Tag Archives: solstice

let your heart be light

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Ten years ago (yesterday) I went on a date with a guy from my yoga class, and I have no regrets. Back-to-back date nights this week, also with no regrets!

This is my Christmas jam this year, reflective of my mood.

 

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Let your heart be light

From now on our troubles will be out of sight…

Here we are as in olden days

Happy golden days of yore

Faithful friends who are dear to us

Gather near to us once more.

 

These lines in particular feel like they fit the moment.

Hitting a big milestone – ten years! – has me thinking about how we just really don’t know what is in store for us. Things are not all roses, and things were not all roses ten years ago, but Rich and I agree that these have been the best ten years of each of our lives. We are seeing signs that we have made the right choice in going down the road together. We’re looking forward to ten zillion more years!

 

Let your heart be light.

tender and mild

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I am placing this image of nine-years-ago Quinn drawing a whole bunch of baby dinosaurs “standing on the floor of the egg” here to signify that there’s a lot of writing going on, gestating behind the scenes. The sun ball lamp might be my egg incubator, and I am waking up early to keep up with the words that bubble to the surface after each long winter’s nap.

I do not want to neglect my blog, and it seems like just the venue to wish happy holidays to all, from here at a safe social distance. I considered using this as my holiday card:

but then I realized I don’t have my stuff together enough to send cards. It was just a snapshot of another “one of those days” that we have all had approximately 365 too many of this year.

It’s the end of 2020 now. I usually choose a song lyric each year, but there isn’t a “bleak and weary” Christmas song, so I chose tender and mild. It’s been mild leading up to Christmas, cold but clear, so we got to see the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, almost. A few days before, and two days after, above the melted sorbet horizon. The word tender certainly fits how our hearts are feeling – battered, bruised, sore, vulnerable.

The holidays are serving as an anchor point for some in a year that has felt awash in a swirling sea of time: You Are Here. For me, these holidays are so bizarrely different that they do not serve me that way exactly. I have calibrated time for myself according to the signs of seasons even more than usual during 2020. The nesting robins placed me squarely in spring, while the nest is now filled up with curled, brittle leaves, so I know we’re closing in on winter. Mushrooms, even, helped me orient, and I don’t know the first thing about them. Yet, just seeing them popping up all around me secured me into autumn. Thinking of their work beneath the surface of things to make available in the soil what the forest needs to absorb next year is a sustaining thought.

To no one’s surprise, I took myself to the edge of the world to perch on a rock and try to find a migrating whale. I did find one (the white puff in the upper left, above). Moving along at a good clip, but paradoxically, for me it was another anchor, another sign to mark the season. The gray whales are headed south to celebrate fecundity and renewal, to circle around newborns, tender and mild, in warm lagoons.

(Laguna San Ignacio 2001)

I hope these photos from an adventure long ago to said lagoons will make you smile, finding you snug and healthy in your homes for the holidays.

(Laguna San Ignacio 2001)

Merry Christmas friends!

 

~a month in the life of a lifelong learner~ not so little drummer boy

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~11-23 to 12-23-19~

Quinn spent a ton of time playing with his Turing Tumble set the weekend he got home for Thanksgiving. He told me his math teacher has posters up in her room and one of them is a quote by Albert Einstein that says, “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” And he said he really could relate to that. He had me sit with him a lot while he worked on the puzzles he is working on – they are getting insanely complicated, and I am almost no help at all, except I am also willing to sit with it longer, with him. So he has gotten a lot of the algorithms solved (such an amazing game/toy/puzzle/brain stretcher/birthday present) and he feels really great when he achieves one, (I think he is about halfway through the 65 activities) but often there is a period of “I’ll never get this one” just before he cracks the code. He is starting to see that pattern, too, so it makes it easier to trust he will be able to solve it if he stays with it. I love how it is encouraging him to persevere.

While he was sitting with one of the algorithms, he was telling me how it was “just a variation” on the puzzle before, because it was based on registers and counting in binary. You know, like (and he started counting on his fingers… in binary.) My jaw dropped, and he said, “I learned that from Vi.” Of course! (I was not sure how to do justice in words to the amazingness I was witnessing, so I made him do it again on video!)

