5 Years or Some Ridiculous Amount of Months

It has been awhile since I visited here, tonight I was prompted to come to say hello to my (almost) 5 year old boys. 5 years ago on the date I went into Huntington Hospital for a fairly uneventful and much held off c-section that brought our two people here. 5 years ago we all irrevocably changed in the minutes of 1117 and 118 p.m. when our small people were pulled into the world. 5 years .... how, how could that have happened 5 years ago?



I sit now alone in our temporary home in our newly found place called Home and my heart twists a bit because they are down with their daddy, finishing touches on the Old Home to make it ready for a new family. We spent 5 days together there to revisit, reconnect, reaffirm and celebrate what we are, where we have been with them. I laid with them in their once-ago room on an air mattress and we talked ourselves to sleep. We woke to the same light that bathed them so many of the photos in our archives, light I know, light I love.

I sit feeling a little bereft that I am not there with them but work duty calls me and I must be here. And they, they are with their Grampa and Gramma, enjoying the feel of once familiar rhythms before they change once again, back in they chrysalis of their Old Place but ready to test the boundaries of their new one. The things they say; about the infant phase being a blink and that they woke up one day and their babies were in college and that they didn't really know when it happened, those conversations you overheard when you were younger? They are all right. There will never be enough time with our littles but you can only realize that when they are not making shrill demands that skitter into your addled brain looking for a place to land.

The last 5 years have altered everything; our wants and needs, our goals and focus, our dreams. They have strengthened and weakened bonds, they have broken bonds. I have felt joy, guilt, completed, undone, unraveled, ashamed, free, bound, afraid and then fearlessly able. I have never felt more myself and more questioning of what that Self actually is, what she is to be, become.

I know some things now though. I know I was meant to be their Mama. They chose me, they chose to come to me and Tim because they are our People and we need them. We need them like air, like manna, like beer.

We are their parents because we are the only ones that could do this. Respond to their cries and then their questions; hold their limbs, fragile still but forming into the bones that will carry them, carry them far and wide, carry them well.

I am not always graceful or kind, I am no template for a Mother. I am brusque and sometimes too honest, I can be short and never focus correctly when instructed on Lego placement or Batman's attributes. But they trust me enough to ask me about everything, anything: where we come from, where we go, why food grows and every night it is my turn to do bedtime I hear this

 "Mama, I love you this this this this this this this...... MUCH!!!!!!! .... two tanks of love just exploded all over YOU!!!!" And I feel it, in my core. I feel it in my heart. I feel it in my Soul.

Because I was meant to be YOUR Mama, my boys. And your Mama loves you more than anything, no tank could contain it, no world, no Universe. Happy 5th Birthday.



  xo, your mama.

Weakened by the Week

It has been a really weird week. I expected the boys back Tuesday but then the house was not done and then there was that storm that blew in and dropped snow on our place and all the roads around and so that delayed things. And so I am still here, alone. Sitting here, listening to Pandora and various public radio shows at a distractingly loud volume to detract my thoughts from being alone.

I have made things, I have cooked meals, I have worked steadily. But I still have more free time than the previous 4.75 years and some of it has been spent right here, in front of the screen, clicking, reading, seeking. Finding some pretty dismal stuff. Pinterest claiming images for their own, the evil-doer of the internets now when a few months ago they were lauded as The Best Thing Ever at AltSummit. People publicly annoucing the spilt of their marriage and the terrible things that are then said. Other people saying marriage should never end even if someone is beating the shit out of them.

What the fuck happened to you, Internets? It is so naive to say that, I know. But jesus, it is like civility, humane behavior, privacy ... out the window. The last few days I feel like showering the guck off. And mainly because I have had the time to click through links, read, seek.

I remember a few months back searching an old friend and I came up with his dad's obituary. A CHP officer off-duty killed on the road by some teens driving illegally in the family minivan. The comments underneath were horrific. People who did not know my friend, his father, his loss ... the things they said burned my eyes and heart and I prayed he never saw that page. Never.

__________________________________________

I am looking forward to their return more than I can say. This world, this online one, it not one to live in. So rough.

A bright spot in my lonely week, one far removed from the screen. Lunch prepared by my lovely upstairs neighbour. 90 next month. She made me German saurkraut and sausage and crispy potatoes and we talked for hours over a properly dressed table about aging and hospice and Germany and immigration and violence and dissociation and the definition of cooperative living. And I felt much more real than I ever do here.


I did my hair proper to visit her. Because she deserved properly done hair. Call me a dreamer but I wish the whole Internets would stop, do their hair, sit down with someone who is almost 90 and survived the Holocaust and listen and shut the fuck up.

As I will right now. Some calming images of my home because now I am all het up.



M upstairs also introduced me to the publication The Sun, a magazine of really lovely print writing. Reading it reminded me of when blog reading was inspiring, ad free and clearly written to be read, not inflame, defame, destroy, wound.

