Archives for April 2020

Try Some Self Care, They Said

April 16, 2020

I woke up with a vision.

It was sunny, it seemed soft and inviting. Tulips were everywhere, our trees were parading their fresh green leaves around like it was Paris fashion week.

I. Was. Feeling. It.

So I made a grand pronouncement to my family:

“I will be taking my coffee on the deck.”

Everyone was impressed. They didn’t say they were impressed, but I could tell by how they reacted: Ben smiled with a mixture of hope and pity while he grabbed his coffee to go and headed to work. The Cub wailed about how he didn’t want to eat his oatmeal while simultaneously eating his oatmeal, and he couldn’t POSSIBLY go outside with me until he had eaten all of my eggs. The Bay Leaf smiled a big gummy smile and immediately had a blow out.

I was off to a great start.

Once the Cub had eaten all his oatmeal and his own eggs, and then eaten mine, he seemed open to the idea. Once the Bay Leaf had been changed, for the third time this morning, she also seemed game.

With my coffee still lukewarm, I struck out for the sun-washed wooden mecca of my perfect morning. It took three trips. First trip: the Bay Leaf’s baby quilt (handmade by my best friend Eryka who runs an amazing little etsy store which is currently dedicated to making masks instead of quilts). Second trip: My coffee mug and toys for continual baby distraction. Third trip: The Cub’s bike, and consequently, the Cub.

In my vision I sat on the handmade little quilt with my sweet bitty Bay Leaf. She would look up at me with frequent love and adoration, but would mostly just babble at her toys. In my vision the Cub jumped his bike off the little step on our deck and rode around in the sun, occasionally stopping to give me a hug and a kiss and tell me what an amazing mother and best friend I was. He’d offer to freshen my coffee, maybe bake me a scone. I would look out and see the top of Mt. Hood silhouetted in the morning light while I sipped my coffee and smelled all the cherry tree smells.

So, these things didn’t happen.

My coffee got steadily colder as I tried to keep the Cub from running over his baby sister. I waged a losing campaign to keep the Bay Leaf focused on her toys instead of trying to stuff pine needles in her mouth. I had to get up and wrangle Marmot who was barking at the neighbors (who, I’m pretty sure are convinced, I keep a rabid dog for fun).

Despite the often harrowing attempts at keeping the children from self-inflicted injury and choking, I did manage to sit in the sun for a bit. I got to watch the Cub scoot around on his bike and he asked me to take so many slow-mo videos of him my phone died. The Bay Leaf only managed to eat like… three pine needles and possibly an ant. Marmot, despite the ferocity of his bark and the fluffiness of his hackles, didn’t jump any gates and did get in a sun soak.

And I, in great swaths of seconds, managed to look at Mt. Hood and drink my coffee before tearing off after the toddler.

Was it my vision? I mean… no. But, it was nice. I did it. And I even got a kid-imposed workout in there too. Turns out my mom reflexes are still in tip-top shape. Ain’t nobody flying down a flight of wooden stairs on my watch.

Sending love from on top of the hill,

Coronavirus and a Call to Action

April 15, 2020

The other day I went for a drive.

I’ve been out of the house very little since this whole thing began. About a week into the coronavirus outbreak, I got sick. We don’t know if it was Covid-19 or not. I have a strong suspicion it was, but they wouldn’t test me because my symptoms weren’t severe enough (my doctor informed me that unless I was going into the ER I wouldn’t qualify for a test).

So that knocked me out for five full days. And then, because we had to assume it COULD have been coronavirus, my entire household went on self-imposed isolation for two weeks. In the midst of that isolation our governor ordered shelter-in-place which limited non-essential travel.

So, I haven’t gotten out. Like, even a little. The most I’ve done is a few walks with the kids around the neighborhood and copious amounts of time in our yard. And by ‘yard’ I mean the patio and pavement that surround our house and have been turned into a BMX ramp playground for the Cub and his bike.

Since the Bay Leaf isn’t what I would call a ‘sleeper’. Naps are a hard-won break. Already established, as I’ve mentioned these posts are twenty minutes long. One way to get a good nap is to drive. She falls asleep in the car no problem. Of course, I can’t give her a car nap every day because the Cub won’t sleep nearly as long in the car and their naps don’t always line up. Plus, nap driving isn’t exactly essential travel… but… let’s be honest, psychologically going ‘anywhere’ even if its basically ‘nowhere’ is needed once in a blue moon.

