This Moment:::3 Days, Camping in the Yard

A Friday ritual. A simple, special, extraordinary moment.

A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

~joining Soule Mama

Free Write:::From the Heart

{Feeling like it's been some time since I posted from my heart, from the right now parts of our life, the real and honest parts of our days and nights, the in betweens, I sat down in the corner of our living room and wrote exactly what had been spilling out in tears these last few nights.  This post has no edits, no days spent with hmm, should I post this?  I'm feeling a lot about summer coming, before the fall that will have two of my babes in elementary.  So before I close the book and smile and say, oh yes first grade has been great, which indeed it has, I need to get a little out, set loose the words I have tucked away.}

Seven and a half years ago, when my husband placed our firstborn in my arms, no one in the room told me what had been taken from me.  No one said, a piece of your heart is gone and she will carry it with her always.  Those words were not whispered in the stillness of our home when our second little lady floated her way to the birthing pool water’s top, nor were they spoken in the early hours of Halloween two and a half years ago when our third daughter was placed in my arms. 

As I slipped into the newness that is early parenthood and grew to say the words my daughter with regularity, just as I rose to the call of Mama in the night, I didn’t have to prepare myself for the growth.  I knew I would wear my heart on the outside of my body; it’s growth too large to be tucked away.  I could sense the arrhythmia during first words, first steps and, later, first books read aloud to little siblings. 

I wasn’t prepared for the pain I would feel from the parts of my heart each child had taken.  I wasn’t prepared how irregular my own would skip as I sent them into the world, away from me and our home and their blankies and into classrooms, recess yards, birthday parties.  I wasn’t prepared for how it would feel to hug her at school yard’s edge as she shook, tear stained saying she never wanted to go back. I wasn’t prepared for how it would feel to hear that time and time again.  Oh, I needed those days almost more than she did when she’d run to the gate, giggling with stories from the day all the while clutching her amazing work, simply beautiful creations from her day.

I believe this oldest girl of mine will grow to wipe the tears of others, helping injured kittens or neglected elephants.  Yes, she so will.  She will grow to do impeccable things with that heart of hers, that heart that swells with the social injustice around her and while that one, giant piece of my heart squeezes with love right out of her, seen and felt in drops and drops of tears. 

First grade has been amazing for her.  Yes, it has.  We weren’t always certain it would be phenomenal for her, but we believed in our awesome community’s public school.  She entered not being able to count to thirty and leaves with a solid number sense and a number scroll penciled past 1,000.  She’s done well; chapter books tucked under one arm and an oral fluency that would make any slam poet proud.  Her teacher is amazingly kind and thoughtful.  It’s the bigger picture of life’s lessons that sting, that’ll make her stand so tall like her Daddy one day.  But each lesson hurts.  I wish I could honestly say as this year comes to an end that the good and the bad, the smiles and the tears have been perfectly balanced.

No, says the space in my heart; no. 

I will not sit my second daughter down and tell her soon, boys will only play with boys on the school yard, but they’ll gladly come to your house and play the way you know them so well.  I will not tell her a group of three girls is often hard, because one might sometimes or hardly ever or often feel a bit left out.  I will not tell her that when a boy she doesn’t really know spends entire recesses chasing her and pulls on her braids during circle time it really is because he likes her a whole lot.  Some things are better left discovered all on our own.  In the fall, when she enters kindergarten, she’ll have to figure out that some people are just plain mean, and some people just rub us the wrong way.  She’ll have to deal with it, with grace and head held high. When I think back to every job I ever had, there was always one person that didn’t jive with me and I’m glad I had learned how to smile and bear them, letting my mouth fill with joy when the timing needed it so. 

So when my eldest says she sometimes spends recess waiting in line the entire time, not knowing who to play with, not wanting to walk up to someone new or someone so totally familiar and lovely but all the while busy and ask them to play fairies or wild ponies and she cries and tells me how much she missed me, well, I wasn’t ready for how much that would hurt my heart.  I’m still not ready for how much it burns to hear that someone said something mean while she sat there, in her favorite tiger shirt eating a peanut butter waffle sandwich while someone laughed at her shirt and her sandwich bread all the while wearing my heart inside her chest.  Yes, this right here, right now, that other week, this week is the hardest part of parenting.  I’d gladly take more sleepless nights, childhood boogers that turn into my own fevers and ailments left over from pregnancy to ease the heart pain from the social order of the school yard.  