 

 

We had W pancake among family members who came for Thanksgiving, and I just love how she appointed Quinn as her agent. She would need someone to transport something from her hand over to her mom, and she would just glance at Quinn and gesture, and he would jump to do her silent bidding. She crawls over to sit on his lap, completely assured he is one of her people. It reminds me of the way Quinn was sure about Rich’s daughter wanting to color dinosaurs with him when he was five and she was in college.

He was telling someone that all the 7th graders are drinking coffee “these days” and they say it’s what they need to wake up in the morning. He said he thinks because his mom and dad both like it so much, he may like it one day, too, but for now he doesn’t want to drink any. It came up again when we were at home, and it spawned a great conversation about different wiring. He said “caffeine makes people all wired and hyper,” at one point, and I said well, that’s mostly true, but one way you can tell if a person has ADHD is if you feed them caffeine and they calm down – it has the opposite effect on them, because of their brain wiring. So he thought that was fascinating, and it launched a whole other conversation about misunderstandings or misconceptions of what peoples’ learning differences are, and how people think “talented and gifted” means a person should easily have all A grades, and how they don’t realize that there are some things that are really a struggle for him even though he is talented and gifted. I thought it was interesting to hear him identify that way!

We did a lot of logic puzzles this week. We do them a lot while we eat. Sometimes the clues are roundabout and you have to go over them a bunch of times as you accumulate new information in order to make sense of them. And other times a clue will just say “the person who ate toast is not Janet” and you can rule something out directly. Quinn said of one of these clues, “well that was explict” pronounced like I just typed it: “explikt” and I knew he meant explicit so I said explicit, and he said, “it’s not explict?” And I wrote it down so he could see the second i, and he said, “oh, well, in plants vs. zombies, they left out the second i. (Note to self, he learns words from video games! Not just books.)

He is SO LARGE. He needed hugs and snuggles this week, and I do my best but it is hard to actually let him on my lap… I still do, but I basically give him a very short countdown from ten. We invented a “snug” which is a cross between hug and snuggle, it’s not standing, it’s sitting on me, but it’s very, very brief. When we have time, we do longer snuggles on the couch with either his legs or torso draped over me, but not both.

I am reading the self-driven child, a good book recommended on the tilt parenting podcast. This week I was getting to the chapter on radical down time, and how important it is for learning and general well-being, and how we need to stop jam packing our children’s schedules and managing their downtime like, “shouldn’t you be doing SAT test prep if you don’t have something to do right now?” Instead we should say, “let’s snug.”

I just love watching his biweekly swim lesson. He is the absolute most awkward swimmer the world has ever seen and is so earnest and so into working on improving! This was the first time she attempted to teach him backstroke! He has been working on front crawl for a few lessons now, and he is impressively gangly at it so far, but she figured she’d try backstroke. The first attempt on his back, his arms were still going forward so he just folded in half and sank to the bottom. The next attempts were comically awkward too, but he improved each time. He would get his arms kind of going, but then lean his head too far back and reverse somersault and go under. He would get his arms kind of going but get stuck and you could see his arm pause mid stroke so he could think what his other arm needed to do… long pauses. He’d sometimes roll onto his side or go under again, because of whatever he ended up doing with whichever arm. He was working on the hands so his elbow would be bent at a 90 degree angle, or he’d work on the arms but just get stuck in the middle. His teacher is so good with him. And he just kept going back and starting again.

When he woke up Friday to do his math review he made it out of bed over to the couch and laid back down. He needed extra rest more than math review. Radical down time. So I encouraged him to not stress the math if he felt he could handle doing it over the weekend and he said he could. It crossed my mind he had seemed extra emotional and hungry all week, so I had him get up to the measuring station and put a new mark on the wall – sure enough, he is growing.

Friday was going to be committed cubs day, the second one of the year, and he missed the first one and sorely wanted to be included in it this time. He had a few assignments he needed to have teachers sign off on, and he did a lot to chip away at it over the course of the week, but got home Thursday night and was down because he had forgotten his one last signature, which he could have gotten during class because the assignment was finished. I let him problem solve, and he decided there was still a chance he could do it in the morning, and while that did not guarantee he could do CC day, he wanted to still try. He told me Mrs. F had said they would be free reading in class Friday so people could finish up assignments, and so his plan was to ask her right away to go see Mr B to get his last signature. He even put a post-it note in his book (Ender – speaker for the dead) right with the bookmark, so he would remember to do it even if he went to start doing his free reading. When he came out of school on Friday, he was so pleased because, “I made it in!”

