blast off

I'm laying with Owen in the top bunk at bedtime and he tells me about his crazy dream.

Owen:

I had this dream that I went outside and you were getting into a space shuttle and it was called the Alone Shuttle. And you were going to this place called the Special Woods where all the animals were really nice and would help you with all your stuff.

I asked you, "Do you have to go Mom?" and you said "Just for a couple hours, Buddy."

Dad pulled me inside because it wasn't safe to see the launch, and when I went back outside, you were gone. So I went back inside and I went through my secret lair and came out in the driveway and I was hiding by the flowers and I saw you in the Alone Shuttle and I asked if I could come along and you said, "I have too much work to do, Buddy."

But then I got in my Secret Mobile and I was driving on the highway and I went past the Special Woods and I thought, hmmmm. So I parked on the side of the road, and then someone woke me up.

I wish I could have more of that dream.

me:

Even though I was leaving in it?

Owen:

Well, you know my lair? It was really cool and had really cool computers and stuff in it. I wish I had one.

:::

I love my job, but it has been really stressful lately. I met one deadline and I'm up against another, and I've been working too much for the last couple of weeks. During the day, at home after the boys go to bed, pretty much constantly. I knew the project would be like this for a stretch when I took it on, but it doesn't make it any easier. I really do believe in the value of what I'm doing, and my boys know that my job helps people learn how to take care of the planet and keep it healthy and keep us healthy, and as I've said before, they have been doing so, so good with the new schedule of more days with Dad and a few days with our beloved nanny. But it has been hard for me lately.

I had a meeting yesterday at which I burst into tears in front of a conference table full of scientists, many of whom could be my father or my grandfather. I was incredibly embarrassed and they all looked like they wanted to hug me. Some of them did. I work with mostly lovely, brilliant people, but when collaborating with hundreds of people and dozens of committees and a handful of egos, there is bound to be a stink bomb airlifted in at some point in the process, and when it detonated, it knocked me on my ass. Unfortunately (or not), my anger/sense of being wronged manifests in tears and when I tried to rationally lay out my feelings about a particular situation, I found myself with the tell tale shaky-voice/blinky-eyes, and before I knew it I was sniffling my way through my harangue. Yeah, I know. Awesome.

I was going to leave the meeting and finish out the day at the coffee shop, but halfway there I took a hard right and drove home to my boys instead. I rattled into the driveway and there they were - all five of them: three littles, light sabers drawn and ready for battle; one big, sipping a hoppy ale and smiling at my early return; and one hairy, lazily raising his head to check me out before resuming his afternoon snooze. Coming home to my boys...I can't even find the words. My boys are home. Their munchkin voices peppering the afternoon air, their sticky little hands and their dirty feet and their bruised foreheads fill me back up, swelling my heart and tightening my throat, and this time -- when the tears pricked my eyes, I was only feeling love.

:::

I had a yoga class tonight. I raced home from work to join the boys at the elementary school for literacy night for what was going to be a brief drop-in before class, but we stayed and then came home together. I needed to be here with them tonight. Eli and I have been collaborating on a new bedtime story.

Once upon a time, Mama was captured by the bad guys and put in jail and her hands were tied and she was calling for help. Eli the Brave heard her, and he came to the jail and he tricked the bad guys by pretending he was old and had a cane so they let him in. But once he got in he said 'Ha! I tricked you!' and he wielded his blaster, which they thought was a cane, and he blasted everyone with sleeping gas and they all collapsed to the ground. And Eli untied Mama and they hopped in the rocket and blasted off together, away from the jail. The End.

We lay on the bottom bunk and I tell him the story and touch the little glow-in-the-dark dinosaurs on his pajamas. I kiss his impossibly, ridiculously soft cheeks.

I do it again before I go to bed. I sneak into their room and I kiss their cheeks and I whisper that I love them so very, very much and then I slip into my room, and lift the baby from his crib when he calls for me and I snuggle him close and we nurse and I kiss the top of his head, and John joins us soon after and I drift off with my feet tangled in his legs and tiny fingers tangled in my hair and two chests rising and falling in the room across the little hall and a big hairy beast keeping guard at the door, and my heart is so full that it comes out my eyes and I thank God that I have these boys and that they have me and that we are together. Not alone.

