Month: March 2014

Offense and Owls

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Farm Life, Mommy Mind, Waldorf Life2 Comments

Unfortunately, I just can’t seem to sleep in this morning. While I’m sure I could use the extra rest, my mind and body are awake now, and there’s no going back. Maybe it’s my age, or the two glasses of wine I had last night with dinner. Either way, I’ll take it as a rare opportunity to have the house to myself for a while, as Elihu continues to sleep deeply. And I know that boy needs it. Yesterday, finally in the car and on the way home after school, he asked me if this hadn’t been the longest week of our lives. Poor kid had been sick the way I’d been the previous week, and he plays a rather large part in his class play, so had been rehearsing all week as well. I knew how he felt. For me, the longest week of our lives had been the one just before.

In addition to the drama onstage, there’s been a good deal of interpersonal drama going in private. The situation with Elihu’s classmate – or with his classmate’s mother, I should say more correctly – finally came to a head. And after more than four months of my having waited to learn which of my many trespasses offended her so deeply, we finally got our answers. Let me tell you, this experience has taught me a few things. Firstly, there are many ways in which to live; you cannot for one moment take any of your own beliefs, values or customs to be the clear and obvious path. No matter how sensible you may think your own approach to life, I can guarantee that some aspect to how you live will offend or frighten someone. Secondly, every now and then you’ll need to apologize as humbly and simply as possible, without caveats or explanations – even when you know your intention was good and wish fervently for the offended party to get that. Yeah, sometimes I guess you just gotta let things go. It was a great exercise of restraint for me to pen a simple letter of apology (my third or fourth apology, but perhaps a physical card in hand will seal the deal) without qualifying myself. Just had to say I was sorry. And crap, I am. I will live differently from now on.

So, just what was it that I did to convince a fellow mother that her child should not be allowed to be in my or my son’s presence outside of school? Firstly, I used profanity. (Old friends will likely be nodding in agreement. This will not come as a shocker to some.) Last Halloween Elihu and I had been invited to join his classmate’s family and another one as well for some dinner and trick-or-treating. We met at an Irish pub, enjoyed a meal and a couple of beers (I waited to order one until I made sure the other adults were drinking. In the Waldorf community I’m usually careful to observe before I jump in. It’s still a fairly new world for us, so I watch things first…) Apparently, I swore ‘more than once’ during the night, and made a ‘sexually lewd’ comment when in my car, with the windows down for her boys to hear… I don’t doubt that I swore. Rain was coming down in buckets, and I was having trouble getting my kid’s elaborate costume in the car without smashing it. I’d had two drinks (not as an excuse, but hey, I don’t drink often, and when I do, I feel it, and so does my tongue) and I can totally see my cursing the damn thing as I wrestled it into the back seat. Yes, I am fairly confident I used profanity. And at the table too – I mean, what the hell? I’m finally out with grown-ups, the kids are running around the restaurant being silly and there’s a general volume level in the room that just seems to soften the blow – if not flat-out invite – words of color and emphasis. Ya know? Course I do admit to having far more of a potty mouth than would be acceptable in many homes, but then again I’d been hearing about “Jesus H. Christ and his twelve raggedy-ass disciples” since I could remember, and I’d known since an early age that many things in life weren’t worth “a pinch of sour owl shit”. Nuff said.

The bit about a ‘sexually explicit’ remark still has me scratching my head… I run through the likely culprits, and I find none fit. I admit that I enjoy punctuating language with an occasional well-placed swear word, and I have hung out with enough men and musicians to have become fairly adept at sexually crass expressions of speech, but man, I could not for the life of me I imagine what it was that I’d said. And she’d said she didn’t care to repeat it either, so I’ll have to give up on learning from this one. Hey, if she was looking for bad parenting choices, she might have found greater offense in the fact that I paid our $44 tab entirely with singles from my kid’s tip jar. I didn’t know we’d be joining them til the day before and hadn’t set any extra funds aside for it, so I was fairly panicked when the check arrived and I didn’t have quite enough… but Elihu did. Hey – I wouldn’t doubt it that this had me swearing under my breath! It had me feeling like a crappy mom for sure. I told him that I was using his money and assured him that next pay-day it would all be returned. Then I slunk over to the hostess’ station and asked her to please swap out my many small bills for some larger ones. I didn’t want the unnecessary embarrassment of paying our portion with forty-four singles… I was trying to stay as ‘normal’ as possible that night. But I’d used my kid’s money to pay for my beer and I’d sworn like a sailor. Not so normal, I guess.

