I walked outside to get the mail this evening, hoping for a particular delivery that wasn’t there. The view up my street -- the long shadows of trees spilling across freshly-mowed lawns, the sunshine still gleaming between them -- made up for that little disappointment, though. The air smells divine, full of grass, the weekend’s rain, blossoms, and light. I love winter, but I am so ready for spring, and spring in the Pacific Northwest makes me glad to be alive and in possession of a healthy set of lungs.
I came back inside to the pile of toys on the family room carpet, the pile of dishes in the sink from the morning’s coffee and Matt’s lunch, the pile of papers from Suzannah’s backpack, the pile of laundry waiting next to the washing machine. The familiar chaos. The ebb and flow. The things in these rooms write the stories of our lives right now.
I love the stories. I hate the clutter.
But tonight I lack the energy to be terribly upset about it. This morning, Isaac received word that I have taught for nearly two full weeks without missing any days for sick children or senior orals or jury duty, and he responded by waking up with a fever of 101 degrees, a cough, and a bad attitude. After yet another rousing game of “Who can stay home today?” it was determined that Matt would work at home and I would go to school. Tomorrow, we will trade, each of us hoping desperately that all will be well by Wednesday because we both have Very Important Things going on. (I struggle with this. I don’t believe my work is less important, and neither does Matt, but my work is not the work that pays all our bills. So I struggle with a neverending stream of guilt and worry that no matter what, no matter what, I am letting someone down. And at the back of all that is the worry that if I get sick, there are no days left for me.)
It was a beautiful day. Perfect day for a run. Isaac was sleeping hard when Suzannah and I came home from school today, and Matt asked if I wanted go, and I did, and I’d looked forward to that all day -- a good head-clearing run in the sunshine. But I stayed up too late this weekend, and all the resolve drained out of me in that moment. What I wanted was a nap, a thing that doesn’t happen for me on weekdays. Matt returned to his work, and Suzannah busied herself with her usual afternoon activities and a snack, and I sank into the couch cushions. Matt woke me over two hours (two! hours!) later.
“You should have gotten me up sooner!” I sputtered. “I was going to go to the store for dinner things!”
“We have everything we need for black bean burritos,” he said. “Let’s just have that. You were really tired.”
I was really tired. I am still really tired. Isaac’s fever flourishes. Is it strange that normal childhood illnesses make me feel more anxious than in-the-moment traumas (of falls, for instance, resulting in blood and loose teeth)? It’s the dread, the insidious dread. Can we protect our other child? Ourselves? (Because my son wants to be held, and though he is no longer nursing he still lays claim to my body as an extension of his own. His sister can keep her distance; his mother cannot, and will not.) How long will this last? I’d sort of like to have a nice, self-indulgent cry right now, but I’m in the middle of other things.
I don’t know what the week holds for us. Matt and I haven’t had a night out alone together in forever and I find myself reaching out to touch him as he walks by in the kitchen, just to grasp some little connection that is just ours. All I see is the laundry, the dishes, the little plastic cups with the sticky orange remains of children’s ibuprofen. This, right now, is my story.
And at the end of the day I still understand that it’s part of a bigger one, the only one I really want to be writing. But I’m eager to push through it anyhow, because the beautiful bigger picture is difficult to see in the smaller, stickier moments.
Monday, April 22, 2013
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Processing
“I'm all over the place, up and down, scattered, withdrawing, trying to find some elusive sense of serenity."
"The world can't give that serenity. The world can't give us peace. We can only find it in our hearts."
"I hate that."
"I know. But the good news is that by the same token, the world can't take it away.”
--Anne Lamott
***
According to...I don’t know, some expert on the internet, up to fifty percent of children will experience some sort of tooth injury during childhood. I was not informed of this completely horrifying fact when I became a parent, and it doesn’t make me feel any better about our daughter joining the ranks this week.
