I don't even think I can do this justice.
He likened it to a flame, brought forth with sparks and sweat and tears and effort. A tiny flame that was fanned and kept alive and sometimes carried in hand to a safer place, a sheltered place and then it ignited everything around it and it smoldered and licked at the edges of the lives of those who held it precious.
This hidden fire kept a slow and steady burn for so long before it threatened to and at last was able to grow large enough to consume everything within reach and out of reach, an explosion of heat and flame that melted the ice and hastened a permanent spring, bright ashes falling down and dissolving. And now it simmers, a flickering longing that can never be extinguished with water or sand.
That's beautiful. You're speaking of faith?
No, Bridge. I'm speaking of us.
No, I can't do it justice and he won't repeat it. He just smiles at me. He's gorgeous. Just gorgeous.
Friday, 2 February 2007
Fog city diner.
I think inclement weather and hole-in-the-wall urban coffee shops are simply our things, one of the many common themes that string together all the random altercations and memories of our early years together, a close friendship that developed, thumbing our noses at, and accomplished beyond the grasp of my workaholic husband and Jacob's mountain of studying to be done, back in those early days.
One of my favorite places in the world used to be a tiny restaurant in a tiny, unremarkable, if not downright seedy neighborhood. This diner existed for a little over two years, I believe, before one day the doors were shut and the entire block was torn down to make way for a big-box store.
But while the diner was in business, we were regulars. It was shiny and clean, dimly lit with a couple of coveted booths and a handful of tiny wobbly tables. We would spend hours sitting there and talking over cake and coffee while rain poured in sheets down the windows and the light failed to encroach on the dark's firm hold. There was a coat rack inside the door and we would drape our raincoats over the hooks and lean our umbrellas up against the base. Then we would shake off the drops and smooth our sweaters and rattle off our orders of club sandwiches and hot soup without ever needing menus. Jacob always asked them to light the candle on the table.
Some days I miss that place.
Within the first six months I was too pregnant to fit comfortably in the booths anymore and we switched to one of the tables and I would sit out from it and sip my soup slowly, trying to savor the atmosphere. I hardly ever saw another person in that diner. Jacob would tell me stories about graduate school and he always wanted to know how I had slept and how I felt, what the doctor gave for the heartbeat that week and if I wanted to do anything special after we ate. We discussed the value of introducing babies to tie-dye and classic rock from birth so that free love and harmony would be ensured in future generations on this planet.
The idealism was mind-numbing., our innocence would bring you to your knees.
The barely-veiled attraction between us was effervescent, bubbling out around the edges constantly.
The owner assumed we were married, and would come over and chat with us. One day out of the blue Jacob pointed out that I was married but not to him. She shook her head sadly and clucked at us.
Oh, see, now, you should be married. I never did see a nicer couple together.
Jacob just sat back and crossed his arms, dimples in full effect while I blushed and said nothing.
We knew that already. We heard it everywhere we went.
Those rainy Monday lunches downtown are something I don't think we'll have again. Sure, the diner food can be found everywhere, the rains will eventually return to this new city of ours and there's always time to go out for a long lunch, but what would be missing now would be our naive ease with one another, the idealism quashed by truth, the innocence replaced with the wrinkles of experience and knowledge firmly rooted because we have lived that future now. We found our dreams and fulfilled them and we made it past simple attraction and fell in love so hard. So that makes it okay to have these memories. They don't need to be recreated or drawn out. Life is now.
But if I could return to that tiny diner in that other rainy city I would proudly take the kids in and Jacob too and I would correct myself for demurring and I would say,
Yes, he's my husband and see our kids? They wore tie dye when they were babies, they love classic rock and yeah, we all still believe in love.
It's one of our things.
One of my favorite places in the world used to be a tiny restaurant in a tiny, unremarkable, if not downright seedy neighborhood. This diner existed for a little over two years, I believe, before one day the doors were shut and the entire block was torn down to make way for a big-box store.
But while the diner was in business, we were regulars. It was shiny and clean, dimly lit with a couple of coveted booths and a handful of tiny wobbly tables. We would spend hours sitting there and talking over cake and coffee while rain poured in sheets down the windows and the light failed to encroach on the dark's firm hold. There was a coat rack inside the door and we would drape our raincoats over the hooks and lean our umbrellas up against the base. Then we would shake off the drops and smooth our sweaters and rattle off our orders of club sandwiches and hot soup without ever needing menus. Jacob always asked them to light the candle on the table.
