Half Full

If you've been visiting this space for awhile, you'll notice the blog has had a bit of a makeover. A little lighter. A little more simple. And a little ditty on the side about how I'm trying to live my life. It's new, and I'm still getting used to it (the ditty, that is) because I'll be honest: I do not come by this whole "choosing joy in every moment" idea naturally. Truth is, I have a tendency to swing into darker places, to stew over little messes, to be stormy and passionate-- sometimes in the not-so-nice ways. My 30 years have been spent swinging in the extremes of emotion. Balance is not a word often used to describe my life.

And that's okay.

Because right now, I am typing while my daughter sleeps on my arm.



She's breathing in a rhythm that makes me realize we are moving toward summer; her inhales and exhales flowing slow and clear, the result of spending an entire day outdoors. It is this baby, along with the two boys breathing in similar candence in their beds a floor above us, that helps me understand the importance of choosing gratitude over anything else.

As a poet, I've always chalked bouts of dark and stormy (or weepy and aimlessness) on my craft. Occupational hazard of sorts. It almost seems attractive-- and certainly has its elements of romance-- to be a creative soul that bleeds emotions in words and sponges the essence of loss as much as love from the world all around. I know. It sounds pretty stupid when I actually type it.

The older I get, the more I realize how brief this time in life really is. I look at my children and find myself totally awed-- when I take the time to slow down and notice-- how quickly they grow and change.

The Noah who woke up this morning was not quite the same Noah whose hair, damp with sweat, I tucked behind freckled ears as he slept tonight. Experiences, moments, discoveries; these things happen to him all day. And he changes.

It is the same with Max and Elizabeth.

Each moment is part of their story. I think I got tired of being caught up in anything and everything that got in the way of the opportunity to watch these stories unfold. And so, I made a decision to choose joy in every moment. And I'm not looking back.

Don't get me wrong: there is very little joy in unclogging the toilet every other day, even when my four-year old is prancing around yelling "I'm the best toilet clogger in the universe!" It isn't easy to feel grateful when my daughter gets up a thousand times a night or when Noah is crying because some bully called him an "A-hole" and he feels like he is swearing by even saying A. Hole. I have plenty of melting moments around 6:45 p.m. (exactly) when the wear-and-tear of the day just feels like too much and I want to pee alone or curl up on the coach or sew or anything besides what I'm doing. My breath gets shorter. My back tenses up and I feel antsy and agitated and unable to settle. And that's okay too-- because it is my body's way of calling me back to the present. Maybe I need to step outside or slide out for a walk. Maybe I need to go grab a book and curl up on the couch and let the dishes wait in the sink. Learning to give myself a break-- this is a big part of living joyfully. In these moments, however, more than anything else, I need to stop and ask one question: am I, despite all the junk, still very blessed? I've never, ever been able to say no. And somehow, I swear, it changes everything.

One glance as photos like these, and I realize, my life is full.









So very full in all the best ways. What are some ways you remind yourself to choose gratitude?

I'm also so very grateful that I'm learning to sew, because now I can whip out fantastic little projects like this sandwhich/snack bag.


You can check out the tutorial on Cluck and Tweet.

In this moment

In this moment:

I am:: discovering spring again through my daughter's eyes


I am:: filled with gratitude for the little things




I am:: taking each step, one foot at a time.



I found this passage in the Parent's Tao Te Ching the other day and I'm letting the words sink in past my skin, past my mind, past the bones and muscles into that place where an inhale stops and an exhale begins.

"You do not have to make your children
into wonderful people.
You only have to remind them
that they are wonderful people.
If you do this consistently
from the day they are born
they will believe it easily.

You cannot force your will
upon other human beings.
You cannot hurry children
along the road to maturity.
And the only step necessary
on their long journey of life,
is the next small one."


Happy Sunday.

Come visit me here for fun (and funny, at least to us) domestic "stuff".

Noticing every minute

Walking through the woods behind our house the other day, this caught my eye:

It was everywhere. New growth springing from limbs and earth…and my children.

It’s funny how spending time in the natural world not only energizes and restores us, but also helps us remember. Being in that moment, air rich with wet underbrush and soon-to-burst buds, I was suddenly so aware of how the change in seasons is also a call to stop. And notice.

My Noah turned 10 a few weeks ago. 10. I think I’ve avoiding writing here since then because I knew I would have to say something about this milestone, and, well, I just wasn’t ready. Each year on my kids birthdays, I write them a letter. I have each letter for each year tucked away, a gift they will receive bundled on their 21st birthdays. I shared my first letter to Elizabeth here, and at the time, thought I would do the same with Noah’s letter.

Except I realized that at 10, his letters are no longer mine to share. Something significant happened when my first born hit double digits. As I wrote the words to accompany his entry into this new phase of childhood, I was struck by how much of my wirting was centered around the notion of watching Noah becoming the person he was meant to be. More than sweet sentiments of the passing year, more than hopes and dreams for his future or reminiscing his first nine years, I found myself writing about the joy I am experiencing simply seeing him explore who he is. And who he is, and how he decides to share that with the world, well, I think that is for him to decide. From each year forward, the letters I write him will be tucked away as always, but instead of feeling like they are mine to read, it feels more like I’m simply guarding these observations and words of love until they are turned over to their rightful owner.


