ode to my firstborn

my boy turned 5 today. i also coincedentally saw a picture of him at 9 months. it still looks like him...he'll always look that way.the big round head, skinny legs, serious eyes about to break into a mischevious grin. this child, my Cole. today is for him. this kid grabbed me by the heart, i mean, every single valve and vein. i could not imagine this feeling i had when i set eyes on him. it was this incredulous moment of how could this beautiful creature come from joe and i? as he grew (and continued to be a crummy sleeper, i might add), his capacity for love and gentleness amazed me. his smile made every sleepless night bearable. it still does. only now, his smile gets him out of the tantrums he's learning to throw, the verbal jabs he tries to make, but knows are wrong, so he whispers them. this kid to whom I am the sun, the moon, the stars....his sense of humor is remarkably sharp and sweet, and he's stubborn as a post set in concrete. but this kid can love. this kid can show compassion and generosity and empathy. he humbles me so often in his spirit of "take this, i love it, but take it because you'll love it too." i love you, my son. i am so achingly proud of the little spirit you are. i take joy in your uniqueness, and revel in each new thing you learn and teach me. you are my firstborn, you taught me love. happy birthday, buggy.

a brief love note

this is about joe. i talk about my kids. i talk about my chickens. i talk about my food. a lot about my food. i should talk about my joe, my beloved, my compass. he pisses me off a lot. but mostly he just keeps me headed in the right direction. the first time i saw him, i knew he was military. his demeanor, his posture, his lack of smile. then i got to know him...and his eyes, his sparkly, mischevious eyes bore straight into my heart. frankly, he scared the crap out of me, but i couldnt' get enough. he won.
the man wrote me bad poetry that melted me. he took me to paris. he gave me two little boys, and brought with him his two older, wonderful children. he gave me his heart and i gave him mine. he has honor and nobility and is generous to others, with his time, and sometimes forgets to save some for me, but it's usually okay because i know he is lifting up someone who needs it more than i do....because I have him and God. i'm a lucky woman and for all our rocky moments, months, years, he's still the one i want next to me every night, who i want walking in the door every evening, and whom i want to bring me coffee every morning.

she felt like the fresh prince

Lynard Skynard told her to turn it up...so she did. Sweet Home Alabama rattled the speakers on her dilapidated, but much loved Volvo wagon, Velma. She got that rare feeling today that one only gets in early summer, though, summer was late this year. It had been a long, dark, wet Spring and everyone was getting punchy. It was July 3 and the sun finally shone.

She rolled the window down a little further, to inhale this feeling. The air vibrated with love and goodwill, excited people with campers and barbeques jammed the highway and it was okay with her. Her hair looked good, the music was loud. The girl, though not so much a girl anymore, felt young and beautiful. When this feeling hits, all the hard stuff just kind of seemed unimportant. And all of these thing, gathered behind her ribs in a bursty glee. It was good to be her.

a life like mine

yesterday, today looked grim. i had a sick kid. complete with puke...on bedclothes, clothes, carpets, couches....yesterday, i did load after load of laundry, carried a bleach bottle in a holster, snuggled little buddies and got prepared for another day like it, but maybe with me or my other son puking, also. But today, Mother's Day, I woke up, not having been awaken in the night to cries of horror at being covered in dinner, revisited, but somewhat refreshed....pit pat pit pat...baby one, piles in....taptaptaptap...baby two scurries to the other side, snuggles into his usual spot. thump, thump...daddy's already up, coffee is brewing, tv is cued for cartoons. Baby One gets antsy, up to watch a little curious george. Baby Two, my tiny Bean, burrows deeper, eyes still heavy and half dozes on my chest for awhile. This kid is almost 30 pounds but I won't move him for the world. His blond flyaway hair tickles my nose but feels like angels kisses and smells like sleep and last nights bath. this is what i was meant to do, i think. i'm the "joyful mother of little children." i'm best here, with my arms around a small child, who needs to hear my heart beat.
There was no more sick today. There was much needed sunshine, both kids in underwear only, playing in the sprinkler while i puttered in the garden, preparing for the pea growth spurt, labeling newly planted starts, my thoughtful husband taking care of our every need. the rain started dropping in big slow drops seconds after the chops got pulled off the grill for supper...
the kids are in the bath now, dad is taking care of it all for me. just leaned on the door frame, watching the birds skitter around the yard between drops, while eating a sweetly huge strawberry, glass of wine in the other hand. i could get used to a life like mine. i think i will.