Some days I miss that place.
Within the first six months I was too pregnant to fit comfortably in the booths anymore and we switched to one of the tables and I would sit out from it and sip my soup slowly, trying to savor the atmosphere. I hardly ever saw another person in that diner. Jacob would tell me stories about graduate school and he always wanted to know how I had slept and how I felt, what the doctor gave for the heartbeat that week and if I wanted to do anything special after we ate. We discussed the value of introducing babies to tie-dye and classic rock from birth so that free love and harmony would be ensured in future generations on this planet.
The idealism was mind-numbing., our innocence would bring you to your knees.
The barely-veiled attraction between us was effervescent, bubbling out around the edges constantly.
The owner assumed we were married, and would come over and chat with us. One day out of the blue Jacob pointed out that I was married but not to him. She shook her head sadly and clucked at us.
Oh, see, now, you should be married. I never did see a nicer couple together.
Jacob just sat back and crossed his arms, dimples in full effect while I blushed and said nothing.
We knew that already. We heard it everywhere we went.
Those rainy Monday lunches downtown are something I don't think we'll have again. Sure, the diner food can be found everywhere, the rains will eventually return to this new city of ours and there's always time to go out for a long lunch, but what would be missing now would be our naive ease with one another, the idealism quashed by truth, the innocence replaced with the wrinkles of experience and knowledge firmly rooted because we have lived that future now. We found our dreams and fulfilled them and we made it past simple attraction and fell in love so hard. So that makes it okay to have these memories. They don't need to be recreated or drawn out. Life is now.
But if I could return to that tiny diner in that other rainy city I would proudly take the kids in and Jacob too and I would correct myself for demurring and I would say,
Yes, he's my husband and see our kids? They wore tie dye when they were babies, they love classic rock and yeah, we all still believe in love.
It's one of our things.
Thursday, 1 February 2007
A reassurance post.
Okay, that's enough. I'm going to bury it with nonsense. Since a bunch of you have tagged me as bipolar, which I'm not and I know people who are and my doctors have all confirmed that I am not, thank you oh so very much. There's not a whole lot of mania around here. We've just got the depression and the PTSD/baggage and everything else is a mirage. He's dead, the only way through is up.
Let's be happy, please?
Here's where I point out if you Google Stoli and blow, I'm the fifth hit. Which is funny, because life doesn't get that exciting around here. Thank goodness (or is that My god, I'm dull?).
Here's where I point out that Jacob has become obsessed with my hands. He can cover my whole fist with one of his. He can put my whole hand in his mouth, which wasn't funny, it was scary and I threatened to take out his wisdom teeth with my bare hands while I was captive.
He walks past me and stops to warm my fingers in his hands. My fingertips are cracked and split from the cold and the dry air. It's his way of finding something to be fussy over so he can keep an eye on me. The sweetness.
We're okay. I swear. We still love each other beyond words, nothing there has changed, even though our relationship appears to have an obstacle course that makes the one that the army uses the nursery-school run.
Loch sent me flowers. Pink roses. Just as touching was the thirty four emails (and counting) with sweet support inside from readers. Only 2 icky ones (so far). Thank you, I'll be responding soon.
And lastly, marmalade and butter. Why? Just because.
Because I watched Last Tango in Paris and butter has been a favorite word ever since.
Because you can knock me down but you won't make me any less perverted.
Hugs all around. Hugs all round.
Let's be happy, please?
Here's where I point out if you Google Stoli and blow, I'm the fifth hit. Which is funny, because life doesn't get that exciting around here. Thank goodness (or is that My god, I'm dull?).
Here's where I point out that Jacob has become obsessed with my hands. He can cover my whole fist with one of his. He can put my whole hand in his mouth, which wasn't funny, it was scary and I threatened to take out his wisdom teeth with my bare hands while I was captive.
He walks past me and stops to warm my fingers in his hands. My fingertips are cracked and split from the cold and the dry air. It's his way of finding something to be fussy over so he can keep an eye on me. The sweetness.
We're okay. I swear. We still love each other beyond words, nothing there has changed, even though our relationship appears to have an obstacle course that makes the one that the army uses the nursery-school run.
Loch sent me flowers. Pink roses. Just as touching was the thirty four emails (and counting) with sweet support inside from readers. Only 2 icky ones (so far). Thank you, I'll be responding soon.