Then there was the owl. The one from which the two boys had removed feathers and talons. That I had allowed the boys to ‘dismember’ this creature was deeply offensive to this family’s Native American beliefs. (Blonde haired and blue-eyed child, I would never have guessed.) What we’d done that day had shocked the parents – so much so they weren’t even able to share it with me; these past four months I was none the wiser for what I had done. But I too had my own feelings about the owl….We knew this owl personally; it was our own Barred Owl – the one that always hooted at two in the morning and once sat on a branch above our heads and allowed us to look our fill at his black-eyed beauty. We’d shone a flashlight up at him and watched as he did what owls do. He would sit still as a stone for minutes on end, then in an instant rotate his head nearly all the way round. He was mysterious, grand and silent. We tired of watching him long before he flew away, and left him in the darkness again, telling him with our hearts how much we loved him as we headed back down the long driveway to the house. How grateful we were that he lived here. It made us feel deeply good to know that he was always somewhere about. Heartbreaking news arrived one day when neighbor Zac told us he had a dead barred owl for us – it had been hit on the road – and he’d bring it over for Elihu to see. We just knew it was our owl. It was with mixed feelings that we beheld the giant bird up close, but it was smashed and dead, all we could do now to honor it was to bear witness, maybe to save some feathers and talons, and to wonder how it was that such a creature survived year after year…

I’d saved the owl in an enclosed tub for several days (otherwise he’d have been dinner for someone else), knowing that Elihu’s classmate was coming over. I’d thought it would be interesting to see it up close, and the mementos would be an unexpected treasure. After all, how often do you get this kind of opportunity? I wondered at what else we could do; taxidermy cost too much. Leaving it out in the woods – as we do with sick, dead hens, that didn’t feel right either. Hell, nothing felt right. Might have buried it, but the ground was already cold and hard. So I decided we’d harvest what we could, then burn it with a little ceremony. Have not cultures been reverently burning their dead since ancient times? I got a woodpile ready as the boys began to learn just how hard it really is to remove feathers from such a robust creature. Pliers were required, and as for the talons, wire cutters were the only tools that worked. I can’t say that there wasn’t a slightly violent feeling involved in the process, but I kept reminding myself that we’d have these feathers and talons – and this remembrance of our friend – for years to come. (Butchering chickens is a kind of violent act as well, but we eat them, so we feel it’s only correct that we must know what it is so kill them, too.) I reminded myself that this creature’s soul had now returned to its creator – that it was now just decomposing matter. If life on a farm teaches nothing else it teaches this: once something is dead, it’s gonna get stinky and messy real soon. Unless you’re gonna eat it – get rid of it. When Elihu and I throw out dead organic matter – whether eggshells for the compost heap or dead hens for the resident raccoons – we always say the items are ‘going back to God’. And that, I believe, is the best way to throw things out. To release them back into the cycle; to allow them to integrate back into the substance from whence they came. Look, getting rid of a dead creature always evokes queer feelings. Sorrow, honor, regret, wonder…. finding a good point of resolution isn’t easy. The day my father was cremated was difficult for me; I still have a very hard time in knowing that his beloved body no longer exists in this physical world… But in the end, when soul and spirit have departed the mechanism, we are left with something that is indeed only physical matter. I don’t believe it hurts to remember the soul that once animated the body by saving just the smallest token. I still have a lock of my father’s hair…

So, after over four months of wondering, the case was finally solved. Foul language and removing parts from a dead owl were my unknown transgressions in the eye’s of our friend’s mother. But I still think that trumping these was the third and still unforgivable offense I’d originally thought was long off the table: that of having once posted an image of her happily smiling child on this blog. Upon learning her feelings about it, I removed all mention of her kid without a moment’s hesitation. I’d not only apologized in a couple of emails, but in person too. I made a point of checking in with her, asking if we were good now. She’d said yes, but clearly was being polite to avoid any confrontation (this is to me ironic in that by profession she counsels others). So here we were, back at the largest issue in her mind: the fact that I had exposed her child to the internet. A place she suggested in a recent email that I must certainly agree is known by all to be a ‘VERY’ (her use of caps) dangerous place. (The world itself is a dangerous place too, but one cannot stay indoors all of one’s life.) Ok. I understand how it can be, but do you really feel your child’s well-being is threatened by one lone image of his smiling countenance on a blog? Sheesh. I obviously do not share this woman’s feelings. But I respect that she feels the danger is very real. But besides taking action, and apologizing, what more could I do? No more, but no matter, the damage has been done. In her mind I had been crossed off the list. She wasn’t going to take any chances on a wild card like me.

In her mind proper values are self-evident, obvious. But in my mind, there’s an interesting twist to this whole thing… What I myself find a little hard to understand is that her child routinely rides on a motorcycle with his father… This is a risk I personally am not willing to take. When I lived in Chicago I once had a motorcycle, and I loved riding. But when I got pregnant, I decided that I couldn’t justify that kind of risk anymore. Someone depended upon me now – there was no room for accidents or injury in my life. When my child is out and on his own and no longer depends upon me, I may get back on a bike again. But not before. This for me is an unacceptable risk, one I feel is far more real and dangerous than mention on any blog. Amazing, isn’t it, how differently people feel about things? I’ve learned a lot from this chapter. One thing is for sure – I’m not going to go around sharing with folks whom I don’t know well that ‘I have a blog’. Too much of a hot-button issue. You just don’t know how it’ll resonate with people. Instead – from now on I’m simply going to say that I’m a writer. I like that better anyhow. And writers can use all the colorful language they like.

