reconnecting with me, myself and I

I stopped pumping last week. If you've ever had the pleasure, or the displeasure as the case may be, to attach yourself on the regular to the machine that squeezes the milk out of your breasts like cattle, then you know it often feels like a degrading ball and chain. It's a love/hate thing, because it's also the reason I was able to work full-time and still breastfeed Angus.

And for me, this time around, I actually enjoyed my regular breaks throughout the work day, when I could disconnect from the chaos around me and reconnect, symbolically, to my little baby boy. I tried not to work during those breaks, because really, it was the only time awake that I had totally to myself (at work and at home), to collect my thoughts and just breathe.

But towards the end of the year, when I was still at my old job, I let that rule slip and started using the time to catch up on work email. I regret that now. I let my stress take over the mindfulness that had always been so important to me.

Giving up the pump has been harder for me emotionally this time. Because it means my baby boy is becoming self-sufficient and doesn't need me as much anymore. And also because he might be the last baby. We're still not sure.

On the upside, giving up the pump means regaining a little piece of myself—for myself, and for my Love. The less Angus needs of me, the more freedom we have to go on dates, to hang out, to reconnect. I'm totally fine with that. And I'm sure my Love is too.

And of course, Angus is doing the best out of all of us.

date night

change is good; transition is hard

Goodbye EatingWell—one era ends, a new era begins.

When midnight came and went on December 31 last year, Col and I were miraculously awake to toast in the New Year. That never happens. We didn't require much dialogue to know what the other one was thinking, and so with our eyes and with our hearts, we committed our resolve. "To 2015," I said, raising my glass. "The year of change."

I won't mince words. While 2014 was an incredible year in many ways, most notably welcoming little baby Angus into the world, it was also the most challenging year we've faced together in our marriage. I had returned to a very difficult work environment after my maternity leave. Col was also dealing with the high demands of his job. With two small children and both of us in stressful full-time jobs, we rarely found time for ourselves, let alone each other. It's not that we were arguing all the time. It wasn't like that. It was just that we barely saw each other. We barely knew each other. Our balancing teacup act was resting nervously on the tipping point, just waiting for that one innocent catalyst to smash it all to pieces. Something had to give.

The occasion for change came swiftly, ready or not. Within weeks, I was presented with a promising job opportunity that would allow me to revitalize my career and find passion in my work once again. There wasn't much to discuss—we had already decided change needed to happen. My head, my heart and my gut were all saying, emphatically, "Yes!" I accepted the job.

But that didn't make the change any easier. My colleague at the time said to me, "change is good, but transition is hard." After eight good years with a brand and a company I'd poured my heart and soul into, I had made the decision to up and leave without looking back. Even as I was so excited for a fresh start and to let go of my heavy baggage, saying goodbye to each of my colleagues was like going through a traumatic breakup over and over again. And at my new job, it took me weeks before I stopped really missing my old team, my old systems, my old routine and all of the things that were familiar to me.

In the end though, the change really has been good. At work, I feel challenged and inspired. I come home at night with the mental space to converse with my family. I'm laughing again. I'm meeting friends for drinks after work. I'm regaining my life back. But we're still in transition, finding our new rhythms. Some of the other issues I've resolved to change still need addressing.

And some change is out of our control. That kind of change is sad and it is difficult. But it is almost always good. Eventually. It just takes time.

What I'm realizing lately is that this is not the year of change so much as it is the year of transition. Maybe even years of transition. It will be difficult, it will be inspiring, amazing, scary and heart-wrenching. But when I think about December 31, 2015, I don't have a clear picture of where we'll be on this journey, what our lives will look like or what we will be toasting. The bigger surrounding picture is still fuzzy. And that is exciting to me. That we still have time to shape things for the better. That we don't have to be stuck in a rut or chronically unhappy or stressed. It's incredibly empowering to finally have that epiphany. Would that it had come sooner in life. But better late than not at all.

Where I am now

There are certain species, such as the octopus, that die shortly after giving birth. I wonder about these animals, and wonder if their evolutionary path at some point decided that the emotional and physical ups and downs of rearing young was too much for the poor souls to handle.

Indeed, in my short experience of giving birth and rearing two young children, I've found that it's perfectly normal for the ups and downs to ignite a ripple effect of existential internal questioning. Such as, "what am I doing with my life"? There is never a good and easy answer. And every possible response spawns yet another line of questioning with equally unsatisfactory answers.

This is where I am these days, between caring for the yungins, wasting minutes I could be sleeping on the interwebs, trying to maintain a relationship with the hubs, and making every effort to to get to work on time. I just wonder sometimes, "how did I get here and where am I going?" I don't have a good answer.

But I wouldn't have it any other way. Honest.

Shards of glass

You know when the universe is trying to tell you something? I broke a glass bowl this morning. As I was rushing around trying to get everyone ready for work and school, I rushed to shove the bowl into a cubbard and it tumbled out of my fingers and hit the ground at breakneck speed, shattering into hundreds of shards all over the kitchen floor. I had to stop everything to clean it up. 