movements of small things

i was driving today, in the rain, and the hills are so green...it looks like a child's cowlicked hair, full of movement and whorls...the deciduous, laced and weaving between the evergreens,unruly and standing straight up in the air. the sheep, white against the fields, with their breed marks,standing red on their woolly backs, a true scarlet letter. they all looked so droopy out there, not sure if it was the rain, or their impending pregnancies, or just because they are sheep, but they still looked beautiful to me. although i love the sun, there is little as striking as an oregon spring with it's dark, ominous skies, and the emerald world below it...speckled with animals, flowers, it throbs with life and freshness, and sparkles if the tiniest sliver of sunshine hits it. we do, I believe, live in God's country.

the gentleness of nothing

there are days when nothing comes gently. and there are days when there is a gentle nothingness...not the sad nothingness...but the quiet of it, which is really quite something. i struggled today with ego and pride, and then it hit me that decisions that were made were made with a higher purpose than mine. And things have a way of edging into place, quietly and gently sometimes, as if nothing at all has changed, but it has...the same way your children grow, gently and quietly, hidden by tantrums and sand in their crevices, cheerios in the light fixtures, but then, suddenly they are bigger....this is how life is, so often, the loud parts distract us from the small snuggling in of things...life's way of pretending to yawn whilst it drops it's arm around our shoulders at the movies...suddenly it's there, the weight of it all heavy and warm and certain.

long day pondering

i think perhaps this blog is misnamed...of course, maybe not. i started it when some friends and i really did have martini playdates...now it's mainly just me, tootling around my yard, surrounded by grubby and adorable, inquisitive blond boys, sometimes holding a vodka tonic, more often, a diet coke, or water with lemon. i'm watching my chickens grow. watching my growing children watching them and the world with wonder. every day my youngest demonstrates a new word, a new daredevil act, or best yet, a new act of love and gentleness. every day my older son, surprises me with insight, and yesterday decided no more kisses. i do anyway, a little because it sends him into gales of burbly giggles, but mostly, because i need to. i need him to need me still, even as i let him learn who he is. and i need that soft baby skin to yield to my mommyness. he's too 4, too fast. i watch the seasons change, feel me change...back and forth and back again. participate in my life as fully as i can. i do know it's a short one. the biggest heartbreak, but joy, also, of life is it's fleeting quality. i am sad to see sadness all around me, when we could be lifting our faces to the sun, breathing and going a new direction. i think about children and food and sustainability and love....and how to make these loves of mine last and feel cherished. how to use these powers for good. i'll get back to you on that...

Urban Farmer

this time of year my thoughts and actions turn to the garden. every year i dream of feeding my family from my garden, with our own chickens and even bees (though, allergic to stings). I flip thru dog earred books and seed catalogs, my nails and the dry spots on my fingers are stained with soil. i bake bread, i bake pies, i stock up on canning supplies early....and then we have to move. this year, i'm gonna finally do it successfully. i've got good soil. i've got no plans to move (can't anyway), i've got a chicken coop in the planning stage and feelers out for hens. i have indoor starts planted. garden bed is turned and ready to be supplemented with farm poo. these things, not the things i think i want, are what really make me happy. feeding my family, watching my sons play in the dirt, finding worms and making "yucky pie". the real me comes out in spring, and again in the fall. the seasons for growth and for hunkering down and nurturing. nothing excites me more than a sprout..than a vegetable or fruit growing on the vine i planted.
i just watched a bubble bee peek in my window, zoom past the cat, tempting him madly and zip off...even on these stormy days, spring is trying to emerge. it's trying to be here.

woodsmoke and rain

a combination of smells...i love woodsmoke, rain and pine trees. i went for a walk tonight. the smoke and foggy rain hovered in the branches of the trees in the low hills, perched but moving and alive. there was something very comforting about it. reassuring me i'm still here, still in my beloved Willamette Valley, still where it rains to comfort me and take care of the green. walking in out of it, drenched to the bone..to a warm house, still smelling like stewing beef burgundy, and warm bread, greeted by a wiggly dog and a relaxed husband, was pretty darn great.

mortar fire.