Though this current issue (not up online yet) shattered a part of me. The piece Underneath the Armor of the young Marines in Afganistan, in and out of battle gear. 20 year old battle hardened warriors when out of gear look like... 20 years olds.

How I wish this world could be so different, so much better, so less saddening.....

Solo

I've been away from my boys one week a year since they turned two. Solo, alone. I don't travel for work, no. I travel for sanity. And I am a very blessed woman for having a partner that has allowed that space for me.

This time, this week, is different. They left me. Headed down South, my three boys, to work on the old house, touch base and reconnect. I have been alone in our new home, albeit temporary home/apartment. But it is my first time alone in Our Space, with their Lego scatterings, Tim's socks that need washing, our dishes and coffee paraphernalia.



I have come out of sleep each morning listening. Looking for a small silhouette in the doorway asking if it is was daytime yet, Mommy. And yet it is quiet, the early sunrise over the hill pulling light into the day, softening their room in its glowing. Made coffee for one, donned work attire, checked in by phone. Headed out.

Returning to a home undisturbed and silent is disconcerting. Knowing it is temporary is comforting. I have progressed in the way of sorting and quilting and 'catching up' in general. and I thank the blessed gods of all for this not being my norm.



They bring light and true Life to my days. In their churning chaos and needs, they define me. The library pulls but not enough. Making of dinner calls but not quite enough. Making is there to fulfill but also fill a hole. Me time is relative when there becomes just too much of it.

I love being a mother and wife and worker and woman and person. I love taking the time to realize that. I miss my babies, babies no longer, I admit, but I miss mine own.

I am grateful to love my life. I am eager for their return. I am trying to embrace the quiet. I am not so good with it.

Solitude vivifies; isolation kills. -Joseph Roux

Settle In

Set·tle    /ˈsɛtl/
verb (used with object)



1.to appoint, fix, or resolve definitely and conclusively; agree upon (as time, price, or conditions).
2.to place in a desired state or in order: to settle one's affairs.
3.to pay, as a bill.
4.to close (an account) by payment.
5.to migrate to and organize (an area, territory, etc.); colonize: The pilgrims settled Plymouth.
6.to cause to take up residence: They settled immigrants in urban areas.
7.to furnish (a place) with inhabitants or settlers: The French settled this colony with army veterans.
8.to quiet, calm, or bring to rest (the nerves, stomach, etc.).
9.to stop from annoying or opposing: A sharp word will settle that youngster.
10.to conclude or resolve: to settle a dispute.
11.to make stable; place in a permanent position or on a permanent basis.
12.to cause (a liquid) to become clear by depositing dregs.
13.to cause (dregs, sediment, etc.) to sink or be deposited.
14.to cause to sink down gradually; make firm or compact.
15.to dispose of finally; close up: to settle an estate.
16.Law .
a.to secure (property, title, etc.) on or to a person by formal or legal process.
b.to terminate (legal proceedings) by mutual consent of the parties.



This is Me now. All of it. All 16 parts speak to me in some way. But for the most part my Soul speaks right now and so the definitions just make sense. Because I am settled in a way I have not felt in... forever? A calm; a lesser need and a greater need.

And the calm that has descended into my depth and made me settle into a Center that does not feel like swirling right now but more like sediment, layers slowly shifting and deepening, creating a base that feels solid, like concrete. Breathing solid concrete.



Things that were once so scary are less so. Things I did not want to do are seen in a different light. People I want to be near are people I want to be near... but there is new space for people that I should want to meet. I am grateful for the ease of transition, for the lovely Marcie I met at the park with her babes that came equipped with costume bag, snacks and an eager desire to find a friend like me as I wanted to find a friend like her.

Who do you thank when you profess to not really pray anymore? I turn to the Universe in general.
Thanks, Universe. You are tops.

And the Question Came

It was bedtime last night and I was laying down between the boys. We were huddling under the blankets, slowly finding the bedtime rhythm of a late night. We began the familiar routine of question/answer/story as we worked through the day and then they asked : "Mommy, where did we come from?". I was startled but I also understood they were asking me Where We came from. Not the question of the womb or the home but the Question...

I didn't say God put us here because I don't believe that. I said I didn't know. I explained a bit about evolution and Earth and the Big Bang, about the Universe being so so large and about every beautiful thing that exists had some path, some place and evolution to make it so. But that I also didn't really know.

The conversation wove about, to volcanic action and back to the time of Dinosaurs and why they became extinct, or dead, as Mace will clarify every time. We talked of food and starvation and legs mired in tar (Mace's theory) and eventually the words slowed down, the bodies I lay between became more and more still and then their breath fell into that rhythm, the one that instantly makes me feel at one with them, at One.

I want them to ask that Question again and again. I want to explain about the miracle that Life is. In the simplest of ways; by showing them a shoot growing, or their lungs exchanging gases with that shoot, or the stars that spin through their own cosmic dance.