I’ve been at school until past eight o’clock in the evening for conferences for the past couple of days so Matt has been on full-time Dad Duty. On Wednesday night I pulled out my cell phone to check my messages as I walked to my car and saw that I’d missed a call from Matt. The message first mentioned an accident, and I assumed he meant the kind of accident in which the three-year-old didn’t make it to the toilet and he needs a quick over-the-phone lesson in how to work the little handheld carpet cleaner we keep in the laundry room. Then I heard him mention the ER. I called home before I finished listening to the message. He told me Suzannah had slipped and fallen on the bathroom floor and her face had hit the toilet, knocking a few teeth loose. By the time I made it home, he had already calmed our daughter and spoken to the on-call pediatrician, who said that if her permanent teeth were loose we needed to come straight to the ER. If it seemed to be only baby teeth, we could wait until the next day.
When I walked through the door a few minutes later, Suzannah was perched on the edge of the couch watching Star Wars and holding ice cubes wrapped in a wash cloth against her bloodied, swollen lip. After a little gentle prodding she allowed me to look at her mouth. Her upper gums were bloody, and her upper front teeth suffered the most impact. Her bottom lip was also quite swollen, although a little poking around led me to conclude that no teeth there were loosened that weren’t loose to begin with. Whenever she removed the ice, strings of bloody drool fell from her mouth. If you know my daughter at all it will not surprise you to learn that this was the most upsetting thing of all -- she didn’t know how she’d be able to go to sleep without getting blood and drool on her pillow and pajamas. I covered her pillow with towels and draped a few more over her bedspread. She finally fell asleep clutching that damp washcloth, propped up on extra pillows, but by then the bleeding had stopped.
Needless to say, our bedtimes were thrown off. We were all exhausted by the time we all managed to fall asleep, and Suzannah slept later than usual, but she awoke in a fairly cheerful mood. The swelling had diminished considerably, although her chin was obviously bruised, and she didn’t really want to eat much. Two days later, her teeth are still hanging in there, her chin is still black-and-blue, but she’s figured out how to eat more or less normally.
Tonight when I tucked her into bed, I said, “Looks like the tooth fairy will be coming a little earlier than we thought.” Without skipping a beat she replied, “I hope so. Then I can make some money.”
***
While my kid smashing her teeth against the toilet is outside our realm of normal, somehow, set against the backdrop of this week, dealing with a relatively minor childhood injury is -- well, so normal it seems unfair. This is what strikes me when someone shoots up a theater. Or a classroom. Or sets off a bomb at the Boston Marathon. I listen to NPR on my way to pick up the kids, I exchange e-mails with equally horrified friends, and I try not to read Facebook because I’m sickened by the speed at which we show our worst selves as we try to make sense of these things. Better to focus on what people are doing in the world and not on the internet. And, of course, there’s the matter of life needing to be lived. There’s the absurdity -- and, I suppose, the blessing -- of the way the world keeps turning.
So on Monday night, I came home with my children. I ran a bath for Isaac and listened to him splash around with his toys while I chopped onions and garlic for Spanish rice. I went through the motions of stirring scallions, shredded cheese, and handfuls of fresh spinach on my stovetop, then spooning the mixture into tortillas for spinach and cheese burritos. Suzannah showed me what she’d written in her planner at school and busied herself at the kitchen counter, drawing or writing -- I don’t remember what now. I brushed the burritos with olive oil. Stuck the pan in the oven. Added rice, tomatoes, cumin, and chili powder to the other pot simmering on the stove. Changed into running clothes. When Matt came home, I kissed him, told him how long the food still needed to cook, and headed out into the cool early-evening air.
People ran for solidarity and support on Monday night and all throughout the week; I’d like to say that’s what I was doing, but that seems a little grand for a solitary jog through the quiet streets of my neighborhood. There’s a part of my usual route that smells like heaven in April, like the trees have held the scent of all the rain that’s fallen this month and chosen to release it in a single burst of freshness so pure I want to stop and drink it as I run past. Breathing it makes me feel sort of desperately greedy and grateful -- both.