Last night mom, Elihu and I went out to dinner at the iconic Hattie’s – a place where the fried chicken still tastes the same as it did forty years ago – and then enjoyed a show afterward at the high school. Each year they produce a top-notch quality musical. This year it was Footloose. Doesn’t seem old enough yet to be hip or ironic, but I guess it’s enjoying a resurgence of sorts, and in spite of having played some of the songs to death in wedding bands years ago, it was still fun to see. The choreography was impressive, and we all enjoyed it. The angel of serendipity was again on our sides; we got a parking spot in front of the restaurant, and then three seats together in the front row – and in front of the percussionist no less. Afterwards in the swarms of people crowding the lobby we ran into two girls we knew from their days at Elihu’s old elementary school – and it made me so happy to see them now as such talented, beautiful young women. It was a nice way to end the evening for Elihu to hug them and say hello. We headed out into the foggy night and in less than fifteen minutes Grandma was dropping us off at home.

The calm inside our house was such a contrast to the whirlwind week now behind us. We were delirious with anticipation of what lay ahead… ‘Imagine’ I said as we smiled to each other… ‘we have NO plans for two days!’ I tried not to dwell on the mountain of dishes, the baskets of laundry, the mess of recycling strewn across our yard… Yes, there was work to be done. But nowhere to be, no one to answer to…. no one to offend. And maybe, somewhere out in the vast, dark woods, there might still be an owl sitting patiently on a branch, waiting, like us, for the first faint stirrings of Spring…

Snowsick

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Farm Life, Low Vision Life, Mommy Mind, Waldorf Life2 Comments

A week has passed since my last post, but it kinda feels like two. We’ve been so busy, and on top of it all, Elihu ended up getting sick too. (I’m still not entirely well over a week later; haven’t known congestion like this in a few years.) Last Wednesday night he came down with a blistering hot fever, and unable to move, he stayed overnight on the couch in his clothes. I stayed up most of the night watching over him. I knew he was benefiting from the ibuprofen, and as he slept at least he felt nothing at all, but still there was a fearful quality to the night. I couldn’t help but wonder how much more serious such an illness might have been a couple hundred years ago. What could an unchecked fever do to a child? I shuddered to imagine how things might once have been. To distract myself from worrying, I searched my shelves for something to read. Glad I hadn’t given away every single David Sedaris book I’d ever owned, because Dress Your Family In Corduroy and Denim was just what I needed. (I have a habit of giving away books to anyone who expresses an interest in them.) In general I don’t have a great memory, so re-reading a book is often just as good as reading it for the first time (it’s like that with me and jokes too – they sound like new material the first few times I hear em). I stayed up til well past two, reading, watching, checking, reading… Until, not wanting to truly screw up my schedule for days to come, I decided I’d stay and sleep on the couch with him. Just lucky that I wasn’t on the school schedule the next morning, and luckier still that I was able to beg out of my remaining commitments without too much stress. There are occasions where I can leave Elihu for a short time, but there was no way I was leaving him alone like this. Yeah, being a single mom can throw a logistic monkey wrench into things sometimes. But this time, thankfully, it all worked out.

Still with a sore throat and boogers obscuring his ‘n’s and ‘m’s, my kid got back on the horse and was belting out his lines as King Midas in the fifth grade play rehearsals on Thursday (man, has he got pipes – charisma too. And you can see how much he enjoys throwing out those lines and living large into those gestures. I couldn’t help smiling ear-to-ear watching him). And then there was the gentleman from the Philadelphia Orchestra who came to play cello and speak to his class on Friday. That afternoon in the car ride home Elihu couldn’t stop telling me about it, and how moved he was to hear this man’s stories and to hear him play. After supper he went to the living room and spent a long time with his bass, mostly working on his bowing. After a time he called to me in the kitchen, “Mama! I got it! I got it! I got that sound!” Then I heard him laugh, and overheard him say quietly to himself “I just love playing this bass.” After I finished tidying up I joined him at the piano, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t come up with some of the grooviest little patterns. We had a very musical jam. I began to think that if he’s playing like this after just a few months at it – and at the age of ten – he’ll be a musical peer of mine in very little time. And likely he’ll surpass me. Yeah, I think that’s pretty much a done deal. But I can definitely live with that.

More’s been going on in the background of our life here too; an unsure relationship with the mother of a beloved classmate has had us both very depressed. Elihu and I have carefully scrutinized the past six months of our shared history with his family, and we have a couple of guesses as to why she’s avoiding our invitations, but none we’re absolutely sure of. I think it may well have been my careless use of the either ‘white trash’ or ‘redneck’ – something I used to describe the population up in their mountain neighborhood way back when I was a kid (the implication being that it was before moneyed folk – like them – had moved in. Oops? Crap. It was said with a sense of humor, no offense to anyone intended.) Hey, I’m the first to admit that my own joint takes on a rather white trash sort of look at times – chicken poop on the front steps, an overflowing recycling bin and a number of retired tube tvs poking out of the melting snow… But I think the terms ‘white trash’ and ‘redneck’ are more about an attitude than a reliance on food stamps or backyard junk piles. (The piles eventually go – but getting rid of them costs money, something we ‘white trash’ folk don’t always have to spend on gratuitous garbage removal. !)