oh these little injuries. so many tiny fragments of shrapnel. tiny and sharp, moving slowly just under the skin. so slow you don't even know they are moving, or even there, until one hits your heart, just a tiny prick is enough to take you down.

i'm feeling sort of battered by the days lately. it's sort of self serving, but i do feel a bit picked on. i've got wavering faith. wavering loyalties. wavering everything. the only sure thing is that these kids need me every day. test me every day. but they also love me every day. one is currently screaming in time out, the other is needing constant reminders of the rules, and honestly i want to chuck them both in their rooms and leave them there for awhile.

on the other hand, other things about me have been completely disregarded. it's fine, really. one becomes invisible after awhile. no matter how red the hair is. these little injuries.

packages, tied up with string.

i've spent a large part of my life trying to (cliche here) "find myself". i've tried country, rock and roll, jazz....literally and metaphorically. i've tried city and country, and urban farming. i've tried vegetarian, vegan and protein only. i've tried wild and free and reserved housewife (not as good at that last one). what i'm starting to figure out is that i'm all of those things. it's not an easy way to be. it confuses people. me, mostly. but i'm starting to settle in to this disconnection or lack of loyalty to one way. i know i'm a mother for sure. i know i'm a cook and a nurturer, also, certainly. i know i like wine and coffee and bread. always. i like orange, and retro furniture. i like gardens and clean floors. spring smells and first sunshine always make me want to be rebellious and unencumbered, if only for a little while. the smell of fall makes me want to bake pie and simmer stew.
i've realized insecurities make me act irresponsibly. make me act like someone who is not all of the above. we, as women, as people, should probably knock that crap off and just learn to love ourselves. i've learned i think i can do everything myself. and while i can't, i sure can do a lot myself. but not everything. well, i'm running out of things to say. driving today, i had a lot to write, but a lot of daily life and jumbles of stuff happened between then and now. jumble happens.

the silence is shattered by a pissed off chicken...

you know how it goes. same old story. kids in bed, dinner mess cleaned up, husband and buddy hanging out at the end of the driveway, chewin' the fat. it's quiet, and you know what's coming. a nearby, clearly wronged chicken cuts loose with a string of poultry profanity. i mean, really. i have children here, listening!

this day was fantastic. really great....i love thursdays..joe gets up early to go to men's breakfast..which means i get the bed for a whole hour to myself (ideally)until Cole tromps down the stairs and snuggles in next to me....for a bit, until Liam, who isn't brave enough yet, thankfully, to descend the stairs groggy, calls for me...then the madness starts. but i love it too, because i wake to the smell of hot coffee, and the house is starting to warm up. but today was especially stellar because a good friend came to visit. it's always fun with her. funny things are funnier with her around. catching the grill on fire, attempting to cook bacon...normally this type of thing would have made me nervous...instead, we stood around debating what to do as my grill flamed--parts that typically are not supposed to flame. finally, laughing hysterically, we called joe to make sure we'd done right (unhooked gas, closed lid, threw some flour on it(which ignited, thusly igniting more laughter from us). the attempt to keep the bacon smell out of my house backfired quite profoundly. and i loved it. made a cake from scratch, dinner was in the crockpot, so i walked resolutely past the laundry to play with my kids in the sunshine. it was just the kind of day you never remember you love so much until it happens. and now, alone in my breakfast nook, smelling an overripe lemon, thinking about doing my taxes...last years....i'm thinking, no, let's keep it up. let's just enjoy these simple pleasures, smells, sounds or lack of sounds, forever friends, kid messes, and every imperfection that makes us perfect. lets just camp there, and be still.

pretty long roar, huh?

sitting with my 4 year old son. he's drinking a homemade smoothie. he looks like the purple pie man, with his blackberry handlebar mustache. he practicing his roars....and his dad's, and his little brother's....all in various pitches and lengths. this kid amuses me. he talks darn near constantly. not sure where he gets that. ahem. his heart and his capacity for expressing love are wonderous to me. his little brother...X-Games athlete in the making. fearless...but the same tender, expressive love. i feel so blessed and i hope they keep this quality.