I wasn’t sure whether I was trying to run away from the world or run myself into some state of clarity or peace or what. But what a privilege. Just to move, to breathe, to be. To burst through my back door again, sweaty and spent, to smell the melted cheese and the spices from the dinner I’d prepared, to know that I would soon slip into a tub filled with bubbles, soothing for tired muscles even though my kids never can manage to stay out of the bathroom when I’m in there.
So I swing, these days, between desperate gratitude for this normalcy, the beautiful ordinary, and desperate grief, because the world is broken, and we’re broken with it. I’m easily angered and I find it difficult to extend much grace. I read Facebook too much, which almost never, ever makes me feel better about the world except sometimes someone will post, say, a beautifully-written piece by Erica Goode at the New York Times, and I’m nothing less than awestruck that a person can birth such a thing almost instantaneously in response to something that defies rational response.
When my head is muddled and my heart is hurting, it might not seem so strange, then, to find almost a comfort in dealing competently with a minor childhood injury -- a fixable thing. We have popsicles and milkshakes and plenty of ice, not to mention plenty of cuddles. And beyond that, there is my relentless need to notice every little ordinary moment, to place it in the context of our beautiful ordinary life, and to find joy there -- in the chopping of onions while my son splashes in the bath, in watching my daughter fill out her weekly reading log, even in the basic ordering of things -- taking the clean dishes from the still-steamy dishwasher and putting them away, in placing the folded clothes inside the drawers, in wiping down counters and tucking children into bed. It’s the illusion of order when nothing is orderly, sure, and most of the time unloading the dishwasher and folding laundry are simply chores to be completed. But they’re part of our rhythm, our ordinary beautiful daily rhythm, and that makes sense to me when little else does.
"The world can't give that serenity. The world can't give us peace. We can only find it in our hearts."
"I hate that."
"I know. But the good news is that by the same token, the world can't take it away.”
--Anne Lamott
According to...I don’t know, some expert on the internet, up to fifty percent of children will experience some sort of tooth injury during childhood. I was not informed of this completely horrifying fact when I became a parent, and it doesn’t make me feel any better about our daughter joining the ranks this week.
I’ve been at school until past eight o’clock in the evening for conferences for the past couple of days so Matt has been on full-time Dad Duty. On Wednesday night I pulled out my cell phone to check my messages as I walked to my car and saw that I’d missed a call from Matt. The message first mentioned an accident, and I assumed he meant the kind of accident in which the three-year-old didn’t make it to the toilet and he needs a quick over-the-phone lesson in how to work the little handheld carpet cleaner we keep in the laundry room. Then I heard him mention the ER. I called home before I finished listening to the message. He told me Suzannah had slipped and fallen on the bathroom floor and her face had hit the toilet, knocking a few teeth loose. By the time I made it home, he had already calmed our daughter and spoken to the on-call pediatrician, who said that if her permanent teeth were loose we needed to come straight to the ER. If it seemed to be only baby teeth, we could wait until the next day.
When I walked through the door a few minutes later, Suzannah was perched on the edge of the couch watching Star Wars and holding ice cubes wrapped in a wash cloth against her bloodied, swollen lip. After a little gentle prodding she allowed me to look at her mouth. Her upper gums were bloody, and her upper front teeth suffered the most impact. Her bottom lip was also quite swollen, although a little poking around led me to conclude that no teeth there were loosened that weren’t loose to begin with. Whenever she removed the ice, strings of bloody drool fell from her mouth. If you know my daughter at all it will not surprise you to learn that this was the most upsetting thing of all -- she didn’t know how she’d be able to go to sleep without getting blood and drool on her pillow and pajamas. I covered her pillow with towels and draped a few more over her bedspread. She finally fell asleep clutching that damp washcloth, propped up on extra pillows, but by then the bleeding had stopped.