I’d also taken Elihu and his friend to a Subway for a quick snack once. Not the kind of place we go to more than a time or two a year – but yet Elihu’s concerned it was a bad move, and one his friend’s mother can’t forgive. Me, I wonder if it isn’t the blog – she’d told me once in a very curt way to remove any mention of her child from it, all images too, and so I did. I had felt horrible about the whole thing, apologized and later asked her – in person – if we were good. “Yes, of course” she’d answered. But maybe not. You can imagine as a mother how sick I feel for my child, who himself has literally wept over this in frustration. And her child often avoids eye contact with me too when I mention the topic of a playdate. He’s a very open and cheerful child, and the contrast in body language when I bring it up is a bit startling. I feel sad for him as well, can you imagine the inner conflict he must feel at the subject? I watch the two of them playing together so joyfully in school, and my heart hurts for the situation. They’re going to be classmates for almost another decade, so we must figure this out. The not knowing how or why we got here is simply grinding away at me. So too is the realization that it’s going to take a confrontation of the issue to see some resolution. No matter, I gotta figure it out. It’s weighing on both of us pretty heavily, and it’s not a nice way to live. If email number five on the subject of a playdate is ignored as the previous one was, or if a terse, cryptic reply comes back  as in earlier communications, I promised Elihu I’d ask her about it directly. Can’t wait til this chapter is in our past. It’s adding a good deal of stress on both of us and it has to be fixed, but I fairly dread the process.

Lately I’ve been jonsin for some Taco Bell. For me, it’s the kind of place I visit like once a year (kinda like Subway – only I don’t exactly ever jones for that place), and then I’m good. Sated. Got my fix, don’t need to feel guilty either cuz it’ll be a while til I’m back. Elihu and I had some errands in the Taco Bell part of town so I suggested we try it. As soon as we walked in and Elihu asked if they had ‘tacos al pastor’ I knew we were in trouble. I explained that it was ‘stylized’ Mexican food. “Oh”, he said, “You mean it’s not Mexican food at all. It’s the Amercian version of Mexican food.” Kinda. I guess. So we made our choices and took our seats. Off to a bad start when the iced teas they offered were not only syrupy-sweet but carried with them a perfumey essence which clung to the plastic cup after poured out… He tried mixing in some water to dilute the tea but gave up after a few sips and stuck with plain water, albeit perfumed with the aftertaste of mango-flavored iced tea. “Why are there advertisements everywhere in here?” he asked me with growing agitation, waving his arms at all the posters encouraging the clientel to supersize a drink or grab a new food creation. “I don’t even want to know what they’re telling me, but I can’t help but read them. It’s annoying!” “Yup, they got ya” I answered with a small amount of genuine sympathy, but let’s remember that this was my jones, and I was totally digging every bite. Elihu wrestled with his taco supreme for a moment then set it down. “You know the way you rode the Vertigo at the county fair – for me?” “Yeah” I answered. “Well this is me doing the same for you.” I looked up at him. “Thanks baby, I appreciate it.” He went on, “I don’t want to ruin it for you, I want you to enjoy it. And I’ll try to enjoy it too, but I don’t think I can.” He paused and looked down at his food. “I’m sorry, I just don’t think I can.” He worked at a few more bites but then stopped again. “And this music! How can I eat peacefully with all this energy coming at me? It’s like the cafeteria at Greenfield. I’m beginning to feel like that…” (The cafeteria at his old elementary school was in fact one of the final straws for him. Loud, chaotic and bright, the place would bring on panic attacks and have him sitting alone at the far end of a long table, hands over his ears, head down and doing his slow breathing exercises to calm down. No one could have been more sympathetic than me, and the remembrance of that scene also helped me in deciding that school as we knew it had to change.)

I’d thought he was merely making an observation, but he really did seem to be growing more uneasy the longer we sat there. I hustled to get my annual fill of that Taco Bell thing over and done. I’d secretly hoped to have turned my kid onto a new guilty pleasure of pop culture, but I could tell that I hadn’t come close by a long shot. ‘Hm’, I though to myself hopefully as I slurped up the last of my Pepsi, ‘maybe he’ll get it when he reaches his drinking days…’ We wrapped up our mess, apologized to the universe for creating such waste, thanked the woman at the counter for our meal, and left the bright lights, loud music and super-sweet soda behind.

Snow began to fall yesterday morning, and while we it didn’t have us screaming in frustration the way it did even a week ago, I can’t say that it wasn’t a bit disappointing. The only good thing about it was that it served to temporarily cover up the awkward, pre-Spring phase of our property. Because this is an ugly time of year for our immediate surrounds; wind-strewn items from the recycling bin begin to poke up through the snow across the yard, great swaths of driveway gravel pushed by long-gone plow trucks top off the crusty snow banks, various cages and animal toters used throughout the winter to nurse house-bound birds remain half-embedded in the ice along the driveway, and fresh chicken poops litter the trampled snow pathways through the yard. Yeah, it’s a fairly depressing sight, but made tolerable by both a dusting of fresh snow – and also by knowing that before terribly long it will all be different. Soon we can rake the gravel back to the driveway and stash that bird paraphernalia in the garage where it belongs. And hopefully soon we’ll discover our shovel again, which fell over somewhere before the last big storm and lies ironically under a foot of snow.

