Home is Where the Trailer Is

(Hmmm. It just occurred to me how literal that statement is for me all the time...)

We headed to Santa Cruz in our cozy little trailer last weekend for a Thursday to Sunday trip. Perhaps one day we'll be better at this or have a trailer that's permanently equipped with everything we need to make a speedy departure easy, but for now, it's not quite lickety-split - although it's a lot better than it was at Christmas! And lest it sound like I'm complaining, it simply appeals to the constant wanderer in me to be able to go at a moments notice. Bruce Chatwin was a hero of mine for a long time - back when it was easy to read the words and separate them from a flawed human writing them. But he spoke to the wanderer in me (and the anthropologist - and apparently, the fiction writer as is known about his work). When he pointed out that "Yet, in the East, they still preserve the once universal concept: that wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.” - (from The Songlines) he seemed to know my soul.

Now that we're a family of four and growing, it's a bit more involved to just hit the road. But I wouldn't have it any other way. What Bruce didn't point out was that traveling with children or husbands who bring other passions along introduces you to a great many details of the journey that you'd have missed without their eyes and ears. It's not so easy to dip down to Patagonia with a family of four, but it's pretty easy to find contentment in a campground bordered by the Pacific on one side and strawberry fields on the others when your idea of adventure includes (without being limited to) cliff hikes, bug watching, bike riding, hill running, surfing, campfire singing, sand castle building and exploring all that which is within your immediate vicinity.

It can be easy to forget that the road is not only what lies ahead, but also what lies under your feet right now. Perhaps this was part of what Buddha was saying when he spoke of not being able to travel the path until you became the path? Given how dirty Sawyer gets - and how quickly - his is an even more literal take on this philosophy. And that is part of the joy. There is pure bliss in his face when, the moment his feet touch the sand, he runs kicks of his shoes, runs forward with arms open wide until he falls, rolling in every direction, sand running through his fingers and toes, pouring into pockets, blending with his hair. Jordan goes immediately for the blessing of the ocean: there is a dance she does that is beautiful to watch and is all about her silent commune with the sea.

The dirt goes deeper and involves the smoke and ash form the campfire, the ketchup from the dinner, the tree sap and the chocolate dutch oven cake. Emerging from the camp showers on the second day is a fairly heavenly experience. Given the long runs up and down cliff paths and along miles of pristine beach I got to do this trip, I'm sure it was especially heavenly for no one to have to smell my ripeness anymore. Tom got his usual surfing baptism in, but nothing special so it was a Friday only affair. We decided to not go anywhere on Saturday and with a visit from Mikey, one of our river guides, we explored and rode bikes and built sand castles and had a monumental day of doing nothing and everything. Sawyer learned all about his brakes on his bike, and Tom took Jordan on rides full of "challenges", all of which she met with ease.

Saturday night the world outside our trailer got its own baptism, howling wind and rain cascading in torrents over our little tin can home. We of course stayed watertight and snug although it sounded like the beginning of Noah's storm outside. I had a hard time falling asleep, but sometime after two (having woken up my husband to see if he also couldn't sleep) I fell into blissful dreams and awoke to a sky scrubbed free of clouds, and sunshine melting like butter over the neon greenness of spring. We packed up seamlessly, the kids riding bikes companionably around, and headed home somewhat early, still no surf to be had and a strong wind spring cleaning the beaches. I loved the feeling of loving to go home as much as I had loved to be hitting the road. It felt like the kind of balance one might strive for all their life.

I still want to go, just go - still dream every single day of taking these wild creatures to bless beaches in Africa and climb mountains in Asia, to bike along roads in Italy and run rivers in Iceland. I want to see each one of the United States alongside them as their section of US History, to delve into Canada and sink into Mexico, to know that wherever they are is just where they are meant to be. I want them to taste different foods, hear different accents, to love the feeling of an airplane taking off, and the promise of a full tank of gas. I want it to be too cold, too hot, too dirty, too crowded, too empty, too wild, too tame. And I want them to always be balanced on the knife's edge between wanderlust and the contentment of home.

“Courage is the price that Life extracts for granting peace
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things;

Knows not the vivid loneliness of fear,
Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.

How can Life grant us boon of living, compensate
For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate
Unless we dare

The soul’s dominion? Each time we make a choice, we pay
With courage to behold the restless day,
And count it fair.

Amelia Earhart

Little By Little (Or, When to Toot Your Own Horn)

Every now and then you strike real gold at the library - a random book that just resonates and connects you to an author and their wonderful world, or a children's book that resonates with them in a way that teaches them something they just are not able to hear from a parent. We are either our local library's dream come true or worst nightmare depending on perspective. I suppose for those who shelve books we're the latter, but for meeting quotas or showing a healthy community need for the library, we're at the top. 

The way Jordan devours books (two chapter books and a long children's book today - and we weren't at home very long) and I try to work variety into Sawyer's nighttime reading list (the same book from our shelves night after night just makes me cringe), we're pretty dependent. I get a wonderful stream of good literature from my mother, but often need the thriller/mystery as brain candy. I am a heavy user of reference books as well, from massage to gardening, pregnancy to parenting. Tom is forever in search of the next greatest autobiography or sports journalism book. I am eternally grateful for our library's wonderful website and for the ability to log on and reserve books online. Our library is one of four in the county and as our county takes two hours to drive end to end, going branch to branch is not a possibility. 

