Nina

click

2011-10-29T20:55:00.000-04:00

Growing up, we had a Hoosier in our kitchen, an antique wooden kitchen cabinet with drawers, shelves, and a metal countertop that could be pulled out to make extra space for rolling out pie dough or letting cookies cool. Inside one of the cabinets was a flour sifter, which fascinated me even though my mom chose to keep her flour in the silver tin with the red metal lid instead. The cabinet held cookbooks, a box with stamps and unused greeting cards, tape, glue, odds and ends. And, for a while, it held a couple of old Instamatic cameras, the very cameras which my mom had used to capture so much of my childhood.

There were a few other older cameras around the house, old twin-lens reflex cameras in leather cases, with two lenses on top of one another and a flap at the top which opened up to reveal the viewfinder. There were cameras in our house for as a long as I can remember, and I almost cannot remember a time when I wasn't trying to use them. The first camera I ever used was one of my mom's old Instamatics, and eventually my parents got me a little red Pentax which I used for years, until they gave me my first single lens reflex camera. Photography, carving up life into what I can see through the viewfinder, is as much a part of me as any other part of my childhood - red Ohio clay, the smell of donkeys eating corn husks, Fiestaware, tomato leaves crushed on a bee sting.

I had breakfast with a photographer friend recently and she talked about how it feels when you know you've gotten a shot just right, when the light and the action and the composition all come together and you know the image is perfect. You can feel it when it happens - everything just clicks into place. She said it feels like a drug, like an addiction. To me it feels like a rush of energy, a transfer of some spark between me and the universe, me and my subject. It feels...right. Like what I'm meant to be doing.

I love that feeling of a perfect composition captured, but it's more than that. When I'm looking through the lens I can clean up the world, edit all the messiness out of the frame that makes life so difficult. That's what makes a great composition - space. It's as much about what is not in the frame as it is about what's there. What else in life can do this, can simplify life down into what fits inside a little rectangle or square. It's the only tool I've found that creates real simplicity, that lets us push out all the mess and focus on what we want to see - the hands together, the kiss, the baby's bright eye, the smile.

It lets us stop time, too. Whenever I'm doing something I really love, or with people I love, I want my camera there, too. Walking on the beach, sharing a great meal, the changing of seasons. Even when they are things we've done before I want to capture them, want to try to freeze those images so I can savor the feeling a little longer, feel the sand and waves on my feet even when I'm back home with the furnace running and my slippers on.

Right now i feel like time is moving faster than ever, watching my sweet kids growing up before my eyes. The weeks are tumbling by like all those crisp leaves on my street, scraping across the pavement in the wind. I have one more week of maternity leave, one more week where my focus can be on my home and family, where I can sit on the couch with Oscar's warm little head nestled under my chin if I want to. I'm thankful for the time I have had - I know it's more than most are blessed with - and thankful for my job. But I am sad to leave this sweet boy, sad that the brutal reality of life is that working full time and being a mother are not really compatible, not matter how family friendly the work environment.

So, I'm trying to stop time with my photos, trying to capture the new smiles and the soft hair that sticks up so funny after bath and the way Oscar makes a fist with his thumb stuck between his first two fingers. I'm trying to get it all down on film so it doesn't really go away, so that somewhere - even if its in some digital cyber universe - there is a new sweet boy kicking his legs and babbling and smiling at me, waiting for the next opportunity to nestle his head under my chin.

life with a newborn

2011-09-08T22:11:00.000-04:00

I had forgotten how elemental, how primal, life with a newborn is. It makes perfect sense that this flows directly from childbirth, perhaps the most primal act of all. Caring for a newborn you are boiled down to all the most basic elements in nature: food, air, love, light, breath, sleep, exhaustion, pain. You spend hours skin to skin, babe to breast, listening to baby breathing, swallowing, panting. When you're not thinking about how much you love your new baby or how much you miss sleeping, your thinking about food. Communication is reduced to its simplest forms: touch, comfort, nourishment, staring into your newborn's impossibly deep, cobalt blue eyes, seeing the world and light and your face for the first time.

Even in the early morning hours when I'm aching to go back to sleep, I find myself staring at Oscar, amazed once again at how deeply and completely I am in love with this child. I sit and fight back sleep just to watch his little face, waiting for a fleeting smile to cross his lips, watching him nursing in his sleep. When I look at him I can feel the love surge through me like the blood in my veins. I love every little detail about him, from his funny spiky hair to his freakishly long, skinny toes (sorry Oscar - you got those from me). He has soft, tiny white hairs all over him, covering the sweet, soft curve of his back, arms, shoulders. He looks like Brian, looks like Dora as a newborn. He even smells delicious - just they way he should, like one of us, a member of our tribe.

Even with that deep love coursing through my veins, it takes a lot of faith to get through this time. It is a time of great blessing, and of great pain as well. In the labor room, I was crying out to God to help me. And I need God to help me now - to calm my fears as I fall again in such all consuming love with my children, to give me wisdom and patience in the late hours, when I am bleary and sleep-deprived and hardly functional, while simultaneously being relentlessly tested by my children. I need God to help me believe in myself, believe that I am a good mother, believe that I can manage this. I need God to be listening, perhaps now more than ever.

In my first week of late-night feedings, I re-read "Traveling Mercies" by Anne Lamott, one of my very favorite authors. In this wonderful book she chronicles her journey of faith, which is quite dramatic and extreme - from alcoholism and drug addiction to a strong, enduring commitment to her faith and her church. I love this book (and all of Lamott's writing) because it is written with such honesty, acknowledging her personal flaws and shortcomings while simultaneously showing us the grace and humility (and humor) of life. She doesn't shy away from the pain that she and her friends and family have in their lives, but instead shows that by coming together, by "showing up", we help each other get through all of life - both the bitter and the sweet.

In his three weeks here with us Oscar has been to church a couple of times. It has been wonderful to be there, in that sacred space, surrounded by so many people who love us and have supported us and our growing family. I love that my children are growing up in that community, where there is always someone willing and ready to hold the baby, to wrangle my wild 4-year-old, to bring us a meal, to "show up" without even being asked. In our church family and with our community of friends here in Asheville, we are surrounded by people who just step in, just seem to know when they are needed.

Last week we also went to a memorial service for a wonderful friend and co-worker who passed away this spring after a battle with brain cancer. He was a lovely, warm, positive person and is sadly missed by many people. The service was held outdoors at the NC Arboretum. Friend after friend approached the podium singing this man's praises as the sun rose above the trees, bathing all of us in warmth and light. As the day wore on it became uncomfortably hot in the sun, people moving around trying to catch the last bits of shade. The service was almost over and a friend was reminding us of how we can keep Joe alive in our hearts by learning from him about positivity, about enjoying each moment, about having a smile on our faces. A deliciously cool breeze blew through the crowd as the service ended, and I felt our friend's presence strongly among the people present, all of us who had "shown up" to remember him and acknowledge his loss.

Having children does open your eyes in ways that few other things do. Living with a newborn is a great reminder of how much we need other people, how much we need them to "show up", to come together around us, to step in, to know when they are needed. The newborn reminds us of all of our primal needs, shows us how these needs continue even in the complicated world of adulthood. We need each other, and we need God - from the delivery room to the memorial service, from birth to death, from hours spent staring lovingly at every detail of the newborn baby to a lifetime spent remembering, and learning from, our lost friends and loved ones. I am thankful for this time of reflection, for being reminded of these things, for the opportunity to accept the love and help of others. Thank you to everyone who has "shown up" for my little family - we are truly blessed by your love.

the birth of a mother of two

2011-08-24T09:17:00.000-04:00

One week ago a mother of two was born. I have been nervously anticipating the birth of this new mother for a long time, even before there was even a pregnancy in place to make her a reality. I have worried about who she will be, if she will be kind and loving enough, if she will be sane enough to safely and successfully raise two children, if she will be brave enough. I have worrying about the pitfalls and mistakes of the past, and conjuring up new ones I haven't yet experienced. I've been looking forward to meeting her, getting to know her, learning to love her. As my belly changed and grew over time, I looked forward to experiencing again the perfect love that bonds us to our children, even as I feared what this change would bring.

Last Tuesday I woke up feeling like the change was about to happen. Little signs were beginning to appear. We had all guessed that the baby would arrive mid-week. At breakfast, Dora said "memember mommy, the baby is coming today". The three of us spent the morning out at Bent Creek, walking in the woods with the dog, eating peaches. We ran errands, had lunch and a little nap, and headed out for more fun - just Dora and I. We went on a wild goose chase all over town looking for a place to swim - the pool was closed, Dora didn't want to go creek wading at UNCA, so we ended up at Splashville, me sitting in the shade on a towel while Dora ran through the fountain with another little girl she befriended. I sat there feeling contractions start, casually beginning to keep track of them to see if they were coming as regularly as they seemed.

My friends Aurelie and Mandy came over for dinner while Brian was out at a rehearsal. About halfway through making baked spaghetti squash with fresh tomato sauce for them, I had to turn over preparations to my friends while I rested between contractions. I wasn't really sure this was labor - it was all starting so different than it had with Dora - and I was dreading what was becoming more and more apparent: a night-time labor. I do not like being up all night (which probably makes you wonder why I have kids at all) and I hated the thought of laboring when I should be sleeping.

I ate a bit of dinner, already feeling nauseated, and started getting very weepy and anxious about little Dora. Should I send her home with Mandy since this could be labor? Should I keep her and then have to wake her up later? I could hardly bear to see her leave. I had known this moment would be really emotional and it was. She was excited about sleeping over with our friends, so it was an unceremonious goodbye for her. For me, the bittersweetness and overwhelming emotion of that moment will stay with me forever. I ached watching her leave.

I called the doula, called my husband, waited on the couch with my friend Aurelie, dozing between contractions and noting how much more intense everything felt this time around. By 10:30 or so, I really needed help getting through each contraction. Brian and my doula, Stacey, arrived around this time, and shortly thereafter I said that we needed to go to the hospital. The night air was cool and I had the window open on the way there, Brian driving painfully slow as the contractions came one after another, only a couple of minutes between them. I was 5 cm on arrival, and I knew we did not have long before our baby would arrive.

Once in our birthing room I had to be on the monitor for 20 minutes, which I thought would be the end of me. I didn't really want to ask for drugs, exactly, but every contraction was so painful and so incredibly intense that I felt sure I could not go on. I thought if someone could die from pain, this could probably do it. I felt like I was being broken in half by the pain, and I couldn't even begin to communicate with Brian or the doula about what I needed. With Dora, I had been able to go into this very internal, almost animal place to meditate through the pain. I tried over and over to get there with this birth but had a much harder time disconnecting than I had, maybe because things were moving very fast.

I got in the tub after the monitor, and the first contraction in the tub was easy. I relaxed, I guess, and the ones that followed were even more intense and painful. I had only been in the tub for a few contractions when I told the doctor I would need to push soon. She checked me and I was 8 cm. Everyone left and just Brian, Stacey and I were in the room. All I could do was hold their hands tightly for each contraction. At one point, Stacey stepped out for just a moment, and I turned around in the tub. At that moment, my water broke with great force, and I felt the baby's head come down quickly. I went through transition in about 60 seconds. I was screaming, throwing up, pleading for help, and my poor husband was pretty scared I think, trying to find someone to help us. Everyone returned in a rush and said I'd have to get out and get to the bed, which sounded like being asked to run a marathon at that moment. I got to the bed and immediately began pushing, without even thinking about it - the body and the animal had taken over.

The doctor suggested I slow down, take breaks between contractions, but I could not. I made loud noises and in my mind hoped that no one else in the neighboring rooms had yet to deliver, for my vocals would probably scare them completely. I remember being relaxed, quiet, focused when pushing Dora out, and that it was intense but not truly painful because I just couldn't feel anything anymore. This was the opposite, other than the focus. I felt everything, and the pain was so intense all I could do was try to end it quickly. I pushed our baby out in 8 minutes.

The baby was placed on my chest and everyone was laughing. Brian and I were crying, and he told me that we had a son, a baby boy, which I had known in my heart all along. He did not cry instantaneously and was taken away for a moment to be roughed up, and I could hear him crying. He was brought back to us soon, lots of hair and bright blue eyes, just like Dora. He looked a lot like her to me, but bigger, rounder. His head was perfectly round, like a c-section baby, because he had been whisked through the birth canal so quickly. We named our son Oscar William Turner, born at 2:10 AM on Wednesday, August 17th, 2011, weighing 7 pounds, 13 ounces, and measuring 20 inches long.

And now I am that mother of two, born last week. I am muddling through this transition, trying to be everything that both of my children need and so far feeling fairly unsuccessful at it. Dora is incredibly excited about having a brother - when she met him she said, "I wanted a boy and we got a boy!" But she is angry with me, "sad" about me, missing our time together. I miss it, too - miss focusing on my little sidekick, doing things with just her, snuggling her in bed.

I was prepared for the intensity of the newborn days because we've done it before, and in many ways Oscar is an easier baby than Dora was (so far at least) - sleeping a lot and eating well. What I was unprepared for was the rift that would form between my older child and I, the way that not only would our time together be shortened but also the quality of the time changed. It is getting easier now that family has gone home and there is no audience to observe Dora's bad behavior, her screaming at me and slamming doors, but it's still there.

When Dora was born one of the things that I wrote about was how it changed my marriage, how it felt a little like a bucking wedge being driven into a fireplace log, splitting us apart so we could work together more strongly, burn more brightly for our new family. Maybe this is what has to happen to Dora and I. Maybe our relationship will be made even stronger through this, by being pushed apart this way we'll be drawn even closer together in some new way, joining forces as the women in our family, taking care of the boys, doing girl things together, having our special "girl" time that only she and I can share.

I know that having a sibling will be a wonderful thing for her, and I know that my family now feels whole and complete, as if a final missing piece has been added to our little puzzle. I always thought I wanted another girl but now that Ozzy is here I see how perfect it is that he is a boy. I know that what I heard is true, that our capacity for love is endless, that I love these two children completely and fully. I do not know how my relationship with Dora will evolve but I do know that we will find a way to always be close, and that though I may be an imperfect mother of two, all of us will be bonded together by a perfect love, even as it changes and grows over time.

4 years ago

2011-08-04T21:02:00.001-04:00

Four years ago today my sweet girl came into our lives. It was an incredible day, and our lives have never been the same. Every day my love for her grows even more - it's amazing.

Since today I'm not only celebrating Dora's birthday but looking ahead in great anticipation of another birth, I spent last night tracking down what I wrote about Dora's birth a few days after the fact. Back between 2007 and 2009 I wrote many blog posts on MySpace about being a new mother - over 100 pages worth - and this is one of the first posts. I've always felt guilty about not completing a baby book for Dora, but when I look back at all those pages of writing I realize that her baby book is just in a different format. I'm so thankful to have that record - and perhaps someday she will be happy to have it, too.

Happy Birthday sweet girl - you are everything to me!

10 days ago written on August 14, 2007

The big day finally arrived! On August 4, Brian and I welcomed our daughter into the world. She arrived a few days past her due date, so we were starting to get a little anxious - mostly because our doctor wanted us to consider induction, even though we didn't want that. Luckily, and with some help from some eggplant parmesan, things got started on their own. My water broke at 3:00 a.m. on Saturday morning and by 6:30 I was having good contractions. I got out of bed - we had tried unsuccessfully to go back to sleep and just spent the time talking about how nauseated with anticipation we both were, and laughing about how sensitive both of our stomachs are - and started walking around the house and packing for the hospital.

I had planned to bake a chocolate cake for the baby while in early labor (just one of many awesome ideas in Birthing From Within) but I didn't. I was too busy timing contractions, trying to stay calm, and packing. At 8:30 we called our wonderful doula, Jo, who came over and helped me relax and focus. Between her, Brian, and yoga breathing, I stayed pretty calm, shed a few tears, and agreed that we should go to the hospital around 11. When we arrived I was already at 5 cm, and I knew then that I could get through the labor without drugs as we had planned.

The next few hours are kind of a blur of various positions, drinking lots of Gatorade, crying out a few times in pain, and mostly trying to maintain my inner focus and breathing. When I was able to stay focused and breathe carefully, the contractions were very manageable. Other times they were not so manageable, but then Jo and Brian would talk me down from the ledge and we'd get through it. I got pretty nauseated and threw up a lot, which wasn't very nice. At one point I had to be put on oxygen and have IV fluids, which was very uncomfortable, but otherwise the intervention was minimal.

The nurses and doctor were so supportive and wonderful, though. No one ever asked me if I wanted drugs, which was great. After just 5 hours at the hospital, I started pushing. At 4:51, our daughter was born! We were so thrilled when we learned we have a little girl - what an exciting moment. I will never forget it as long as I live. Looking at Brian and sharing that moment with him was so perfect - everything I had hoped for. We named her Isadora Marie. Isadora was Brian's idea - we liked the name and it is also a nod to family names Isobel and Dorothy. Marie as a middle name is a long tradition on my side of the family. The name fits her perfectly, because she isadorable:)

Pictures and more to come soon. For now we're just trying to catch our breath and learn about each other. We feel so blessed to have a healthy baby and to have had the experience we wanted. Never again will I let someone tell me that I can't do something, because I proved to myself that you really can do anything you set your mind to with the right preparation and support.. I had great support from my wonderful husband and the doula, and that made a huge difference.

Welcome Baby Isadora! We've been waiting for you:)

tell me

2011-08-02T21:47:00.000-04:00

Dora's new thing as she's going to sleep at night is to ask me to tell her things. "Tell me about what we're going to do this month." Or "tell me about when the baby is bigger and I am bigger." And "tell me about when you were a baby." Judging from the chatter coming from her room right now, I'm not sure how well this actually works for getting her to bed, but it's sweet anyway, and tonight it made me realize something I needed to figure out.

I have been moping around and writing and worrying a bit recently about not being able to focus just on Dora anymore, about becoming a mom again and having to let go of the luxury of one child. I am really excited about this baby, and having another child is something we want, but it's not without heartache by any means. Last night after work, Dora was being so good while I made dinner - coloring and talking to me. While dinner was in the oven, I sat by her coloring desk and watched her, crying over her sweetness and charm and feeling guilty and sad and scared all at once about how a new baby will disrupt this.

I've tried to explain to her that there will be a lot of work that I have to do with the baby at first, that mommy will be busy a lot and she'll need to spend time with daddy. I think on some level she's a little worried about this, because she has been extraordinarily difficult and needy lately, especially at night, but for the most part she just talks about how excited she is that the baby is coming.

So tonight when she asked about what will happen in the next month, I was blathering on about helping me with diapers and baths and feeding the baby. Then she asked me to talk about when she and the baby are bigger, like she knew or perceived that she needed to remind me that there is more in our future than just newborn chaos, that there will be a time when they really play together and become friends. I talked about blocks and the train set and, eventually, Uno (the latest craze in our house). And then I said, "you'll be a wonderful big sister. You and baby will be great friends, and you'll take care of each other." And it made me remember one of the reasons I really wanted to have another child in the first place - to give my children to each other, to give them each someone other than Brian or me to be tied to, to love, to trust, to navigate through life with, to take care of, hopefully for the rest of their lives. It's not to say that I don't think that only children can have this through friends and cousins and other ways, because I certainly do think they can. But I still wanted to give that sibling tie to my own kids, if I could, if the stars aligned to allow it.

Snuggling with Dora again tonight to try to get her to bed, my belly was pushed up against her back and baby was kicking against her. She's asked me before to lay like that so she can feel the baby move. Already they have a connection, one that is probably already more powerful then even the sadness I feel about letting go of this time. Being reminded of that connection doesn't necessarily make me feel any less bittersweet about this, but it does add a new dimension to this jumbled up mix of emotions I'm feeling.

I saw a postcard today about a book project that asked, "what does love look like"? Well - that's it, I guess. Taking care of each other, being connected to one another, learning from each other even when one of us is only 4, loving each other even when it's hot and past bedtime and mommy is so incredibly tired and pregnant. Love looks like sharing the rest of your ice cream cone when mommy drops hers on the floor. Love looks like playing cards one more time before bed, because secretly you love it just as much as your kid does, or maybe more. Love looks like answering silly questions while we fall asleep, making up stories from our own childhoods, the baby kicking up against us, saying goodnight in its own little way.

pregnant

2011-07-27T21:12:00.000-04:00

Last night I was sitting on our bed, relaxing in the air conditioning, wearing Brian's Snoopy t-shirt. I was looking down at my big basketball belly, Snoopy all stretched out over me, thinking about my mom. Thirty-five years ago, give or take a couple of months, she was just like me - pregnant with her second child, wondering if it was a boy or girl, and wondering if it would possibly arrive on the birthday of her first child. Those who know us well know that my older brother and I share the same birthday, six years apart. He was playing with his new Evil Knievil motorcycle in the hallway of a hotel with my aunt and uncle when I was born, delivered by the impatient Ohio University football team doctor who needed to get to the game. And now, here I am, very pregnant, and only a few days away from Dora's 4th birthday, wondering if we might break some kind of statistical odds and have our own set of kids who share a birthday several years apart.

Because my mom died before I was pregnant with Dora, I've never really had the chance to "share" pregnancy and motherhood with her. After she died, I remembered hoping that I might someday have a daughter, to have that mother-daughter connection again. When I was pregnant, I comforted my fears by reminding myself that my mom, someone who I eventually thought had all (or at least most) of the answers, was as clueless and scared as I at one point. During labor, I felt like I channeled my mom, making jokes with the nurses just like I think she would have even in the midst of pain. I've found myself connected to my mom through motherhood when she's arrived on the scene through me in some way, or when she's shown up in something Dora has done or said. It's often been unexpected, but also a gift. So now, here I am again, connected to her through pregnancy, through having two babies born at almost exactly the same time of year, through the wonder and worry that comes with pregnancy and birth.