While we yearn for Spring, Elihu also years for his father. For a break from me. Because it’s just the two of us, all the time. And while it’s a precious thing, it can reach its limits. I take my breaks here in my chair at my computer, I have my virtual community of friends on Facebook, but Elihu, he is isolated. He’s very good at being an only child, he can pass hours drawing, reading, practicing or even playing with blocks. But he’s kind of fed up lately. And I get it. And of course, my heart can sometimes break for it. He’s called his father several times recently, but there hasn’t been much time to connect. Dad’s either arriving or departing – or he’s at a restaurant and his food’s just come, or it’s too loud, or he has to sound check… I feel the disappointment in my son as he clicks the phone off. I ache for him. I wish that he could just see his daddy already. He’s been good about it all; many are the times he’s begun to cry and wish aloud that he had a mommy and a daddy at the same time. But these days he seems to be taking it more in stride, if there is such a thing. Maybe it’s all inward now, maybe it’s because he’s maturing, I don’t know. At least the countdown to his Easter visit with dad has begun. It’s given him some hope, something to look forward to (plus his sister’s visiting from England and that’s got him very happy indeed). So we limp through this long stretch, our eyes on the path ahead…

Making our load just a little lighter (scratch that, make that a lot lighter!) was the news we received just yesterday that the house at the end of our driveway will not be built this Spring, in fact the whole deal fell through. Hooray! As our neighbor casually said, it’s merely ‘a respite’, but hell, we’ll take it. Elihu and I high-fived each other and shrieked in delight. He later followed up by expressing a thought aloud: “Thank you universe for keeping the field as it is. We are so grateful that it is a field and is continuing as a field.” He’s big on stating the ‘isness’ of things; not that we are hopeful that something might be, but grateful that it already is. He will often correct me when I use finite terms, as he insists that I need to see the desired outcome as already existing – or continuing to exist. While I can admit first introducing these ideas to him, I’ve long gone out of the habit of living them – it’s he who’s taken up the charge of visualizing things as he’d like them and remaining grateful in advance of receiving them. Lucky to have my own personal life coach in the house. !

And I just may need a little life-coaching to get through this last, snowy stretch. It’s been an exceptionally long haul. May the memories of warm, scented breezes and the buzzing of bees keep our spirits aloft as we await the end of winter. Because we are as tired of the snow as we are of being sick. Oh please, come Spring, come soon and heal us….

Blue

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Birding, Mommy Mind, Pics15 Comments

It’s probably the cold. Day four and it’s still pretty bad. My nose is sore, I’m pooped and this endless winter isn’t helping. My poor kid is fed up too, and he’s not even sick. But God bless that little man, he finds joy enough to keep both of us afloat when I’m at the very end of my rope. Not saying that Elihu hasn’t felt it too – oh he has. He’s had his mini-meltdowns, been brought to a point of near weeping for the endless cold and indoor living. But he rebounds fairly well. Better than I do.

House-bound as we are we’ve had to make do like the rest of the world in our northern neighborhood. But even with the gift of a new tv in our basement, we’ve found other things to keep us entertained. Good thing too; I’m fairly ready to sink into despair. A quick visit to the Studio today was a bit discouraging and had my mood becoming even darker; the workers have torn out more of the walls than we’d originally planned on. It was not a happy surprise. Guess it was necessary. Must have been some additional damage, I don’t know. It’s Sunday, and there are no answers today. Gotta get thru til tomorrow before I find out where we’re at now. But for the moment, I rest in a very blue mood.

I’ll get to bed soon, heal myself with a generous night’s sleep, and then rally tomorrow. Another long week ahead, more on my plate than I can ever see achieving, but what can I do? Either give in or push back. Right now I don’t feel the strength to do a single thing. But knowing that I share my life with such a boy as Elihu gives me the inspiration I need to keep it together just a little longer. After all, blue moods don’t last forever….

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A little music….

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and then some tower-building.

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Impressive, huh?

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In the end, it’s always about the birds…

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Because they’re such a big part of our daily lives.

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Inspired by his desire for Spring, Elihu drew this lovely picture. I had not the heart to tell him that the reeds were as blue as the jays… He would have been heartbroken that his use of color wasn’t accurate. But notice what a lovely mood has been created precisely because of the blue palette…

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Maybe blue’s not such a sad color after all.

