•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?"

•survival doesn't have to be elegant•

Seeing what is there, and celebrating the tiny things, and acceptance. And knowing when my expectations are a trip-line in the dark on the stumble-y way to water. Those are a big help.  xox lis

•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.

•what happens•

Right now, there are a bunch of 'draft' posts littering the backstage here at HalfAssedMama.com. The titles are interesting. "Englandia." "Long losts." My favorite is simply "the toyotas."

There are a great many things preventing us from blogging. We both just landed ourselves new jobs. In my case, I got a text in England from my boss. One of our co-workers was leaving; would I like to apply for her job? After five weeks, Troy, Penn & I returned home to a swirl of jet-lag-interview-hired!-ready-set-full-time-job-for-mommy on top of (p.s.) a week-long conference that took Troy to Massachussetts. I'm still skinning my knees daily, just trying to keep up, but it's good to be working at a new velocity for That Store we love so well. It will let up, in December. So look for that "Englandia" post, then. Right now it's swim lessons and scraped-together meals and piles of suitcase innards.

For Amy's part, it's packing and working, not sleeping and tidying up loose ends, because her new job means a rather abrupt move, cross-country. Which means, first and foremost, we will be half-assedly blogging from opposite coasts of the US! (Thank you to Bryn Mawr for proffering this upgrade in bloggerly coolness.) Amy has accepted a dream job as a production manager for the Bryn Mawr theater department. She moves to Philadelphia on Sunday. I went to her house a few nights ago in a work-induced stupor, and she sent me away with a giant ceramic ladle, a box of beads, an oversized bag of clothes, and a book of our blog. Of course, all the clothes are still in the bag. The beads have been picked over by a small child. And the book is right here, online, for anyone to comb through. But there's something different about seeing all those early posts in pages. I can open to a random date, as though our posts are part of a larger story. And so they are. Once upon a time, Amy wrote, "Right now, I'm going to go put one small piece in the kiln to see what happens..."

Right now, I'm going to go.  

xox

•half-assed, remember?•

(I've been sweating over posts and the lack thereof. Given our blog title, it's a wonder it took me this long to come around. Just write, dumbass.)

We're not all built the same. Yet we're so much more alike, we humans, than we are different. Is everyone destined to pine? I have a piney history. I'm not particularly piney at the moment, having just affirmed that I live where I want to live, and love the family I've been given. And manifested the job, literally of my dreams. (Still reeling from that turn of events.) But I tend to pine. I'm good at it.

I am happy. I am even working on the illusion that I'm ready. For change, which is possibly more inevitable (and less comfortable, in some instances) than death. But I have that tendency to pine. Even in the middle of my big pile of joy, I yearn. And it's not unpleasant, either. I've ALWAYS been this way. Pining is a core trajectory of my personality.

Or maybe it's not. Could it actually be something else? Not yearning, or ambition... could it be hope? For more? I am hopeful, rather than pineful? I certainly prefer that spin. My superstition is creeping around the edges of the screen, whispering things like "dangerous," and "greeeeeeed." I guess that's true, as well. My heart is a greedy thing, and my eyes, wide enough to swallow everything.  xox

And now, a propos of nothing, a soft egg from a complimentary hotel breakfast in Trondheim.

•moving sounds good•

Burning Man sounds good.  Hang-gliding, too.  I swear, ever since I pulled every single thing out of my closet and held it up to the light, things are looking clearer.  We are moving, we are changing.  I am throwing away old photos and recordings, the paper trails, the acceptance letters.  

Last night I dreamt I was with a rescue team.  We had to take a helicopter to the disaster.  I gave myself three seconds to decide whether to balk at the airlift, or go with it.  I chose to leave my fear on the ground.  Anyway, what kind of helicopter drops its load, when lifting an ambulance into position?  We landed just fine, and my team never knew my doubts.  Last week, in waking life, I applied the same thinking to a routine blood draw.  I'm phobic about my veins. I faint, I kick.  I decided not to warn the phlebotomist.  First time.  I focused on normalcy. Be strong, handle your shit.  It worked.  The phlebotomist talked about his wood-working hobby.  I said "have a nice day," and made it to my car without screaming.  Later, I danced.

We are walking, on.  Through and into change.  We get to decide when it's time to let go.  xox

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.

•today's awesomes•

mornings.

interpretation.

cauliflower.

(I mean, why cauliflower is called cauliflower:)

the path ahead.

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.