They don't call it a "pregnant pause" for nothing. Pregnancy is naturally such a time of expectation, of wondering about the future, of holding onto your past, of trying to fathom in your little human mind what is really too large, spiritual, monumental to be fathomed in an entire lifetime. Every year around this time I reflect on Dora's birth day, how amazing it was, how we had no idea how much our lives would change because of it. And now this year, I'm reflecting on it even more, looking ahead mostly with great anticipation, and just a bit of anxiety, hoping that my memory of how spectacular birth was is accurate. I've been going around for 4 years telling everyone that birth is great, "you can do it!" - and now I think, "can I?"

There are other thoughts, too, of course. I'm so tired of being pregnant - it's been so much more uncomfortable this time around. I climb out of bed in the morning and I just hurt, all over. But I also know this might be the last time I'm pregnant. I look in the mirror and think, "I have to remember what this looks and feels like, forever, because when it's over I'll miss it". My husband tells me how beautiful I look with my big pregnant belly and I want to hold onto that moment forever, knowing I'll soon barely be able to find a reasonable set of clothes or time to shower. Experience tells me how quickly this baby will go from being a tiny infant to being a kid, how soon I will look back on this time with fondness and a sense of loss. I worry about how this is all going to affect Dora, how it's going to affect our marriage, our finances, my ability to juggle work and home (which already seems stretched to the limit). I worry about going through the post-partum period again, if I'll have the same challenges and anxieties, and if my plan of attack for that this time (different from last time) will work.

It's such a time of complexity and mixed emotions, and I think the second time around in many ways is even more complex. You know the joys you are looking forward to as well as the challenges you're about to experience. You know how completely you will love this new baby you're about to meet, and how simultaneously joyful and frightening that kind of love can be. You know how crazy-chaotic it's going to be, how you'll hardly be able to shower or make a meal. But I guess you also know that the chaos is (semi) temporary, and soon we'll have two kids instead of a baby and a kid - they'll soon be playing together and fighting and rolling their eyes at us. I'm hoping the knowledge of how temporary the stages are helps us relax and enjoy it a little more.

I always wanted more than one child, just like I always wanted to be married, to have a job, to have a house full of pets and all the craziness that all of that brings. Knowing you want something and trying to achieve it doesn't mean you get a free, smooth ride. But becoming a parent - just like living in a marriage or a hairy house of animals - means finding a joy you hadn't known possible, even if it also comes with sorrow you didn't know about. It is about as far from a smooth ride as you can find, in fact. But when I look at Dora - or my husband and the challenges our marriage has weathered, or my pets and how much I love them - I know that all of it - the bad clothes, and the sore muscles, and the days when just getting a shower seems impossible - all of it is worthwhile. If not having all of that meant not having her - or any of this - well, there's nothing in this world that could make me want that in exchange for less chaos or an easier life. The proof is in the pudding, you know - it's in the early morning snuggles and I love yous, in the kisses and hugs, in the welcomes home from work when she tells me she missed me so much. It's worth it, it really, really is. And the uncertainty - the wondering when this baby will come - the chance to reconnect with my mom in some transcendental, spiritual, walking the same path kind of way - that's all just a little bonus lesson in humanity, a chance to reflect on how amazing life is. Only a little while longer and we'll know some of these answers, and we'll have new questions as well. It will be unexpected, but it will also be a gift.

portrait

2011-04-21T22:29:00.000-04:00

This week Dora drew the sweetest, cutest, most heartwarming portrait of our family. I'm going to frame it and keep it forever. She's been drawing these little stick figure, head-is-the-entire-body kind of people for a little while and they are super-cute, but this is the first time I could really look at what she drew and see what she is trying to communicate. It's obviously two adults and a child, and we are all smiling and sort of looking at each other. It makes me smile and start to cry all at once, and gives me that feeling that my heart is about to explode.

She's been doing a lot of writing, too - practicing her letters, writing her name, and asking to write my name and Brian's name (with our help reminding her of what letters to draw). I'm so proud to see her doing that, too, but there is something about seeing a drawing of hers that communicates something so specific that is really moving to me. It's like this new window into her mind, into the way she sees her world, into what our little family means to her. It's like getting to know her from a whole new perspective.

We've had a trying week - no naps during the day leading to really fussy evenings, lots going on at work for me, and Brian out working late every night. Between all of that and being pregnant, I feel completely exhausted. Either I wasn't this tired with Dora or I conveniently forgot. I feel like I have almost no time to focus on this baby. Someone told me yesterday about a friend of hers who said she felt guilty because she had no time to focus her attention inward with her second baby, and I completely agree. It's almost like the baby knows, in a way, to keep making its presence known. If I'm getting upset or stressed in a meeting - even just the slightest bit - it starts to kick and move around right away, as if to say, "hey, don't forget about me, don't let that heart rate get too high because you're not the only one having to live with it."

I was crying with another pregnant friend the other day about that moment, whenever it comes, when we say goodbye to baby number 1 as we're leaving for the hospital, knowing it will be our last time with just them. This is not to say that I am not excited about having another baby, because I really, truly am. All of us are - even (especially) Dora. But even when we have our trying weeks, I love being Dora's mom. She's so amazing and I'm so lucky to have her in my life. It's really a joy - even feels sometimes like a luxury - to be able to focus completely and entirely on her, on giving her love and praise and holding her close. I will love having another baby and, yet, there is a part of me that is sad about letting go of the image of just the three of us with our round happy eyes and smiley faces.

After dinner tonight Dora said, "I'm not going to be a baby ever again". This was after lots of talk tonight about becoming a big sister, and how when she's 4 we'll be having a new baby. I know of course that she won't be a baby again - she doesn't look or act like a baby anymore, even though she holds on to a few baby habits that, when she's very quiet or asleep, make her look just like she did as a baby. But somehow hearing her say it got me a little choked up. I looked at her and said, "well, of course, but you know you'll always be my baby." She smiled her sweet little smile and said "yes."

Soon Dora will be drawing our family portrait and adding a smiling, happy baby to the mix. Soon none of us will be able to imagine our lives without baby 2, and I know that welcoming him or her into our lives will be a joyful and beautiful experience. There is a grief in that, too, a loss just like there was when Dora came into our lives. Maybe I'm more aware of that now because I've already experienced it, or maybe I'm just tired and emotional. I'm not sure. What I am sure of is that when I look at Dora, or at her little family portrait, I feel like my heart will explode with love for her, feel my soul filled up with the power of this love that's like nothing else in this world. To have the chance to feel that again for another baby, to have my heart expand even more than I thought possible, and to watch that love unfold between Dora and her sibling - that's a sweet, cute, heartwarming portrait of a family, too, one that I want to frame and keep forever.

Dark Chocolate Almond Banana Muffins

2011-04-11T21:12:00.000-04:00

What's that you say? A recipe? Shocking I know, as I hardly ever post them anymore. Recently I read Julia Child's "My Life in France" (which I adored), and although I know this is the exact opposite of what she intended, it made me a little more timid about improvising and making things up in the kitchen. That, and all of my recipe-reading, Top Chef-watching, foodie-blog obsessing made me feel a little less-than-qualified to be writing about food. Don't get me wrong - I love food (love it, especially now), and love making things from scratch, reading recipes, taking pictures of the food I make, etc. I'm definitely a foodie - but one who creates her own things? I don't know...

But, tonight, we had this bunch of brown bananas, and it seemed like time to make banana muffins. I've made this Moosewood Restaurant banana muffin recipe many times, but I was missing my usual chocolate chip/walnut combo. Then, I found half a bag of Hershey's Special Dark nuggets with almonds in my cupboard and it was time for a little improv. Just a little.

Dark Chocolate Almond Banana Muffins

adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts

2 cups unbleached white flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup vegetable oil

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

2 eggs

4 ripe bananas, mashed

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 cup (or so) coarsely chopped dark chocolate with almonds

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly oil a 12-cup muffin tin. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a large bowl, using a mixer or by hand, beat together the oil, sugar, eggs, and bananas. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, being careful not to overmix. Fold in the vanilla and chopped chocolate. Spoon into muffin tins and bake for about 20 minutes, until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

Enjoy while warm as a bedtime snack with a glass of milk. And don't forget to improvise.

wannabe

2011-04-06T20:47:00.000-04:00

The author of one of the blogs I read regularly has had a book proposal accepted (her second). I read this yesterday and was reminded that I want to do that. I have ideas bouncing around for this in my head, but I never really find the time to hone them, or if I do I find that perhaps the ideas aren't as well-developed as I thought. It's something I really want to do, though, partly because I think I have something to say and partly because I've fallen into the trap of romanticizing the idea of being a writer. There. I said it. At least I'm being honest.

So after I read this I came home thinking about the things I want to do, the kind of person I want to be - some things I'm already doing and some things I'm only dreaming about. In my mind it turned into something of a mini-photo essay, a words and pictures kind of mini-inventory of where I am, and where I want to go. Mini. As in, not including everything. Here goes.

I want to be the kind of person who has a dining room table with flowers on it, free of clutter and bills and paperwork waiting to be sorted. I'm almost never this person unless it's a special occasion, or people are coming over for dinner. But it's spring and the lilacs are about to bloom, so it happened on a regular old Tuesday, meatloaf night.

I want to be the kind of person who brings their kids into the kitchen and helps them fall in love with food and cooking at an early age. Sometimes I am.

I want to be the kind of person who makes meals from scratch. I almost always do that.

I want to be the kind of person who knows how to use a new piece of photography equipment on the first try. I'm not. My first roll of film shot through the Diana is almost all underexposed.

I want to be patient. I'm not always, but every once in a while I am.

I want to be the kind of person who writes a successful book proposal, who writes in her blog about the new book that's going to be coming out soon, with her name on the cover.

I'm not. Yet.

expect the unexpected

2011-03-30T21:23:00.000-04:00

Dora started a new school at the beginning of February. It was bittersweet for us - seeing her leave behind friends and teachers we had all grown to love, leaving the security of the only place that she had ever gone, where she was known for her bottle refusals and strong personality. We are happy about the new school - especially because she ended up going there with a friend - but it's been an adjustment.

Dora has been telling me stories of other kids being unkind in various kid ways. We've talked to the teachers, who assure us that Dora holds her own very well. We've talked to Dora about how to deal with kids when they aren't being nice. And, I realize that some of her stories may be embellished in her own three-year-old way. Still, I had not expected to be dealing with this so soon. I'm responding to it as best I can - trying to be reassuring without being unrealistic, and without making a huge deal out of it so she worries more. I'm not sure I'm handling it exactly right, but I guess I thought I'd have more time to prepare.

I think I was fairly notorious in my elementary school for being the girl whose mom wouldn't let her have Barbies. My mother didn't like the image of beauty that Barbie portrayed. I think it bothered her to think of little girls playing with big-breasted, super skinny, sexualized dolls. I was allowed to have Skipper - Barbie's undeveloped little sister who came with a horse. I haven't really thought about this in years, until the other night when Dora asked if we could play with Barbies. Again - I did not think I was going to be answering this question yet. I told her that, no, we are not going to play with Barbies, and that we're not going to get any Barbies either. I told her how, if Barbie were a real person, she would not be able to stand up because her body proportions are physically impossible. I'm sure this really meant a lot to my 3-year-old. We moved on to reading Personal Penguin.

In a way, I should not be surprised by any of this, for the theme of parenthood really is "expect the unexpected". I can't even count the number of times I've been surprised, sometimes pleasantly and sometimes not, by being a mother. I'm surprised by myself - how great I can be sometimes and how sometimes I can be really impatient, really unfair, really not the mom I want to be. I'm surprised by my daughter - how smart and beautiful and funny she is, and how she can frustrate me so much so easily. I'm surprised by my fears and my hopes and by all the thoughts this experience brings up for me. It makes you see parts of yourself, your partner, your world you never even knew existed.

Tonight during yoga our teacher told us it was our last class - a surprise and disappointment to all of us, including our teacher. I realized in class tonight for the first time the power of controlling your breathing as you do in yoga, of forcing yourself to slow down and get quiet. I felt the power of the poses, of breathing through them with purpose. I looked down at my hands in Downward Facing Dog, at my turquoise ring that belonged to my mother, and my hands looked just like hers. I don't remember ever seeing that so vividly as tonight.

As I snuggled Dora into bed tonight, stroking her hair and her cheek and her perfect little ear, I thought about how I had touched her face this way on our first night together. Awash with the power of labor and the overwhelming new love I was experiencing for the first time, I learned my first lessons of motherhood, of how it opens up the depths of your heart as never before. I look back on it now and think how much more I might have loved her then if I had known what she would become, if I had known how completely central and essential she would become in my life. There is really not much I would change about her birth, but I do wish I could go back there knowing what I know now, so I could really soak in those first moments of her life, really look at her then while knowing what she would become. This is not to say that I didn't love her perfectly then, because I did - it's just that my love for her has grown so much, I wish I could whisper in the ear of myself as a new mother, "you think you love her now? Just wait. It's going to get bigger and stronger every single day, even if you think that's impossible."

Perhaps there will be some sense of this our second time around. Perhaps we'll be able to soak in the weight and depth and breadth of our new baby in his or her first moments. Or maybe to do is physically impossible, like Barbie in real life. I'm excited to find out, and certain that whatever the experience is like, it will also be unexpected.

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

--Oscar Wilde

help us to show our love

2011-03-15T20:59:00.000-04:00

Yesterday at dinner, Dora and I said grace before we ate. It seemed like a day that needed that - a moment of silence or simple words to thank God for our blessings, and to pray for others. I confess that we don't normally say grace unless on a special occasion - something I picked up from my own childhood. But last night, it was just the two of us, and an edamame, cabbage, chicken, and noodle stir-fry on a regular old Monday night. Nothing special.

I was somewhat surprised to find myself reciting a prayer we said as children, one I hadn't heard or thought of in many years. We've taught Dora the short child's prayer, "God is great", etc., and on special occasions I recite the Runser family traditional prayer, based on Psalm 145, and referred to in our family simply as "the Eyes". But this prayer - I can't even think of the last time I said it:

Lord, thank you for this food,

and all the blessings of today,

help us to show our love,

by being kind and good, we pray.

After this, we prayed for the people of Japan. As with any disaster of epic proportions, I am overwhelmed and saddened for all of those who are suffering from this tragedy. As news reports come in of tens of thousands of lives lost, villages destroyed, displaced people going hungry, and possible nuclear crisis, I am reminded of how small and helpless each of us are. It feels like even those of us who want to help can hardly do so, as what does a small donation really mean in the face of such loss.

I look at my safe, warm, beautiful little girl, my loving husband, our sweet little life, our new baby on the way, and I know I should be saying grace at every meal. I should be thanking God at every turn for all of the grace afforded to me in so many ways, the abundance given to me that is embarassing in comparison to the needs of others. It simply doesn't make sense, how some can have so little while others so much, how some of us are in peril while others are us are warm, safe, fed, and dry.

I know only one person in all of Japan, my friend Hiroshi. I heard from him yesterday and I know that he, and his immediate family, are safe. He is traveling around the country, trying to document through his photographs what has happened, and hopefully keeping himself safe in the process. In a short message to me he explained that he and his family are safe, and not directly impacted by the earthquake. But, he added, "this is not a matter of where they live and where we live". He went on to say that everyone in his nation must unite to face this crisis.

This is true for all of us: it is not a matter of where they live and where we live. All of us need to unite with our brothers and sisters in Japan, as we have done for others in the past, to face this crisis, to help one another, to lend a hand, even if we feel small and helpless and like our tiny contribution won't make a difference.

Help us to show our love, by being kind and good, we pray.

For a list of ways you can help the people of Japan, click here.

parallel universe

2011-01-26T21:12:00.000-05:00

On Monday, I happened to be in the car for most of the day and caught a Fresh Air interview with physicist Brian Greene. Now, I took physics in college, from the illustrious Dr. Baker, and I actually enjoyed it quite a bit (in large part because Dr. Baker found ways to make his class funny, somehow). But I don't pretend to understand what Dr. Greene was discussing. Basically, he was discussing a theory that states that matter can only combine in a finite number of ways, and if the universe is infinite, then that combination will occur repeatedly throughout the universe. In other words, in an infinite universe, there may be many parallel universes, within which matter has organized in the same way (as in, we are all there in the parallel universe, living our lives like we do here, I guess).

As mind-boggling as this concept is, I have thought in the past about the possibility of different moments in time happening simultaneously - like envisioning that my mom is her young, healthy, witty self somewhere else in the universe. Maybe then I'm some sort of inter-generational tie between my mom and my daughter, who will never get to meet in this world, connecting them as I reach one hand into the past and hold onto Dora's hand stretching into the future.

And there's a sense of parallel universes when you think about all the joy and pain that simultaneously take place in each moment, day, year, life. In my own little life we have an amazing, flashing light of joy among us - another baby coming to join us later this summer. We have dreamed of this for so long and are overjoyed that our sweet Isadora will get to be a big sister. Yet in the midst of our happiness, we have friends as well as strangers in the greater human family facing unimaginable sorrow. Just today I learned of one friend involved in a serious car accident and another, whose courageous journey I have mentioned before, who needs our prayers now more than ever. Perhaps only quantum physics can explain how such beauty and such pain can at once be contained within this world, how the blessings and the sorrows get tossed out across the universe like so many shining stars.

As I put Dora to bed tonight, she said to me, "I wish I was in your belly". I asked her why and she said, "so we could snuggle". I promised her that she will always be my snugglebug, that I'll always snuggle her. We talked about her being a big sister, all the things she will teach her little sibling, how she'll help me with the baby. Dora refers to this baby as a girl, even though we don't know (and won't find out) the sex until the baby arrives. After a few minutes of quiet she said, "maybe she'll like James Brown." I squeezed her close and laughed, wondering how many three-year-olds are so into the Godfather of Soul that they hope their siblings-to-be will share in their musical tastes.

Maybe not so many three-year-olds would say it now, but maybe on some other plane in the universe there's a 1960s kid about to become a big brother or big sister, hoping their new sibling is going to get up offa that thing, too. Maybe in the parallel universe Mike made it home safely from work yesterday, and Rachel is so healthy she hasn't had so much as a stuffy nose in the past three years. My prayer is that, if matter really can only organize itself in so many ways, these realities in the parallel universe become reality here. I pray for wholeness for the entire human family, for health and healing for all those who need it, for wisdom for those who provide medical care, and for an unending capacity for love and forgiveness among all of us. With all of these things, the universe truly is infinite.

old movie stars

2011-01-19T20:41:00.000-05:00

I made it home safe and sound from my trip last week that involved airplanes. Lots of praying and holding tight to my cross, and reading a fabulous book to take my mind off my fears. Everything was fine, and I am happy to be back home again.

Dora spent the week in Ohio with my dad and stepmother. I never like the way this house feels without her in it, but we made the best of our time without her. We finished up projects around the house, got her room totally reorganized (finally), and went to a movie. After much debate we saw True Grit. Being the Coen Brothers/Jeff Bridges fans that we are, we both wanted to see it. But, I saw the John Wayne version as a kid, so I was apprehensive about that final scene with the horse. I remember sitting on the faded tan cordoroy couch in my parents' living room, shocked and crying about what happened. My apprehension about the final scene was over me like a cloud in the theater, and at the end when it came I was just as upset as I had been all those years ago. To me that has to be one of the saddest scenes involving an animal in a movie ever made. It just breaks me heart.

I've always been an animal lover, and I can hardly bear to see one hurt in a movie, even knowing all the rules and regulations in place to protect them during filming. I read that the rules about the equine actors used in True Grit were more explicit and rigid than the rules governing the 13-year-old human actress. In the river crossing scene, the water had to be a certain temperature for the horses, whereas there was no mention of a required temperature for the humans. Nonetheless, I am always tender-hearted when it comes to animals in film.

In the ladies room after the movie, I was not the only one wiping my eyes. For many of us, animals are a connection, a place of common understanding to which nearly all humans can relate. Sure, there are a few non-animal people out there, but most of us understand the way a cat or dog curls its way into your heart and home, staking out a permanent place of honor at the foot of your bed, on the back of the couch, or on your hearth.

At Christmas, we adopted a cat from home, a beautiful, long-haired, black and white Maine Coon named Hedy. She had been given to me by my friend Maria years ago, but soon after she walked into my life she adopted my mother as her favorite human. She was definitely my mother's cat. She was a wonderful companion to her, sleeping on her bed, following her into the bathroom, kneading and purring incessantly. When my mom died, Hedy was sleeping on the bed next to her, curled up beside her like she always was, waiting for my mom's hand to stroke her black fur.

Now that this old movie star is living with us, she sleeps on our bed, purring incessantly, kneading and drooling, happy to be with us. She's as beautiful as she ever was, happily waiting for the next opportunity for someone to pet her. Beyond just enjoying her company and her perfectly symmetrical markings and her stunningly long whiskers, my home and my heart are warmed by her presence because of the connection to my mother that she represents. There is something so comforting about running my hands over Hedy's beautiful black fur, knowing my mother did the same thing not so long ago. I hope Hedy feels that connection, too, a little spark of familiarity, a little bit of extra warmth from a hand that feels just a little bit like one she used to know and love.

all you need is love

2011-01-05T20:44:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year!

