It smells like rain tonight

We have been relishing warm summery days this week, regardless of the specter of global climate change.  Tonight, however, the wind is blowing from the north and carrying the scent of rain.  A late dog walk gave me time to watch the clouds roll over my city, reflecting the street lights and dimming the sparkle of the last wistful Christmas lights on a few scattered homes. Rain is always welcome in our dry land, but in January the smell is surprising.  Winter deadens the senses -- cold air holds no scent, and fresh snow brings a stilled hush to the streets.  Rain is a promise of spring and awakening, making me pull the dogs restlessly, as if we are hurrying toward something instead of traveling in long circles out and back home again.  By the time the storm arrives the north wind may fix that, chilling and changing the rain to snow, settling us back down into winter; bringing forth scarves and gloves and frosty noses.  Until then, I walk just a little longer, hoping for a lilac breeze to sweeten my dreams.

A deep and abiding peace

I am at peace.  For the first time in years, I feel that my country is mine again, and I no longer have to wait for the next incident of horrific abuse of power to come to light.  I didn't know, until this morning, how anxious I was; how distressed our "leadership" made me.  Now, again, I can be proud to be an American.  I thank all the gods there are.

Tick Tock

Clocks make me anxious. Their implacable measurement of time creates deadlines I have no way of eluding. Bed time, meal time, time to leave the house – all are boundaries by which I mark my days, rushing from one to the next, hurrying to meet appointments already past or rushing up so swiftly that I cry out in frustration, snapping needlessly at those around me, as if the endless march of seconds is somehow their fault.

Two days a week I have mini-vacations – time when my children are being cared for by others. I fill that space with errands but often find that without the fuss of car seats, stopping to select and pocket random small rocks, discussions of “why I am eager to leave the store/bank/restaurant now that my task is completed and I understand you’re still investigating something I don’t begin to comprehend but can we please leave now?” I have time to sit for a few unexpected minutes. Once I filled that space with books or radio or writing lists, but now I sit, reaching for stillness, and appreciating that found time for the gift it is.

On vacation, the mere act of removing my watch slows me down, liberates me from self-imposed structures of hours and minutes, allowing me to savor a few extra moments of dark sleepy night-time storytelling with my son, or a mischievous demand for just one more bed-time song from my daughter. Not hemmed in by a morning alarm, I find myself more readily leaning into my husband and chatting into the night about upcoming schedules and not-so-distant plans, or talking more quietly and intimately about our dreams.

This week I had to take my watch in for repair, and I won’t see it again for four whole days. I feel naked and mildly panicky, worried that I’ll miss something. I don’t know why, since I have the cell phone, the computer, the car, and two clocks in the kitchen (one of which is on the oven and reads 350 when I bake, which confuses my husband to no end). I wonder if not having a watch on my wrist, physically tying me to the passage of time, will change my perception of the week. I know I put everyone to bed nearly an hour early tonight, but I can’t tell if that was due to the darkening sky or some less pleasant motive. I decided this evening, though, to believe that not having a watch means I am on vacation, and I will practice relaxing instead of fighting the rigors of a timely life. Perhaps this is a lesson for me: what a blessing to sometimes step outside of time, to find a place where there are no consequences for a late night, or a long morning walk, or an extra story or two.

Change of seasons

Winter stopped by today. We have been graced with a slow fall, drifting from green to yellow and red, with a glorious blue background each day. Yesterday our front yard was a frenzy of leaf raking and neighborly child labor, with a brief break for homemade chocolate chip cookies to recharge. Today the cool gray sky warned us to break out coats and mittens, which my children willfully disregarded, much to their chagrin fifteen minutes later. We warmed up in a bundle on the couch, in front of a slow fire in the new wood stove and relishing a rare weekday movie. I have become sleepy with the cooler weather, slowing my frantic efforts to tidy the house and instead melting into my easy chair with ancient magazines which are no longer relevant but lightly pass the time. I can barely bring myself to go outside, preferring instead to peruse recipes for slow-cooked food like bread and hearty roasts. I get more time with my children, too, who are drawn reluctantly inside when it becomes too dark to distinguish one child from the next. Instead of digging up my front yard, my son sits in front of the fire, mesmerized by the flames. If I approach carefully, I sometimes can get quiet insight into his day, which is otherwise summed up with a careless "It was good" which leaves me aching for the hours I don't see. Winter is a time for reacquainting ourselves, I think, after sharing our days with the neighborhood. The intimacy of darkness brings us close.

