off the charts

A day or two before I started my new job, a tiny plastic envelope filled with powdery white grains arrived in our mailbox. I had ordered kefir grains the week before. When one is on the cusp of major life transitions, everyone knows that a jar of fermenting dairy resting on the kitchen counter is a must.

Well, maybe. I think it says a lot about me that I decided to take on a mildly smelly and delicate fermenting process just before the baby started with a child care provider, the boy started kindergarten, and I started working four days a week. Dear World, could I please control one little slippery thing? One little thing that will make terrific after-school smoothies and promises to fill our bellies with microscopic, smelly (did I already mention smelly?) health-promoting bugs? Because back in August when the grains arrived and all of these changes were fast-approaching - and the baby was cutting four teeth at once and began waking every two hours at night - my body forgot how to fall asleep.

That is exactly how it seemed to me. With few exceptions, I had been doing something every night for thirty-six years in a row without having reason to notice or think about how exactly I accomplished it. I just did it. And then I forgot. I was underslept and overwhelmed, and sleep eluded me.

The worst of the insomnia really only lasted for a few nights; once we all began our new endeavors it subsided. But dudes, it totally freaked me out. It was a powerful sign that taking care of myself (as I join with students during the day to, ahem, help them learn positive ways to take care of themselves) will be essential this year.

So what do I do to promote peace within? Make kefir. Revisit cookbooks. Think about new twists on breakfast. There is something so reassuring to me about the mere possibility of making a terrific meal and sharing it with the people I love. Just thinking about cooking lately brings me back to earth, back to my body, back to the comforts of nourishing myself and others. Feeding and eating. Breastfeeding too! The pleasures of this overflowing life.

It's why I sent a favorite cookbook to a friend expecting a baby this fall. Transitions, you say? Read this! Cook something new! Feed yourself and your growing babe and surely all will be well. It's why I take extra pleasure in offering Beatrice new foods. The pears this morning? Not so much. But she went wild for pureed quinoa, and it made my heart sing watching her grab for the spoon. At her six month check up this week, I learned she is off the charts for length. She is growing like a weed in sunny September! And every Monday I get to be home, all by myself, with this sweet dandelion. This past Monday I made granola, did a little laundry, did a little yoga, and spent a lot of time rubbing my nose into her soft belly and making her laugh. Talk about off the charts.

p.s. So, um, did any of you notice how this was really a look-how-cute-my-kid is kind of thing, disguised as a proper post? I warned you...

p.p.s. If anyone has experience making kefir, let's talk. Really. Why does it separate so quickly into curds and whey? Why do I keep missing that thickened, yogurty sweet spot?

now is now

I just finished reading Little House in the Big Woods to Gabriel. That makes three times reading the book aloud as a parent, and at least once or twice silently as a child. And every time the last chapter takes me and holds me completely in its quiet grasp, so hushed and reverent is its tone. Pa tells the girls why there is no fresh meat today: he had been unable to shoot the animals he went out to hunt the night before. They were too wild and free and beautiful in the moonlight to kill. Then he puts the girls to bed and takes out his fiddle. He sings Auld Lang Syne, and explains to sleepy Laura that the days of auld lang syne are the days of long ago.

Frances just loaded pictures from the hand-me-down camera she's been using over the past months into the computer. I love to see the images my kids capture. A hundred pictures of Grandma's dog. Mama in the kitchen. Intimate shots of stuffed animals and beloved pieces of jewelry. Gabriel loves to take close-ups of eyes on my phone. He does fabulous portraits of adult mid-sections.

Frances took a video, unbeknownst to me, of the mother of one of Gabriel's friends telling me about a family trip, while I nursed Beatrice and nodded and made sympathetic noises. It was so strange to see the exchange through her eyes. What are the nows - the experiences, the images, the feelings - that will lodge inside my children and live always there? My soft middle in a hug? The feel of each others' legs flopped over one another in summertime? The heat and smell of Beatrice's milky breath?

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the fire-light gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

She thought to herself, "This is now."

She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the fire-light and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

sabbath musings

As in years past, with the school year about to begin, we've decided to try observing some version of a sabbath. (I just read that old post about keeping the sabbath, written in 2011. It made me: miss my friends, miss the creative space and time I had for lengthy exploratory blog posts, and wonder at all the changes that have moved through our family since then).

What shape might it take now, with a third grader, kindergartener, and almost 6 month old baby (who tried beets for the first time tonight) in the mix? With a new job for me, a new school for Gabriel, and more commitments outside school and work than ever before? I suspect protecting Sundays for church-going, walking, swimming, reading, cooking, biking, crafting, and having dinner with friends (Taco Sunday remains a hallowed institution) will mean saying no to more things. In order to have a Sunday like that, you have to get a lot done on Saturday. And in order to get a lot done on Saturday, you can't go to a soccer game, two birthday parties, Target and the liquor store, all before friends come over for dinner.

