A Trip Down the Rabbit Hole

...then I fell off of the face of the earth and disappeared down a rabbit-hole for three months... 

...The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well....Down, down, down...

...and all around me was a blur.  One day, one week, one month, all one muddled lapse of time filled with little sense and less reason, all for a muddled purpose...

...here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.  

Twice as fast as that.   

The end.  

It has been one year.  One year since we left an established life and complicated our already complicated life in search of something. I still don't know exactly what I'm searching for.  It has felt like a Wonderland search for madness.  And time has moved in Wonderland speed.  Months have passed and yet I'm sure that I might at any minute wake up under a tree from a lovely nap having found that no time has passed at all.  

In one sense, I have done exactly what I came here to do.  I have made connections and gained experiences.  I have grown as an artist and a writer.  I have been pushed and pulled into something new.  As my feet start to search for solid ground, I can look back up the rabbit-hole and see that I have come a very long way toward something.    

In another sense, I feel as if I have lost a year of relationships.  I feel alone. I severely underestimated the value of community.  I need Mad Hatter tea parties and coffee with friends.  For this reason, I would pinch myself and wake-up, back where I was a year ago, if I could. 

Then again, I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.   

So here we are.  School is coming to an end.  I have done what I came here to do.  And, the question that everyone wants answered is, what now?  I wish that I knew.  I am just moving forward.  At a slightly altered pace.  Racing toward an ill-defined end is exhausting.  And I have missed far too much beauty as I've run twice as fast as I can possibly run just to to go somewhere that I can't even see.  Yet a path must be chosen.  Decisions must be made.  We can't stay exactly here.  This exact spot fits exactly none of us.  So what now?    

Alice came to a fork in the road. 'Which road do I take?' she asked.  

'Where do you want to go?' responded the Cheshire Cat. 

'I don't know," Alice answered.  

'Then,' said the Cat, 'it doesn't matter.' 

*Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll 

Barn Therapy

I woke up cranky, for no reason.  And anxious too.  She called from a sleepover, crying, wanting to come home.  We sat around talking about going to the park for an hour.  I scheduled an impromptu riding lesson, instead.  We all stayed to watch, and breathe.  The little one played with the barn cat.  We talked about getting a kitten.  I think our cat might be lonely.

Presence and Happiness in the New Year

Those who prefer their principles over their happiness, 

they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness.  

- Albert Camus

All true happiness, as all that is truly beautiful, can only result from order. 

- Benjamin Franklin

These two quotes may seem odd ones to begin a post about the new year.  But they actually sum up the things I've been thinking about as this old year has come to a close.  Happiness and the search for.  Or rather, how to be.  And not just be happy.  But how to just BE.  Be content.  Be secure. Be present.  
The search for happiness is something that I have struggled with in recent years.  Being a wife, mother, and homemaker defined my early adult life.  I had found my place in that world.  I knew who I was.  And I was happy in that life.  I've found that as I rebuild who I am as a single, working mother, I'm struggling to find my happy.  And I think it has a lot to do with Benjamin Franklin.

I've tried to order something beautiful out of the chaos.  All along forgetting that there is beauty in the chaos.  Camus reminds us that order, when adhered to blindly and rigidly, can consume our fragile chance for happiness.    In other words, you can't order happiness.  You can't build a happy life.  Happiness is found within ourselves.  At the heart of the matter.

All of that said, Benjamin isn't completely wrong either.  While you can't let your happiness lie in the hands of the conditions of your life, you certainly shouldn't live a life that isn't centered around the things that make you happy.

I think I've forgotten all of that.

When I started to rebuild my life after my heart was broken, I cast aside parts of myself that made me truly happy.  As if I couldn't be who I was before, simply because someone else had changed the rules. Just go back three years on this blog and you will see what I mean.  Where are the handmade and local living posts?  Where are the traditions and the quiet moments?   This blog feels like a chore sometimes because I'm a little lost without certain parts of who I was.  Sometimes I throw a wordless picture out because it's all I have to give.  Those are the moments that I realize that I'm not as present in our daily life as I should and want to be.  I've lost my center.  I've lost some of the parts of myself that order my happiness. Those are the things that I've felt the conditions of my current life won't allow.  Those are the things I'm taking back.

This year, we made a big move.  It was a risk.  Six months later, it's still a risk that I'm sorting through.   This year, we let some things go.  And sometimes you have to let things go to know how much those things mean to you.  Like community.  We are a family that centers itself on community.  It's vital.  And we miss that deeply.  This year, we grew a little more into who we are as individuals.  The boy is a runner.  He is loyal and strong.  The oldest girl needs quite time in nature if she's going to shine on her stage.  That is her center.  She found that on a horse.   The youngest one is a competitor.  She is also timid and loving.  They are all so different and all so beautiful.  