As I was thinking of the bowl just now, I remembered this photo I took yesterday of a broken window at my office. The reflected light from the shards reminded me of something I wrote a couple of years ago. Now, how many ways can I read into this series of events?

A glass window pane can be a harsh and cold-hearted thing. It can bottle you in and completely cut you off from the world around you. On the outside, the fragile bird is fooled by his reflection and hugs into the glass at break-neck speed. But shatter the glass, and you and the bird can be set free, swept up by the swirling wind into the heavens above.

For those of us left behind, the sharp fragments of glass cut a painful wound deep into the heart. But if you can manage to shift your view ever so slightly, you will see that the shards become a luminous prism, casting millions of magical rainbows across the landscape and letting us steal a glimpse into that world beyond.

Down Meadow

I'm staying at my parents this week with the kids. Partly to avoid a week of single parenting, while Col is traveling for work, but mostly to spend some time here while I'm still on maternity leave. 

Amelia is at peace here. She loves the chickens, the garden and being able to run around and explore. And she loves here Lalla and Papa Lalla. This means a lot to me--and to them--because you know how fickle and unpredictable toddlers can be.

Angus is being his usual mellow happy self. What a sweet little boy.

And me? I'm fighting the exhaustion of caring for two young children on my own. And trying not to think about going back to work next week. 

2 months

Angus turned 2 months a couple of weeks ago. He's practically 2 1/2 months now. At his doctors appointment I couldn't resist snapping a photo, just as we had done 2 years ago with Amelia. Later, I looked at the two side by side. Genes are unreal. They look so alike, and yet so different. How does that work out that way? I already know they'll BE very different from each other too, personalities reflecting each one of their parents. Amelia--stubborn, dramatic, funny, strong-willed, smart, visual. She's her mama's daughter. Angus--mellow, easy going, tactile, sensitive. He's his papa all the way. After just 2 months of life, I know this about him. I feel I'm just getting to know him, and yet know so much already. And I'm completely in love.

a dose of reality

It wasn't until our daughter went to the ER for the first time for an allergic reaction that I really felt what it was like to be completely helpless as a parent. The fear was paralyzing; I couldn't think straight. I remember racing to the car with my baby in arms completely naked. She didn't even have a diaper on. It never even occurred to me to use the Epipen. The one tool I have to keep my baby safe and I'm afraid of it. How awful is that?

If you don't have food allergies, it's easy to assume they're not a big deal or that sufferers are just being difficult or "special." 

I can say my daughter was not being difficult when, not even a year old, she broke out in hives after eating scrambled eggs. She was not trying to be special when her lips swelled up after mistakenly eating nuts in a sauce at a restaurant or when she ate an energy bar packed with not one but three offenders: almonds, cashews and flax (we didn't know about her allergies at the time).

I've always been casual about health and people's "issues" with diets and food. I tend to not take them seriously, and so even though we carry Epipens and have been through more bottles of Benedryl than I care to admit, I'm still grappling with what it means to have a child with a disability around food. Not only a disability, but one that is potentially deadly. 

Ever since her food allergy diagnosis and we picked up her first Epipens at the pharmacy, there's been this lump of fear in the back of my throat that Amelia will go into anaphylaxis and I will be paralyzed and not know what to do. 

I don't do well with the unknown, the unpredictable or with things I don't understand. Like, why was she able to eat almond butter so many times before and not react? Why did she not react the time my mother mistakenly fed her flax that was lurking in a butter spread? Why did she break out in hives inexplicably after eating strawberries and carrots at school? She is not allergic to those foods.

I've been thinking about Amelia's allergies more this week, because we had our annual visit to the allergist recently and she had to be retested for her known allergies as well as new ones.

They pricked her back over and over and half of the pricks turned into hives. Amelia was screaming and trying to scratch her itchy back. The cashew one was the biggest. Eggs didn't make a hive at all.

So the good news is Amelia can have eggs now. She's grown out of that allergy. But we discovered she has environmental allergies as well: cats, pollen. We were advised to get rid of our cats and then scrub down the bedroom. Get rid of our cats? They are part of our family. But keeping them could increase her risk of developing asthma.

As a parent, we make decisions every day that are subject to second-guessing. Breast feed or not, work or stay at home, organic or not. But these are not life and death decisions. When it comes to your child's health, are you a criminal for being lax? Keep the cats and risk asthma. Go to a restaurant and risk cross contamination. Give her a piece of chocolate that "may contain traces of nuts"?

I want to care for my child, but I also don't want her to live life feeling as though she can't enjoy it. But is the risk worth it? I don't know enough yet to feel as though I have the right answer. I'm still new at this thing called parenting.

What would you do?

Allergy prick test.

In the ER with puffy lips after eating hazelnuts.