So, I went. When Ben is home, I can tuck her into the car and go for a weekend cruise while he hangs with the Cub. It’s so nice to be ‘out’ in the world, so to speak. I drove to Sauvie Island (where Ben and I were married) and did one big loop through the pastureland and along the water. It was peaceful, quiet, beautiful. The oddest part of the whole experience was the drive to the island. Headed through usually bustling weekend neighborhoods was like driving through a ghost town.

It was gorgeous out. Seventy degrees, sunny, springtime flowers everywhere. And no people… the few I did see were wearing masks or kerchiefs. The grocery stores had lines around the block with masked people putting at least six feet of distance in between one another. All the businesses were closed, there were barely any cars on the road, the parks almost entirely empty.

It was… weird. And it was the most unsettled I had been since I got sick. When you’re at home every day with your little family things start to become routine, even normal. Sure, we’re not going places or seeing family but we’re doing things together, we’re snacking and napping and playing. We’re doing 75% of the stuff we’d be doing anyway. It doesn’t feel like anything is really that different.

Except that it is. Everything is different. That drive made me feel like I had entered into a dystopian novel. Like some sort of biological disaster had wiped out half the population or something and resources were scarce. Thank goodness that isn’t the reality but it was very sobering to witness. Luckily, right now, this emptiness is a good thing. We’re staying home, we’re protecting ourselves, our loved ones, our neighbors. We care, and continue to care. And things are happening. Gigantic things. The environment is getting a chance to breathe. Maybe not for long, but for this brief window the smog has lifted, the daily destruction has all but ground to a halt.

I read an article about how when things get back to normal, the government will be gas lighting us about what happened here. They’ll want us to forget all about the pandemic. They’ll want everything to get back to normal–consumerism, industry, money, money, money. They don’t want us to remember that we, collectively, halted 90% of the economy and survived. We cared. We took care of each other in a world swept with immediate and enveloping change.

WE CAN DO THAT AGAIN.

Unlike what that orange megalomaniac in the white house says, he does not have complete control of the country. He doesn’t decide everything. We have the power to change things, quite literally over night. We can be the change and help the environment and stand up for our rights to have healthcare and shed crippling student debt. We can do that. And I think the young people should take note. This is a tragic circumstance, but this can be an empowering one as well.

Let this pause be our collective inhale.

It’s time to say what we want for our future.

It’s time to say it loud enough that the self-involved sociopath running the government can hear us.

Oh, and vote that jackass out of the office. I’m done with him. And you should be too.

Sending love from on top of the hill,

Chocolate Detangler

April 13, 2020

I figured out this whole Easter candy thing.

I suspect it serves the same purpose as Halloween candy.

Bribes.

This morning, after a healthy bowl of oatmeal and blueberries, I fed the Cub chocolate eggs in the bath while combing through his accumulated dreadlocks.

Also, the bath water was freezing.

I had filled the tub while Ben was taking a shower and apparently that was enough for our hot water heater to say HAHAHAHA. NOPE. So, the Cub stood in cold water eating chocolate while I worked at combing through the seven cups of detangler I had smeared all over his head.

I came away victorious, and he came away covered with chocolate. It was mutually beneficial if you discount the ‘getting clean’ portion of bathing and only focus on the curls. Which is what I do. Because that’s how parenting works. 50% success rate is like… a SOLID shelter-in-place day. So, go me.

I’m down to six chocolate eggs. Which means, the Cub’s hair will probably only be presentable for the next few days. When the bribes dry up, he’ll just live matted with dirt and crumbs; a feral bike-riding beast who scoots around the yard terrorizing my flower beds and demanding sesame street videos from his nest of snarls, toy cars, blueberry stains, and cherry-petal-encrusted-feet.

Sending love from on top of the hill,

Easter. Nailed It.

April 11, 2020

I got a text last night at 9:30 from the Easter Bunny.

She wanted me to know that there were eggs out front. She had tucked a couple in some tulips, a few behind the daffodils, three near the cedar tree. She wanted me to know where they were because she knew I wasn’t an ‘Easter mom’. I have yet to dye an egg or purchase chocolate. I haven’t made a goodie basket or busted out the pastels. I haven’t let my toddler do any holiday-related crafts. What even is a holiday-related craft?

