Moving about

We have lived in this space for over a year now.  This space I didn't want to come back to and did. This space that I begrudgingly nurtured until I started to love it again on a long term basis. It seemed the dust had just (and finally) begun to settle, I was convinced I could tolerate South Carolina and had accepted it into my "5-10 year plan." Then Rob came home and said he suspected a position in the northeast may open soon, and also that he may be approached about it, and also that he wanted it if he was. I said ok. I don't know any other way to be. Somehow it will end up being a good thing. In the long run.

In the short run. We are moving to New York.

I'm thinking about it like a dream. I'm looking for houses and booking flights and mapping out travel plans and it's like a dream. And I think I have to keep it that way so it doesn't overwhelm me. I do things during the week that are organizational but in the back of my mind "it will make it easier when we're leaving" is the real reason. I think about how to re arrange the house so it will be ready for us when we return at Christmas. I talk in my head to the house and the trees about us leaving. Will you be okay? Have we loved you enough, in this short time, to weather our absence? And sometimes I cry.

Vapor -- and gifts from somewhere else

...a few minutes ago I heard my son faintly talking through the monitor in his room. I went upstairs and barged noisily into his room, ready to scoop him up and continue our day--but he was completely asleep, and didn't budge when I rested my hand on his little back (to make sure he was still breathing of course). He has been talking in his sleep more lately--either that or there is a child ghost chatting away in his room (also not unfathomable in this house). So I tiptoed out and back downstairs.

I walked through the kitchen and absent-mindedly picked up a peach from the fruit bowl on the table, washed it off in the sink, grabbed a paper towel and started walking toward the front door.

As I approached the door I mentioned to Emma (our niece, who is still sitting on the couch) that the thunderstorm was probably sadly going to float right past us without so much as a drop of rain, and without listening for a response (she's 11 and she's on her iPad, sooo....) I took a bite of the peach and pushed open the glass door to our front porch.

Maybe my eyes were closed for a split second. That's how it must have happened even though I sensed light as if they were open. The taste of the peach and the heat from outdoors and the familiar veil that is the smell of the woods surrounding our house -- it all happened at once.

In a split second I was 10 again. I was a long legged tom boy with white blonde hair halfway down my back. My dad and my grandparents were alive and vibrant. I had just gotten a horse that summer and my black cat, who I'd had since I was four, was stretched out on the hood of the dark blue jeep wagoneer my dad bought a few years before.  My little brother was my biggest annoyance and he and my two cousins were also my best friends. I was biting into a fat, pink, freestone peach that had been picked from a tree on my Papa's farm probably that morning and I had just walked outside to find a tree to climb so I could watch the storm roll by from its branches.

And I opened my eyes as if I was waking from a dream and had no control over it. I stood there for a moment, nearly reeling from the wave of memory and nostalgia. Then I walked to the side of the porch, leaned against the bricks and closed my eyes again in hopes of regaining any shard of that gasp of a moment

but it was gone, in a breath...

Sunday

I'm sitting on the side patio listening to the birds and the trees. Henry is still sleeping and I just finished a glass of savignon blanc. Last night we had a family over. A friend of mine, her husband, and their three girls. Henry was in hog heaven. At first my husband and I were bummed that it had started raining before they got here because we had done so much to prep the yard and porches for outdoor time, but after the initial disappointment and introductions and greetings I'm pretty sure no one even noticed. The house was a buzzing circus. It was fantastic.

It rained all night and into the morning. At some point I brought Henry to bed with us and it rained more. Henry had his head buried in Robs shoulder and his feet tucked under my rib cage. The Christmas decision to buy a king bed was a good one.

The birds are singing and the trees seem greener and everything is light and lush.
The forest is happy.

April 2016

There are four drafts of words upon words that I never published here. So much as happened and so much has been felt and all these things are rendered into history. I haven't posted anything since October following our son's birth. All the words and all the time and all the confidence have been mostly poured into motherhood and taking care of a home and family and trying to stay sane and happy. All of that.

This week Henry and I have been outdoors more than inside--even though we are both struggling with a rotten cold that seems to have it's fingers sunk deeply in. I finished the second of two check-log terraces in the side yard of the house where we have been living since last spring. I said I would never live here again--this place where evidence of my childhood collides with that of my own child. These wood floors have felt the stomp of small feet for over a hundred years. So here we are, having been here almost a year after nearly 15 years of absence--our son has learned to crawl and walk and run and talk here, just as my brother and I did.

Last year was a blur. The move was a blur. Now it's spring again, and I have been planting like mad. Henry squeals and runs around in the dirt and tries (usually successfully) to collide with as much water from the garden hose as he possibly can--me wiping snot off his face every now and then with my t-shirt. Our goofy puppy galloping around the yard with a stick or a ball or a gardening glove, or one of Henry's shoes.

I've been thinking a lot about things. That's what I do. I think.

This morning we planted a dogwood tree in the front yard near the woods. I've written poems about dogwood trees and they have been haunting me like shadows scratching a window while you're asleep. There is plenty of haunting here--mostly floating around like lightening bugs, magical, fascinating and ethereal. There are darker things too of course, but they stay in the shadows and you can only see them if you aren't looking. With some experimenting I've found.....well, it's often better to just look, and keep looking. Stare if you must.

It occurred to me this morning that the only side of the house where dogwoods don't naturally grow may be a good place to plant our little tree -- maybe it's good luck to have dogwoods at each of the four corners of a yard. That's why. We have three more trees to plant and I have yet to come up with reasons for where they should be.

That's all for now I think. After a year and a half I don't want to overdo it--not with words.