•gratuitous jammies post•

With bonus golden-hour shot of family on the UFO at Arroyo Park. Happy Holidays, everyone!

xox

•turkey•

Happy Columbus Day! I mean... well, our Thanksgiving always involves Pittsburgh and Columbus, and lots of beloved people. It is always a true reason to give thanks. May your holiday be full of family, blood and otherwise!
xox

p.s. That gorgeous hand-knit in the picture is my friend Laura's doing.

p.p.s. Below, a video of some turkey-roasting hijinks from last year's holiday. I couldn't resist posting this, mainly because I still don't know quite what to make of it. I give you... Turkey Cord 2011! Any ideas?

•it's beginning to look a lot like giftwrap•

Winter is coming, the goose is getting fat. Rather than put my penny in the man's hat, let me introduce you to No New Christmas. Particularly, the rules.

No New Christmas was an effort by my family, put forth a few years back, to gift things of a recycled, made, or otherwise stridently not-purchased variety. When I say family, I mean Troy and myself. It was easy when we began, to include Penn in the fold. At two, he didn't have much of an opinion about NITB vs. No New. That's all different this year, as Lego has tightened its grip. Troy and I have been avoiding the topic. To No New, or not to No New? That is a different blog post.

I've never actually set about creating guidelines for NNX (sounds like a boy band), but I'm inspired by the recent ferver (my own) for advent calendars. You've seen these things–they number one through twenty-five, they help you while away the days until Christmas, they usually involve the popping out of wax figurines that taste sort of like chocolate. I started making a tiny-art shadow-box version last year, then abandoned it for baby socks. Until I get pictures, don't ask. (Ask Pinterest.) Lego has an advent calendar. There is now a Whisky advent calendar, recently admired by Huffington Post. Which brings me back to NNX (No New Christmas): could you D-I-Y a booze advent calendar? Could you keep it NNX? Perhaps. It all depends on the rules I am about. to. set. forth. Right here:

How To Achieve No New Christmas 

(or #howialienatedeveryone)

1) Use these guidelines to help shape your gift-giving season, not everyone else's. Be a good sport, and always be gracious when receiving any gift. From anyone. See Rules #7-8.

2) Gifts must be recycled, reused, repurposed or hand-made.

3) Consumerism is not the enemy–waste is. Feel free to buy something recycled, reused, or repurposed. Feel free to buy something hand-made by someone else. But before you wander into the gray with a plastic-wrapped bar of soap from some small company in Vermont, ask yourself. Is it really No New? (See Rule #8 for wiggle room.) A human hand may have, at some point, touched a set of Legos. Doesn't count. (She said to no one's husband in particular.)

4) Hand-made gifts can incorporate new purchases of ingredients. We need food to live. Seems like it should get a pass. Also, I don't want to be the one to begrudge you your peppermint bark. (She said, hoping her friend would read this post and made that flipping peppermint bark again.) Finally, it's unwise to recycle chocolate.

5) Gift Wrap must conform to Rule #2. But see Secret Rule #10.

6) Stockings must conform to Rule #2.

7) Service Gifts must... these are tricky. Are massages new or made? How about that wine-and-cheese-of-the-month-club? This is a wild card rule. Totally your call, whether or not that heifer is new. (Spoiler alert: you actually get to decide on all of these. It's Choose-Your-Own-Advent, and you're winning!)

8) Bonus Rule: when one of your gifts is made entirely of repurposed/recycled/reimagined items that you did not have to go out and purchase, you gain a little wiggle room. For other items, like the Death Star 10188.

9) Since there is no zero-waste alternative, I hereby sanction use of the USPS.

Secret Rule #10) Gift wrap you purchased at 90% off last year totally counts as NNX. xox

November 19, 2012 update! I finished my sock advent calendar. It was actually as much fun, start to finish, and it looked and sounded. I did manage to get some no-new Legos in there, as well. (Thank goodness for teen-aged neighbors!)

I've always loved Boxing Day. And the absence of the need to do anything on the day after Giftmas. The day deserves its own compartment and surprise.

