See How We Are: Take Two

We did not have the summer we planned. The list of things that derailed us is long and fairly complicated and mostly health related. A detached retina and a bone graft - that's about all it took to make us cry uncle, cancel our vacation, shelter in place, circle the wagons and spend the summer taking care of each other, which is, in retrospect, not a bad way to spend a season.

Max had adventures of his own this summer.

Strings Camp at Texas State University 

Tornado Relief in Moore, Oklahoma

And now it is Labor Day. (Cue The Internationale.) Max has the first week of seventh grade successfully under his belt. Frank's classes met last week. I am in the process of excavating my desk from beneath a summer's worth of neglect. We are together, avoiding the heat, enjoying each other, which is, I believe, a very good way to begin a new season.

Everyday Miracle

I baked a lot yesterday. I made these pumpkin chocolate chip mini muffins for a gathering this morning and they just turned out kind of strange. They tasted good but they were made with egg whites and yogurt (healthy, yes) but the consistency was, in Max's words, peculiar.

I set them aside and baked some cookies. I tasted them again last night and thought that if they still seemed weird this morning, I would stop on my way and buy some replacements. I was disappointed. I thought they were going to be so good.

This morning (after a well-deserved and lovely eight hours of sleep) I popped one out and tasted them again and you know what? They are good, spicy from the cinnamon, with tiny little bursts of chocolate. They transformed themselves while I was sleeping.

So let that be a lesson to you. Never give up on a project until you've slept on it. Always give whatever it is you are working on a chance to sort itself out... while you are sleeping.

Perhaps Some Good News

Max had his well child checkup yesterday. You may remember, it was his pediatrician who first noticed the slight curve in his spine and referred us to the orthopedic surgeon. When she first noticed it two years ago, she measured it at 9%.

The orthopedic guy measured it at 15% at our last visit and we started to worry a little and pray a lot. Here's the whole story, if you need to catch up.

Yesterday, she measured it at 4-6% which is awesome, which is completely within the normal range for a school-age boy!

Now there's still the orthopedist to see next week and xrays to be evaluated, but I am taking this as a sign that he's outgrowing the curve and that all it will take is stretching and exercise to make his spine grow straight and true.

We won't really know anything until next week but I will take this opportunity to celebrate perhaps some good news and say thank you to everyone who said a prayer or lit a candle or held us in the light or lifted us up or send good thoughts our way. Really, truly, you made all the difference in the world.

Bloom

Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble

We got in late last night and I got to bed even later. This morning I am that kind of groggy that has me walking into furniture and standing in front of the fridge forgetting why I am even in the kitchen.

The Silk Road Ensemble was stunning last night. Max was thoroughly enchanted. (He did a much better job of sitting and listening intently than a lot of the adults around us.) The program leaned heavily toward world music, much of it Middle Eastern and Asian and a couple of the pieces required what I like to call "muscular listening."

Max & Frank both have this ability to listen to music almost mathematically. I am more of a three-chord-songs-I-wish-I-had-written-myself kind of girl but the music last night was so beautiful and moving, I had no problem despite being a bit out of my wheelhouse.

Last night reminded me that I want to do more of this, more downtown after dark, more live music.

And yes, Karen, I wore something pretty.

Tell Me the Story

When we went to see the new allergist this week, I reminded Frank to just give him the facts. Don't launch into a long discursive story (as Frank is wont to do). The allergist just wants data.

In contrast, I am loving The Fellowship of the Ring. It is our current bedtime reading. In Tolkien, after the facts have been passed on, someone (be it elf, dwarf, or hobbit) invariably says, now tell us the story.

Valentines

As part of our Valentine's Day tradition, we made valentines for each other.

Brand New Year

I'd like to say that this day, this first day of a brand new year, began suddenly different, that I went for a run as I intended, that all the laundry was washed and dried and folded and put away, that I consumed only locally grown organic vegetables, that I did not once get frustrated with Max or with Frank, that I did not spend too much time reading blogs or loitering on the Facebook street corner, that I wrote three crisp new morning pages in my journal or that I transferred all the important dates into this year's calendar but you know, I didn't do any of that. I did, in fact, a whole lot of what I usually do.