A room of their own

Long before the kids' room was a bedroom, it was our den, where we as a young unmarried couple spent countless hours lounging and watching tv. And long, long ago, before the building was divided into condos—when the grand old Victorian house housed just one family and Elm trees lined South Union Street, where there were no cars, but just horses and buggies—we think it was probably a dining room. The dumb-waiter door to the en suite loo suggests it was probably the staff entrance to the kitchens. And the large stain glass windows feature a cornucopia of colorful fruit.

As a den, it was our favorite room in the house, but it took some time and some compromise to turn it into the space we loved. The wall color was the thing. The room has beautiful mahogany woodwork. But there is a lot of it and it is dark. When we bought the apartment in 2008, the walls were painted white and the stark contrast against the wood gave the room an odd cold feeling. It needed color to play off the warmth of the wood. I wanted navy blue. Col wanted teal. We ended up consulting a color therapist. I don't believe that is her true occupational title, but the woman was brilliant and found us a middle point—blue Danube.

So we painted and we decorated. We bought our first sofa together and put it in that room. We made creative used of the old closed-up fireplace by putting our tv there. It was a wonderful sanctuary and we spent more time there than any other room in the house.

Three years later, we had our first child and needed a room for her. Our only choice was to transform the den into a nursery. It was hard at first to give that up to a being who we had not even met yet.

In a somewhat noncommittal fashion, we decided to keep the blue walls and most everything else the way it was. I'm glad we did that. Those walls and that room tell a story—about the early years of our relationship, marriage and starting a family together. 

Soon after Amelia was born, I remember hanging up alphabet cards on the wall with little clothespins. I had purchased them earlier that day—my first outing alone after I had given birth. My mom had stayed home with the baby and then held her as she watched me attach cards one by one over the crib, transforming our den into a baby room.

There's something magic about that room that seems to welcome and adapt to each phase of our life. 

Some nights when Amelia was a small baby and I spent hours holding her in the darkness of that room, I sensed there were others in there with me. Spirits from families past watching over us. I would imagine dinner parties in the old dining room—liveliness, laughter and candlelight with the butler standing so still and upright in the corner.

Sometimes the presence would spook me and I'd rush to switch on the light. I still get chills thinking about it now, though I haven't sensed the spirits in a long time. Perhaps they observed long enough to feel comfortable letting us live in this dwelling and they decided to let us be. 

Now we are a family of four and the room is shared between toddler and baby. We added a dresser, we tidied things up. Amelia's toddler bed now takes the place under the fireplace mantle. But we didn't change much else and I'm glad about that.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to take some photos and submit them to a design website that I like. They featured the photos a couple of days ago in their user-submitted column. People started commenting on the page and I was surprised at how touched people were by the space—and the color. 

I feel as though I can't take much credit. It is not a consciously designed room, it just adapts little by little to the needs of our family. It is a room that lives and breathes, right along with those who inhabit it. Perhaps the spirits are still there, somewhere in the walls, making accommodations to our silent requests. Then quietly taking note of our moments, significant and otherwise, writing them down with forever ink onto the long parchment scroll that tells this building's history. It is magic, and I feel so lucky to be a part of the story.

Our old den:

Amelia & Angus' Lively Lovely Room (Apartment Therapy) 

The Babby Room (Penelope Post)

He smiles

I breath a sigh of relief. It's 11:32 on a Friday night. Col is out with some friends and I'm in bed with little A. Milly is asleep in her own bed. For once. All of the lights in the house are off. 

Up until this week, we've been leaving a light on in our bedroom, knowing there'd be numerous nighttime wakings and diaper changes. Knowing that I'd want to SEE--not just hear--the little guy breathing next to me.

So much changes in a month--and even from day to day. I'm feeling more confident. The baby is more confident. He knows more. We sleep with the lights out now. If little guy so much as stirs I simply roll over, shove a tit in his mouth and fall back asleep. 

He's started smiling at me too. And at his big sissy. I think they will be great friends. That is my hope at least.

Before Angus was born many people warned me that having two kids was harder than one kid x2. I never really understood what that meant. I still don't, and I'm not seeing this unfold. At least not yet. Am I being naive? Are we still in a honeymoon phase? If so, I want to cherish this, because it's pretty frickin' great.

The way we are now

I woke up this past Monday morning thinking "yesterday was one of the best days ever." It was Mother's Day and we had spent the day together as a family on a mini road trip down route 7.

We stopped for pastries at Vergennes Laundry--something I've been wanting to do for months--and then headed to Middlebury, where I had attended college a few years back. There was a new shop I wanted to check out and I thought it would be fun to explore campus. 

We did neither. The shop was closed for the holiday and we never made it up the hill to the campus. Instead we had a picnic by the waterfall in town and then got side-tracked by the Morgan Horse Farm right outside of town, where there were 6 or 7 new baby foals vying for our attention on such a lovely, sunny spring day.

