Is there anything heavier than a newborn?
Is staying just not leaving? All these years on the wind, I have no roots to put down.
Optimism has returned. I can do anything . . . but I’m still me, so only if I want to.
I am stuck in the space between what I think and what I do.
Not all who wander are lost, but I certainly was. Am?
The path that leads me away from myself always leads me back. It turns out, there’s nowhere else I can go.
Usually when I write, it’s because there’s an idea that’s come to the surface. Something bothering me, like the grain of sand in the oyster and when I think there’s enough layers for a pearl, I try to write it out. But this morning I’m just following my fingertips.
I am itching to start a book club on You Were Born for This and laughing with myself over my abiding joy in them. I love them so much, I basically went to college for book clubbing.
It was lovely being back in the arms of my Southern sisters–an instant grounding in who I am and the fact that fitting in is for the birds; belonging is where it’s at.
Not working did not work out the way I thought it would . . . nonetheless, it is beginning to work out.
I’ve been sad for years and now I’m ready to fall in love with life again. The minute I had the thought, I blinked and the world looked different.
I love the weather here–it’s always doing something beautiful or disturbing and my senses enjoy the exercise.
This is me. It’s how I think and how I talk. I often unintentionally make it weird, especially with people who don’t know me well, by saying too much or going too deep too fast in conversation. But I’ve thought it over carefully this past year and, while there are several things I’m changing, I don’t want to change this part of myself–it’s how all my best and closest friends have been made.
The idea of “home” has always been tricky to me. I have no hometown, I have no one place where my family lives to return to, and I have no lengthy history with anywhere. So home has never been a place, but I never worked too hard to define it until lately. More on that to come.
For the past two days I’ve wanted to write and write and write, but that’s not my life at the moment, so I jot notes in little notebooks I keep hidden in my purse, my knitting bag, amongst the cookbooks in my kitchen. When the time comes, it will all still be there.
I’ve been thinking about Kerry a lot lately. It’s so painfully beautiful and cool that even years after his passing, I can still so clearly see his particular brand of goodness shifting things for the better. And it’s a comfort to me that, in that way, he’ll always be here.
Having read You Were Born for This twice now, I’ve decided that your life’s purpose is not something you find or choose or grow into. It’s something you can accept or not, but regardless, I believe you start living it the moment you’re conceived. My existence bent space and time when I came into being and whatever I was born for, it started happening back then. I can’t imagine my life’s purpose has been waiting all this time for me to wonder about it and figure it out.
I had to pull quills out of my dog’s nostrils last night with pliers. And, despite being the same weight as me and fully capable of eating my hands for hurting him, he just let me do it. That’s trust. And love. Whoever believes dogs have no soul has never really known a dog.
My new paddle arrived yesterday and I’m going to try it out this weekend. I’ve been feeling optimistic and like I need a shorter format for summer writing so I don’t do what I usually do which is neglect the blog entirely from whenever it gets warm until whenever it gets cold again. More on that to come as well. : )
I’ll be honest. I was working toward bolstering my courage, but I didn’t really think I’d feel much different after declaring myself a writer. I was wrong.
Am I terrible at routine? Or do I just have no interest in it?
Sometimes, I think I’m having an identity crisis, but when the dust clears, it always turns out I’m just getting better at being who I’ve always been.
Here I stand, at the edge of this ocean inside, staring down at words that curl and rush–reaching for my bare toes. I’ve hesitated long enough; I’m going in.
I said too much. Because if I’d said nothing at all, I would’ve never felt like I didn’t say enough.
My heart is open, spilled like warm, flat soda in the parking lot. It will evaporate eventually. The rain will come and wash the rest away. And no one will know it was here.
He begged me to put my faith in him-all that was left were shattered remains of a tattered hope. I handed them over and watched them so slowly turn to doves in his palm . . . do you know how many years? . . . how much energy and patience? . . . it takes to turn pain into doves?
I may slow down here and there, but I’m never turning back.
Every memory I have of feeling alone, when I look back, I can see I wasn’t.
I’ve learned to work on forgiving myself first. If I can’t manage that, then there’s no path to forgive others and being forgiven doesn’t help.
As my sweet Sunshine gets older, so many long-forgotten memories of my own childhood are coming back to me. My favorite from this morning is a memory of my mama playing hot lava with us in the living room when I couldn’t have been more than four. She was jumping from the couch to a cushion on the floor and belly-laughing.
It takes so much more than love to make a long-term relationship work well. But when hearts get broken, great love can sometimes hold you together while they mend.
If I could only choose one word to describe my twenties, it would be “big.” I had big fun; I made big mistakes; I felt big hurt; and I found big love.
I can’t choose a word for my thirties yet because we aren’t even halfway through, but so far, “humbled” and “grateful” are neck and neck.
I am falling in love with Massachusetts.
Snowy days are my favorite–beautiful, sparkling, white. My thoughts swirl like snowflakes in the wind while my fingers chase after them over the page like children with their tongues out.
I cannot get used to the sky here–each day a new shade of blue I’ve never seen and can’t describe and the clouds move so fast there’s no time to decide their shape.
And when the morning sun hits winter tree limbs after a freezing rain, it looks as if diamonds blossomed overnight.
We are rich, indeed.
Big changes coming for Mac n’ Cheese Manor!!! We are working with the Get the Lead Out program to certify our house as lead free which will include: new windows, siding, doors (inside and out), and trim. We’re working with MassSave to insulate! It will likely be a few months yet, but the contractors who will bid on the work have been here to look around and after months of paperwork and phone calls, I feel like we’re finally moving forward!