You see why the Easter Bunny had to step in.

Luckily, I’m on extremely good terms with the Easter Bunny. We’ve been friends for a year now, and she’s willing to throw me a cadbury bone during this childhood benchmark. All she asks in return is I occasionally grab an item at the grocery store if we’re going, or send Ben over for a handyman project from time to time.

We live across the street from her.

Did I not mention that? Her name is Rebecca. She’s lovely.

So thanks to Rebecca and her generous bunny ways, we had a successful egg hunt this morning and the Cub was delighted and had many questions about why the “Beaster Bunny” wouldn’t stick around after leaving all these eggs. The best I could come up with was: “The Beaster Bunny has to head home. She’s tired! She’s healing from a foot surgery! She needs to put up her paws and enjoy a cup of coffee. She’s earned it. She loves you and can’t wait to bring you more eggs next year.”

It looked like that explanation wasn’t going to cut it, but then he realized that all the eggs were full of chocolate.

So, there you go. Easter. Nailed it.

Sending love from on top of the hill,

Lukewarm Equilibrium

April 9, 2020

Today I am perched at the end of my writing chair. I’m wondering why the keys on my laptop are SO INCREDIBLY LOUD and how I didn’t notice that before. My back is hunched and also stretched slightly to one side, in an attempt to maintain front-heavy equilibrium. Why am I so uncomfortable, you ask? Won’t that hamper the writing process, you ask?

Yep. It’s extremely counter productive.

But it’s also the only way I’m keeping this baby asleep.

She refused to nap in her crib. She did this new thing while nursing, I’ll refer to it as: ‘The Snapping Turtle’ and after my continual surprised gasps, apparently couldn’t get comfortable. Obviously my fault. How dare I express verbal discomfort. Nipples are for snapping, mom. I decree it.

So decreed, I find myself with a napping baby in the sling. I’ve dedicated this first nap of the day to creativity and so, even in this less-than-ideal turn of events, I’m writing. I’m even drinking tea! Not hot tea, of course. Can’t chance a spill. So, you know, lukewarm tea. It’s good though. As a mom, most of the things I drink are lukewarm. Rarely are hot beverages drank hot or cold beverages drank cold. Lukewarm is the state of my beverages and somehow the state of my being.

It’s beautiful outside again today. These seventy degree days make shelter-in-place a lot more fun. Being in the sun helps everything. Of course, it also starts the internal simmer. Days like this I want to be in the mountains. I want to feel my shoes on dirt trails and the smell of growing things.

Lucky for us, we moved into our dream house a year ago and the smell of growing things is everywhere. The landscape here is unreal. The cherry trees, the dozens and dozens of giant tulips and carpets of bluebells. Even trilliums! We have bunches of trilliums here! I’ve never seen a trillium domesticated, so having some of my very own is about as magical as it gets.

The cherry blossoms are starting to disappear, replaced with new green leaves. There are less petals to sweep up, though they continue to form little drifts along our walkway like some delicate pink-stained snow. Spring is beautiful on top of the hill, with its birdsong and big trees and lush gardens.

Soon we’ll be back out in the yard, the Cub will be riding his bike all over the makeshift ramps that Ben built, and Bay will be in her sling, peeking out at the world, soaking in some Springtime scents and sights. I’ll be drinking lukewarm tea or maybe a second cup of lukewarm coffee. It’ll be wonderful, and now that we’re observing shelter-in-place, there won’t be nearly as many people out to see me weirdly hunched over and leaning to one side while I carefully shuffle around trying to maintain baby sling buoyancy.

Sending love from on top of the hill,

A Scoop of Decaf

April 8, 2020

I recently learned an approach to writing that was new to me. My instructor told me that when I sit down to write, I should empty my head. Seems simple, right? It’s not. It’s not because I have a thousand ideas every day. It’s not because I have things that happen in my life and I think: I have GOT to write about that. Now THAT is something people will love.

To be fair, sometimes I do write out all the things in my head, but those pieces rarely make it onto the blog. A lot of those things are just needing to be said, to get them out of my head, into the universe, unburdening me of their attention seeking.