Speaking of Ender, Quinn loved the concept of paired beings from the books. In the story, piggies are paired with trees as an adaptation to protect them from a planet-wide plague. Quinn stretched the concept to a human-star pairing.

I had encouraged him to speak his idea into a google doc so he could harness the way his brain is able to articulate ideas verbally much more quickly than he can get those ideas to come out of his typing fingers. I had been talking to him about the speech-to-text options on numerous occasions, but had not gotten him to try it yet, and this was the perfect opportunity. Here is my transcript of an audio recording I took as a backup while he was speaking into a doc:

“…And then once the star gets even stronger it would start smashing carbon into oxygen and once it gets to its strongest point which is usually right before it supernovas, it starts smashing oxygen into iron and I was thinking, well, if you created some sort of, like, could a man, could human beings create a man made star that could smash together stuff to create like an atom with a whole bunch of stuff like a whole bunch of protons and electrons and neutrons and then harness that… and this would be a star that’s the size of like a chrome book, it would be a really small star… like you could fit it in a fish tank… or in a drum. But then the star would create something like fermium atoms or something like that and the fermium atoms would then be used in like a nuclear laboratory or something like that and you would split the fermium atom into like a whole bunch of neutrons and protons and electrons, and you would use those neutrons and protons and electrons to basically make a whole bunch of atoms out of those separated piles of neutrons and protons and electrons. And then if the theory went right then it would become like speaker for the dead where all the animals on Lusitania are paired with a plant and they basically just coexist so it would be something like each human would create like their own star, their own personal little star the size of their chromebook, or their drum, if they have one, and then use their star to like get some fermium atoms, which they would split up, and then use those atom pieces to make more atoms to get the star bigger, and then like once the human dies of old age, the star should then be approximately the size of a human, and at that point the star would then use its power of making atoms to create another human, like create a new human child, at which point it would supernova and then that human child would grow up with its own personal star and so on and you could pair humans and stars… with like a weird biological bond but yeah… and then… yeah….”

“So that’s what you wanted to get out of your brain onto the page! Isn’t that awesome, look…”

“And I typed several paragraphs!”

“And so adams are going to have to change spelling so do this cool trick ready? Go up to edit on the bar, and go to the find and replace, find all “adam” and replace with “atom”. So if you said a word 50 times and it did them all the wrong way you can just replace.”

“You can replace all adams. And ‘madams’ haha.”

“’When sister gets even stronger’… I think it’s supposed to be ‘when the star’…..”

I wanted to capture a raw version of what it’s like trying to hang in there with this kid who is mashing up Ender’s game and the periodic table, contemplating the synthetic elements of the actinides series and seeing what he can do with them to advance the genre of science fiction! I’m trying to provide him some tools, fitting those in edgewise, trying to keep my head above the current as the absolutely torrential flood of imagination comes pouring out. This is a pretty great example of what it’s like.

This month had some sadness; Quinn’s friend Pippin is moving away.

His voice has lowered dramatically the past month or two. I am not hearing a lot of cracking, but what I have noticed is that his laugh remains a few octaves above his speaking voice. I do not know if he will keep that long term, but hearing him reminds me so much of my older brother’s voice and laugh right now, the way he speaks in a mellow tenor but his laugh reaches up to tickle the rafters. My brother’s laugh is one of my very favorite laughs in the world, and one of my very favorite things about him, and it would not be a disappointment if Quinn inherited this trait. Even if it is for a temporary period, I’m thoroughly enjoying the way his laughs ring in the air, jingling like the bells at the upper reach of his mallets, perhaps because they contrast so with his new low speaking register in the timpani section.

At his band concert, his teacher made a brief intro of the first song, little drummer boy, saying they did have one of those (M is very small), and also a not-so-little drummer boy, and a drummer girl. Mine is the not-so-little one! He was on the snare drum for all three songs! And he was absolutely wonderful! He played both with and without the snares engaged (the beginning of little drummer boy starts out with it disengaged and sounding like a tom). He played some pretty complicated parts! Triplets, rolls, lots of variations. He did so well! He was holding so still for the first song I wasn’t convinced he was drumming, but then on the several measures he was not playing but counting, he bopped around just like he used to when he was playing sleigh bells last year. I think the rhythms he was playing were seriously challenging, enough to really keep him on his toes!