This Moment:::Cayuse Pass

A Friday ritual. A simple, special, extraordinary moment.

A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

~joining Soule Mama

:::
{weekending, a few days late}
after a freeway clogged with sunny day rush hour

or, as the husband says eleven lanes too many

the Seattle-Obama-Clooney traffic jam,

an orthodontist appointment for the biggest girl,

in an office with bottomless pinball and a talking parrot

we drove toward a national forest of evergreens

high, white snow pack, solid glacier views

12-foot walls, high altitude sledding
cayuse pass

happy forest memories

time spent here began to fill space

empty of mountains, crisp blue skies,

carved from The Beartooth Mountains

reminiscent of Montana days

oh, this weekend there was an hour poolside while my family slept
(soon, I'll tell you all about where we stayed)

sunshine creeping towards 80 degrees

a pacific northwest rarity

I read chapters (chapters!) of a memoir named Bloom

took a snooze after dinner watched a movie that made us want to buy a zoo

Saturday was spent skiing at Crystal

sweating off sunscreen in 75 degrees

slowly growing more and more sunburn

charring the temporary tatoos of spring skiing: halmet lines, goggle tans

Olive rode the chairlift, didn’t cry during bunny slope runs:

a true success<

felt when Betty rode the chairlift by herself, navigated the trail

down to adirondak chairs tilted sunways

mama pals sipping cocktails, babes snacking in snow, playing games with ski poles
yes, this is my thing, our thing and absolutely the thing.

Mother’s Day begins as the littiest one, naked

slips into bed, whispers,

Happy Mama Day, Mama.  Want to share my pillow?  Here, feel it.

When a two-year-old  shares a lovie, it’s easy to feel how easy love is

Luke flips pancakes, piles bacon

girls with their sweet cards, fingers wrap around my neck with smiles,
love 
press against my cheek.

Soon after, the minivan dropped me off at Crystal Mountain’s gondola

I have never before skied in 80 degree weather, where the base drops hourly by feet,

where an unload from a chairlift requires a leap forward, down a bit to snowpack

I skied in a tank top, ski pants flapping unzipped to reveal board shorts 
and I was still too hot

It is 80s day at the mountain, so lots of neon bikinis and jazzercise legwarmers

my metallic tank top fits right in

I put my new skies to the test,

along with my confidence

when it gets too steep, I pretended the person in front of me zipping around slushy moguls is my brother-in-law

someone who remains the only one to consistently get me to test myself on black diamonds

with the perfect playlist, tropical conditions

turns where I work for it or get stuck in the 7-11 Slushie of it all

I feel like I am in a music video,

not a Brandi Carlile video

but a Warren Miller flick,

Social Distortian soundtrack

or even Jurrasic 5

passing tree wells

minus the gold bikini

I have no idea if I looked like a tree frog in a puddle,

but when this song came on

I sure felt like an Olympic athlete

I hope the sparce audience

from the chairlift above felt the same

still, a small part of me feels guilty about spending so much of Mother’s Day

apart from the ones who made me a mama

still, there’s patience and joy gained in hours, alone, on a sunny ski slope

still, there’s energy and eagerness restored from time spent doing what I love

where I love it

there’s an eagerness in fingertips from a long, long weekend in the woods
away from Wi-Fi and cell reception
Thank you, Mt.Rainier, three little blonde ladies,

and the guy who has my heart: 

the one and only, the one they call Daddy. 

Sunday’s dinner was at the home of dear friends,

where our children step comfortably into where we left off months earlier

and play like cousins, like neighbors
and I stand in the kitchen of the friend 
who first taught me how to be a mama
who became a mama eleven months before me
and in this kitchen

conversations pick up like it often does with folks known before marriage, before babes.

We spend the better part of the next morning at our pediatrician’s office,

a dr who helped us navigate the beginnings of parenthood with humor and research

in a Hawaiian shirt, always

it’s a level of care such as this that makes a five hour roundtrip off-island appointment

totally more than worth it.

As I type this, now 5:22 pm on Monday

it’s 80 degrees out
I'm like completely exhausted.  Entirely exhausted.

ferry slowly passing islands, eagles and still,

chilly seas, harbor seals and bull kelp

I feel full with the best of both worlds:

a trip to the mountains, a journey home to our house by the sea.
& wait
it's a weekend already
I've barely caught my breath
exhale
so much lovely in our days
so full, so lucky
:::
how was your weekend, and what do you have planned?
joining Amanda