Waiting with bated breath

I'm having nightmares. Friends being kidnapped and murdered, children being hurt. My sleep is so deep I can't swim up, and the dream is past by the time I wake, so that I am only bemused and anxious, rather than free to cry and release the tension which shakes my bed. I believe I'm translating concern about the election into creative fear, but I don't know for sure where my anxiety comes from. I pray it is over soon. Forgetting the unpleasantness of the flyers in the mail (what a waste of resources and money, I think, as I dump them into the recycling bin), and the ceaseless ads, and the light political jabs over the dinner table, I just need to know what comes next. I don't like stories that never conclude, and this has been endless. I think I've been telegraphing my unrest to the children and the dog; we all have short tempers right now. Perhaps, after the 4th, we will sleep again, and find harmony in each other's company again. I wait. We all do.

Walking after dark

We have a new dog. This is an exciting development in our household, although Teddy has fit in so well as to make her arrival almost a non-event, except that the back yard fence is finally being rebuilt (to my great pleasure). I tell you only because I now find myself walking the neighborhood at a time of night when I in the past allowed myself to lapse into the doldrums of television.


Evening walks are a sensory experience. Without the definition of daylight, my relationship with my environment becomes much more tactile - previously duck-able branches and leaves part my hair as I forge through them; I cannot time my passage through the sprinkler; plants easily identified in the morning are instead appreciated solely for their scent, thrown across the grass by ungainly dog and leash. Streetlights throw japanese leaf prints on the sidewalk, dappled art disrupted but undisturbed by my passage. I find myself lost just yards from home, disoriented by unfamiliar landscaping. Fortunately Teddy guides me, lurching against her lead, home.

Solitude

V came into my room at five this morning. She's been doing that -- demanding bed space at first light; trying to play games while my eyes are still crusted shut. At first I was resentful, but after she fell back to sleep I realized she'd given me a gift. Solitude.

I don't often get time to myself. Granted, the younglings play by themselves a fair bit, but their games sparkle with brilliant ideas that need monitoring by less inventive folks. Otherwise we'd have a yard pocked by randomly spaced, ankle-twisting holes filled with stew (made of water, grass, mud, leaves, bugs, ashes, soap, and other things I dare not contemplate); leprechaun traps (bricks, rocks, pointy sticks and nails); and interspersed with found and then forgotten "treasures" such as broken tail lights, bits of jump rope, bottle caps tied on strings, and many, many small rocks. My children have deep white trash roots I can only attribute to my husband. It's all his fault. Really.

But this morning my inventors are asleep, and I have solitude. As I lay in bed contemplating my own wakefulness, I began listing all the things I could do while they slept: grocery store, respond to email, empty the dishwasher, make more lists. Then I got up, made myself a cup of tea, and sat on the porch to watch the sunrise reflected on the trees. First, the ends of certain branches shone orange and pink, then a shaft of light hit a blooming rose in the neighbor's yard, turning it from pink to burning magenta. It rained last night, and the air is cold on my toes. I savor these early morning goosebumps against the prediction of several ninety degree days in a row. My green tea is grassy and fresh on my tongue, and the robins are serenading me, in hopes that I will sprinkle the lawn and draw worms to the surface for them.

I breathe, and put off obligations for a few more minutes. Solitude is a gift. I will cherish it.