The kids were on their best behavior too, Angus slept the whole time and Amelia was a complete peach, playing frisbee with her papa and laughing uncontrollably and wanting to say hello to every single horse at the farm.

It was almost 3 by the time we headed home, way past nap time. We were treading on dangerous territory. But there were no meltdowns. Just two zonked out kids for the 50 minute drive home. 

Bliss.

Back at home Col and Amelia stopped at a lemonade stand on their walk to pick up burritos for our dinner. Angus and I just lounged on the sofa for a bit. It really was a perfect day, not extravagant or outrageous by any means, but it was exactly what I wanted or needed.

I was explaining to Col that visiting Middlebury always brings with it a certain amount of anxiety. I go there and I see the buildings and remember the memories. I had a good time there and I have no regrets, but I was wild and also a college kid. I look back at the me in my late teens and twenties and cringe just a little bit. I want that girl to grow up. I want the people I was trying to impress or prove something to to see that this girl has grown up. I've changed so much. 

Just as that girl could not related to who I  today, I have a hard time relating to her. To her, excitement was making out with an Italian supermodel on a dance floor somewhere in Paris. Now? I just want a picnic with my family. 

And I got it. Such a lucky lady.

little language

Amelia's first real words were banana and butterfly. When she was less than a year old, she would say "na-NA-na-na" and "BUTT-eee" with great enthusiasm. And we as parents delighted in the fact that we could understand what she was saying. That we could now start communicating together.

Now just a little more than a year later, it's incredible to me how much of a communicator our little one is.

The other day, when we were looking at the magnets on the refrigerator, she asked, "where did the hippopotamus go?" First of all, hippopotamus?? Yes, she knows what one is and she can say it, all five syllables and all. But secondly, out of 20 animal magnets, she knew that one was missing. And that it was the hippo. These days, I can't claim to have such great observational skills.

Amelia has also come to understand adverbs and uses them freely and correctly. "I want to hold Angus," she says and then adds after a little pause as though to illustrate her new skill, "AFTER he's done eating."

So yes, we are communicating very well with this little toddler, who not too long ago was a little meatloaf in my arms. But there are still quirky little things she says that just make me chuckle and I know I will regret it if I don't write some of them down. Here:

- She has a funny accent (we don't know where it came from). For some words, such as tent, it's decidedly southern "TAY-ent" and other times it sounds like she's straight from the Northeast Kingdom (she's not, though she has ties there). Her mother does not say, for example, "I CAY-n't!!" or "Right THEY-ehr!" But she does.

- She says "tock" for "top" whenever she sings "rock-a-bye baby on the tree-tock"

- The other day when she was going to the loo, she told me, "I need to hold my penis down. Like Bart." Bart is a friend at school. Imagine my reaction and the conversation that ensued. With lots of "whys" from the little one. 

- She says "why." A lot. And she likes to draw it out when she says it. "Whaa-AH-yee?" Classic.

- My favorite: she always adds "right there" when we asks what something is. And she says it with her NEK accent: "What's that right THEY-ehr?"

another day

Listen, it feels good to be saying this, but I read my last post and have to chuckle. A friend of mine made a remark recently that these times of transition are short-lived. And you know what? She was right. At least when it comes to toddlers.

After my daughter rejected me and made me feel like a failure as a parent, I made of point of spending some alone time with her and just reassuring her. I've been trying to give her hugs whenever she's having a tantrum or meltdown or whenever she seems to need it.

The hugs are as much for her as they are for me.

And then all of the sudden, a few days ago, she whimpered, "I don't want Papa, I want Mummy! Mummy and Angus!" I didn't even try to hide my excitement at that remark. To realize that she hadn't rejected me forever, that she still needs her Mummy. And it only took a few hugs and a couple of days to get here.

These days we are all wearing our emotions on our sleeves. Loud and clear. She is a toddler, I am hormonal, and Papa, well, he's just tired. It's a roller coaster of emotions all around. The upside of this of course is that with every low point, there is a high point.

And silly little distractions can help us forget why we were upset in the first place. 

I'm not trying to belittle the huge transition we're all working through or saying we're over the hump or that Amelia has completely accepted her new lot in life. That will take time. But it's just good to rememeber during those dire moments that dire is not forever and in many cases is very short-lived.

family of 4

Well, we did it. After almost 42 weeks, the little baby arrived and he is a boy and we named him Angus. We are now a family of four, which feels much more of a unit than three. It feels good in that way. It also feels strange. This will be an adjustment.

One thing people kept asking me leading up to the birth was, "Is Amelia excited to be a big sister?" I always felt it was an odd question to ask and a difficult one to answer. How does a 2-year-old feel excited about something she doesn't understand? Excited, no. Curious? Perhaps. But I knew it would be difficult for her. No, it would not be exciting in the beginning. It would be difficult. My heart was aching for her even before Angus came. I cried about it sometimes, even knowing that eventually they would become best friends.