sitting in this funky little fixer upper today, i feel content. this house is like me...solid foundation...cosmetically challenged, some rough edges and plumbing problems...but charming and warm and inviting. it's a house that likes to hug, and likes to be loved back. it feels happiest when full of laughter and good smells. it's nice to feel this way...after a spell of unrest, of uncertainty, of disconnect. it's nice to sit here, listening to the sounds of my kids playing, a vase of spring buds on my table, next to a window looking out onto the back deck, while a roast chicken bursts lemoney, peppery goodness out of the oven. it's good to be back.

do your research before converting...

i'm pretty sure my cat has peed on every moving box still left unpacked. we don't have carpet, so it's not in it...but i cannot escape this smell. no amount of vanilla amber candles will block it. it's true incentive for finishing the unpack, i guess. repugnant.
i'm surrounded by males. all my kids, save my stepdaughter, who lives on her own, are male. all my pets are male. i cannot escape the male-ness. it has it's place but today it's culminating in pee where it shouldn't be...down the sides of the toilet, on the wall behind the toilet, seeping out of diapers, and of course, on moving boxes. i've really had enough of all that today.

as i said earlier, and really mean...since i decided to try on perfectionism for size, my life has been much harder. i see stuff that needs doing and feel i must do it. and most of it can wait, like it has for most of my life. there are times when this foreign, perfect aiming behavior could have served me well...architecture school, for example. those kids are intense. i passed and i passed with good grades, etc...didn't pull a single all nighter, never had that harried feeling of not quite right yet. it was always fine, or good enough. but now...i know my kitchen floor is funky and needs to be mopped. usually i could say to myself "it's the weekend, i'll do it monday" and i'm desperately trying to say that now...because i have a whole pile of shoes and belts and hats to put away...since dumping a despoiled box out to get it out of the house....and really, my heart and butt wants to stay right here...but it's nagging me. i've a strong suspicion that if i finish this glass of wine, i'll win the battle. but i'll see that floor in the morning and flip out, internally for sure, externally, quite possibly. i want it to be shiny and clean and perfect. sundays do that to me.

reminders like a frying pan to the head...

i know someone with a pretty sick child. she celebrates the little things. first, when i read about her current victory, i cried. i couldn't help it. i hope i never know how these mothers get by day to day with the worry, the fear, the agony of wanting, needing to take the pain from your child and take it on yourself instead, if God would only let you. they do get by though. they do it for their babies, because this is what helps them to heal. but i hope i never have to summon the kind of strength that must take. so i cried. then i went upstairs and buried my nose in the hair of my sleeping children and kissed them, said a silent prayer, told them i loved them. and now, i cry again because i yelled loud and repeatedly today. i used the scary mom voice and made my littlest cry. why do we do this? why, in the moment, do we think they are trying to maliciously torment us? they aren't, they are being stinkers, because that is what 2 and 4 year old boys do. and my goal of being a kind, consistant, nurturing mother, well, that counter clicked back to zero to start again. it's all we can do. pray for a better day tomorrow and do our best to make it happen. but i'm reminded, that there are no guarantees. God gives much but also can take away. and my children will know love. they will know humor. they will know that mama isn't perfect but she loves them with an ache that only a mother can feel. they will know.

about face, left face....

let's change directions for a bit. i've grown weary, for a time, of my thinly veiled, grey observations about daily life at the moment. food. it's how i express love. the process, each cut of the knife thru vegetables, carefully selected. the blend of herbs and spices, just right...the way the cream and butter and garlic and wine swirl together forming a culinary heaven. the crackle of a chewy bread, with a bubbly crust that makes a huge, delicious mess when sliced. the way love and food come together to form comfort, or refreshment or just what you needed at that moment. now...the rub....the people i cook for--a preschooler, a toddler and a man who, bless his heart, has seared his tastebuds and sense of smell with paint fumes (to clarify, he's not a freaky inhaler, he spent years in the automotive paint industry). my love falls on empty mouths. joe tries to appreciate. he really does, but my carefully thought out, blend of herbs, dashes of spices...go unnoticed, or pronounced flavorless. i should say, they aren't flavorless...but you see what happens. if i don't catch myself, and remind myself of my tough crowd, i get hurt. i'm so connected to nurturing, that to feel like i've fallen short is difficult for me. i recently decided that i'm going to cook, my intentions are clear, and if my efforts go unheralded with sighs of delight, it's okay. i'll do the sighing.