And lastly, marmalade and butter. Why? Just because.
Because I watched Last Tango in Paris and butter has been a favorite word ever since.
Because you can knock me down but you won't make me any less perverted.
Hugs all around. Hugs all round.
Brigetum Thiopental.
Hi, fresh out of therapy, maybe you want to skip today.
I don't think life affords much time for the most important aspects of itself, ironically. My own is a perfect example. In between running the kids to school and skating and hockey and doctors' appointments and getting new glasses and groceries and vet visits and work and phone calls and endless meal-making and laundry lies a few precious hours in which to write, sleep and visit my therapist. Fuck, if you want to boil the days down into their fundamentals, there remains very little time to simply sit and think, to heal and to steal precious bountiful remnants of affection from the one you love.
Don't you think?
So this is it. My healing time, here on this page. And when read it paints a picture of the girl in the corner who appears to be incredibly self-centered and egotistical. As if everyone stands on those eggshells and waits for me to decide how the day is going to be.
And that's not how it works. Gee, wouldn't it be nice. No, instead I made a sword out of hopes and a paper shield and I don't know how to use either one but I made a stab at creating a defense in order to protect these three and it finally crumbled right in front of me.
Stop reading, okay, please?
They're alright, no worries. The kids won't really get it until they're grown up. Last Wednesday I would have written a whole bunch more but I'm still finding my way around how I would like to be presented now that everything has changed again, and we're fighting again because he is disappointed in me and angry at himself and Claus is possibly a bigger miracle worker than ever and it would have been the one and only day in my life where it was the worst time ever for Caleb to show up.
And yesterday even. We fought, bitterly and loudly. My voice is hoarse from this sickness. Jacob's is hoarse from talking, yelling and crying too. He ripped a door right off the hinges and now he has something that is easier to fix than his wife.
He took off last night and went down to the church and sat on the steps at the front of the sanctuary in the dark with only the moon coming through the windows and I finally went down very late after getting someone to come to the house for the kids and I found Jacob there and we held each other and didn't talk. He prayed, I listened.
I think God was out.
But it's only the beginning because once again I tried to pretend that everything was fine and I tried to keep going with my secrets intact and once again I failed.
I should know better but I'm not learning. I lied. Again. Surprise.
I said Cole didn't hurt me. I lied. And I'm sorry.
Jacob has saved my life more than once and for some reason this whole experience is one that I can't hide from. Into truths that I can't hide from, and into the expectations of a man who has given up everything so that I don't hide from him. So that he can hold me. And love me.
He knew, he suspected, he had already decided that something else was there but the longer I let it go, the easier it became for all of us to hide it. And last week with Claus' help I managed to tell Jacob of so many burdens I never wanted him to bear and then suddenly before I could help it I was spilling secrets I never planned to tell and it was all out at last and Claus was satisfied and he actually said to me,
And now we can begin.
Didn't I say that before?
And Jacob sat there clutching my hand and staring at me like a stranger until I swore at him and then he yelled at me. All of his fears came out, all of his promises over the years that I had pushed aside.
The broken dishes. Christ, I knew I should have found him and killed him then.
I'm sorry.
Don't you ever apologize to me. My God, Bridge. Why? What were you protecting him for?
I wasn't protecting him, I was protecting you.
I don't need protection. What were you saving me from?
This.
What is this, Bridget? TELL ME WHAT THIS IS!
Me.
We went back today, together, and Claus and Jake are confident now that the truth is on the table at last and we can work at this. That now we finally might get through this. Me.
I hope so. I feel lighter. I also feel stripped and exposed and just...lighter somehow. And yet there are still layers buried so far underground, someday someone will find oil.
You said, 'Jesus, please forgive me of my crimes
Sanctify this withered heart of mine'.
*(This post has been edited slightly for privacy since first being posted. Thank you for your understanding.)
I don't think life affords much time for the most important aspects of itself, ironically. My own is a perfect example. In between running the kids to school and skating and hockey and doctors' appointments and getting new glasses and groceries and vet visits and work and phone calls and endless meal-making and laundry lies a few precious hours in which to write, sleep and visit my therapist. Fuck, if you want to boil the days down into their fundamentals, there remains very little time to simply sit and think, to heal and to steal precious bountiful remnants of affection from the one you love.
Don't you think?