I know it's been a long time, but I'm still here. I still love this project, and many days thoughts of what I'd like to write go through my head. I can't always make the time to write here, but I'm going to keep it up when I can. Thank you for coming back to read again and again. That means so much to me.

2010 was quite the year of ups and downs. We shared many joys with our friends and family - new babies (or news of babies to come in 2011), marriages, successes, adventures. We shared sadness, too - losses of loved ones, illness. Together Brian and I grew a lot this year, facing our own challenges and finding that our commitment and love saw us through yet again. We watched Dora grow into an entertaining, inquisitive, and loving little girl. We each branched out into new creative arenas - photography, craft projects, and music, music, music. We said goodbye to one of the world's most lovely and adorable cats, our dear sweet Mackeson.

This past year I was amazed again at the resiliency of love. In late November, a good friend of mine lost her son in Afghanistan. Her loss is unthinkable, yet she maintained so much grace and positivity I was overwhelmed. Her son's beautiful light in the world - and their love for each other - shines on. This year I saw love see friends, family, and self through pain and loss and seemingly insurmountable difficulty. Though in the darkness it can sometimes seem impossible, John Lennon was right. All you need is love.

I'm looking forward to 2011, trusting that love will again see us through the good and the bad. In less than a week I'm flying for work, which is a big accomplishment for me - facing a fear I've been unable to overcome for a long time. At Christmas I received three old Kodak Instamatic cameras that belonged to my mom, and I'm really looking forward to using them this year, holding in my hands the same tools she used to record so many of our family memories when my brother and I were young. This year I want to read, write, take pictures, make things, take care of my house, stay connected to my wonderful friends, and snuggle up with my beautiful family and pets. Yes, all you need is love.

100% From Scratch Pumpkin Pie

2010-11-26T22:19:00.001-05:00

I cooked all day yesterday, just for the three of us. I made nearly everything - except for the butter, the drinks, the bread for the stuffing, and the fried onions for the green beans - from scratch. Even the mushroom sauce for the green bean casserole was from scratch. It was warm and sunny. We cooked with the windows open, peeled potatoes in our shorts.

It was a non-stop kitchen extravaganza, but we did find time for playing games - Candyland and Memory - while the chicken roasted. I couldn't see roasting a turkey for two adults and a toddler, so we had chicken with herbs.

As we sat down to dinner, the song we danced to at our wedding - I've Got You Under My Skin - came on. It seemed like a sign - a sign of all that we have to be thankful for, a sign of commitment and what it really means to be in a committed relationship, a reminder that everything about us - even our beautiful girl - starts from one tiny, simple, sacred space together.

It was a beautiful day, and the only thing that would have made it more beautiful would have been if our table could have somehow magically been surrounded by all our friends and family, all the people we love so much, living or not. That would have made the meal absolutely perfect.

Most of what I made came out well, but not everything. The mashed potatoes weren't quite right, and the bread cubes I cut up for the stuffing were too large. The best part, without a doubt, was the 100 percent from scratch pumpkin pie. I've never before made a pumpkin pie that started out as an actual pumpkin, and now that I have, I'm not sure I'll ever make another one that starts out as a can. This pie was so absolutely perfect - great texture, delicious pumpkin-y taste - that the minimal (and I mean minimal) extra effort needed to roast the pumpkin instead of opening the can was completely worthwhile. The best part - even better than the fact that I still have about half of this pie left - is the fact that I have another pie pumpkin from Flying Cloud Farm in my collection of winter squashes, patiently waiting for its destiny in my pie plate.

100% From Scratch Pumpkin Pie

For the crust:

I use this recipe from Martha Stewart for my pie crusts. For this particular pie, you can halve the recipe.

For the filling:

1 whole, honest-to-goodness pie pumpkin

2 large eggs

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1 cup half and half

Preheat the oven to 425. Line a rimmed baking sheet with tin foil or parchment and oil very lightly with vegetable oil. Without scooping out the seeds, roast the pumpkin, cut side down, until tender and browned - about one hour. Allow to cool completely. Discard seeds and scoop flesh (even browned spots) into a medium bowl. Puree using an immersion blender. When smooth, press through a fine mesh sieve into a large bowl, discarding any solids left in the sieve.

To the pumpkin add the eggs, sugar, salt, vanilla, and spices. Whisk until combined, then whisk in the half and half.

Reduce oven temperature to 375. Place the pie crust in a 9-inch pie dish. Line the pie crust with tin foil, and fill with pie weights or dried beans. Bake until firm, about 20 minutes. Allow to cool for about 15 minutes.

Reduce oven temperature to 350. Pour prepared filling into baked crust. Bake until set, about 1 hour. Allow to cool on a wire rack for one hour before slicing. Serve with homemade whipped cream, and kiss those cans goodbye.

arrow

2010-11-17T22:08:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago someone told me, wisely, that I should write down all the cute and funny things that Dora says and does. If I were actually finding time to do this, I'd have plenty of material. Like the time recently when she said to me while using the potty "girls stand up, and boys sit down". I asked how she knows that and she said, "because it's true". We went camping recently and she enthusiastically introduced herself to all sorts of people, kids and adults alike. She walked up to a woman dining at an outdoor restaurant and reached for her sweet potato fries, "hey, can I have one of these?" A jogger ran by us at a waterfront park and she said, "I hope that man doesn't fall in the water!" Today she asked Brian why his chest is so hairy, and tonight, when I suggested she share a cookie with her friend, she said, "yeah, I can do that, because I'm really very nice".

There seems to be no shortage of funny, charming, or observant things running through her mind at any moment. She's pretending all the time, imitating us, saying things we say. But she's coming up with her own things, too, showing us the little individual she's becoming. I feel now as I did when she was a tiny baby on her first day, wrapped up like a burrito in my arms. I looked at her, amazed at how different and interesting she was, and overwhelmed by how much I instantly liked her.

Last month she spent her first overnight visit away from us, staying a whole week in Ohio with my dad and stepmother. I enjoyed the time apart at first, the time to focus uninterrupted, the easy mornings, the spontaneous dinners out, seeing a movie together. But I missed her so much, too, our house feeling instantly cold and empty without her. A sock lay strewn across her bed, waiting. I woke up in the middle of the night terrified, panicked at the thought of the miles that lay between us. My home did not feel right without her in it, and I wanted her back as soon as possible.

We met in West Virginia to exchange child and dog. We had lunch at a crowded, buffet-style restaurant. I took Dora into the dingy bathroom, and instantly thought of my mother, of all the dirty West Virginia bathrooms we braved in our years together, driving to vacation in the Outer Banks. I missed her so much at that moment, longing for her to be there, to see me now, to know me as a mother, to know Dora.

Back at the table, the season's first snow falling outside, Dora looked at me and said, "where's your mom?" We've talked about my mom a lot before, but she's never asked me so directly about her. "Well, that's an interesting question," I said. "Remember how Mackeson got sick, and then he died and went to heaven? Well, that's what happened to my mommy. She's in heaven now." Dora pondered this a moment and said, "that's her home?" "It is now," I replied.

I drove us home through the last signs of fall and the first snowflakes of winter. We passed flaming red poison sumac pointing to the sky, bright orange maples, the ground around them blanketed in gold. Above us was a bright, amazing sky - gray, foreboding clouds, layered with thin white filament and backlit with a powerful glistening sun. I wondered how it was possible a 3-year-old could not only charm me with her witty and often funny observations of the world, but also somehow be so insightful and knowing as to ask questions that shoot right into my heart like an arrow.

I was asked recently about how I've felt my mom in my life since she died. Some people report dreams, or feeling a presence. For me it has been much more fleeting, much more like glimpsing the tail of a comet. Her smile appearing on Dora's face for an instant, or my hand looking just like hers in the evening, turning pages as I read to Dora, my mom's silver and turquoise ring glistening on my finger. On the first anniversary of her death, Brian and I drove over to Lake Lure, me anxious for something to do other than sit around the house thinking about what I had been doing one year before. It was a surprisingly warm day. We walked Murphy along the lake, empty vacation homes all around. The cherry trees along the water's edge were covered in tiny, pink blossoms just beginning to open, and it was only January 7th.

When my mom died, I hoped that I would someday have a daughter, that I would someday have that mother-daughter love in my life again. Now that I've been blessed with my amazing little girl, I want nothing more than for her to know all she can about my mother, to know who she was and what she meant to me. When she asks me her witty questions, or when she eats and writes and draws with her left hand, or when that mischievous smile crosses her face for just an instant, I wonder if she already does.

listen

2010-10-15T21:21:00.000-04:00

I've been doing a lot of reflection over the past few weeks, noticing little things that have happened, a few choice words said by others, little glimpses of answers and understanding I've been searching for. Last week, I went home for lunch, for a quick break in the middle of a stressful and long day, to do some dinner prep, and to eat quite possibly the most delicious sandwich ever made. I had on-hand all the ingredients to make a really killer pimiento cheese sandwich - City Bakery Seven Grain bread, a local tomato, leftover hormone free bacon, and Earthfare's chipotle pimiento cheese. A perfect culinary goodbye to summer. Yum.

That day I heard Joan Osborne's "What if God Was One of Us" on the radio. In it she asks, "what would you say if you had just one question?" I pondered this for a second and knew my answer right away. "what am I supposed to be doing with my life?" I wouldn't ask who shot JFK, or what happened to Atlantis, or if there really is a Bermuda Triangle, or even what Heaven is like. I'd ask for guidance, for direction, for an answer to the one question I find myself pondering the most: who am I, and what am I doing here?

Later that day I saw a bumpersticker - "Love my job, love my boss. I'm self-employed". I found myself wondering if God speaks to us through bumper stickers. It just seemed to be placed there for me to see it, to get stuck in my brain to return to when I start questioning myself again. I jotted it down on a piece of paper.

A few people, some who know me well and others who I am only just getting to know, have told me lately that I'm doing ok - reassured me that I'm doing a good job with my daughter, boosted my confidence about my job, complimented or even promoted my photography, or just encouraged me that the challenges I'm facing now won't necessarily last forever. It's not just these words that give me comfort, but the fact that busy people who are under no obligation to do so have found a way to lift me up, let their warm light shine on me, give a part of themselves to me in a way that really means something, really betters me in some way. A woman I hardly know the other day asked me about my work, and after explaining my day job to her I added that I do some creative things on the side - writing, photography, crafts. "You're an artist", she said, "I can tell."

I drove home through a light fall drizzle pondering this. When I think of artists, I think of real, trained, openly talented people - my mother, her beloved teacher Don Roberts, our spectacularly cool and also very loving neighbors Steve and Katherine Aimone. I think of superstar artists, and people whose work graces the walls of galleries, hotshot photographers whose websites make me swoon. Me - I'm just dabbling in things I love, stumbling my way through technological advancements, trying to understand my sewing machine, and relying on my innate understanding of the rule of thirds.

In the past, I have comforted myself a bit about losing my mother when I was just 28 by recognizing that, while our relationship was cut short, it was also very strong, very close, very lovely. Like everyone else we fought and had our differences, but other than a few minor details there is little I would change about my relationship with my mother if given the opportunity, other than of course making it longer. I'm realizing now that this is the way life is - everyone gets some things right, and other things that aren't so right. Some people get a long time to work on their relationships with their parents, but are never as close as they might want to be. Some people know exactly what they want to do in their working life, know their calling as if God's plan for them was delivered to their doorstep wrapped tidily in a bow. Some people don't get to live in a town they love, but they know they're doing what they're supposed to. It seems that God just doesn't let us have all the answers at once - none of us do, even those that seem to.

A pastor once told me that God speaks to us when we get quiet and really listen to ourselves, to our hearts, to our gut instincts about what we should do. I try to remember this - to give myself time to get quiet and hear that voice. I feel now that God also finds ways to speak to us through others - through those who know us well and those we have only just met who find a way to say just what you need to hear, just when you need to hear it, even though they have no idea that's what you need just then. If I have learned anything from my recent challenges it is perhaps that staying alert for and open to those voices of encouragement is as powerful, if not moreso, as listening to my own voice, my own questions.

This morning, Dora cimbed into my bed in the darkness to snuggle with me. She pulled me close and said, "mommy, you're my best friend". God knows what we need to hear. Sometimes we don't even need to ask. We just need to listen.

clarity

2010-09-18T21:47:00.000-04:00

I've been neglecting my blog, partly because I've been busy with some other new projects, like working on my photography, and partly just because my life has been really complicated lately. I have a lot of things to write about, and then again some things I haven't wanted or been able to put into words in a way that I can share here. I've had such a lack of clarity lately that it's been difficult to know where to begin.

Yesterday when I went to pick Dora up from school, I was really looking forward to seeing her. It's been a long week, full of evening meetings and other activities making our time together limited. I was excited to start our weekend together. When I arrived, though, the teacher told me she had just bitten one of her friends, for "being in her way". I spoke to Dora disapprovingly, reminding her of the consequence the last time she bit one of her friends - no TV all evening.

We had to make a quick stop at the grocery store for milk and orange juice. I toyed with getting some ice cream and in the split second I stood still to look at the choices, Dora decided to take off. She's run from me in the store before, but this time she completely disappeared. The store was packed with people starting their weekends. I turned round and round in the produce section, paced back and forth at the ends of the aisles, and she was nowhere to be seen. I thought, is it time to start screaming her name? Then I saw the flash of her plaid shorts by the milk and cheese, following a girl of about 7 who was trying to help her. I grabbed her arm hard, admonishing her never to do that again. She started crying loudly, saying she didn't want a time out. It felt like that scene in a movie when the film slows down a little, every head slowly turning to look at us while I dragged Dora to the checkout line. One man glared at me as if to say, "if you had held onto her properly you could've avoided this".

I sat in my car feeling like the world's worst parent, embarrassed by my anger and frustrated with my inability to coax good behavior out of my daughter at times when I need it most - in public, or when she could be in danger. I started to cry, thinking of my friends and their lives that seem less complicated, feeling pangs of jealousy of those who seem to (or do) have what I want. I thought, "how can I want two children when I can barely handle one?"

The truth is, we do want another child, but for some reason, it hasn't happened for us yet. While second babies seem to appear every day amongst my circle of friends, we remain three. I'm sure there are many reasons, but sitting in my car in the afternoon sun, Dora whining for her blanket, I thought perhaps God hasn't given me a second baby because I'm not yet doing a good enough job with the first one.

My logical mind knows this is not the case, that there is not some cosmic scorekeeper above, deciding who's had enough tragedy or hardship, evenly distributing the natural disasters by population and demographics, checking off the boxes next to discomfort and disappointment in each person's life. I know you don't "get" a second baby by being "good enough" to your first one. But the voice of one's logical mind is not always the loudest.

This afternoon, Brian had a gig and Dora and I had a girl's afternoon. We went to the trail around Beaver Lake in Asheville, me snapping pictures and Dora riding her little Skuut bike. We had to stop and pet every dog. I pointed out every turtle. Dora said hi to every person we passed, and she chatted with others. A group of teenage girls were lounging in the grass, and she said to me, "I want to go talk to those ladies." We talked to an older couple walking a dog, and another couple who wanted to know all about Dora's bike. Dora ran up to another woman walking by herself. We spoke for a few minutes and as we were about to part ways, Dora grabbed the woman's leg to hug her. The woman said, "where does she get all that love?"

We were near the end of our walk then, so I carried a tired Dora, her bike, her helmet, and my camera back to the car. I thought about what the woman said, thought about curious, open, outgoing Dora, who walks up to old African American ladies at the drugstore and grabs their hands, who says hi to every passing person, even the grumpy ones, who asks to pet every dog. I may not be doing everything right with Dora, my life may be so hectic right now that I can't give her the attention she deserves. But one thing is for sure - she knows she is loved, and she knows that showing that love to other people is part of her job in this world. That loving spirit that shines from within Dora, and the knowledge that I played at least some part in creating it, is more important than nearly anything else I can think of. Perhaps what I need to do is realize that, for now at least, knowing that is clarity enough.

wind in the trees

2010-09-02T22:16:00.000-04:00

Last week Dora and I went camping with friends Mandy, David, and Isaac at the beautiful and wild Hunting Island State Park in South Carolina. It still amazes me that I now live just a short and easy half days' drive from the ocean, one of my favorite places on earth. More amazing still is to go from our rainforest-like mountainous habitat to this tropical, coastal, exotic place in a mere 5 hours. In the morning I was packing our car and running last minute errands and in the late afternoon we were climbing around on the trunks of lumbering, dead Live Oak Trees, waves splashing against decaying stumps and fallen Palm fronds, like characters in Robinson Crusoe, or Lost, or Lord of the Flies.

Dora had an absolute blast exploring this natural playground with her favorite little boy, Isaac, and canine friend Joey. I just tried to take some deep breaths and let the peacefulness instilled by the ocean sink deeply into me. I hope to carry back to Asheville with me some shred of that solitude, so difficult to hold onto amongst the stress and deadlines and constant interruptions of normal life. I took advantage of the spotty cell phone service and (essentially) refrained from keeping up with emails and checking the dreaded FB account.

The first night, I slept restlessly. There is something so vulnerable about sleeping with nothing but a thin mesh zippered screen between you and the rest of the world. I haven't done that much camping, although I do enjoy it, but I always feel that slight sense of edginess, wonder how quickly I'd wake up if someone else started to slowly unzip my tent. Dora was restless at first, too, but the ocean breeze and promise of a day full of exploring and beach time lulled her to sleep. I lay awake looking up at the moon through the trees, worrying about having left home, worrying about our future, worrying about worrying.

The next morning dawned incredibly windy. We were in campsite 2, right behind the dunes, the ocean only steps away at high tide. Our site, vulnerable as it was to the elements, was surrounded by tall pine trees. I looked up in the gusting wind wondering how they continued to stand against such a force. Down on the ground, clothes fell off the line, chairs toppled over, our tents wobbled and rain flies snapped. Up above, though, the trees barely moved, swaying gently, a united force expertly designed to withstand natures' coastal chaos. I pointed the trees out to my friend, noting that they seemed to be helping each other. The gusts of wind seemed to be instantly dissipated by the trees' foliage, each absorbing a bit of the impact so that no one tree was required to bear the brunt alone.

That night, though the gusty wind worried me, I slept better. I hoped that a limb wouldn't break lose and crush our tent, comforted myself with the remembrance of how the trees seemed to be helping each other. I thought about those trees like the people in my life, standing all around me in the wind and all of us helping each other. As I often do, I wished that my mom was here still, to stand amongst those trees by my side. I feel her absence every day, but most of all at times of stress and uncertainty, and I always miss her when I'm near the ocean, a place she so dearly loved. I tried to really think about what it means to have all those supports nearby - whether in body or in spirit - all steeled around me in solidarity, and I fell asleep.

The next day, the wind had died down. We drove home through hot South Carolina, back to work and stress and all of the messes our lives include that are waiting for attention. Later in the week, Dora and I drove to the park for a quick bout of running through a field blowing bubbles, me somehow remembering to squeeze in a few moments of unplanned and silly fun in our week. The windows were down, music playing, both of us with whisps of hair flying around our faces. I remembered the trees, and my sadness that my mom is not among them, and realized there is a new little tree there now - growing tall beside me, both of us steeled against the wind together, helping each other every day in ways we may not even fully understand yet. I smiled thinking of my little tree, her glowing presence in my life easing the pain of the other absence just a bit.

That night, we booked campsite 2 for October. I think of that wind, and how much stronger it might be in October, and I worry a bit about us in our little tent, steps away from the waves. The trees will be there, though, standing all around us, helping each other, making sure that we can rest easy - all three of us.

jade

2010-08-24T08:51:00.000-04:00

Last week, I had the priviledge of photographing a beautiful wedding ceremony in which our friends Trevor and Joanna pronounced their commitment to one another surrounded by family and friends in the afternoon sunlight on a beach in Surf City, NC. It was a sweet, warm weekend, filled with love and celebration and kind words. Both of them are wonderful people, grounded and kind and wise beyond their years, so it should have come as no surprise that their families and friends were in turn wonderful people. It was a beautiful thing to be a part of.

The weekend started with a welcome dinner on Saturday night, featuring a low-country boil made by family members and filled with music made by Orange Krush, for whom the bride is the lead singer, my husband the keyboardist, my friends the other musicians and their families. At Sunday's wedding ceremony, guests pitched in making flower arrangements, desserts, decorating the beach house where the reception was held. Even the groom's brother performed the ceremony, waves crashing behind his outstretched hands, wedding bands carried in a seashell filled with sand. It felt like every person there played a part in making the day happen. It was definitely a group project.

During the ceremony, as in many weddings, all of us present were asked to support the couple, to be there for them, to nurture their marriage for the years to come. This is, after all, the responsibility of any wedding guest - not just to enjoy the free wine and cake, but to agree to be a strand in a web of support around this new love. To me, this is a large part of why the public wedding ceremony is important, for the fledgling marriage's witnesses become also its greatest champions.

The weekend turned out to also be the culmination of one of the most challenging moments of my own marriage. In the space of a week, my understanding of all that I know and believe about my life was completely changed. I have always known that marriage is difficult, and now I know that more than I ever have. As the words of Corinthians were read during Joanna and Trevor's ceremony, I clicked the shutter on my camera with tears running down my face.

The wedding guests received jade plants as a thank you gift from the couple, given for their symbol of friendship. On our long 7-hour drive home, though I placed it in a safe spot, the plant drooped and wilted. By the time we returned home, I wasn't sure it was going to survive. It's instructions said not to water it more than twice a month, and so I was unsure of what to do.