Last weekend was Turing tumble, this weekend was Rubik’s cube!

 

He worked on his cube for the entire day Saturday while I was at farmer’s market, and solved it. By the time I got home, he was a pro. If you watch that very long video, you can see him solve it again, and if you notice he is not pleased, it is because he “figured out” that there are “multiple solves” to the cube, based on the orientation of the Rubik’s emblem on the white face of the cube; there is a solution where it is right side up, and if you have it in the stand you can see red, yellow, blue. Apparently, he spent a good part of the day after solving it his first time, trying to get it solved to that solution, and it was thwarting him. Because perfectionism. But also because of staying with the problem longer.

After farmer’s market we went to get a Christmas tree. After we chose our tree and the helper had set it into our truck, Rich went to pay, but Quinn noticed the tree wasn’t all the way tucked in so the tailgate would close. Quinn jumped up and angled the trunk where it needed to go in the one corner so the top would go in the opposite corner and not stick out the back. I love it when I see him take initiative to fix something or do a job that needs doing, without being asked or having it pointed out at all.

When we got home I asked him to work on cleaning up his room a little bit so that his Turing tumble could move from the living room back to his room to make room for the tree. He just jumped right to it, no complaints, and organized some of his Jurassic park legos that he had out on the floor into a lego box, and put the instruction booklets into the right section of the accordion file, etc., again without me having to point out or assist with these steps.

In his video production elective, he learned about a fun music making module in chrome. For science he had to make a poster about an element in the periodic table, so he picked boron. He really liked the boron entry in his elements book.

He worked on cubing quite a bit more, and he also sent me a bunch of texts about wanting to collect all the different ones. He has the standard 3×3 one, but wants to get 2×2 next, then 4×4, 5×5 etc up to 11×11. Then and only then does he want to get the triangle and other shape ones.

Handmade solstice present for his dad.

I feel grateful for having gone through what we did when Quinn was little, and approaching learning in a self-driven way from the start, because he ended up knowing the difference between school and learning, and still knows it. Otherwise I doubt he would spend weekends doing hard puzzles, or light up like a Christmas tree this morning when I said “I’ve heard you can program robots to solve Rubik’s cubes” as we drove to school. The boy has a lego robotics kit coming to him for Christmas, so I know future weekends will be occupied with such things.

Finally, for the grand finale this month, Quinn rocked his Half green belt test!

~rainbow mondays~ merry and bright

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rainbow dragon costumes for pancake granddaughters. this shipment hasn’t been made yet, because grandpa found out some little girl stats about favorite colors and animals, and went on a mission to find a blue bunny and a white mouse for his girls.

solstice beach sunshine rainbow

rainbow christmas lights! which will probably be featured in rainbow monday photos through valentine’s day, since we finally put up the tree on christmas eve. rich’s daughter fits in perfectly with the nerdy glasses family theme.

rainbow lights and sunlight! the sun made a brilliant appearance on christmas day, much to my delight. finally enough light to make indoor natural-light photos less blurry! what a lighthearted day!

red: i forgot to buy the boy new socks, but i did thrift him some bright red sweatpants just in time to pajama his way through christmas pokemon battles. of his hand-knit auntie wrist-warmers, quinn said, “i’ve always wanted a pair of these!” and hasn’t taken them off since, unless prompted.

red: handsome fiance with fairy lights on his nerdy glasses, sitting in his red chair on christmas eve.

orange: that sun!!! setting charizard on fire during an epic pokemon battle.

orange: solstice sunset. i left work early on the shortest day and was richly rewarded with more sun-drenched goodness.

orange: the very vibrant end of the shortest day.

yellow: sun through beach grass on solstice.

yellow: more solstice sparkles and sand.

green: mr. wrist-warmer loves that one of his baby mittens that i knit for him is still around, adorning our christmas tree. we are also so very pleased to have our ornaments and stockings out of the back corner of the storage garage this christmas!

cutie blast from the past. you’re welcome.

green: we probably missed darth vader the most… when you plug in the lights, he says, “the force is with you young skywalker. but you are not a jedi, yet.” happy to have him back. i also love our collection of animal ornaments. and when i say ours, what’s rich’s is mine, okay?

green: christmas eve green sparkle magic making the walls shimmer. tree-topper mouse is another friend we were happy to be reunited with.

blue: solstice sky with bridge in background and driftwood frame in foreground.

blue: foamy waves looking vaguely like snow on solstice.

purple: i hope your christmas was merry and bright like ours!