I will not be able to tell them that they were put here by the choice of some Other thing because I don't know about that. But I can tell them that they are Here. And I can tell them about what I do know. And about Love. That seems a very good start.



* Thinking of Susan, a brilliant star with a valiant warrior heart and a voice that spoke to hundreds, thousands, millions as she lived. She is missed on this day.

Anew

Do you believe in dreams? Ask me three years ago and I am not sure of the answer to that one. Younger Me might have said, yes, of course. Three years ago Me? Not so sure. Me? Today? Equivocal resounding Yes.

I write this from my new home (for now). My home in a town that was a name only 8 years ago when we first started passing through this area. 5 years ago when we first stopped in it. 3 years ago when my brother settled in 'just down the road". Today, when we now live here. Dreams, they are funny things how they settle into our skin and soul and call and call until we listen.

Dreams, not the ones of sleep, but the ones of Action, never look as we think they should. Never wear the robes we imagine they will. But once put into Action and let go, they become what they are.

I wonder sometimes if it is Dreaming or just listening to what the Universe is actually saying to us. I cannot really know, new to this again but I want to believe that in the listening, we are finding our way.

I asked about a year ago for a new way; a way out, in and around it all. I wanted something New and Better. I wanted what we all want, It All. Define as you will, it looks different for each of us. It is not the first time I have asked, Oh, no, not the first. I think I ask a lot. Maybe more than others.

The thing is, when you ask, well, Ms/Mr/Mrs Universe can answer in spades. This time we were ready so we packed our Selves and cast iron and toys boxes and stuff of life and followed the signs.

For a few weeks now I have come out of sleep at 4:30 a.m. knowing exactly where I am, not disoriented but just awake. And I have thought so much about this, this Dreaming, this Asking. Pinch. Pinch me, again. It still feels like vacation, all those spots we drove and drove to, striving to get away from it all, away from that which was not Us but that which we wanted To Be.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

And Then....
A few days later when I resume the writing of this post...

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

One power outage when NOTHING worked out here in the country, not even 911... (not as drastic as that sounds, it was only for 8 hours)...
One experience of a food and farm conference where Everyone, farmer or eater, spoke the same language I have been trying to articulate for years in a deadened Suburban area...
One day later after we had my folks here to scope out homes and property...
Three days after intense orientation in my newest job setting, barrage of information, union negotiations of which I have zero experience, system changes, people changes, all changes...

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I can still say the same thing. My breathe catches when I see pine trees on the long drive home from these long days of orientation to new things. My mind slows as I realize that I have time to breathe here. My smile lifts as the girl at the check out stand asks me about my day.

Utopia does not exist. It is a dangerous thing to play with the idea that there is a more perfect place to be in the Universe than the one you are Now. But when you give up the perfect, embrace the idea that the Dreaming is a good thing and also a thing to Follow...

Life as is changes; Dinner still needs to get to the table, jobs still need to be done and cars still break down at the most inopportune of times. But you? You feel lighter, looser, happier and more capable.

Let me rephrase, Not You. I. I feel those things.

And that makes me feel like sharing for the first time in a long time.

Hello, from our new Home. :) Glad to be back

An appendectomy and Adieu

Our 17th anniversary started with a sponge bath. A very thorough sponge bath. Not a sexy role playing thing, it was a bath of necessity.

As I helped Tim wash away 2 days of hospital funk, scrubbed his hair, his scruff, I thought "So this is what they mean about sickness and health". I told him that thought.

We've been together a long time, almost half of our lives. We're weathered together, our skin, our souls. We've come through.


I had his ring on my necklace for two days, he gave it to me pre-op, a quick exchange before they took him up for an emergent appendectomy. It is a major minor surgery, usually quick if not painless. But still my heart hit my throat when I saw him on the gurney, spoke with the surgeon, watched them wheel him away, sat in the stuffy waiting room.


I signed onto the caring for others almost the same year we came together. I've been doing both for a very long time now. I can say when the two intersect, it may not be my strong point. It is one thing to care for a stranger for 45 minutes and then walk away. Quite another when it is someone you love, when that someone is your spouse.

He is on the mend. A bit of a surly and anxious patient but home and on the mend. He walks strighter by the half hour, things seem to be righting, the surgeon was pleased with the simplicity of a sometimes complex surgery. The boys welcomed him home, all shouts and questions, happy that their daddy only lost something inside his tummy.


We've postponed our leaving all with well wishes and little issue, folks sending healing thoughts and prayers, friends bringing funny gag gifts that even made the surgeon laugh.

(That's a ceramic Lassie. She has a new appendix for Tim in her mouth. Clever sweet friends)

Weathering another storm, this one quick and hard, waking to a New Year's Eve day hard, bright and hot. All clear.


