We enjoyed lasagna, green salad, and sage and parsley garlic bread elbow to elbow around the Saarinen. In a departure from my usual French drama, we drank Famiglie Montepulciano d’Abruzzo 2020, with a nose of sweet leather half-buried in the garden, mouthfeel like butter, and a grape jelly finish. After dinner we walked to the retaining pond, collecting Exceptional Sticks from the woods along the way.

A hike back up the hill and then we were home, singing around a homemade, lopsided, Dr. Seuss-looking lemon and wild blueberry cake with fluffy lemon buttercream frosting. After they’d gone the house fell quiet and felt empty again.

My boy and I have new rhythms and new favorites, new jobs and new home offices. He learns to drive on a cherry red Ford pickup. We spend time with sisters, cousins, and uncles. Our voices echo through empty rooms with bare floors and walls.

It feels right that we came here in winter. My heavy heart needs a resting, fallow time. I burrow under, and curl to lick my wounds.

Sweet, cold air.

Steam rose hot and white from our mugs every morning. Space heaters softened the chill.

We greeted neighbors, shared persimmons from our tree and pawpaws from theirs.

Bought fries on the empty boardwalk but had to pay with cash.

Passed rows of headless meters and ducked into stores to stay warm.

Read books cover to cover under scratchy woven blankets.

Sat with silence and ghosts of summer.

Grains of sand on our feet

from a warmer time.

Reboot. Disconnect from work and home, connect to the ground, air, living things. Touch soft moss and cold water. Hear rocks crunch underfoot and the wind sweep across the mountain. Deep healing.

This book shelf is a crazy mix of random paperback novels and obscure hardcover biographies from the 60’s. No matter how many times I stare at this shelf, I always seem to find a selection I hadn’t seen before, and so I pull it odown and thumb through its crumbly pages. Then little bugs skitter across the letters and I sort of freak out, and that’s the end of that. But there is one bug-free book I come back to again and again, a selection of Thoreau’s writings accompanied by photographs by Eliot Porter.

One short vanilla breve and one short hot cocoa to go before hitting the grocery store. No boys. Big smiles.

A visit to Grandpa’s house means dog spit, hair and barking, Coors Light, cheese crackers, giant weeds, root beer, chips and salsa, theological debate, playing in the sandbox, grilled sausage and peppers, a walk to the playground, indecent desserts and a sleepy ride home.

When I was twelve years old, she wrote this letter to me, just before heading into the surgery that would define the rest of her life. She was not sure she would survive the operating table, and wanted to make certain that I knew just how much she loved me. I keep this note in my underwear drawer. I take it out and read it on days when I need her.

Laura Lucia Roberto Anderson

born March 20, 1918

died March 15, 2010

*
*Her nickname was Ruby. She and my grandfather posed for this picture after Mass one sunny Palm Sunday on Long Island. Maybe they stopped by the bakery on their way home that day. I imagine my mother and her two brothers riding in the back seat of the car, holding their buttered rolls and watching the buildings blur through the windows.

We gave up a family bed when our youngest was about two and a half years old. By that time we had been sleeping together in one bed as a family since our oldest was first born, four years earlier. We loved our family bed, but each one of us was quite ready for some more sleeping space, our own comfortable area in which to stretch out and rest without being under direct threat of flailing limbs and pinched tresses. I didn’t sleep a wink the first night we slept in our own big girl/boy beds, but both children did. And they woke up with smiles on their faces.

But sometimes, on chilly fall and winter nights, after a long day of living and loving together, we’re not quite ready to go our separate ways at bedtime. Sometimes we make a family nest and sleep in it together like a colony of rabbits. In winter we build a big fire in the wood stove, drag a million pillows and blankets down the stairs, and make the fluffiest, warmest, most inviting space to cuddle. We play games, read books, play…and sleep. Yesterday was Daddy’s birthday, so we celebrated in style in our first family nest of autumn. After a long and chilly night, I built a fire in the pre-dawn light and waited for the little ones to wake up.

A cold Sunday afternoon with friends. We caught some serious air on the jumps, Jack. We sledded until dark, and then fifty percent of our family fell asleep in the car on the way home.

This summer slipped away in a steady trickle of words and deadlines, graphics and proofs.

I know I reeked of cigarette smoke. My second-hand pants were inches too short, my hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail by a 48 year-old father new to single parenthood, and my nails were bitten to the quick. But that Santa pulled me in tight anyways and hugged me close, and he smelled of cinnamon, and butter cookies, and reindeer feed.

Lord do I miss these spots.

La Colombe Rittenhouse

Dilworth Park

The Continental Midtown

Graffiti Bar

Bud & Marilyn’s

Mission Taqueria

On the second to last day of this year, I stand at the clothesline and pin damp sheets and pillowcases still smelling of lavender. They snap and twist in the cold wind. I’m surrounded by all the[…]

Inside, I watch the bone broth simmer through the glass lid. The bubbles wiggle the chicken feet floating on the surface of the golden liquid.

And I’m sick and worn down to just the warp in spots. My eyes burn and my ears are blocked and ringing still with the leaving, that final gift that pricks and throbs like so many tiny shards of […]

I drape the dried sheet over the mattress and make crisp hospital corners at the foot of the bed, and the smell of petrichor rises from the linens, warding against evil in the new year to come.

While the preacher spoke of a world beyond the veil, one half of a mated pair caught his neck in a loop of nylon cord that he or his mate had worked into their nest. He parted the louvers covering the exhaust vent and launched himself through to the outside.

I closed the car door, then stood on the sidewalk, staring up at the side of the house. His bloodied head looked as though it was glued to the metal slats, and was twisted at an odd angle to his body dangling below. His mate clung to his bottom half, flapping her wings as if trying to fly for two, swinging them both back and forth. She flitted to an overhanging branch and watched as we freed his body from the vent and the plastic. I buried him in the garden bed along the back fence.

I told her just after she came through the front door. She asked if it was the mostly brown one or the one with a lot of black on his face, and I said it was the latter.

“That was Solomon,” she said, her voice breaking. She turned away to mourn privately. I stepped to the back window and watched thick grey clouds pass high above the freshly turned garden soil.

I took another trip to Philly for work last week. I love filming in cities, because the energy/people/sounds are so different from my daily experience. When I got home I noticed that most of my favorite clips were of some mode of transportation or other (with the exception of the part where I try to get my colleague Joy on camera and hilarity ensues), and so I combined them into one short little movie that makes me smile (and laugh at that silly part) every time I watch it.

Clusters of red and white brittlegills dotted the path through the back woods. Can’t know for sure which species, there are over 750 in the genus. But if there is any poetry in happenstance, then surely my path was strewn with Russula sanguinaria, bloody brittlegill, the deep, rich red of a life poured out at your feet.

We were alone for the afternoon, and so we walked around the lake, slowly, savoring the warmth of that Indian summer day. She patiently waited for me each time I stopped to take another, and another, and another. We watched flying creatures of all kinds enjoy a large patch of asters (I’d never before seen a Buckeye butterfly). Just as I was zooming in on the center of her web, a spotted orbweaver zipped past my lens and encased a newly-caught fly in a death cocoon, and I felt pity and awe and guilt in equal measure.

At work or church I would say that the view was breathtaking, that the climb was invigorating, that watching the sun rise over blue mountains was moving, and I would mean every word. But what I would whisper to you in the quiet is this:

…she reclined like a queen on a cushion of stone and watched birds of prey circling beneath her…

…he grappled with fear and emerged a victor, unafraid to look down…

…I drank in the cool forest air, knelt to feel the stubble of giant fern leaves broken by the careless, traced the initials of lovers carved into the bark of a bent tree…

I saw your ghost standing at the top of the steps last night.

(your dark hair reflected the beams of that hunter’s moon)

You looked down, head tilted, smiling. You walked a few slow paces, stopped.

I watched you move from the corner of my eye but did not turn to face you. My ears filled with the roar of my own heart’s blood and I heard nothing else.

The hours between then and now are thin, brittle sheets that crumble in my fingers when I try to reclaim their utility.

I text her a photo: pictures of her life hang from clothespins on my kitchen wall.

“It cracks me up that you took pics of all of the messy places,” she texts.

“Those are all of the beautiful places,” I text back.

And it’s true. Every corner of her home held beauty. All things burst green with the late northern spring in the Oran Valley. We stayed at her place even though she was away, but her family memb[…]

Bruce gathered eggs from the hens’ favorite corner of the barn (why they don’t lay in their coop, no one understands, but chickens are complicated people) and served them up for our Saturday m[…]

And then there were those chickens. I couldn’t stop myself–I took about 900 pictures of chickens that weekend. Why? I have no idea, but who wouldn’t take pictures of giant pet birds that w[…]

When we were away from the house doing family things, attending the events for which we’d made the trip north in the first place, we talked about what Tilly, Monty, Jag and the chickens might be[…]

Weeks later, I stand in the kitchen while the tulsi steeps. I reach out and touch each picture and remember sweet birdsong, the squeak of trampoline springs, the crack of a bonfire, the quiet of a[…]

• I could barely believe the beauty of Manhattan Beach. Lemon trees and succulents in nearly every front yard, warm and fragrant breezes, my feet in soft sand after a painfully long winter.