 

~rainbow mondays~

a splash of color on monday

a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed

advent affirmations

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for the two weeks that quinn was gone leading up to yesterday (and the start of our two weeks together! yay!) i sent him some advent notes to open each day… and i’m going to store them here for him to be able to look back on someday.

December 10: One thing I love about you, Quinn, is your laugh. It makes me proud that one of the things your karate teachers said about you early on is that you are the resident “smile-bringer” of the dojo. I love hearing your musical laughter when you hear, read, or see something that tickles you. Laughter is such a gift, because even as it helps the person laughing feel good, it is helping the people around him feel good as well. Here is a joke for today:

p.s. 10 is a great number! Can you believe you will turn 10 years old in just a few short months?!

love, mama

December 11: Dear Quinn, I admire your confidence. I think it was so cool to watch you stand up in front of your class and give a presentation about bearded dragons, and seem natural, like you were just having a conversation. You seem very confident when you do your blue belt forms out on the karate mat. One of my wishes for you is that you maintain that confidence in all you do throughout your life. You told me recently that you have at least four jobs you want to have as a grown up: 1. a musician 2. a famous kenpo teacher 3. a paleontologist and 4. a game designer. I have no doubt you will do so many amazing things! Glad I get to watch you soar.

love, mama

drawing by Quinn, 2014

December 12: Dear Quinn, I value your kindness. This world needs more people like you. It is so nice to watch you being friends with other people, regardless of their age, abilities, gender, or anything else about them. It’s obvious to me that all the people you come into contact with end up liking you, because you act with kindness towards them, and accept them for who they are. It makes a mama heart happy to see this in you. You are an example to people much older than you, including me. I did not always feel like I wanted to be friends with everyone in my school, the way you do. It has taken me a long time to realize that everyone has something to offer in friendship, even if they don’t seem like it at first. You are teaching me that lesson! You are a wonderfully kind human being, and I’m proud to be around you.

December 13:

Dear Quinn,

I love that you are in tune with your animal spirit helpers. You’re a guy who is in touch with the natural world, and I think that is so important. You’re one of the people who cares about the Earth strongly enough to make a difference. I think your owl spirit helper is a good friend. I’m sure you have your own things you know about owl, but to me, owl is stealth, flying on silent wings, going silently and subtly. Without a fuss, without reactiveness. Owl is watchful, with those big eyes. And of course, wise! Owl is like a ninja! Owl is also a bringer of healing and renewal. I see all these wonderful traits in you! (If only you could fly!)

Love, mama

December 14:

Dear Quinn,

You are brave! Like a Gryffindor. Like a rebel Jedi knight. I think you could do anything you set your mind to doing. I see a lot of courage in your character! I admire your bravery and courage. It’s just one more thing that is great about you!

Love, mama

December 15:

Dear Quinn, I wish for you this winter to have some snow! I have not always appreciated snow, but watching you play in the snow gives me great joy. I can deal with my face feeling like it wants to fall off and my fingers turn into icicles, if I get to watch you having fun.

I do not, however, wish for you to experience sleet. (Whatever sleet is!) Love, mama

December 16:

Dear Quinn,

I think you have the quality of Indomitable spirit in great measure. You are not a mean or imposing or intimidating person, and I think it can be misunderstood that indomitable (unbeatable) means you have to be a super tough guy. I don’t think so. I think it means you are resilient, and that you have a spirit that never gives up. And these are things I see in you in all different areas of your life. You are a positive person, you bounce back from disappointments with amazing resilience, and you are determined in a way that I think exemplifies indomitable spirit. In case you were wondering, I think you’re great!