So this is it. My healing time, here on this page. And when read it paints a picture of the girl in the corner who appears to be incredibly self-centered and egotistical. As if everyone stands on those eggshells and waits for me to decide how the day is going to be.
And that's not how it works. Gee, wouldn't it be nice. No, instead I made a sword out of hopes and a paper shield and I don't know how to use either one but I made a stab at creating a defense in order to protect these three and it finally crumbled right in front of me.
Stop reading, okay, please?
They're alright, no worries. The kids won't really get it until they're grown up. Last Wednesday I would have written a whole bunch more but I'm still finding my way around how I would like to be presented now that everything has changed again, and we're fighting again because he is disappointed in me and angry at himself and Claus is possibly a bigger miracle worker than ever and it would have been the one and only day in my life where it was the worst time ever for Caleb to show up.
And yesterday even. We fought, bitterly and loudly. My voice is hoarse from this sickness. Jacob's is hoarse from talking, yelling and crying too. He ripped a door right off the hinges and now he has something that is easier to fix than his wife.
He took off last night and went down to the church and sat on the steps at the front of the sanctuary in the dark with only the moon coming through the windows and I finally went down very late after getting someone to come to the house for the kids and I found Jacob there and we held each other and didn't talk. He prayed, I listened.
I think God was out.
But it's only the beginning because once again I tried to pretend that everything was fine and I tried to keep going with my secrets intact and once again I failed.
I should know better but I'm not learning. I lied. Again. Surprise.
I said Cole didn't hurt me. I lied. And I'm sorry.
Jacob has saved my life more than once and for some reason this whole experience is one that I can't hide from. Into truths that I can't hide from, and into the expectations of a man who has given up everything so that I don't hide from him. So that he can hold me. And love me.
He knew, he suspected, he had already decided that something else was there but the longer I let it go, the easier it became for all of us to hide it. And last week with Claus' help I managed to tell Jacob of so many burdens I never wanted him to bear and then suddenly before I could help it I was spilling secrets I never planned to tell and it was all out at last and Claus was satisfied and he actually said to me,
And now we can begin.
Didn't I say that before?
And Jacob sat there clutching my hand and staring at me like a stranger until I swore at him and then he yelled at me. All of his fears came out, all of his promises over the years that I had pushed aside.
The broken dishes. Christ, I knew I should have found him and killed him then.
I'm sorry.
Don't you ever apologize to me. My God, Bridge. Why? What were you protecting him for?
I wasn't protecting him, I was protecting you.
I don't need protection. What were you saving me from?
This.
What is this, Bridget? TELL ME WHAT THIS IS!
Me.
We went back today, together, and Claus and Jake are confident now that the truth is on the table at last and we can work at this. That now we finally might get through this. Me.
I hope so. I feel lighter. I also feel stripped and exposed and just...lighter somehow. And yet there are still layers buried so far underground, someday someone will find oil.
You said, 'Jesus, please forgive me of my crimes
Sanctify this withered heart of mine'.
*(This post has been edited slightly for privacy since first being posted. Thank you for your understanding.)
Wednesday, 31 January 2007
A halo made of antimony.
Watch her fly, Jacob. And be ready with your arms wide to catch her.
I once talked myself into a corner and I decided I liked it there and so I never left it again. He has stayed patiently close to anchor my crooked halo over my horns while I stirred him with my delightful stories and my adoration.
I don't know why he does that.
I don't know if he'll return. His princess added an unexpected tale of repugnance to her repertoire and when you suspect something but its never confirmed it's easy to forget that it might be true after all.
I once talked myself into a corner and I decided I liked it there and so I never left it again. He has stayed patiently close to anchor my crooked halo over my horns while I stirred him with my delightful stories and my adoration.
I don't know why he does that.
I don't know if he'll return. His princess added an unexpected tale of repugnance to her repertoire and when you suspect something but its never confirmed it's easy to forget that it might be true after all.
Reverse psychology.
It's getting long again.
Yeah, I suppose I should shave it.
Keep it, it'll look great when you meet David Suzuki.
Yeah or I could shave it off and look younger.
You and Ed Genochio*. You both look hot with beards and yet you both keep shaving them off.
You think Ed Genochio is hot?
Of course. Don't you?
Not so much, Bridge.
Well, you should, because he is.
What about David Suzuki?
That depends.
I see.
He's no Ed.