One Snowy Day gave its life for this advent calendar. All beat-up, beyond-repair books should go to such fine resting places! xox

•every so often•

I think, I'm doing it. The sun breaks through the clouds, the pavement shines with promise. It's a good feeling. xox

Penn's "habitat."

"Can I sleep in my habitat?"

•artichokes•

I told Penn "True Blood" is not a movie. It is a television show about artichokes. 

Later, amidst the usual bedtime tears, my suddenly-five-year-old wanted to know,
"Are you gonna watch an artichoke show? I don't like artichokes, but if they're not going in my mouth I want to see it." Then, "You get to watch stuff and I don't!"

Well, yeah. And perhaps the eventual slumber of a five-year-old is better for it. 

Recently, a friend lamented having showed her daughter an animated film about dragons. The movie introduced the verb "killing" into the toddlers vocabulary. Another friend, the mother of a boy who I've credited with teaching my son the art of constantly pretending to have a gun in his hand, recently mentioned that her husband is very anti-gun. So. File all of this under no-matter-what-we-do? We've tried to relax about the gun obsession, in an effort to give it as little energy as possible. And we've started "Movie Nights" with Penn, in an effort to have a little bit of popcorn-riddled fun. A part of me wonders what he would be like, raised instead in the woods with hand-hewn chess pieces on a stump covered in checker-board moss. That I painted on, chia-ball style. What if. What if we raised our child with select omissions? No guns, killing, Darth Maul, black teeth, poison, or even that bad man who sent the planes with the bombs.* What would a five-year-old Penn be like, without his tart awareness of the world? Awkward though it may be, it's an awareness. 

Just musing. What is it that you wish you'd kept to yourself? For just a little longer?

xox
*Penn's description of Hitler.

Something More Than Babysitting

 

Yes, the child is out of focus here and below. 

He was moving more than you might imagine to look 

at this, and it turns out I'm not so good at catching 

fast-moving kidlets with my phone camera. 

Last night, Lis and Troy both had work-related commitments, so I’d eagerly agreed to spend a few hours hanging out with Penn.

After dinner, we gathered up some plastic bunnies with parachutes and set off for the park with them. Penn explained to me in great detail how you have to climb to the very highest point on the play structure, and then drop the bunnies just so, allowing their parachutes to fill with air and ensuring a good jump. He decided we should take not only his bunny, but the second one—the one his mom and dad use—because it’s better to have a second one, in case one person wants more turns. Because sometimes, sharing just isn’t the most fun you can have, you know?

He asked me if we could stop by his friend’s house to see if she could go to the park with us. So we wandered down to the co-housing community where she lives, the community that Lis and Troy and Penn are also a part of, though they don’t technically live in the community.

Of course, it didn’t take us long to run into someone we know. Because Lis often invites me to join community meals at the common house (and because it’s the kind of place where everyone and their goldfish belongs to the food co-op Lis and I both work for), I’m familiar to many of the members. And Penn, of course, is well known and loved.

So we stopped and chatted. And then we went and knocked on Tatum’s door. It was close to bedtime for her, but she and her mom came outside to spend a few minutes with us before Penn and I walked on to the park. Brie and I chatted and the kids ran around, giggling madly as they pretended to sneak up on us and poke us in our backs. We would break the conversation to feign shock, the kids would run away, and we’d go right back to the conversation.

Once we’d walked our friends back to their house to get ready for bed, we turned around to see another friend, Amy, across the walkway, going to visit Holly at her house. We all greeted one another warmly, and as we chatted, Holly heard us and called hello to us out her kitchen window.

It was pretty much exactly as blissfully warm and community spirited as it sounds, and what really struck me was this: Not one person even asked why Penn and I were hanging out, or where Lis and Troy were that evening. It seemed as if everyone found it entirely normal that a loving, non-parental grown-up would be out and about in the neighborhood with her four-year-old friend on a spring evening.

Eventually, Penn and I wandered on. We climbed the play structure exactly as Penn had described to me, and we dropped the bunnies from the great height, and their parachutes filled with air to help them land safely. 