The thing about the promises made at a marriage celebration that I did not realize until now is that they aren't frozen in time. The people who promise to protect and nurture and support your marriage aren't just the ones who are there at your wedding, but the people with whom you form relationships throughout your life. While it is certainly true that we are still supported and loved by the people who were with us on June 19, 2004, whether in body or only in spirit, our marriage is also upheld by our new friends and family, by those people who have joined us on this journey since that day and in our 5 years in Asheville. When you form a new friendship, you join that circle that was present on the wedding day of your new friend, a silent participant in one of the most important rituals on Earth.

I put the jade plant in my kitchen, on the counter by the window where it can receive light and fresh air. After a few days there, it has recovered, standing tall, it's round green edges soaking up the indirect light of our home. I did what I thought would help it most, and then I waited for nature and the plant to do its own healing. This is what our friends and family do, too - they help and support, they do their best, and they lift us up to the sunlight, hoping that nature and time and space will heal. What more can I possibly pray or hope for my own marriage than this - for the time and space and light to be recreated, to be healed, to be renewed, all the while surrounded by a circle of family and friends old and new, the waves crashing behind us.

all cats go to heaven

2010-08-06T21:39:00.000-04:00

Today we said goodbye to our beloved cat Mackeson.

He had been sick for about a month, losing weight and not eating. We were never quite sure what it was, but it felt like it was time to let him go. Last night, I knew the time was drawing near, so we had one last sweet snuggle together, him purring on my pillow and me petting him as we both fell asleep. In the middle of the night, I woke up to find him snuggled at the end of the bed with our other cat, Simone, spooning and purring like they always did. I buried him in the mid-morning sun in the front garden, a place of honor next to the hydrangea, the perfect spot for a new lavender bush, with silver leaves just like his fur.

I found Mackeson 13 years ago when I lived in a rundown farmhouse on Vore Ridge Road in Athens County, Ohio. I had an eccentric roommate who named him, after the triple stout beer. At about the same time, a woman brought a little brown female tabby cat into the vet clinic where I was working. She had found her in a storm drain by the highway. I had been thinking about getting a cat of my own, and suddenly I had two, who promptly fell in love and were closer and more loving to each other than any two pets I've ever known.

Mackeson came to us as a young, unneutered male - killing mice, disappearing for days at a time, yowling in the middle of the night, "teaching" the dog tricks (according to my roommate). On one particularly hard day, I had called home to ask my roommate a question and she told me, "some guy stopped by here looking for you today". I was intrigued. "He had gray hair, and green eyes, and whiskers..."

I move around a lot in the years since - home, to another apartment in Athens, to Michigan, and eventually to North Carolina. Simone and Mack (and my dog, Murphy) followed me on all of those moves, the cats snuggling together in the window hammock in whatever place it was installed. Eventually, we added another cat to the mix, a black and white kitten named Baldwin. She took on both Simone and Mackeson as surrogate parents, nursing on them, being groomed by them. I would come home to find all three of them squeezed into the hammock, licking and purring and blissed out on each other. That was the only opportunity Simone and Mackeson had to try kitten-rearing, and I think they loved it a lot.

Mackeson saw me through a long period of my own growth - through college, boyfriends, roommates, trying to pick a career. He settled into any new situation just fine, making his place in whatever life I was living at the time, sleeping on my pillow every night, me falling asleep holding onto one of his paws.

Mackeson made a place for himself in my marriage, too, winning Brian over right away. When we moved to Asheville, we only had each other and our pets, and we spent countless hours at home playing with the cats - giving them catnip, playing fetch with toy mice. We would use "the Mackeson test" to decide where to eat dinner when we were feeling indecisive, writing down restaurant choices on pieces of paper and seeing which one Mackeson smelled first. We knew our cats so well, we could identify them by the smell of their fur, the sound of their meow, the rhythm of their purring.

To love an animal is to make a connection that transcends all we understand about communication or love or the boundaries of humanity. It is a perfect love, even when we ourselves are far from perfect, one that brings a richness and depth to our lives in ways that nothing else does. Though having a child certainly curtailed the amount of time spent focusing solely on our pets, there is always a place for them - with their heads on our pillows and their love snuggled into our hearts. Losing a pet is as painful as losing a human family member, but I wouldn't trade the pain I feel now for the wonderful life I shared with Mackeson. I am so happy, so blessed that I got to experience that love with him, that I got to give him a safe and happy life he probably would not have had otherwise.

My friend Mandy lent me a book today that included a quote from Will Rogers, who said "if there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went". It won't be heaven for me if it doesn't include my pets in some form or fashion. I believe Mackeson is there now, back in his prime, fat and beautiful, laying in the sunshine, enjoying the garden of St. Francis of Assisi, purring and loved and full of life, waiting for the day he gets to sleep on my pillow again.

We love you and miss you already Mackeson, and we always will.

three

2010-08-04T22:07:00.000-04:00

This little girl turned three years old today.

I suppose that it never gets easier to believe that your child has gotten as big as they have. I look at Dora and she is so tall, so grown up, so full of intelligence and vocabulary and awareness, it's just amazing to me.

I thought a lot about Dora's birth today, of course. I tried, at various times throughout the day, to remember exactly what we were doing at that moment three years ago today. Calling a friend, taking one last look at my belly cast, spending a quiet moment alone in the nursery. Walking the dogs, eating watermelon, trying to sit outside and being chased back in by mosquitoes. The agonizingly long drive to the hospital, when for once my husband drove too slow. The jokes I somehow made even in pain, my incredible doula, my doctor who was kind but strong when I needed her to be. The mountains outside my window, the way everything stood still for a moment before the baby arrived. Finding out we had a girl - meeting her, hearing her cries, a family now instead of a couple.

The memories are there still - they will always be there - but I noted with sadness today that they have faded a bit. There are a few more details that have escaped me, exact times when events occurred are slowly fading, it takes more concentration to call up the exact details. I realize that it will get harder and harder to return to that day in my memory, but I want to hold on to it, want to believe that I will always be able to recall exactly how incredible that day was.

We had a lovely little evening together, with presents and cupcakes and a new book to read. We all sang happy birthday. We put the magnetic letters all over the fridge, the mark of a toddler in residence. After books and bath and phone calls to grandparents I climbed into bed next to Dora for our goodnight snuggle. I thought back to this night three years ago, to laying in bed next to my new little baby, all wrapped up like a burrito with only her face visible. That night as I laid there beside her, a new mother spinning in a whirlwind of hormones and emotion and exhaustion, I felt my heart expand to welcome this new love, felt my life break open like the Earth's surface in a tremor, light and energy and heat pouring in. I remember being surprised that I really liked her a lot, that she really seemed like a special, perfect, interesting baby.

Tonight, as Dora fell asleep, her face relaxing and looking once again more like an infant than a child, I realized that her birth - the growth and change and transformation that took place that day - continues on. My heart is still expanding for her, my life still opening up for her, my world continually transformed by the power of this love. The memories may fade and the little details may become hard to remember, but I am still shaped by becoming a mother, by growing with Dora into the mother I am now. I have written before that there are many days when I think, "I cannot possibly love her any more than I already do", and the next day comes, and I do love her even more, somehow. The same can be said, apparently, for how we grow and learn as we become parents. Every day I think I cannot possibly be transformed any more than I already have been, and then, somehow, I am.

Happy birthday sweet girl. You are special and perfect and interesting, and I love you more than I will ever be able to tell you.

lone sunflower

2010-07-28T22:30:00.000-04:00

I awoke this morning to an orange-pink sunrise filtering in through our window, casting across our bed and the cat sleeping at my feet like a haze. I was the first one up. Instead of my usual mundane morning tasks or email checks, I wandered outside with my camera, eager to capture the fleeting morning light burning away the fog.

I would like to be the kind of person who has a yard full of sunflowers. This year, I planted two packs of sunflower seeds - along the top of our hillside garden in the front of the house, and along the fence-line in our backyard. I imagined how lovely they would look towering over the yard, welcoming our visitors, or lined up against our wood fence in the back. I envisioned their orange and yellow and red petals bending towards the afternoon sun, shading my other plants.

Only one sunflower survived, grew tall enough to bloom. It bloomed for the first time yesterday, a bright, beautiful orange surprise. This morning, in the fading morning glow, its petals were covered in dew, its large green leaves cupped with water from last night's rain. I wish they had all grown and bloomed this way, but they did not. One is enough - enough to make me try again next year, enough to make me imagine our yard surrounded by tall, gangly sentries, omens of summer and harvest and heat.

After work, I returned home with Dora to learn that a strange and sad thing occurred today in my hometown. The wonderful peace activist and farmer who I wrote about just yesterday died tragically in an accident on his farm. A friend thought perhaps I had written the blog because of his death, but I had, in fact, written it just before he died. Not long after I stood in this morning's orange glow, focusing in on dew drops on orange petals, a faithful, brave, loving, gentle man left this Earth in a most horrible, shocking way. This man, who stood face-to-face with an Israeli tank, who has lived in war zones, who has dodged real bullets, died on his hilly, rural farm in Southeastern Ohio, where war and tanks and bullets are just distant, unimaginable things. He truly believed that peace on Earth was possible, and he worked his entire life to see it realized.

About 5 years ago, I saw his wife speak about her recent experiences living in Palestine. She spoke of walking children to school surrounded by armed guards, of the fear of violence which soaked into every fiber of the fabric of that life. I remember being moved by her bravery and faith, her willingness to put herself in danger doing what she believed in. She said that, when she and Art would set off for foreign lands on peace-keeping missions, they would bid each other goodbye knowing it may be their last. In their faith and in their love for each other, they were prepared to die, prepared to lose each other, even. I take comfort in this thought, in my understanding of their deep faith, in their absolute belief in the power of love and of peace.

I don't really know what to make of this, except to be reminded once again that the world is connected, that the power and timeliness of our memories might be beyond our understanding, that this morning's orange glow and my solitary sunflower are somehow harbingers of a peace we may all hope for, while only a few of us have the strength to dedicate our lives to its promise. Is it better to believe that this is all just coincidence, or is it possible that it's not, that some energy in the world connects us in space and time in a way we can't fathom or explain? All I know is that a person who dedicated his life to peace and justice and walking a gentle path was welcomed into heaven today, and that is a moment of significance worth pausing for, like a lone sunflower in the garden covered in dew, basking in morning's early soft glow.

In memory of Art Gish

freshest-ever eggplant parmesan

2010-07-27T22:57:00.002-04:00

We are thoroughly enjoying summer's bounty here, plowing through week after week of CSA boxes from Flying Cloud Farm. It's been hot, too - far too hot to turn on the oven, but I did yesterday to try making eggplant parmesan using all produce from our box. We were sweating while we ate it, but it was delicious!

My mother never made eggplant parmesan, but I have an early memory of eating it at a dinner at a neighbor's farm. My parents sold flowers - zinnias, snapdragons, cosmos - at the local farmer's market when I was young, and through that became friends with farmers around our area. Among those farmers were Art and Peggy Gish, peace activists whose farm in hilly southeastern Ohio was open to a variety of transients and visitors, where the only payment for room and board was made through laboring on the farm. The Gish's raised all variety of unusual vegetables, Asian greens and kohlrabi and eggplant. The dinner was vegetarian, served at a large table surrounded by men with long beards and women in skirts and sandals. The eggplant parmesan was, to me, exotic and delicious, unlike anything I'd ever had. In truth, it was not exotic. I know now that the ingredients were chosen simply because they were in season, but at the time I found the entire experience - the food, the people, the communal way in which the meal was prepared and cleaned up after - to be intriguing and beautiful.

I'm not sure this eggplant parmesan lives up to the meal I ate with Art and Peggy all those years ago, but it does follow in their path by using seasonal, local ingredients at their peak of harvest.

Freshest-Ever Eggplant Parmesan

(adapted from Martha Stewart Food)

olive oil

1 egg

1/2 cup breadcrumbs

1/2 cup shredded parmesan + 2 Tablespoons (I used pecorino romano)

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon dried basil

coarse salt and freshly ground pepper

2 - 3 small eggplants, peeled and sliced into 1/2 in rounds

5 vine-ripe tomatoes

3 cloves garlic, crushed

1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, sliced

1 Tablespoon tomato paste

1 cup shredded mozzarella

Preheat oven to 375. Line a baking sheet with foil and brush with olive oil. In a shallow bowl, whisk the egg with 2 Tablespoons water. In another shallow bowl, stir together the breadcrumbs, 1/2 cup parmesan, oregano, and basil. Season with salt and pepper. Dip the eggplant in the egg, then dredge in the breadcrumbs to coat. Place on baking sheets, then bake for about 20 minutes, until browned on the bottom. Turn over and back for another 20 minutes, until golden brown.

Meanwhile, set a medium saucepan of water to boil. Score the bottom of the tomatoes with an x and drop into boiling water for about 30 seconds, until the skin starts to loosen. Drain in a colander and rinse briefly in cold water until cool enough to handle, peel, and core. Over a medium bowl, coarsely chop the peeled tomatoes, retaining all the liquid from the tomatoes. In a medium saucepan, heat 1 Tablespoon olive oil over medium heat. When hot, add the garlic and saute briefly, until fragrant. Add tomatoes, season with salt and pepper, and bring to a boil. Simmer for about 10 minutes, until beginning to thicken. Stir in tomato paste and fresh basil.

In a square baking dish, spread about 2 cups of sauce. Layer about half the eggplant slices over the sauce, top with more sauce, and sprinkle with half the mozzarella. Repeat layers, ending with mozzarella. Sprinkle with 2 Tablespoons parmesan. Bake uncovered for about 15 minutes, until lightly brown and bubbling. Let stand about 5 minutes before serving.

Enjoy with an assortment of friends, toasting the season, peacemakers, and the bounty of summer.

puddle jumping

2010-07-09T22:35:00.000-04:00

It's been a difficult week here. Stress at work seems to be at an all time high. Friends and coworkers are facing their own challenges. One of my most beloved animal friends is incredibly sick, so much so that I said some final goodbyes to him a few days ago because I really thought it was time for him to go. He's still here, but is so much more frail and old than he was even two weeks ago. My sweet Mackeson boy has been with me for 13 years, sleeping on my pillow, nuzzling with his lovely Simone, begging for food and spending many years fat and happy. I know he's had a wonderful life, prolonged and made so much better by finding me when he was living in an abandoned trailer by a house that I rented. But the thought of him not being part of my life is absolutely heartbreaking.

We are about to travel this weekend again, trip anxiety looming over me like a cloud. Dora and I came home from work and school today in one of the first rains we've had in a long time - one we desperately need. There is so much to do tonight, of course, but when we saw the rain Dora said she wanted to stomp some puddles. We headed outside, her in a raincoat and rain boots although it wasn't raining anymore, and me with my camera. On the way down the concrete stairs to the street, when my back was turned, she tripped over her boots, smashing her hands and knees against the hard concrete. I picked her up, held her and kissed her, and took her to the porch. Four bandaids later she was feeling better and ready to puddle jump again, and I was thankful things hadn't been worse.

We stomped puddles and laughed, then headed home for dinner. We had books, bath, and bed. I packed clothes and cleaned the kitchen. I sat down, loaded the puddle jumping pictures onto my computer, and found a wonderful gem - a photo of Dora, smiling mischieviously with her blond curls around her face, the spitting image of my mom.

I have been missing my mom so much lately - missing her humor and her loyalty and her advice. There are times when she feels so very far away - when I feel her absence so strongly because it is so real, so palpable. Finding her in the photograph tonight was like magic, like discovering some lost piece of myself that had been right in front of me all along, like glimpsing the tail of the comet. There she was again, real, alive, smiling back at me in her funny little way, like we're about to share a joke. It is such an amazing, incredible gift to have her back with me again, even if for a fleeting moment. I will treasure that photo forever - my sweet girl splashing around with total joy, giving her mama a gift greater than she could ever know.

one year

2010-07-07T20:28:00.000-04:00

My blog is one year old today. It's hard to believe I've been doing this for a whole year. In many ways, I didn't think I'd make it this long. I'm proud I've been able to keep up with it, and on the other hand I wish I had accomplished more. I guess some small part of me thought that, maybe, I'd put it all out there with this blog and something big and momentous would fall in my lap - the book deal and the column in Bon Appetit and whatever else you care to imagine. But, it's ok - it really is - that those things haven't happened. Yet.

What has happened is that I've discovered things about myself I didn't know before. I've found that writing is more therapeutic than ever, that there are times when I have something that I want to say, need to say, so intensely that the only cure is to sit down and write it - all of it - until the thoughts are clear, or at least cleared out. I've learned that what I have to say means something to other people - even people who don't know me at all - which has been more rewarding than any of you who have commented or encouraged me could ever know. I've seen my husband be a supportive and loyal friend, allowing me the time and space to create what I've presented here even at his own expense.

I'm using my camera more. I'm taking pictures all the time, especially this month, even if it's just in 10 minutes stolen between work and dinnertime. I'm allowing myself the creative freedom to capture whatever crosses my path, while also pushing myself to try new things, get back out there, dance around the edges of some more formal place for photography in my life. I'm officially the user of a digital camera, and even though I'm not totally confident in my skills, at least I'm not blowing through film the way I used to. The instant gratification of digital is - well - dangerous.

I'm formally recording my life as a mom, Dora's life as my daughter, her growth and her development and her amazing milestones. I never wrote in the baby book. I didn't keep up with it as I should have. But I've got this - written words and images that I hope will someday have great meaning for her, or at least help her understand who I am.

I've developed a new connection with my mother that I didn't know was possible. Setting out on this project I had no idea how much of my writing here would center around my feelings of loss, my memories of my mother, my musings on what it means to have lost someone so important to me. Delving into that has been painful at times - and not just for me - but I am so glad I did it. She may be gone, but I believe that my words can keep us connected, can keep her alive in my world and my heart in a public and honest way.

So much of what I write here is about trying to understand the purpose, the place we're supposed to occupy, the direction our lives are headed. But, every comment I get, every time a friend shares this space with someone else, every time my husband gets teary-eyed at what I write, every time I finish a post and feel it's completed some new piece of the puzzle, I know I'm doing some small part of what I'm supposed to be doing. And maybe that's enough, for now.

Thank you all, so much, for sharing this space with me, for encouraging me, for being supportive when I needed it more than you can ever possibly know.

Here's to another year!

lemony kale ravioli

2010-07-05T14:14:00.000-04:00

Approaching the one year anniversary of this blog has reminded me that one of my original intentions with it was to write and post recipes, and my photographs of them. As the blog has evolved, I've gotten further away from doing that. Coming up with new recipes takes time, of which I seem to have very little these days. Between working full-time, crafting (and trying to make a profit of it), becoming more consumed with photography, spending time with my husband, and being a mom, we're lucky to be eating, period. But, I recently got some encouragement from a reader (my cousin David) who asked me to keep posting recipes, and from today's habit post, which includes my photo of homemade coleslaw in the making (yay!).

If you participate in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program you've probably been getting your fill of cooking greens this spring and early summer. Our CSA box from Flying Cloud Farm has included them every week since it began in April, and that's fine by me. Present every week has been kale, one of my favorites. I love kale, I really do. I like it sauteed ever so slightly in olive oil with garlic and lemon zest, tossed into soup, or added to quesadillas or burritos. I came across several ravioli recipes using cooking greens, which inspired me to come up with me own kale ravioli recipe.

I'm sure some of my Italian friends out there would be able to share their time-honored, delicious recipes for making ravioli from scratch. That's something I'd really like to try, but I probably won't have time until, say, I retire. So, this recipes relies upon wonton wrappers, a stand-in that works well and is used in a myriad of similar recipes. If you are adept at (or just ambitious enough to try) making your own ravioli, please do! In the meantime, here's a shortcut for you.

Lemony Kale Ravioli
To save time, I made the sauce and the ravioli filling simultaneously - but for simplicity I'm listing the instructions separately.

For the sauce:

1 Tbs olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1 lb, 13 oz can diced tomatoes
1 14 oz can tomato sauce
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
freshly ground pepper

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat until shimmering, add the garlic, and saute briefly until fragrant. Add the tomatoes, sauce, and herbs, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and let cook slowly while preparing the other ingredients. Season with pepper to taste just before serving. Feel free to sub fresh herbs for the dried if you prefer - just use 1 Tbs of each instead.

For the ravioli:

1 Tbs olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 bunch kale, finely chopped (it's ok if the leaves are a bit damp)
zest of one lemon
one small container ricotta cheese
a handful of shredded pecorino romano cheese
1 package wonton wrappers
salt and freshly ground pepper

Heat the oil in a 10-inch skillet over medium heat until shimmering, add the garlic cloves, and saute briefly until fragrant. Add the kale and stir to coat with oil and garlic. Saute until wilted and tender but al dente, about 5 - 7 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Scrape the kale into a medium bowl, add lemon zest and ricotta, and stir to combine.

To assemble, place one wonton wrapper on a work surface with one corner towards you, so the wrapper forms a diamond on your work surface. Put a small spoonful of filling in the center of the wrapper, moisten two edges with a bit of water, and fold in half in a triangle shape, pinching the edges down to seal. Keep the filled raviolis covered with a damp paper towel as you work, and keep the stack of wontons covered until ready to use.

To cook, bring a pot of salted water to a boil, add the ravioli, and stir gently. Cook for 2 - 3 minutes, then use a slotted spoon to transfer them to a colander to drain. Serve topped with sauce.