I wish I could tell you about how Tim saved me this night 17 years ago but the details are a little compromising. He was there though...kissed me, bundled me up and took me home, let me use his toothbrush...the first of maybe what is a 1000 times now. We've not been apart since. Distance at times, struggle at times but the relationship? Right there.

That night when I used his toothbrush I was, ah, seeing things. I was in his bathroom brushing my teeth when I glanced into the mirror and there I was, about 89 years old; not Me young but Me old, so old. And that's when I knew. I was right where I was meant to be. A big thing to realize at 19 but unavoidable in a way.

I don't know if we'll make it to that vision in the mirror together, wizened old ones. But the last 2 days, the last 17 years actually, well, they are just proof that I would like to.

Happy anniversary, MCD. Glad you are okay.
Good night, 2011. Hello, 2012.
All the lighter for the loss of an appendix.

Inked

Bones knit themselves in the most beautiful of ways. When you fracture a bone it is apart, the strongest part of your body. It repairs the damage first by laying a new structure, a filigree really. Over time that delicate web fills itself in and becomes what is called a callus. The callus is never really the bone it was before, it is never as elegant, never as joined. But that callus marks that spot, where that bone fractured, bears the mark until the bone is dust again. I think sometimes that human souls are the same. Human souls can fracture but they heal…by building a network…and filling it in with a callus. Forever marked but whole in a new way.

I spent a weekend with some fantastically beautiful women and finished it by building a new structure on my body. I took some time for myself and ended up coming home marked forever in a way I feel completely comfortable with. There was a moment when I went breathless, sitting in that chair in that parlor, feeling the deep stinging pull of the needles and the question formed in my mind… What does this mean to me? But then I let it go because it is what it is.

I did yoga in a room that gazed out over what has been called a meatgrinder sea. On this day it was not, it was flat and yet not. The wind would sail across it and smooth it and push it and ripple it and then throw it but a gentle throw, nothing like I know. Nothing like my sea. I was in a room with women I had come to adore in 24 hours and shared what I find to be a most scared experience, the practice of yoga. There is something that happens when you breath in unison, you become a tribe.

I think humans souls knit themselves like fractures…possibly if they are lucky, possibly if they are strong, possibly if… but no, that is wrong. We live and breathe and so we heal and that is really the only possibility. It is what it is.



One of the amazing things about the human body is its complexity and its ferocity when it is in need of healing. My fascination with this process makes me what I am, it is why I do what I do. But forever I will turn to breathing in unison and chanting a mantra in a safe space as my healing choice for the soul. When you chant you lose all boundary of Self because if you didn't, well, you would just feel ridiculous. Those moments shared, chanting with women I love sealed a conviction I have long held true, one I find hard to articulate as maybe all truths are.

And so I went on that Monday to a man named Lee and asked him to put that seal on me, where I can see it. In a way it felt like the most fitting healing despite infliction. And now home again, I glance down and I am happy for the moments that led to this. And ready for the next moments.



When the Universe speaks and if you want to listen, you just do. And then you smile, rub some ointment on your healing wrists and go along.

MIA

I don't mean to be MIA. I don't want to be MIA. I do that thing where I write blog posts in my head or make comments on some of the amazing writing that I get to read every so often. But it does not translate, the words to page or rather screen.

I spend a lot of time working lately. It crept in, the hours incresing as they had to. In a way I decided I wanted to practice a little, anticipating that I might have to actually go 'for real' full time. First it was three days, then I added a fourth day and now it is five. Funny how time can creep away so easily, so quickly, given readily. I have not been angry or upset about the change, it feels right to be working this way, testing myself. But it does leave very little time for anything else.

Anything else; blogging falls into that category. I love words but spend hours tapping our patient care documentation, it is not fancy stuff and the obligation sometimes sends my wrists into a spiral of stiffness and pain and I realize it bleeds me of the desire to tap out more for myself. But then I read something from last year, something like this and it makes me realize.

I love this space for many reasons but those reasons have taken a backseat of late. I have little time to read and connect and comment and engage in this realm. But I know it will be here, when the time comes for me to be here. And I want to keep placing words here because when I glance back into my own lives and words here, it connects me somehow. It is truly the height of Me-ness, to put words here for Me. But I kinda' feel like that is okay too.


Insta-life. I love it.

In the mean time I am holding onto to the tether that Twitter and Instagram have become. As the time comes for packing and rearranging our lives and (gulp) big big moves, it is nice to have a place to reach out and find you all.

And as for the move? It all came through so far. The job, slated at part time with benefits for all of us, the timeline we needed. A trip North to find a place to lay our heads is in order. Holidays are in order with the whole family coming down to gather one more time.

But I am going to go through with 365 though. It looks like we will be picking up the moving van on December 31st, figure that will make a great last photo for a year that is shaping up to have been one somewhat light on words but packed full of actions.


no Halloween recaps this year but here is a glimpse


On my bday last month. Pretty happy.

RIP Steve. From the Eye of a Little.

