everyday life

Happy birthday to the man nobody believes exists

Last year I wrote a happy birthday post for this guy and received several comments to the effect that people didn’t know I was married.  Well, that’s just one of the lines I draw.  There’s a lot of personal stuff I’m happy to share, but one of the places I’ve decided is off limits is my husband.  From this bloggy world, only Denise has actually spent time with Matt.  So, if you have your doubts, she can vouch for his existence. (extra credit: who can name the bff to the right of Matt in this photo?)

But it’s his birthday again, so I think I can break my own rule just for today … Happy, happy, happy birthday, Matt.  This is the 13th of your birthdays we’ve celebrated together.  That first birthday seems like both yesterday and a lifetime ago.

You continue to be so many wonderful things, to me, to the two short and loud people who live here, and to your family and friends:

– Surprisingly talented hydrangea gardener

– Generous morning latte maker

– Persistently, annoyingly early riser

– Miraculous blizzard-avoider

– Magnanimous eater of the random all-vegetable meals I create from our CSA box

– One of the best skiiers I’ve ever been on a mountain with

– Patient children’s golf and tennis coach

– Enthusiastic runner behind a new two-wheeler biker

– (Mostly) tolerant extrovert husband of an introvert

– Animated bedtime story reader

– Indulgent listener to long, detailed stories about adventures like trapeze (think “one time? at band camp?”)

– Barbecue enthusiast

– Doppelganger of our son – such that Grace saw a picture of you & your brother at 3 and asked, “why are there two Whits?”

– Undeniable Fun One of this particular marital pair (stuck with perma-crying non-fun moi)

– Husband, father, son, brother, identical twin, godfather, uncle, cousin, friend

Happy birthday, Matt.  As ever, I’m amazed.

Moments of wonder

Last night I folded up a big Target box and put it in the recycling bin.  The box was covered in sharpie words and crayon drawings, and has been a major focus of this house for several days.  As I took it out, noticing that the air is positively swampy with spring as I did so, I thought how thrilled I am that Grace and Whit still find a cardboard box to be a thrilling thing to play with.   The arrival of a big cardboard box is met with celebrating, and provides days of fodder for playing together or alone.  I love this.

It reminded me of the night, a few weeks ago, when I decided to make a chocolate fudge cake that I’d first made for Whit, on his request, last summer.  I surprised the kids with the cake in the morning, and gave them each fat slices for breakfast.  They looked at me, bewildered wonder on their faces, suspecting, I think, that I was going to announce that I was joking and snatch the plates away.  I wasn’t, and I didn’t.  They were thrilled beyond all reason at this tiny surprise.  Grace even told me recently that she had written a “whole page” in her journal at school about this, and I groaned at her that she wasn’t making me look very good in front of her teacher.

I get the same sense of awed pride when I asked Whit recently what his favorite part of spring break was.  He said, without hesitating, “Disney,” but then he went on, “but close after that, our trip to Walden.”  Or when, after a dinner full of rowdy, obnoxious bickering, they calm down, within minutes, when we go for a pajama-clad ‘notice things’ walk.  Furthermore, that they ask, over and over again, for these walks.

I know for sure that this is one of the things I most want to pass on to my children: the propensity for delight, the willingness to be amazed, an openness to the hugeness of small things.  Whether it’s a trait or an inclination I’m not sure; I don’t know that it matters.  I do know, however, that it is one way to assure a life full of joy.  That doesn’t mean there won’t be great sorrow, too.  As far as I can tell they are often twined entirely together.  If there’s one thing I want to do as a mother, it is to help Grace and Whit hold onto their capacity for wonder.

I noticed, as I tried to find a link, that I have more than a few blog posts with “wonder” in the title.  All of a sudden it occurred to me that maybe that’s what this blog is about: the wonder of ordinary life.  The wonder of that design, of which we sometimes glimpse the contours, though never the whole.  The wonder of human relationships, the sky, the turning of the seasons, poetry, the power contained in the light of a day.  The wonder of living in the slipstream of time, whose eddies are both utterly unique and totally universal.  That’s what this blog has been, for almost five years: a record of my moments of wonder, both in their thunderous joy and their swelling sadness.  And a love letter to those two small guides who have shown me the way here.

So fragile, so lovely.

Inspiration’s been a little slow in coming this week.  My writing has stalled to a complete halt and I’m trying not to panic about it.  I know that the specter of the end of the year has commenced its menacing looming; I can feel it flickering around the edges of every day.  Another school year is drawing to a close, bringing with it incontrovertible evidence that 365 days I can never have back have slipped by.  Grace and Whit grow ever taller, ever further from the babies they were just yesterday, as the raveling string between our hearts unspools.

All I have to offer today, from this morass of emotion, is a few moments from the last several days.

Another dandelion offering from Whit, proffered in a tight fist with a big smile and great pride.  I see no reason not to put these smack in the middle of my kitchen island.  I even move the peonies out of the way.