You can easily freeze leftover ravioli - just place the filled but uncooked ravioli in a single layer on a baking sheet, cover with saran wrap, and freeze for about 1 hour, then transfer to a sealed container to store. To cook, toss frozen ravioli into boiling salted water and cook until tender, 4 - 5 minutes. You can also make what you want for one meal, then save the remaining filling and wonton wrappers tightly covered in the fridge until the following day.

When making this I haven't gotten my proportion of filling to wonton wrappers just right - I had a bit of filling left over. I've saved it in my fridge to use as a sandwich spread this week. The ravioli would taste equally delicious with any other kind of sauce - a white wine, butter and herb sauce would be delicious, or just some fresh tomatoes and basil gently sauteed in olive oil. Or, just toss them with olive oil and shredded pecorino romano.

It's ok if some of the raviolis come open while cooking. According to Lynne Rosetto Kasper, old Italian ladies she spoke with said this is a good thing, as it imparts even more flavor on their ravioli by enriching the cooking water. It's always nice when imperfections have a purpose. Enjoy!!

tiny lights

2010-06-28T21:43:00.002-04:00

I had my very first ultrasound when I was about 7 weeks pregnant with Dora. I'd had a horrible stomach flu the weekend we found out I was pregnant, and the doctor wanted to be sure everything looked good because it took me a few days to feel better. The tiny bundle of cells that would be Dora floated around on the screen, looking a bit like a tiny seahorse. Inside the seahorse was a tiny flashing light - little electric charges pulsing through cardiac tissue, like a miniature lighthouse in the fog. That was the first moment that I actually felt pregnant, the first time I felt some sort of connection with the life forming inside of me. At that time, only Brian and I knew about the pregnancy, and the little flashing light was our secret, the silent tiny life force making its way, lighting up within me like a star being formed.

This weekend we drove to Ohio for my cousin Rachael's wedding. I drove alone, delayed by a meeting as Brian and Dora headed north through the West Virginia mountains. It was the first time since having Dora that I made the trip without her. I listened to music, caught up on my favorite podcasts, let my mind wander as the long afternoon shadows turned to darkness, the sun slipping behind the lumbering mountains. I thought again of the tiny light, of the way that one life can be carried within another, that just below my heart, at my very center, a flashing bulb of promise and future could secretly hide. I thought about my mom, as I always do when I drive towards the home we shared, towards her family. I wished more than anything that she could be there with us to see her grand-niece get married, to celebrate another beautiful occasion, another life begun.

The wedding was lovely, the bride and her sisters glowing like that afternoon sun, bright pink roses all around. Brian played the music, my brother performed the ceremony. Dora played with her cousin, and later danced like a madwoman alongside the white dress, the pink satin heels, the groomsmen in their matching gray suits. Like any good family event, it was mutli-generational - from grandmothers to toddlers. All the tables were decorated with votive candles placed in recycled glass jars of varying sizes - Ball jars, baby food jars, spaghetti sauce jars. My mother would have loved that.

On the way home, this time with Dora sleeping in my backseat, I listened to part of a This American Life podcast about murder. I turned it off, for it was too disturbing for my taste. But before I did I heard the story of a woman who's father was murdered when she was 10 years old. She had spent years wondering who committed the crime, gathering evidence, hoping for some explanation. She met with a crime reporter who, upon reviewing what she had gathered, told her to forget it. Instead of being disappointed, she found herself feeling free, feeling liberated from the burden of searching for an answer, a person to blame, the bitter taste of revenge. She thought that her father would not want her spending all of her time obsessing over his death. Instead, she would focus on his memory, and on moving forward in her own life.

It is very easy to get bogged down in the fact that my mother died, to marvel at the unfairness of it all, to recoil at the friend complaining about her own mother, to be filled with heavy, weighty, suffocating grief at the thought of never speaking to my wonderful mom again. I remember that, the day that she died, I did not want to go to sleep, because I knew it would be the last day in which we were both alive. What would my mother want me to be thinking about, what would she want me to be doing with her memory? Would she want me to think about how she died, how she left so much before her time, how things could have been different? I know all of these are natural thoughts to have, but probably she would want me to focus on ways to keep her in my life, on staying connected, on carrying her forward into my daughter's world in some real and tangible way.

Sometimes I feel like maybe that flashing light is still inside of me, a life being carried forward just below my heart, keeping me warm, connecting with me, staying a part of this world. Perhaps we can keep our loved ones with us that way, glowing out from within. I go to the weddings and the funerals and the family picnics not only as myself, but to represent my mother, who would certainly be there if she were able. She's there, glowing inside of me, a flickering votive in a recycled glass jar, a symbol of life and love that can't be easily explained, that transcends time, that sustains and protects and eases, ever so slightly, the pain of losing her.

energy

2010-06-22T13:16:00.006-04:00

Last week I had the privilege of meeting a friend's new baby girl. Both mother and baby were beautiful and serene, getting to know each other in that remarkable, timeless space at the very beginning of life. My friend commented that the baby was very relaxed and laid-back, and she thought that was because she was as well. It gave me hope that perhaps with second babies we can relax a bit more, enjoy those first few weeks a little more, with less fear that the baby will never stop crying, that we will never learn to nurse, that there is something wrong. Surely the knowledge we gain from raising the first baby can be applied to the second, even if the two are totally different.

The mutually reinforcing serenity that my friend and her baby were sharing got me thinking about energy, about the ways we are all connected and influencing each other and subtly altering the course of history, like tiny rivulets of water forging a path across the earth. Being married to a performer, I have learned that the energy of the crowd translates to the musician. The gig goes well if the crowd is dancing and having fun, even if it's pouring down rain outside. But a reserved crowd leads to a stale gig, no matter what the weather. Some challenging tasks energize us, while others suck the energy away and leave us exhausted.

I had a full and busy schedule this past weekend. Saturday morning was spent back at the City Market with Mandy. We got more good feedback on our work and sold a few things, but did not continue the pattern we set at the last market, where we both did very well. We both left feeling tired and hot, and a bit discouraged, but determined to keep going forward, with plans to take pictures of our work and proceed with setting up an Etsy page, finally.

Saturday was also our sixth wedding anniversary, so Brian and I got a babysitter and went out to dinner. We had a beautiful meal on the rooftop terrace at Sazerac, which we have been hearing about. The sun was shining but it wasn't too hot, there was a nice breeze and easy conversation, a lovely glass of Chenin Blanc, so delicious I wrote down the exact name of the wine. Dessert was a perfectly prepared creme brulee and a shared champagne cocktail. We laughed, talked about our beautiful, amazing girl, spoke the honest truth to each other. We felt surrounded by good energy, by love, by a sense of accomplishment in having stayed true for 6 years.

On Sunday, Father's Day, Dora and I spent time together at home in the morning, and ran errands, too. We took Dora downtown to Splasheville, a new fountain in the recently completed Pack Square Park that shoots water out unpredictably as kids and adults run around cooling off in the heat. Dora was shy and unsure at first, but the energy of the other laughing, playful children drew her in, and soon we were bargaining with her to get her home. I spent a few hours that day making a delicious and beautiful lime tart with berries. Supposedly this was part of Brian's Father's Day gift - and it's true that he enjoyed it very much - but it was as much for me as it was for him. Oh how I love gathering my ingredients, following the instructions, making something beautiful and delicious and filled with love. Even when making things from scratch is tiring, I come away feeling energized and fulfilled.

Last night, Mandy and I got together for a little photo shoot in preparation for setting up the Etsy site. We collaborated on each scene in her beautiful backyard, using stone and tree bark and grass and sky as backdrops for our work while David entertained Dora on the swing set. I was completely energized by the photography, as I am by the crafting. I couldn't wait to get home and work with the images. We drove home in the heat to a gathering thunderstorm, and when I got Dora out of the backseat I realized she was burning up. More than just sweaty from play, she had a fever. She immediately went to her room and asked to go to bed. I turned on her air conditioner and fan, stroking her hair as she fell asleep. In my mind, I turned over the possible causes of her illness, from the ridiculous to the probable, returning so easily and quickly to my early motherhood days of high anxiety and wildly creative disaster thinking. I later explained to Brian that the creative disaster thinking is probably some remnant of motherly instinct to protect, to be hyper-vigilant to any possible threat to our young. Understanding it's cause and origin, though, doesn't make it any easier to control or accept, or any less exhausting.

Saturday, June 19th, was also my mother's birthday. She would have been 74. I think about her now and I wonder if she had these same worries, these same questions of identity and purpose and future. I know she taught me to worry the way she did, so I'm quite sure she did her own share of creative disaster thinking every time I stepped off the school bus with a hot forehead. It's easy to believe that our parents always had all the answers, but now as a mother myself I realize that's just not the case. They were just making it up as they went along as we are now. When I stood in the shower the day I went into labor, hot water pouring down over my round belly, my last moments of pregnancy upon me, I tried to think of my mom as she must have felt facing new motherhood, and I realized she was surely as afraid and uncertain as I was.

I have moments in my life in which what I am doing brings me such strong positive feelings - tender moments with Dora, an evening of solid writing, a turn of the embroidery needle that comes out just right, a perfectly prepared lime tart. I'm trying to find out how to be sure that more of my time is spent on these things - these things which energize rather than exhaust me. Like the cause of Dora's fever I turn over and over in my mind the possibilities, wondering how I will ever figure this out. I'm trying to use what I've learned about myself so far in this life to really understand who I am, even when such introspective thinking results in total uncertainty. Surely that burst of energy I feel from certain creative outlets is the universe trying to tell me something. If only I can find the serenity to get to know it, that timeless and remarkable space we must inhabit at times of new life, during periods of transformation, at the beginning of something new.

365 days

2010-06-10T05:37:00.006-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up my copy of Anne Lamott's "Operating Instructions" to find a suitable quote for my friend Andrea's blessingway. The evening brought together two circles of friends who hadn't previously met, and it was an absolutely beautiful, lovely night. We all read something about motherhood - touching children's books, poems, things we ourselves had written. I read a short blog of mine - written when Dora was teeny-tiny - and the Lamott excerpt. Being an excerpt from a Lamott book, it included the F-word, some political references, made us laugh, and made us cry - everything you want and need in a good piece of writing.

Looking for that excerpt was enough to get me started, and I've been reading a little bit ever since. To be a good writer, you need to read a lot - so I know this is good for me. And I enjoy it. But it also means I've had less time to write. I want to write - even have entire blogs pass through my head in, say, the shower. The time simply isn't there, right now. But sinking into a book these past few weeks has been a luxury, a return to some former part of myself that I have essentially lost in motherhood. I have always loved to read, and when I lay down in bed on a summer night, with the window open and the fan spinning above me, I am a child and a teenager and a newlywed and an expectant mother all at once, feeling the pages slip between my fingers.

I've read this book by Anne Lamott about three times - once before I was married, when it's story of friendship was the most powerful narrative to me. I re-read it when Dora was a little baby, the same age as Lamott's son Sam is in the book, and I found solace in her honest and funny account of the wild swings between absolute adoration and complete desolation that come with new motherhood. Now the book is still touching, still funny, and it is her sadness about her father's death - her feeling that him not knowing Sam is a real tragedy - that speaks to me the most.

My mother had a thing for books, too, and it is through her that I discovered Anne Lamott, and nearly every other contemporary author I have read and enjoyed. She worked in bookstores and libraries throughout her life, and I trusted her literary guidance so completely that, when she died, it had been years since I had picked out a book for myself. After years of following and enjoying her suggestions, I felt lost. There is a comfort now in returning to words I know that my mother read, but I miss the new adventures, too, miss the unfolding of some unknown story that comes in a new literary experience.

The past week has unfolded like Lamott's account of new-motherhood, traveling over ups and downs with the speed and ferocity of a roller coaster. After an incredibly stressful day at work last Friday, I took some engagement pictures for good friends Joanna and Trevor. I had been in tears in my office hours before, and found absolute joy in taking the pictures for them. I came home feeling energized and happy. The next day, eating lunch and babysitting for a friend, my phone buzzed on the table indicating a new email had arrived. I read it, and gasped out loud. The email brought the sad news that a colleague and friend had died, totally unexpectedly, apparently of a heart attack. He had been at a meeting, left the table, and didn't come back. I am sure that the day before, he had packed a suitcase and kissed his wife goodbye for a business trip, but he never came home. On Monday, a friend who attended his funeral said she had been in a room full of people in absolute disbelief. And today, I heard some sad news about another friend, an illness returned for another round.

It seemed almost unbelievable, then, when yesterday the facilitator at a workshop I was attending asked "if you had a year to live, would you be doing what you're doing now?" People around me said yes, but I stayed silent. I'm not sure it's possible to know the answer, and my tendency to get tied up in logistics stopped me from going too far into the answer anyway. What about money? If I have a year to live, I must need health insurance! I can't just quit my job, etc. etc. It's an interesting question, and it does make me think. A year ago, my friend had a year to live, and he didn't even know it. I guess that's the point of asking the question.

If I had a year to live, I'm not sure what I would do, but my guess is that there are a few things I would try to do: Read. Write. Take pictures. Sew and knit and be at the farmer's market every Saturday. Spend time with my girl. Reconnect with my husband. Walk the dogs every day. Vacuum - maybe. If I had a year to live, I'd start picking out new books again.

When faced with uncertainty, Anne Lamott writes her questions on a little slip of paper and puts them into a box by her bedside. This is her way of asking God for guidance. After this week of loss and reflection and returning to words I have loved and read before, I woke up this morning feeling uncertain myself. Perhaps I will always be wondering what I'm supposed to be doing. This morning, I took a cue from one of my favorite authors. I wrote my question on a slip of paper, put it in a little wooden box in the top drawer of the antique dresser in my room - the one that belonged to my mother. Like Anne Lamott, I'm waiting for my next operating instructions. I think maybe a trip to the library is in order. It's almost time for a new book.

what's in a name?

2010-06-01T19:36:00.006-04:00

At work today, I was listening to Pandora and an Enya song came on. I haven't heard Enya for a long time, although I was into her music a lot about 10 years ago. It reminded me of a moment in my labor, near the end, about the time of transition. I was having a difficult time, getting that panicky urgent feeling that a lot of women get in transition. I didn't know that was what was happening, I just knew I needed it to be over. My doctor somehow got through to me, got me to relax and breathe some oxygen and settle down for a bit. Doula Jo asked "Enya or Nina Simone?" One word was about all I was capable of at that point, and I said "Nina", but she started the Enya CD anyway. It was totally fine - either was fine. But it made me think - that was about the last coherent word I said while Dora was still in my womb, before she finished her journey into this world. Did that last word somehow sink into her in a special way, leading her to use it as such a communicative force when she began to talk? After all, "nina" was basically the first word Dora ever used. It may be a name to most, but in Dora's world (and ours, by extension) it had meaning beyond a name. Did my utterance of the word nina at a moment when the entire universe stood still, at the precipice of the start of one life, at the intersection where I grew to become a new person while also losing a part of myself, somehow become the single most powerful and intimate word that could be said?

The strangest thing about this word - or name - is that, in my mind, I think this is not the first time of great transition in which this word has been spoken. I seem to recall that, when my mom was very ill, she would call out to us and say "nina". I remember asking her what it meant. I don't remember what she said in response. I didn't even really remember it until some time much later. Could I be remembering it correctly? I really don't know. But, if I am remembering it correctly, surely this means something. Does it mean that, through the great transitions of death and birth, there is some opening, some place through which communication is fluid and transcendent and elevated above simple conversation? Is there some way that the words my mother spoke at her moment of greatest transition flowed through me to my unborn child, to the spirit within Brian and I that would become Dora, to the baby in the clouds waiting to be born some 4 years later? It is almost too far-fetched and other-worldly to wrap my mind around, and yet it also seems entirely plausible.

I just got back from a road trip to visit my good friend Maria in Georgia. We spent most of the weekend on the "night-night rescue project", which was our attempt to mend Dora's blankie that Maria knitted for her before she was born. She loves, loves, loves that blanket now, and it's full of holes. If it disintegrates completely I'm not sure what we'll do - saving it is pretty critical. We knitted 15 or so little square patches that we sewed to the blanket, and Maria is making a few more for me to attach later. Then I'm going to sew some cotton onto the back to try to reinforce the thing. I think it's going to work. I hope it's going to.

We had a lovely but short visit. Dora was so totally off-schedule that she fell asleep immediately upon our departure, settling into a morning nap as if she were 6 months old instead of nearly 3. I took advantage of the silence in the car to listen to one of my favorite podcasts, the Moth. Included was a story by Roland Rocchiccioli about his experience caring for his mother at the end of her life. She died of liver cancer at age 94. Although their relationship had been tenuous, it was he who cared for her in the end, bathing her, taking her to doctor's appointments, lifting her dog onto the bed as she breathed her last, calling the priest for last rites. After she died, he sat with her body, chatting with her, watching the birds outside, trying to grasp what had just happened. He said, "she brought me in, and I took her out". I have never heard it said that way. He said that he realized that being with someone at their death is just about the most intimate experience two people can share, after which "you can never be ordinary again". I agree, and the only other moment as intimate is that of birth. When you are there to witness a person cross over the threshold between life and whatever lies before and after, it is as if the entire world stops. the universe stands still, all is quiet, and everything is waiting with baited breath for the transition to take place. Everything stands still to allow space for such a momentous occasion to occur. It is at those moments that we are our most human - most animal, even - and also our most spiritual. As Mr. Rocchiccioli said in his story, when someone dies, one second they are there and one second they are not. The life force leaving the body is palpable and obvious, the stethoscope against the chest isn't needed to know that the heart has stopped. The baby entering the world does so with a cry - a natural reflex to draw in life-giving breath, and a spiritual announcement - pronouncement - of their arrival.

As both birth and death can feel like tiptoeing along the edge of another dimension, a glimpse into something beyond what we know or understand, I don't think it's that wild to imagine that a word uttered in death might be breathed into a new life like the life-giving oxygen inhaled at birth. Perhaps that word said by my mom in her final hours hung in the universe around me, waiting to enter the world at the next opportunity, the next time that the space between life and the universe was minimized by so great a transition. Maybe I'm just looking for another connection that isn't there, another way to believe that on some level my beautiful girl and my beloved mother have crossed paths. Or maybe there really is a space in which all those who transition from or to this life are one. Either way, I know that I am blessed, honored, privileged, humbled beyond words to have been there for both of these momentous and life-changing transitions, the two most powerful and intimate moments of my life thus far.

small miracles

2010-05-26T21:12:00.005-04:00

Good news. We found Baldwin today. My neighbor and friend Katherine found her hiding in a pile of brush behind her studio. After work, with threatening gray thunderheads gathering around us, Dora and I called for her by the brush pile. I was near giving up when I heard some faint meowing. Soon she scurried out the other side away from us, under a trailer where other wild cats like to hide. I finally coaxed her out with a can of cat food.

I scooped the food onto a plate and put her in the bathroom to eat alone. She ate the whole thing. When I checked on her a while later, she rubbed against me and purred. I think she had eaten very little in the 10 or so days she has been gone, but otherwise she seems fine. She is back to hiding behind the TV cabinet. Tomorrow I'm going to buy her some kitty relaxation herbs that Katherine told me about.

We had a late, simple dinner, and a late bedtime, and I have a stack of napkins to finish. I can't write more about this now other than to say thank God for small miracles, and for a neighborhood full of pet lovers who are paying attention, and for Newman's Own Turkey Formula.

Every once in a while, what we have lost is found again. Amen.

better late than never

2010-05-23T12:33:00.005-04:00

Dora's hair is beginning to get curly. After over two years of fine, straight, white blond baby hair, she's been running around for the past few weeks with loose ringlet curls framing her face. We always hoped she might end up with the best combination of hair from us, loose, beautiful waves halfway between my thick straight hair and Brian's tight, unruly curls. Now it appears that might end up being the case. Better late than never, I suppose.

This is what we want for our children in every way: to impart on them the best of ourselves, giving them all of our good qualities and none of our less desired ones, physical or otherwise. We can only hope that Dora inherits her father's good eyesight, so that she isn't so nearsighted that she can't read the clock at night like her mama. If we're lucky, she'll grow up with my less-sensitive digestive system, or at least my tendency to remember and avoid the things that disagree with me, a talent her father has yet to develop. She is already showing a love of music, even telling Brian "I want James Brown" when she wants to dance. Maybe she'll get Brian's natural musical talents. And in her pretend world, where she spends a lot of time these days, one of her favorite toys is the pretend cupcake baking set. I'm hoping she'll follow me into the kitchen as well.

In reality, we have very little control over these things - hair and eye color and sensitive stomachs get passed on in ways we understand but cannot influence. Our influence, though - the part we do control - is powerful just the same. I know Dora yells "stop that Newman!" because I do sometimes. I worry also that her fiery temper, quite shocking in comparison to her usually sunny disposition, comes from me as well. When she is biting and kicking me, screaming at me for what she wants, I wonder if I'm not just getting my due for the temper I unleashed on my own parents all those years ago.

Even when we do our very best to avoid it, sometimes what we do ends up hurting our children. On Monday, Brian and I sat with Dora at the dentist's office while she got her first 2 fillings. As a person who didn't have a cavity until my late 20s, the fact that she already has 4 makes me cringe. Given what she had to endure, she really did an amazing job. She cried, but she sat still and didn't struggle as the assistant held her head for the doctor. Holding her down while the smell of drill against enamel filled the air, her eyes filled with fear and uncertainty, I felt twice the pain and guilt. It was painful enough having to participate in the procedure, even as I know we needed to do it. But the entire experience was made even more painful by my feeling that the entire thing is my fault. I nursed Dora at night, and did not always brush her teeth afterwards. There were a lot of reasons I did it - because I wanted weaning to occur naturally, because I wanted all of us to sleep, because I was giving her what she wanted, because I was just trying to survive. I never set out to hurt her, of course, but knowing that my decision landed her in the dentist's chair, crying in pain and fear, was almost more than I could bear.