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on accepting truth

Pema writes that "the truth sinks in like rain into a very hard earth." Perhaps Pema was not a hydrologist. When the earth is very hard, rain doesn't sink in; it runs off.

I think sometimes this is how it goes with accepting truth when our hearts are hardened. Maybe a little sprinkle will find a crack to seep into. But a downpour of truth when we aren't ready to take it in?

Flash flood.

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INCOMING!

You know you're a mother of boys when....

...you land the soft underside of your bare foot on a playmobil skull.

...while laying on the bottom bunk with one boy, you hear from above through the crack between the top bunk and the wall, "INCOMING TOOT!" followed by a stinky stench wafting.

...you don't visibly flinch at livingroom light saber battle before 8 am.

...your turn.

(I'm not one to perpetuate stereotypes, but I have been particularly enjoying the boyfulness of my life lately, and I know some of you hear me on this. Join me in the comments below? I have a feeling this could get funny.)

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i took a moment from my day*

Tonight when I gathered my things and breezed out the door to pick up at the coffee shop what I didn't finish at the office, I had this *flash* and I was leaving my dorm room for a night of studying [socializing] at the library. (4th floor, tables by the window.) Maybe it's the chill in the air or the anticipation of nighttime coffee or maybe it's all the old photos I've been pouring through.

John and I just celebrated 10 years of matrimonial bliss. [Last week, on Owen's 7th birthday.] This month also marks 13 years since we've been an item (Although the date is marked via hindsight, as it took me months before I let him call me his girlfriend, silly me.) And this month also marks 14 years since we've met - on a late summer/early fall night before classes started. He was there early for soccer practice, and I was there for some pre-freshman orientation thing that I don't clearly recall. But my friend Jamie and I and a couple of other girls were roaming the halls of the dorms, looking for boys, when we came upon an open door and a tiny room full of *cha-ching* SOCCER PLAYERS. (yep.) I sat down next to that shaggy blond-haired baby-faced Beck-look-alike boy and probably didn't turn my eyes elsewhere the entire night. And while it was an entire year before we actually started dating/hanging out/making out (whatever), it was that night, that very first night that we met, when he vowed to his buddies ala Wayne's World (it was 1996, yo.) She will be mine. Oh yes, she will be mine. [true story.]

So we've been together for a while. And there are many more stories between there and here, but I'll save them for another time. Because tonight I think of our college days. Pre-kids. Pre-marriage. Pre-anything-other-than-the-self-absorption-that-comes-with-being-a-college-kid-and-following-the-Phish-tour. And thanks to the thoughtful 10 year anniversary gift of my sweet husband [a photo book - complete with captions and messages all bound and hard-covered!], I actually have a stash of old photos scanned in, at the ready for sharing.

So here we are, in our early days. And I am grateful to God and the series of events that have played out through the universe over the last decade+ that I can say today with all my heart that we are even happier, even more in love, than we were then.

[I love you, babe.]

the evolution of us...

the dorms circa 1997: New Love, complete with college clichés i.e. grateful dead poster, guitar, and an ugly couch

1998? '99? Some summer, some Phish show. Deer Creek maybe? (anyone recognize this?)

In Belize 1998 - he came to visit me during my semester abroad

January 1, 2000 - in Florida after seeing Phish at Big Cyprus for NYE'99

September 2, 2000 Four months after graduating college, at 22 yo, we tied the knot!

Our one-year anniversary, backpacking in the Porcupine Mountains of Michigan's Upper Peninsula

Sept. 01, 1 yr married and road-trippin' to Rocky Mountain National Park

November 2002, biking slickrock at Moab. That beard? A product of 5 months without shaving or trimming. He went another two before he buzzed it off. My grandma told him he "looked like a trapper."