Do you let your children play with your iPhone? We do.

It is a great babysitter. Well, not babysitter. But, it is great, you know? They, with their facile minds, just get the iPhone. It was made for them, for their small swiping fingers and lateral thinking. For the last year my small ones, the ones I swore would never have their own cell phones until 35, have usurped, explored, played. I know Steve Jobs; the man maker genius, is gone. But oh god, what he left us.

Mace has fingers that fly. I am constantly amazed by his ability to process the way the iPhone works. He inherently 'gets' it and I barely keep up when he is teaching me just how to beat the next level of Angry Birds. But he also loves the camera. I would like to think we have encased our precious little babies (read:iPhones) in steel so we regularly turn them over for their exploration.

Mace takes pictures. 100s. When I tap Camera Roll I am simultaneously dismayed and amazed. I love his eye. Follows some of the pictures I found today on my Roll, eye by Mace, processing by Mama.






Thanks, Steve. For giving (much more) facile minds a way to express themselves. Your Stanford speech resonates in me in more way than one.

*** Used the Cameramatic app to 'enhance' Mason's photos/ which is even more evidence of the lasting impact of Jobs/ that y'all know what that means.

Good Stuff

I want to tell you so many things. I want to tell you about feeling good. So good.


Because more than one person and place told me I was needed and valuable and would make their place better. Because we wandered through open places where homes sprout out of the earth, homes that I dreamt of but forgot of that dreaming until the doors opened wide. Because yesterday a wide open opportunity cracked light into a place that has laid quiet and dim for many years.

It has been five days of immense change, possibility, opening. It started with a long drive North with my partner, you know, that one who lays next to me in the dark hours and struggles to hold the daily grind of life at bay in the light hours. The one who I forget to cheriah at times when the grind of life grinds on me. It was a good drive, full of talk of dreaming and doing. And also some loud ranting on my part that is always received so gently and taken so readily.

And then Thursday morning I walked nervously into a setting where I was anticipating grilling, questioning, proving. But the space was not that, it was courting. The courting of Me, my skills and person. I was blushing by the end of the two hours there. And I was encouraged and totally sold. The rest of the day we spent on winding roads, framed by old old oaks, winding into a town that is my kind of town. Old and new, seamless. A library that has a whole floor for children, tucked down creaking stairs and opening to space that says 'We love and value small people who want to read and learn'. Tiny local stores full of handmade and whimsy.

A school on a hill that advocates learning outside of the classroom. Victorians and cottages that beg to be owned because they cost a fraction, a reasonable fraction.


And then Friday, another interview. Her first laughing line to me when I walked into her office? "Oops, guess I should have told you it is casual Friday," (giggle) as I stood in my 'dress up' clothes. The giggle put me at ease immediately and I liked this woman, one who could be my boss. I sat at a table with 6 people, my colleagues, told them about myself. And then got really pass-out nervous by the attention but they gracefully stepped in to give me a minute to recover. Then we just talked. About our work, what they want and what I want and the Universe said 'Bam!'. Because they need Me. Exactly what I am. They need someone who lives in that town that I was in yesterday, they need an experienced neuro specialist, they have plans, big plans. And they want me to be a part of it. I did not blush this time, I fiercely lobbied. Because I felt it, that click, that this was it, what I was wishing; for accomplished confident colleauges seeking growth and community and support. The only drawback is the position is not full time. So I have decided it is not a drawback only a sign for me to get in there and remind them why they need me there full time. I was offered both jobs which is so awesome, but Job #2 is it. I am hoping the Universe continues to speak to me, to help make it happen.

And then I met my baby niece, the newest person to join the expanding world of my blood. Giant eyes, lashed for days, animated beyond belief for her 4 weeks.

So wonderful, to hold her close and talk to her Mama and hug my brother, fiercely again, to see him move into this place in his life, to know we could be just down the way from them.

And then Tahoe, where I feel like my cup has run a little over. This weekend in Northstar there is a fundraising race and event. It is organized by Tara Llanes, a pro-mountain bike rider that was in a terrible crash that resulted in a spinal cord injury. She hosts the event every year and we have been there for three years in a row. Before I transitioned to home health, I was a neuro specialist, mainly stroke and brain injury, but I treated persons with SCI often. I make it a point to be there to contribute but I always wanted to do more than just show up.

This year a new company called CORE was part of the event. Click the link to know more but basically a young guy named Aaron Baker started the first fully adapted gym for people with functional limitations, things that might keep them out of a 'gym' setting. He opened in January, all equipment is designed for individuals that have need for special equipment and it costs 60 bucks a month to join. He wants to spread this love and by god, I am going to help him do it. My mind jumped immediately to opening one up here at the base of Tahoe, for those that have need for this 'niche' gym, as he called it.

