hiking backwards

cora and I hiked moore cove this morning. it's been a long time since I've been there: I always write it off as kind of a wimpy hike, one I've done too many times with too many group home kids complaining the whole way. but cora and I desperately needed a good strong dose of the great outdoors after being cooped up for a week, and I knew it was a hike easy enough that she wouldn't ask me to carry her.

cora rarely stops talking. and it isn't even just running dialogue of whatever we're doing, although there's a good bit of that mixed in. she talks about things she's imagining, things she'd like to try, things she's sounding out as she goes along. she doesn't seem to mind a bit if anyone is really listening either. occasionally she'll say "mama. this is really important. listen," but I think even as she's saying it she knows that most of what she says in her long monologues is more for her own entertainment than that of her audience.

so we hiked. cora prattled along as we slipped and slid on the trail. I thought a lot about group home kids we had dragged along the same path and pointed out a rock kids were alway eager to climb. she asked if we had carried her and jamin in the ergo on this trail. we had. she asked how the kids climbed the rock and I showed her. I thought about where those kids must be now, if they remember hating those hikes we forced upon them or if they remember them fondly now. lots of them have kids of their own now, and I wonder if they will ever take their own kids hiking. I thought about the first time I ever hiked moore cove, driving down from asheville with some women I worked with but never really felt connected to. I thought about our visitors last summer and how they haven't gotten to see these waterfalls frozen. I wondered if I had ever seen this waterfall frozen before today. I can't remember.

we were hot by the time we got back to the car. we shed our jackets before buckling in and turned up the music as we hit the road back to town. it was a birthday mix a friend made for me last year, one I had kind of forgotten about in my winter doldrums brain. we listened to "galileo" by the indigo girls and pretended it was spring. we couldn't even get halfway through the song before cora would ask for me to start it over again. and again. and again. I didn't mind. maybe this day will be forever linked to that song in her brain. worse things could happen.

I used to worry I would be old if I was ready to stay in one place. being still would mean I had given up and quit dreaming of something better. hiking moore cove today made all the lives I've lived right here flash like carnival lights in my mind. there is so much still to be done. so much of it can happen right here. there is so much I've already done. and so much of it happened right here.

so not only will I let the next life off the hook, as the indigo girls so poetically recommend, I think I'll let myself off this time around, too. I'll just have to remember to hike moore cove anytime I need a refresher course.  you should come with me sometime. I know cora's game.

week in review

things to be glad about

snow days!::being stuck on the mountain for six days and not feeling trapped until day six::baked goods every day::ten eggs on the coldest day ever::jamin in carhartt overalls::cora playing school by herself in her closet::visits from weaverville::a perfect valentine's day morning with poetry and heart-shaped biscuits::winter walks::neighborly neighbors::living with a two-month-old::food truck dreaming::wood stove congregating::eric's willingness to do the outdoor chores::kids who love board games::

moments worth remembering

we love peanuts and (root) beer.

jamin held kitra for the first time this week. instant chemistry. he has held her every day since.

this is my valentine.

cora will rarely let me take her picture these days, but when I go to dump photos off my phone it is full of selfies like this.

things I've read


I listened to tiny, beautiful things on cd and boy, was it great.

I'm taking a course on the artist's way with a friend.

any article on foster care can get me revved up and over-the-top emotional, and this one is no different. rabbit and eric talked me back into our happy home with just three kids. but I still think we should foster again. and according to this list, you should too.

our favorite jam

someone sent me this song a few weeks ago and it has been haunting me ever since. and I finally finally watched boyhood and there it was again. bam.

words for the week

I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you're in it all the same. 

so why not get started immediately. 

I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over. 

And to write music or poems about. 

Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching. 

You could live a hundred years, it's happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.

~mary oliver, the fourth sign of the zodiac

(you should listen to her on being interview. for reals.)

we carry each other

here's the thing about living in a small town: you can't not know.

I suppose you can write 28712 as your return address for years without really being part of life here. I am sure it happens that way for a lot of people, actually. but if you are paying even a little bit of attention, you just can't not know.

if you didn't know the driver (and odds are fairly good that you did: he grew up here and ran a local business), then you know someone who knew him. or you know his parents. or his sweet partner.

and if you aren't connected that directly, then maybe you know someone who saw the wreck. someone texted you from the scene saying "pray, just pray." someone one you know stopped their own car, their own family safe inside, to help, to hold his hand, to sing while they waited for an ambulance.

and if that isn't your link to the story, then you at least know what it is like to drive on rosman highway, that stretch where the road widens and the speed limit broadens. you know what it is like to be thinking of anything other than your own mortality while you look at scenery you've flowed through a hundred times before. you know what it is like to forget you are traveling in a huge hunk of metal at high velocity and that any slight compromise of that habitual action can alter the world as we know it beyond comprehension.  and even if you've never driven on rosman highway, never passed through that expanse of totally forgettable landscape where anything could happen but not much ever does, you've been on a road just like it.

and if you haven't driven in a place where it could have been you but it wasn't, then maybe you're a parent and you remember your sweet child at six months. you remember who you were in those first months of parenthood when the newness hadn't quite worn off and the person your child is was just really starting to emerge. you think about how your child knows you now, and you are grateful, so very grateful, for every moment you've been given with her.

and if you aren't a parent then you are a child, a child who grew up with or without a dad, a child whose life has been shaped because of it either way.

if you live in a small town, you can't not know. you read the tiny blurb of a newspaper article that should have said so much more. you hear people talking in the yoga dressing room, in the grocery store. you ask people you know if they've heard, how they're connected.

maybe in has nothing to do with living in a small town. maybe this is just how we grieve, how we process, how we wade through the sad vulnerability that tragedy can bring. maybe small town life is just the magnifying glass that makes it larger than ordinary.

but there is underlying comfort to be found through the grief in my small town this week. that comfort comes in knowing our community is connected, in knowing that we do know each other, or at least know each other through each other. the comfort is that it is a grief shared, that there is room for all of us to feel heartbroken and rattled whether we knew michael duckworth or not. it can be my grief (and yours, too) even if we are not his mother or partner or even his close friend. we are too tangled up around here not to share the big things like sadness. it is far too much to carry alone so we must carry it together.

and carry together we do. and carry together we will. even as we help to carry this family today we know it will be us some day that needs to feel the hands of our people all around us. the hands of those closest to us, and the hands of those that love us through those that love us. this is what love is. we love because we are loved. and the (heart)beat goes on.

here's the thing about living in a small town: you can't not know. but here's the thing about living full-hearted life: once you know, you get to be one of the helpers.

brevardians (and lovers of brevardians world-wide), please consider contributing to the mike d memorial fund to support mike's family. this is how we carry each other.