I've made some other mistakes this week, too. Our very shy and skittish cat, Baldwin, has disappeared. She never goes outside, and the truth is we rarely even see her inside. But last weekend, while Brian was out gigging and I was in and out of the backyard working on projects, the backdoor came open a few times. Once I caught all the cats in the backyard, corralling them back in with the promise of a can of cat food. Another time, I thought only Salem - our savviest escape artist - had gotten out. Days later I realized I hadn't seen Baldwin in a while, and a search of her favorite hiding spaces, and then every possible hiding space, convinced me that she is not in the house anymore. I've searched the garage, the neighbor's yard, combed the entire block for any sign of her. She is so impossibly timid, my guess is that she is holed up somewhere, hiding and afraid. It was unintentional, of course, but now I've hurt someone I cared about just the same, and I'm not sure she'll ever be back.

I've been thinking about the Japanese philosophy Kaizen, or continuous improvement, ever since I heard about it in a This American Life podcast weeks ago. It's mentioned in one of Toyota's new commercials, too. Like everyone else I spend plenty of time beating myself up for my mistakes, so I've been trying to assuage that a bit with the concept of continuous improvement - do better next time, learn from every misstep, keep moving forward. It's like marriage or labor or cooking or baby rearing - learn and move forward, learn and move forward, one step/contraction/recipe/day at a time.

Now, we brush morning and night, with fluoride toothpaste and an electric toothbrush. Nothing but water before sleep. No more mommy milk, either, as much as we both fondly miss it. I double-check the backdoor, now. This afternoon, we'll be putting up posters about Baldwin. The worst could be true - she could be hurt somewhere, or worse. But maybe she's been found by someone lovely, who really needed a kitty, who could give her a one-cat-home where she wouldn't be terrorized by some of my other bully cats. Maybe she's somewhere enjoying a sunny window, resting and awaiting her next delicious meal. Maybe my mistake is Baldwin's Kaizen, her chance to move forward in a better way. Hopefully all of this has done more than just cause us pain, but has improved us as well, so we can do better, move forward together, grow. Better late than never.

my mom's easter bread

2010-05-12T06:06:00.007-04:00

Last summer, shortly after I started this blog, I was home in Ohio at my dad's house. I snapped the first header photo for this blog, wandered around the yard using the old picnic table as a backdrop for the FiestaWare's bright colors. I stumbled upon a couple of recipes that remind me so much of my mom, of my childhood. I was so happy to find her recipe for tomato salad, which I posted a few weeks later. I also found a small, faded paper booklet full of feast bread recipes from around the world. Inside was a treasure I remember well from childhood - Kulich. This is a sweet, yeasted bread that my mother made every year at Eastertime. I was so happy to have found this recipe, so happy to be able to carry on this tradition for my family now.

Baked in old coffee cans, this feast bread puffs up over the top of the can, creating a dome perfect for drizzling with sweet, confectioner's-sugar-based icing. Although the original recipe calls for topping the bread with lemon icing and candied fruits, my mom always used plain confectioner's sugar icing and multi-colored sprinkles. In our house, the rule was always that the oldest child got to eat the frosted top. As the youngest, not just in my immediate family, but the youngest cousin in my generation on either side of our family, I thought this rule was completely unfair. I, of course, would never be the oldest child. Until now.

I intended to make this bread at Easter this year, but instead was traveling to my Uncle Roger's funeral at the time so could not. It's a bit late this year, although it's still technically Easter in our church. This was my first time making the bread on my own, and I have some questions I would love to ask my mom. She must have used more than the two cans called for in the recipe, because my two loaves came so far out of the top of the cans that they took on a life of their own.

I used raisins as called for but I'm pretty sure she used currants. The recipe also calls for mixing the entire thing with a mixer, which I did, but I'm pretty sure my mother never did. She most likely mixed it by hand, with a wooden spoon in the big pink Corningware mixing bowl, the pull-out metal work surface of the Hoosier her backdrop. I'm going to take this approach next time, because I think the texture will improve. And next time I'm going to toast the blanched almonds before using them. The recipe below, however, is unaltered from the original. I'll post an adapted version in the future - maybe next year, when I'll follow the rules and let Dora eat the frosted top.

Kulich - Russian feast bread

3 - 3 1/2 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon (or 1 package) active dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup butter, cut into pieces
2 eggs plus 2 yolks
1 1/2 Tablespoons lemon zest
1/4 cup raisins (or currants)
1/4 cup blanched almonds (try toasting them first)

Icing:
1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
1 Tablespoon milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
sprinkles

In a large bowl mix well 1 cup flour, the sugar, yeast, and salt; set aside. In a small saucepan, heat milk and butter over low heat until very warm (120 - 130 degrees) - it's ok if the butter doesn't melt. Gradually add to flour mixture; beat at medium speed 2 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Add eggs, yolks, lemon peel, and 1 cup flour; beat at medium speed an additional 2 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Stir in raisins, almonds, and enough remaining flour to make a soft dough that leaves the sides of the bowl. Turn out on a lightly floured surface; knead 8 to 10 minutes, adding flour as necessary, until dough is smooth and elastic.

Place in greased bowl, turn to grease top. Cover; let rise in a warm place about 1 hour or until doubled. Generously grease one 1-pound coffee can and one 1-pound fruit can (remove paper labels). Punch down dough; place in cans, half-filling each. Cover; let rise in warm place about 1 hour, until-doubled. Bake in preheated 350 degree oven 25 - 35 minutes (check fruit can after 25 minutes) or until tops are golden brown. Remove immediately from cans and cool upright on wire racks. To make icing, whisk together milk, confectioner's sugar, and vanilla until smooth. Frost tops with icing, letting it run down sides. Decorate with sprinkles. Slice off the top and give it to the oldest kid in the room, or eat it yourself when no one's looking.

tiny sparkle

2010-05-08T06:54:00.008-04:00

Earlier this week, I was minding my own business at work, typing away at a report while the sun shone brilliantly outside, illuminating a perfectly cloudless day while many of my other mom friends enjoyed trips to the playground and play dates at the Nature Center. I pushed those seemingly idyllic lifestyles from my mind and focused on the task at hand, snapshots of family and construction paper cut-outs of baby hands surrounding and sustaining me instead. My phone buzzed, and a voice over my intercom said, "your mother's on the phone". For a split second, I struggled to figure out what was happening, my brain fumbling to recognize this unfamiliar and impossible turn of events. "My mother is deceased, so this call can't be for me," I said. The voice replied "well, she SAID Carrie". I sensed the annoyance in her tone and thought, "oh, you want to argue with me about this?" "The call is for someone else" I said, and hung up.

I sat at my desk and started to cry. I know it was a simple mistake, a misunderstanding, but it felt like a joke, salt in the wound, sand in the eye. It made me realize something else, too, something I hadn't thought of for a long time. People get calls from their moms while they are at work. Some people probably have that happen regularly. "It's your mom again" says the voice over the intercom. I know it might seem strange to suggest I didn't already know this, but it's just something I had put out of my mind. I thought of my coworkers casually taking a call from their mom, or even brushing her off to get back to work, and felt that familiar heavy sadness I feel when reminders of my mom's absence jump out unexpectedly, shining a harsh spotlight on the missing piece of my life.

Friday after work, Brian watched Dora so I could run some errands. I stopped at the fabric shop for some zippers, then to Target for cleaning supplies. A mob of people surrounded the card aisle, jockeying for position in front of a huge display. I thought, "What is going on?" Graduation? Happy Spring? Oh, right. Mother's Day. How could I forget? I felt that familiar sting again, the reminder that I'm part of this "club", as my friend Gretchen calls it. I hurried away from the crowd, tears stinging my eyes. Mother's Day is a time of emotional push and pull, a fine balance between celebrating the beauty of my daughter and lamenting the loss of my mother. It is a bittersweet day, to say the least.

This morning, I got up early to hit the grocery store alone before church, just me and the dads sneaking out for last minute gifts and flowers. I came home and there was a sweet card and an iTunes gift certificate for me, and Dora said, "Happy Mother's Day, Mommy". We went to church together, colored, played in the yard. I baked Kulich, a Russian feast bread my mom used to make at Easter-time. Later, the three of us went for a hike at Bent Creek, chasing blue butterflies and waving at cyclists. We went to dinner, then toasted marshmallows in the backyard over our new fire pit. At bedtime, I snuggled into bed next to Dora, rubbing her back to help her fall asleep. I thought about my mom, wishing as I often do for one more day, one more chance to ask her the questions I have now, one opportunity for her to see my beautiful girl, my good marriage, my life as it is now. Dora put her arm around me, her eyes sleepy and closed, and whispered, "Happy Mother's Day, Mommy".

A week ago, as our quick visit to the beach drew to a close, I tiptoed out of our hotel room as Dora and Brian slept in the early morning. My mom loved walking on the beach in the early morning, the birds, the angle of the sun, the ocean in its most natural state. I walked along the waves slowly, the hood of my sweatshirt up against the strong breeze. I thought about my mom, pictured her on so many mornings like this one on the shores of North Carolina, watching sandpipers chase the edge of the surf. I was nearly back to the hotel when I saw what I was looking for - a rare beach treasure my mother was notorious for spotting. A tiny sparkle in the sand revealed it - a small shard of opaque white sea glass. The advent of recycling - something I practice religiously - has rendered sea glass nearly extinct. Though I know it is a good sign that it is uncommon, I still look for it, still always feel that no beach trip is complete without a smooth glass splinter riding home in my pocket. On that early morning beach, reaching to the sand for the sea glass, I felt surrounded by my mother's spirit, by all the things that remind me of her. I smiled, squeezing the glass in my hand and heading home. "Thanks mom", I thought.

Although the reminders of my mother's absence are all around me these days - even popping up unexpectedly at work or as I run errands - the reminders of her presence are here, too. I see them in nature, in my daughter, in myself. Like a tiny sparkle of sea glass against sand, it often takes a discerning and attentive eye to notice these artifacts of her spirit around me. But they are here, nonetheless, maintaining our connection, shaping my life now, our love one long continuous thread as infinite and unbroken as the ocean horizon.

"Happy Mother's Day, Mommy" I whisper. I love, love, love you.

shore and horizon

2010-05-02T21:36:00.006-04:00

For the past two years and nine months, I envisioned myself writing about this subject many times. I knew it was inevitable - a necessary if bittersweet step towards the sort of independence and growth my little one would eventually need. There were times when I lived in absolute fear of this happening, times when I simply felt sad that it would happen one day, and times when I was more than ready for it to be so. With a bit of nudging from me, a few nights of tears from both of us, and a lot of discussion, Dora has stopped nursing. I'm sure there are many people who might think that, at 2 years and 9 months, she was long overdue for weaning. There may be others who think it happened too soon - that the fact that I had to push her a little bit meant it was too early. Either way, it has happened, and we have thus far survived this transition relatively unscathed.

Dora and I graduated from nursing during the day or at bedtime a while ago, but it was that middle-of-the-night, get-back-to-sleep nursing that we couldn't find a way to stop. My pediatrician once told me not to get in the habit of nursing her in the middle of the night (once she was old enough to sleep through without eating). I remember thinking, "you're not the one who has to get up the next day and go to work after a sleepless night". Five minutes of nursing and she was back to sleep, and so was I. Even though I've had several business trips that have left us separated for days, once reunited we have always picked the habit up again. I kept hoping that she would just lose interest - this, the baby who refused to take a bottle with such determination that she would go 8 hours between feedings even when she was very, very young. A minor dental crisis spurned me to more decisive action. About a week ago, after many, many discussions about how mommy milk is for babies, I told Dora that we would snuggle back to sleep instead of nursing. She was tearful, frustrated, laying on the ground moaning - but I held my ground and within 20 minutes she was back to sleep in bed. We had at least one more night of real resistance, and a few tears here and there - but overall it has been much less traumatic than I had imagined.

My experience breastfeeding Dora has been absolutely beautiful. Aside from those first few incredibly difficult weeks, and the months and months of bottles refused, it was easy, loving, perfect. In those early months, I spent hours gazing at Dora's sweet angelic face, watching her deep blue eyes flutter shut as I listened to her swallows, her tiny baby hand on my chest. During my deepest moments of anxiety, settling onto the couch together to nurse was my surest way to calm down - deep breathing and a dose of oxytocin do wonders to settle the nerves. The rush of love a mother feels when breastfeeding her infant is explainable through science - the pituitary gland releases oxytocin and prolactin, causing the nursing mother to feel intense love for her baby. It's more than that, though, isn't it? To me, that's the feeling of my heart and soul expanding, opening up to a love I never knew possible. That's not a hormone working it's magic on my brain - it's my baby, reaching in and connecting with me in the most primal, most basic way.

Two nights ago we were sleeping in a hotel room in an oceanfront hotel in Atlantic Beach, NC. Brian and Dora had joined me for a work trip, and we stayed an extra night for a mini-family vacation. Dora woke me up in the middle of the night, crying. She did not want to lay down and snuggle, did not want to join Brian and I in our bed. She looked at me and said, "I want milk like a baby". I looked at her sweet face, her blond hair a wild frame around it, and I felt my heart swell with the longing to give her just what she wanted, to hold her close and listen to her breathe and swallow, breathe and swallow. Instead, I offered her an alternative - a drink of regular milk, held in my arms like a baby, followed by brushing of teeth and snuggling in her bed. Within minutes she was asleep again, a little baby island surrounded by her big white bed.

I laid in bed next to my sleeping husband, tears running down my cheeks as I bid a final farewell to nursing my sweet baby girl. I knew then that our time together in that way was gone for good. The full moon was huge and yellow, slowly rising over the black ocean, it's white streaks reaching from shore to horizon. I imagined myself on the dark sand, the moon above me and the cool, hard sand below, letting go of our sweet time together like a tiny paper sailboat, bobbing up and down, sailing out to sea. All of our love and tenderness and intimacy floating away on the dark waves, the strength of our connection like the moonlight on the water, transcending space and time, touching both shore and horizon.

I let go of this time with love, with as much strength as I can muster, with the knowledge that I will hold it in my heart forever, as a sacred and beautiful space in which I discovered the depth and breadth of my love. It's as if I've discovered an ocean within myself, a vastness unmeasurable by science or technology. Thank you, nature, for creating this experience. Thank you, Brian, for loving and supporting it for us. Thank you, sweet baby Isadora, for the amazing love you have given me, for the light you have brought to my life and the world, for the connection between us that I know will transcend space and time, touching both shore and horizon forever.

expectations

2010-04-22T06:41:00.005-04:00

Last night was one of those nights when things did not go as I had expected. The internet, phone, and cable were out, so some of the things I had planned I couldn't do (post a blog, or look for a vintage embroidery pattern for a napkin special order I need to do). I felted another alpaca bag that I knitted for another special order and it came out totally different from the last one I knitted. It's expensive yarn - not the kind you want to make mistakes with. Dora has been regressing in her potty training - intentionally having "accidents" on our bed - so I had a set of sheets to wash that I hadn't planned to do. At bedtime, she got up three times before staying in bed. The third time, she wandered into the dining room naked, having removed her footed pajamas and pull-up before coming out to tell me she had to go potty.

This morning I woke up exhausted, partly from an interrupted night of sleep due to restless pets, snoring husband, and wakeful baby. As I sat up in bed to put on my glasses, I wondered just how long I can keep this up. I have all these little side projects, a full-time job, a marriage, a child, friendships to maintain, pets to care for, a house that is begging for attention, a partner for my blueberry bush patiently waiting to be planted in the backyard. All of these - for the most part - are things that I enjoy, yet I feel so much chaos and tension with all of them swirling around me that I often feel completely overwhelmed and unsettled. It's not the same kind of obsessive anxiety I have struggled with in the past, but more of an ever-present buzzing, a background noise preventing full focus on any one thing.

I accomplished one thing last night - creating a revised header for the blog, with a grass background for spring and summer. The weathered picnic table at my dad's house will return as the background this fall, because I love that as well, but it felt like time for a little modification, a little brightening up of the welcome to this space. I finished a baby gift for a friend as well, and if I get it in the mail quickly it might actually arrive before the baby does. Of course, we walked the dogs, too, and picked dandelions gone to seed to blow on, and snuggled on the bed. Those little moments felt like time well spent.

Last weekend, Mandy and I had our first market weekend. We were completely set up and ready to go by twenty after seven. Our little table, covered in burlap and decorated with little bottles of spring flowers, looked amazing. We were pleased to discover that no one else at the market had quite the same kinds of things we did. There were two others with textiles but with totally different aesthetics, and no other knitters. We had many visitors, saw old friends, met new ones, chatted with potential customers, basked in many positive and warm comments. I missed our first sale, at the other side of the market buying kale and asparagus. We each sold a few things, and got one special order. We handed out many of our business cards. Neither of us came home with our antique cigar boxes bursting with cash, but we came home wealthier just the same, feeling like we'd accomplished something, started something special that we can both be proud of and enjoy.

I didn't sell a single knitted item, even though I'm much more confident in my knitting skills than in my sewing and embroidery. Perhaps it is the season, perhaps its that my knitted items aren't as lovely as I think they are - I'm not sure. My prized white alpaca clutch was lovingly touched by many - it is very, very soft - but it didn't sell. I went into the market hoping that we each would sell one thing, so I left very happy, but surprised. It hadn't really gone the way I thought it might. That's ok, though - the way it went was still good, just different, unexpected. Perhaps this is the way I should try to feel about everything I do. Just because it isn't what I expect, just because things don't happen right when I want them to or exactly the way I imagined them doesn't mean its not still a good, positive thing. It's easy to get overburdened and distracted by the background noise and the cable being out and the naked toddler sneaking up on you when she's supposed to be in bed. The key is to let the other things - the things that do go well even if unexpected - drown out the other noise.

busy

2010-04-14T20:14:00.005-04:00

I have been really, really, really busy. We've had family in town, and work has been hectic, and every evening has been filled to the limit with crafting - getting ready for our first market weekend this Saturday. I'm thrilled that Mandy and I were accepted to sell our craft items at the Asheville City Market, but also overwhelmed that the first market date is this Saturday and I have hours and hours of work to do.

I've been so busy that I missed the weeping cherries in bloom on Blue Ridge Avenue. They must have been in bloom for all of 12 hours, because I'm on that street nearly every day - somehow I missed them. I nearly missed my lilac blooming, but caught sight of it tonight when I let the dogs out after work. I made dinner with the kitchen window open, the scent of lilac and spring grass floating into the kitchen.

I made quite possibly the best dinner I've ever made tonight. I don't know why I've never tried it until now, but tonight we had gnocchi with cherry tomatoes, zucchini, fresh basil, lemon, and butter. It was so delicious. I shouldn't have taken the time to make it, but it was so perfect, so lovely. This summer, I plan on making lots and lots of variations of that dish - gnocchi with asparagus, peas, lemon and tarragon; gnocchi with roasted vegetables; gnocchi with fresh tomato sauce.

After dinner, Dora and I walked the dogs. This was the first night I really noticed all the birds, a loud Mockingbird serenading us as we climbed the hill. I handed Dora a dandelion gone to seed, showed her how to blow on it just right to make the white fluffy seeds float all around us in a cloud. After bath, Dora laid on her bed and looked up at the red woodcut on her wall. "Mama, I see sheep!" she said. I told her that Grandma Carol made that. "For me?" she asked. I told her that Grandma Carol was my mommy. She said, "Carol is your friend?" "Yes" I said, "Carol is my friend". "Ooh, I like Carol" she said. My eyes welled up as I thought of us having our first conversation about my mom. I've told Dora about my mom before, but this is the first time we've actually talked about her. It was very, very sweet and very special.

I am so busy, I should have rushed through tonight - thrown together leftovers, skipped the walk, put off the bath for another night. But we had such a perfect little evening together - beautiful and fragrant and lovely and touching. I could have missed it, just like the weeping cherries. I am so, so glad I did not.

slip between the sheets

2010-04-06T20:59:00.006-04:00

Last week Dora and I traveled around Ohio for my uncle's funeral. We stayed with my in-laws, my beloved Aunt Joanne, and in my childhood home with my dad and his fiance. Each night, in a different bed and with a different bed time, we snuggled up together for sleep. For being dragged all over the state, being asked to sit still during a funeral service, and having no consistency in diet or schedule for 4 days, Dora did incredibly well. She had a few meltdowns but was overall a sweet little angel, breathing softly in the bed next to me, sucking her fingers and holding her night-night close.

I thought about my mother a lot over the weekend. I was in Ohio for her brother's funeral, surrounded by members of her family - people who knew and loved and understood my mother, who miss her in the way that I do, who remember her sense of humor and her personality. It was Easter weekend, a gloriously warm and sunny spring weekend, with daffodils all around - a time of year that my mother loved. As I slipped between the sheets next to little Dora, dwarfed by the big bed, I thought of sharing a bed with my own mom as a kid when we would travel - in hotels, at family members' houses. I have an older brother, and when beds were in short supply I slept with my mom and my brother slept with my dad. It was always such a treat - a special night for just mom and I. She would jokingly tell me not to kick her, but I know now that she probably - at least sometimes - loved those times as much as I did.