Promise

Someone else’s pain has no place here, in the space where my breath catches. Most people’s pain doesn’t make it that far—I’m good at leaving it with its owner.

Yours, though.

Each time I see it, I draw that frozen knot into me for the smallest moment, even knowing there’s nothing I can do for it. I hold it close, hoping one heartbeat, the warmth of one indrawn breath might melt it.

But it’s full enough in here already, I know that, and there’s no room. I let it go on the out breath.

Still, if you’ll let me, I’ll touch it softly each time it comes up, in the only way a friend can: I’ll place my hand quietly on your heart and witness from the outside. I won’t expect to be the one to transform anything. I’ll sit with you for as long as it takes, listening patiently for the sharp cracks and gentle dripping of the thaw.

Force Nothing

2011 was not the year I thought I’d have when it began. Funny how that happens, although, to be honest, I’m not sure I could tell you exactly what I thought it would look like. Despite that, it was undeniably a year I needed to have, and it has been, perhaps, the most complicated and nuanced year I’ve experienced. It was horrible, and it was very, very wonderful, and it was everything in between, and it certainly changed the course of my life.

A year is long, and a year is no time at all—just a series of weeks, really, and those are just a series of days when it comes right down to it. And in the blink of an eye, the utterance of one sentence, the course of a day, a moment of insight, everything can change. The year and our lives turn on the smallest moments, singular points in time that may or may not be visible to us after the fact. They’re little cliffs, and we’re constantly leaping.

Leaping off of cliffs this year left me, as it always does, with work to do. There are always cliffs, and there’s always work to be done—but this year, the work in front of me is clearer than usual.

You know how some people choose a word for their year? Something they’d like to focus on, a concept or attitude they’d like to incorporate more fully into their lives. I imagine that when you make such a choice, you see your word everywhere, in everything; every moment becomes an opportunity to practice your word in some way, to draw your focus gently back to the growth you’d like to see in yourself, the work you’d like to be doing.

I’ve never done this. There are so many possible words to work with—which one to choose? Do I have to choose just one? The trick, of course, is to find the word that best works as an umbrella for all the things I’m feeling and thinking about.

There’s an Adrienne Rich poem called “This is My Third and Last Address to You,” and it’s quite long, but really, what I’ve always loved most in it are five stanzas somewhere in the middle. And if you are facing any sort of change or growth—especially if it’s the kind that makes you uncomfortable or impatient, this particular stanza may speak to you as it always does to me:

force nothing, be unforced
accept no giant miracles of growth
by counterfeit light

Is there a word that will stand in for that stanza, that will serve as the umbrella word for my year? Patience is part of it, but I’m reaching for something deeper. A sort of quiet understanding and compassion for myself and others: We all take the time we take to get where we’re going, and we can’t be hurried along. Nor can we be stopped or slowed when movement and growth are really happening—and movement and growth are usually happening, right under the surface, even when we feel as if we’re slow as molasses. Slow is not stagnant.

There’s never any time to waste, and simultaneously, there’s always all the time in the world. A new year comes, just as they always do, right when it’s meant to. We may think we’re not ready, but we are. We may think we know what this new year will hold, but we never do. All we can do is adjust our focus once again, resolve to force nothing, and know that as long as we aren’t letting ourselves stagnate in fear or resistance, then we’re growing, moving forward, making progress. The work we each have to do, when we take the time to know what it is and learn how we might go about it, can be joyful and fulfilling—even in the moments when it’s hard or painful. Because deep work, the work of growth and change, is always as complicated and nuanced as an entire year.

And somewhere in this year, as in every other year, there will be those moments when the world shifts, and everything changes, and we leap off our little cliffs, and that joyful, painful work we’ve been doing (slowly, so slowly) lands us somewhere we really never expected.

***********

(Not a small stone. [Uh, clearly.] This is actually the column I wrote for this month's issue of the newsletter I edit. I felt the need to put it here too, but I needed to wait for the newsletter to be published and distributed. It's been a week, so I've decided the rights revert to me...now! And as careful readers will already know, the lovely Peaceful Peacock, Julie, read this a few weeks back and basically said, "Your word is right there: Miracles." And so it was.)

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.

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.

•not your mama's apple•

Photos taken at Full Belly Farm on October 1, 2011.



A half-assed Happy-o-versary to us, to us! And to you lovely readers, thank you. Our first post was also about pomegranates... in a way... :) Thanks for making all of this possible.