Love, mama

December 17:

Dear Quinn, If there isn’t going to be snow, at least we have Calvin and Hobbes so we can experience it vicariously. Love, mama

 

December 18:

Dear Quinn,

When I look at you, I see a guy who has integrity, and a well-calibrated moral compass. That means you know what is right, and what is wrong, and you point yourself in the right direction. This is something I’ve noticed about you all your life. One thing I’ve observed is that you align yourself with characters in stories you love who are the “good guys.” You’ve been a fan of guys like Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker all along. You’re like a sunflower… they always turn their faces towards the sun (they’re heliotropes!) and you are like that when it comes to the goodness in the world. Integrity has a lot to do with that. Our choices have meaning. Harry’s aim to disarm even when his opponents are dueling to kill illustrates his commitment to keeping his own soul intact and aligned with the light. That is a way he has strong integrity. When you first started to do good guys and bad guys in your playing, it was easy to find the hero, and easy to put characters into one box or the other: good guy or villain. As you’ve grown, you’ve started realizing there is a lot of gray area and people aren’t always as easy to put in an either/or category. I am watching you absorb these subtle shades of gray in the stories you enjoy. One theme is that there is always a path back to the light, another choice to be made, no matter how far a “villain” has crossed over to the dark side. The dark side may tempt someone, but it is always possible to turn back towards the light. Sometimes, one who has turned dark comes back to be the most valiant of the good guys. But it is something I hold dear about you, that you have always identified through and through with the most light-bringing and life-affirming of characters. The ones who have always been on the light side, and never wavered. You are and, I trust, will always remain steadfastly one of the good guys.

Love, mama

December 19:

Dear Quinn,

I like your vocabulary. I think you are amazing at choosing the absolute best word for the sentence. You’re not one to take the easy route when it comes to finding a way to tell about something. You speak of captains “slain” and crew “perishing” when your stories of pirates come out. Then you’re onto paleontology, using words like “excavate” and “reconstruct.” You talk about pain that “sears”, and “loopholes” in a plan. Planes “taxiing,” “squadrons” battling, healers in an “infirmary,” a “dubious” character,  a “pelagic” emergency, an instance of feeling “dumbfounded” or “rambunctious”. It’s also the way you weave words together that I love, because you’re very poetic. Last year you told me, “when you yawn, it puts electric needles in your balloon and pops it.” When you were 6 and learning to read silently, you told me, “I can just read it to myself in unhearable talking!” When you were 5 and we watched the Alice in Wonderland dance performance, you told me, “I liked it so much! it was like hundreds of toys, being painted out of a box!” When you were 3, you described the weather by saying, “the trees are making it wind and the wind is waving goodbye…” and you told me, “the rain comes out of the moon’s tummy!” And one of my favorites, the first time you went to the old dragon house (age 4) you said, “it feels good to me in here! I feel like I might explode with excitement, like I’m inside a box that’s full of pomegranates! With two mice!” I love you and all your words. Love, mama

December 20:

Dear Quinn,

You are a courteous dude. I think that you really embody all of the black belt principles, and courtesy is no exception. When I think of courtesy, I sometimes think of the Why behind people’s courteous actions. When some people display what are known as “good manners”, I think they sometimes do it more out of a sense of doing what they were told to do or to not get into trouble, instead of doing out of their own moral compass of integrity telling them to do it for the right reasons. When it comes to you, I see you treating others with courtesy out of a real sense of wanting to do the right thing, because you’ve internalized the golden rule and have put thought into what it means to treat others how you want to be treated. This is a much more deep and meaningful way to be courteous in the world, and it is a blessing to see you acting in this way towards your fellow human beings. You’ve talked about one of your strengths of “Being A Good Friend” and I couldn’t agree more. I think you’re terrific at being a friend! And you’re a friend a person can really count on, who won’t abandon them when the going gets tough, who cares about who the person really is and accepts them in all their uniqueness. You’re a really quull dude, I hope you know. I love you!

Love, mama

December 21: Happy Solstice!

“somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight, someone’s thinking of me and loving me tonight…” -Fievel Mouskowitz

a story from 8-4-2009 (Quinn age 2):

At bedtime, Quinn asked if I would call Dada on the phone… so I did and he told Dada “yeah” to whatever question he was asking Quinn, and then said, “I’m having milk” and then to me said, “I’m handing it back to you.” (ha!) Then I said do you want to say night night to Dada? Quinn said, “yeah.” He told Dada “night night” and handed it back again. Then we laid down again for more milk, but soon he said, “I know, let’s go to the beach!” I said, honey I think it would be fun to go to the beach tomorrow, but right now the sun has already gone night night….” and he was bummed. But then I said, “how about we talk to the ocean and tell it night night and we’ll see it tomorrow?”