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Let’s hope a good night’s rest helps us do away with the winter blues…

Gone

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Elihu's Room, Low Vision Life, Mommy Mind, Pics2 Comments

Well, think I understand why I was so to-the-bones exhausted the other night. Woke up with a cold the next day. Aches all over, a sore throat and a voice like a 3 pack-a-day smoker. Last night was a long, sleepless one. (Ironically it happened the day after I’d commented to a co-worker that I rarely got sick. !) But today in spite of feeling lousy I didn’t slow; too much to do. Vacuumed the house, gave the stove a good going-over, did the requisite making and cleaning up of three home-cooked meals, baked some bread, did a load or two of laundry and spent some time at the piano. (Not too thrilled about the ceaseless list of material I must learn – it requires an investment of time I hardly have to give and don’t get reimbursed for either, but I give it nonetheless as the music must be learned regardless.) After a good day’s labor I decided that Elihu and I would commence to pass a couple of hours as all self-respecting Americans are wont to do – in front of the tv. Our very new, long-awaited ‘real’ tv, that is (not the tiny counter top tube type, the likes of which we do already have in the kitchen. Mr. Colbert is my one true love, may all know it, and he keeps me company when I do the dishes). Our new tv is every bit as up-to-date as the Jones’, thank you very much. All 39 diagonal inches of it. !! This was a purchase I’d researched up and down, thought long and hard about after finally making a decision. Even to have decided that we should actually have such a creature in our house – that in itself was something of a big move for us. During the course of life as usual, we haven’t much extra time to watch the thing – but as this relentless winter drags on and on and on, we do find ourselves occasionally with an hour here or two that we might care to fill with something other than jam sessions or homework. I mean, how many polkas can one learn, right?

Our cellar (that’s what one calls the basement in these parts) is kinda chilly, so we now have a resident down comforter to drape over our laps as we hunker down in our new bean bag chairs a-la-Walmart and pull up real close to that giant tv. Elihu’s vision is such that we often say that ‘if he can’t touch it, he can’t see it’. While it’s kind of an exaggeration mostly designed to make a point, there is some truth to it. He, and all other Achromats must sit within a couple of feet of a tv screen to register the images. Plus, being extremely photosensitive, the image must be adjusted about as low as the brightness settings can go – while maintaining contrast, so the images are still distinct. I’m glad to have him mostly all to myself as a parent – because when it comes to his visual comfort, I know what he needs, and I make sure he has it. He has no ‘normal’ sighted folks other than me to share with here, so the screen is set for his maximum comfort. As a mom, that gives me peace. I get such joy looking over at him, his eyes wide (they’re seldom wide open) and a look of awe on his face as he watches his very favorite Ben 10 character kicking all manner of alien butt….

He may still get a thrill out of Ben 10, but he’s on that cusp of little boy/bigger boy now…. He’s taking his bath as I write, something I’ve almost always been present for, but tonite, he tells me he feels he’d like to be alone. It’s not the first time he’s told me something like that, but once again it highlights for the the new terrain coming up in the not-too-distant future. Yesterday he laughed as he pulled my hand across his legs, arms and then upper lip, all of which were becoming hairier than I’d remembered them being… He knew I’d be a bit taken aback. He got the reaction he’d wanted. (I fake cried for him to bring my baby boy back – or stop growing!) Elihu is excited about the changes coming up, and why shouldn’t he be? Why shouldn’t I be? The tender years are wrapping up, and how lucky are we to be entering into the years where we can play music together, do things, have even more adventures, be better matched as partners, and less like parent and child…

I admit it, I’m ambivalent about this growing older thing. I want my arms always to fit around my boy, I want him to always fit in my lap here in this cozy chair (it’s getting a tad tight these days). Hell, I want always to hold my seven month old babe in my arms, sit in my rocking chair and sing him to sleep…. A baby is an easy thing to miss, but it’s also easy to forget ever having had such a tiny thing in your arms  at all…. I can understand why people have more of em… so tender, so sweet… But SO much goddam, relentless work they are too! Yeeks. Ah, but then I can let all that weepy nostalgia go when I envision the future yet before us, and realize the downshifting of domestic duties that go along with the territory (if you know different, maybe don’t tell me, cuz I’m really building it up in my mind as the wide open future as soon as he can feed, dress and clean himself without any assistance or prompting.)

I have been feeling under the weather, but at least I know it’ll last only a day or so. Our sick hen, Sophia, however, finally had to give up today. In spite of a week’s tender treatment in the house; antibiotics, warm towels, fancy feed and the occasional serenade by a young bassist, and in spite of a good start to her re-entry into coop life, last night her breathing had become labored once again. I realized that I could either bring her back inside and committ myself fully to her recovery, stinky kitchen, random poops and all, or I could let nature run her course and decide for me. There was another option we considered; we could call neighbor Zac over for a quick “Axe-u-puncture” treatment. Unless I kept her inside for a good month and mad her my top project, I didn’t see ever restoring her to optimum hen health. And although I do have a lotta love inside my heart for creatures in need, I just couldn’t find the oomph this project would require. So when I saw a strange, black shape on the snow today, I knew what it was, and I realized that Nature had made the choice for me. Of course I was saddened to see she hadn’t made it, but beneath that ran a sweet feeling of relief, for her as much as for me.

I ran out to see, and learned that she’d separated herself from the flock, walked a strange, drunken curve into the snow, then simply fallen over. Elihu had seen her just an hour before, so I knew it to be recent. I picked her up and cradled her in my arms, leaned over and kissed her. Brought her to the house for Elihu to see, but his need for closure hardly existed, this was just more business as usual. I laid her out on the snowbank across the driveway as an offering for the meat-eating crows. I think tomorrow they’ll be quite pleased to find her. And it pleases both of us to know that Sophia is no longer suffering, and that now she brings a benefit to others in need. A bittersweet conclusion, but still, ultimately speaking, a happy ending.

