40x40: run up becky mountain

I remember the first time I drove up becky mountain. it was probably 2004. I had a minivanful of girls in tow. we were taking one of those girls up to free rein for a horse therapy session. it was winter. I thought anyone who lived up here must be crazy. while the rest of us waited for the girl with the lesson (this was back when free rein was at sugarbush farm, which I now think of as an extension of our yard pretty much) we drove to eagle lake and played on the swings and threw rocks in the water. I didn't know that wasn't allowed and miraculously no one said a word to us about it.

I remember the first time we drove up becky mountain as a family, to look at the house we live in now. we made the trip down from asheville and I still thought it was a crazy idea to live up here, to make this curvy drive daily. I have since learned that it wasn't all that long ago that becky mountain was a dirt road all the way up to the seeoff switch. a neighbor here on the mountain tells tale of learning to drive in the sixties before it was paved. her daddy told her if she could drive up becky mountain in a stick shift she could drive anywhere in the world so she did it over and over until she had it down. that daddy was probably right.

somehow a few years ago eric got it in his head that he should run up becky mountain. so one thanksgiving he did. it was so cold his beard was frozen by the time he got home. our friend lev was visiting and he danced circles around eric all the way up the mountain, but it kept eric going. and it made eric want to do it again. and again and again and again. it became a tourist attraction for anyone who came to visit: see looking glass falls, eat at bracken mountain bakery, and run up becky mountain. and most of our visitors were totally in. over and over the kids and I stood at the mailboxes to cheer for our friends (stevie. lindsay and maeve. kyle. jason and stephanie.) and over and over I just thought they were all nuts.

but yesterday I joined the ranks of the crazy. not only do I make that windy, curvy drive up and down becky mountain every day, I have not made that climb on foot as well. it is exactly three miles from the bottom of the mountain to our front door. I didn't run much at all, but I did it. on  my own two feet. all three miles in 53 minutes. boo yah.

it is a very different experience to walk a road you are used to driving. I noticed different things all along the way. I couldn't believe I could still hear the cows from the bottom of the mountain even as high as halfway up. I saw driveways I'd never noticed before, I told myself stories about people living along the route I pass through so very often. I thought again about how much of our lives, our spiritual selves is shaped by where we are, the physical geography that surrounds us. how deep the mountains are etched into who I am. how I relate to this place like I was born to it. how even through the asphalt through my sneakers I could feel this ancient hill in the very core of who I am.

I sang out loud until I was too out of breath to keep up with the tempo of my feet, and even then music poured through my head every step of the way. over and over I heard my deepest self say, "this is all that is required of you: one more step. one more step." and that is exactly what I did. one more. one more. one more. until I was home. 

it is really all that is required of any of us. one more step. all the way home.

Put one foot in front of the other
Steppin' into the here and now
I'm not sure just where I'm goin'
But I will get there anyhow

I got this far with no direction
Followed my nose to where I stand
My heart's still strong, I know I'll make it
Sit right down in the promised land

too noisy peter

my mom is a trainer. not the kind that helps you work out in a gym (although, given her personality and stubbornness she might not be half bad at it), but the kind that stands in front of large groups of people to prepare them for a job they have just excepted. mostly she trains people to work with teenagers in residential facilities. she is very good at her job. 

one of the curses of having a mother who speaks in front of large groups of people on a regular basis is having family stories become part of the training material. she regularly uses a certain story of a certain daughter who stood in front of the church during the christmas cantata making a slashing motion across her throat every few seconds. when she talks about "family speak" (the phenomenon that occurs when families use their own language among themselves that other people may not understand) she gives away years' worth of inside jokes and family secrets. after decades in the training room these stories have become soundbites, sanitized down so that the players are barely recognizable anymore. she talks about how we call the remote control "the beep beep" or how for years none of us said anything but "shhhhhhicken" whenever someone asked what was for supper. it isn't embarrassing anymore because we feel so far removed from the players that we were in those stories.

