Many Returns

Monday I'll join in welcome a friend and semi-neighbor back to NJ who became dear in a short time last year, and then left to attend to family concerns out west. I'm thrilled but wondering. Will she stay? Can we begin our big plans again, plans we had to try some new foundation-shaking? Will I feel ready?

Otherwise, this feels like a good time. The girls are happy, I am happy, R. seems happy, too. We are feeling grateful for each other. Ella missed school on Wednesday for a belly doctor appointment, and I took her for tea while Lena was at school. It was brief but lovely: she thrilled in her "tea timer" and nibbles.

Today, she wanted to come to the grocery store with me, even though I promised her it would be boring and I would feel irritated, at a grocery store on a Saturday. She didn't mind, and I secretly was happy. "Sometimes I feel like I miss things," she said, referring to errands. I promised her that I save all the fun things for her. And lately, I do. Except for that mid-week bookstore trip I'm still plotting, and hope to take soon. I'll be there for hours, I'm certain: absolutely hours.

Lena sobbed that she couldn't go with us. (It would have been too much, and we needed her to help R. keep an ear out for co-op members buying my father's ocean shrimp.) We brought her chocolate. She was fine when we came home, and thrilled at the small squares.

There is always food in our day, and it helps me remember the ways it brings us together.

Wigglies and Wobblies

It has been hard to blog about the small things because life this month has been more about big things: you know, the big things I like but that, in excess, start to fray us a bit, like:

1. Who's covering for Wednesday night?

2. Who's covering for Thursday afternoon (don't forget school pickup)?

3. Who's covering for Friday night?

4. What's for dinner all of those nights?

Part-time, regularly changing work is like a machine you can never really oil well, because it's too busy chasing you around the room.

I know one day I might look back and smile at how peaceful this all was, because it didn't involve any after-school activities besides Daisies once a month. And once a month is all we're doing until the spring (I'm not a fan of running around in the snow, and I'm really enjoying the hibernating, and school currently seems to be enough stimulus to sufficiently tire the wigglies.) No one has declared they will be inconsolable without ballet class, and that's nice right now.

Adding Mo

Reconnect

Renovate + refurbish (spirit)

Redact (mistakes are good)

Reclaim truth

R's in Verse: Thomas Lux

The daily fare, every day ugly in some way,
every day beautiful and gone.
--Against which: no, not always
against or else the bitter grinding, daughter,
the bitter grinding leaves you nothing, nor no will
to go forth--in one hand the rage
I hope you have, in the other the rapture.

Thomas Lux, from "For My Daughter When She Can Read"

All My Resolutions Have the Letter

1. Rest

2. Reading

3. Riot (when it is called for)

4. Rising (early rising makes peace)

5. Reliability (personal)

6. Resilience (so helpful when nurtured!)

7. Redirect extra time from things to people

Felt Words Redux

Have learned of the quote again:

"If it is to be, it is to be by me."

Felt Words

My friend Amy (Miss Amy, to L.) told me that during a low time, she saw a felted banner in her child's school. I don't remember the saying exactly, but it read along these lines: "The change begins with me."

After feeling the wind taken out of my sails these past few weeks for reasons of both circumstance and perception, it was nice to hear that saying. It reminded me that although people and circumstance might change, I can still take steps toward the projects i imagine. For a few weeks I've been stuck in feeling as if the circumstances could be changed back again--that the people who were thrillingly on board could be coaxed back on. But they can't, because no one can control other people. Nor should they.

I Was a Good Mom Before....

...I had an extrovert.

"I want to watch sports," she says to me a few days ago. "I want to watch basketball."

I found basketball on a sports station. It was not quite the kind she was thinking of, and it was hard to determine what she really envisioned.

It was another moment in many moments when I both admired and felt confounded by her, and vaguely, around the edges of my raw introvert nerves, wondered how we could have so recently shared a blood supply.