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Monday, August 29, 2011

What I cannot believe.

What I cannot believe is that we didn't know what we were missing.  We had a feeling...and some fears, but we didn't know. 
and now we do.

Today was the 'open building' day in our new school district... you can go in, see your classroom, tour the building, go see the cafeteria and the library, meet the principal, talk to the school fundraising ladies.... meet your classmates, run in the halls...

By the end of our 25 minutes, hubsJ and I were choking back tears. Rather than starting the year with 44 classmates, our boy is going to have 23 classmates and a teacher who stays all year, classmates with two parents (some, but at least SOME.), and 70,000 books, actually sorted into categories.  These things are standard in the rest of the country, i know.  but not in poor communities, not in struggling schools. haves not. He has a sweet teacher, a sweet classroom, excited kids to become friends with... oh my, oh my.  a whole new life that begins.  How can you be any happier to let your kid grow to this?

(i'm no dummy, i know he's a boy in a public school classroom, but man, i love school. )

My heart is so full of gladness for our move and our motion that it hurts like I am heartbroken.  It hurts.
I imagine for all you normal people out there, that this might be a type of joy, that one feels in one's heart. :)  It also feels like I want to nurse, will explode with the tenderness.

I don't have an ipod, or any songs on a computer, anywhere...but I had a real bonified imaginary soundtrack in my head on the way home from the school this morning.

My soundtrack is 'cuts like a knife', and  the beautiful yell in 'i'm a creep', weezer? ...Peter Gabriel because I will take whatever he dishes... . and then 'we are the champions' because really, its on everyone's list, or should be. and of course, folk versions of 'goodnight irene'...

Irene----we did fine during the hurricane, but I have a very strong and newfound relationship to the trees in and around my yard.  They lost some branches but none of them fell or lost their footings.  We lost power for the day but had it back in time for a later supper. I had the best bath of my life when we had water again and felt my first kinship with this house.  We are beyond beyond incredibly lucky.
The swingset is no more, but it came with the house and started out quite akimbo so we will test to see if it will hold more than one child and then let her pass gently into the good night, i believe.  

Saturday, August 27, 2011

We went to the beach.

Holy Beauty ... a storm is coming and the waves, my GOD, the waves and the spills and the storm is a'coming. we have our candles and we have our power and the air is heavy and there is no wind.
but that is going to change.
Holy Beauty ... a storm is coming and the waves, my GOD, the waves and the spills and the storm is a'coming. . .

Monday, August 22, 2011

Marriage is hard, like a brick wall of beauty...

really, its hard. way harder than anyone ever says it is. and its gorgeous, in its height and breadth. and its surprisingly porous, so many things slip through and away that you could never believe possible. and sometimes that is lovely, to release so many things. and sometimes we pine for what is lost, and spend a tremendous amount of time and energy trying to get it back.  and there it is, what we jump into unknowingly, jump from ... crash into... a sharing, a longing, a space of immobility and permeability, an us when the 'I' is still unknown.  what has 'love' become? what are the changing definitions and how much change will we tolerate? how to bend with the wind when one is an edifice?
:)
my analogy perhaps goes too far. because, of course, there is sex.
for those of us who go that way, anyhow.
who aren't too tired...asleep before the light is off... or bogged down by the minutia of the everyday, holding onto resentments that play their power roles in turning down something the other would really like, self-pleasure relegated to the capriciousness of a relationship...
BUT! sex is good, and we should all be doing it whilst we may.
so, get on that.

ah, the yin, the yang. ah.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Change. (and the complete F%$#^%$%$$! inability to deal with it)

A childhood friend died after a long battle with cancer and treatments and today I'm going to spend the day with his family, across the street from the house I grew up in, in which my parents no longer live.  The tent is being supplied by another neighbor and she and her four sisters will be presenting all of the desserts. It was a good neighborhood and I haven't been there for a long time, and childhood was even longer ago... sometimes.  In watching our kids we get some of our memories back, which is an astonishing miracle of memory... and for all of the 'grownup' learning that we do, how death is part of life and decay and cycle are all one, the shock of death shows up the lie.  I think I'm so thrown by this death because it is a signal of the change of the generations, a possibility that change and mortality are around the corner.  all the 'knowing' that all of life is impermanent is shaken by the personalization of it.  What will I do when Mrs. King is no longer sitting at her kitchen table? when Mr. King is not splitting his own wood?  when my Dad is not raging against the politicians and/or the woodchuck? when my mom is not politely thanking me for having her over for dinner?  who will i become when I am the last holder of my memories?
Will I really be unchanged? really? How long am I going to define myself as the woman from a small house... in the face of this new gigantic-ness?  where I have come from becoming 'less' than where I am ? or, does it work that way? Do the memories of long ago get bigger as we age? it seems like that, when faced with many elders... reminiscing seems to be the powerbroker in the game.
when faced with the constancy of change, why is there so much resistance? am i really so idiotic, so patterned in my battle against reality? expending energies in impossibles? certain improbables?
oh, i love words. they roll, baby, they roll.
and distraction, i love distraction too. 
and, if i am looking forward to a funeral to see so many people from the deep past, what does this say for me? aye?