Turns out, my anxiety was justified, in part. When Angus was a day old, Amelia came to visit us in the hospital. Her first reaction to seeing me holding the baby was to burst into tears and cry, "Uppie, Mummy!" (which means she wanted me to pick her up). My heart broke. Luckily, I had support. I handed baby off to Papa and swooped her up in my lap and gave her a toy giraffe "from Angus." This appeased her and the visit ended on a high note. But I was nervous about coming home and what the adjustment would look like.

On the one hand, to my surprise, she adjusted pretty quickly to having a new baby brother. She actually has become "excited" and fascinated with his poopy diapers, his crying, his nursing. Everything. 

Sadly, what she's not excited about anymore is her Mummy. She wants her Papa for everything--to bring her to the loo, to put her to bed, to put on her socks.

"I don't want Mummy in the room," she whimpered to Papa the other night before bedtime. My heart broke, again. But I left the room quietly, wanting to give her space, not quite sure how to deal with this new parenting challenge. 

I wasn't prepared for this. And it's breaking my heart over and over again. At daycare, her teachers say she has become very attached to her two female teachers and is upset whenever they cuddle with any of the other children.

They wonder if she is searching for a mother-figure. My heart breaks, yet again.

"But I'm here!" I want to tell her. I want to hug her and kiss her and tell her everything will be ok. And I do this, but somehow I feel she doesn't quite understand her own feelings yet. And then the baby cries and I must leave her to go and attach him to my breast for a half hour.

This is very complicated stuff for anyone to deal with, let alone a 2-year-old.

Now the difficult question people keeping asking me is, "How is Amelia doing with Angus?" The easy response is, "She's doing great, she loves him." But the stuff the trails after in my thoughts is harder to put into words. 

And I know it's a phase. I hope it is. That's what I keep telling myself. But in the meantime, I miss my little girl. And she misses me.

holding my breath

I'm staying home from work today. To rest. It wasn't the original plan. But suddenly I reached my due date and passed it. And all of the energy I'd been rounding up day after day—to get myself out of bed, get the girl fed and dressed and off to school, get to work on time and work a full day before coming home to make dinner, pass out on the couch and wake up to do the same the next day—suddenly, I couldn't quite scrounge up that energy anymore. It has completely dissipated.

And here I am lying on the couch, listless and lazy. It's a foreign feeling that I haven't known in some time. I know I should make the most of it and just BE, but at moments, there it is: the guilt. Of not being fully productive. Of not working. Of sending my girl to daycare, when I SHOULD be spending some of our last precious days, hours, as a family of three TOGETHER.

Agh.

The breathlessness comes and goes. The crampiness. The contractions day after day. Still no baby. I'm feeling impatient to get on with this next phase of life.

Where did this impatience come from? The routine of non-stop-ness? Is this the American family way? Or am I just turning into my father?

Instead of holding my breath, why can't I just breathe deeply and enjoy it?

The blissful moments when we are able to slow down are so seldom, they are SPECIAL. Last night, for example, I was tired after dinner, so I went to lay down on the couch. Mealy came to join me with a stack of books while Col cleaned the kitchen. We read together for what felt like hours (though it was probably 5 minutes) and it was lovely.

All of a sudden, she started looking around with concern and said, "I peed on Mummy."

"What?" I asked in confusion and jumped up from the sofa to discover a giant wet spot beneath us.

"Run to the loo," I exclaimed! "Run before you pee anymore!"

She ran to the loo and I ran to get some cleaner and was scrubbing up the pee before you could say, "itsy bitsy spider."

And just like that we were back to normal.

I don't read parenting books

I work with some amazing people. Many of them are full-time working parents. On any given day, you can walk into the staff kitchen during lunch and witness some of the most interesting conversations about parenting: discipline, spousal relationships, work life balance, potty training, healthy cooking, sickness. You name it. There's usually banter, since not only are my colleagues smart and multifaceted, but they're also passionate and opinionated.

Today the lively conversation was about a parenting book called duct tape something or other. I missed the beginning of the conversation and I missed much of the middle and end, to be honest, because I found myself sucked in to obversing the conversation unfold. One was trying to give advice, based on what she'd read and had success with. Another had read 2 pages and was already skeptical, based on her own parenting experiences. Here I chimed in briefly, "you guys read parenting books?!"

People read parenting books?! One time last year in a moment of sleep-deprived desperation, I succumbed to a book on sleep. I didn't get very far, before I felt completely bewildered. None of the suggestions felt right. They felt too hard, too unnatural. And my baby rejected them too. As a new parent, it took all the courage within me to set aside self-doubt (and that dang book) and rely on my gut. And my baby. 

Sure there are nougats of truth in those books, but if you're a parent searching for answers or hard and fast rules, it's hard not to take the words of the "experts" for gospel and live by them without exception. And the problem there is that as a parent, with living breathing children, you will never fully live up to that gospel. You will ultimately make a mistake or veer from the path and feel like a failure.