Grace still loves playing with her American Girls, and her absolute favorite thing is their dogs.  She is obsessed with dogs.  Witness them lined up by her desk.  This isn’t even all of them.  This child lobbies, daily, for a pet of her own.  I’m still holding firm to no but we’ll see …

This is how Whit went to bed the other night.  The famous exercise pants (size 3T) and a pirate hoop earring from Disney World.  Spray paint his torso gold and he could bartend at Studio 54.

The stunning flowers, even on a rainy day, that fill the yard of the kids’ school.  I’m sure the other parents wonder what I’m doing when I stand there, iphone pointed up, and take pictures of trees or sky.

The last pair of Grace’s shoes in size 13.  She is actually wearing a 2 now, but Converse run huge, so these were 13.  I can’t bear that she is out of toddler shoe sizes.  Really, I can’t bear any of it.

I was one of the parents who “helped” the kindergardeners hold the chicks.  Whit had this dear black one with a yellow splotch on his head.  I held him too, and could feel his tiny heart racing like a hummingbird’s against my palms.  So fragile, so lovely.

And then Whit drew this picture and wrote about his chick.  I cried at how I can read his writing now, at his detailed drawing, how he, like me, noticed the spot of yellow.  So fragile, so lovely.

A weekend of magic and dandelion fluff

Grace and I got to Kripalu on Friday afternoon and almost immediately headed down to the labyrinth.  This is a quiet, holy place, a maze I’ve walked before.  You follow the winding path into the center where there is a post that says “may peace prevail on earth” in several languages.  Grace walked in front of me and after a few minutes she turned to me and said, “does this really lead into that middle?”  You could see the post in the center, with offerings of beads and buddhas at its base, but the path wound around and around and it did indeed seem hard to believe we’d ever get there.  “Trust the path, Grace,” I said without thinking about it.  And she did.  And I did.  Once in the middle, I turned to find this:
Later friends arrived, and Grace met Abby, the daughter of my dear friend Denise.  They hit it off and spent the weekend giggling and exploring.  Other friends from the ether who were there were Lisa, Christine, and Sarah.  The sessions with Dani were extraordinary.  I’d gladly travel the world over just to be in her presence.  The fact that Katrina was there, assisting, just made it all that much more magical.  It gave me goosebumps when, over the course of two days, Dani shared many quotes that I love dearly.  Two of them I’ve written about before: Pain engraves a deeper memory (Anne Sexton) and You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way (E.L. Doctorow).

In the afternoon, Abby, Grace, Denise and I walked down to the lake that you can see from Kripalu’s hilltop location.  At the shore of the lake the girls played in the sand and we sat and watched and talked, our hearts expanding.
Everybody’s eyes opened a little this weekend, I think.  I imagine that Denise, like me, was hearing Dani’s words about paying attention in her head.  We noticed a black turtle sunning himself on a log in the swamp.  The girls blew fat white dandelions and the fluff floated around us like snow, or like grace.  We stopped to gaze at the word “love,” spelled out in little rocks on a large flat boulder.
At dinner Katrina joined us and I felt again the immense comfort and gratitude I’ve felt in her gentle, keenly intelligent presence since the first time we met, a not-coincidence that altered the current of my life.  After putting Grace and Abby to sleep – to their overwhelming delight, together – Denise, Lisa and I sat around and talked.  Lisa is far more extraordinary than I’d even imagined, which is saying something, since I was deeply impressed already.  The three of us talked as though we’d known each other forever.  We covered writing, cancer, lecherous grade school principals, navigating pre-puberty with daughters, the joys and challenges of younger sons, twitter, and more writing, writing, writing.

Yesterday afternoon I went, unenthusiastically, for a long run.  I ran by the Charles River and one small part of my route winds through the woods.  I was alone in there today, running, feeling tired, achey, weak.  The wind came up then and suddenly I was surrounded by a cloud of dandelion fluff.


Making me happy right now

Grace and I are off to Kripalu today for Dani Shapiro‘s memoir workshop.  I can’t wait!!  So, instead of a post, a few things that are making me happy right now:

  • Finding flowers on my bedside table from Grace and Whit yesterday (with Whit’s marked with an old toilet paper roll: classic).  They had picked them at the park in between downpours yesterday afternoon.
  • Om Shanti, from Madonna’s Ray of Light CD.  It reminds me of my trip to Feathered Pipe years and years ago.  And it still inspires me.
  • Loose, peasanty silk blouses by Rebecca Taylor (I have one leopard, one floral, and I am wearing them on repeat)
  • Cropped skinny white jeans (with the aforementioned blouses)
  • Peonies, peonies, peonies
  • J Crew boys pajamas (particularly the blue and white striped shorty ones with a long-sleeved top)
  • My new Mala beads from Tiny Devotions.  I swear I can feel their energy when I wear them.
  • Our plans to visit my sister and her family during their sabbatical next year for Christmas.  I can’t wait.  Have to get my children passports (the fact that they do not, I think, horrifies my parents: by the time I was Grace’s age I’d already lived in Europe for four years)
  • My morning green smoothie: pear, cucumber, spinach, ice cubes, coconut water, mint, agave, chia seeds

Please tell me, what is making you smile these days?