Our 3yr anniversary, in our upper flat with our hours-old firstborn. I know, I look 12. And I'm red and blotchy from hormonal happy crying, and my husband has a farmer tan. He was holding the baby skin-to-skin, people! That's why he's not wearing a shirt in any of those early-days pictures.

Our 4yr anniversary, camping at Minnesota's Whitewater State Park...our 1 year old birthday boy was asleep in the tent.

2005 So happy together... family of 3 with a bun in the oven

Six years married, with two month old second child at Wolfman Triathlon

seven years down! a night away from the boys for the Wolfman triathlon

Eight years of wedded bliss...we're growing! (check out that belly) 2008

Axel's first Phish show, summer of 2009 @Alpine Valley

fall of 2009, nine years married

2010 - a decade of marriage! here's to many more decades to come.

*title taken from the lyrics of Wading in the Velvet Sea by Phish

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morsels

:: For Owen's birthday, he had a mini-party with his brothers and his best friend, also named Owen. The Owens were sitting side-by-side eating their sandwiches when friend Owen remarks to my Owen "Reading is so fun! In books without pictures, you get to make up your own pictures. In your head!" To which my Owen replied, "I know! It's awesome. You can make the picture however you want to. You can make the guys look like anything you want!" My heart burst. They naturally spent the day playing Star Wars legos, and we even played Pin the Tail on the Tauntaun, at Owen's request and thanks to John's mad drawing skillz. A great time was had by all.

:: All of Wilson's tests came back negative. So they think that he's still fighting the Lyme's. We've got some stronger antibiotics and some pain meds, so hopefully another month and we'll have a recovered pup. It's been super sad to watch him in pain, losing weight and energy for months now. We're really hopeful about this treatment. We love him so.

:: My dad spent all summer enduring radiation five days a week, following surgery last spring to remove his prostate [cancer]. Good news. Big news. PSA scores of ZERO. That's good. Very good. We are thankful and grateful and relieved. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your prayers, thoughts, concerns and well-wishes.

:: I am in the final stretch of the crazy at work. It has been intense and challenging and hard and rewarding and interesting, and I have learned a lot. About climate change impacts in Wisconsin, of course. But also about family and balance and teamwork in marriage and support systems and the Village [that it takes to raise children]. And I am looking forward to going back to part-time hours once we move from writing/editing mode into layout, come October. Like I've mentioned before, I have so many ideas cooking in regards to my creative work and I really look forward to the time to put some of them into action.

:: Thank you all for reading. To those of you who I've never met but who pop by to read my stories anyway - thank you. I'm sorry I'm horrible at reciprocating. I spend very little time on the internet; and unfortunately, I can't keep up with the funny, thoughtful, beautiful blogs that so many of you write. I'll have to do another link up again so you can direct me to some of the gems I've been missing. To those of you I know in the flesh? Thank you for reading, too. I'm always surprised when I bump into a friend or acquaintance around town who mentions they read my blog. People I never would have guessed would read this are out there reading, and I am humbled by and grateful for the time you take out of your day to read the words I string together over here. I started this thing as a place to practice my craft and play around with words a bit, and the fact that people read [and dare I say enjoy?] what I spin out is a huge gift to me. So thanks, friends and penpals alike.

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The Wilderness Downtown

Have you seen this yet?

If not, check it out. A little interactive art to start your weekend off right.

[The Wilderness Downtown - an interactive film by Chris Milk featuring 'We Used to Wait' by Arcade Fire.]

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seven

Seven.

I'm feeling the pull to hold his stories close, to share just his essence and keep the rest for us.

He's turning seven. The boy who made me a mama.

Who cracked my heart wide open, who softened my edges and blurred my borders and peeled back the veil that hung over life, exposing the layers and layers of texture and color and smells and sounds that I hadn't even known were there. He handed me a key and we threw open the door, bursting through together, him pulling me by the hand as I gazed in jaw-dropped wonder at the marvels around me - the scary, marvelous world with more beauty and heartache than I ever, ever could have imagined or believed in, no matter how strongly you swore it was true.

He's got a poet's eyes, a golden heart. This boy is such a gift.

Happy birthday Owen, my boy. I love you so much.

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