• I’d never before attended a wedding held outside in the rain, but now I can heartily recommend it: huge smiles peeking out from under dripping raincoat hoods and umbrellas, steam rising from the pavement, the sound of water all around.

• I made a cake, sewed a colorful bunting and watched a newly minted teenager dive into blue water over a long weekend.

• Bonum est praestolari cum silentio salutare Dei.

I started an analog notebook. It’s a fuchsia Moleskine notebook, and I am filling it with pressed flowers, photos taken on instant film, and my words.

I have a homely, stately little Smith-Corona typewriter now, purchased from a nice woman who had owned it since high school in the 60’s, and I incorporate its use into my analog journaling. My d[…]

More and more often on the weekends and in the evenings I’ve insisted on vinyl and reading instead of mindless TV blaring in our sole living space.

I’ve been slightly obsessed with bifurcated sleep patterns for about two years, loving the idea of breaking my night’s sleep into two distinct blocks with meaningful, analog-y stuff in the dar[…]

I know that this yearning for what used to be does border on pointlessness (from the New Yorker, The Pointlessness of Unplugging). But for me, one who spends all day staring at computer screen for[…]

As I write this, a loved one of mine is snuggled up in his bed, recovering from his second surgery in three months. Nothing life-threatening, but surgery nonetheless. His recovery will include several days spent in bed, followed by several weeks of crutches and physical therapy. I’m by no means an expert on natural healing (really I have so much to learn) but I believe in the power of preventative care, am learning more and more about nutrition as medicine, and am wide open to ancient and naturopathic healing wisdom. I thought it might be worth sharing about how I prepare our home for convalescence, and the natural remedies I use to encourage rest and healing.

A calm and serene environment

Before the period of convalescence begins, I make sure to thoroughly clean the bedroom where my loved one will recover. I remove clutter, wash, fold and put away laundry, and clean off all surfaces with a non-toxic natural cleaner. I also wash the bed linens and dry them on the line outside, to bring fresh air and a bit of nature inside. Once my patient comes home from the hospital, I tuck him or her into a bed that smells of sunshine. I also vaporize a mixture of orange, patchouli and ylang ylang essential oils to create a peaceful vibe in the room.

A plan for things to do

Hanging out in bed can be a little tedious, once the novelty wears off. I always check out a stack of new-to-us books from the library for my patient to read. Once a trip to the television becomes possible, we choose a movie series and spend the next few days and/or evenings watching a movie while snacking on freshly-popped organic popcorn. Family favorites include the Back to the Future trilogy and the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies.

Nourishing food for healing

Again–I have so far to go in this department, but do have certain items that I keep on hand when someone has a need of healing. We drink several cups of organic tulsi tea each day, incorporate organic turmeric into our diet via golden milk or vegetable curries, and make smoothies with whey protein and green superfood powders (thanks to my stepdaughter for the recommendation) to get some semblance of greens into even the most reluctant of bodies. We supplement with multivitamins and vitamin C drink mixtures as needed. It’s good for me to remember that even the tiniest of baby steps in this area moves my family forward towards better health.

A way to get clean

Eventually after a period of extended convalescence we all reach a point where we long for a nice, hot shower. I’ve found all kinds of neat products at Walgreens that keep incisions of all shapes, sizes and locations dry. But waterproof dressings aside, you don’t have to purchase a bunch of medical equipment just to assist your patient with bathing. For me, helping an injured loved one into the shower is a precarious ballet that includes strategically placed towels, a waterproof limb cover from Walgreens and a small plastic step stool from IKEA sitting under the water stream, ready to be repurposed as a shower seat. It feels wonderful to put on clean clothes and towel off sweet-smelling hair for the first time after surgery.

A good night’s sleep

We all know sleep is necessary for healing. Melatonin, no screens for the 1.5 hours before lights out time, and adequate pain control all contribute to a good night’s sleep. I don’t hesitate to give the pain medication prescribed by the doctor, as pain really does interfere with rest. Once pain is under control, we move to over the counter pain relief, but we are in no rush to stop taking stronger medicine because of fear.

I can say with certainty that these measures are a great comfort to a person weakened by pain and dependence on others. I prepared in this way for my own surgery a few years ago, and was much more comfortable during my recovery than if I’d been surrounded by mess, in pain, and bored to tears.

We take the Metro to the National Mall to watch the Arsenal of Democracy World War II Victory Capitol Flyover. We walk to the western slope of the Washington Monument grounds and stake our claim. A black dog sits nearby and pants in the bright sun. We eat our simple picnic lunch on a blue plaid blanket in a dense forest of legs, lawn chairs and tripods. My girl passes the strawberries around, one eye on the sky.

The first warbirds appear just to the right of the Lincoln. He raises his binoculars to his eyes. I hear the clicks of a thousand camera shutters. Veterans and distinguished guests are gathered for a service at the World War II Memorial below. The public address system shouts sentiment, fills in the space between flyovers. I feel the engines in my chest, and close my eyes to imagine war, death, and life, the sound of victory rattling my ribcage.

When the last formation passes, the speaker asks the crowd to stand for Taps. All of the chatting and clicking stops, and we are hushed and reverent as we listen. As the last note falls away, I sweep one finger behind my sunglasses to wipe my eyes.

On our way back to the Metro station, we wander through the farmer’s market and make new friends. We cool off underground as we wait on the platform for our westbound ride home. As the train heads towards Rosslyn I say we’re under the river now, so they can imagine the car full of fish and current.

The tender friendships one gives up, on parting, leave their bite on the heart, but also a curious feeling of a treasure somewhere buried. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Southern Mail, 1929, translated from French by Curtis Cate

The truest, most loving friends in the world helped us pack our truck and clean our house on a Friday night. Kids raced around, got underfoot and played hot potato. Crazy Phil discovered some 20 year-old homemade pickles in my basement. Despite the corroded lids, despite the fact that the pickles were floating around in a murky, green water filled with unidentifiable objects of plant origin, he ate them. Then he passed them around. Video of that disgusting event here. There was pizza and a little drinking and my girlfriends washed my bathrooms, packed my food, washed my fridges, and slipped care packages of new toys and goodies into the truck for us to discover on our arrival. Their acts of kindness that night filled my heart to overflowing.

Even more blessings awaited us at our new home in Virginia. Our new housemates had vanilla candles burning in every impeccably clean room, more dear and devoted friends helped us unload what we had loaded just hours before, and we shared a meal of very good Chinese food in our dining room to celebrate this new beginning. The next morning, running on adrenaline, I dug into the work of creating a home, but had to pause to satisfy a mysterious craving for fresh salsa. And as expected, eventually the migraine came, forcing me to bed and to rest. But we’re here, and we’re loved, and will forever be indebted to our dear ones.

Other garden notes:
–> Killed my seedlings that were started way too late by overfertilizing them. Too much love, hyper-vigilance, overparenting, the story of my life. But I found some lovely heirloom transplants at my friendly neighborhood garden center and adopted them.
–> Lettuce is growing and I cannot wait for the first homegrown salad of the season.
–> Peas, melons, peppers, cukes, herbs, they’re all growing away, but this time I am determined to avoid a jungle mess, and so am studying pruning techniques.
–> My garden is child’s play compared with the restorative agricultural work being done by my Regrarian heroes, but we all must start somewhere.

I spend hours in the garden. I weed the beds and tie the bamboo supports with fresh twine. I spread black gold from my illicit compost pile over the turned soil. For a while I listen to music, then I listen to the wind, then I just listen. I feel gratitude for the warm sunshine and cool air, for a functioning (if aging) body, for the worms and dirt, for the smell of the wild mint and chives made fragrant by the cut of my spade.

But I also ache: for a little farm to tend with my gentleman farmer at my side; for the quiet evening conversation that often follows a long day spent outside; for sweet words of poetry whispered back and forth by the light of the full moon.

Fitting in is assessing situations and groups of people, then twisting yourself into a human pretzel in order to get them to let you hang out with them. Belonging is something else entirely—it’s showing up and letting yourself be seen and known as you really are. — Brené Brown

Being seen and known as you really are…is there anything more terrifying? Or, when it finally happens, more freeing? Or, if lost, more debilitating? This morning the red-winged blackbirds are in full song.

I’m shedding clothing that I’ve kept for decades, things that I’ve held dear. A race t-shirt from 1990. A tailored, pinstriped suit from 1998. A black backless gown with beading along the hemline, the one that used to turn heads. I pull it all from the closet, sort it into piles for consignment, donation, and cleaning rags.

What is left? Only what I really need. Two shirts. Four skirts. A pair of jeans. All are of the dust, and all turn to dust again, does it really matter all that much what we wear on our bodies? I know myself and adorn myself accordingly: I am a caretaker, a breadwinner, obedient to divine ordinance, pushing deeper into the closet toward the back wall and emptiness.

So many below freezing days, and then this storm of heavy and wet snowflakes that stung our cheeks as we walked. The pond, transformed by a layer of ice and snow, was a white meadow ringed by bare trunks. I snapped a few photos and then the wind told us it was time to turn back. Just as we started on our way home, I looked down and noticed: she’d worn her purple sneakers instead of her boots. Silly girl.