As for me, I was reminded that I am an artist, visual and written.  I was reminded that it's OK to wander.  Because not all who wander are lost.  I was reminded that it's OK, and good even, to make beautiful things, even if no one else cares.  I was reminded that I am allowed to be both the woman I was before and the woman I have become.  Most importantly, those three beautiful sprites reminded me, in their growing, that presence today is all I can give them for tomorrow.  Presence is what they will carry with them in their memories and their hearts.  So in planning our future, I must guard our today.

This coming year, I'm taking back some parts of myself that have been collecting dust on the shelf.  I'm returning to a handmade life.  My hands need to create.  I'm returning to clean eating, living locally, and simplicity.   I'm continuing the expectation that my art and my writing matter, if only to myself.  I'm continuing the traditions of our home, both new ones that we've come to love, and old ones that have been forgotten.  And finally, I'm returning to quiet moments here in this space.  Moments that celebrate family and time together.  Muddled reflections and poetry.  Rain and homemaking.  I want to be more present in our daily.  The small daily moments that make us.

This is going to be a big year.  It's a year that holds change.  I can feel it in my fingertips.  I honestly don't know where we will be at the end of this year.  I don't think I've ever started a year like that.  Change has always caught me just a little off guard.  But this year, on day one, I can feel it coming.  I can feel the leaves rustling in my soul.  A gentle breeze is stirring and the wonder of an open heart is calling.  This year could take us anywhere.  Can you feel it?  It's exciting.

Let's begin.

Merry Christmas!

The magic of Christmas has fallen upon us again.  The stockings were hung and the children were nestled.  And deep in the night the greatest gifts were left for us to discover.  Gifts that can only reside in our hearts and our memories. 

Christmas morning arrived to bright-eyed smiles and the warmth of family gathered.  There were surprises and exclamations.  There was thanks given and joy felt.

The presents have now been unwrapped.  The toys played with.  Hugs have been given.  Good food has been enjoyed.  Games played and a movie, or two, watched. The day has been lovely.

Christmas is about family.  Christmas is about giving.  But most of all Christmas is about Love.  This evening, as we cuddle up together to enjoy the last bit of Christmas magic in this day, we will remember that love has come.  Our hearts are full.  And that is the greatest gift of all.

Seventeen Days of Thankfulness

I am thankful...

 for days of fog and mist and the quiet therein 

for getting lost among the trees

for beautiful butterflies

for cold morning ice on the window and that first lung-clearing intake of frost when you step outside

for the sheer joy in that laugh

for Ferris Wheels and carnival magic

for history, personal and universal

for that rarely captured smile and a boy who wears his emotions closely

for moments when hard work pays off

for ghosts

for three little princesses I know and one prince charming

for the small things and the ability to see them

for finding something beautiful hidden in nature

for the hope of finding someone to walk through life with

for a girl and her horse riding fast into the setting sun

for finding a place to belong

and for Tom Sawyer moments in idyllic settings and the wild imagination of childhood.

Thanks and Giving

"Thanks therapy is God's prescription for joy"

-Ann Voskamp, A Holy Experience

We need some thanks therapy around here.  We've been sulking and pouting for a few months now. These months have left me soul weary.  A weariness I can feel beyond my bones.  We're spiraling into the dark hole of Oscar's trashcan.  Folks, we're grumpy.  (Albeit more real life than puppet, although there are days...)

We need some crisp autumn truth in our spirits.  We need the shedding of the leaves and the color rush of fresh vision. We need something to change. I'm tired of the grouchiness and the weariness and the pouting and the sulking and the general unease that comes with all of that.  I'm just so tired.

I'm trying to be patient with the changing.  I know that major life movement take time to adjust to.  I'm still giving it my year.  I know that it's all still too strange and unfamiliar.  I know that we have yet to find our community.  And I know that we are all still fresh with the missing.  But I fear that in the missing we are neglecting our life here, now.

The crazy truth, the thing I'm not supposed to say out loud:  I'm making up this parenting thing as I go. The thing that comforts me:  you are too.  There's no instruction manual.  There are these crazy things called intuition, logic, and love.  I try to strike a healthy balance of all of the above and hope I land somewhere near north.  I don't know how to help three kids get over a loss.  I don't know how to help them make their home here.  I don't know where their angry/sad button is or how to turn it off.  

But I do know this.  Perspective can change any situation.  I think what we need is a little November rain.  A spirit rain.  We need to find joy in the missing.  Joy in the pain of this moment.  What we need is thanksgiving.  Real thanksgiving.