I have never had a garden and know nothing about growing things, but we’re going to give a small garden a try this year. Wish me luck, I’m going to need it, or rather, our poor plants are going to need it! On a similar but different note, we are also planning to build a chicken coop! I mean, can we really call it a farm, even a little one, if there’s no garden or chickens?
On the battle front, we continue to lose to the squirrels. We have four traps (three live/one kill) and every day the bait is gone but the traps are empty. We’ll be welcoming two cats to our home as soon as the construction work is complete and hopefully they can succeed where we are failing.
I stopped using shampoo about a month ago and I’m never going back!!! I’ve started using New Wash which is completely fantastic, but is also quite expensive. So when I run out, I’m going to try the curly girl method and see if that works for me as well. I have a friend who does it and her hair looks great so I’m crossing my fingers!
As it relates to writing, I’ve changed my mind about rewrites. As I’ve gone through it, I find that most of what I wrote doesn’t want to be rewritten; It was what it was at the time and looks too different in hindsight for me to even know where to begin. I’m still going to fill out the rest of my Cancer Files, but by adding to them, not rewriting them. Everything else I’m leaving be. There are so many new chapters to write!
It’s been a lovely and difficult winter for me. It is so beautiful here. I haven’t loved snow like this since I was a child. I fall more in love with our creaky, old, farmhouse and rambling eight or so acres every day. We’ve made wonderful new friends, and I love being home with my Sunshine. And yet, when the anniversary of my mid-December move arrived, I felt so sad for all we’re missing by not living closer to our families and friends back West. There is a certain kind of loneliness for much-loved people and places that is unbearably bittersweet.
2018 is just going to be a big and busy year for us. Between repairs to the house, additions to the farm, and our wild baby, we’re going to be hopping and that’s not a bad thing. I feel like I need to be this kind of busy right now. Lots to do, but not sooooo much to do that I can’t sneak in a momosa and some writing time here and there. : )
Can a farmhouse also be a beach house? I feel like this is the question my Pinterest is asking . . .
I love the feeling of satisfaction I get after putting everything in the crock pot that dinner is done and it’s only 10am.
I buy birdseed now. Just one more, small step toward becoming my mother. : )
Lacing up my Kodiaks with a smile on this ten degree morning to let my horses out, haul water buckets, throw hay, and walk my dogs and baby; I am so happy to be living this life, no matter all it took to get here.
Rereading the poetry and writing of my twenties–my shame, my cancer, my life before I understood what I had already been taught about value, love, and happiness has been at times difficult, but mostly an exquisite and tender opportunity to love myself as I was then in a way that I couldn’t as I was then.
Also, even when writing about the past, my words have always carried me forward.
Well, my hour for coffee and writing is up; the messy kitchen is calling . . .
When we finally arrived at our new life, I found the person I had packed up would not do at all. Four boxes of clothing and only two pairs of Levi’s?
Who have I become?
I went back to open that dark door again,
but found only a small, bright window where it used to be.
And what should I make of that?
It’s been over a year and I just switched my focus forward from all I left behind. Had I waited a moment longer, I might have fallen right over the edge of my life.
Motherhood broke my heart and I can’t keep anyone out anymore.
I’m going back to ugly places, where there are beautiful lines, poorly housed in shanty poems. And when I get there, I’ll be kind to the girl who wrote all that falling down poetry. Even if she’s a stranger now, I walked here in her shoes.
It’s wild to think that a year ago I was frantically packing, avoiding saying goodbyes I didn’t want to need to say, and feeling so unsure.
It isn’t easy making the transition from leading others, to leading only yourself. I miss having a team, but I also love the deeply personal pride I feel after completing a project on my own.
One of my favorite things about being home with my Sunshine is the luxury of doing one thing at a time and giving all of myself to that one thing. Whether it’s playing with her outside, cooking, writing, chores, or anything else, I no longer spend all my time doing one thing and thinking about something else that needs doing.
Part of the reason I loved this house the moment I met her is that a writer is meant to live here and I knew when I crossed the threshold for the first time that I wanted that writer to be me.
Motherhood is amazing and fulfilling and difficult and precious. The rest of me is still here, too, and still needs to be acknowledged, exercised, and cherished. It’s a balance I’m still working out.
Even on our worst days, I miss her while she naps.
Time to go, the dishes are calling, and since I let that call go to voicemail yesterday, I’d best pick up today. : )
Bye!
Outside, the wind is swirling so many autumn leaves so high, it’s like living in a fall snow globe.
It feels like I have a place in this lovely, little town; I’m just not sure where it is yet.
To love and care for my old dog, who loved and cared for me so very well in his prime, has been one of the greatest honors of my life.
Don’t tell my husband or my mother in law, but my daughter is reminding me of everything I ever loved about Christmas before working in retail destroyed that love. At least I thought it was destroyed . . .
We were going to call our little farm Boldlygo, but just the other day, my sweet Sunshine brought me a book off of her shelf and we read it together. It was a long-forgotten favorite of mine and fits too perfectly to pass up naming our place The Tomten Farm.
As it always does, fall is pulling me into myself where all the winter words are, and though it hasn’t always been a pleasant journey, I find myself looking forward to writing from that dark, silent space.
I don’t know how he is always the man of my dreams when my dreams are always changing. I just know that every day I wake up and it’s still him.
Black Ink Birds 