We are moving in two months, so I am taking William Morris’ words to heart. I am making choices, selling off, giving away. I feel stripped down to a ribbon inside. I move from room to room, pulling items out of corners and closets. I hold each thing in my hand, feel its weight, and I whisper to myself: And this? Does this matter to you? Will its loss tear through you, leave you broken and wanting?

The whispered answer:
Just let it go.

I stand very still in sparse underbrush and listen to voices echo across the water.

I drop to my knees in the middle of a stand of hardwoods.

I bring my face close to moss, bugs and fallen leaves.

I hover over clusters of soft, grey mushrooms.

I stare too long at a patch of sunlight on bark.

I lose hours to the forest.

I wear the woods home:

dirt on my knees,

burrs in my hair,

mud on my boots.

Thirty minutes before closing. The grounds are dotted with little houses, each one filled with whispering old objects.

Electric fans move the air inside the main building and I wander through three levels. A man browses through silverware on the ground floor. I see him again on the second floor, looking at a small wooden puzzle box. And then we’re on the third floor where the air is thin. We are spirits looking for lost possessions.

Eyes closed, my hand wraps around a small glass bottle that once held a tiny bouquet of buttercups.

All of the silver, all of the linen, all of the brass and the wood and the glass, every small and large thing wears a fragile coating of dust and soul and each thing wonders
who will ever love me again

I sat on that very same flat hometown rock when I was her age, on the side of a rushing cold water creek filled with crayfish and bubbles.

A coffeecake for new homeowners. I’ll never be able to wrap presents in plastic bows and bright paper again.

Three things that remind me of you:

the Hillstreet Blues theme song

plum eyeshadow

seashells

You were the first, the first one to push through the membrane between our worlds. I touched the soft stretch marks on your belly after you’d gone, while you were still warm. Hours later in the shower, I stood helpless under the water as your final minutes repeated over and over again in front of my unseeing eyes.

Now each loved one that crosses to the other side thins the barrier between us by degrees, and I feel myself half there with you these days.

I registered to become a bone marrow donor last month, the gift of time to another daughter, maybe. Happy Birthday, Mom.

I had a lot of time to say goodbye to the places where I’d spent most of my time, but wasn’t able to say goodbye to the people who I’d miss the most. People > places. I was disappointed.

I bought a fluorescent light fixture with two full-spectrum grow bulbs and installed it in our basement pantry. I made pots out of newspaper and we planted seeds. I water them twice a day and imagine them tall and strong in the sunshine.

We found a new trail and followed it to its end.

My gift wrapping this year started with a walk in the woods to gather bits and ended with brown paper packages tied up with string. All of our gifts were handmade, out of necessity and also just because. I’m feeling super-inspired by Mary Jo Hoffman’s STILL project lately, so much so that I just ordered a plate for my tripod, and have plans to finally learn how to use my bounce flash once and for all.

Oh, and that last gift is a bottle of my daughter’s favorite barbecue sauce that the local stores have inexplicably stopped carrying. Because that is how I roll.

Once a week I make bone broth.

I strip the chicken carcass bare, throw it into the pot, cover it with clean, cold water. Throw in the wing, leg and thigh bones.

The chicken feet are alien and I can’t bear to touch them without wearing thick purple kitchen gloves
(chicken feet with little brown calluses on the bottom, like people feet after a long summer of walking barefoot to the swimming pool)
but they add glucosamine, chondroitin, and minerals to the broth and so I throw them in.

Floppy, forgotten celery from the back of the fridge. Onion peelings, two dried bay leaves and garlic whacked with the side of a kitchen knife. I read that apple cider vinegar helps to extract the minerals, so I splash some into the water and cover the pot with its lid.

The soup pot bubbles for 24 hours. The house smells sweet and meaty, and the windows fog and our sinuses open.

When cooled, the broth is thick with gelatin. I heat up spoonfuls with peas, sauteed cabbage, cooked potato, leftover millet, and chicken meat, and call it soup. This broth will boost the immune system, Italian grandmother-style. This broth will remineralize teeth and soothe aching bellies. This broth will steam from mugs on the cold, dark days of December.

We spent about two weeks preparing for a Market Day at our homeschool co-op. During those two weeks our home buzzed with quiet industry and focus. The experience yielded valuable lessons in ordering, inventory, budgeting, pricing and perseverance. The actual event was a success: her hand-painted wooden families and gnomes were a hit, and his sweets sold quickly as soon as lunch was over. Now she is exploring the possibilities of opening an Etsy shop, and he talks of new recipes to try.

During the Market Day festivities, a fellow homeschooling mama asked me how we manage to fit creative endeavors into our school days. I explained that, when given this sort of opportunity to practice and refine real-world skills, we basically abandon most of our formal lessons and throw ourselves wholeheartedly into the project at hand. In other words, teaching my kids how to earn a living sometimes trumps first conjugation pluperfect tense. I suppose that wraps up my homeschooling philosophy in a nutshell.

We returned to Woods Edge farm for our third annual bonfire on Saturday. Angelina‘s non-profit hosted a camp for Native American youth this summer, and many of her campers returned for the day. So many sounds: Johnny Cash coming out of the barn speakers, horses neighing, a leaf blower making a giant pile for jumping, laughter, native flute.

I spent time in the chilly upper pasture trying to get a good shot of the boy horses grazing. The only way I could keep them near me was to sing, so I made up the most ridiculous, operatic songs about horses and belted them while setting up my shots. Just when I thought I had the perfect picture, the horses were spooked by a squirrel. A SQUIRREL. So much for the power of opera.

to show them beauty between strips of asphalt

to console myself

to let the urge pass

(not all good things are wild and free)

sweet gentle green moss

frail butterfly wing

round red berries

a single thorn

Today is dark, cloudy and brooding. I’m listening to Pandora, making applesauce and enjoying the darkness.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/DNZGlcfXM14

Pizza for 16 was quite a project. I slid pizza on and off of the hot stone for about two and a half hours, red-faced, hair piled high on my head and sweat trickling behind my apron. Lovely image, I know. I sipped on a glass of old vine Zin and chatted with lady friends while working. Children popped in and out of the sweltering kitchen to place their pizza orders and check on status. My pizza was last to come out of the oven. It was delish, if I may say so myself.

I watch my heart trampoline hard on the wake, tethered to me with the thinnest rope.

He swings wide, an inked stylus recording a round swell of current, then jerks left and right, scratching thick and black the sharp spikes of my fear. A final jolt, and he slips under the dark water.

Later, we thump hard and fast back to the marina.
His brown skin glows a life vest orange,
his blue eyes closed against fat rain drops.
He scratches his jellyfish stings.

I turned the surprise cucumbers into sweet and spicy pickles this weekend. Let me just say, pickling is far easier than fermenting. No vegetal whey taste, no wondering about exactly what kind of microbe I am growing, and the cukes were ready to eat two hours after hitting the vinegar and spice. They are delicious. I am eating them with everything, at every meal, and dreaming about making my next batch as soon as we can locate more vegetables in the jungle out back.

When it’s twelve degrees outside on New Year’s Day, it’s important to stay near the fire, have a guitar dance party, and drink eat leftovers for dinner.

Happy Friday. xxoo

I saw a flash of yellow behind big green leaves and called to my kids to come see what I’d found. They dashed around our tiny backyard and squeaked with excitement. We had no idea these Boothby’s Blonde cukes were even growing deep in our jungle. Now to find the best sweet pickle recipe…

Portland in July was a temperate, low humidity heaven on earth. Bungalows, restaurants, cape cods, bars, and flower shops are mixed together and spread out across the straight line of Southeast Division Street. I sat at a tiny outdoor table at The Woodsman Tavern, sipped a coa de jima and thought if I lived in that little house across the street, this would be my regular haunt.

Just spent four days in Syracuse to attend a loved one’s memorial service. I am pretty weary. We made little excursions to favorite places, and I saw some of my most favorite people, but really, I am just sad and tired.

Jungle. I mean serious jungle chaos.

Big Apple gourds, Snow Cap beans and Boothby’s Blonde cukes (I think–did I mention we didn’t mark anything?) are taking over my fence. His melons are attacking her carrots. The tri-sticked teepee is maxed out and Good Mother Stallard bean tendrils wave around in the air above, disappointed.

The other bed is overflowing with lettuce and…uh…cukes, I think. I have a big Genovese basil plant. The Holy Basil I grew from seed is coming to life finally, I will use it to make a healing tea with fresh turmeric and ginger. Last week I had to perch on the back edge of the raised bed and hog tie the whateveritis to the fence to keep it from smothering the cilantro. I felt the eyes of neighbors, who already think I am crazy, bore into my flailing body as I struggled with the twine and the spiky stalks. It will all be worth in when we cut into the first melon, right?

More music on our front steps. The kids played hide and seek in the dark spaces between the buildings. One nearby door slowly opened a crack, an unseen man or woman probably peering out to pinpoint the source of the sound. I sat on my stool, listened, swatted away mosquitos. My neighbors’ television sets cast strobing stripes of light on their front lawns.