I cooked black eyed peas for good luck. I had a long conversation with Frank about our unfolding food allergy plan (more on this later). I left a message for my sister. I called my mother to say happy new year. I took a rambling walk with Frank and Max. I wrote for a bit. I picked up my knitting twice but got distracted both times. I washed and dried a load of laundry that is at this moment wrinkling in the dryer. I baked bread. I washed the dishes. I read and you know, it was a pretty nice way to start a brand new year.

Blue

It is a seasonal thing, this feeling that descends on me when the weather starts to change and the light starts to shift. Sometimes it's in the form of free-floating anxiety, sometimes I just feel sad, sometimes I get run down and get a sinus infection and sometimes it creates a longing in me that stops me in my tracks and leaves me breathless.

In the past, I've tackled this feeling with vitamin C and coffee. I've done a couple months of therapy trying to erase it altogether. I've ignored it. I've tried to just power through it. I've thrown exercise and wine and a new pair of shoes at the problem.

One thing I have never ever done is embrace it. Try and listen to it.

I've been reading and listening to Jen Lee in the last couple of months. Yesterday, as the sun went down and I found myself wiped out by 8pm, I remembered the title of her podcast, You Can Be More Gentle With Yourself Than You Imagine. I repeated it to myself a few times as I tried to get to sleep last night, and woke up this morning saying those words in the dark.

So today I am choosing gentleness. I am choosing to take care of myself. Today I am honoring my change-of-season-blues. I am listening.

The Shape of the Day

I've had a crazy busy couple of weeks with appointments and doctors and school things. Every day I would look at the list of things that had to be done, places I had to go, and sigh.

After I had mentioned my "very busy weeks" to a handful of people, I made an astounding discovery: most of you are this busy all the time. What drives me to distraction is business as usual for a whole lot of people.

While I assumed I was just stumbling around over here, it seems that I have actually carved out a way of life that's pretty extraordinary. Usually, my life is full of large swaths of time in which to write, or knit, or sit on the porch or the back steps. I can, on most days, sit down and read for an uninterrupted hour or two.

It wasn't until the last few weeks, that I got enough distance from what makes a normal day for me to see my everyday world so clearly.

I am grateful for the shape of the day, most days. I consider myself lucky.

And Sometimes You Get This

Beginner

Max is getting to the point in his guitar lessons where the songs he's learning are beginning to sound like songs. This is in contrast to the early weeks where he was just struggling to get the chords right. During those weeks, listening to him practice was an exercise in puzzling those stray chords into some kind of order, something that might resemble a song.

These days when he sits down to play a song, I could actually sing along, and I do sometimes, quietly, under my breath, from the kitchen. All the pieces of the song, what makes the song a song to begin with, are there shimmering in front of him when he practices.

He's more assertive during his lessons too. Picking out which songs he wants to work on next – currently, "Running Down a Dream " by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Next on his list, REM's" I Remember California". When his teacher suggested The Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour", Max politely declined saying, "That song's just not my cup of tea."

I'm proud of the progress he's made mainly because not a single bit of playing guitar has come easy for Max. He's had to struggle and practice and practice for every chord he's learned, every song he's strung together. A lot of things do come easy for Max and I was worried that the difficulty, the steep learning curve would frustrate him and he'd give up before he got to the good stuff.

I could not have been more wrong. Max has embraced the challenge, displaying a real depth of patience with himself as he learns and practices.

He reminds me that it is okay to not be great at something when you're beginning, that it's okay to try new things, even if they're a little scary and the people around you are not sure you can do it, that some things are worth sticking with through the hard part, the awkward part and that when you love something you keep on practicing every day until you can hear the song, until everyone else can hear the song too.

March Full Moon Dreamboard Stand In

I was all ready to put together my full moon dreamboard. I'd been gathering images. I had my supplies ready.

Then this morning dawned with several unexpected twists and turns and although the meals got planned and the pantry was restocked, the day began to slip away. About an hour ago I realized, it was not going to happen – not today.

And then, like a bolt out of the blue, Jamie tweeted this: No time to make a dreamboard? Write a word, draw a symbol or glue a picture in your journal of what you'd like to invite into your life.