At the funeral, my cousin's husband had put together a little book of stories and photographs about Uncle Roger's life. The book included a story about my grandfather, Carl Brady, being one of only two men not laid off from a job at a door and sash company. Each week, Grandpa Brady took five dollars to each of the men who had been laid off. When the stock market crashed and accounts were frozen, my Grandma Brady's father, Charles Albert Keuhn, let Grandpa Brady borrow the money to keep up with the payments. My Grandparents went on to be successful business owners, running a lumber company in Barberton, Ohio for many years.

I hold on to these stories of my mother's family more strongly than I ever have in the past. Much of the genealogy of my family has been researched and established - my mom and her sister have worked for years gathering that information, even traveling through Tennessee and North Carolina with my dad in search of answers. I feel fortunate that those details have been worked out, and it's fascinating to look back at the charts and dates and imagine the lives that have led to my own unique experience. It's the stories that go along with these charts and dates that I hope we don't lose hold of - the details and insignificant moments that could easily get overlooked but that paint a picture of those we have lost in a more vivid, colorful light.

I have often envisioned myself gathering together letters from my mother to try to more clearly understand her experience as a mom. I have already caught a glimpse of some of this through the letters I have found - a letter written when my older brother was just a toddler, into everything and keeping my parents on their toes just like Dora does now; cards sent later to my Grandma Brady, detailing our latest accomplishments and challenges as young adults. Sometimes these notes seem filled with insignificant moments or mundane details, but to see my mother's handwriting, to read her words again - even a to-do list can become priceless, can point to commonalities I would otherwise have no way of knowing.

On Easter Sunday, after church, Dora and I drove south through the sunshine. In West Virginia, the lumbering hills around us were just beginning to turn green. In Virginia, we traveled through bucolic farmland, vibrant green fields dotted with yellow daffodils and forsythia, pink weeping cherries, white Bradford pears. We played "spot the farm animal" and ate raisins. We saw baby lambs, little calves lying in fields with their mamas, a spindly legged sable colt silhouetted with its mother against the Virginia sky. It was such a beautiful, beautiful day, even if spent in the car.

I try to reconnect with my mom now through those old stories, and by staying close with her family, with photos and letters and pure reflection. What I didn't anticipate when I lost my mom is the way we would bump each other in the universe, time compressing between us as we slip between the sheets next to our daughters. Joy and sorrow and love and beauty collapse in on one another, and my mom and I are in the same place even if for just a moment - regarding a lovely spring day hand in hand in hand. When I gave birth to Dora, I felt a connection to all the mothers in my line - united by the transformative power of birth. I did not know then, as I am beginning to see now, that the experience of mothering brings that connection, too. Whether mundane or profound, that is a detail I am so thankful I have noticed, so moved to have experienced. The sun shines on me now just as it did on my mama, even if the clouds are gathering sometimes, even when the day's journey is too long. In that way, in that place and time, we are together again, now and always.

peace

2010-04-01T05:54:00.002-04:00

My uncle Roger, my mom's brother, passed away this week, and I'm headed to Ohio for his funeral. Uncle Roger has two beautiful daughters who are two of the kindest, most compassionate women I have ever met. He also has four wonderful grandchildren, a great-grandchild, and a second great-grandchild on the way. He was my mom's oldest sibling. He lived in Ohio all of his life, but traveled through military service and to spend time with his daughter, a missionary in Ecuador. He loved airplanes, history, woodworking. He and his wife, Erma, were married in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, in 1952.

Rest in peace, Uncle Roger.

orangette brownies

2010-03-29T20:48:00.005-04:00

I was inspired to begin writing this blog after stumbling across the food blog Orangette. I read the author's words and studied her photography and thought, "I bet I could do that!" At the time, Molly Wizenberg, creator of Orangette, had not only built a loyal readership, she had wooed editors at Simon and Shuster as well as Bon Appetit, had met and married her future husband through the blog, and was on the cusp of becoming a restauranteur with said husband. To say that her blog is a success is a bit of an understatement.

Once I began writing, and shooting all of my early photographs with my trusty iPhone, I saw that not only did blogging NOT come with an immediate rise to fame, it was quite a bit of hard work as well. Although the blog itself has evolved into territory I didn't really anticipate, I still love writing about and taking pictures of food. I'm pretty sure I'll never be a cookbook author or a columnist in Bon Appetit, but as a person who loves to read about, think about, and create homecooked wonderfulness (or something like it) every day, I'm still going to be a food blogger, at least now and then.

So, in honor of the blog that inspired me to start this journey, here are some Orangette brownies, inspired by the French confection of the same name and adapted from several brownie recipes, including one in my trusty Moosewood Cookbook. These brownies feature that lovely, nearly indescribable intersection between orange and chocolate. They aren't too sweet and, based on actual scientific research (and by this I mean a group of my closest friends and their kids), are appealing to both adults and children.

Orangette Brownies

5 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate
2 sticks butter, room temperature
1 and 1/4 cups brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup white sugar
5 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
zest of one orange
1 cup toasted and coarsely chopped almonds
1/2 cup flour

Preheat oven to 350. Gently melt the chocolate per package instructions and set aside to cool. Cream the butter and sugars until light and fluffy, reserving the wax paper butter wrappers to grease your 9 x 13 inch baking pan. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. Stir in the vanilla and orange zest. Slowly stir in the flour, stirring just enough to combine. Fold in the almonds. Spread into the prepared pan.

Bake for 20 - 25 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Serve while still warm, with a smile and your loftiest aspirations.

tiny paper bird

2010-03-25T06:18:00.012-04:00

When I was pregnant, my chiropractor, who ended up having a significant and very positive impact on my pregnancy and birth experience, told me that she would love to give birth again, but she wasn't so sure about raising another child. At the time, standing on the precipice of the greatest unknown any woman will ever face, I could not understand what she was saying. In almost every form - literature, film, television, stories told by strangers in grocery stores - birth is depicted as the most difficult, painful, unpleasant, frightening experience one can go through. Not having experienced childbirth or child rearing yet, I could not imagine that raising a child could be more difficult than giving birth to one.

My own childbirth experience, it turns out, was actually quite beautiful. That is not to say that it wasn't difficult, painful, at times unpleasant, or frightening, because it was all of these things. But it was also the most magical, powerful, earth-shattering, life-changing thing I have ever been privileged to experience. I remember absolutely everything about that day, and I hope I never, ever forget it. And I can say in complete honesty that I look forward to doing it again someday.

Amazing experiences aside, raising a child is, at least from where I sit now, far more difficult than giving birth. Even on the most perfect of days, it is trying, tiring, exasperating. It's also lovely and beautiful - but as often as it is pleasant it is unpleasant. Yesterday was just such a day. It was a sunny, beautiful day. We had a sweet walk around the block with the dogs, admiring the daffodils, staring up at the weeping cherries on Blue Ridge that will soon be impossibly beautiful in their soft pink blooms. We played in the rock pile with the sand toys, sun shining on our backs.

We came inside and Dora watched the Muppets while I made dinner. The food took longer than I had hoped, and we had already gotten a late start. We were both growing hungry and tired. Bedtime got pushed back later than it should. We had to skip her bath due to the late hour. The night ended with a time-out before bed, Dora in the entrance-way crying and me in the kitchen, sipping a glass of wine and watching the timer on the microwave count down. As we sat in her room for our last goodnight snuggle, I found myself overcome with grief, missing my mom as I often do when things aren't going so well.

Sometimes the hardest thing about being a parent is admitting you need help, or the days that come when you know you need to ask for it. Sometimes the hardest thing about being a parent is discovering the things you want for your child but don't or can't have - financial security, health, a clean house, a perfect marriage, a job you can explain to a toddler, a grandma Carol.

I've been blessed by friends and family that have helped me in so many ways - with food, or childcare, or simple understanding. There is nothing quite so comforting as being able to tell a friend what a terrible night you had with your kid, and hearing not only that they think that's ok, but that they did, too. Even strangers sometimes give us what we need - the sympathetic mom at the grocery store, the man at the car wash helping me load the car seat back into the car, the waitress at the sushi restaurant who loves Dora, who brings her treats and tiny paper origami birds.

That's the thing about parenting - and birth - that have surprised me the most. It's like it gives you a new set of eyes to see the world through - eyes that can see so much more detail, both the good and the bad. You see the hurdles and the challenges and the bedtimes punctuated with time-outs with greater clarity. You see the tragedies of the world in a new light, as they impact other people's children and you imagine how your heart would break if it was your child being impacted (or perhaps it IS your child). But you see the beauty, too - the support of friends and family, the value in admitting you need help, the privilege of helping someone else in turn, the beauty of a tiny scrap of paper folded with skilled hands. If nothing else, becoming a parent has given me a new perspective, one that I know I am blessed to have, even on the most difficult of days.

something special

2010-03-22T20:48:00.000-04:00

I remember the first time someone who was not an immediate family member or close family friend complimented one of my photographs. I was is in high school, participating in a summer program called Governor's Scholars, and had a black and white photograph of some morning glories in a student show at the end of the program. These were the days when we shot film, and developed it ourselves, and printed it ourselves. The morning glories were growing against the exterior of my parent's house - the soft curves of nature juxtaposed against the hard lines of human settlement. An older gentleman came up to me and commented on the image, noting that I had quite an eye. Later, my mom told me who he was - the director of the College of Fine Arts at Ohio University.

There is nothing quite like getting the approval of someone who isn't obligated by blood or relationship to provide it to you. That is not to say that encouragement, love, support, and kind words from friends, colleagues, and acquaintances isn't important, because it really, really is. It's amazing to me that my friends and family somehow seem to know just when I need a boost. I can be feeling really, really low about the blog, or about my writing or photographs, or things in general, and out-of-the-blue I get a lovely encouraging comment, a complimentary email I wasn't expecting, a vote of confidence from someone who doesn't even know how much I need it. But when someone outside of your circle gives you that boost, it feels a little bit different, makes you feel like maybe you do have something unique to say, or something special to offer, or an eye that brings new perspective to the world.

About a week ago, I approached someone electronically who I don't know well and asked for a chance to chat with her about being a writer. I love writing this blog - and am committed to continuing it - and I also feel like maybe I have something more to say, something that I'd like to see reach a wider audience. We all dream about doing something different - and for me, I dream now and then of making a career out of my creative aspirations - writing, crafting, photography. I don't think it's a bad thing in any way to want to do something you love every day - in fact, isn't that what we should all be aspiring to? And aspirations aren't a bad thing either. I thought perhaps chatting with someone doing just that would help me sort through some ideas.

Though the initial response was positive, the next day I was surprised to find a blog post by this author ranting - and that was a word she used - about people who want advice about writing. Of the many opinions and frustrations aired in the essay, the one that most caught my eye was critical of people who want to publish books. The author asks why people can't be satisfied by writing for the sake of writing. I found that to be an interesting comment coming from someone who herself is a published author, no doubt making a living from writing, speaking about her writing, and the like.

I felt disheartened by this response, mostly because it hadn't been given to me directly - I'd much rather have received an honest answer about a busy schedule, or a plain disinterest in talking to yet another aspiring author. But it also hurt because, at least for a few days, I contemplated her words with the sort of negative self-view that is easily sprouted from someone else's criticism. Criticism, it seems, is equally as powerful as encouragement, if only in the opposite direction.

The truth is, I've done a lot of creative things for the sake of doing them - and for other reasons - for a long time. I've been a photographer since I got my first camera - a red Pentax point-and-shoot - from my parents as a kid, when I shot frame after frame of every animal around me. I've been a writer since I got a letter to the editor published in Cricket magazine when I was about 8 years old. I've been an artist since I sat at the kitchen table drawing, or painting, or making something out of playdough. I've been a knitter since I sat by my mother's bedside while she battled cancer, searching for a pastime we could explore and share together even as her strength waned. I've done all these things for the sake of doing them, for the love of the people who inspired me to do them, for the pure enjoyment of putting pen to paper, or light to photographic emulsion, or needle to yarn. On rare occasions, I have done these things for profit - even successfully. There has been value - and pride - in doing those things each time, no matter what the reason, no matter what my motivations might mean to anyone else.

I'm married to an artist - a musician who is making his way in the world peddling his craft. He plays music because he loves to - for the sake of playing - and because he wants to make a living at it. I have no illusions or romantic misunderstandings about how difficult this is. Owning your own business is hard. Making a living creatively means working, every single day, and sometimes losing a bit of your love for your craft because you have to do it even when you don't feel like it.

In spite of that knowledge, I'm about to being a new venture I'm very excited about - creating for more than just the sake of creating. With the support and partnership of my great friend Mandy, I'm branching out into a little side business - a craft venture - to see where it can take us. Stay tuned for more information on how we'll be peddling these wares - and in the meantime check out our website. I'll be doing this - as well as my regular job, and writing this blog, and taking pictures (and being a mom and a wife and a friend and a foodie) - for the sake of doing it, and to pay the bills, and to answer some unanswerable question within, and to see where it leads. To me, that's something special, no matter what anyone else thinks.

daffodil

2010-03-19T21:15:00.004-04:00

It officially feels like spring, finally. I had a meeting today an hour and a half away, at a lower elevation. On the drive over, I saw the seasons progress. This morning it was cold, a cloudless blue sky at sunrise, marked with only the searing white contrails of four planes heading west. The sunrise as I came over Old Fort Mountain was breathtaking. Coming down the mountain, the sun was warmer, the season further progressed. Not only were the daffodils blooming yellow along the interstate, but the cherry trees glowed pink as well.

My absolute favorite flowers are daffodils. I love the way they signify the arrival of spring, our annual reminder of the season of new beginnings. I love how strong and faithful they are - returning every year, over and over again. I love that they are simple, and unassuming, and bright sunny yellow. I love that you can find daffodils marking old homesteads, lining paths long gone in abandoned coal mining towns, bordering front stoops now found only in memory and photograph. We gave out daffodil bulbs as our wedding favors, and I love to think that every year at this time, a little reminder of our lovely day arrives in the yards and gardens of friends and family around the world. I love that daffodils return even after those who planted them are gone. I love that the daffodils my mother tended are still signaling spring at my family home in Ohio, even though she's no longer there to enjoy them.

Today was a perfectly beautiful spring day. I spent most of it working - have spent most of the past several weeks working more than I like to - but with the longer evening light we managed to fit in an hour of front yard playtime after work. In recent weeks I have had so little time for Dora - because of work, because of other new projects, because of sheer exhaustion from all of my responsibilities. That little hour of playtime in the sun was perfect.

It was perfect for building a rock sculpture on the steps.

It was perfect for gathering sticks from the yard, beginning to clean out the beds. It was perfect to admire the little spikes of green slowly emerging from the earth, the sweet purple crocus already blooming as the yard's earliest spring arrival.

It was a perfect reminder of the new beginning that spring represents, that warm days are around the corner. It was a perfect day to think of all the daffodils emerging all around us, strong and beautiful and unassuming, quietly honoring the hands that have tended them ages ago. It was a perfect day to feel the sun on our faces, looking forward and looking back all at once.

waffles with pure maple syrup

2010-03-08T20:12:00.005-05:00

It is a scientific fact that smells can elicit powerful memories. Walk into a room where someone is wearing a familiar scent from your past, and its like walking into a time machine. Step into someone else's home with that certain undefinable sent, and you can close your eyes and pretend you're back at your grandparent's house once more. The portion of the brain that processes smell is part of the limbic system, where memories are also stored. I remember this being referred to in college biology classes as the "smell brain". That close link within the brain means that smells often bring to us a strong, nearly Déjà vu experience of memory.

Though not based in scientific fact, I believe that tastes can have the same effect. Lemonade has never quite tasted the same to me since an unfortunate combination of vodka, lemons, and sugar rendered its taste unpleasant. A fresh snap pea, snow pea, or green bean transports me back to childhood, sneaking a bean or two off the plants in my parent's garden while they harvested produce for the farmer's market.

Pure maple syrup - something I consider a requirement at any respectable breakfast - reminds me of childhood, too. One year we had the good fortune of visiting my parent's friends Janet and Bob in northern Ohio at sugaring time, when we got to see first-hand the production of maple syrup. Janet is a childhood friend of my mother's, and at the time she and her husband lived in a big, beautiful house in Burton, Ohio. I was completely fascinated by Janet and Bob - they had a big family, with many fostered and adopted children. They were skydivers. They had built their own pool. I think during that visit that my mom and Janet hadn't seen each other in years. They were surprised to discover they had the same bedspread and were feeding their families on the same colorful Fiestaware dishes. (Years later, visiting Janet and Bob at their new home in Georgia, I was awed by Janet's impressive and beautiful Fiestaware collection).

We all piled into the fiery sugarshack to watch as the freshly gathered maple sap was boiled down to syrup. It was a slow process, requiring great patience which I surely did not have at the time. I remember a lot of stirring, and steaming, and waiting. I must have had maple syrup before, but the next morning, after having seen the process firsthand, the syrup tasted sweeter than ever over Janet's french toast. I distinctly remember that special breakfast - where I sat, the tall ladderback chairs, the shape of the kitchen, the bright dishes all over the table. To this day, making a big, special breakfast for out-of-town guests is one of my favorite acts of hospitality.

Most recently, Brian's brother Mark and his wife Jenn came to visit, so I made waffles with fresh fruit and scrambled eggs before we took a drive out to Highlands last Sunday morning. This waffle recipe is an adaptation of several different recipes, with beaten egg whites to add volume and texture, pure vanilla extract for its perfect mellow sweetness, and real maple syrup for everything it represents - trees, nature, purity, warmth, and memory.

Waffles for the Out-of-Town Guests

2 cups whole milk
2 Tablespoons white vinegar
2 cups all purpose flour
2 Tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
2 large eggs, separated
1 teaspoon vanilla
powdered sugar and pure maple syrup, for serving

Preheat oven to 200, and place a cookie sheet topped with a wire rack in the oven. Combine milk and vinegar, stir, and let stand for 5 minutes. In a medium bowl, sift together dry ingredients. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. In a large bowl, whisk the milk, egg yolks, butter, and vanilla until combined. Gently add the flour mixture to the milk mixture, stirring just until combined. Fold in one half of the egg whites using a rubber spatula, then fold in the remaining egg whites just until combined. Pour batter onto hot waffle iron. When done, transfer to wire rack in oven to keep warm. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve with fresh fruit and pure maple syrup.

fine and better

2010-03-04T20:21:00.006-05:00

Tonight, I didn't have the energy for anything more exciting than pasta with red sauce, dressed up with a splash of red wine like my mother used to do. I suppose my lack of energy might have had something to do with the fact that Dora had to have not one, but two time-outs before leaving school today. I've just returned from a business trip, having spent the last several nights away from home, away from Brian, the pets, the house, and Dora. I should've slept wonderfully but for some reason I tossed and turned away from home, dreaming of work, waking up thinking about my family, sleet lashing the windows on the 15th floor. After days away, I want to come home to peace and simplicity and a obedient little girl who I can play with and enjoy, but who goes to bed when she's supposed to. Instead, I have two time-outs before even leaving daycare, spilled milk in the kitchen, and a toddler now crying in the hallway about bedtime instead of peacefully slumbering at 8:30 like her little colleagues probably are.

Dora is, quite honestly, a delightful and easy child most of the time. I think we've gotten off really easy for the most part. She has always slept well and eaten well and been fun and happy, usually. She doesn't try my patience very often, in truth, but unfortunately when she does I seem to have very little patience to give. Tonight I found myself thinking of the saying, "you can't be all things to all people". Indeed. In fact, I can barely be some things to a few people, and not even everything to the people closest to me. By bedtime, I am completely spent - I have nothing left to give. And when bedtime drags on for hours, I eventually just have to close the door and walk out, the result of which is a tear-streaked face peeking out at me from the hallway.

In an earlier bedtime attempt, I remembered something my mom used to do at bedtime. My dad would read to us - I remember lots of Richard Scarry, and Maurice Sendak, and Dr. Seuss. After stories, I'd climb under the covers and wait for my mom to come check on me. I'd lay with my back to the door, so I couldn't see her come in, and she'd sneak in and sit behind me on the bed. Then, she'd run her hand across my back, down my arms, over my legs, making imaginary check marks all over me with her finger. I can remember just what it felt like - the weight of her sitting down on the bed behind me, the way the mattress would pitch a bit towards her, the feeling of her finger floating above me. I used to absolutely love this - it would relax me, and help me fall asleep.

As I laid next to Dora tonight, rubbing her back and waiting for her breathing to slow with sleep, this memory of my own mother and her bedtime ritual flooded back to me. Tears sprung to my eyes, and my feelings of longing for her rushed back once more. Grief is a funny thing in that way, sneaking up and springing on you from some dark corner, where you didn't even know it was hiding.

It's at my lowest moments when I miss my mom the most. That is not to say that I don't miss her in the good moments, too, because I do. I think of my mom when I see the first crocus of spring, wishing I could share it with her. I wish she could see the crepe myrtle in my front yard, see my little sweet house and my little sweet life, see my latest creative endeavor, see my little baby girl. I miss her then in a wistful way, often with a smile and a tear, thinking of how she would love this or that. But when I am worried, or stressed out, or fighting with my husband, or unable to calmly parent my daughter, or facing a hard decision - I think of my mom, and her sense of humor, and her advice, and I feel like my heart could break with the pain of her loss. I just want to lay down in bed, with my back to the door, and feel her sit behind me and put her little checkmarks all over me, making sure I'm fine, making it better.