And then it was getting later, and Penn was yawning, and a tired-whiny note was starting to enter his voice. And I knew just how he felt, so I picked him up to carry him home. The night air was cooling, and his little body was warm and solid as he leaned into me and put his head on my shoulder. We walked several blocks that way, in silence, until my arms couldn’t take it anymore, and I put him down and we held hands the rest of the way home, through a neighborhood where everyone knows us.

What Matters

Up late working to the sound of crickets, frogs, and the night breeze, and I suddenly felt the need to note it here. Just to document the moment, the loveliness, the gratitude I feel for it, though my body hurts, and the week's been hard, and I'm way behind on way too many things.

But none of the hard stuff really matters.

I have a screen door that leads to a world of nighttime spring breezes, the sounds of crickets and frogs. Tonight, when I was unable to concentrate (for the quadrillionth time of late), I got up and spent a few hours making myself food for the week: I washed and dried two heads of lettuce so it would be ready for salads. I hard boiled eggs and baked some chicken. I roasted tiny new potatoes with carrot chunks and cauliflower, salt and olive oil. I made tomato-y curried lentils to eat with toasted cashews and yogurt and chutney. I cut up three apples and doused them with lemon to keep them from browning. I talked on the phone with one of my most beloved people, and it was more like having her in the kitchen with me while I worked--sometimes, we were just there, on the phone, not talking, each absorbed in our own moment, but present with one another nonetheless. There I was, nourished in all ways.

My dogs had a good day. This afternoon, I set up an extension cord and took my computer to the little table on the back patio, where I sat and worked for several hours while my dogs ran around the enormous yard with my landlords' two dogs. They're the best of friends now; they all get excited when my dogs arrive each Monday morning--quivery doggie play-date joy. Today, one dog went to the water bowl and the rest followed, and then each dog drank from the bowl in turn, while the other three stood around politely waiting their turns--they almost queued up; it was hilarious.

One of my landlords just cleared an enormous space out back so that I can start a garden--he's planning to have it tilled for me when the ground is dry enough. My other landlord, his wife, is planning to grow a couple of tomato plants out there too, but mainly, the space will be mine this summer, and I hope I can grow enough to supply them with plenty of produce all season long (not really much of a challenge around these parts, where everything grows like weeds).

My life is filled with small joys that are actually enormous, and I'm surrounded by beauty all the time. I have good work to do, and people who love me with all their hearts. And people I love with all my heart. And the hard stuff is hard, and it makes me tired, and my body often hurts.

And none of the hard stuff really matters.

The lizard who indulged me by sitting quite still
for a portrait session for quite a long time.

Bunny (baby? it was very small) in the front yard late yesterday

afternoon. Edited all soft and romantic-like, because...BUNNY.

•tiny change•

Goodbye, "ToddlerBlog"!
*sniff*
xox

•today's awesomes•

mornings.

interpretation.

cauliflower.

(I mean, why cauliflower is called cauliflower:)

the path ahead.

xox

•trust your feelings•

I'm watching Star Wars for the first time with Penn.  After the usual stalls--popcorn, dishes, drinks, cat shoo'd away from my spot on the couch--we finally started the movie.  10 minutes in, I took him in my lap.  He was trembling, he was so excited.  Teeth literally chattering.

We skipped some scary parts (aunt beru-bq, trash compactor), but now it's full speed ahead to the Thai fighters and that two-meter sweet-spot Luke has to hit to 'splode the Death Star.  Penn is now on his feet and blasting the screen with his EZ-squeeze toothpaste tube squeezer.

The whole reason I've been putting this off, I realize, is me.  I'm the precious one, not my four-year-old.  Somewhere, it became important to me that he feel the sanctity of these movies... so I kept falling back on "he's too young."  Today was one of those I-can't-believe-I'm-that-Mom days.  Wherein I finally realized what a dork I've been.  It's nice, sitting here and watching this clunky old movie with my kid.  I'd forgotten how awesome, Alec Guinness.

Just now, from the couch--
Me: He shut off his computer, because he's using The Force!  He's just using his feelings!
Penn:  (holds up toothpaste thing) Did I break this?

xox

•one of those days•

When the world shows up and you meet it with open arms.