So, I grabbed a handful of my favorite images and a bottle of glue and my journal and in literally five minutes created my March dreamboard stand in. It is not the larger, more complex dreamboard I had planned, but it gets to the heart of things and some days that just has to be enough.

Spring Break

We stayed home for our spring break. We laughed, cooked and ate together. We listened to music and made music and danced. We slid and floated and swam. We each uncoiled from our regular workload, stretched and rested. We saw Up, which totally wrecked me in the first five minutes, honestly I never recovered and Diary of a Wimpy Kid which is a darn good movie with a beautiful message about being yourself and being true to your friends. We absorbed some sad news and found a way, I hope, to look on the bright side. We spent a lot of time outside.

Frank and Max made a sundial.

Max decided to get his hair cut.

There was tennis

and the inevitable trip

to the guitar store

where Max flirted with a drum kit.

We played games

and wrapped up the week with a ride on the little train at the zoo this morning

in chilly perfect sunshine.

Same As It Ever Was

I was going through some of my photos on Facebook the other day when it dawned on me how utterly and completely we are a family of habit, of repetition and ritual. In nearly every photo Max is wearing the same shirt. (The casual observer might assume that the poor child has only one.) But that's his favorite shirt, the one he always wears on weekends which is when I most often pull out my camera. Another point driven home by those photos is that we do the same things over and over. We sit on the porch. We go for walks. As a family, we hang out in very predictable ways.

Frank and I have always been creatures of habit. We took flack early in our marriage from friends who were mystified at our desire to stay in on Saturday nights because we grilled on Saturdays and listened to the radio and danced around the kitchen. This tradition is ongoing, Saturday is still a night for grilling and music in our little family.

Our rituals lend a distinct shape to our days and weeks. I can count on one hand the number of nights in the past year that we did not sit down to dinner together. It is something we all value and it brings our hours spent apart to a familiar close. We each share a high and low from our day, sometimes we share a freaky moment or a musical moment instead. No matter how crazy or out of whack our individual days might get, we can count on coming back to the table and telling our stories every night.

Just like we rely on those weekend walks in that same tie-dyed t-shirt and our Saturday dinners and playlists. These are the rituals that mean family to us. It is the way we remember who we are.

Conversation

I talked to an old friend today. Someone I haven't spoken to in years. Someone I used to know and have never forgotten, another friend I left behind when I burned my Texas bridges and moved to Maine. This is one thing Facebook gets right. Reconnecting people who have somehow lost that slender thread of connection.

M was my roommate in college. (She turned me on to Neil Young and you never forget the person who turns you on to Neil Young.) We reconnected on Facebook and talked on the phone this afternoon. It was good to hear her voice and here about the amazing life she's made for herself – a happy life on her own terms. It's what I always imagined for her. And how refreshing to talk to someone who is happy, who loves their life!

After I hung up I started thinking about my own life and how I answer questions about who I am now and what I'm doing, the life I have chosen. I think these answers sometimes come out sounding apologetic and you know, that's not how I feel about my life.

Driving to the school to pick up Max, the conversation with M still ringing in my ears, I realized I really love the life I've made. I love being a mother and a wife. I love the way my days are shaped around meals prepared, dishes washed, laundry folded and the writing I do in between those things.

I wouldn't change a thing.

Wait! I Want to Tell You a Story

I've been struggling all day, trying to come up with a way to tell this story. I want to frame it perfectly, so you will see how poignant and perfect a moment it was. I have, however, given up. All my hand wringing has brought me no closer to the right way, so I'm just going to tell it.

As I've mentioned before, we take turns creating Saturday night dinner music mixes. We take particular delight in surprising and stumping each other in a lively game of "name this band." Last night was Max's turn.

His mix began with a song I didn't know and then one I did and then, a song I haven't heard or thought of in way too many years.

My mom tells the story of how when I was a little little girl I would watch the cartoon, Casper the Friendly Ghost, on television and when the adults would be scared of Casper and run away and Casper would begin to cry, I would go over and try to put my little arms around our big clunky television and comfort him saying, "I'll be your friend, Casper."

Max has never heard this story.