Our house is featured in the July 2013 online issue of Ikea Family Live Magazine, a digital publication of Inter IKEA Systems B.V. The mag’s editor Helen reached out to me via email and asked if we’d like to be featured. When I accepted, she sent me a digital package containing photo guidelines, interview questions and FTP instructions.

I styled our place myself. I used my Canon Rebel XT and my 18-55mm kit lens to take the shots, used my free Gimp download to gently edit the shots, and used my brain and rusty writing voice to craft some explanation of the crazy that is our place. And our place is crazy, make no mistake.

My interview emphasizes how well our space suits our needs, and it does, but we have to constantly stay on top of* the clutter or all bets are off. I spent quite a while staging these photos, and like any other magazine, they show our place at its tidiest.

I thought it would be funny to look at the shots in the mag, taken after a day of staging, and compare them with shots of the same rooms taken with my iPhone on a normal day.

These comparisons make me laugh so hard. If all magazines published “reality” shots, Pinterest stress would be a thing of the past. But in that case I suppose no one would be inspired to do any better. This process reaffirmed for me that beauty exists in my life, in every moment and every where: in a car held together with duct tape, in the weeds dotting our lawn, in a flea market painting of a cat and a family room bursting at the seams with mess/life.

——————————————–
*”staying on top of” may or may not involve yelling, semi-violent pile-making, and the waving around of trash bags in a menacing fashion.

We took a walk after dinner Friday evening, following mossy trails to the playground. I admit to doing a little climbing, a little playing, but only as much as becomes a forty year-old. At the end of our walk, we approached our front steps. Fireflies twinkled all around the concrete and the grasses, but only at our house. We were chosen. I lit them a candle to keep them company.

This early summertime has been lovely. Some notes:

• We waited with bated breath for cicadas to visit, but in the end had to settle for finding a few husks out at a friend’s place in Haymarket.

• My kids were the very first people in our community pool on the Friday before Memorial Day. It was 54 degrees outside.

• We three went strawberry picking, our first time ever. My first time ever. There is no thing sweeter than a freshly-picked, ripe, red strawberry. Except for maybe a ripe and juicy peach.

• My garden is really thriving. It felt like an epic struggle against entropy and all forces of nature to get the garden pulled together, but now? Now I have lettuce, two varieties of basil, arugula, beans, melons, peppers, three varieties of heirloom tomatoes, chives, cilantro and probably a bunch more stuff I can’t remember growing in our humble backyard. And only one unmentionable incident involving a varmint and my lettuce plants.

The fourth downpour of the day outside my home office window. I am a lead writer on a proposal due soon, so most of my words are aimed at my work life right now.

I have tons of soft, sweet clover growing all over my backyard and I and refuse to cut it short or spray it with herbicides. I just can’t do it. I often sit on a bar stool in my kitchen and watch the bunnies and birds hang out. The bunnies chow on the flowers and the birds look for worms near my de facto/illicit compost pile.

On warm spring evenings, our neighbor carries his huge bass across the driveway and plants it in the front yard. His little ones often follow him over. We grab the sidewalk chalk and whatever instruments are handy and then we jam. People dance, people draw, people come out and stare.

Whatever. We are that family, the one with puffs of unruly clover in our lawn and messy drawings on our stoop and a ten year-old playing cajon and a twelve year-old dancing with a box on her head and a crazy mother filming the entire circus on an iPhone.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/o8yUl8mw6oE

*“The aphid is a stupid little creature which lives by thrusting its bill or sucking tube into a stem or leaf if a plant, and thus settles down for life, nourished by the sap which it sucks up[…]

We three step outside our front door and walk down a paved path to a bridge that spans a small trickle of water, banked on both sides by honeysuckle. They pick small bunches of the flowers, then s[…]

Moments later, at the dining room table, we open the thick book and search the index in vain for honeysuckle, then cicadas, but then settle on reading about our most recent house guests, ants. The[…]

My older sister invites me to come stay at a house on the beach to celebrate her 50th birthday. I rent a Ford Escape that has Bluetooth and satellite radio and cruise control, pack up my two kids, a suitcase and a cooler, kiss my husband goodbye and head for North Carolina.

We stop too many times for too many potty breaks, get too deep into the country to find a Starbucks, I drive too fast and get a speeding ticket five miles from the house, but eventually we pull into the driveway as the sun is setting behind Salter Path Road.

She meets us at the door and we hug tight and long. She has our mother’s eyes, different color but same shape.

We file through the doorway, take in the view, drop bags on our beds and have dinner with our brother and my sister’s friends from work that have come to celebrate, too. That night we fall asleep to the ocean sounds coming through my sister’s open window across the hall.

The next morning we rise at dawn and look for shells, pick through deposits of brown sea lettuce, lengths of rope, wilted plastic bags. Little white piles of dried and empty sand flea skeletons are everywhere, as if swept into neat heaps by the sandpipers. Our collected treasure swings at our sides in green buckets.

We return to the house, hose sand off of our toes and heels and make coffee, make small talk, make chicken salad and salsa. We spend the day moving between inside and outside. We play cornhole and Frisbee and Quirkle, listen to Jimmy Buffet and Steely Dan, drink pitchers of sangria and chilled Coronas, swim in the pool and the ocean.

Later we make dinner, then her friends head out. The rest of us settle into an evening of cards and chatting. During a game of Greek Poker we disagree about something unimportant and my sister starts to mother me, gently correcting me. I stare down into my iPhone and read a random email over and over again, angry. I look up and it’s my mother’s eyes that are looking back at me from across the table, and when my sister’s friends suddenly pile into the kitchen, back from one bar and ready to bring her out to the next, I make my apologies and follow the kids upstairs to get ready for bed. Asleep, I don’t hear her slip into her room when she gets back from her night out.

I am scrambling eggs when she comes into the kitchen the next morning. She pours herself a cup of coffee and then begins to move around the room, tidying up while I cook, and we talk about nothing, really. I want to know if she saw my face flush angry last night but I don’t ask. I step out of the kitchen onto the deck, into a chill morning wind, and look out at the beach.

The sky is grey, the sunrise blocked by clouds. A large pod of brown pelicans is feeding in the shallows right in front of the house, all wings and distended pouches and flying spray. A lone adult glides in from the south and approaches the flock, sailing over the dark waves, and as she reaches the group she hurls herself towards the sea with great purpose, plunge-diving they call it, a precision strike meant to catch the living thing shimmering like silver just under the skin of the water. I hold my breath until she emerges from the deep.

Little Rock, Arkansas is not a friendly city at night, so you must wrap yourself around your craft cocktail at the hotel bar and not move around too much.

My tiny and withered arms pulled together great slabs of lumber and leveled compost. Seedlings are pushing toward light, waiting in starter containers for their true planting.

I found God’s Word lying in green grass, covered in dew, and brought it home. The stranger’s handwriting looked out of place in my kitchen full of familiar.

I dropped to thirty hours of my office job a week and replaced those two hours a day with morning homeschooling. I haven’t felt this connected to my kids in a long, long time. More on that to come.

We took the train into the city on a cold Friday morning. Union Station was gothic, beautiful and quiet in the early hours of the day. I sipped hot coffee and the children shared a cinnamon sugar pretzel in the white tiled food court. We walked across the street and into the National Postal Museum inside the Old City Post Office.

We spent the next two hours moving back and forth through two hundred years of history. I lost myself in lives lived and lost, my mind filled with their stories. The international stamp collection is stored in a wide wall of skinny vertical display cases, and we thrilled to the variety of sizes, shapes and colors. In a gift shop bin my son found a fat and heavy plastic bag labeled “OVER 500 STAMPS FROM ALL COUNTRIES INSIDE!!” His eyes were bright with excitement so I had no choice but spend the $7US. He held the bag tightly in both hands during the entire train ride home.

He sat down at their work table, made a hole in the bag and turned it upside down.. We watched the stamps spill out of that hole, big stamps, small stamps, all colors and countries and soon the pile covered much of the table. Over the next two hours we sorted stamps together, found countries on our world map, talked about how countries sometimes just dissolve and form new countries, and made many little piles all over the table. We each picked our favorite stamps from the whole lot–how lovely is the butterfly and those mushrooms?

The next day while he was at a friend’s house I sewed a stamp pile organizer of sorts, a temporary place to keep his piles sorted and visible until we devise a more permanent way to display his new (instant) collection. While the stamp holder isn’t as colorful as the last organizer I made, the green makes a lovely billiard-table-ish background for his treasures.

The above photo was awarded an Honorable Mention by the judges of the 2013 Mobile Photo Awards. This shot will be part of a show being held at the Soho Gallery For Digital Art in Manhattan from February 22-28. Opening reception is this coming Friday night and Lord willing I will be there to take it all in. We’ve needed an excuse to drive up to NYC and this seems like a pretty good reason to make the trip.

I’m stealing moments here and there between chores this Saturday to create. Pale blue, scratchy wool roving will soon be a smooth, friendly felted bowl to hold treasure.

My sous-chef drizzled the maple sugar on the scones with more skill and style than I’ve ever brought to bear. My return to work weighed heavily on my heart and mind all day.