I've been thinking about my mom in her training sessions as I think about blogging. I've been trying to decide how long I can talk about my kids online without their knowing about it. I think of this space as relatively private, but of course it isn't. just last week someone I met for the first time told me that she has been reading my blog for years. flattering, yes, but a bit tricky as well. how fair is it to our kids to have an online presence they don't know about? when they go to google themselves years from now, will they be okay knowing I've been recording their childhoods for my own self-indulgent blog fodder? already the precursor anytime I take cora's photo is "okay, but don't send it to anyone." a reasonable request, I'd say. 

but if I'm not going to write about my kids, what the heck do I have left to say?

the struggle is more than blogging. I am at a place in life when I want very different things from life than what my kids want. that has been true since the moment they were born, but now we are to a place as a family that we have the maturity to pursue different stuff in bigger ways. some of us are more ready for that change than others. but for me I feel rather lost when I realize I can do anything I want to do. for so long I have been parenting, direct in-the-trenches parenting my own kids, as well as group home parenting, foster parenting, teaching parenting classes, leading parenting support groups, heck I even teach a parenting sunday school class at church. I am ready for what is next. and I don't have a damn clue what that is.

and of course it is not that simple. just because I am ready for a parenting break doesn't mean my kids are done being parented. and just because I recognize this need for change, this shift in habits and identity doesn't mean I know what to do instead. and just because I know I want something different doesn't mean that change is gonna come overnight, just because I say I am ready.

in our own family speak we often say to each other with a sigh, "too noisy peter." it was a bedtime story favorite of jamin's for what felt like years. you know the folktale: a man thinks his house is noisy so the local wise guy suggests bringing a variety of animals to live inside his house with him. then when he pares his life down just to what it was before, his world is blissfully peaceful and he lives contentedly ever after. 

the problem in our house is that I am the opposite of peter. I rarely complain about the noise. instead I am driven to distraction by the quiet. we hit a seasonal lull and I start saying things like "we should really think about adopting another kid" or "I think we should move to idaho" or "wouldn't it be fun take a trip to south america for an indefinite period of time?" my family is not entertained. they roll their eyes and keep talking about whatever things normal families talk about, just to spite me.

but the past few months I've been hiding. after four months away from life here this summer, a whirlwind tour of new england, coming home to homeschool and homestead, two big disappointments in the potential job arena, an extra roommate and an extra dog, I just don't feel up to it all. it feels like failure not to feel like myself. it feels like paralysis not to know what to leap into next. it feels like a loss to not have a plan, a dream, a vision. 

but here is where the magic happens, too. sometimes the not knowing is the most knowing place of all. questioning where we've been, where we're going, and how we're going to get there is how life happens. I'd rather feel lost every so often than coast through the life unexamined. I'd rather feel too noisy and too quiet and have to do something about it than not feel any of it at all. 

so here we are: change is coming. it's already happening. every bit is just preparing us all for the next bit. the same girl that made those slashing motions across her throat in the church concert has to decide which stories about her own kids the world gets to know. and the wisest around me say I have to get quieter, much much quieter, before I can get myself up to the life noise level I prefer. so that's what I'm doing: paying attention, listening, staying willing to change. even if it means a pace of life different than what I think I prefer. even if it doesn't happen on my own timetable. 

and in family speak, it all sounds just right.

Unconditional

Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;
Turning to face my fear,
I meet the warrior who lives within;
Opening to my loss,
I gain the embrace of the universe;
Surrendering into emptiness,
I find fullness without end.
Each condition I flee from pursues me,
Each condition I welcome transforms me
And becomes itself transformed
Into its radiant jewel-like essence.
I bow to the one who has made it so,
Who has crafted this Master Game.
To play it is purest delight;
To honor its form--true devotion.

- Jennifer Welwood

because I don't know what else to do

a blessing for my friend

I don't remember meeting you.
it must have been in those early days of watauga
where everyone seemed too cool
or at least wanted to be
and I felt preppy and normal in a way I had never felt in high school.
I don't remember not knowing you that first college year.
I remember the purple rug in my dorm room
where we would eat lunches comprised completely of orange foods:
mac and cheese, cheesy rice, and tang by the gallon.