The song last night was the theme song from Casper the Friendly Ghost. Max had sung it in music class earlier this year and never mentioned it. Frank, who knows the story, looked amazed. I got tears in my eyes and started to tell Max the story, then he got tears in his eyes too.

I don't know how to wrap the story up neatly for you. It was one of those rich, messy, human moments – the three of us stopped in mid-dinner, our eyes filled with tears over a cheesy cartoon theme song. We cried and laughed. We finished dinner.

Skate Away

So I mentioned in last week's post on The Joy Diet that what I really wanted to do was go rollerskating. I got lots of encouragement in the comments and decided I would go this week. I made a special point of telling my sister. She is my creative cohort and helps keep me accountable.

Can you guess what happened next?

I made plans to go on Tuesday night and then spent about 24 hours talking myself out of it. I would feel self-conscious and dorky. Max needed me. Who would do the dinner dishes? It's a giant hassle for such a silly whim. Which devolved into, who do you think you are? You'll look ridiculous. You will fall down and there will be no one there to laugh about it with. You will embarrass yourself.

Yes, gremlins working overtime. That got me thinking about resistance and why I was expending so much psychic energy trying to keep myself from doing something I really wanted to do. When my brain throws up that much clutter I try to sit up and pay attention.

So I did what I thought would help me over the hurdle of all that negative energy - called my sister and confessed, " I'm talking myself out of going." And she did what every caring sister would do, told me to go and that if I backed out she would give me a hard time.

So, I went and you know what? It was great. I didn't fall, not even once. I was, at moments, self conscious but I got over it. I let those wheels spin me around and around, let the adrenalin of feeling exposed and maybe a little foolish course through me and had a very good time.

The feelings I associate with skating are joy and an almost crazy sense of self confidence. In the crazy dark patches of my early teen years skating was something I was good at. At the rink things made sense - I knew exactly who I was.

Last night, I think I got a little piece of that back.

Monday Trivia

For those of you who might have missed the announcement on Facebook, Max fell in love with an electric guitar on Saturday.

After the initial blah of dealing with the time change yesterday (what time is it really? am I hungry? sleepy?) I woke up today feeling fantastic. I love to see the sun up and shining in the morning and I actually enjoy the way darkness falls a bit earlier. It makes dinner seem cozy. Give me more candlelight!

I am looking for a good chicken florentine recipe. I have one of the few eight year olds on the planet who will willing eat spinach, as long as it is "in stuff." Salad, yes. Pasta, yes. Big green pile on a plate, not so much.

Have we always started counting down the days until Christmas immediately after Halloween?

Full moon tonight. Wherever you are, go out. Look up.

Knock on Wood

We haven't had the flu yet. (I realize by saying this out loud I may open some karmic portal to influenza hell but I'm knocking on wood and hoping for the best.)

H1N1 has been rampant here in San Antonio. Today's paper says the occurrence rate is going down for the first time since the outbreak started, surely that's a good thing. This week one class at Max's school was down to 10 students, almost half out with the flu.

I know a lot about viruses and disease. Remember, Frank is a microbiologist. I know so much about pandemics that I don't know how I can sleep at night. Volunteering in Max's class this morning, the student sitting next to me sneezed and I just shuddered imagining the germ spray.

Yes, we had our seasonal flu shots. We get them every year because Max has a touch of asthma and is prone to pneumonia. Frank works with germy college students all day long and I will do almost anything to avoid getting sick. If H1N1 vaccine becomes available here, Max may be the only one who can get it.

So here's our family secret to avoiding the flu thus far: we are crazy, paranoid hand washers. We wash our hands all the time. I include a little hand wipe in Max's lunch box so he can wipe his hands down before lunch and we wash, wash, wash with soap and water all day long.

I'm glad we haven't gotten it, and I worry about Max getting it. I assume Frank & I will be cranky and miserable but generally okay. Isn't what's scary about this flu that it seems to be more dangerous to little children?

So we haven't had it. I hope we don't get it and if you or your children do get it (I'm looking at you, Boots and you, Nancy) I wish you a quick recovery, fever meds that really work and a never ending supply of popsicles.

PS - Please don't leave horror stories about vaccines in the comments, that would just be mean. We made an informed decision for our child and for us. I would not begin to assume that I know what's best for anyone else. I promise.