When I sit down to write now, I release the pressure of expectation and I sit at my laptop, looking out at my cherry tree. I light a pile of christmas lights that sit tangled and pretty to one side of my desk. I put on some writing music (typically a wordless film score) and I sit. I sit and I start typing. A lot of times it starts with the way the light is filtering through the petals or the smell of my coffee. I start there and see where it takes me. Sometimes it doesn’t take me anywhere of profound interest, but it always takes me somewhere I enjoy being. I just let myself see what comes.

This morning I feel jittery. I typically try to mix in a little decaf with my morning brew so it doesn’t get me too wound up. I’m sensitive to coffee. I love it, and with two little kids I need it, but it can make me rapid and distracted. I guess there wasn’t enough decaf this morning, or maybe I didn’t eat enough eggs with toast. The great mystery of April 8th. I’m sure this is riveting…

The jitters are not just in my coffee, the jitters are in the air. I see the jitters in neighbors when we cross the street to avoid being too close. I see the jitters in the way we check the media, eyes half-lidded, as if that might shield us from the worst of the statistics while still giving us the knowledge we need to stay connected.

Rapid heart beats, distraction, an excess of unproductive energy. This is the state of our world, and of our quarantine. I feel it when I miss my parents and my friends. I feel it when I see the refund from the airbnb that was supposed to be our home base for a hike-filled girls trip in Sedona.

It’s not just the coffee…

As we move forward in this new temporary normal, some things begin to fall into place: This constant vigilance is tempered with the routine of the moment. We get up, we eat breakfast, we play with toy bikes, we play in the yard, we watch shows, we go through our day. Activities, rest, snacks, tantrums, repeat. All very humdrum, all very normal.

So that’s our scoop of decaf.

As we continue to move through the day and play and clean and laugh, we help take the edge off. It’s not a large space, our house and our yard. But, when you’re three and seven months, there’s plenty to touch and pick and prod and bike over. As this pandemic stretches on, and as we continue to shelter-in-place, a tempered brew is being poured. It tastes the same, smells the same, exists in the same universe. But it slows me down instead of winds me up.

Sending Love from on top of the hill,

Sleep, Sleep, Selected Poems

April 7, 2020

I have a stack of books next to me. Two different sleep training methods and one collection of Mary Oliver poems. The two sleep training books are out because it’s time to sleep train Bay.

There are as many approaches to sleep training as there are opinions about it. To be fair, we’ve already tried to sleep train the Bay Leaf, but it was traumatic. She cried, and choke-cried, and banshee screamed for six hours even with our many checks and shushes and holds. And that was using the gentlest method I found among our archives… So, we’ve been dragging our feet picking it back up again.

It didn’t help having a global pandemic sweep through. Suddenly things felt more fragile, more temporary. I wanted to give my children everything—love, attention, closeness, security, physical availability. The instinctual reaction to the unknown is to pull inward, grab those closest to me, and refuse to let go until the danger has passed.

The danger has not passed. The danger may not pass for months. It’s here and it’s dictating our current existence. So, we’ve continued to press our children close.

But, there’s something that scratches at the back of my mind. On mornings where I feel thin, or evenings where I feel brittle, the scratch turns its nagging drags into long, deep cuts. This painful reminder is for physical space. With everything going on in the world, the children and I are spending most of our days in the house or on the patio. We are all smooshed together while the pandemic plays out and most days it’s a relief. Having us all be together and safe and healthy and cared for, fills me with profound gratitude.

Of course, I worry about Ben, out in the world, possibly exposed to the virus. But, we know he’s out there doing what he needs to do to support our family in this era of crippled restaurants. He’s doing everything he can to keep the businesses going and keep us as financially stable as we can be.

When he’s home, the Cub and him are riding bikes together, playing on the ramps he built, generally soaking in one another’s company. The Bay Leaf spends time with her dad but eventually is only mollified by mom.

She is very attached to me.

I mean that in an emotional and physical way.

She is attached to me unlike the Cub ever was. This is new territory.

Particularly at night, she cannot abide Ben. It can only be me. She doesn’t transfer, she only wants the warm comfort of mom curled around her pudgy little body. Protecting her little heart and soft skin. And I love her babyness, her sweet puffs of breath, her search for my breast and my warmth. I love having her with me because I know this is the end of our babies. And I was never needed in this way with the Cub. It makes me feel special and necessary.

But the scratch-scratch of self-preservation continues. I need to have some physical autonomy for extended sanity in a world that is keeping us all home and smooshed. We need to sleep train Bay so that Ben and I can spend time with each other in the evenings. We need to sleep train Bay so I can write. If we can get her sleeping at night, naps might be longer and a writing practice can be carved out for more than twenty minutes at a time.