Stop with the Ed nonsense.
Are you jealous?
I've walked more than he's biked.
I don't doubt it.
I've been to more places, too.
Are you playing a one-sided game of my-cock-is-bigger-than-yours?
Possibly.
Why on earth do you need to do that?
Because you said he was cute.
Well, he is. He's got a great accent, too.
I don't need to know this, Bridge!
(*For the record, I've had a crush on Ed Genochio for a few years now.)
Yeah, I suppose I should shave it.
Keep it, it'll look great when you meet David Suzuki.
Yeah or I could shave it off and look younger.
You and Ed Genochio*. You both look hot with beards and yet you both keep shaving them off.
You think Ed Genochio is hot?
Of course. Don't you?
Not so much, Bridge.
Well, you should, because he is.
What about David Suzuki?
That depends.
I see.
He's no Ed.
Stop with the Ed nonsense.
Are you jealous?
I've walked more than he's biked.
I don't doubt it.
I've been to more places, too.
Are you playing a one-sided game of my-cock-is-bigger-than-yours?
Possibly.
Why on earth do you need to do that?
Because you said he was cute.
Well, he is. He's got a great accent, too.
I don't need to know this, Bridge!
(*For the record, I've had a crush on Ed Genochio for a few years now.)
Tuesday, 30 January 2007
Nocturne.
Today's barometer is that we're all sick again. Last night I took Nyquil to quiet the raging sinus pressure and pain and had a restless sleep. Henry suffered the worst, coughing most of the night, tossing, turning and at one point calling out for..Daddy.
The kids don't call Jacob Daddy, they call him Jake.
The hardest parts of life are not my own, they are the children's, too young to fully understand life as it is now, their dreams bring back their memories in full bloom, as if they could reach out and touch in their sleep what no longer exists in their waking hours. Henry is no exception. On nights when he couldn't sleep Cole would rub his back and sing Harry Chapin to him, Cats in the Cradle, sort of an inevitable confession because Cole knew he worked too damned much and he felt guilty constantly but he never changed. I hate that song. Hate it.
Last night Henry asked Jacob to sing him to sleep and rub his back like daddy used to do when he had time. And Jacob couldn't dare bring himself to sing that fucking song and yet he wasn't about to refuse Henry any request for comfort that he could ever ask of Jake. And so Jake settled blissfully on a song that Henry now calls Jacob's lullaby, even though Henry is well aware that it rests on one of Mommy's favorite CDs of all time, the final track of U2's Unforgettable Fire, and he's heard it a million times before, but never a cappella, in Jacob's baritone, at three o'clock in the morning in the dark, which lent it a haunting simplicity that left me with no words at all.
Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thundercloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Let it rain
Rain on him
The kids don't call Jacob Daddy, they call him Jake.
The hardest parts of life are not my own, they are the children's, too young to fully understand life as it is now, their dreams bring back their memories in full bloom, as if they could reach out and touch in their sleep what no longer exists in their waking hours. Henry is no exception. On nights when he couldn't sleep Cole would rub his back and sing Harry Chapin to him, Cats in the Cradle, sort of an inevitable confession because Cole knew he worked too damned much and he felt guilty constantly but he never changed. I hate that song. Hate it.
Last night Henry asked Jacob to sing him to sleep and rub his back like daddy used to do when he had time. And Jacob couldn't dare bring himself to sing that fucking song and yet he wasn't about to refuse Henry any request for comfort that he could ever ask of Jake. And so Jake settled blissfully on a song that Henry now calls Jacob's lullaby, even though Henry is well aware that it rests on one of Mommy's favorite CDs of all time, the final track of U2's Unforgettable Fire, and he's heard it a million times before, but never a cappella, in Jacob's baritone, at three o'clock in the morning in the dark, which lent it a haunting simplicity that left me with no words at all.
Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thundercloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Let it rain
Rain on him
Monday, 29 January 2007
A polaroid from 1976.
Sing with me,
Sing for the year,
Sing for the laughter and sing for the tears.
Sing it with me
Just for today,
Maybe tomorrow the good Lord will take you away.
Oh, don't roll your eyes. I heard it live in 1994 at an Aerosmith concert and it still sounds just as epic to me as it did when I first heard it when I was five years old and my dad took a momentary breather from his beloved collection of Eagles, Elton John, Gordon Lightfoot, Beach Boys and Creedence Clearwater Revival 8-track tapes and put on the radio.