I let the tub go, unscrubbed.  I let the vegetables, the mud in the crisper, the holes in our front door where the wind blows through, all go.  The sun came back today, and though it had only been gone for twenty-four hours, Davis seemed to jump for joy.  It was like we were given back our Saturday, the farmer's market, our weekend run.  Though the wind blew, and sometimes wisps of mysterious rain dusted the blue, I stayed outside with Penn and our neighbors.  A ship was built and flown, old boards became shields and swords, oranges and broccoli were shared as equals, and adults chatted and laughed.  Someone did a face-plant.  Impromptu food and drinks were made.  The stove caught on fire.  (A paper bag, too close to the pilot.)  A baby cat-napped, a friend spent the morning "sweating copper."  I learned that phrase is actual shop-talk, not just verbal swagger.

It was a perfect day.  It was a perfect illustration of how a day can be, when something opens us up and nudges us out.

I still managed to get stuff done: dinner, snacks for the looming week, nap, chicken chores.  But it was really a day about slagging off--sunglasses and kicking a ball.  When I let go, it seems, a little time wells up from the spot where I'd kept my stick in the mud.  Elastic, that time is.  And all mine.  xox

Annie Dog

Before the gray

Annie's muzzle has been going gray. She's nine now, and I looked at her this afternoon, as we sat at a coffee shop, and noticed that her paws are graying too--her two front paws, one of which is shaped like a lobster claw at the end of her short leg. Her funky paw, as we call it, with its "opposable thumb," is gray where it used to be a deep, reddish tan.

But her eyes are bright and clear, and she looks at me with the same eager smile as ever. And in the yard when we got home, she held a stick in her mouth and batted a tennis ball around with that funky paw, playing the game she invented for herself when she was just a puppy, and bubbling with doggie joy.

•ghost time•

Frustration will fall away. There will only be the palm of his hand. The white of his beard. The softness of a belly that can tolerate cheese and peanut butter heaped on an English muffin and washed down the gullet with milk, aahhh. Won’t I miss him? Won’t my heart ache like a frost heave on new pavement? In my twenties, I worried about his health. I threatened that peanut butter--I would hide it! How ridiculous—and how telling of how it will be. How the moment it all snaps away, when I’ll crave only the company of that person I once knew, and in the black of winter, how it will feel I only have myself to blame.

Miracles

Penn and me yesterday, on a coffee date with Lis. Photo by Lis.

Last week, with a little nudge from a friend, I decided to choose “miracles” as my word for the year. As soon as Julie suggested it, I felt pulled by the word—intrigued, delighted, nervous. It fit well. There’s a lot behind that word for me, and I sat down to write about all of it this afternoon, but I got overwhelmed pretty quickly. There are so many miracles from this past very difficult year, so many people who were involved in creating those miracles or in helping me to see them. But it’s my word for the whole of next year, so I have a feeling I’ll have plenty of opportunity to write about it—no need to get it all out now.

Still, as I wrote and wrote and tried to spin out all the threads of all the miracle stories from my year, one little story popped out at me, so that’s the one I’ll tell you now. Maybe I’ll tackle each story in its time—little piles of straw waiting to be spun into gold.

But this one is about Penn, Lis’s (and Troy’s!) amazing, beautiful little boy (the toddler behind Toddlerblog over there, for those of you who are new here). And I think this story says just about everything you need to know about what it is I'd like to invite into my life by choosing this word.

The morning after I ended my marriage, I moved out of my home and into Lis and Troy and Penn’s spare bedroom. They welcomed me wholeheartedly. Penn and Lis greeted me at their door, and Penn was clearly concerned and full of questions. He wanted to know why I didn’t want to live with B. any more, and I had to tell him that was a really good question, and it deserved a really good answer, but I wasn’t sure how to explain it to him just at that moment, and would it be okay if I thought about it and gave him an answer later?

And he said yes, and then he asked me if I was still sad (Lis had told him I would be, and he could see I’d been crying), and when I told him yes, he came over to me and gave me a hug that made me cry even more. Because the hug he gave me was not, in any way, the hug of a not-quite-four-year-old child. It was the hug of a soul-level friend, a friend who understood at the deepest level that I was hurting. It was the hug of someone who was caring for me in exactly the way I needed to be cared for in that moment, and it was easily the most awe-inspiring, miraculous hug I’ve ever been given.