Spent the morning with my loves at a cozy coffee shop in Arlington. I wrote in my journal about 2013, about my hopes for renewal and rebirth. My girl began writing in her tiny purple Moleskine, too. Tonight we will light candles, share our writings and craft a family vision for this year to come. Then we will pop popcorn and play a game, and then we will blow out the candles and nestle down into our covers. And when we wake, it will be a new year.

The blue-grey light returned on Boxing Day, along with snow, sleet, rain, cold. I felt like I was back in central New York. I burned Nag Champa and played 80’s music in our warm kitchen. John fried cold slabs of leftover grits in the cast iron skillet, and I ate two of them with butter and my most favorite-est thing ever, Sriracha.

Pre-dawn whispers (I stuffed my head under a pillow and went back to sleep).

Presents opened before the eight o’clock hour.

Hot coffee from the Chemex.

Sweet, soft challah French toast eaten continental style by a bad piggie.

Organic, fresh-pressed juice to cut through the sweet.

Beautiful music streaming through the house.

Gentle, quiet focus on a new art.

For the first time, my girl helped braid the challah, her small fingers gently moving the ropes and curling in ends. We used the knife as a chisel and popped chunks of Callebaut in our mouths while we worked.

The challah baked up quick. We left the hot loaf to cool on a wire rack and drove to church, where I sat on the edge of my seat as our pastor hit all the high notes in O Holy Night. Once home I sat in my bent wood chair under my mother’s cable-knit afghan and stared at the lights on the tree.

Merry Christmas. xxoo

discovered while tidying the bookshelves.

After building up my courage with coffee and Ella, I spent the morning sewing a hefty curtain to replace the broken bi-fold door of our coat closet. I’d been waiting for five years to cut into this Ikea fabric, and couldn’t have used it for a better purpose, as the length of this curtain really shows off the pattern.

As predicted, the record player is getting a real workout. What is surprising–but probably should not be knowing this boy and girl of mine–is that most every selection they make is classical. I’ve raised them on a steady diet of jazz, classic rock, and cheesy 70’s love songs, but there is no denying their visceral hunger for strings, piano, brass. Mozart was his choice one afternoon this week, and the sounds of the quintet filled the first floor of our house.

Spent another three days in Portland last week. The city has become more familiar to me. I have a favorite coffee spot. I got lost slightly less frequently than I did a month ago. I barely noticed rain-soaked hair and hem. And I found a nice warm place to have dinner that feels like my dining room at home. All of these small comforts combined made the separation from my family a little more tolerable.

I rearranged the living room this weekend and made a spot for the turntable we bought two years ago. It had been about 20 years since I’d actually listened to any of my records, so I spent this afternoon with Wings, Led Zeppelin, Roxy Music, Blind Faith. I’m looking forward to digging into the Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn from my husband’s extensive LP collection.

A shaggy-haired guy with a toothbrush in one hand and an empty plastic gallon-sized milk bottle in the other approaches me as I walk down Stark Street and asks if I know where he can find some water. I tell him I have no idea, and he gives me a smile and thanks me and keeps walking. At Pioneer Square a man with a blue face leans against a bike rail and smokes a bowl of weed. I ask to take his picture and he smiles his yes, and after I take the shot, he blows smoke in my face. Head spinning, I cross the street and stop near the Starbucks to watch a game of chess. People gather in groups, talking and greeting passers-by, so different from how people act where I live that I just stand staring in awe until they start staring back. On my way back to my hotel I pass a musician playing buckets with a friend.

http://youtu.be/c5sC_n5f4Xs

We managed to slip out of town to the beach house and have enjoyed a few warm and sunny days, but now a cold front is rolling on in. At the ready are Playmobil sets, plastic Civil War soldiers, vintage Hardy Boys hardcovers, two decks of playing cards, and a variety of other wet weather beach house staples. I have good chocolate and a good book on hand, and am snuggled underneath a fleece blanket, so I say let the weather come.

I’m headed to Portland today. I’m listening to jazz on satellite radio, looking out the window at the canyons colored with dawn and just feeling so in awe of creation. A dirt road carved into the deep red earth below folds into a sharp angle, looping around a little town as an afterthought.

Alastair and Jacqui were once “the church sound guy and his worship singer wife” to me, little more than strangers. In fact the first real conversation I had with Alastair went something like […]

Alastair, standing in front of me, a microphone stand between us: “Sing louder.”
Me: “I can’t.”
Alastair: *sigh*

Slowly we became good friends, and now ten years later, Alastair and Jacqui are as close to my heart as family. They invited us over for dinner this past Saturday evening. The meal Alastair cooked[…]

I slip outside with my camera, leaving behind the chatting and smiling that always makes me self-conscious, uncomfortable, embarrassed. I walk the property line, trailed by dragonflies, and stoop down to touch soft mosses and strange willowy seed pods. I descend to the culvert to look for frogs, but the heat has shrunken their pond to a puddle where a lone tadpole circles, believing himself to be the only of his kind.

I’m hoping to begin this book with the little ones as soon as we’ve settled into our new dinner–>cleanup–>schoolwork–>bedtime routine.

Sauerkraut experiment #1 is underway. I love the deep purple color of the cabbage juice in the jar. I found postcard art by illustrator Phoebe Wahl tucked into Issue 3 of Taproot Magazine, and it now hangs on our kitchen line, reminding us of the colder weather heading our way. I dusted off the kitchen scale and about a thousand other neglected kitchen tools to make a ri-DI-culously good Coconut Layer Cake for a special birthday.

A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked. ~Anais Nin

I keep my distance, as usual, camera as buffer and coping mechanism. The cast and crew of my friend’s film are called into the poolhouse in groups to watch behind-the-scenes clips on his laptop. The kids steer chunky white rafts around the water. I am called to bear witness to a ritual that is strange to me, but apparently is a very traditional part of this sort of celebration: the throwing of the directors into the pool. I ask no questions, just lift my lens and get the shots, pleased that I chose photography over movie-making.

I came across a completely beautiful (and completely dead) cicada while on a walk with my girl. It now clings to the side of a nest in my home office.

I designed a postcard for my husband’s real estate brokerage. Kind of wonky composition but I like to think that is part of the charm?

I push the broken storm door closed once, two, three times before it latches. I wave and blow kisses to my littles standing in the front window, turn, and make the short walk to my bus stop. I scan the headlines through the newspaper box glass and wait. The bus pulls up to the curb and I step through the open doors, climb the stairs, tap my commuter card to the fare machine, then take my usual seat. The bus threads its way down the narrow street and makes several stops, picking up small, orderly lines of people. The daily riders greet each other with the ease of the long-married, remarking on a new haircut, asking about the weekend, pointing out an uncharacteristic suit and tie in a teasing voice. Fifteen minutes later, we climb the HOV ramp to the highway. I close my eyes and listen.

The other riders rise and stand in the aisle as soon as we exit the highway. The bus comes to a stop and the doors open. I step into the current and am carried past idling taxis and buckets of flowers to the pedestrian bridge. A newspaper is thrust into my hand and I float across a sea of red tail lights. Halfway down the tunnel the others turn toward the Metro gates, but I break free of the tide. I walk to the far end of the tunnel and emerge onto the street. I make my way down the hill and enter the housing development bordering my office campus. Most balconies are bare, but one is not. The streets are unswept, and the withered lilac blossoms release a sweet, stale fragrance as they are crushed under my Converse. I pass a long-haired cat sleeping on a concrete porch. I turn a corner and my office building stands grey against grey sky. I slip the lanyard of my employee badge around my neck as I pass through the glass entrance doors.

She gets an unreal amount of attention when she rolls around in public wearing these skate/shoe thingies. Every comment she overhears from a little one (Mama, HOW is that girl skating on her SHOES??) makes her smile wide. The floors at IKEA are the bestest of all.

Been spending time in the kitchen, working on my fermentation chops. Haven’t you heard that fermentation is the new canning? Three half-pint jars of whey came from one container of organic yogurt, and now I am sneaking that stuff into all of my kids’ food. I made a batch of Carolina Slaw from the book Real Food Fermentation and it’s sitting quietly on the countertop, changing from one thing to another. The inside of the glass is thick with condensation after only two days.

On Sunday afternoon the kids and I kind of geeked out over the renovated and enlarged bulk foods section of our local Whole Foods. All three of us squealed with glee over the multicolored popcorn, and brought some home to try. The kernels fluffed white in the Dutch oven, the colors turning inside out. We chewed thoughtfully, remarking around mouthfuls that all of the colors seemed to taste the same.

I used blurb.com’s book creation software to prepare a gift for our host at Surfside Beach. I wrapped her book in the recycled paper with which I wrapped ceramic bowls at the checkout lane of my IKEA, and finished the wrapping with shells we gathered from the very beach shown in the book. She was thrilled with the gift, and it was passed around the dining room table from guest to guest at her birthday party. You can view a modified (omitting the most personal photos) preview of the book online by going here.

Sprouted buckwheat groats, chopped tomatoes, sliced cucumber tossed with lime juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, and chopped fresh mint and parsley. Recipe by the Gluten Free Hippie. I have begun sprouting grains and learning about lacto-fermentation, and have quit alcohol, caffeine and sugar (sigh), in a bid to prevent a recurrence of my disease. I’ve lost five pounds and so need to find new things to eat and pronto!

