songs, lies noes to nose with him. And all the while Sprout grins like he’s having lunch with his idol. It’s the best, the way my boys are together. I want more than anything for them to stay this way. For them to always be buddies and friends, for Bean to always have Sprout’s back. For Sprout to always burst into wide smiles when his brother enters the room. It makes me so happy.

Bean asked if he and Sprout could share a room recently. We have 3 bedrooms, so they wouldn’t have to necessarily, and it hadn’t really occurred to me to have them share. But now I’m wondering, why not? What are the pros and cons? I always had to share a room with one or the other of my sisters, and while I am sure they hated it (sorry I stole all your clothes, sis!) I adored it. Not always, but most of the time. I loved going to bed and having a sister to whisper with, and waking up in the middle of the night and hearing her breathe. But now as a parent I’m not actually sure how to orchestrate room sharing–with boys who are four years apart. How would bedtimes work?

So. Questions: what were the highlights of your day today? And: yea or nay on the shared-bedroom business?

Today not enough sleep. We need bananas, paper towels, bread. The dishwasher needs unloading. It always astounds me how life keeps coming back to these things. To bread and dishes. To sleep. To love.

Today I sit on the couch and press my nose into that warm place behind Sprout’s tiny ear and whisper. I love you. I love you. I can’t remember before him now, in the same way that I can no longer snow.

I am always surprised by this: that I cannot remember winter when the meadows are rife with grass and pollen, when the trees have leaves wider than my palms, even though winter stayed so long every sinew and capillary in my body must have a dormant memory of snow. My memory fickle, like black ice.

Hard to recall the way the sky was dark at four. The way the birds all left except the noisy jays and chickadees. The way the steps were covered in ice, the water in the coop frozen solid, everything requiring the extra effort of warmth.

I think of the first humans making fire. That astounding spark. What chest pounding, what sheer joy must have ensued! How urgently we need heat to be alive: warmth touching us like the fingers of god, sparking our thoughts, making our blood move, making yeast and flour swell and turn into the bread we break and eat.

In the wood stove all winter, a fire, until the motions of preparing it, lighting it, banking it down became as familiar as making love or breaking bread, and now here we are with hours and hours of extra sun and everything green, and my baby is on my lap, holding locks of my long hair.

I try to explain to DH how I’ll miss him small, but he doesn’t really get it. To him, words are better. Sentences and walking, tools held, handed. Telling jokes. Getting them. He’s so in love with Bean right now. A big boy who says things like “Apparently the water bottle was removed from the running stroller,” and who calls for “Assistance!” when I catch him and tickle him on the couch until his daddy comes, laughing, and for a few minutes we’re all a pile of arms and legs, close. And I am too of course, but I also love this right now in a way I never expected.

I fell in love with Sprout differently, utterly from the start, and while it feels like a betrayal saying this, in the end a pound of feathers and a pound of bricks both weigh the same, though one falls harder, faster to the ground. I love them both.

It’s just that this now is such a blurry tender place. I curl up into the present on the couch, hold him, try to get words down. I listen to the way things hum and chatter in the house: the refrigerator, the birds, the bathroom fan. Sometimes I think about how this life, mine, has become so small. The circumference of it just circling this. Now. So often the four of us going about the small things of our day. Bread with butter and honey. Making jam from old apricots and leftover blackberries. Running. Books.

Sometimes I feel guilty that it isn’t bigger, flashier, more. Something. Guilty? Maybe that is the wrong word. But some days I feel the judgment, coming from somewhere. The world pressing up against the thin glycerin skin of this moment, fragile as it is.

I used to love watching bubbles float up and away over the roof of the house, out of sight. Of course they burst, but in my head I imagined them floating on and on, up, into the blue sky, to Jupiter or Japan, on the tail of a kite or a songbird.

Such are the moments today. Tired. More tired. The nights still sometimes haphazard, but mostly soft with sleep and pillows, dreams right there, and even when he wakes up more, as he did last night, when the morning comes a small piece of me is grateful for the fitful night, for the broken moments of rest.

I love him so, small like this. Full of radiant smiles and giggles. Before words and sippy cups and defiance. I can’t believe I’m saying this. For so long I was reluctant, and many days I still am. Motherhood pisses me off in this country. Women are limited so much by this choice we make to bring small people into the world and to be good to them, feed them with love and stories and crackers with mozzarella.

There is no field guide for this, for these moments, and yet I know I’ll stumble through and be fifty before I am ready. So I keep putting the words down. Some kind of record. Now. More coffee.