I'd much prefer to observe my colleagues at the lunch table and pick and choose the parts that sound good. I'd much prefer to get advice from a friend who is in the same thick of it that I am. I'd much prefer to see how my sister handles a situation, and then choose my own variation. I'd much prefer to watch my own child's cues and let her help direct our path. To get and weigh and assess feedback from teachers. And see how my husband handles working through the trials. 

And make mistakes, but feel ok about it.

is this dialogue?

Two nights ago, as I was getting ready for bed, my husband walked into the bathroom and began, "I think I'll wear my new Vans tomorrow." I searched his face to do a quick read of emotion and all I could see was a stoic, weary visage staring back at me. This was serious.

It was a few minutes before midnight on a Monday and our first meaningful conversation all day (and last chance at any conversation for 2 weeks) was a barebones declaration of his foot fashion choice for air travel. But I had no good alternatives to suggest, so...

"Really?!" I replied. "I'm so happy for you."

He looked back at me quizzically and then relaxed his face into a soft chuckle, finally I suppose realizing the comedy in the moment. But we didn't go on to talk about shoes, socks or otherwise. It was late and we were exhausted. We kissed goodnight and fell into bed.

He would wake up 4 hours later and get on a plane to China.

Fast forward a couple days and again I find myself searching for the right words. Time is short and so are characters counts on my iPhone. I type out a quick message from work hoping Hubby will get the message in the next 24 hours. Bonus if I get a response.

I type, "You make it to China ok? Mealy went to dr with me this morning and got to hear the baby's heart beat. She was wide eyed and fascinated. So cool. Baby is healthy. Strong heart beat."

Ten hours later, I do get a reply. Positive and affirming in under ten words.

I don't really need much more than that. Really. Let the words live in the subtext or in a good book. Or a good argument. (But let those be few and far between.) This is how we communicate these days when life things get in the way. 

We learn to adapt our expectations and interactions in a way that works with what we've got, right now, in the moment.

fresh start

It's early January, it's a Saturday and it's rainy. I just got home from a shopping trip downtown and returned with two boring things: a pedometer and a new yoga top. This is not about New Year's resolutions. At all. I don't believe in those. But something about this soft, quiet, wet day inspired me to think forward. Holy crap, I'm going to have a baby in two and half months. 

It knocks my breath out to climb a few stairs. How the heck am I going to make it through child birth??

So the top is to encourage the inner yogi in me and the pedometer is to remind me to get off my butt and walk.

And the return to writing? I guess maybe that is some kind of resolution. But I hope it lasts. My friend share an article recently about the therapeutic nature of writing. Something I've always known to be true, but have lost sight of. It was a good reminder. So there you go. 

Hello again!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/01/01/258674011/editing-your-lifes-stories-can-create-happier-endings

due east

We just arrived home from our annual family trip to Maine. This year, because our usual rental house was unavailable, we decided to try somewhere new: Eastport. The town of Eastport is pretty remote—about as far east as you can go and not far from the New Brunswick border. It took us 9 hours to get there from Burlington.

If you're looking to get away from it all, this is the place to do it. The last hour and a half of our drive took us through a great pine forest on route 9. Nothing but woods and road for miles and miles. It was breathtaking and terrifying at the same time. Before we even arrived at our rental house, our phones switched into Atlantic time zone and started picking up the Canadian phone carrier, so we had to turn them off or else be charged international roaming fees. No cell service for a week. I was plenty okay with that.

The house we rented for a song was situated right on Passamaquoddy Bay (a smaller bay in the Bay of Fundy) overlooking Deer Island, New Brunswick across the way. The tides in the Bay of Fundy are some of the biggest and most intense in the world. When the tide was out, it went out far far far, leaving us with tons of muddy tidal flats to explore and find crabs. When the tide was in, it came in up up up, all the way up to the edge of the lawn leading to the house.

The tides factor in very much to what you can see or do in the area, a fact that is both interesting and irritating at the same time.

One day, we took a ferry boat over to Deer Island. We were hoping to catch a glimpse of Old Sow, the largest naturally occurring whirlpool in the Western Hemisphere. We caught the ferry at low tide, which meant we had to walk down a long beach to where the ferry was docked in the wet sand. It took us forever to even find the ferry, since it was not well-marked and the boat was just pulling away as we arrived. But the fine gentleman running the ferry saw us and had the captain come back to pick us up. We hopped on the boat, paid the gent our $3 and enjoyed a lovely semi-private boat ride across the bay. There were only 4 other people on the boat besides us.

About a half hour later, we docked on another wet beach, this time on Canadian soil. Before we could get off the boat, two border guards jumped on and approached us to do the usual border crossing questionnaire and presenting of passports. Colin wanted to ask for a stamp, but figured they probably didn't carry them! It was one of the most bizarre border crossings I've ever done. But also pretty cool. As we headed toward the beach, the ferry gent warned us: "When you get on the ferry to come home,  make sure you see me on the boat. Otherwise it's the wrong boat and you'll end up on Campobello Island!"

