manner

manner

Monday, December 9, 2013

the way things are

this week's soundtrack. take a deep breath.

it's december. it's advent, the second week, in fact according to the wreath on our kitchen table. every night as it is getting dark we light the candles and I sing whatever song pops into my head in the moment. we're not too rigid about it all here at mudflower. thank goodness there are two candles every night now, so we don't have to fuss about who will blow the single candle out. next week when there are three, I am sure the fuss will start back up. we are counting down the darkness, counting up to the light. I can't wait for solstice just so I can feel like spring is coming, even if it is really still a whole season away.

eric works a lot. I say that, and then I think about a regular american work schedule, and it really isn't that much at all. but it seems like a lot to us. he serves as an assistant teacher at the local woo woo school in a preschool classroom. he says it makes him appreciate our own children so very much. then he hurries across town to the natural food store where he stocks shelves and makes small talk all day. he loves that job. he says it is the perfect mash-up of physical labor and social engagement. there are days he leaves before cora wakes up and gets home after she is in bed. we visit him at the store for hugs and a snack. the kids found reindeer antlers on a headband that they purchased for eric to wear at work. he wears them with pride, much to the amusement of the old ladies that love to flirt with him. 

cora is starting preschool. she thought her attendance was contingent on her keeping her underwear dry all day. now that she has mastered bladder control with consistency, she has begged to go to school. she went last week with eric, and love love loved it. jamin kept asking warily, "but I dont have to go, do I?" so very different, these children of mine. so cora will attend preschool three mornings a week and this is a very good thing for all of us. such an easy decision that just sort of made itself, a huge relief for my overly-analytical brain. I think I get so stuck in feeling like I have no choices in my world (there isn't enough money, we don't have time for that, this is the way life is supposed to look) that I can't really see it when the universe offers me beautiful gifts. it's scarcity thinking and it is terribly dangerous, and apparently it is a lesson I have to learn over and over and over.


thanksgiving was good. this is what we look like after two big meals and lots of time with people who love us. I am so thankful right now especially for people willing to love on my children because there are lots of moments these days when I just can't do a proper job of it myself. I am learning, slowly slowly slowly, that what I may believe philosophically about parenting or education or life in general may exceed my own psychological and emotional stamina. and I am learning even more slowly to just be okay with that.

we had lots of company and a very full house for a while there, which is good for me in lots of ways. firstly, I love a full house, I love having people around, I love sitting at the kitchen table and playing games and eating popcorn and collecting stories. and I got to show off where we live a bunch, which forced me to really think about what I love about living here, why we stay even when I am haunted by so very much here, even when my feet are itchy with want of change, even when it rains and rains and rains and I realize that this is normal for this little neck of the woods. so I was a tourist in my own town, hiking waterfalls I haven't visited in years, popping into little shops downtown I didn't even know existed. it's good to have company, too, because eventually they all leave and I am so grateful by that time for the peace and slowness of my family and household that it feels lovely and not boring or impossible anymore to just be the four of us, to just live in the woods and that be enough.

our days are a never-ending tangle of narnia and pirates and whatever else jamin happens to think of in the moment. he is king peter chasing larryboy around the kitchen table and then jack from "the magic treehouse" fighting the white witch in the land of dinosaurs. cora can pretend to be a turtle in any situation, no matter the setting or the other characters. we are pirates, we are chess pieces, we are tree spirits and mermaids. it is beautiful and exhausting and silly all at once. jamin loves books on tape and cora loves the marble game mancala (she is actually very good at it). it is a chore to get jamin out of the house most days. I need more of a plan on a day-to-day basis because we all do best that way, but mostly I just want at least ten minutes every hour to myself to read a library book or just to think about something other than the demands of my children. feeding them is a full-time job. but there is something lovely in that, too, especially that they want to do so much for themselves in the kitchen these days. and their comfort foods make me proud: jamin begs for lentils (the red ones, not the brown ones), and they will do just about anything for split pea soup.

I love my yoga practice, that time when no one asks me any questions, when I am finally warm enough to feel like myself, learning the edges of what my body can really do. it makes me kinder and calmer and I feel like a dancer for the rest of the day: look at me, the grace I use to reach something down from a high shelf, the poise I have as I bend to tie my shoes without bending my knees. silly, I know, but I love it all the same. and sometimes silly is sanity.

this is the way things are. this is the season, the place, the people, the purpose I am supposed to learn right now. practicing for the christmas pagent yesterday made me feel it all, watching the same kids we've gone to church with all year take on a new role in the same old play, a little taller, a little clearer as they read their lines. my kids look that way to other people, too. "this is kinda boring," jamin-the-shepherd announced halfway through yesterday's practice, a comment his wide-eyed wonder of last year would have never allowed. it may be a kinda boring, but there is comfort in the sameness, too, beauty in the expected, and a gentleness that comes with being still.