My happy end will come when this kid finally gets out of the bath and I can myself head off to bed. Mama don’t go down til the house is settled and ready. And some nights it just seems to drraaagggg oooonnnn  aaannnddd oooonnnnn. Yes, I do realize that ‘These are the good old days” and one day I’ll miss em. But sometimes I’m just really ready for these good ol days to be long done n gone.

IMG_0668Sophia  listens patiently

IMG_0655And she stays close by while Elihu plays for her

IMG_0661Yeah, she just hasn’t looked too hot in a while now.

Dear Sophia is no longer in distress. You were a fine hen; thanks for coming to live with our family here at the Hillhouse for a bit, we were delighted to know you.

Sono Stanca

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Mommy Mind, Waldorf LifeLeave a comment

Man, has it been a week. Tonight I am pooped. I’ve kept going and going, and now that I’ve plopped down in my chair to sit for a moment, it’s all just hit me.

And on top of it all, this afternoon it started snowing again. Not just the pretty fluffy white stuff – but rather the dense, wet, instant slush sort of stuff. By late afternoon all after school programs were cancelled (my piano class included, thank God) and we were off the hook for the evening. Pretty sure that tomorrow’d be a snow day, we may have gotten a bit too relaxed with our schedule this evening, as Elihu has only just gotten to bed, and as I write this he is reading still. That’s never easy to wrap up. I’ll spend a minute more here, then go play nighttime police duty.

We did a little stock-up shopping in anticipation of a snowed in couple of days (Friday there’s no school anyway) and by the time we got home we found all sorts of fun little diversions that each involved more time than we realized. Between errands, dinnertime and our play we’d passed hours before we’d noticed how late it was getting… We played our penny whistles, our recorders and kalimbas, home-made drums of mason jars half-filled with water, shakers, hand drums and more… and then there was the block tower building, the melodica playing, the learning of obscure polkas, the knocking down of previously made towers with remotely controlled spideresque robots… I suppose we carried on so because we’re both fairly convinced that tomorrow there’ll be no school, no orthodontist appointment, no piano students, no nothing. And I cannot wait. I can accept the snow once again without complaining, because I know that by Elihu’s eleventh birthday on April 28th there will be none of it left. This I know. So it allows me to accept the current situation with a cooler head. But the busyness of our lives, the non-stop to-do list, the chaos (albeit a joyful sort) of school, the ongoing domestic chores – all of it has me wanting to cry uncle at the moment. So I’m looking forward to an unscheduled morning.

I hear Elihu’s turned off his light on his own. Good boy. I’ll go in and check on him now, tell him I love him so, and wish him sweet dreams. We’ll both be sound asleep before long. It’s been such a long day. Good night friends….

Threshold

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March has historically always been a jam-packed month for us. And yesterday we’d both kinda reached our limit. By the end of the night Elihu had shut himself inside his bedroom, where he cried and screamed out his frustration… He had said that he was upset over a perceived transgression of mine… I’d picked the bed covers up off the floor and put them back onto his bed, and in so doing had ‘ruined things’ as he’d had his bed ‘just the way he liked it’. Mm-hmm. Crazy talk, and I knew it, but there was no reason to press the point. Instead I left him to cry, sulk and in general get the residual crap out of his system. No point to counter his mood with volume, anger – or reason. I knew what it was about: this had been one incredibly busy and stressful week and it was finally manifesting.

Late winter is always a bit busier for us as I play piano for (among other things) the traveling Missoula Children’s Theater group, which produces a musical at Elihu’s former Elementary School. I love doing it, it revives for me the skill of light sight-reading, it always has a cute musical theme and is fun to play – and of course seeing all the kids (63 of em this year!) rising to the challenge of singing, dancing and reciting their lines – all in these incredibly inventive costumes – makes it more than worth it. But it’s an investment of time for sure, and our rehearsal days begin just when the school days leave off – and since we’re on an earlier schedule at Waldorf, it adds a bit of a challenge. Elihu just doesn’t get enough sleep during this week, plus the poor kid has to sit through hours of rehearsals (and it’s microwaved pasta for supper all week long too. Ich). He’s a trooper, and once again at the end of it all, I realize how much of a team we are. By the end of the show he knows all the songs, even offers me notes, and ends up having a ball watching the final production. (He was once in the chorus a few years back, and while he had a good time, he didn’t enjoy the overall experience enough to do it a second time. His performance skills shine in other ways…) Yeah, just about anywhere I go – teaching, playing, working – he comes along with me. It bonds us in a way I can hardly describe.