We didn't see Old Sow. The best time to see it is right before high tide as all of the tidal waters converge and bubble and swirl into a magnificent funnel. But we did see plenty of wild-life, making it some of the best $3 ever spent. Turns out, going at low-ish tide was a boon, because as the tides started to come in and the waters of Old Sow began to churn, the porpoises and seals gathered in large numbers, presumably to find their lunch. We sat by a small lighthouse overlooking the bay and Moose Island on the US side, as the porpoises danced and played right before our eyes. An eagle soared above us out and over the water. And even the cormorants had their fair share of fishies for lunch.

The Deer Island ferry ride was my favorite part of the weeklong trip, which included two more excursions to Canada—Campobello Island, where we saw more eagles and whales and picked a ton of wild blackberries on a hike, and St. Andrews by Sea, which you can get to easily by car. We explored the small town of Eastport, enjoyed some pretty delicious (albeit very rich) seafood and went hiking at Shackford Head State Park, where at the overlooks we could see many working fish farms in Cobscook Bay and also where we were attacked by stinging red fire ants (not a highlight of the trip, but a good story I guess).

We even visited a mustard museum at Raye's Mustard, the only stone ground mustard factory left in the US. Why mustard in Eastport? Sardines! There used to be over 20 sardine plants in Eastport alone, and all of the factories packed the sardines in Raye's Mustard. Now that the American sardine industry is no more (the last plant closed a couple of years ago), Raye's has entered into the specialty foods market and they make some pretty amazing mustards there. Being mustard people, we bought 4 large jars and probably would've been happy for more.

Back at the house, we enjoyed our daily explorations to the beach and every night the boys built a bonfire on the beach, which most of the gals passed up in order to watch some guilty British pleasures on TV—Sherlock Holmes and Fawlty Towers. But on the last night, we let the kids stay up late and we all went down to the fire after dinner to make s'mores.

The next morning, we headed home. We were ready. I think if I didn't have a child and I really did want to get away from it all, I could have spent days and days there happily writing and painting. But with a 1 1/2 year old, by the end, we were all ready to get back to our routines—and civilization.

this food may cause your body to self-destruct

Do you fear food? I do. What a strange and sad thing to admit. But it's true. This new-found fear started a few months ago with a scrambled egg, of all things. 

But I wasn't always afraid of food. In fact, if you know me, then you know that food-love factors largely into my life. I work at a food magazine. I attend my farmers’ market religiously and seek out new food products and restaurants obsessively. I bake. I cook. I feed. I eat. (Who doesn't?)

I grow an herb garden and have a veritable relationship with my plants that flavor so many of my meals. The old lavender who comes back year after year—her roots are so deep and gnarled into the earth, I can count on her steadfast loyalty. My rosemary is more fickle, but I annually make room for him (or one of his kind) in the garden—so special and unmatched is his flavor, I cannot resist. Fresh chives season my salads from the first thaw to late into the fall.

Speaking of gardens, it was in the garden that I first developed my love of food. Growing up, when there was nothing to eat in the cupboards, there were always sun-warmed cukes in the garden. My mother used to make crab-apple jelly from fruit-bearing trees in the yard. She'd bake up rhubarb crumble from the weeds growing out back. We picked black raspberries at our next door’s neighbor Paul’s house. Paul was an old-timer Quebecois who didn’t speak any English, but he had the most wonderfully overgrown berry bushes that had taken root around an old rotting wood pile. Paul welcomed us to pick as many berries as we could and so we would, coming home hours later with stained fingers, scratches aplenty and sweet black raspberry grins.

I could go on an on about my food memories, but I won’t. We all have food memories, don't we? Food is such a basic aspect of human life, but the culture of food, the experience of food, colors so much of who we are as individuals.

***** 

I tend to wax poetic about these things, but it's not all good stuff, is it?

I mean, too much food can caused sickness, obesity and disease. Too little can cause starvation or eating disorders. But I've always assumed the dangers of food to be largely human shortcomings. It's not the food that is the problem, it is the abuse of food that is the problem. 

I always thought: everything in moderation, focus on fresh, wholesome, local ingredients and you should be okay.

But those naive assumptions were challenged one night last fall when I fed my 9-month old baby a scrambled egg (from my parents' darling hens, of course).

She broke out in hives.

It was a mild outbreak, but I was a new mother and it scared me. It was to be the first of several episodes of hives, so we finally met with a food allergy doctor to do a scratch test. 

The egg test came back positive. My little baby girl was not yet a year and she already had an epi-pen. 

It was a sad moment: how could she go through life without ever trying my farmer's market quiche or devouring an egg sandwich on the way to go snowboarding? But I was hanging on to this small ray of hope: the doctor said that egg allergies in small children are fairly common and that our girl might grow out of it. So I filed the diagnosis away in my mind as "not a real food allergy."

