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.

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.

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.

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.

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[…]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

My part of the world is being hit hard by the Orange Death. Thick deposits of Tang-colored powder cover my c[…]

I’ve been coordinating with editors on some submissions that are already on retainer. I’ve been sending queries, which makes me feel like a trollop begging for fifteen minutes in the backseat.[…]

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+ Analogue Daydreams, a documentary-style amateur video explaining the art of Holga photography

+ A video interview with Karen Laborie, illustrator and friend. I spent two summers at her home in southeast France when I was a teenager, and now sh[…]

+ Brian Ferry (no, not of Roxy Music) takes the best pictures and makes some great mixes on 8tracks, too

+ My kids and I have been laughing for two days over all the franglais on the McDonald’s France website. “Le cheeseburger” hits their funny bone especially hard […]

+ I’ve been half-heartedly monitoring the mass-hysteria resulting from [ABC’s story on unschooling](http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Parenting/unschooling-homeschooling-book-tests-classes/story?id=1[...]

+ Listening to WQJZ’s live webcast, complete with commercials for Delmarva businesses, makes me feel like I’m at the beach house in Dela[…]

OK. Back to work, if one can in fact call compulsively checking email “work”.

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?

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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