I remember road trips, trips too long to take by car really,
packed into college minivans
viginia
mississippi
charlotte
la
(we flew that last time, but you were convinced
we should have driven there too)

there were whole semesters I would barely see you
surprised by you in the lunch line
once in a while.

but then we were neighbors that last year, remember?
you borrowed my clothes
(how is it possible our very different bodies
could ever fit into the same pair of jeans?)
I braided your hair
we crawled in and out of windows.
there were beach parties indoors in february.
there were drives on the parkway.
there was outkast and dixie chicks and black crows and india arie.

we left school and our lives kept crossing here and there
but all of this is just to say
you are my friend.
I hold you in my heart.
you know my best and
you definitely know my worst.

I don't know how to love you best right now.
I don't know how to carry this hard time with you.
I don't know how to tell you I am sad, too.
I don't know where to put my sorrow.
I don't know how to ease yours.

but indulge me
(you always do)
to offer what I can.

to you,
my friend,
the one who knows my old self
and the self that self is becoming,
the one who has seen me in stripy socks and apron shirts,
the one who has never been scared away
not by my tears
not by my bluntness
not by my absence
not by my darkness,
to you, my friend,
I give this blessing.

may you always know just how loved you are.
may you always feel the warmth others feel from your smile.
may you burn long as your soul shines and shines.
may the world be big enough to hold all your sadness
with room left over for hope.
may you bask in the glow you have shed on others' lives.
may your vision be broad enough to know we can never see the whole thing at once.
may you feel empowered to ask for help when you need it,
the same way you have offered help so many countless times.
may your good always always outweigh your bad.
may you always be your mother's daughter.
may you always be your father's princess.
may you always feel safe
to feel the way you feel.
may you always be your little one's mama.
may you always know that role is yours to keep, no matter what.
may you always stay open to whatever is next.
may you be surrounded by your people forever and ever.
may you always know just how loved you are.

the last of the milk

there is less than half of a half gallon of almond milk in my fridge right now, just enough milk to get us through breakfast. this is my great triumph this week. when planning through life's transitions, it s a delicate balance to make the milk last right up until the last minute without running out too early or needing to buy more too soon. I have succeeded.

and it's not just the milk victory that deserves to be celebrated this morning. there's the glorious sunrise that greeted me on our last morning here. there's penelope sitting in the driveway more than halfway packed. there's a boy on the couch reading to himself. there is a reunion with maeve and then a reunion with eric to look forward to this afternoon. but mostly just making it to today has me cheering the loudest.

we leave shelter island today. we're about two weeks ahead of our planned departure date, and of course I have a lot of different feeling about that. leaving now means not seeing people I have put off visiting al summer because time would be so much looser in our last two weeks. it means walking away from the planning for next summer, one of the things I love very best. it means leaving after a week of parenting on my own which leaves little space for leisurely sunsets and moments of reflection and contemplation. it means a slightly frazzled version of a packed car, one I am sure eric will undo and try to remedy in a parking lot somewhere this evening.  but here we are, and here we go, and that is that.

end of camp can be my favorite. I like the process of looking back and looking forward, making sense of what worked and what didn't, cleaning out the dregs of summer supplies and lost and found. because it was just me with kids this week after the rest of the staff left, mostly it meant kid-friendly activities during the day and then lots of late night conversations with phil. I am not good at late nights. I would do everything I could think of to wear those kids out during the day. they are both official bike riders now (all this flat, paved space did the trick), but we only have one functional bike between them, so two of us would chase the one on the bike through camp while the one on foot would whine about it being their turn already. I played soccer with them. like actual run up and down the field and kick the ball soccer. maybe this is normal behavior for other parents, but if you've known me longer than about thirty seconds you know that things that require coordination while running aren't really my strong suit. 

and we started school this week, too. it is good. it just fits and makes sense and kids dig it and thank goodness for all those things. 

and then the packing. eric does the packing in our household and he takes great pride in this role. doing it on my own this week, fitting our life for the past three months in to our little honda fit while making sure to leave room for five passengers is not easy. did I mention the camping gear that has to fit on top or the lego creations that are oh-so-fragile or the shells and sea glass and who knows what else qualifies as treasure in cora's mind? everything I would pack, the kids would immediately need so we would unpack it and start over. everything I sorted into the give away pile was immediately discovered and reclaimed. but we are leaving anyway, and we'll figure it out as we go. isn't that the way the best adventures happen? isn't that just what we've always done?