•gratitude, and a sort of California barometer, revs'd•

Just grateful for all of it. The whole, beautiful mess.

Listening to Frances Ford Coppola speak through the radio and making leeky, appley greens with egg for breakfast, I am reminded: how small, this world. Absurdly small. I don't know this guy, but thirty years ago, he held my cousin when she was a baby. Tomorrow, I'm going to hold her hello, in Pennsylvania. Charlotte lives in New York, but we rendezvous in other places. "How'd you get here from Maine?" my son asked a friend of ours, just last week. He'd mistaken her for Charlotte, and no wonder. She's in the air, as is the way with certain people at certain times of the year. Tomorrow, I will be in the air.

What a tangled fascination, this life. What luck there is in the world, and what horror. Our town has made international news of late, thanks to an unpleasant decision by a police officer and various higher-ups. Like getting shampoo in your eyes only the shampoo is hot-sauce, I explained to Penn. He caught me watching the video of the row of cross-legged students in sweatshirts, the casual lieutenant spraying red into their faces. "Is those police men?" he asked. "Are they making bad decisions?"

The stories we are telling. The food we are putting in our mouths. The weather, how large it feels. How we go on, about our days, remaining calm. The moon can sweep us off our feet at any moment. The air can change. We can get dropped. At any moment.

Everything matters. Movement, especially, is key. xox

Borrowed Earrings, and a Love Letter to my Bryn Mawr Friends

(This post was partly inspired by Bella's prompt this week for the 52 Photos Project, which was to photograph something you've borrowed or would like to borrow.)

Five and a half years ago, I attended my fifteenth college reunion, and sometime during the weekend, I admired my friend Giulia’s earrings. Giulia always has gorgeous jewelry, and this particular pair of earrings was made of green amber and silver. She gave them to me—for no particular reason, except that I expressed my love for them, and she loves me. I protested a bit, but she insisted that I take them. So I agreed to take them on loan, and over the next five years, I thought of her—of course—every time I wore them.

This past spring was an especially hard one, but it was also my twentieth college reunion, and I knew I needed to go, because my college friends are some of the dearest, steadiest, most beloved people in my life. And when I packed to head east, I made sure Giulia’s earrings were with me. I figured it was the obvious time to return them.

I’m not sure Giuls remembered that I had the earrings until I handed them to her, but when I gave them back, she proceeded to search through the jewelry she’d brought with her until she found this pair:

She decided I needed to take them home with me, and of course, this time I agreed. At Bryn Mawr, we like to joke that once we’ve done anything twice, it’s a tradition, and so Giulia and I have started our own little earring loan tradition. She picks a pair for me to borrow for five years, and I bring them back at the next reunion.

*******************

It’s difficult to put into words just exactly how much Giulia and all my other friends from college mean to me. I’ve thought of them pretty much every day since last May, and the energy of their love washes over me frequently. That love has always been there, ever since college, but I think something about this particular reunion marker really hit many of us hard, in the best possible way.

I had a moment during the weekend, in our class meeting, when I looked around the vividly familiar dorm living room, and saw all those vividly familiar faces—the faces of people who are incredibly close to me, and the faces of people I really barely know, except that I’ve “known” them in some way for the last twenty-four years. That’s more than half my life.

Faces you’ve known for more than half your life mean something—something significant. They may not be the faces of dear friends, and yet—they’re not at all strangers. They’re something more than community, even, though they’re certainly that. Perhaps they’re like an odd kind of extended family, people you feel connected to, people who share some vitally important part of your history, even if you really don’t know a whole lot about who they are, or what their daily lives are like.

And then there are the people who actually are my dear friends. I don’t know that there are really words that can adequately describe the feelings of nourishment, love, acceptance, gratitude, comfort, support that I receive from this group of people. They’re home to me.

I was stunned, several times during the weekend, to realize that these friends have always seen me, since I was seventeen, in ways that it took me many, many years to see myself. They knew what was in me and who I could be long before I did. Simply because they love me, and they were paying attention. I certainly hope I’ve been paying enough attention to be able to see each of them in such a deep way.