I was hooked.
If only I can infuse my children with this eclectic, psychotic love of music I'll have done a good job. You do realize someday these little kids of mine are going to grow up and make their own marks on this planet, don't you?
I know.
I don't think anyone is ready for that. Hopefully they won't be the least bit shy about stepping out of the shadows of their infamous mother, all flesh, ocean-obsessed and headphones permanently fused to her skull.
Hard to believe they are such well-adjusted people. When I am not the least-bit well-adjusted, and am prone to pulling songs up over my head like favorite quilts and hiding in their comforts until people pull out the searchlights and come looking for me.
Why?
Narcissism. Plain and simple. The dark and seedy underbelly of some of my highest days. The inevitable exposure of all of me. Because I'm here, dammit and I'm going to leave my mark, even if it's only the smallest of bruises.
Sing for the year,
Sing for the laughter and sing for the tears.
Sing it with me
Just for today,
Maybe tomorrow the good Lord will take you away.
Oh, don't roll your eyes. I heard it live in 1994 at an Aerosmith concert and it still sounds just as epic to me as it did when I first heard it when I was five years old and my dad took a momentary breather from his beloved collection of Eagles, Elton John, Gordon Lightfoot, Beach Boys and Creedence Clearwater Revival 8-track tapes and put on the radio.
I was hooked.
If only I can infuse my children with this eclectic, psychotic love of music I'll have done a good job. You do realize someday these little kids of mine are going to grow up and make their own marks on this planet, don't you?
I know.
I don't think anyone is ready for that. Hopefully they won't be the least bit shy about stepping out of the shadows of their infamous mother, all flesh, ocean-obsessed and headphones permanently fused to her skull.
Hard to believe they are such well-adjusted people. When I am not the least-bit well-adjusted, and am prone to pulling songs up over my head like favorite quilts and hiding in their comforts until people pull out the searchlights and come looking for me.
Why?
Narcissism. Plain and simple. The dark and seedy underbelly of some of my highest days. The inevitable exposure of all of me. Because I'm here, dammit and I'm going to leave my mark, even if it's only the smallest of bruises.
Nien and thirty, sleep, pretty girl.
Jacob woke me up this morning by whispering that there are thirty days remaining until March first, and that I have survived the dark ages, and graduated to over nine hours of daylight at last.
Once there was a way to get back homeward
Once there was a way to get back home
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby
Golden slumbers fill your eyes
Smiles awake you when you rise
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby
I find winters here very difficult, and that's a general observation not borne out of any other reason besides a horrific disdain for more dark than light of a day. Something I can't explain but I talk of often. The summers are glorious here, with the sun baking our little corner of the planet from the middle of the night to late in the next night, it's beams piercing the bubbled glass at 5 in the morning and providing a relentless glow until long after 10 pm. We get little time to hang upside down in the dark..like bats. I'm not a bat. I would do well in Denali, says Jake.
One of my disdains is for these room-darkening, insulated curtains. The kind we quickly discovered we needed, and we spent hundreds of dollars on them and then a few hundred more on better curtain rods and hardware with which to anchor these twenty-pound panels.
But they work, and around this time of year they choke off my enthusiasm and I begin to resent the hell out of the shroudlike weight of these protective fabrics that prevented the light.
And the cold, let's not forget the cold on a morning that saw the hinges on the screen door just about refuse to budge and I couldn't get back in for a few moments. The cold that makes me appear to puff down the road like Henry's favorite TV train character. Even though no one can see me, they're all safely nestled behind their own insulated drapes.
This week also heralds in a full moon on Thursday and so the children will be wild and we will be slightly moody and wondering why and it will all culminate into a surreal existence in which we have epiphanies that spark a new understanding, of how we can exist as skeptics and then fall back on something as simple as the hours of daylight or the phases of the moon or the dates of an ancient calendar that we cross off to find our place and gauge our moods. How I scrape the snow away from the sundial in the yard and peer at it as if I'll be able to wish it into service.
Jacob is trying to help me keep my faith through what might prove to be a difficult week but I'm going to focus on small, insignificant things and glide through it like I'm on a rail so that I don't linger too long and take those dreaded two steps back once again.
So far so good.