Pomegranates. Not my native apple. A seedy, grainy, medieval French pain in your ass? Maybe. (I know a secret for opening these. Think water birth.) When I was growing up in New Hampshire* in the 80s, pomegranates were expensive and misunderstood. Now they grow like weeds on the walk to and from Penn's preschool.

What's weird to a native New Englander is that *apples* don't do well in Northern California. Macintosh at the grocer are bruised beyond recognition, and there are no real tart options beyond Granny Smith, and her tarted-up cousin, the (unbelievably hued, yes) Pink Pearl. Pomegranates, on the other hand, grow magnificently in the Mediterranean clime. They're everywhere, including hedgerows meant as boarders. Throw-aways. In the same way rosemary is grown as a landscape feature, pomegranates are low-maintenance shrubs. They don't like much water. They love sun. And pomegranates are ripest when they split (and look over-ripe). Kinda a cool signal: they flash their ruby jewels to the world. That means you need to live near a tree, for close monitoring. Lest you miss it. (All the poms in the pictures above are still ripening. Note the one with the hexagonal flower opened, vs. the closed-flower orbs...)

Now, a simple recipe:

Maple Pomegranate Cocktail

rum
cognac
pomegranate juice
maple syrup (grade b works)
a lime
a few pomegranate arils, if you have the means

In a shaker, put 3 ice cubes. Cover with one ounce cognac, one ounce rum, about a half-cup of pomegranate juice, and 1-2 teaspoons Grade B maple syrup. Squeeze a quarter of a lime o'er top, and shake the beeejeeezus out of it for at least 7 seconds. Strain into an up-glass, with pomegranate seeds in the bottom. It is worth making one serving at a time, but I'm sure a pitchered approach would work.

Currently in the oven: granola with pomegranate pulp. There's a company based in Sacramento that makes granola using fruit juice in place of oil, and I've wanted to try that at home ever since I sampled the results. Pomegranate juice yeilds a lot of pulp: the chown up bits of aril and seed casings, plus bits of juice. What a perfect reason to stir with oats, maple syrup, vanilla and...?? I don't think I included anything else. Although pecans would have been nice. Stay tuned! Update: that granola was spectacular. Next time, I'll add unsweetened coconut!

xox

Open the Door

You want to know a fantastic antidote to oncoming depression, whatever its source?

Reach out and tell someone how much you love them, the work they do, who they are, what you see in them. Do it because it's true. Do it because they should know. Do it because the moment you do, a door will open up, and you'll see outside of yourself--that place that seems so dark right now. There's incredible beauty and light out there, and when you open that door, the light will never fail to lift your heart and spill in through the opening to get all over you.

•a very merry HA birthday•

Turns out the age for which you must get the birthday cake right is 4. Any variation on the theme, no matter how delicious, will be rejected--nay, rewarded!--with apocalypse now, toddler edition. Complete with hyperventilation, and outbursts so simultaneously piteous and hilarious you will be unable to stop laughing. Which won't help matters.
But there are no strawberries!!!! < sob sob sob >
Where is the....fraaaaaawwwww-ssssssting!!!!?
The earnestness. The confusion. The terrifying (if it weren't so adorable) rage. To be fair, it was his last night of toddlerdom. Perhaps he realized he ought to go out in style.

What I did next was, perhaps, not my finest flourish. But it had been a week of napless, back-to-school madness. And we were celebrating with an all-adult birthday dinner (save the guest of honor, of course) in our friend's extremely echo-y, amplifying living room. Oh, honey, you thought cake and candles were tonight? Actually, that's tomorrow. We'll have cake with frosting and strawberries and candles on your real birthday (thankgoditsnottoday). Tonight's cake is just a nice dessert for after dinner... That's right. I groveled.

And then I regrouped.


The next morning, I gathered my triage materials. Frozen cake, leftover frosting a friend made, strawberries, jam, old cereal bag for piping on accents. Things were looking good. And then I started to go a little nuts. Turns out, there are a great many images on the Interwebs of various "bus cakes." Inspiring. Could I free-style a bus that would meet with the child's approval? Could I, in fact, half-ass it?


Fortunately, my ambition knows no bounds. And I had a few hours o' free time.



I started to lose it a little with these strawberry "bushes." Not an essential feature, but...



It worked in my favor. My son appreciated the sugary offering, and accepted the whole monstrosity as a "fire bus." He even forgave its chocolate exterior. (Note to parents: white frosting is like gold. If you attempt a four-year-old's birthday cake without enough of this stuff, tread lightly and prepare for war.)