At the end of the weekend, a small group of us went for brunch at a local diner before dispersing to our separate parts of the world for another five years. (We’ve done this Sunday brunch thing at the last two reunions now, so you know what that means….)

I was sitting in the diner booth, stirring my coffee and listening to Giulia, who was sitting next to me and telling a story in her inimitable, animated, gorgeous, larger-than-life way. I turned to look at her, and it took my breath away. Every bit of her was so familiar and dear—her beautiful face and smile, her mannerisms, her speech patterns and laugh. I know them so well that I can call them to mind in a heartbeat. Just thinking of her calms me, makes me feel loved and joyful and lucky.

And I’m incredibly fortunate. Because Giulia isn’t the only friend I feel this way about—I have a whole pile of friends like that where she came from. And I won’t list them here—I’ll let Giuls stand in for them all—but I trust they know who they are. And I hope they know how very, very, very much I love them.

•happy monday•

We could do worse than have a slightly manic one. I'll take mine in Purple Haze. xox

•teeny tiny art•

The one that got away. "Mustard Sally" didn't make it to the teeny-tiny-art exchange on Sunday, on account of some frothy growing glue that got out of hand. But it's nice to have her here, at home. (Note to self: don't test a new glue on an otherwise done project.)

Back in the summer, my friend Julie hatched a plan to get all of her friends to make more art. Inspired by Art-o-Mat, she decided to host a "tiny art" exchange in November, amid cocktails and appetizers and friendship. The art would be palm-ishly sized, and everyone would get to ooh, aah, and bring home treasure at the end of the night. Well, that night was Sunday the 6th. And oh, was there treasure! Gobs upon cookie-swap-gobs of it. Beautiful stuff, all. Fortunately, I only needed to pull one all-nighter to get my tiny pieces ready for the final reveal, because.... everyone in my family, as it turns out, is completely absorbed by art! Penn spent the weekend writing and drawing and stapling and taping, Troy made origami caterpillars out of old maps, and I pasted and cut and pasted and cut. It's not exactly news. We've arted in our house before. Supplies live on the windowsill. Houses and carports and Boba Fetts and snowmen are drawn and finessed and decorated and recreated on a daily basis. But this weekend was different. We couldn't stop making art.

It was fabulous.

It might just be the new house order.

The icing on the teeny, tiny cake: my brother Art was among the participants. Undaunted by the country between us, he sent his box of teeny-tinies in the mail. And I sent his swapped collection back to New York yesterday. Very much looking forward to Skype-ing when he opens it! We would have Skyped on Sunday, but oh, the wicked EST to PST time change. It works much better in the reverse.

More art that came out of the teeny-tiny-splosion:


Penn named this "air heart." It makes a little puff on your cheek, if you squeeze the poof.


An homage to... well, I suppose it doesn't even matter.

Now, for the clean up. I'm not daunted by the task, but I don't exactly want to put the supplies away... xox

•rise•

[This post is part of a tag-you're-it game, designed by Amanda Blake Soule. Check her out! And leave a link to your own moment in the comments, if you wish!]






xox

•the best parents•

Once upon a time, there was a Mommy and a Daddy who wanted to talk. The problem was, anytime they talked, their swarthy little toddler had something, also, to say. So the Mommy and the Daddy thought long and hard. They sought far and wide the answer. One night, while dining with friends, it came to them: sometimes, the best parents aren't parents at all. The next day, they arranged for friends to take the scurvy child. The Mommy and Daddy fled, and talked! Meanwhile, the adult friends took the the deck-swabbing toddler. Without so much as a furrowed brow, they concocted a First Rate Pirate Adventure, including the actual commandeering of a ship, the jumping of a plank, a swimming expedition with first mates, and a hunt for actual treasure. In a few short hours (and with the help of cardboard, marker and aluminum foil), they opened the toddler's eyes to a world of scarves and piracy. When his parents returned, they found a happy boy. But ever thereafter, they could not dissuade him from wearing a hearty's mustache. And a skele-tattoo, at all times. Even to the Co-op. xox