I feel so passionate about this for many reasons. My greatest challenge when I worked in rehab was not the treatment, it was the discharge process. Telling a person "Your rehab is done, now go out and do your best in a world that does not accomodate many of your needs". I had a few resources to refer but they were all short term, anemic when you think of time in terms of years of recovery. No matter whether that person was 21 or 76, there is no place to tell them to go once their rehab dollars run out. But now there is, there is a vision that Aaron realized because he has a high complete cervical SCI and he never said to himself, "I can't".

The amazing thing? He walks, people. He is a high cervical complete SCI and he gets up out of his chair and walks. This is both miraculous and encouraging for anyone living with an injury. Actually, this is mindblowing. He says it is because he never stopped training his body to recover. I believe him.

So, wow. The Universe and its voice these past few days has floored me.

I am grateful and joyful and so very happy. And that is such a good thing.
That is what I wanted to tell you. And that I hope you are too, want to give some of it to you, my friends. It feels like so much right now, I have plenty to spare.

For Her, For Me

It had been months since I sat in front of my sewing machine. July, actually. The machine collected dust in the corner and any and all projects in the queue sat, neglected or forgotten or undone. I had ideas about this and that; a quilt, a knit hat, a new t-shirt handstitched. But these hands, they remained idle. Well, not idle but tapping out work or turning book pages or wrestling the young boys that fill so much of the hours, those precious ones that are open.

A huge factor in availability of precious hours is work. I think that is the norm for a working mother. A shift to a 5 day work week has rippling effects, it intensifies demands, crushes them into those precious hours and I find I choose making dinner over making 'something'. I find myself on the floor with Lincoln Logs rather than seated at the machine, watching them rather than myself.


There was a shift last week though, both boys sick after a return to the germ haven that is a small children's school. Tim caught the awful bug, my Mama came up against her own health issues, work lightened up. I found myself home more than not for the week. It was an odd feeling, so many hours open and not devoted to work. It felt good.

I found myself pulling out new fabrics, letting the quilt I have been imagining take root in color and shape and design. Math and measure and cutting table. My mind had space for it, even with the demands of small people and one big not feeling well. It felt luxurious.


Over the weekend I was able to pull together the quilt for my newest niece, born 3 weeks ago. I had started a simple red and white 9 patch for her, saw it joined in almost windowpane fashion. The blocks were pieced, sitting in the pile marked 'neglect'. But then she came and pictures of her (and a surprise name switch when she was born) and suddenly she was not Rose but Avery.

I spread the blocks out on the table and saw something else, saw Avery in it and started slicing away. Which is kinda' scary when you have already spent some time piecing together all those 9 patches. The result looked nothing like the initial concept. But then, little Avery is here now, a person who could not be imagined until she appeared and started to share that self.


(Some of it is wonky as all get out but the slicing and piecing improved with each block. Quilting, such a learning curve).

We meet her this week; travel North for job interviews, relocation logistics and then Friday, baby smooshing and kissing. I am so happy to go bearing gifts for her, something that carries all the love this whole household has for her already.

And so, onward to this week. Change is afoot, I felt unsettled and excited and hopeful and so damn scared when I glance around and imagine moving. But the time at the machine? It centers me. It is not the sewing, really. It is the making. The way making something makes me feel. I feel more real. And now the real Me has to move onto hand sewing the yellow binding that Tim suggested.

And when I get back from the Northern sojourn I have this nifty 'newly re-purposed' cabinet to organize and stack full of fabric. The man can do more than pick a wicked binding.

Remember

51 minutes.

If you have the space and the ear and the time, please listen.
Hard but the loss, each has a story. Thank you StoryCore for doing this for us.

240 and Ticking

I started 365 on January 1st. I wanted a challenge, a recording. I wanted to pick up my camera daily and work it, work my eye and my equipment. I wanted the discipline. I am 240 days in with a few missed days here and there which is not too hard to shrug off.



I am finding that I may be getting more than I thought from this year of shooting. I may have recorded the last year we will live in this house, this space, these hills, this Home. Hard to believe so much (and yet so little) has happened in the span of 240 days.

In January Tim and I took a solo trip North. We needed kid-less time and we wanted to explore. We headed North into the land at the base of Lake Tahoe, rolling foothills not very different from our own but with so much more space and possibility and promise. The promise tasted sweet and unfamiliar, an adventurous taste reminding us of those days pre-family and pre-home ownership when we used to leave ... to Africa, to Ireland, To Oz. It was a heady thought, the leaving and relocating. We returned home, immersed back into the Home we have now, the work, the friends, the lives. But we could not let it go.

We talked about it. I Mondo Beyondo'd it in a very quiet internal way. We incessantly perused Zillow and Redfin and had discussions with my live in parents about logistics and possibilities and hope for a different place, a Future that was not so shaped by the Past.

And then we went, three weeks North with our boys, seeing family interspersed with more searching and finding, a deepening well of assurance that this was right. We left reluctantly, afraid to re-immerse and reconnect and maybe forget our resolve.