...i'm not sure, well, maybe i should?

okay, so i'm not actually sure i should be writing anything tonight. it was a long day. filled with a lot of tasks that had to be done, and many did not but i got to spend time on hold anyway. i've got a dog at my feet, a cat on the table next to me, and three sleeping people in the house, and i need to be also. but i wanted to find time to say that girlfriends are invaluable. Girlfriends who help you wade thru your life, who remind you to look for God everywhere, who remind you to celebrate tiny victories because sometimes that's all we get for awhile. my small victory tonight is taking the upper hand in an internal debate. this debate will happen again. but for tonight, i win.

life is so not what i thought it'd be which is pretty wonderful in some ways if you can see past how disappointing it can also be sometimes. these little dramas of the day today--they are my movie, my theme song....i don't need to find drama, or find a way to attract it..it's in the toddler meltdowns that end in tiny arms locked around my neck, in sloppy kisses and in cold dog noses on my cheek in the middle of the night. it's in the terrible beauty of those rocky spots in a marriage--that you pray you get thru. it's in all the things that make you, you..when you wake up and realize you're who you are. and have always been, even when you spent so long pretending you weren't. this drama, the beauty, the pain. it's all worth it and it's all here for us to savor. this door, this life is short and ends fast. i think i'll just live in my own soundtrack of rocket noises, matchbox cars down wood stairs, of mommy calls in the middle of the night, the symphony of opening doors and fruit snack wrappers, of barking dogs and snoring husbands, of the dragon tails theme song. all of it. it's all mine.

home in a place that's not...

i had to move recently. i did not want to, and i'll spare the sordid details. i've always been known (more, like a family/friend joke) for my wandering nature. I've lived in 23 different houses in 16 years. the house i just moved from was the first place i'd lived that i didn't want to move from. i'd been there a year. it wasn't so much the house, it was the town. my hometown--the one i swore i'd never live in because i was much too cool, metropolitan, blah, blah, blah. i'm not. i wanted the comfort of home. i loved taking my kids for a walk and always running into someone i knew and liked. i liked walking to the coffee shop to talk to dave, or jenna or one of the sweet people who worked there. i liked the surreal mix of bmw's and monster trucks in the parking lot of the local grocery store. i liked finding a church that didn't scare me, that helped me find God. so i had to move back to a town, about an hour away, that i had some bad experiences in...but into a fixer upper house i actually like. i've been trying to convince myself that home is where my family is (true) and it's just geography (also true)..but there is something to be said for connecting to a place and it's people. i saw things in this new place that touched me--the dapper old gentleman pushing his classic bicycle, the line of Harley's that's always parked in front of, or just pulling away from the rough bar on Main Street, rosey cheeked kids in sports uniforms, or a mom pushing a stroller. I see these things, and it makes me smile. this is someone's hometown, just not mine.

...and today, me, tomorrow, we love

sometimes it's really hard to be me. in fact, it's often better not to be me, in fact, since it goes against the me i'd like to be. there is something to be said for improving oneself, or denying oneself to better serve others. God says it's a must. But often, my inner dialogue says "Good God, must I?" I'm a bit rambly today...a series of inner explosions, expressing itself in strange behavior, coupled with a cold and some contankerous boys in my house today, has left me feeling somewhat out of sorts. someone told me recently that the only person i needed to satisfy was myself and my heart. sounds good at first....but really, how very selfish and how shallow an existance this would be for the long term....and it shows in his life, sadly. true satisfaction actually comes from taking care of others, showing love, giving love, handing it along. it grows and grows and has deep roots. but the "Good God, must I?" bubbbles up from time to time when I Want, I Need, Me, me, me gets left behind. it's terribly hard to be selfless and let those me, me's just dissolve.

revisiting..

yeah, i forgot about my blog after one post. i'm remembering that whole "juggling kids and life and nonsense from my first and only post...and i'm supposing that is what has happened. so much life in less than a year. i suppose this is one of those God tests....i get them a lot, but this is the biggie..between love snags, kid snags, weight snags, financial eff ups.....this year has made me grow a lot. being forced back into a place where i need to rely on my husband, myself and God more than i ever have, well, it's humbling.

so, i've decided to cook more. not just cook, but cook to nurture. and since both my children and my husband are immune to my gastrointestinal charms, it is for me alone. but i sure hope you come to dinner.