Even though, we have to carry an epi-pen, which is scary as hell.

*****

Two weeks ago, we had another episode. This time, it was so scary, we went to the ER. Later, after more  testing, we discovered that Amelia might also have allergies to tree nuts and flax seeds. We're still waiting on the final tests results, but even now, days later, I'm feeling somewhat floored.

I mean, eggs, ok. But flax seeds? And nuts?

How could a food so natural and so wholesome as an almond cause a little person's body to self-destruct?

The epi-pen, Benedryl, Zyrtec, prick tests, blood tests, emergency medical plan and the ER—these are not the sorts of things I envisioned in our little girl's life. And certainly not in relation to food.

I want my daughter to be an explorer, to be able to extend her palate as far as her curiosity can take her. But how can you feel a sense of freedom and excitement and curiosity when trying something new carries the risk that your body will reject it?

*****

I still do love food, of course. And so does my daughter. I realized this tonight as she was chowing down on flatbread with sun-roasted tomatoes, garlic scapes and oyster mushrooms. 

And I'm trying to use our new reality as an excuse to actually expand our food horizons. But I will never look at food again in such a rose-colored way as I did before.

free as a bird

Last Friday, I went to my yoga class as I usually do Fridays at lunch. At the studio, there is a bowl of intentions. If you want, you can take a card out of the bowl and use the word written on the card to help you focus during your yoga practice. I don't usually pick a word. I am filled to the brim with words enough as it is. But on this particular day, on a whim, I decided to draw a word out of the bowl. I turned over the card to read it. The word was, "free."

"Free. That is a good word for me today," I said to the woman at the desk. "That feels about right." It did feel right, but at the time I wasn't quite sure why.

Our family friend Patty would say I drew that card for a reason, that there was meaning to it. She likes to discover the connections between things, to find meaning in numbers, everyday objects, happenings.

Patty's son Reid died suddenly last weekend. How do you find meaning in that? Reid was my age. We grew up together in the early years when we lived in Pawlet. And even when my family moved away from that sleepy town, their family continued to factor deeply into my early childhood memories. But I didn't really know him at all.

Yesterday, the family held a service at the family farm in honor of Reid. As those close to him gathered and shared their stories and memories, I discovered this was a boy that struggled with life ever since his dear Pop died in 1996. They all struggled—he and his brothers, his mother—but Reid did especially. For almost 17 years. Why did I not know this? How could I not know? Because my mother didn't tell me? Because I didn't ask?

One after another, people came up and described Reid as a caged bird that has been set free. Patty and some others read out loud from Wallace Steven's 13 Ways of Looking at a Black Bird while high overhead a hawk circled nobly around us in blackened silhouette from the sun.

There is meaning in everything. If you look for it, you will find it.

Free.

If you are a naturalist, then you know we are all one with the earth—at birth, in life and at death. Reid's ashes are now scattered on the hill, where as children we ran and played. Where in the summer, the honeybees will drink the sweet clover nectar. He is one with the earth and with the honeybees.

If you are a scientist, then you know energy never really dies. The day Reid fell, the energy that coursed his living body—contents under pressure—released. His energy is now all around us, darting here and there like a hummingbird among the hibiscus.

If you are a poet, then you know you must harness that energy somehow, like a bird on a string. You must gently rein it in to the palm of your hand. You may hold it and mould it and translate it into a gift. But then you must set it free. For the entire world to see. Reid's poetry will live on forever. His music will live on forever. He is free.


* * * * *

A glass window pane can be a harsh and cold-hearted thing. It can bottle you in and completely cut you off from the world around you. On the outside, the fragile bird is fooled by his reflection and hugs into the glass at break-neck speed. But shatter the glass, and you and the bird can be set free, swept up by the swirling wind into the heavens above.

For those of us left behind, the sharp fragments of glass cut a painful wound deep into the heart. But if you can manage to shift your view ever so slightly, you will see that the shards become a luminous prism, casting millions of magical rainbows across the landscape and letting us steal a glimpse into that world beyond. They glitter on the roof of the sugar house, where we stayed the summer our own house burned down. They glitter in the apple orchard up on the hill, now completely overgrown. They glitter over the village of Pawlet, Mach's General Store, the mill pond and the little house where we grew up. They glitter over Haystack Mountain and up into the heavens.

* * * * *

Over the last week, I have spent many hours thinking about Reid. I've cried for him. For his brothers. For his father, who also died way too young. And for Patty.

When processing heartache, it is hard not to go into dark places. But you must try not to.

The world has wonderful ways of reminding us: there is still so much LIFE on this earth! The hummingbird flapping her wing so fast in the garden is singing, "live, live, live!" The gull who floats on a strong headwind knows not to struggle against the force, but to lay into it and glide like an easy rider. He takes a deep salty breath and dives towards the sea to snag his next meal. He is loving the simplicity and deliciousness of it all.

Some of us kids from the early Pawlet days, little Reidie at far right.