my last moon flower bloomed this week. eric planted moonflower seeds back in march on the back deck of mudlfower and packed the seedlings for the trip up here (see what I mean? packing master.) and transplanted them here to vine around the deck. it is his love language. moonflowers reach all the way back to the beginning of our relationship, one of the first things he ever planted for me. I remember I smelled it before I even saw it that summer, and he has planted them just for me ever since. he saves the seeds every year. this year the beach soil was too sandy and the deck too sunny, so I only got four flowers through the summer, but I noticed the leaves instead: big heart-shaped reminders of where our roots should be.

so here we go. there are adventures to be had and hugs to be given and reflecting to do and soul cleansing to accomplish. but first, we're going to finish off the last of that milk.

the ripples of us

i.  the kids and I take long walks through camp and up and down the beach. on good days i remember to bring bags and we pick up trash the whole way. jamin loves to pick up trash. cora loves to pick up rocks. it is always an adventure to see what we find. sea glass counts as treasure, but freshly broken glass is a hazard. time changes everything. the weirdest thing we find consistently is those little individual flossers. so many of them. why? I have no metaphor for discarded flossers on the beach.

ii. we drove eric to the airport today. he is somewhere in the air between philadelphia and orlando right now. his grandfather is dying. we started the summer with eric's grandfather in the hospital, then things improved, but now it is hospice and the end is close. it feels sad. it feels complicated. it feels lonely and inconvenient to be so far away. I am in new york and eric is in florida and somehow no one is where we belong but everyone is right where they should be. because how can we be anywhere else than exactly where we are supposed to be? at least that is what I keep telling myself in between deep, shoulder-scrunching breaths: "I am exactly where I need to be."

iii. rabbit and kitra visited. we did fun things and showed off island life, but mostly we just reminded ourselves why we all like each other so much. I need reminders of what my life looks like at all these different angles. I need to see my life through someone else's view, too, and rabbit is so good for that. she loves us, all of us, and she sees us all so differently than the way I see us. and she brought sc peaches and grits and we had biscuits twice while she was here. definitely a good visit.

iv. we keep making plans that just keep getting jumbled, but that is when the best things happen, right? I think we are going to travel. eric bough a roundtrip ticket, so eventually he will come back to new york. then we will go see some things before we go home. it seems silly not to poke around new england since we are right here. and once we are home, we're just...home. I need to camp. I need to explore places I don't know well. I need big trees and beaches where the view is ocean, not bay. I need to feel small and clean and capable and wild. I need to relearn myself. I need space from summer so I can decide how I feel about it. or not. maybe I already have everything I need.

v. we can see the stars better here than we can at home. I do not understand how this is possible. it seems like on the mountain so far from town our light pollution should be far less than here on shelter island. we see a shooting star almost every night. we made sure rabbit saw one while she was here. I think we all just wished for home, in all the ways we know it. one night after watching for stars on the deck eric and I slipped down to the waterfront to swim in the dark with the last of the staff. we all left glowing trails in the water as we swam through the bioluminescence. we made our own shooting stars. plenty of wishes for all.

the direction we are facing

I know my call despite my faults
And despite my growing fears

And I'll find strength in pain
And I will change my ways
I'll know my name as it's called again

'Cause I need freedom now
And I need to know how
To live my life as it's meant to be

~mumford and sons

and so here it is, the end of summer,
the end of a hard summer,
hard in ways i didn't expect and wasn't prepared for.
I can know that endings are really just beginnings and that
the two are always so tangled up
it is hard to tell the difference really,
but there are big parts of me that want
to separate the two, that want
to know this is what is over and this
is what is starting.
there is so much in me
that wants to look backwards,
that wants to say
I see where I made mistakes,
I see where I failed,
I see where I fell short
and where I just never even really tried.
and I want to say sorry
and I want to explain myself
and I want the chance to make it right.
but because this is not just an ending
but a beginning, too,
there is even more looking ahead,
seeing what needs to happen right now,
what ways I need to forge onward,
to leave other people's perceptions to other people to figure out,
not to fix it all,
not to tie it up in a package with a bow
to store under my bed in a shoebox labeled quinipet 2015,
but instead to take that messiness,
the places I didn't do my best or didn't do at all,
to take the relationships
that left me feeling yucky and burned,
to take the criticisms, the hard conversations,
the conversations that never happened at all,
to take all of that
and all the good that came this summer too,
to take it all and use it as the lens through which I look ahead.
to take who I was
and who I am and
keep becoming who I am meant to be.
to keep hearing the call that only gets louder,
even when other people keep trying to drown it out.
even when I, in my insistence otherwise, in my glaring mistakes,
try to drown it out.
the call is clear.
the call is for home and community and intimacy.
the call is to keep creating even though none of it comes easy.
the call is to live big and love bigger and bigger and bigger,
big enough to forgive myself,
big enough to keep trying anyway,
big enough to let go,
big enough to say yes.
there is beauty to be found
even in the mixed up tangle of a beginning
and an end. because what is the difference, really?
only the direction we are facing.