Turns out, if it's worth doing, it's worth over-doing. Within half-assed reason, of course. xox


©2011 Lis Harvey

Trust Roots

Is it better for grief to be paired with hope? Or is it best to have none, to hit the bottom hard and in your pain know, at least, that there’s no further down to go? Hope can always fail us eventually: What if the thing hoped for never comes to pass? What if the universe is moving in a different direction than the one you’re longing for? And so grief paired with hope is a perfect breeding ground for fear.

And still, I think I’ll take my grief with hope and do my best to wait, as Adrienne Rich says, "...without sadness and with grave impatience." And to believe that roots lovingly tended can survive a winter under snow and send up green shoots in the spring--whenever spring arrives.

(From "This is My Third and Last Address to You," by Adrienne Rich)

The work of winter starts fermenting in my head
how with the hands of a lover or a midwife
to hold back till the time is right

force nothing, be unforced
accept no giant miracles of growth
by counterfeit light

trust roots, allow the days to shrink
give credence to these slender means
wait without sadness and with grave impatience

here in the north where winter has a meaning
where the heaped colors suddenly go ashen
where nothing is promised

learn what an underground journey
has been, might have to be; speak in a winter code
let fog, sleet, translate; wind, carry them.

•when are they going to come out?•

When you are an adult...
and you find someone you love very much...
like Mommy loves Daddy...
and Catrina loves Laurie...
and Michael loves Karl...
you might want to use your seeds, then, to make a baby...
to start a new family, your own family.

Shattered

Whether or not you choose it, it seems shattering a life is much like shattering anything else.

The initial breakage is utter chaos. Your feet are bare, and there you are, standing in the middle of shards, that cup of coffee you were so looking forward to splattered on the floor, the wall, the table and chair legs. Who knew liquid could travel so far propelled only by the force of a mug hitting the ground? Who knew the pieces of the mug could bury themselves in dark corners, under the china cabinet, in the next room over? Who knew a mug could break into so many individual pieces, each one a memory of the lovely thing you once had?

And that’s the tricky part—the way the mug’s pieces are suddenly so lovely to you. Suddenly, all you can see is the work and love that went into this handmade thing, the investment of time and energy at the wheel and hope in the firings, the beauty of the glaze.

Somehow, in your grief, you don’t remember the hairline fracture that ran through the whole thing—the flaw that meant it was simply a matter of time before the mug broke anyway.

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

When a favorite mug of mine broke a few years ago, I was devastated. I guess that’s a little odd, but my feelings about mugs run deep—I’ve made many of the mugs I own, and when I'm in my active pottery-making mode, I am, in fact, a little obsessed with the making of them. And while this particular one wasn’t made by me, it was one I loved dearly, and I’m sure most people won’t exactly be able to relate to the level of grief I felt about breaking it. I cried a good bit. I kind of hated myself for losing my grip on the poor thing. And I couldn’t bear to throw out the pieces. I had no idea what I would do with them—the mug was far beyond any hope of repair—but I gathered up as many pieces as I could, washed them carefully, and set them in a bowl on my kitchen counter, where they stayed for about a year and a half.

Over the next few days, I came across a shard or two of the worst kind—the little slivers that get stuck in feet or fingers and make them bleed. There weren’t many left at all—we did a pretty good job cleaning them up. But the ones I found hurt a lot, and they made me so sad all over again.

The other night, I was looking for a photo to use as a new blog header, and I kept opening photographs that were just like those little slivers of stoneware—painful reminders of something I’ve shattered. Unlike the mug, this shattering was done consciously. And somehow, that makes the shards feel that much sharper.

Eventually—just last fall—I had an epiphany about the shards of mug. It occurred to me that stoneware is fired well above the temperature at which I fire silver clay, which meant that I was easily able to incorporate those shards into my jewelry designs. I could create with this broken thing; I could transform the mug and my grief about it into something new and very beautiful.

Is grief always like that, on the other side? And is this what people mean when they say that you have to sit with grief? That you have to clean the shattered pieces, gather them into a bowl, and go about your life as best you can, taking whatever comfort you can manage in the knowledge that you needn’t throw out the pieces if you don’t want to?

And then one day, when you’ve seen that bowl so often that you’ve almost reached the point of no longer seeing it, you’ll glance in its direction, and you’ll see it as if for the first time, and with enormous joy, you’ll realize exactly what you saved those pieces for.