Taken while going a little stir-crazy during my recovery.

On a day trip away from Surfside, we walked around historic Charleston, SC. The air smelled of horses and ocean. As we walked up King Street from The Battery I peeked through countless wrought iron gates at the lovely private courtyards, which were my favorite part of the entire visit.

My mind and heart were bleached clean by the sun and salt water during one June week in Surfside Beach, South Carolina. I found myself wanting to use my Canon again after years of disinterest. I’ll be sharing a few sets of shots from that week in the next few posts.

I’m staying cocooned in my home this week, working through each little pain and complication of last week’s surgery. The pain brings clarity of focus, and I find myself considering small details, like the banding on this teeny hand-thrown vase, for long moments.

I hear giggles mixed with serious discussion drifting up the stairs to my sick bed. I haul myself to standing, hobble to my camera, and tiptoe down the open stairs to see exactly how this day of their summer vacation is starting.

Surgery is over. I’m filled with gratitude for surviving, and I’m also in a lot of pain. Friends have been so kind, bringing flowers and meals, and my best friend has been at my side every minute. I will be in bed for a little while longer but have some good reads to keep me company.

“…and being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” ~ Luke 22:44

I clear the dinner plates from the table, pile them into the sink and begin to rinse them off when the crushing weight of remembering hits me again, making my heart thump heavy. In three days my mind will know nothing.

The night before, I lay curled on our bed, weeping, terrible fear smothering reason. I asked John what happens to our souls when we are under anesthesia. He pulled wet ribbons of hair off of my cheeks and said our souls sleep, honey, we just go to sleep so we don’t feel pain.

I stand in front of the sink and watch the water flow down from one rounded plate edge to the next, and I begin to think about Jesus in the garden, praying in the dark hours of the night. He understood exactly how His days in this world would end: “drawing the breath of life amid long drawn-out agony” on a hillside crossbeam, missing great portions of His flesh and most of His blood. In the garden, the knowing of what was to come caused Jesus unbearable suffering, and while His love brothers slept a stone’s throw away, His fear fell down around Him like fat raindrops.

And yet when His prayers were complete, in an act of astonishing self-control, He rose from His knees for a third and final time and turned to face His fate.

I finish the rinsing and file the plates away into the dishwasher. I wash down the kitchen counters in slow circles, the rhythmic motion soothing, and I whisper under my breath, not my will but Thine.

That night I lay awake in bed, unable to sleep, fear radiating out of my bones

(I was sure my husband could feel this fear from across the bed)

and I wondered if I would be alive in a week, or if maybe my very last earthly sensations will be the coldness of liquid anesthesia creeping through the needle in my arm and the remembered whistle of this train filling my ears to bursting.

It is kind of weird to be shopping at Whole Foods on a Sunday afternoon and come across a band standing in a little triangle-shaped space between the olive oil, fish fry counter and bulk dried beans, jamming their faces off. It’s even weirder when the music is actually incredibly good. I wedged my body between two parties of greasy-lipped diners woofing down their fried oysters to take these shots, but in my defense, I did give them the apologetic photog face.

I wonder if a butterfly hanging wet-winged and upside down from a slender branch doesn’t look up at the grass or down at the sky and think to herself, “Hello, Grass,” or “Hello, Sky, I have been away for a while. But I am here now.”

In June of 2010 started working full-time in order to provide for the family during a long financial dry spell. I found out quickly that I was not Super Woman. I failed often at work, excelled at nothing at home. I stopped writing, crafting, cooking, stopped playing a meaningful role in the homeschooling. The loss of eight, nine, ten hours of every one of my days forced me to abandon nearly every parenting practice and homekeeping habit that I held dear. It was all I could do to survive from day to day as I tried to keep work tasks, thoughts and stress from completely taking over my mind, body and spirit. I just…stopped making a home for my family. And after two years, this became a new normal, and I thought that this “who I am” was going to be forever.

And then, last month, I spent a week with my family and some good friends in the sunshine and sea air. I walked beaches and collected shells, cooked simple meals for eight, and took pictures. My skin became bronzed, my long hair curled in the salt and damp.

In the quiet hours of that week, I came to understand that the overall breakdown of my family life had everything to do with the small choices I made every day. Grain by grain the hourglass is emptied and filled. I realized that in any life, every minute of the day must be used wisely to work towards a worthy goal. On the last evening of that trip, while standing at the edge of the Atlantic, I made a decision to make my life and my home into what I knew it could be.

That decision made at the seaside three weeks ago has had wonderfully positive effects at home. We’re living in more order, have initiated and begun garden and decorating projects, and the overall atmosphere swirling around us is hopeful and excited. The children are bright-eyed and enjoy their days. I have learned to fully refocus my brain on the things of home once my workday ends.

And my posting here resumes, this site that is, was, and always will be a celebration of family life and people and places that I love. It feels good to be back.

Parting note: I’ve moved this site from a free Blogger blog to a privately-hosted WordPress site. If you are reading this in a feed reader, thank you so much for remaining subscribed to this desert of a journal, and, my God, either you are a special breed of person, or you haven’t dethatched your feed in many moons.

The older men always doze on the evening bus ride back to suburbia. Their heads nod in unison, lowering to their chests, and with each pneumatic sighing press of the brakes, their heads flick upright, as if mounted on hinges, and so they nod their agreement that, yes, their days are numbered.

Three of my photos have been selected to be a part of the InstantDC Mobile Photography Show 2011, sponsored by the DC Ad Club and APA and in partnership with FotoweekDC. Opening night is Wednesday, November 9th at Interface Media Group, 1233 20th Street, NW, Washington, DC. I attended this same show last year as a wannabe. I moved from grouping to grouping and wondered if I’d ever be “good enough” to have anything of mine hanging next to anything of theirs. Crazy stuff.

I can’t describe what a joy it is to have a son. This bedroom of his speaks volumes about the person he’s becoming…if you can read the clues.

I wanted to sleep through this very grey and rainy day in Virginia last week. Instead I stared at the green of this cutting and imagined spring.

It was slippery outside this morning, too slippery to run. I made maple oatmeal scones instead. We sipped coffee and read about dinosaurs, then I retreated to the home office to begin my day.

We walked. The rivulets running across the path were choked with layers of leaves, mud and twigs, and thick, dark clumps stuck to the sides of my boots. I hugged my camera to my belly and hopped across rocks through deeper, freely running waters. They ran ahead, but I lingered at the sides of the path. Brittle mushroom skins covered a tree with brown, curling scales. I stooped to feel moss and bark. I turned to admire an empty peanut shell in a hollow. A single red berry clung to the end of a dark red, thorny stem. I heard their voices calling to me from deep within the wood. I looked up, and found that I was alone.

Happy December! I’m downloading lusselatter recipes and making lots of plans for the month. I’m also listening to **Silje Nes** obsessively.

**ACKC** on 14th Street NW. Can’t even describe how perfect **The Audrey** was, a cupful of melty bi[…]

An extremely pierced, pretty woman watched from the other side of the glass as we approached from the street. She pushed a grey button on the wall to release the door, and we walked inside **Fathom Creative**. The **instant dc** exhibit was spread out across the walls of the second floor space, and I spent the next 45 minutes geeking out over the work, entirely comprised of iPhoneography. If I didn’t have iPhone envy before, I am a hurting unit now. The second shot from the bottom is a special message painted on the bathroom wall above the toilet for those gallery visitors who stand while using the “facilities”.

This is my office away from the office. Wooden bowls on my windowsill hold treasures gathered and formed by little hands.

We have many nests in our home. They are filled with rocks, shells, eggs, toys, and husks. The cicada husk reminds me of one hot summer in Virginia when my daughter was small and the cicadas flew thick and loud. I found the fuzzy bee body on the back deck one fall morning, but I haven’t had the time to figure out its species.

This is where my children spend their days learning, only Daddy does the teaching now. They like to listen to Bach while they study. Or so I’m told.

A sign hangs at the beginning of the long driveway, but I only catch the first word, Woods, white painted letters on dark pine. We pass fenced pastures dotted with small barns and stands of tall trees, only tufts of orange and brown leaves left at their very tops, their bodies spare streaks below. The horses lift their heads as we pass. We park under an old maple and haul folding chairs, blankets, and backpacks holding flashlights and sweatshirts past the farm house and into the back yard where the gathering has started.

This is Angelina’s farm. She is a former lawyer turned farm-owner. Her long, black hair hangs down her back, almost brushing her thick leather belt. Many of her family are here, and friends, and friends of friends like we are, standing around the food tables or sitting in small groups. Children run through and between the barns, jump into the leaf piles and then pull poking leaf bones from their hair and pockets. The sun hangs low. Thick rays skim the tops of the dry branches piled high in the fire pit. The air smells of horse and hay, salad dressing and vegetable stew, grass and sun-warmed wood.