Quinn asked, “can you call the ocean on the phone mama?”

Today I want to remind you that no matter where you are, you can always look up at the sky and it will always be the same sky that I can look up and see above me. when I look up at the sky tonight on solstice, I will send hugs and kisses on the moon and stars for you. that is one of the reasons I love our saying… “I love you as big as the sky! as big as the ocean! all the way to the moon and back again! 9 quintillion times!” because… it’s so big! and it’s there, no matter how far apart we are. I miss you and I look forward to seeing you soon! I love you! (you know how big!)

we’re never far apart, you’re always in my heart!

When you were 3, you made this observation of the moon, sometime around winter solstice: “the moon is pulling its cloud blankets up over itself.”  I hope you are snuggly and warm when you pull your blankets over yourself tonight, under the moon that is shining down on both of us.

Love, mama

December 22:

Dear Quinn,

You make this season of magic and wonder so… magical and wonderful! I don’t know a lot of people who are so fervently excited about advent. It has been a joy to watch you take delight in the small daily rituals that we have invented (advented?) and adopted and evolved over the years of your life. You are SO much FUN! I have many memories of you at younger ages, positively impatient with how slowly the days were going by until Christmas or Solstice. You have mellowed out as you’ve gotten older and learned to enjoy the present moment more and more. But you’ve still retained your sense of magic and wonder, and it’s a wonderful thing! I love hanging out with you around this time of year, and catching some of the joy that bubbles up from you. I can’t help but join in the excitement! I love adventing with you. Love, mama

December 23:

Dear Quinn,

I’m overflowing with joy that you will be at my house again tonight! Here’s a boat load of “Quinn loves boats” stories to celebrate!

When you were almost four, you looked into the woodstove and said,“the orange is like the sea. There is dark orange below and light orange on top. The log is the boat, floating on the sea. The sparkles are the cleats on the boat. The steam is the lines on the boat.” One time when you were 5, you wrote a song that went like this:

“and so i set three crab traps
and went to another place
and set three more
and set three more in another place
and set three more in another place
and then there was only three crab traps left
so i went to another place
and set them…….”

Also at age 5, you used boat terminology to remember that “the letter E has 3 crossbars and 2 canoe cracks!” Also, “look at all the O’s on this page. They look like buoys marching in a line!” (of course you loved Q’s even better- they have a little bit of rope tied on, so they can be crab traps!)

When you were 3 and practicing drawing, you found it important to connect things- when you drew the eyes on people, you “attached” them with string to the skull. Or if the lines we use to draw the boat don’t meet up perfectly, you’d lash them together with some rope and then advise me to “keep your sure on you to never ever untie that line, ever!” You also liked to draw arrows so things knew which way they were going. “And here is an arrow pointing which way the little green boat is going. It’s going to the orange house with just mama because quinn is at the shop with dada.”

I asked, “did mama take quinn to the shop in the boat?”

You replied, “yeah. That’s the way some people do it. You poke a lot of holes in the road, and it makes water. Then you don’t drive your cars, you drive your boats and canoes.”

Love you boat boy! Love, mama

December 24:  story of eagle boy and the baby bear by Quinn (12-24-2010, age 3)

“one day there was a boy who flapped his hands with his arms out wide as he was pretending he was an eagle, and FLEW off! one day when the eagle boy was playing in the forest he heared a voice saying HELP HELP HELP! and flew out of the forest- he stopped playing and flew out of the forest and ALL the way and landed on a beach and walked to the edge and saw a little bear on an isl- washing up on an island. and then he saw that the baby bear was safe and washed up on the island. he had to find the mama and dada for th bear. i was walking and i saw him in the water as he floated to the island. ‘that won’t do,’ said the boy. alright. and if that happened, i would have to build a boat for y- a canoe for you. and you can sail. so the eagle boy made uh a kind of sort of canoe raft and threw it right in  SPLASH in the water. the baby bear pulled the island aboard… the baby bear jumped off the island onto the raft canoe and pulled the island on board. and the um eagle boy THREW a paddle down. the baby bear caught it, and paddled his way back to his mama and dada bear. and the eagle boy flew back to his mama and dada gir-l- his mama was a girl, his dada was a boy. ’cause it was time for lunch- ’cause it was time for eating- ’cause it was lunchtime. how’s THAT story?”

me: that’s WONDERFUL!!!

