a season of ~whole~

i declared my word of 2012 to be whole, and a more cynical person might think the universe took it as a challenge, and began dismantling my reality one piece at a time.

this week has felt like a series of sighs of relief. weight being lifted from me, and each time i didn’t even realize i had been carrying weight. yet it’s like my rib cage is no longer being pushed down on, and i can finally inhale deeply. expansion.

intermittent sunny weather has been a much-needed balm. quinn and i spent one afternoon clearing salmonberry from the garden patch. can you find waldo in the photo below, taken from the other end of the garden? i think i can fit a lot of plants in this space….. (rubbing hands together gleefully.) the sun, as well as the promise of using the loppers, has enticed quinn to get involved after a season of hibernation.

we’ve also been getting a lot of fresh air on the weekends, watching college track meets. rich’s daughter is a senior with a track scholarship, and he never misses a meet. in fact, he doesn’t even look at the map anymore when driving to these meets, which is so nice for me, and my trepidation of navigating on command. in so many ways, i have been enjoying life in the passenger seat, literally and metaphorically, after having to be the one driving-navigating-doing-it-all for so long. hanging out at a track and showing quinn “that’s the event mama used to run!” is fun, too. i think the team appreciates hearing a five year old parroting some of their cheers, and calling out to whoever happens to be running the current race, “push it, girl!”

quinn has been thinking a lot about eating animals lately. he sat down to salmon chowder yesterday and told me, “i like fish, and i don’t like killing them. i don’t think we should eat any animals. there is only one kind of meat we should eat, and it’s woolly mammoth meat. because woolly mammoths think that people are rocks!” [insert chewing and gulping chowder sounds here.] he’s also been learning a lot of lessons about patience. he had to wait for his (decidedly meat-filled) hot dog until after a race, and he resigned himself to that good naturedly. as soon as our hero was across the finish line, he looked up and said, “now i can get my hot dog!” as a mama, i revel in his newfound ability to appreciate delayed gratification.

it was so sunny this saturday at the track meet that coloring outside was an option. i need to document some of his recent drawings (art is still one of his main things) but coloring has really taken center stage lately, as a few very good coloring books came his way at birthday time. he did a very thorough job on “t. rex hunting at sunset,” pictured nearly completed below.

he even enlisted some help with coloring from his new idol. she is a great person and so sweet to quinn. he loves seeing her races, and thinks she “could run ten hundred million miles without stopping!” and naturally is self-assured about the fact that of course she definitely wants to play dinosaurs and color with him. she is pretty cool about humoring him on that.

rich and i have chuckled a little bit about “our kids playing together.” yuk yuk. age differences are so funny and irrelevant, and life is hilarious.

although there has been a fair amount of stress so far in 2012, i have to say, love is winning out. hands down. it’s a beautiful thing to hear my kiddo/pancake assistant naming the pancakes, based on size, for the members of his newly acquired family. he gets to meet the baby pancake soon, because life is hilarious and keeps going and love keeps growing and some grandpas happen to be well within my dating age bracket, and good lookin’ as all getout. lucky me!

we’ll be here, planting seeds and making pancakes (but only the edible kind, thank you) and embracing the beauty of family and welcoming spring.