Needless to say, our bedtimes were thrown off. We were all exhausted by the time we all managed to fall asleep, and Suzannah slept later than usual, but she awoke in a fairly cheerful mood. The swelling had diminished considerably, although her chin was obviously bruised, and she didn’t really want to eat much. Two days later, her teeth are still hanging in there, her chin is still black-and-blue, but she’s figured out how to eat more or less normally.
Tonight when I tucked her into bed, I said, “Looks like the tooth fairy will be coming a little earlier than we thought.” Without skipping a beat she replied, “I hope so. Then I can make some money.”
While my kid smashing her teeth against the toilet is outside our realm of normal, somehow, set against the backdrop of this week, dealing with a relatively minor childhood injury is -- well, so normal it seems unfair. This is what strikes me when someone shoots up a theater. Or a classroom. Or sets off a bomb at the Boston Marathon. I listen to NPR on my way to pick up the kids, I exchange e-mails with equally horrified friends, and I try not to read Facebook because I’m sickened by the speed at which we show our worst selves as we try to make sense of these things. Better to focus on what people are doing in the world and not on the internet. And, of course, there’s the matter of life needing to be lived. There’s the absurdity -- and, I suppose, the blessing -- of the way the world keeps turning.
So on Monday night, I came home with my children. I ran a bath for Isaac and listened to him splash around with his toys while I chopped onions and garlic for Spanish rice. I went through the motions of stirring scallions, shredded cheese, and handfuls of fresh spinach on my stovetop, then spooning the mixture into tortillas for spinach and cheese burritos. Suzannah showed me what she’d written in her planner at school and busied herself at the kitchen counter, drawing or writing -- I don’t remember what now. I brushed the burritos with olive oil. Stuck the pan in the oven. Added rice, tomatoes, cumin, and chili powder to the other pot simmering on the stove. Changed into running clothes. When Matt came home, I kissed him, told him how long the food still needed to cook, and headed out into the cool early-evening air.
People ran for solidarity and support on Monday night and all throughout the week; I’d like to say that’s what I was doing, but that seems a little grand for a solitary jog through the quiet streets of my neighborhood. There’s a part of my usual route that smells like heaven in April, like the trees have held the scent of all the rain that’s fallen this month and chosen to release it in a single burst of freshness so pure I want to stop and drink it as I run past. Breathing it makes me feel sort of desperately greedy and grateful -- both.
I wasn’t sure whether I was trying to run away from the world or run myself into some state of clarity or peace or what. But what a privilege. Just to move, to breathe, to be. To burst through my back door again, sweaty and spent, to smell the melted cheese and the spices from the dinner I’d prepared, to know that I would soon slip into a tub filled with bubbles, soothing for tired muscles even though my kids never can manage to stay out of the bathroom when I’m in there.
So I swing, these days, between desperate gratitude for this normalcy, the beautiful ordinary, and desperate grief, because the world is broken, and we’re broken with it. I’m easily angered and I find it difficult to extend much grace. I read Facebook too much, which almost never, ever makes me feel better about the world except sometimes someone will post, say, a beautifully-written piece by Erica Goode at the New York Times, and I’m nothing less than awestruck that a person can birth such a thing almost instantaneously in response to something that defies rational response.
When my head is muddled and my heart is hurting, it might not seem so strange, then, to find almost a comfort in dealing competently with a minor childhood injury -- a fixable thing. We have popsicles and milkshakes and plenty of ice, not to mention plenty of cuddles. And beyond that, there is my relentless need to notice every little ordinary moment, to place it in the context of our beautiful ordinary life, and to find joy there -- in the chopping of onions while my son splashes in the bath, in watching my daughter fill out her weekly reading log, even in the basic ordering of things -- taking the clean dishes from the still-steamy dishwasher and putting them away, in placing the folded clothes inside the drawers, in wiping down counters and tucking children into bed. It’s the illusion of order when nothing is orderly, sure, and most of the time unloading the dishwasher and folding laundry are simply chores to be completed. But they’re part of our rhythm, our ordinary beautiful daily rhythm, and that makes sense to me when little else does.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Jury Duty, Spring Break, and Loving the Ordinary
It’s the season for cherry blossoms scattering across the sidewalks, for running outside in a t-shirt, for falling in love (again) with the state I’ve grown to call home over the past decade. It’s also the season for dusting off this blog from its winter sleep, although I last updated in March. (Still, I’ve driven through a snowstorm since then.)