“yeah! for dessert. THAT story was good for eating for dessert. yeah. i could put lots of the story ice cream in a bowl, and put lots of dessert in there.”

Today I celebrate the stories in your heart, and I hope to enjoy lots more story ice cream in a bowl with you in years to come! Merry Christmas Eve!

December 25: Merry Christmas Quinn!!!

You are the biggest gift I have ever received in my life. You are a wonderful person, and I am glad I’ve had a chance to tell you that I think so, in detail. You are an inspiring, creative, caring, kind, courteous, courageous, fun-loving, joyful, wonderful guy. I am happy I get to be a part of your life, and so glad you chose me for a mama! I hope you have a very merry day today and look forward to a nice holiday week with you! And hanging out with you on the light side of the force.

I love you as big as the sky, as big as the ocean, all the way to the moon and back again infinite times! Love, mama

five years of love and light

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retrospective… 4… 3… 2… 1…

  

y’all, it’s been five years since i fell in love with this man!

five biggies from this past year:

  1. our first trip to the e.r. as a couple; sickness and health: check.
  2. we found dragon house 2.0, in all its wood stove glory, and started the bayou walk tradition, including sightings of a river otter and a baby hummingbird being fed.
  3. rich performed in one flew over the cuckoo’s nest and i broke a board with my hand.
  4. we took our annual trip to new york in september.
  5. we got engaged beside a giant dragon in a magical forest filled with music and fairies.

we’re going out tonight to the same restaurant we went to five years ago for dinner, when we discussed our more or less healthy eating habits, coparenting arrangements, and musical and book preferences. (we had already covered quite a bit of life story background material at the laundromat, so we were filling in the more minor details.) we’ve decided that since we are five years older and wiser, we do not need to re-enact the sitting in his truck (until an hour i will not name) portion of the evening, during which the police came and made sure we were of legal parked-in-a-truck-at-an-unmentionable-hour age. instead, we will go home to bed like the grandparents we are.

my word for 2016 has been “lighthearted,” and though i’ve been struggling with things trying to weigh down my heart, the darkness and heaviness will not prevail. days like this make it ever so easy to remember my blessings, and be filled with lightness of being.

 

this e.e. cummings poem right here….

 

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

 

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

 

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

the paradoxical lightness my heart feels in carrying around another heart… this and many other miracles (e.g. the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart) i plan to spend the next 99+ years studying in depth by this man’s side.

tomorrow i’ll wake up again to more greatest hits of our love soundtrack, and smile just like i do every day when i hear my ring click cheerfully on the glass of the jar of honey i will stir into his coffee and tea. we’ll chuckle about “barticle” the cat insisting that he fits perfectly into a box 2 sizes too small for his 19 pounds. we’ll shuffle around in slippers and pull on sweatshirts and hug and kiss goodbye for another day. and if i’m lucky, i’ll forget whether we kissed and get a bonus one before we head off to work.

then i’ll pick up my kiddo after two long weeks apart, and we’ll all celebrate some more.

happy holidays from our nerdy-glasses family to yours!

and hurray for the return of the sun, to lighten our hearts even more!

more love and more light

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there is a signed custody judgement.what a relief!!!

happy solstice! there’s more light from here on out!

remember this? time to draw another big tree in this image. yes, we have definitely put down more roots.

since i will not be online tomorrow, and it falls in the same vein of bringing more light and love to the world, i have a few happy anniversaries to dish out.

my godparents will have been married 50 years as of tomorrow. wow.

my mom and dad celebrated 37 years, yesterday!

my brother and sister in law have been dating for 8 years, as of tomorrow, and engaged for 7. if i did my math right.

and last but not least!

tomorrow i will have spent a whole year with this shady character:

we’ve been through a lot in just the one year. i am happy to report that we have only ever argued over whether or not one should rinse eggs before cracking them. and i will gladly rinse all of your eggs for you, my love, for 98 more years, if i can be lucky enough to spend those 98 years with you.

there’s only going to be more love from here on out.