We eat and laugh. The men pick up guitars and try out a tune or two. The grey mare gives rides to the little ones, circling in the pea gravel until the passing three wheeler spooks her to a standstill. The sky deepens and the barn darkens as the children take turns swinging blindly at a pinata hanging from a cross beam. One final crack of the broom handle and candy pours from the fatal wound onto the cement floor.

The moon is round and orange. The sweet mares whinny for attention and carrots from their fences. We sit near the fire and watch the bats make laps around the horse barn, passing in front of the floodlight with each go-around. We circle little limbs and pull blanket corners down and around body edges. A flashlight hunt for a lost belonging takes place in the giant leaf pile; we hear a shout of victory and know that what was once lost is now found. Sparks fly upward.

When we are here there is no hurrying and no herding and no lunch-packing, no prying small hands off of my body, no pushes toward the school door, no blue eyes full of longing to be home. We walk along the bay bottom at low tide and dig, and we poke at slimy things with long sticks. We pick up the hermit crabs, and we talk about how we love our visits to the beach, and we don’t talk about the times in between. We are different people when we are here.

Four cousins who had never met became fast friends. The brothers gave a free concert to the frogs in the pond, and the frogs gave a free concert back to the brothers. And I floated barefoot throug[…]

Last week we sat together on a single chair at Starbucks, waiting for our Frappucino. I piled her long limbs into my lap and circled her with my arms, holding in her angles and big feet. I rubbed my nose into her hair, and she closed her eyes. “You two are so in love,” said a woman to us in passing. “That’s so rare to see.”

She lingered in the kitchen with me all of this morning while I made scones and coffee. She slipped out for a few minutes, then returned and handed me this card. I whispered my thanks into her sweet, soft neck.

John’s late grandmother would sit here in her Jordache cut-offs and read in the evenings, her feet propped up on the ottoman and a glass of watered-down wine beside her. At low tide, a warm breeze would come to her through the sliding glass door, smelling of muck and mussels and ruffling the pages of her book.

We weren’t really lost; we could see the house just across the cove. But the fields were so very cold and muddy, and the winds came off the water and whipped stinging sand at our eyes and mouths, making the evening seem desperate and epic. And so our thoughts and conversation turned to fire and food and warmth and shelter. The Muscari pushed toward the sunset, unfeeling, insensitive to our struggle for survival.

I found it at the edge of the Atlantic, lifeless, grey, sliding in the foam. The pain of the frigid waters shot up my legs as I darted in to pluck the ocean’s dead from her shallows. The white last now sits on my window sill, the trophy of a landlocked housewife.

I am very glad that I am not a mama pig. Wait a minute. My young roll around in the mud, too. Maybe I am a mama pig. If so, I got gypped in the boob department.

School in the mornings, play in the afternoons, writing at night after everyone else has fallen asleep, so the days pass here. Our days have found a new rhythm that quite resembles the old…well, except for the sun. The new kitchen and dining room get lots and lots of delicious morning sun. I love nothing more than to sit in it and bake my poor bones, made frigid by five years spent in one of the snowiest, cloudiest, rainiest cities in the States. I’m not sure when I’ll ever be warm again. We’re heading to the National Zoo on the Metro today to see Cyrano the giant anteater. I wonder if he likes sitting in the sun, too?

The walking path was covered with seed pods. The kids thought they looked like alien faces. They found a squirrel’s nest that had fallen from a tree and poked it with sticks, looking for life. Most everything along the path was brown and grey, except for bright green patches of moss at the base of some trees, and the river itself, colored green by long ribbons of algae that quivered in the current.

One packing problem specific to LP owners: I keep getting distracted by all the eye candy. I’m a sucker for album art. Check out the LPCover Lover blog for more awesome album covers.

“We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.” — Ray Bradbury, on writing

Writing is one of the most important components of our homeschool. I want my children to enjoy their journaling, narrations and compositions, and in my experience the feel of one’s notebooks contributes to the overall appeal, or lack thereof, of the work at hand. The standard, black and white marbled covers of their history, science and language arts notebooks not only threatened to make dull work out of a task that should be meaningful and pleasant, but also threatened to trigger one of my migraines. I covered them up with bits from my fabric stash: hers are covered in a petite Japanese print, his are covered with a bold graphic Ikea print. Their notebooks are now personalized, soft, comforting, ready to receive.

I use a sharp paring knife to remove a cone from the center of each cooled cake, the last step before filling each one with creamy, delicious, Fluff-based guts. Out of the corner of my eye, I see half-filled moving boxes in the living room, waiting their turn. Then the oven timer rings: the pizza dough is ready to divide and shape. At this rate, by the time this house is packed and ready to go, I may no longer be able to fit into any of my jeans.

This night I watched a man at the bar stroke his wife’s hair over and over again. I watched women and men stumble around the makeshift dance floor in front of the band. I watched my husband strain to hit some high notes while nailing most of them. I crouched in corners behind my camera. If life was a spectator sport, I’d be world champion.

I made a world for them. When I couldn’t find the perfect bunny house for sale, I glued wood and moss and stone, late into the night. I crafted grass, and a pond, and a path between the two bunn[…]

I love you.

I believe in you.

I am so happy to be your mommy.

Last night I had such a vivid dream of the beach house in December: huddling against the bitter wind blowing through the uninsulated front wall, trying to coax water to flow through frozen pipes and out the tap. The winter will be long.

We’ve decorated our tree (suffering only a few ornament casualties) and had a jolly Saint Nicholas celebration, with our favorite sour cream coffee cake taking the place of the Dundee cake of old. We are reading our favorite Christmas stories. When the kids are at school I am quite busy crafting presents in between bits of “real” work. So much to do yet.

One short vanilla breve and one short hot cocoa to go before hitting the grocery store. No boys. Big smiles.

I forgot to arrange a sitter, so I sent him without me. Part of me wanted to go, but I was afraid I’d have nothing to say to them. I didn’t realize he was going to come home so late and so hungry.

When it’s twelve degrees outside on New Year’s Day, it’s important to stay near the fire, have a guitar dance party, and drink eat leftovers for dinner.

The first time I visited the website of accomplished Stockholm-based illustrator Ingela P. Arrhenius, she was coincidentally having a giveaway. I entered, and to my great surprise I won this studly little Swedish man. He now sits on our nature table and watches over the children as they do their homework. He has found a compatriot in my grandfather’s Dala horse.

This walleyed draft snake came out of the swirling flokati rug mist and took his place along the bottom edge of our front door, full of kitty litter and all business.

I do like this time of year, when the outside colors are shifting from vibrance to reserve, diving deeper down into their end season. I, for one, think grays and browns are quite lovely, and bittersweet.

Warm cookies and gloomy skies are the October norm in central New York. He was home all week with the flu. We sat next to each other on the couch, our respective laptops at hand. She wished for fl[…]

Post script: Our chalkboard wall was [featured on the lovely Ohdeedoh today](http://[…]

A classic dinner scene at the beach. I am honored that this shot was chosen as photo of the day today over at The Maternal Lens.

As I watched this day end I somehow knew that I was really watching the end of a season. When we left the next morning, the air had turned much colder. The leaves that lined the turnpike with fire on our way down turned brown and curled in the wake of our speeding northbound minivan.

When they got home from school they began filling the boxes with their plans, hopes and dreams for the month.

I am not the only one who waits at the window for my little friends’ return.

I could have tried to describe with words the unbearable cuteness of the three tiny peppers that grew in my garden this summer, but the camera makes easy work of it. Next: Laura sews tiny clothes for the peppers and stages a pepper puppet show.

Cooler weather brings the smell of green coffee beans roasting out on our back deck. We all wait quietly and listen for first crack. The beans are best the day after roasting. And the coffee is smooth and delicious.

It was hard work. I had to lift heavy pine branches over my head to finish the lean-to, and while I held still to staple the sides of the tee pees, the mosquitoes nearly ate my face off. In fact, one bit me on the left side of my lower lip, and I have been doing dead-on Silvester Stallone impressions all afternoon. Adriaaaaaaan!

I wanted to tell them no, because I am old and tired and over-caffeinated. But this was the first weekend after the first week of a new school year, the end of the first week of our new days spent more apart than together. So I said yes instead. Yes, I will play with you. Yes, I like what you do. Yes, I love you.

Wooden paths and bridges lead to trout pools lovingly tended by ghosts. A thick layer of moss covers every surface, absorbing our words and footfalls. In a neighboring yard, a woman hangs her laundry on the line. We float past her unnoticed.

I water my garden every morning. When I’m finished, I sit on my front steps, tuck my hands between my knees for warmth, and listen. The water makes a crackling noise as it seeps into the concrete at my feet. If the windows of the passing cars are open, which they often are, I can make out the wax and wane of NPR or Coldplay or Taylor Swift, or an ad for a car dealership in the city. Through the open door behind me I hear the kids crunching their cereal in the dining room. They both sing wordless, keening little kid songs between bites. I close my eyes and memorize the sounds.

It’s very strange to see my name in a magazine. But I’m not complaining.

The succulents on our front steps look so beautiful after the rain.

Tomorrow evening, the kids and I will be at John’s grandmother’s place, watching the sun set over **the** **bay**. This is probably the last summer we’ll be able to spend time at the beach house: John’s grandmother passed away in December and the house most likely will be sold at the end of the season.