So today we begin a month of thanks and giving.  We don't have a lot to give, but what we have is His for the offering.  We aren't feeling very thankful, but we will list thanks until we feel it.

All we have is today.  Let's find joy in this wild, sweet mess.  

So The Boy Ran

Earlier this fall, the boy joined the cross country team.  He was at a new school, in a new town, without a single new friend to call his own.  He needed something to pour his energy into.  So the boy ran.

Of the three of them, he's struggling the most.  Lately he has reminded me of that old nursery rhyme:

There was a little girl

Who had a little curl

Right in the middle of her forehead

And when she was good she was very, very good

But when she was bad she was horrid!

That rhyme should have said "teenage girl".  Or maybe three year olds and thirteen year olds have something in common.  An irrational self-centering that cannot be brushed aside because it is their reality for that moment.  And for my boy, can I blame him?  He's endured so much these last few years.  He's endured it with more grace than his years should have allowed.

Maybe, in moving him, I provided the straw and the camel collapsed.  Yet he's still Chris.  The kid who helps without being asked.  The responsible kid who won't play until his homework is done.  The kid who recently bought a video game with his hard saved money just because he knew his sisters would like it.  When he's good, he's very, very good.

But occasionally, the heart cracks and the emotion that was being dammed up spills out into angry words that can't be taken back.

In those moments, my mama heart cracks open with his and I feel lost in the parenting waters.  I can't see the stars and my compass is broken.  And I wonder if we'll survive the battle.  

In those moments, my heart breaks for my boy, for I fear I have wounded him.  My mother worry takes over.  All of the what ifs and did I screw up and where did I go wrong and other failure speak.  We all do it. We mothers.  We let worry and anxiety consume us.  We shouldn't.  But can you blame us?  We have been entrusted with human lives to make or break.  

In those moments, I go to leather worn Word and I wonder if that last line is wrong.  Can I really make or break him if Another is molding him?  Perhaps what we've really been entrusted with is a human life to hold and to let go.  Our greatest job is to love them into the going.  

He's not lost.  He's just hurting.  And I will love him through the hurt.  Through the harsh words that I know deep down he doesn't mean.  Through the battles.  And I will love him to the Lamp at his feet.

And he will run.  He has spent the fall running off his anger.  Running off his frustration.  Without meaning to, he even ran into a potential friend or two.  He found a coach who saw that he needed to run.  The coach motivated him and pushed him.  He ran hard.  Everyday of every week for three months.  He felt the pain of it every night in his knees and his feet.  Some nights he went to bed with four ice packs strapped to his legs. Yet, he kept running.  Woke up wanting to run.  He got faster with each race.  In the end, he finished with a strong season that left him wanting more.  So he will run all winter and run all spring until the season begins again next summer.  He will run because he needs to.  He will run because he needs to be a part of the team. He needs the heart patching community of it all.  

 And I will let him run.  Loving him through the pavement pounding push of each step.  

We're Just Making It

So, I turned a page and now we're in Nashville.  If I'm honest, the last few months have been a roller coaster of emotion mostly spiraling down.  In other words, this has been a hard adjustment, that I'm not sure a single one of us is handling well.  Some things have been great.  Some things have been disastrous.  Some things have been downright hellish.  Let me go backwards a bit and explain.

The summer started off great.  I loved my internship.  Working at Cheekwood was everything that I had hoped it would be.  I looked forward to going to work every morning.  And I was truly sad when my time there was over.  In fact, on my last day, I applied to work there again during the holiday events.  I didn't care what they wanted me to do.  I just knew that I wanted to be back there on regular basis.   On top of that, coming home to my sister and her family every day was wonderful.  It was nice to spend so much time with them.   I also spent June in a creative writing class where I produced some of my best writing to date.  The professor encouraged me to see it through to publication.  I fell in love with what I was writing and became very motivated to take his advice.  I've continued working with that piece and plan to keep working on it until I can finish it.  That was June.  It was great.

Things started to get hard about mid-July when we actually moved here and officially left home.  We were back in Matthews for a week.  The kids had sleepovers every night.  We squeezed as much friend time as we could into one week.  Then we loaded everything into a giant Budget truck and made our way to Nashville.  The first week was OK.  I think we were so exhausted and still in a relative state of shock, so the homesickness didn't set in until week two.  At that point, we all crashed into tears.  We were living in a shoebox filled with more stuff than we could possibly unpack into the space. We couldn't find anything.  We couldn't find anything in this town either.  I wasn't sure we had even moved to the right part of town.  I didn't really like the suburb that we had decided to move to.  It felt big and somewhat ugly and far from what I wanted to do here. The boy was angry, one girl was terrified of everything unfamiliar, the other girl missed her friends in a heartbreaking way, and the cat was a freaked out terror.   July was a mess.