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Many Children and roasting vegetables.. and sometimes vice versa...

I think I am pushing summer out of my mind.  I am.  I have spent the morning roasting vegetables to prepare a veg lasagna because that is how I can make something this morning.  the 'make' is on.  I am using summer pattypans to stock the lasagna but otherwise I spend my time dreaming of butternuts and red and orange leaves and sweaters...oh, the sweaters in my dreams. . .
I've been challenged lately, in the cooking/parenting arena, both outwardly and inwardly.  My three year old neice is here and she is a vegetarian, an only child, and a GIRL.  holy smokes.  I have laughed in the past at how different boys are from me, noting the inborn tendencies towards gender stereotyping, etc.  great. great for me to be so abtuse.  super.
bhut holy smokes. girls. how do you all do this?! seriously.  the differences are astonishing and I can't differentiate between what she needs because she's used to being the only one and what she needs because she is a girl and doing girl things. Her cousin, my son, is 9 days younger than she, so there is an impossibly easy comparison chart for their behaviors and abilities and etc. etc.  Girlie's mom is gone for possibly the next week while she does some important closing up of her past in New York.  so I am on my own with a girl and I am daunted. the outfit changes, alone! forget about coloring! easy, quiet, always a possibility! and spending lots of time figuring out how to cook vegetables in a way that everyone will eat.  It is a shame and a half that I don't already have this experience, but aye, there it is.  I was given 7000 pounds of vegetables at the open house and I cannot and will not compost it all.  Pattypan, Spinach and Red Pepper Lasagna, here we come. 
I thought pattypan was purely in farmville.  ha. I don't even have an instantaneous label for food-related posts, because while i do like good food and don't serve much processed food, it is a simple simple matter of letting hubsJ cook on the weekend and making the same four meals all day all summer long, with the surprise additions of neighbor's corn once in a while. 
WAHOO...

good lord.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

We are Moved...

Yes, it is the royal WE.  It is official, we have been moved.  We have been seen, welcomed, warmed.
My heart walnut is roasting.

LOVE LOVE LOVE

We had our big housewarming throwdown this weekend.  I met new people! I talked to grownups! I trusted that my children were fine, almost the whole time!  It was a fabulous thing, I was laughing and bustling and showing off and I was happy . 

Sometimes it is a serious interior gasp when you think about what a rare feeling that is. And so it should be.... the gasp i mean. but anyhow, thats neither here nor there.

The party was warm, the day and night were warm, we had a real live taco truck in our driveway and everyone ate their fill and I had no hostessing stress.  imagine it. no hostessing stress. no dishwashing! even the trash was taken away. this morning i collected empty bottles and juice boxes and wiped up lemonslices and even had a lemon slice for my glass of water.  it was an openhouse, come and go as you please, and some sleepovers and no harm no foul, i say. no harm, no foul.  there were no wifely admonishments towards the HubsJ for being the only latenighter and it was a latenight bonfire sort of night, and I had a great time. great.
great.
I move at my own pace sometimes, and experience a great deal of awkwardness as the lights go down and I can't read lips anymore... bonfires can be downright fraught with peril of the 'pardon?' sort, but this night I just sat and sighed contentedly and all was well.  children in the bonfire light running around the trees.  pretty damn cool. this was one of those summer nights of childhood, the sweaty running, the flashlights, the interior lights, the warmth of the house from the blues outside. everyone and everything was a blur of action and movement...


We are downright moved.
This is our new place... I have high hopes.




Thursday, August 4, 2011

Walk the Talk

I'm not, I ain't. I try and I flail and then try again. It seems, in all areas, all... that I move through this day after day revolution in a constant try try try mantra. and (of course) I am weary.
This doesn't mean that I don't see joy in my moments, that I think my burden too heavy, that I despair.  My boys are coloring, which in this house is sort of miraculous these days.  the house is gigantic, still, but I think we are adjusting and finding our nooks, all of us... the coloring is taking place on the floor in the sewing nook, where the machine is unpacked and the majority of the still unpacked things are resting.

At the top of the stairs in the farmhouse is an empty spot with a window. I have been steadfast in keeping it empty, for it is full.  of my hopes for a quiet space and that dreamy feeling that I had before we got here. the possibility space.
And while I am frequently screaming at the boys, or at least, thats what it feels like to my internal world, I know this place is there.  I've been giving myself timeouts on the stairs so that i can peek at it like this. I'm weepy and full of sadness a lot but have been trying so hard to remember these places. I have been so inconsistent, its remarkable. 
watch this list of flipflop:
1. This morning, I flushed the house and went around putting up energy symbols and incense-based crosses in all the important spots and corners of the house. It was very intentional and specific.
2. I am feeling inconstant in my reading and writing and unconnected to the larger spiritual world that floats around in my body.
3. I'm getting these emails from a joy program that is going to last ten days. I wanted the joy to read.
4. I am so damn cynical that I cannot believe in the reality of other people's joy.  (gasp.)
5. This house is so big that I feel incredibly conspicuous and embarrassed by it. 
6. We are having an openhouse THIS weekend to share it with everyone we know because we want to share the love we have for it...like giggly kids... (uh, did you read #5?!)

Seriously? really.