So I think observing a sabbath at this time in our life will probably be defined by making hard choices, even sacrifices. There are so many worthwhile and pleasurable things to do. But when we do too many of them we are scattered and flighty and forget how to be present to one another.

At least I am, I do! My head and heart have been so full with all the transitions that we are in the midst of just now. I have a desperate urge to slow down. Stop, even. Being a student counselor at St. John's is going to be absolutely excellent. Two weeks in and I have a very good feeling. But this kind of work can be emotionally and spiritually intense - as is raising children. Also replete with serious responsibilities - as is raising children - and I fear the low level of anxiety buzzing around me, threatening to creep up my spine and take up residence just beneath my sternum. I think I need a sabbath. In fact I need mini-sabbaths every day and I have been fantasizing about how to create them (turn on the breastpump in my office so no one comes in and meditate for 15 minutes? Sneak a walk in during lunch? Take baths at night?)

Gabriel rode his bike for the first time this weekend. Once he figured out how to get started he flew like the wind. We had dinner with some lovely new friends last night, and Beatrice - who continues to dislike bottles and consequently ate way too much solid food last week while I was at work - marked the end of her pathetic bout of baby constipation with what I will euphemistically call an Event. All over the nice blue towel she was sitting on. We are excellent guests and did not hesitate to rinse her off in their kitchen sink.

Third grade begins tomorrow. Kindergarten begins Wednesday. Life just keeps happening all around me, whether I am calm or fretful, but I like it so much better when a shred of peacefulness is available.

How do you do this? Where do you find stillness, what are your anchors in all this bracing, rushing water? What are the boundaries you create around your family - around yourself - to ensure that you can drag a finger through, dip your feet in, and feel the wonderful wetness of it all?

terrible horrible no good very bad

I know, I know. How could it - whatever it is - really be terrible horrible no good very bad with this darling face around to grace our days?

The children have learned the concept and expression first world problem. So when my brand new super duper smartphone was lost, then run over by a car, they repeatedly reminded gloomy me that this was a first world problem. This is not really a problem. This is a hiccup, an annoyance.

Next day we had a flat tire at Trader Joe's. Two of their stellar, cheerful employees came out and put the spare tire on for me while the three children squinted at all the equipment involved in the middle of the parking lot.

What else? A nasty cold, family-wide. The car wouldn't start this morning (AAA came and proclaimed the battery very, very dead). The baby went on a nap strike, which blanketed everything for me, all week, in a gauzy layer of stress (fussy and tired out of the crib; screaming and yelling inside of the crib). The strike began after I took away the swaddling blanket, which I had found doubled tightly around the newly-mobile crying baby's neck. (Oh good lord. It was a scary scene.) Needless to say the nights are not so great either; I'm running on fumes.

On Friday I had a long meeting at my new job (which begins For Real this week). I came home to find the sitter and the children looking dejected on the couch. The baby had refused to eat or sleep for four hours and everyone was a wreck, having listened to her inconsolable crying for a long, long time.

A series of first world problems, people. No real problems to speak of. (But am I complaining? Maybe a little). Nonetheless, at the lowest point(s), I had one (or a few) of those moments when all you can do is cry, and that insidious, undermining query presents itself: what if you can't do this? What if this life you have chosen is simply too hard?

After I came home and relieved the traumatized sitter on Friday, Gabriel told me how he'd gone to play in his room because he couldn't bear to be around Beatrice when she was crying so much. "I kept thinking," he told me, "I kept thinking if only Beatrice could see Mama's face. Not a picture, but really see her face. Then everything would be better."

As I tell him every night during his bedtime ritual (which is the story of a darling dear named Gabriel and what happened to him that day), he is indeed a darling dear. But I confess, I felt a bit queasy when he said that. I love to be needed and wanted as much as the next person - probably more - but oh, the sheer enormity of the responsibility one takes on as a parent! It is your face they need to see, it is your touch, your voice, your smell. How beautiful; how frightening.

So here is when things began to look up, at least internally for me (because you know I couldn't tell you all this if I hadn't found at least a little distance from it): when I woke up Saturday morning after a rough night and told Mike (who had been in the throes of the cold, and who I hadn't wanted to burden) that I needed help. That life has been a bit grueling lately, and I need help. What kind of help exactly, I didn't know, but I knew I couldn't hold it all myself.

He helped. We did chores as a family with a strikingly cheerful attitude while the baby napped (hallelujah!) and the concrete gesture - the all-hands-on-deck work of it - made me feel that I wasn't alone. But I had to ask! The asking was the most important part, and the thing that got me out of the  funk. It can be hard to ask when you're the mama, the strong center of things, the face that comforts. Next time life throws us a slew of first world problems, hopefully I'll have the grace to ask a little sooner.