Speaking of twenty minutes, we’re at minute thirty-two and so you can see I’ve got a tag-a-long.

So, I’ll look at these books, we’ll try again. It’ll be hard and awful, but it’ll be necessary for all of us. I’m not looking forward to it, but I know it’s the best thing we can do for her, for me, for all of us.

Oh, and I included the Mary Oliver because sleep training is the fucking worst and she is the fucking best, so… a little poetry helps the pill go down.

Sending love from on top of the hill,

Writing Instead of Eating

April 6, 2020

It has been a year since I’ve written in this space.

A lot of things happen in a year.

Time, for one thing, has disintegrated into the stratosphere. Now there are two children instead of one. Two children who require constant observation. Except for now, right now, the baby is asleep and the toddler has been given my phone to play games for the duration of Bay’s nap. The typical nap duration for this particular baby is about twenty minutes on a good day, so, this writing will be short.

I’m writing instead of eating. I haven’t eaten anything yet today. I did have coffee (the most important part of my morning) and I did feed both of my children. Somehow, my own basic human needs got pushed to the side. I’m not hungry first thing in the morning because I’m busy. Both Ben and I are busy. He’s up with the Cub, I’m up with the Bay Leaf. Whichever one of us is up first makes oatmeal with blueberries for the toddler and coffee for us. Somewhere in the middle of that there’s changing diapers and the cub’s favorite show and feeding Marmot and making sure Marmot has his meds and then Ben has to head to work and here we go!

So, I’m writing instead of eating. I’ll eat when the baby wakes up. I’ll make myself something quick and easy for lunch while simultaneously spreading peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat for the Cub. I’ll dish up some veggie/fruit puree for the Bay Leaf to smear all over herself. That will be lunch. It will be a chaotic affair with laughter and messes and push back and impromptu dance parties. It will be, another lunch in quarantine.

I’m writing instead of eating because I haven’t written in a few weeks. I took a class, a writing class, with a bunch of very talented writers online for a few months. It was amazing. I wrote every single day. I wrote in ways I had never written before. One thing I learned was to come to my writing with nothing on my mind. Start typing whatever pops up and then go with it, follow it through the thickets and into the dark corners or the open spaces where the light pours through. Go in and keep burrowing until you tell your truth, whether it be mundane or earth shattering.

So, I’m doing that. I’m sitting here, listening to my stomach growl and writing my truth. Writing is one of my basic needs, and though it isn’t feeding my stomach, it is feeding my soul; trite but true. I’m going to let my son look at my phone for twenty minutes so that I can feed my soul. I’m sure a few parenting blogs out there would be scandalized.

Twenty minutes is not enough time to get into the vastness of the current climate. This shelter in place, this pandemic, this unease. There’s a heap of anxiety surrounding our lack of information. I have a sneaking suspicion that all of us will know people infected with this virus (I know two, and I may have been three), we may even know people who die. This is a time that will define a generation.

But there are bright moments. There are little corners I can sweep up and let the light in. As tiring as it is to have no break from my kids, I love my kids. Being together has been an eye opener on how much fun we have as a family. It’s not perfect. There’s screen time guys, and sometimes, a lot of it. But there’s also building little bmx tracks for toy bikes, there’s singing songs and making mac n cheese. There’s bouncing babies who giggle and running toddlers who can twirl and do a two-step.

I have been stepping up in a way I didn’t realize I could, until I had to. I’m crushing this constant parenting expectation without escape. I thought a week in I would be muttering to myself and eyeing my beer fridge (we have a beverage fridge full of beer, because, pandemic priorities) by nine a.m. Turns out? By nine a.m. I am elbow-deep in cardboard ramps and makeshift foam pits. By nine-thirty I’ve done two silly dance contests and paparazzi-ed my baby.

It’s not that bad, in fact… it’s pretty good.

I’m worried about my loved ones, may parents, my extended family.

But, with what we’ve been given? I’m pretty content in this moment, sitting at this computer, not eating, but typing. Giving myself the space for creative nourishment.

That being said, twenty minutes are up.

Time to grab a baby, feed my stomach, my toddler, and maybe try to wash a dish.

Sending love from on top of the hill,