And this left me in a quandary. How do I do justice to the 10th birthday of my baby boy, without simply reprinting that letter (which I always feel like sucks the best words out of me for each birthday). How?

I go back.

Locked in a bathroom with white tile and blue walls, I took the pregnancy test. It was late August, 1998. I was 19. The test was positive.

Flash forward eight months. I am in a hospital bed, crying and pushing and feeling exhausted. I told my mom I could. Not. Do. This. But I did.

I won’t say the moment Noah came out that everything changed. My love for him was instant and fierce, but my understanding of the depth of mothering came in pieces over the next five—or ten—years. I was 20 years-old when I brought him home. And we, in so many ways, raised each other.

There is no person on earth that I feel as tied to as Noah. It is as if a piece of my soul was placed into my womb when he was created. Not that my other two children feel less a part of me. They don’t. It’s just that there is something so familiar about Noah’s mind, about his heart, that makes me understand we are woven together in uncommon ways.

While I have long loved how his curious mind and abstract way of discovering the world brings me back to those moments of my own childhood, I also know they have served up a desire for me to guard every second of his growth. In doing so, I over-analyze, hyper-concern, and generally get caught in a trap of parenting doubts.

Like a mirror, he has reflected this too.

Recently, while walking down the hill that leads into our town, I took time to simply notice my surroundings. I listened to the few song birds that had already returned from their winter homes. I felt and heard the wind sweep across my fingers, the rustling of leaves still clinging to the now snow-free ground. I saw the clouds move east through the sky. In the distance, the ice was shifting in the bay. It was subtle, not something I could visibly recognize. No, it was more a feeling; one that I noticed only because I was paying attention.

And it hit me.

That is what parenting at this age is all about: noticing. So I’ve spent the last weeks doing just that. I listen to the words that flow so readily from Noah’s mouth. I watch his face, taking in old expressions and new ones. I laugh to myself as he tries out new fashion, new phrases, new ways to walk. He’s exploring his identity. He’s trying on different hats (which, apparently, must be worn sideways).

Freeing myself from the attachment to how my mothering will shape the being he is to grow into, I suddenly am able to sit back and just enjoy my boy. As he is. In this moment.

10. It’s a huge leap from babe in arms to eight years away from high school graduation. Soon will come the days when friends and activities will replace the desire to curl up beside me with a good book. But for now, for this moment, 10 is a beautiful age, one where the hard work of tantrums and diapers and sleepless nights are distant memories, and the awe of discovering who this person—this person who was born from my body—truly is. What a gift.


*You can find me going on (and on) about spring in the great north country right here.
** You can find me writing about everything from crafting (which often includes wine corks) and food to um, all that other mama-related stuff over at the newly hatched Cluck and Tweet, a website trying to be find the joy (and sometimes sarcastic laughter) in all things domestic.

On Justin, for a change

Most of the time I sit down at my computer to write here, I’m buzzing with words about what funny thing Max said or how Lizzie just looks at me and giggles for no reason, or how Noah seems so suddenly grown. Tonight, though, as I sit in front of what may be the last fire of the season, I realize the only person I want to talk about is Justin.

My husband turned 39 today. As we sat side-by-side and had lunch today, I took a rare moment to just watch him. He was staring out the window, sighing in that big thought kind of way.

“Birthdays,” he said with a frown, “only remind us we’re getting older.”

This is true. I nodded and hugged him and said something cheesy, some cliché about him being like fine wine. And I went back to lunch and laundry.

Parenting is a funny thing. It is, in so many ways, the most intimate act two people can entwine themselves together to perform. Intimate, but also exhausting. Exhausting and weighted and worrisome and wonderful—and simply busy enough to make even the best of us (and I am by no means in that category) forget to stop and just look at our partners. To sit and just breathe alongside them and take five minutes out of our day to say thank you or I appreciate you or anything else that validates what they do to make us, well, us.

Thinking about the father Justin is always brings a deep sense of gratitude for me. He’s the kind of guy that can spend hours building sand castles or playing Legos or pick up soccer in the backyard.

He’s the kind of guy who would rather start an out west ski tradition with his eldest son rather than with his buddies.

And on such a trip, he's also the guy who suggests his son take the camera and get a picture of this:

(and a year later, his son is still laughing about it).

He’s the kind of guy who takes one look at his daughter’s toothy grin and just melts.


It’s a gift my children don’t even realize they are getting, because he just IS present when he’s with them.


I love that about this man.


And I love this too:


It is so true, that at some point, birthdays just remind us we are getting older. But maybe that’s okay, when we’re living and creating and being part such a central part of something as simple and profound as a family.

Happy, happy birthday J.