the view from the golf cart

jamin is sick. today was his second day home from day camp with a fever and a tiredness that we've seen in him before. the boy is our family's emotional barometer. if we're doing too much, living life too fast, taking on more than we really should, jamin is the one to tell us. if he doesn't tell us with his words (which a lot of times he does), he tells us with a fever. we should know the drill by now.

jamin isn't the only one run down and feeling the mid-summer slump. the staff here at camp is right there with him. camp asks a lot of us: long stretches of time in the sun, enthusiasm all the live long day, late nights and early mornings, not a whole lot of downtime at all. and we're all piled on top of each other which makes sharing germs far too easy. luckily we seem to have gotten sick in waves here at quinipet this summer, and while wave one is bouncing back and getting into the swing of things again, wave two is just starting to stumble through camp with a slightly glazed look and a tickle in the throat. let's hope there is no wave three.

we only have one week left of overnight camp and then just one more week of day camp after that. I feel like there is so much to do, so much I still need to accomplish to make this summer count, so much of the staff I still don't know well enough. it is easy for me to be resentful of these days home with jamin, feeling like I am not "doing" anything. and then as I am here trying to figure out what it is I am usually doing that makes me feel like I am "doing" something, like my job here is important, like I am contributing to the summer in a meaningful way, I can't come up with a whole heck of a lot.

on normal days, days when jamin and cora are both in day camp and I am scurrying around camp "doing" things, every once and a while eric will zoom up in a golf cart and try to persuade me to take a ride with him (one of eric's jobs this summer is to keep all the camp watercoolers filled, an assignment that comes with golf cart privileges, much to his delight). one of the days I took him up on the offer he took me down to the far end of camp and stopped right in the middle of the road. "look at that tree," he said, pointing. the tree is a oak, an old one, with one limb that is disproportionately long, growing horizontal to the ground.

"wow," I said, both because it is a truly amazing tree, but also because it seems like the proper thing to say when you've been whisked away by a cute guy in a golf cart who wants to show you something cool.

"sometimes I come down here to look at it, just to remind myself that if that tree is capable of much more than it appears to be able to handle, then I probably am, too."

(and when one is whisked away in a golf cart by a cute guy who shows you natural wonders and then says profound things about said wonders, swooning is really the only appropriate response. that and thanking your lucky stars he decided to marry you all those years ago.)

that tree didn't set out to become a wonder. it didn't question whether it was capable of growing in the way in which the light led it to grow. in fact, all that is holding that limb up is that constant reach towards the light. all I can do is keep growing towards the light. sometimes that means bustling around and feeling accomplished and connected to my community. sometimes it means playing six games of double solitaire in a row with a seven-year-old with a fever. both matter. both count.

the reason I am here this summer has nothing to do with a check list of responsibilities or how quickly and purposefully I walk through camp. I am here to live big and love bigger. that big love includes camp staff and my own family. it includes taking care of myself. it includes making sacrifices for the good of someone else, even when it doesn't fit into my own agenda. and it certainly includes breaks in the middle of the day to be inspired by the world around us and eric's take on it all.

I feel certain jamin will be feeling better and we'll be back in the regular rhythm by the start of next week. but I hope this downtime will stick with me, reminding me of what I'm really here to do. and when I see that tree down at the far end of camp, I hope I'll remember that all I'm really called to is just reaching toward the light. that's where the wonder is. that's where the growing happens.