Letting it Go

For the first time in four years, Ellis is with his dad instead of me on Halloween. Charlie whose words include "Hi," "ear" and sometimes "puppet" when he's playing with Ellis's finger puppet and he repeats the word after me, doesn't know that Saturday is Halloween. What this means for me is no trick-or-treating, no costume purchasing, and no candy in the house to counteract my workouts. I am taking a year off. I think if I never got a chance to do these things with the kids, I would be sad, but one of my main mom policies is that if the kid says he wants to do something we try our best to do it, but if no one says a word about it or I'm not on duty when it happens, I take the opportunity to let it go. It's this letting go that makes it possible for me to feel that the fun stuff is actually fun.

All this makes me think about holidays. Starting now and into the dead of winter it will be one thing after another. I'm sure that the idea behind having holidays when the days were growing short and cold was meant to be a way to take the edge off the bleakness. Unfortunately, the chance to celebrate and take a break is often replaced by expending energy and cash in large amounts at the exact wrong time of the year. About five years ago, I made it a policy not to travel to see relatives during the holidays and not to buy presents for anyone who was not my child. In the void grew a series of traditions for my own little family that really amount to enjoying time off at the darkest lowest energy point of the year. Furthermore, what I find is that because I don't feel like I have to do anything, my feelings of love and generosity are actually able to surface and we have had some of the most fun Halloweens, Thanksgivings and Christmases that I have ever had (although the bar was pretty low on that one as most of my childhood memories of these days are not so fond).

So here's to the beginning of the season of slacking and snoozing and eating and loving and numerous other non-goal-oriented, non-perfection-driven things.

Writers

It's early in the morning the day before my birthday. It doesn't look like the sun will come out today, but we're all up and writing. Ellis is busy writing me a birthday poem entitled "Fly All You Want." Poetry writing is his new thing. I remember writing my first poems in first grade like him. One even won a contest. Charlie at sixteen months will take any writing implement available to him. He's sitting at the table scribbling on a piece of paper. So far he has no desire to speak any actual English words and may just go straight to writing. I didn't want to be outdone by my progeny so I thought a post was in order. I'm realizing that I'm a little behind in posts as the end of the year approaches. As a person who doesn't make birthday wishes as much as set birthday goals (control freak much?), I'm making a commitment to match or surpass my 53 posts for the year that I had in 2008. In order to do it, I may have to change my usual style of not putting something down until it's exactly right. I need to be more like Ellis who bravely guesses at spelling or Charlie who just loves the act of putting pencil to paper.

Sneaking in a few more moments at the beach...

Sometimes you get cut a break. Sometimes the kicker on the other team misses the kick in the last seconds of the game so that your team wins. Sometimes it snows on Monday and is sixty degrees the following Sunday. I don't want to ask too many questions. I know enough to take advantage a gift when it's given.

Torpor

I hesitated as to whether to call this post "Snowtober" because, yes, it snowed here this week and there's possibly more coming tonight. Look! Here's the proof:

This is where living in the moment gets a little tricky. When the moment smacks you upside the head and completely changes direction in a matter of days. When I woke up to snow Monday morning, I realized that I had no snow brush or scraper for the van since we bought it in April and the old brush was in my stolen Honda Civic. I also could only find one glove for myself and no hat that fit Charlie. Surprise! Summer's over, and by the way, there's no fall this year. Good god, mother nature, at least have the decency to wait until the leaves are off the trees!

What is the same as usual is the deep sluggishness I feel this time of year when the amount of daylight rapidly decreases. Without a few sunny golden red and orange autumn afternoons to help me store up the last bits of energy this year, I'm feeling like I'm moving in molasses. I want to spend my days inside eating, drinking wine, sleeping, watching movies, reading books, and generally not moving very much until the northern hemisphere is in a better position to see the sun. I wonder why life doesn't just shut down this time of year. Instead it tends to be a time of greater obligation. Help! I'm stuck in slooooowwww moooooootion while the world keeps moving at its usual pace.

Harvest Feast

I love cooking for people, but tonight, I was able to take that joy to a whole other level. Tonight's meal was cooked mostly with ingredients that we grew this season in our own backyard. I love cooking that starts with going into the yard and digging up what's growing there. The salad was one hundred percent from the garden: late crop lettuce, carrots, and cucumbers, as well as the last fruits from the tomato plants that have been prolific this season. The main dish was a vegetable risotto with turnips, butternut squash, acorn squash, carrots and sage grown here at home. The weather turned hard this week into fall closing the door on summer, but this meal (topped off with mint and bee balm tea to accompany dessert) reminded me how generous the land was to us this summer thanks to compost from the Minnesota Zoo, diligent watering during a drought (though not so diligent weeding) and an adventurous spirit for planting late into the season. So long, summer 2009. Thank you for your deliciousness!

Kitchi Gammi

We missed last year's pilgrimage because Charlie was too small, but I wasn't going to let another season go by without a trip to the big lake. For a while there it seemed like it was going to be an unpleasant day of children with bad attitudes. Those people who thought the DVD player in the van would be a great help to parents didn't think about how it can instantly become a source of contention and a vehicle for the worst selfishness to come out. Lunch also was just short of disaster with the kids. We pushed our picky eaters with the New Scenic Cafe (local, organic, wonderfully grown up). A verdict of "NO PIE" came down, but was rescinded because we just didn't have the heart not to stop at Betty's.

Now, I have had many inauspicious trips to Lake Superior. In fact, here's the top five list (in reverse order of horribleness):

1. Morning sickness setting in at the beginning of a long-anticipated vacation.

2. Angry, twelve-year-old Nate walking off in the middle of Duluth.

3. Losing my glasses at Park Point during a work trip after having too much to drink and having to get a trial pair of contacts in order to drive home.

4. Hydroplaning on I-35 by Hinckley and spinning across the median into the opposite side of the highway, while miraculously not dying or even severely hurting my car.

5. Being on vacation with my first husband and his parents and realizing that our marriage was over and I was in love with someone else.

You would think that after all that, I would avoid that place. I can't. I love that wild, beautiful, dangerous lake so much and will always be drawn to it. Luckily, today was not an inauspicious trip. Despite all the crankiness that just confirmed my opinion that too many material comforts bring out the worst in people, especially children, once we hit the beach, everything changed. The boys, big and little, were drawn to the same things that I am - those beautiful stones, lapping waves, twisted wood washed ashore, tankers and sailboats. They frolicked and climbed, not as rivals, but as brothers enchanted by the power of the inland sea. As I watched them, I was grateful that I could give them something so wild and free (something that would surely have been forbidden from my childhood) and that they could enjoy it without even thinking about it. Conflict returned on the drive back when we were once again in the thrall of movies and music choices, but now I know that they have not yet lost the capacity to live in the real world - both terrible and wonderful.

A thing I remember about pain...

I was in labor with Charlie. I was pushing with no medication and the pain was incredible. It seemed like I wasn't getting anywhere and I was afraid to push harder. I looked at Josh, the nurse, and my midwife, and I said, "You guys, this really hurts. I don't think I can do this." My midwife took my hand and put it down to touch the top of Charlie's head. "He's right there," she said. I grabbed a hank of Josh's hair and I pushed with everything I had.