The day before we returned I screwed up the courage to look into one of the larger healthcare providers in the area. They had no less than 5 jobs open in my area of practice, 5 jobs in the area we want to call Home. But I stalled, hesitated to apply online, frozen in the headlights of such big change.

I spoke to my supervisor the first day back about my desire to move and the very real possibility of leaving my position. She was supportive and encouraging and even gave me ideas about what my salary should be up North. I still did not apply.

It has been a month since we returned. Last Monday I put in my application. I received a call back that evening. I talked with a recruiter Tuesday then had a phone interview Wednesday for a position, Friday for another. The medical system is stellar, the people I have spoken to make me smile, the jobs offer fully paid benefits for the whole family and a whole lot of other bells and whistles that had me jumping up and down in my chair. We are headed North again, Tim and I, two in-person interviews scheduled for later in September.

I am giddy, I am so damn nervous and I am marveling at all that can happen in 240 days. Some days have felt mundane and unoriginal, slogging through paperwork, later seeking a glimmer of light for that picture I 'have' to take.


But if this all happens in the way it may happen, I will forever be amazed and grateful for recording the Year Our Lives Changed A Lot.

Going to keep going to see what the next 125 days hold.

A pie for Mikey

I work in health care. I work in home care. I work with the sick and sometimes the dying. Many of the people I see are more in the ebb than the flow. It is what I do and I feel that I am in it because I do it well.

Over my years in home care I have come to appreciate so many things; the way people feel when they are finally home, in their own clothes, surrounded by their familair things, allowed to have their routines. I worked for years and years in the hospital setting; the world of gowns that lay you literally bare when you dare to move out of bed. Later I moved to the rehab setting where you are allowed to wear your own clothes but you cannot because your left arm and leg do not work so your spouse goes to walmart and gets a hideous pair of pull on sweats that leave your frame swimming and exposes you in a totally different way.



I am trying to say I love home care, love what I do now. And I am digressing far from what I was trying to actually say. Friday night I made a pie. I made it because of a father and mother, husband and wife, family and life that was broken by unforeseen tragedy. She asked for pies in his memory and I felt as if it was a small thing to do in light of the wave of huge loss, maybe a small current sent her way as she reshapes everything that she is.



I see loss on a weekly basis because we have a hospice component to our services. I take hospice patients regularly. It sounds a bit anomalous, rehab in the hospice setting. In these times I go into the home to teach a family member or caregiver how to help make their loved one more physically comfortable, I teach them how to protect their bodies as they struggle to not only care for this dying person but take on roles they never imagined. It is a great privilege to be a part of this but it is never not wrenching.

So, I see death in many forms daily. But this death, this loss, it strikes a different chord. It is one thing to try to accept the process of loss, another to have no say, no warning, no time. It is truly a terrible loss. And so despite the fact that she is a stranger, a person not met yet, I made the pie. I read her post and made the pie and cried as I shopped for the needed items and felt that the loss was not distant.



The pie is still being eaten. My sisters are in town and the little cousins keep running in and out and people keep scooping bites and pieces and asking how to make it and hearing the about the loss of this man. Loving the pie but not the reason for its presence.



Yes, we will all go someday. And none of us know the how or when or why. Won't know. But I do know we are here now and can live best by embracing it all, the big huge messy picture that is our Life. It is not too late to make some pie. Or give some love. Or change things you do not like.





My beloveds.

Mothering :: Lessons

Last night I did the unthinkable. I withheld my love from my children. They had completely dismantled a handmade necklace, scattering it in every direction. When I found them it was too late to salvage the piece, bedtime was minutes away and my head was going to explode. Fuming, I yelled for them to get to their room! and then went into my office to try to settle myself. It was Tim’s turn for bedtime and I decided that I was just going to get my yoga things together and leave the house early, give myself a few extra minutes to calm down.

One thing led to another and the early start to class did not happen. But I saw one of the boys run by the window on the outside patio and started to see red again, knowing they were drawing out the already arduous process of bedtime yet again. I yelled, telling them to get back! to their room and get in that bed!. I turned off the light, shut the door and went back to find the ever elusive pieces of yoga that I need for classes. And then I heard it … from their room.

I could hear him crying. Racking sobs, so loud. I knew Tim was in there, that they were not crying out of fear. But even more, I knew exactly what I had done. In my anger I had diliberately ignored our bedtime ritual, the kiss-hug-high five and repeat that happens every night unless we are too far to touch. I had ignored them racing past the window which was the two of them looking for me to say sorry and get that hug-kiss-high five. I had let my anger get the best of me and was hearing the result of it.

I opened the door. Mason was there, devastating tears and deep sobs, Owen just staring at me, closed face and shut down. Both looked at me and I opened my arms and they came into them. I felt their still small bodies burrow into me, I apologized for being so angry and also for being so mean. I apologized for letting my hurt hurt them and then we cuddled and laughed a little and said a proper good night.