Dora is in bed finally - one last try that worked. I laid her down in bed, covered her up, kissed her forehead and told her I love her. I laid my head down next to hers on the pillow, rubbed her back, listened to her sucking her fingers as her breathing eased. I ran my hand across her arm, making imaginary checkmarks with my finger against her soft cotton pajamas. What else can I do? My mom is not here to make me feel fine and better anymore. I've got to do it for myself, by being that for Dora - by sitting on her bed, and rubbing her back, and giving her a childhood memory that might comfort her in years to come. I've got to do it for myself by remembering my mom - remembering how she loved me, how she comforted me - and holding the memory of that love in my heart to keep me warm, to give me strength, to make me feel fine and better.

coconut vanilla bean custards

2010-02-25T20:53:00.007-05:00

Last summer, I got a mysterious package in the mail. There was a return address, but I didn't recognize it, and there was little else to identify the sender - no note, no name. Inside was a little treasure trove of kitchen goodies - a packet of gray French sea salt, glass jars of shallot-pepper seasoning, herbes de Provence, Vietnamese Cassia cinnamon, a pretty wooden bud vase. The package also included a long, thin glass container of whole vanilla beans - dark, exotic, intensely aromatic and absolutely beautiful.

There is little in this world so wonderfully delicious as pure vanilla. When given the choice, I almost always choose vanilla ice cream. I like to throw a bit of vanilla extract into any sweet recipe, even if not called for - waffles, apple crisp, caramel corn. I have always loved baking, and have burned through many a dark brown bottle of pure vanilla extract. But in all those years I've never actually used real vanilla beans. My never having used them before, coupled with their mysterious origins, made these vanilla beans the most special of all.

I later learned that the mystery package came from my friend Nick, a fellow foodie whose been busily mastering all things culinary since early childhood. Though we're now separated by a great distance, one way we now stay in touch is to send each other links to deliciously written and photographed food blogs, and by supporting each other in our own blogging adventures. The little mystery package was a wonderful surprise, but learning who it was from made it even sweeter.

I made this recipe for coconut vanilla bean custards for Valentine's Day this year. The recipe makes several servings and kept well in the refrigerator for several days.

Coconut Vanilla Bean Custards
adapted from Martha Stewart Food

1/2 cup plus 2 Tablespoons finely shredded unsweetened coconut
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1/4 cup sugar
1 envelope (1/4 ounce) unflavored gelatin
1 cup half and half
1 whole vanilla bean
1/8 teaspoon salt
strawberries, for garnish

Toast coconut in 350 degree oven until browned, watching carefully so it does not burn. In a small saucepan, heat milk and sugar over medium, stirring often, until sugar dissolves and milk is steaming, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat, stir in 1/2 cup toasted coconut, cover, and let stand 15 minutes. In a large bowl, sprinkle gelatin over 1/4 cup cold water and let soften for 5 minutes. Strain warm coconut and milk mixture through a fine mesh sieve into gelatin, discarding coconut. Whisk until gelatin dissolves, then whisk in half and half and salt. Use a sharp paring knife to split the vanilla bean and carefully scrape all of its seeds into the bowl. Reserve the empty pod for another use. Divide the mixture between 6 4-ounce ramekins or custard cups and refrigerate until set, about 3 hours. Top with remaining toasted coconut and garnish with strawberry, and enjoy with someone you love.

sunshine

2010-02-22T20:34:00.005-05:00

This weekend we finally had a glimpse of spring - two sunnier days warm enough to get outside. It felt like the first meal enjoyed after begin sick, the first chance to come up for air from a long, tedious job. It felt so good to finally breathe fresh air again, to feel warmth on our faces and play outside after so long indoors.

I had a creative weekend - sewing and knitting, baking, meeting with my friend Mandy to talk about our new creative venture (more on that exciting news later). Dora played while we felted little wool purses, marveling at the yarn's unpredictable transformation. In the afternoon, while Dora slept, I set up my sewing machine, bringing to life a few ideas I had been envisioning for weeks. As the sun streamed in through my window, casting light across my work, I thought how I could be satisfied, fulfilled even, by doing this all the time. A real artist, I'm sure, doesn't have her sewing studio in her dining room - along with the home office, the playroom, and the recording studio - but it was a lovely little daydream for a few minutes.

In the afternoon I took Dora to the playground. I chased her around while she explored, snapping pictures. The sun was low in the sky now, casting long shadows, peeking between the wooden slats of the play structures. I could barely keep up with Dora, ending up with lots of photos of mulch and wood, a tiny flash of pink t-shirt streaking off the corner of the frame. On the swings, an older girl asked Dora what her name was. I answered, and she said, "like the Explorer?". "yes, like Dora the Explorer." Dora got away from me at one point and slid down the big slide with me at the top, unable to catch her at the bottom. She fell off the end of the slide, landing face-first in the mulch. No tears, though - just jumping up and brushing herself off, getting back to business.

On Sunday, I sat across from the stained glass windows glowing from the outside in, illuminated by the morning sun. I listened to the sermon, about the wilderness within us, and the wilderness around us, and how we navigate that, and learn from it, and grow with it. Later in the service we heard that about a member of the church who had suffered an aneurysm at work on Friday. He will not survive, but his partner and family members are graciously allowing his medical team to keep him alive until recipients are identified who will find new life through his donated organs. Even in grief, these people have found a way to let the sunlight into someone else's life - into the lives of strangers. I was moved - am moved - beyond words.

I had a lovely weekend - lots of sunshine, both literal and figurative - but I still found time to bellyache about what I'd like to change about my life, still found myself jealous of another's success, still had timeouts and toddler screaming matches and unfinished loads of laundry. But, I was reminded, too, of how all of this is so fleeting, so much a blessing even when it might not feel like it. I was reminded of the incredible strength of love, of how, even in our darkest moments, we can let love guide us to a place where our selflessness saves someone else, where we open the curtains so the sun may shine on another.

I watch my girl run through the frame, explore and play with abandon, fall down on her face and get right up again. My heart could burst with love for her, hot and glowing like the sun inside my chest. What I never knew before becoming a parent is how much my I would learn from my child, how much she would teach me about love and light and life. She is my sunlight, my warmth after cold, my reminder of all that is beautiful in this world. She reminds me that the sun is going to shine again - winter never lasts forever. It is up to us to get into that light, to be filled by it, and to revel in the blessed opportunity to feel our faces warmed, to find a way to share it with those we love and those we don't even know yet.

valentine

2010-02-12T20:17:00.005-05:00

This week Dora and I made Valentine's for her classmates. When I heard they were having a Valentine's Day party in her room this week, I started thinking about what to make. Growing up, I had this great book called "Making Things", full of projects and ideas, ranging from giant paper mache sculptures to fingerprint creatures. I used to love reading through that book, thinking about what it would be like to make the projects and dreaming of doing them. Now, years later, I STILL love reading through any kind of instructional material for creative projects - sewing projects, knitting patterns, cookbooks - and I do the same thing, imagine what it would be like to make the skirt or knit the sweater or bake the bread. That love for reading each step and thinking it through is really what drew me to cooking, knitting, sewing, etc. in the first place. There's something about being told to start here and end here, and being shown what the results will be, which is very comforting to me.

I remember making a lot of potato print projects with my parents as a kid. Printing was something that happened a lot in my house. My father inherited an elaborate collection of letterpress materials from his father and uncle, and for as long as I can remember dabbled around in his basement printshop creating cards and broadsides and stationery. One of my mother's art mediums was woodcutting - she created a series of intricate animal prints from solid wood blocks that she carved early in her career as an artist. The unicorn, the cat, the elephant, the rabbit - a menagerie of tiny stripes and circles and fine lines in a multitude of colors marched through our house. I think we probably got into potato prints more due to their economy than as a simple derivative of my mom's more detailed carvings or my dad's printshop, but either way making potato prints reminds me of childhood.

So, I picked up a potato at the grocery store on my lunch hour, and that evening, after dinner, I carved several different heart shapes out of the potato. We used red finger paint and white card stock and stamped away, making a few ugly, globby messes before getting our technique down. Dora didn't want to stop when it was time to put our stuff away - begging for more paper and paint. Last night, I cut the card stock into quarters, writing a quick message on each one for Dora's little classmates, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and her great-grandma Brause.
Brian said Dora proudly carried her little envelope of Valentine's into school, and tonight we sorted through all the Valentine's in the construction paper heart folder her teachers made for her. Little Asher drew a picture of his and Dora's house, Evan sent along a yummy heart-shaped rice crispy treat, Brooklyn sent a set of princess stickers. Dora's sweet teachers sent home some Valentine's for her, too, and I instantly regretted not making Valentine's for them. How could I forget those sweet ladies, who have loved my baby girl from infancy, feeding and comforting and watching over her with as much love and attention as they afford their own children? We pay a pretty penny for their love, but the way they love Dora, and the way she loves them back, is true and honest and worth every cent.

I was supposed to babysit for a friend tonight, but the plans fell through - in part because of snow, but mostly because Brian is sick, and I feel like I might be getting sick. I so want to repay this friend, who has helped me out so much lately, but it was not to be today. Our plans for tomorrow have been cancelled, too. It seems like nearly every time I plan something - a dinner party or a date or a babysitting gig - someone gets sick, it snows, something interferes and I have to cancel. I can't even remember to make Valentine's cards for the sweetest ladies on earth who take care of my little girl while I slug away under the fluorescent lights.

All of this makes me feel like such an unreliable person - the person who no one can count on because something always gets in the way, the person who cancels at the last minute, who forgets or falls short or just doesn't get it right. I love being creative - love coming up with designs and projects and using my vision or my words to create something new - but sometimes I wish there were step-by-step instructions for everything. I want to be the person who does things right - who follows the directions and gets good results every time - but I'm not. Nobody is - not even Martha Stewart or Oprah or Thomas Keller or Anne Lammott.

The snow is falling again outside, and all around us is a blanket of white. I've got a family to take care of - a husband who doesn't feel good, a baby who's sleeping, a kitty with a bad tooth. I've got a knitting project to finish and a craving for popcorn. Maybe the person I really need to make the Valentine for is myself. My friend Emily was writing about this very thing the other day, and as she so deftly pointed out, loving ourselves is often the hardest thing to do, the lowest on the priority list, the Valentine we really forget to make. There aren't instructions for this one - the only thing we have is the starting point.

Start here.

silver lining

2010-02-09T17:34:00.007-05:00

The past two days have been the kinds of days that force me to conjure up some glimmer of hope, some positivity, some silver lining in an otherwise bleak landscape. Yesterday, for example, included an unwieldy stack of chairs getting the best of me, an unexpected (and, it turns out, very expensive) car repair, and another tiny, predictable disappointment - one I had anticipated but that hurt a bit nonetheless. At the end of the day, I was exhausted and driving the company car because my husband was driving my car while his was towed away unusable. It was the last straw - a reckless, angry driver who thought I cut him off followed me from Dora's daycare center to my neighborhood. I took a detour to the police station, which finally deterred him, but not before I had become totally shaken by the experience.

Today we learned the full extent of the cost of the car repair, muddled our way through all manner of logistics to solve our transportation woes, and puzzled over the 4th day in a row in which our usually charming, happy girl has been fussy and complaining of feeling bad. Both Brian and I felt like we were losing it today - more than once I felt tears taking over while trying to work, trying to stay on top of the impossibly stressful tasks that face me in the coming months of my job, feeling more trapped than ever by responsibilities, emails, meetings, new debts.

In the midst of all of this, I have been reminded of the solace that can be found in simple beauties and pleasures. Last night, I found comfort in the rhythm and familiarity of cooking, in the promise of spring found in rows of green asparagus, in the simple deliciousness created by combining them in a hot oven with olive oil and coarse salt.

Amid my current turmoils I found joy in the fact that Dora's new, short haircut reveals that she has inherited the little cowlick I have at the nape of my neck, the one that pushes my hair to one side when its cut short.

Through the fog I saw a beacon of light from friends near and far, who pick up my daughter and bring her home for me, who let me borrow their car, who offer a listening ear, even if electronically. From 723 miles away, my heart was warmed by the fact that my friend Kendra and I, on almost the same day, took nearly the same snowy photograph without even knowing it.

photo by Carrie Turner, Asheville, North Carolina

photo by Kendra Stanley-Mills, Beulah, Michigan

These difficulties, too, shall pass, but perhaps they are necessary as a reminder to notice the small things, the little niceties of life that are easier to ignore when all is going smoothly, the little unique blessings only we can see on our own lives, the silver lining in the otherwise gray cloudy sky.

looking back and looking forward

2010-02-05T21:41:00.001-05:00

A couple of years ago, I started writing a blog on MySpace. I don't even remember how I got started doing it, but it evolved into a story about becoming a mother. I was pretty faithful about writing that blog throughout Dora's first year of life, and even later. I've been thinking for a while about creating some sort of archive here with all of those blog entries. I went back to reread some of them recently, to see if they are worth resurrecting. I think that they are - at least some of them. It's funny to see that, two and a half years later, I'm still, in a way, thinking about the same things, asking the same questions. Have I made any progress at all?

The night I re-read my old blog entries, I also read an article by Anne Lamott, one of my absolute favorite authors. In the article, she talks about finding who we're supposed to be, something that everyone, including my hero Anne Lamott, apparently, struggles with. Having read Lamott's work, I know that she has, indeed, made many mistakes and wrong turns in her life. But, she's always been a writer, right? Did she go through years of imagining herself as a writer while doing something else, or shopping her books around unsuccessfully, all the while considering a career in retail sales? Of course she did - even Julia Child wasn't always Julia Child, right? - but it's hard to imagine those we most admire ever having questioned their place on earth, ever having been unsure or unable to take the next step.

Admitting my own questions and frustrations is not to say that I don't love my life right now. If we can't do anything but imagine how much better our lives would be some other way, we're wasting our time. Today, I came home from work early because Dora's daycare was closed. We spent the remainder of the afternoon - most of it, anyway - building a city of blocks around the train set with butternut squash, garlic, and sage roasting in the oven. We were giggling, snuggling, smiling, making funny jokes about how each of our pets lived in one of the wood block buildings we had constructed. That's Martin's house, and that's where Simone lives, and Mommy, Daddy, and Dora live in the big tall one. It was a sweet, sweet afternoon - a pleasure, a gem, a little winter gift. It was my sweet little angel and me, cozy in our warm little house with the wet snow all around outside, reminding ourselves of why we've got it so good.

It's funny to think that, two and a half years ago, we were blindly stepping off into the unknown of parenthood. Our whole world was about wondering if we had a boy or a girl, worrying about the birth, wondering how hard it would be. Now we know - it's incredibly hard, incredibly life-changing. Now we know that birth is beautiful, that we were blessed by a little girl angel baby. Now we know that, even though we can dream about what we hope to become in the future, we have a gift in who we are today, too.

So here's to looking back, and looking forward.

Friday, July 27, 2007

just waiting

It's July 27th - a date I have been saying for 9 months. It's an estimate, and I was pretty sure the big arrival wouldn't be today anyway, but it's still a little surreal to look at the calendar and see that today is that day. I'm just going about my usual business, even though everyone keeps saying, "You're still here?".

Someone said to me today, "enjoy your last few days of being pregnant." It's so strange to think that any day now, we will be 3 instead of 2. One morning you wake up and suddenly there is another person in your life, who'll be there forever. I don't even know if this person is a boy or a girl, what their name will be, what they'll look like, but it's still pretty amazing. And the other amazing thing is that somehow, and we don't know exactly how yet, we'll get there together. There's no way to get there - to the arrival of this new life - except to go through it, knowing (hoping) that something - our love, our faith, God - will help us find our way.

image

2010-02-02T20:12:00.006-05:00

Dora has gotten really good at operating my iPhone. She knows how to use the slider at the bottom of the screen to turn it on, she knows how to use the touchscreen. She's opened apps, sent emails, made phone calls, even changed my settings. All of that is fairly annoying, but one thing she does that I actually find very charming is that she changes the wallpaper picture frequently. Nearly all of the photos on my camera are of her, so it's not hard to pick one that has her as the subject - but I think she picks photos of herself on purpose. It's fun for me to pick up my phone and see what photo she's chosen for me. Right now, it's a sweet summertime picture of her. She's wearing a pink tanktop, green grass all around, her light blond hair blowing in the breeze. She's looking down and smiling, in such a shy, sweet, playful way. I love this photo of her, love that every time I open my phone I see her there, looking 2 years old and 15 years old all at once.

I like to think that Dora is choosing for me the way she wants to be seen, the way she wants me to think of her when we're apart. Isn't that what we all try to do? Don't we all try to pick the most ideal image of ourselves, the one we like the best, and try to become that image in the world? We do it with the foods we eat, the cars we drive, the work we do, the clothes we wear, the music we listen to. We do it with the shows we watch, or those we are willing to admit that we watch.

But just like every other form of communication, an image isn't foolproof. An image can be misinterpreted. You may believe that you are projecting an image of yourself as the kind, considerate, thoughtful, and honest person you believe you are, that you want to be. But sometimes the image doesn't read that way to someone else, even when you do your best. Sometimes it doesn't read that way to ourselves, either. In my mind I'm this creative, kind, patient, balanced mom, but then sometimes I find myself staring into space while Dora watches "Dora the Explorer". Or I allow myself to get dragged away from our 15 minutes of pre-dinner playtime to answer a work phone call. Even for someone with a relatively good self-image, the self-doubt within can sometimes win the day - or at least dominate the internal conversation. When that self-doubt is compounded from outside - from a coworker, a family member, a friend, a stranger - it becomes almost too much to bear.

We try so hard to be the best version of ourselves, to be the person in our favorite photograph of ourselves - the young, healthy, attractive, happy person. We try and rarely do we succeed, but perhaps its the trying that matters. Perhaps its the fact that we create that ideal image and then strive to meet it that makes the difference, even when we so often fall short. As I said recently, having a child forces a level of optimism - something that some of us struggle with. I believe with that comes a requirement to believe that the ideal image of ourselves is attainable, and that even when it is not, as long as we keep that frame in our line of sight, we're succeeding. And on the days when the image is not attainable - when it's out of focus, or has a poor composition, or the lighting is all wrong - on those days we have to forgive - ourselves, the world, the viewer. We have to forgive and we have to remember that tomorrow, we get another chance, another turn behind the lens, another click of the shutter, another chance to get it right.

ok

2010-01-26T20:55:00.006-05:00

I was a single mom last week. Brian was in Memphis for the International Blues Competition. The mornings were the hardest - I got up at 5 both days but still barely made it to work by 8:30. Getting us both ready - with lunches packed - was nothing less than a miracle. In two days the house was an utter disaster. Work was - is - unusually stressful. By Friday night I was just exhausted, and found myself so thankful that my friend Linnea, mother of Dora's boyfriend Asher from school, offered to meet Dora and I for pizza. She'd had a day about like mine - a ruined dinner and a husband out of town all week. It was chaotic and loud with three kids, but very, very fun, and a well-timed reminder that life is messy and difficult but good.

Saturday was "girl's day". We got up early and went to yard sales, stopped by the bakery for a treat, and ran other errands. In the afternoon I cleaned the house - even the hard to reach spot behind the toilet - which felt very satisfying for some reason. We went grocery shopping. We made dinner together. We watched a movie. It was a very nice girl's day. Brian got home as we were reading stories before bed and Dora ran to him calling "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy".

On Sunday, Dora and I went to church and then baked cookies, since we'd gotten the grocery shopping done on Saturday. It was a rainy, cold day. After Dora's nap, we took her bowling, which was very cute and funny. After just one game (with the two worst bowling scores either of us have ever had), the serious league bowlers came in and we left, back out into the pouring rain. We took Dora to Dancing Bear Toys, mostly just to pass some time before dinner. After much contemplation she settled on a little tiny giraffe. She's very into zoo animals lately.

We braved the rain for dinner at Doc Chey's, the first time we've taken Dora there since she's started doing well in restaurants (especially ones that serve edamame). The giraffe sat with us and ate some edamame, too. Dora is in the midst of potty training - and doing really well with it, I might add - so when she asks to go potty we take it seriously. Brian took her to the men's room to try. I sat at the table alone, looking out into the street at the rain, at the lights of the Fine Arts Theater shining against the wet pavement on Biltmore Avenue. My family was together and all felt right with the world. I thought, "we are going to be ok". Sometimes, with our crazy schedules and all the stress we're both under, it doesn't feel like we're going to be ok. But there are moments - when the rain is falling but we're warm and dry - that it does feel like we're going to be ok.

Life goes on, though. Yesterday I learned of yet another thoughtful, kind, lovely person who is facing a cancer diagnosis. The disease certainly likes to pick on our best and brightest, doesn't it? This morning, the furnace broke. January is a slim month for musicians - not a good time to get hit with a $300 unexpected repair. Tomorrow, I leave for Raleigh - on the road again, as our friend Willie Nelson would say. Once again, my family will not be together.

About a year and a half ago, when I was dealing with intense post-partum anxiety, worrying about everything - worrying even about worrying - my friend Susie gave me a quote she had written down. It was about optimism - about how we, as parents, have a responsibility to be optimistic for our children. They need us as that positive force in their lives.

I'm not necessarily a natural optimist - nor is my lovely, sweet husband - but it is true that children bring out optimism in us. Who else can bring us out of the house on a rainy cold day to go bowling? Who else would get two adults to pretend to feed edamame and rice to a plastic giraffe? Who else can run through the house with arms outstretched, with a welcome home like no other? You do things for your children you wouldn't - even couldn't - do for anyone else. For her - for us - I'll believe that all is right with the world. I'll remember that life is messy and difficult but also very good. For her, I'll believe that we are going to be ok.