I’m supposed to be grading papers tonight. Grades are due on Friday or something, and we have conferences next week, and I have a large stack of senior essays awaiting feedback from my purple Pilot pen. (I prefer green, but I can’t find any of my green pens. I have about six purple pens floating around and so they will have to do, but I think the absence of green in my little red canvas pen pouch is inhibiting my ability to just get this done.) I hauled these essays to Montana with me last week and spent several hours grading them at my favorite coffee shop in my hometown, then spent a few more hours grading them at my parents’ dining room table after my kiddos were tucked into their beds, but after a day of that I decided not to let them have any more of my spring break.
So spring break is partly where I’ve been, and before that, it was jury duty, to which I reported rather cheerfully on a Monday morning a few weeks ago, not really believing I’d be chosen to serve on a trial but would spend a day or two sitting around and reading a book. Out of a couple hundred of us, what were the odds? But of course I was picked in the first group, and in that group, despite my valiant efforts, I found myself sitting in a jury box. Right in front. Juror #2. For two weeks.
The timing couldn’t have been worse, really. I had just spent two full weeks out of the classroom for senior IB orals, and I couldn’t even comprehend a month. I taught each class a grand total of two times between finishing orals and beginning jury duty. Still, when we were given the opportunity to explain why serving would present a hardship, the handful of people who were excused said things like, “I’m the only wage earner in my family, I have three kids, and if I don’t work for two weeks, we’ll have a tough time making rent.” I had to scramble a bit, and it certainly wasn’t ideal, but I know exactly how fortunate I am to have a job in which I still get paid for jury duty and don’t have to use any of my sick days.
And anyway, it’s a great experience. I was a little surprised at the amount of “advice” I received on getting out of jury duty. I’m going to go ahead and assume that most of it wasn’t serious -- at least I hope not, because I can’t imagine actually representing myself as a total whackadoo just to avoid it. Also, at the end of the trial, the judge thanked us and said, “We know it’s a great inconvenience for just about everybody to take this much time away from their lives, but if we only kept people for whom it was easy, we would only have one kind of juror.” A fair point. Also, I learned a lot. I honestly gained a tremendous amount of respect for both lawyers and judges. The courtroom proceedings were occasionally boring (mostly after lunch, which is a tough time of day for me to sit still and not speak or move -- yawn) but mostly fascinating. And it wasn’t lost on me that the twelve random people on this jury would be responsible for making decisions that would impact real people in real ways. When my students asked me if I’d do it again, I said yes, I absolutely would. It wasn’t always fun, but it felt important. And I found small ways to make the experience enjoyable, since it was outside my daily routine; to counter the afternoon chaos of driving to pick up Suzannah from my friend Bonnie’s house or Morgan’s work and switching cars at the transit center before dashing to pick up Isaac so late in the afternoon, I left a little early each morning -- early enough to walk to the coffee shop across from the courthouse and drink a hot chocolate as I watched the streets shake off their morning sleepiness. I read half of Midnight’s Children. I wrote a lot. I took some quiet, head-clearing, solitary walks. I had a nice long lunch break each day, much longer than what I get at school. All that, I will miss. (Sometimes it’s good to step just outside the boundaries of normal, everyday routine, and find the hidden graces there.)
Oh -- and I was the presiding juror. No one seems surprised by this, which, I guess, means I’m bossy. All I know is that no one else seemed to want it (which surprised me), and also, facilitating conversations is actually part of my job, and maybe I was missing that just a bit.