And speaking of birthdays, I am so very excited to announce the hatch of the new weblog Cluck and Tweet. It is a great one-stop gaggle of fun where you'll find everything from crafting and traveling with the kidlets to recipes and talk about, well, the breeding grounds of life. Please, please come over and check us out-- and say hello-- because my friend Alison is offering up the coolest necklace giveaway, and I just want one of my peeps to win it!

Lots to celebrate-- over on mynorth.com, I'm celebrating the return of spring-- and because of www.cluckandtweet.com, I'm celebrating the fact that I can write off my lattes. So basically, I'm trying to be all over the web, and all up to no good. Hope you are having sunshine and above zero temperatures too...

Dance. It. Out.

When I woke up this morning, the thermometer hanging on my back porch read -26. I stood and stretched. I hummed and tried to ignore the cold seeping in through the glass door beside me. My body, however, was loud enough. There was the snap. And the crackle. And the pop-- all of which reminded me that the chill outside had found its way to the insides of me—in the way of bones, muscles, and joints.

March is here, and that means my annual wanderlust has hit full stride, my patience for winter is waning, and my undying optimism (okay, I never actually have that, but still) has been sucked into the vitamin D-less pit. Foul. That’s what I’m feeling.

At some point today, Max and I were getting into it about God-knows-what—maybe he took my turn in Sorry, or I said no to extra peanut butter on his apples—what I do know is that I was all sorts of irritated. And he looked at me, his wispy blond hair falling over his eyes.

“You are so beautiful mama," he said. His voice seemed so small, as he added with a giggle, "But that doesn’t really have anything to do with what we’re talking about does it?”

Ouch, in the most magnificent sense of the word.

I’m trying these days to be more aware of the moments I have with my children. Noah turns 10 (10!) in a month,

and as you can see, he has mastered the sullen tween self portrait already, which has me gulping for air and wishing I had, well, more time with him. Yet there are days like today, when I get cold and cranky and simply forget that there is sheer and utter joy in simply breathing the same space as these amazing little beings I get to watch grow.

Until, that is, we dance. it. out.


Cranking up our little silver radio and dancing (flailing) around the kitchen was a tradition Noah and I started when he was just old enough to shake it. And as you can see, Max and Lizzie have, as Max says, “got the music in the toes, now look out cause here it goes…”




My new motto might just be to live in the present moment, especially if that moment includes the phrase “Rock on mama!”

Lullaby

Dear Lizzie,

I am typing this as you lay sleeping in the bed we share, an arms length away. The noise you make as you sleep—a sort of breathy sigh—serves as a metronome for my fingers against this keyboard.

One year ago, I was cradling you in my arms. Vernix still caught in the creases of your skin, you were here—sharing the same air as me—and yet I sensed you were still of some place else too.

One year ago, your lips were no bigger than a thimble. You opened your mouth to drink; we became dependent again.

One year ago, I wept at your red hair, your blue eyes, the sudden and sharp beauty that is a mother and a daughter.

One year ago, I drank chocolate milkshakes like water, giddy with birth and tied to that moment when time stands not still, but together. That moment we get when you pass from inside to out, from a shadowy stomach to life.

One year ago, my sweet Elizabeth, you were born.

Now I watch as you sleep. I think of you in your birthday dress and stripy tights, laughing in that way that causes your nose to scrunch and your head to fall back. I think of your fingers, the pudgy creases now caked not with birth but white frosting. And your arrival seems so distant, a memory of a you that no longer exists.

Today you walked around the coffee table, babbling “mamamamam, baaaaa, pu-pu-pu,” with serious vigor, as if relaying vital information about the state of foreign affairs. Your brothers came into the room and you squealed with delight, immediately crawling to their feet, vying for attention.

Eventually, you turned to me, arms flung up in a familiar, sudden desperation. You’ve realized you were without me and I pull you close and catch your almost cry in the back of my own throat. We rock together. You nurse, your hand resting on my chin. Your eyes looking into mine, a mirror image.

Now I sit and watch you sleep. I feel the change that is coming, the emergence of mind and spirit and independence that comes with toddler years. I see the quiet days we spent together, swaddled and small, fading into that place of sweet memories.

You are becoming your own person, and I celebrate that—I celebrate you.














Speaking of celebrating...Over at MyNorth this week, I'll be posting everyday about a snipit of winter worth, well, not going crazy from snow and silver skies and cold weather and....Ah, you know. February in general is not a fantastic month, and where I live it can be grounds for getting committed. So, I will be reminding myself-- and hopefully all of you-- why I won't go, um, postal before spring hits. The first required activity for surviving February is here. And Day Two is right here. Please zip over. And Check back there everyday until February 21. By the way, They (as in the suits in charge of the magazine and website) are letting some strange blogs slip through as their community grows, so if I want to keep getting paid the big bucks-- okay, peanuts-- I need your help...visit. read. say something (perferably nice).

xoxo Happy Valentines Day!

tricked you....now come right this way (pretty please, of course)

Come see me over here, and you'll get treated to a glimpse inside my "real" job. And maybe a trip down memory lane-- one that involves an oversized mouse, and beer.

hope you are staying warm!


PS-- comments over there are always appreciated. Economy and all-- I'm not above the gravel.