Yoga last night was like a purge and a prayer. I have been at the end of my tether in so many ways lately. There are times when being stretched so thin in so many directions feels like it will never end. Sometimes the hardest tether to take is the one of Mother. There is no rest from it, it is a ceaseless demand and a challenging position. Sometimes the tether feels like a noose as they refuse to eat this or cooperate with that or take 10 minutes to usher from car to house or house to car. It is no matter that I have to work or launder or cook or clean, always the Mother part comes first now because it should, because it has to, because they are and so that it how it is.



It struck me as I thought of writing this post that so much of it has to do with what I am mothering. They are children now, unmalleable in many ways. They are assertive and have desires and wants and wishes and ways of giving and holding back now too. They challenge us daily to think of new ways to entice or engage or just get away. They make me worry in a different way as school and reading and learning and Life starts coming in. I am feeling a new fear, unacknowledged until this moment, that I cannot do this. That I don’t know the right way to do this. That I am hurting more than helping, that I am fucking them up.

That feeling has not gone away as I write this, my fears still sit at the back of my throat as we contemplate huge life changes, knowing they will have to go along with any ride we choose. But I know one thing. I am not going to with hold my love from them, no matter what anger sparks from whatever is happening. Because that was a scary thing and it left me feeling empty and them feeling so sad, so sad. Chalk it up to another lesson in the land of Mothering. A good one, an important one, an essential one.

Going to go hug one of my boys now. Lesson learned.

Blogher11 :: Unmoored

Last year I attended the annual Blogher conference in NYC, my first. I posted about it the day after and I still feel strongly in my conclusion that Blogher is whatever you make it to be.

I went to Friday of the conference this year and I do want to speak of the experience but cautiously, very cautiously. Because for me this year felt totally different and although not terrible, I am not putting 'different' into the 'better' category.


Let me say this; I do think tacking on a conference that entails the gathering of three thousand women at the end of a three week journey may have been a bit much. I feel like I entered the space already exhausted, not energized or enthused about blogging. And Blogher is really about just that, women blogging. The conference has grown exponentially and with it the topics, the numbers and the sponsers. There was a lot going on and information and people speeding by at a rapid pace. And stuff, so much stuff.

There was also a few intimate moments meeting the ones I love to read and know online and letting their physical person take shape in my life, getting that hug and learning little bits of information that rarely slip out online in our measured blog posting and twitter clips. But when these things happened in the quiet of a hotel room or at the edge of a pool, both places not technically included in the conference space, well, that was when I have to question just why I am there.


I found the pace and information and the sheer seas of people to be too much for me this year. I found difficulty staying in it and wanting to stay in it and I actually ended up leaving Friday evening, calling my lovely husband who was juggling the boys that day and asking him to grab me early and bring me back to our little rental cabin thingy where the boys were wreaking havoc and there was a horizontal space to lay my head. I did stay to see the one part of Blogher that I think remains true to the initial spirit and purpose of blogging, the Voices of the Year speakers.

I listened to Bon and Kate read and then listened to other women speak their written words and cried and laughed (hard) and then cried again. That part will always be like that, I think. That part is the reason why I read and sometimes write in today's blogging world. You should read that part, and you can here, but man, it was good to hear the words spoke clearly and purposefully by their creators.

I did attend the Thursday night parties which were low key, except for the seven feet in heels drag queens wandering the halls.

I did wander through the Expo hall where the sponsors set up booths to entice and engage the bloggers. For me it was definitely zoo-like. The Jimmy Dean sun guy from the commercials was there, there was a lot of sausage, some free Dove bars .... a lot more, oh lord, a lot more. I think so far as I dig down into the bag of swag which followed me home, I have yet to find anything that I would buy, endorse. I did get a free copy of this book by these ladies, the book went promptly to my newly pregnant friend and I do hope it is a help or at least a laugh as she navigates this new part of life.

I think what I am trying to say is that this year I realized Blogher is not for me. I don't believe I will take my dollars, hard earned that they are, and direct them towards another weekend next year. Not because there is anything fundamentally wrong with Blogher or sponsers, not that there is anything wrong with me or the way I choose to blog. Mainly because we are not a great fit, Blogher and I. I would rather hoard those dollars so that on some future weekend I can travel to new place that holds old friends where there is no session schedule or party to make but just people and tea and couches and drinks. All the laughs and fun that happen at Blogher but scaled down to just the people and not why they blog or if they make money or do it right but instead what they love and believe in and plant and think and do.

I will say, there was a great moment where I received a detailed description from this lovely woman about how to bale hay and dispose of feral kittens and that was pretty cool (please say that like Miley Cyrus as you read those words because that is how we use them around this household and it makes us laugh every time).

But hell, who knows, now that it is NYC again I might just use it as an excuse to travel, not buy a ticket and just crash people's hotel rooms.

Adios to another Blogher.