We finished up just in time for Easter weekend, a visit from my parents, and spring break. The day after Easter, the kids and I drove back to Montana with my parents and spent four blissful, relaxing days in Bozeman. April is generally not the most attractive time of year in my home state. When we spent spring break there five years ago, Suzannah built a snowman with her grandma in the backyard, and I went jogging through piles of slush on the roads. Three years ago, we drove to Montana for my grandmother’s eightieth birthday and encountered snow worthy of December. This time, we were blessed with sunshine and temperatures nearing seventy degrees, but the newly-melted snow left the grass matted and brown and the trees are still mostly bare.
And yet, as I breathed the sweet air of my home state as spring struggled upwards from that muddy ground, I understood that I was feeding my soul exactly what it needed. I unplugged. I didn’t read Facebook. I barely checked my e-mail. I ate my mom’s homemade muffins with gjetost in the mornings, I jogged up the highway towards town in a light spring rain, I drank the same coffee I loved when I was twenty-one years old. I spent a couple of hours with someone who changed my life sixteen years ago and who I love to this day. I spent a morning with my mom and the kids at the Museum of the Rockies and followed that with lunch at MacKenzie River Pizza. I ate my dad’s popcorn, made in his 44-year-old popcorn popper -- something I insist upon every time I go home. I had no real agenda. It was a perfect week.
Matt stayed home all week, not really feeling like he could take five days off right now, but he flew into Bozeman late on Friday night. On Saturday afternoon after brunch, the Winslows headed west once again, stopping overnight in Spokane. (We always drive straight to Bozeman from Seattle on the first leg of a trip; heading home, we like to relax.) A cozy dinner at a brewpub, an early night in a comfortable hotel, a leisurely brunch at Huckleberry Bistro before we hit I-90 once again -- it was a lovely end to the week and a nice transition back into teaching and some sort of normalcy, if that’s what you call it.
And even though I appreciate the occasional departures from the normalcy, from the routine -- the hot chocolate across from the courthouse, the solitary walks along unfamiliar streets, a temporary return to the home of my childhood -- it’s also pretty sweet to settle back into the life I live every day here and remember why I love that, too.
I’m supposed to be grading papers tonight. Grades are due on Friday or something, and we have conferences next week, and I have a large stack of senior essays awaiting feedback from my purple Pilot pen. (I prefer green, but I can’t find any of my green pens. I have about six purple pens floating around and so they will have to do, but I think the absence of green in my little red canvas pen pouch is inhibiting my ability to just get this done.) I hauled these essays to Montana with me last week and spent several hours grading them at my favorite coffee shop in my hometown, then spent a few more hours grading them at my parents’ dining room table after my kiddos were tucked into their beds, but after a day of that I decided not to let them have any more of my spring break.
So spring break is partly where I’ve been, and before that, it was jury duty, to which I reported rather cheerfully on a Monday morning a few weeks ago, not really believing I’d be chosen to serve on a trial but would spend a day or two sitting around and reading a book. Out of a couple hundred of us, what were the odds? But of course I was picked in the first group, and in that group, despite my valiant efforts, I found myself sitting in a jury box. Right in front. Juror #2. For two weeks.
The timing couldn’t have been worse, really. I had just spent two full weeks out of the classroom for senior IB orals, and I couldn’t even comprehend a month. I taught each class a grand total of two times between finishing orals and beginning jury duty. Still, when we were given the opportunity to explain why serving would present a hardship, the handful of people who were excused said things like, “I’m the only wage earner in my family, I have three kids, and if I don’t work for two weeks, we’ll have a tough time making rent.” I had to scramble a bit, and it certainly wasn’t ideal, but I know exactly how fortunate I am to have a job in which I still get paid for jury duty and don’t have to use any of my sick days.