We even tried to go on vacation at the end of July.  While everyone around us had a good time, we struggled to be there.  Each of the kids at some point during the trip asked if we could just go home.  We usually love the beach, but our hearts weren't in it.   We were all on edge, which is exactly why we should have gone on vacation and exactly why we shouldn't have gone on vacation with other people.   We couldn't relax.  I was stressed about finding a job while in school.  I was stressed about getting the house unpacked.  I was worried about the kids transitioning.  The kids were stressed about starting school in  new place.  They were homesick and anxious and a little angry.  We were happiest in the moments when we found ourselves lost in front of the vast ocean.  I let loose several silent screams into the sea.  The beach was lovely, but we were a mess.

August.  School started.  It's so different from the little community school that we loved in Matthews.   We don't know the teachers or the traditions.  Sicily cried most days after school the first few weeks.  This is the child who wrote a poem about how much she loved her teacher at the end of last school year.  Analiese made a friend on day one.  Another new student.  That saved her.  The boy refused to make friends out of spite.  He spent his lunch break in the library.  I started school two weeks later.  Two weeks after that I was sure that I hated Belmont.  Like, the kids, I didn't know the teachers or the traditions.   And I didn't like the Belmont teachers or their traditions.  Shortly after starting, some of my transfer credits got reversed.  It was now going to take even longer to finish.  I ended up changing my major from one that I loved to a generic one in an effort to shave some of that time off.  I lamented the fact that I could have been sitting in classes that I was actually interested in with professors that I loved instead of in a class that I didn't need with a professor who made me want to shout obscenities.   I missed my old school as much as the kids missed their old schools.   Compounded with that, I couldn't find (and still haven't found) a job and I was really missing my old one.  I didn't realize how fulfilling the studio was for me until I didn't have it anymore.  I love teaching.  I miss my students and my classroom.  Especially after a summer full of teaching and gaining fresh ideas from other teachers.  I need somewhere to spend all of that energy.  I need something to pour into that has meaning.  Belmont is not that place.  Needless to say, during this time, we all came home grumpy and sad and frustrated at the end of the day.  Thus far we were not transitioning well.  August was an emotional mess.

first day of school

By September, I felt like a failure for coming here.  I felt lonely and exhausted.  I was questioning myself daily.  I considered, on more than one occasion, packing it up and heading home.  And we did.  For a weekend.  We went back to Matthews for Labor Day.  It was the exact vacation we needed.  It was refreshing to be in a place that felt familiar.  We saw friends and felt their hugs hit us directly in our hearts.  We came back here riding that warmth.  It propelled us into the rest of September.

Not long before we had left for that trip, the boy had joined the cross country team.  Being part of a team has kept him afloat.  The only friends he has made here are his teammates.  He respects his coach even though he's being pushed.  Cross country has given him something to look forward to.   For Analiese, that has come in the form of a horse.  Horseback riding is something that she has always asked to do but we've never been able to pursue it because of the expense.   Not long after we got here, we passed by a little stable and as always she looked longingly into the field of horses.  I decided to make it happen.  I called that little stable and it turns out they are a small operation with very few students and they were willingly to work within my finances.  Now she finds her peace on the back of a horse.  Sicily, the one who laughed when I told her we were moving, was the most difficult.  This place scares her and she's struggling to find a comfortable niche here  We had to search hard for the perfect gym and dance studio.  We found the gym a few weeks ago and she has since been asked to join their competitive team.  The dance studio is still up in the air.  She's going but she misses Masterpiece.  She danced there for five years.  Now everything is compared to that.  She may give it up and that makes me sad.

All of these things have helped make September less of a mess.  All of these things are pointing to a new life being built here.  I won't say each day gets easier because that would be a lie. The boy still has days when he's angry that we're here.  The girls both still cry occasionally.  And I am still questioning this move on a regular basis.   It's more like each month gets easier.  Maybe by Christmas we will have made it through a whole week without one of the four of us asking to go home.  I doubt it.  A dear friend encouraged me while we were back home at Labor Day by telling me to give it a year.  She said, "Give it a year.  Then, you know you've tried.  At that point, if you come back its not a failure.  You went and you tried but decided you wanted to come back."  So with those words in my mind, I'm giving it a year.  My hope is that by that point we will all want to stay equally as much as we want to leave, if not more.  Time will tell.  For now, we are just making it.  One day at a time.  One week at a time.  One month at a time.  We're making it.