Ten random traditions we’ll be observing over the next ten days:

:: **Morning coffee** on the dock
:: Saying **goodbye to the sun** on the dock
:: Midnight visits to the dock (can you tell we like the dock?)
:: A large pie with onions, sweet peppers and mushrooms from ***Nicola Pizza*** in Rehoboth
:: **Fisher’s caramel corn** in Bethany (can you tell we like to eat?)
:: Book browsing at **Bethany Beach Books
**:: Letterboxing at **James Farm**, which is within walking distance of the house via road or squishy bay bottom at low-tide
:: $1 toy shopping at ***Fun For All*** in Rehoboth
:: Clamming at low tide, followed by our famous clams casino (again with the eating)
:: Wading to the far shore of the cove to hunt for dessicated baby horseshoe crabs (not for eating)

I’ll miss you while I’m away, but I promise to send you a postcard. Or a **picture**. Better yet, hop in the car and drive on over. We’ll be waiting at the end of the dock.

I found this little guy sitting on a table at the church rummage sale today. His ticking is loud and he sits on my desk and keeps me company.

Our neighbors have an awesome deck, a welcoming firepit, and a killer fashion sense.

I just love these little guys. Several times a day I open the tray lid, lower my face down to them and breathe in their warm, brown breath. Soon they will each have proper names, and we will take turns reading poetry and singing to them.

The sound of Noah learning how to hammer nails on our front steps rang through the neighborhood, acting as a beacon to all knights neighbors within hearing range.

“Before beginning a hunt, it is wise to ask someone what you are looking for before you begin looking for it.” – Winnie the Pooh

Things here are still brown and gray, so we hearty Northern types have to hunt for Colour in March. We found a marble, played Pooh Sticks, collected rocks, and endured A Perilous Crossing. I think five is my favorite age.

On our way to the shops in the upper village, we always stop by the memorial park to greet the lion in the fountain. He doesn’t start spitting water until April.

A little one acting not quite right. A pizza lunch at the amphitheater, sheltered from the drizzle. A visit to the library. A confession: a sore throat since morning. A quick ride home. A fever. A[…]

One day, when I was about five years old, my mama found this piano on the side of the road. She recruited friends to haul it back to our falling-down farmhouse, and then just like that, we had a piano. She played it, I played it a little, and when he visited, my crazy Swedish grandfather played it a lot.

We were very poor when she found that piano. My father still slept on our downstairs couch because he had nowhere to go after the divorce. We scrounged clothing for free from the Rescue Mission. I had sores in the corners of my mouth from malnutrition. You know, that kind of poor.

My nutty mom, my sardonic dad with the Brooklyn accent, my grandparents, friends from church, they would all gather in our kitchen with their guitars and pipes and jokes, and they would talk and smoke and play games of penny poker and laugh and laugh. I would lie on my back under the glass table, between pairs of feet, and watch the cards and coins move across the surface above. Later on my grandfather would crank out tunes on the red piano, and we would dance and sing.

He will be eighty years old this October but he still mans the grill on Sundays.

She walked out of the gray woods holding this pot. She found wild snow drops under a shaggy mat of brown. She freed them from leaf bones and dried tangles, then plopped them, dirt and all, into discarded plastic. Now the pot sits on our front steps and makes Mama happy.

He tried the yarn’s length around my neck after each trim, over and over again. I put Fray Check on the end of the yarn to keep it from unraveling and told him I wasn’t peeking. His little man[…]

I participated in my first creative exchange recently. Nancy of Round Rabbit ceramic jewelry fame sent me a really sweet, blue, handmade heart dish, and I sent her a clutch that I made for her.

“So, Joss, what do you think about coffee,” I ask her.

“I think I’m going to like coffee when I get older, and I’ll probably drink it,” she says, not looking up from her book.

Good answer.

“So, Noah,” I say, turning to my left to look at my five year-old, “do you have any thoughts about coffee?”

Pause.

“Well,” he says with much gravitas, “I did try a Red Bull once.”

I nod my head slowly and furrow my brow a little, matching his tone. Then I take another sip of coffee and watch the morning traffic pass by the front window, and we all think about coffee.

I had $3 in change in my pocket, scrounged from various change jars and couch cushions in the house, so no buying for me that day. It’s more fun to look, anyway.

We stopped at Varsity on the Syracuse University hill for some pizza last week. We were surrounded by lots of college students, hospital staff wearing scrubs, and blue collar dudes. People didn’t seem to be able to deal with a lady with two kids and a camera. I think I scared them a bit.

Canon ink cartridge shipping material. I saw these happy dude faces the minute I laid my eyes on them. Not everyone sees them right away, though.

Not done yet. We’re going to IKEA this weekend for the finishing touches. Boy, am I glad those curtains are finally up, sewing them almost killed me…

We’ve been staying inside during this frigid week. Warming by the fire, playing with Legos, watching shows, deep conversations, preparing meals, drilling holes…feeling quiet and buried. Snuggling in.

Beginning last summer, John and I felt a need to be really present at home and in our neighborhood. We planted a garden and hung out more with neighbors. We listened to the church bells ring through our little village and tucked into the moment. Now in the deep winter the pull of the local dovetails nicely with my cyclical, borderline agoraphobic, hermit-like desire to stay inside my house until spring. I was pleasantly surprised to read this article and discover that I am accidentally hip, timely and eco-conscious, it seems.

We had a lovely Saturday night date during a big snowstorm: sandwiches at The Blue Tusk, followed by a $5 movie at The Palace Theater. I wish I had known that The Palace doesn’t actually heat the theater in winter. I watched most of the movie sitting sideways in my seat, my stockinged feet in John’s hands and the rest of me buried deep inside my down jacket.

A cold Sunday afternoon with friends. We caught some serious air on the jumps, Jack. We sledded until dark, and then fifty percent of our family fell asleep in the car on the way home.

The Christmas cookie project took us from daylight to darkness. But we could feel those extra few post-solstice moments of light.

I spent our snowy winter solstice indoors, watching the snow fall out of the corner of my eye as I crafted last-minute gifts. All under the watchful eye of one feverish director, that is.

Actually, we were looking for our first letterbox and after three previous attempts and not one stamp to show for it, we didn’t care one bit if the guy watched our every move. We found the box, stamped our guts out, noisily re-hid it and left. From the highway I spotted the smoking guy poking around the hiding place, trying to figure it all out. I guess we’re bad letterboxers.

And yet there is a gift: we are reminded that we are alive. We have today. We remember that we are here on Earth for a reason. At this moment my reason is to set out bagels for those who mourn, to hold people I love close to me, to put out the butter bells. But the next moment it may be to share the reason for the hope that I have. And in so doing my faith ignites and burns, my love for He who is in me is renewed, and I am once more brought to my knees, so grateful for a God who came to Earth as a baby to deliver us. Through death, we sometimes find life, again.

I want to need to remember:

:: a pod of dolphins hunting for their breakfast in the waters across the cove

:: the smell of laundry that has dried in the salty bay air

:: laughing and carrying on with old friends over wine and clams casino

:: a funky haircut that heralds a new season in my life

:: rounded triangles of moonlight reflected off the backs of thousands of waves and minnows

:: linguine con le vongole made by my former chef of a husband using clams dug from the bay with our own big and little hands. so. very. yummy.

:: reading sonnets under blankets after the weather turned much colder

Funniest conversation overheard:

Abbie: “Wow, you can see the whole world from up here!”
Jocelyn: “Can you see Italy???”

If you live with a guitar player, you must be prepared for one unfortunate truth: you, your children, and your children’s children will be tripping over guitar cases as long as your guitar player draws breath and you share a roof with him or her.

After the fourth time in a week that one of my poor, innocent children tripped and fell over a guitar case left in the middle of our living room floor, I threw up my hands. Then I cried, Uncle! Then I ate some Doritos. Then I Googled “hang guitar”, which brought me to this tutorial, the perusal of which ultimately resulted in me hatching an evil plan to rid my home of random guitar case leavings.

What You’ll Need:

• Laser level

• Stud finder

• Electric drill with drill bits and screwdriver bits

• Length of handrail appropriate to your wall

• Mounting hardware appropriate to your wall (I used drywall screws)

• Padded tool hangers, enough to accommodate your guitars (I bought these)

• A friend to help you, if your handrail is loooong

What To Do:

1. If you want the handrail to match your wall, prime and paint the handrail and let dry.

2. Use the stud finder to locate the studs in your wall.

3. Mark the location of your studs on the wall.

4. Hold the handrail against the wall where you plan to position it, and mark the location of the studs along the length of the handrail.

5. Drill pilot holes in the studs and handrail.

6. Use a screwdriver bit to drive screws through the handrail pilot holes and into the studs to mount the handrail

7. Drill pilot holes into the handrail where you want the hangers to go

8. Screw hangers into the pilot holes. You’re done!

All of this took place at 11 o’clock at night, after my kids were in bed, when my husband was out of town, with smooth jazz blasting from my iTunes radio to try to calm my drill-frazzled nerves.

Music stores charge at least $15 for a hanger that supports one guitar. I spent $30 in materials and ended up fitting six guitars on my wall.