Today, as we left the school post-show, post-picture ops (with kids he’d known since Kindergarten all those years ago), we entered the cold, clear winter night with joy and relief in our hearts. Finally, finally, finally….  Finally we were over the hump, finally we could go home and just do nothing. I took one last look at his old school with a deep feeling of nostalgia. It was the last time he’d be there for Missoula while still a peer of the cast. Next year both he and his old classmates will be middle schoolers. I sighed, and tried to remember the moment, to capture it and lock it away in my memory bank… the sounds of the kids laughing, yelling, running and playing, shouting their goodbyes, and one by one finding their way back to their family cars. We all drove off into the night and within minutes we two were pulling into our long, beautiful country driveway. As we came closer to our little house, we mused that we’d always be part of the family we’d just left, and how lucky we felt to have a home in both Greenfield Elementary and Waldorf too. It made us feel included, safe, happy. And as we walked across the moonlit snow to shut in the birds, we both stopped for a moment to admire the exceptionally crisp and bright stars (one of which Elihu corrected me was Venus) and velvet-black night sky. How lucky we were, we marveled over and over to each other. That this quiet, lovely oasis was ours. We lived here. Every so often we’ll share a pause like this, and we’ll just sit in the stillness as we take it all in. And tonight, with this crazy week – and even crazier day – behind us (including a quick visit to the urgent medical care unit – more on this later), we really were present for those stars, the moon, the sparkling snow, the deep, beautiful dark woods beyond.

There is much more to come, more than I myself can even truly understand at this point (The Studio is but one item on the full menu of projects and commitments before us), so I realize that tonite’s respite might not be quite enough time for us to recharge our batteries for the next phase, but hey, sometimes ya just don’t have any choice but to keep going. I suppose one could simply throw in the towel and retire from all meaningful existence (and don’t think I haven’t considered that option a time or two!) but that really isn’t the responsible person’s option now, is it?

So on we march, over the threshold and into our future adventures…

We Are Three!

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The Hillhouse turns 3 today! Wow, what a lotta stuff here… Some 440 posts, over a thousand subscribers, visitors from over 100 countries… Sitting here in this tiny room, just the two of us, it’s almost impossible to imagine it.

I can hardly remember so much of our past three years (especially the first one), as it all seems so far away now… It kinda feels as if these days we’re living a completely new chapter. I guess we are. My fiftieth year is nearly behind me now, I have a regular job, my father is gone and the Studio is emerging as the new adventure… We’ve learned how to raise and butcher our own chickens and grow our own food. My son has braces, he’s becoming more capable and independent every day, and he has discovered a passion for upright bass…. Yeah, things these days are indeed new and different.

As I pass casually over the old posts I’m reminded of our three-year ride here; in the beginning, Elihu was baby-toothed, had an adorable lisp and his passion for birds – as well as his collection of books on the subject – was just beginning to grow. We shared our life with avian friends of all sorts – from homing pigeons to exotic pheasants and much in between (I particularly loved our button quail, King George, who, along with our cat, lived free-range in our house and made strange, espresso machine-like sounds in the dead of night in his vain search for a mate). The bird adventures still amaze me. We’ve tamed our current bird experiences a bit; having sent our goose Maximus away, we’ve nothing left but some chickens (one of them is in the kitchen recuperating on sick leave from the coop as I write this).

While this blog officially started three years ago today, we’d already lived here for two years. I think of those first two as the lost years, as I was still fairly reeling from the loss of my husband and old life in Chicago. This blog came about as a means to express myself, to free myself from the ceaseless internal turmoil. My ruminations circulated, around and around in my head without resolution, without any sounding board, any witness… And the whole thing had felt very unfair (let’s be honest, it still kinda does). There was no legal justice coming my way, so at the very least I though perhaps I might glean some emotional justice if I could only share my story. So it started as a therapeutic device – but ended up being so much more.

What an amazing world this is in which we live; even when separated by half a globe, we can participate in each other’s lives, give each other support and continue to grow and learn from each other in ways we never could have anticipated. The world in which Elihu will grow up both thrills and frightens me. I can’t being to imagine the challenges his and future generations face, but at the same time I marvel over the potential before them… The planet will continue to shrink as social media and platforms like ours help to bring us all together – so that we may unite in our common goals as one human family. I’m convinced there’s enough on the planet to go around – and I pray that in the not-too-distant future the distribution of wealth and resources will begin to level out. Hopefully the better our ability to express ourselves and communicate, the happier and healthier our futures will all be.

While we haven’t ever known true hardship, Elihu and I have experienced enough challenges here at The Hillhouse to have learned a few important things. May I share them with you? As we see it, here are the top three ‘things’ to have in your bag of tricks as you go along: 1) A sense of humor (cannot be overstated); 2) A sense of adventure (life is a game, be bold and take chances, play as hard and creatively as you’re able) and 3) in the end, act in love as often as possible (for us, gratitude goes into this pot too). Look at that! Three years here, three little pearls to share.

Having said that, I think at this juncture it might be a healthy energetic move to wish my ex, his wife and their two boys, Elihu’s sister and her mother too, my love and good wishes for their futures… I don’t wish any of them ill. Not saying my heart’s not still recovering, or that it doesn’t pose a challenge for me going forward… This whole process – this very blog – has been driven by my discomfort with that situation. But I can say that I’m working on it. I don’t harbor bad feelings for my ex’s new family, and I wish it publicly known. All I wish for is that everyone here on this globe get a fair shake at a good life. And that includes people who’ve hurt me, intentionally or not. I guess we’re all just doing our best. So on with the adventure, and peace to us all.

To all of our dear readers, thanks for being part of our global family of friends; your love and energetic support means so much to us, and we send it back to you too.

E & E