We have two tactics at the library: I go online and reserve books for me and the kids that I've come across on a blog or that are part of a series that Jordan's devoted to. Then I bring the kids in and give them some arbitrary number of books that they can choose from the shelves. Usually it's between 8 and 12. Before Christmas break I think it was twenty. And almost enough. I usually augment with a selection I find appealing as the reader/listener. Three weeks ago one of us put a little book called Little By Little into the stack. It's a sweet little book about a little boy otter (named Otto) who has an older sister and a fear of swimming. We've renewed it once. And we may have to buy it. In the book Otto has a list of things he can do, which is quite extensive, and a list of things he can't do, which is one item: swimming. After much parental encouragement, his older sister finally tells him that the secret is to start off small, and before long, Otto is finishing big - jumping off the Biggest Ever Rock into the Deepest Ever Pool and doing acrobatics underwater.  

The book resonated with Sawyer, to say the least. And at a flyby lunch visit to the library last week I picked up a couple more swimming-centered books that helped as well. Today at the gym he let go of the death grip he usually maintains on us, and was swimming over and over from the edge of the pool to the lane line and back again. We had to forcibly make him take breaks. 

Jordan is almost always "playing a game" that involves her being some kind of baby animal, often a kitten, with a new name and color change a few times a day. Sawyer almost always joins in, usually the same kind of animal as his sister, always named Posey. Midway through his swimming extravaganza I asked him if he was an otter or a boy. He turned his head just before launching himself off the wall for another mini lap and said with a smile, "otter." 

Putting his jammies on, he asked why his shoulders and back were sore. In bed (having just read Little By Little again, of course), he said with his eyes at half mast before descending into that wonderful dark pool of sleep, "I did it little by little, too."

Here's a poem I wrote in the fall: 

Book Binding

My daughter

Has my addiction:

I can see the need thrum

in her veins:

Books.

Like drugs or coffee or new love,

no doubting the

narcotic effect.

Did she inherit it from me?

Or in providing her

the recommended 

daily allowance

of childhood reading

Did her need take root?

I know, I know

I use the word need:

"We NEED 

Food, Water and Shelter,"

Her father likes to say.

But still.

She is five

And I feel her need

for the written word

viscerally:

In the car,

In the between moments

At school. At home.

In childhood

Reading was both

My escape

And belonging. 

In childhood. Ha!

Is.

I know her life is less

A maelstrom

Than mine at her age.

I hope she does not find

The same affinity

With the sadder characters,

Does not long for

The more graceful life

As I might have.

But who can know.

She escapes,

And this sudden gaining

Of ability

Forms her wings:

I feel more a leaving now

Than I did when she exited

My body.

Perhaps this is why 

My mother

Has always given me books:

To give me the journey

And the freedom -

But to know

Where I have gone.

Books are a shelter,

Sustenance for the soul,

Quench a thirst more deep.

I am not a perfect mother

(Have only read about them)

But I have given her this:

The ability to sate herself

With words.

11/08

Pro-Creating (Or, That New Oven Came Just in Time)

We've gone and done it again.

I couldn't even call my mother when we found out - since it was Tom's idea and generally just all his fault, I had him call her. I actually had a hard time uttering the words for the first few days. It's not like it wasn't a planned pregnancy - it just seems like such a roll of the dice in general: you're trying not to for years, or you're desperately trying to for years. Usually one right after the other. Not a whole lot of needing to try for us. I had to be able to talk about it pretty quickly, though - Tom's fourth week Facebook post about deciphering the pink lines on the HPT wasn't subtle enough to get past many family members. And so, we're baby bound again. 

I think it's hilarious when people ask you during your first trimester (if it's not your first child) if you're tired. Um, I'm always tired! I'm a mom! I'm excited, too. And although it took me a long time to get past the thought that two was the limit on the number of children a socially and environmentally responsible family should bring in to the world (never mind fiscally...), so many of our purposefully childhood friends have told us we can "have theirs", I feel good about it on all counts. If I wasn't 38 (and was even more insane than I now feel) I might even consider a fourth. Given how many people randomly asked us if there were twins in our family or if I knew that being a "more mature" gave me a higher chance of delivering twins, we only heard one heartbeat on the doppler at our first midwives appointment. I was honestly slightly disappointed. As I said, the fourth is not in my future, and so getting two for the pregnancy of one sounded actually feasible. Which evidences how much hormones can mess with your brain. 

Joy of joys, my own twin sister will deliver my first niece or nephew on my side of the family soon and I am beyond excited. My younger sister is doing her best to provide me with more nieces and nephews and my gratitude is abundant. a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_jynyQ3TJqow/Sb3jom05pPI/AAAAAAAAAHU/pn2tOdEwXG0/s1600-h/DSC_0022.JPG">

My wonderful mother in law gave us a new oven for Christmas in 07 - a gift I didn't take her up on until the week before Thanksgiving in 08. A Thanksgiving we were hosting. We'd been without a working oven since late February and, being a bread baker, I was so excited about the new arrival. Or arrivals. We got a double oven, and much like twins, it is twice the joy.


We don't do cakes in the oven. Cakes are Tom (and the kids') territory: they are always cooked in a dutch oven on hot coals outdoors. And are always perfect. But we do bread, with recipes handed down from my mother. Like gardening and running, the process of making bread, especially the kneading, is meditative. And Jordan and Sawyer love baking - most of their snack days at school have involved baking something. It's science and family responsibility lessons all in one. And the sense of accomplishment they get, pulling something homemade from the oven, is priceless.

Being a walking oven, especially in this stage of pregnancy, isn't that exciting. I do love being pregnant. I don't love changing out the wardrobe, desperately trying to find something to wear in the closet that makes me feel even remotely comfortable or attractive. But given how much I adore those first two kooks, what a wonderful father they have, and what great siblings they will be, there is far more excitement than trepidation. I adore my siblings, cherish them and feel the greatest gift I can give to these children I already adore is the gift of a sibling.