And anyway, it’s a great experience. I was a little surprised at the amount of “advice” I received on getting out of jury duty. I’m going to go ahead and assume that most of it wasn’t serious -- at least I hope not, because I can’t imagine actually representing myself as a total whackadoo just to avoid it. Also, at the end of the trial, the judge thanked us and said, “We know it’s a great inconvenience for just about everybody to take this much time away from their lives, but if we only kept people for whom it was easy, we would only have one kind of juror.” A fair point. Also, I learned a lot. I honestly gained a tremendous amount of respect for both lawyers and judges. The courtroom proceedings were occasionally boring (mostly after lunch, which is a tough time of day for me to sit still and not speak or move -- yawn) but mostly fascinating. And it wasn’t lost on me that the twelve random people on this jury would be responsible for making decisions that would impact real people in real ways. When my students asked me if I’d do it again, I said yes, I absolutely would. It wasn’t always fun, but it felt important. And I found small ways to make the experience enjoyable, since it was outside my daily routine; to counter the afternoon chaos of driving to pick up Suzannah from my friend Bonnie’s house or Morgan’s work and switching cars at the transit center before dashing to pick up Isaac so late in the afternoon, I left a little early each morning -- early enough to walk to the coffee shop across from the courthouse and drink a hot chocolate as I watched the streets shake off their morning sleepiness. I read half of Midnight’s Children. I wrote a lot. I took some quiet, head-clearing, solitary walks. I had a nice long lunch break each day, much longer than what I get at school. All that, I will miss. (Sometimes it’s good to step just outside the boundaries of normal, everyday routine, and find the hidden graces there.)
Oh -- and I was the presiding juror. No one seems surprised by this, which, I guess, means I’m bossy. All I know is that no one else seemed to want it (which surprised me), and also, facilitating conversations is actually part of my job, and maybe I was missing that just a bit.
We finished up just in time for Easter weekend, a visit from my parents, and spring break. The day after Easter, the kids and I drove back to Montana with my parents and spent four blissful, relaxing days in Bozeman. April is generally not the most attractive time of year in my home state. When we spent spring break there five years ago, Suzannah built a snowman with her grandma in the backyard, and I went jogging through piles of slush on the roads. Three years ago, we drove to Montana for my grandmother’s eightieth birthday and encountered snow worthy of December. This time, we were blessed with sunshine and temperatures nearing seventy degrees, but the newly-melted snow left the grass matted and brown and the trees are still mostly bare.
And yet, as I breathed the sweet air of my home state as spring struggled upwards from that muddy ground, I understood that I was feeding my soul exactly what it needed. I unplugged. I didn’t read Facebook. I barely checked my e-mail. I ate my mom’s homemade muffins with gjetost in the mornings, I jogged up the highway towards town in a light spring rain, I drank the same coffee I loved when I was twenty-one years old. I spent a couple of hours with someone who changed my life sixteen years ago and who I love to this day. I spent a morning with my mom and the kids at the Museum of the Rockies and followed that with lunch at MacKenzie River Pizza. I ate my dad’s popcorn, made in his 44-year-old popcorn popper -- something I insist upon every time I go home. I had no real agenda. It was a perfect week.
Matt stayed home all week, not really feeling like he could take five days off right now, but he flew into Bozeman late on Friday night. On Saturday afternoon after brunch, the Winslows headed west once again, stopping overnight in Spokane. (We always drive straight to Bozeman from Seattle on the first leg of a trip; heading home, we like to relax.) A cozy dinner at a brewpub, an early night in a comfortable hotel, a leisurely brunch at Huckleberry Bistro before we hit I-90 once again -- it was a lovely end to the week and a nice transition back into teaching and some sort of normalcy, if that’s what you call it.
And even though I appreciate the occasional departures from the normalcy, from the routine -- the hot chocolate across from the courthouse, the solitary walks along unfamiliar streets, a temporary return to the home of my childhood -- it’s also pretty sweet to settle back into the life I live every day here and remember why I love that, too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)