Once there was a way to get back homeward
Once there was a way to get back home
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby
Golden slumbers fill your eyes
Smiles awake you when you rise
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby
I find winters here very difficult, and that's a general observation not borne out of any other reason besides a horrific disdain for more dark than light of a day. Something I can't explain but I talk of often. The summers are glorious here, with the sun baking our little corner of the planet from the middle of the night to late in the next night, it's beams piercing the bubbled glass at 5 in the morning and providing a relentless glow until long after 10 pm. We get little time to hang upside down in the dark..like bats. I'm not a bat. I would do well in Denali, says Jake.
One of my disdains is for these room-darkening, insulated curtains. The kind we quickly discovered we needed, and we spent hundreds of dollars on them and then a few hundred more on better curtain rods and hardware with which to anchor these twenty-pound panels.
But they work, and around this time of year they choke off my enthusiasm and I begin to resent the hell out of the shroudlike weight of these protective fabrics that prevented the light.
And the cold, let's not forget the cold on a morning that saw the hinges on the screen door just about refuse to budge and I couldn't get back in for a few moments. The cold that makes me appear to puff down the road like Henry's favorite TV train character. Even though no one can see me, they're all safely nestled behind their own insulated drapes.
This week also heralds in a full moon on Thursday and so the children will be wild and we will be slightly moody and wondering why and it will all culminate into a surreal existence in which we have epiphanies that spark a new understanding, of how we can exist as skeptics and then fall back on something as simple as the hours of daylight or the phases of the moon or the dates of an ancient calendar that we cross off to find our place and gauge our moods. How I scrape the snow away from the sundial in the yard and peer at it as if I'll be able to wish it into service.
Jacob is trying to help me keep my faith through what might prove to be a difficult week but I'm going to focus on small, insignificant things and glide through it like I'm on a rail so that I don't linger too long and take those dreaded two steps back once again.
So far so good.
Sunday, 28 January 2007
Low light.
We're home. Jacob wanted to come back early and do some work, and so you get a post.
He isn't doing a lot of preaching anymore. He's still the congregational minister but there has been a long line of guest ministers and his partner doing the bulk of services and he has appropriately shifted his presence to the background, in preparations for the transitions to come.
I miss it. I miss his sermons. I never thought I would say that but it's true.
We did had fun with his sister. I love her to pieces. She's happy I'm part of the family. And I'm happy we're sisters now, having been friends for about 15 years. She was the one who wanted to party and begged her brother to drive her everywhere and if it hadn't been for what used to be a maddening subject between them, I never would have met Jake.
She painted our nails-hers, mine and Ruth's. She tried to get Jacob and Henry too but they resisted. She took me out for long drawn out virgin martinis (apple juice and olives-they were awful) and put low lights from a box in my hair in her tiny cluttered bathroom. We laughed until we cried and she hugged me hard and often and told me she was happy that I made her brother so happy. More than once I would point out that we've got our problems but every time she would stop me and reiterate how happy he is.
They are a lot a like, those two.
And now I've got a Sunday afternoon alone with the kids to catch up on laundry and story times and Jake will be home by 9 pm or so for a late romantic supper and maybe some snuggles. No skating tonight, since it'll be too late when he's finished at church.
Hope you had a nice weekend too.
He isn't doing a lot of preaching anymore. He's still the congregational minister but there has been a long line of guest ministers and his partner doing the bulk of services and he has appropriately shifted his presence to the background, in preparations for the transitions to come.
I miss it. I miss his sermons. I never thought I would say that but it's true.
We did had fun with his sister. I love her to pieces. She's happy I'm part of the family. And I'm happy we're sisters now, having been friends for about 15 years. She was the one who wanted to party and begged her brother to drive her everywhere and if it hadn't been for what used to be a maddening subject between them, I never would have met Jake.
She painted our nails-hers, mine and Ruth's. She tried to get Jacob and Henry too but they resisted. She took me out for long drawn out virgin martinis (apple juice and olives-they were awful) and put low lights from a box in my hair in her tiny cluttered bathroom. We laughed until we cried and she hugged me hard and often and told me she was happy that I made her brother so happy. More than once I would point out that we've got our problems but every time she would stop me and reiterate how happy he is.
They are a lot a like, those two.
And now I've got a Sunday afternoon alone with the kids to catch up on laundry and story times and Jake will be home by 9 pm or so for a late romantic supper and maybe some snuggles. No skating tonight, since it'll be too late when he's finished at church.
Hope you had a nice weekend too.
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