Change

As is usual in these parts, this week fall abruptly turned off the lights and left, slamming the door on its way out. Where Tuesday morning dawned sunny and pleasant, the streets lined with red and green and gold, Tuesday night it rained and Wednesday it snowed. Our beleaguered walnut tree began Tuesday as an ethereally golden harbinger of doom and by Wednesday evening it was a stick with a sodden pile of brown muck at its base. All done. Next!

Luckily for my mood I like this time of year, with its frost-on-the-grass mornings and its bleak, unpretentious prospects. Where some people get melancholy and weepy as the days shorten up and night falls faster, I feel a little tingling of anticipation (books fire holidays birthday Food pies stuffing PRESENTS), which Helen, as a fellow late-fall birthday-er, totally gets. We started reading The Long Winter during the uniformly beautiful days of August and had to put it up because "it makes me want it to be wiiiiinter." Well, okay, Muffin, although I wouldn't really call this one a paean to the glories of snow. I get it. You're my daughter, through and through.

The other one in my house, though. If I hadn't been present and accounted for at his birth I might be starting to wonder right about now whether he truly belonged to me. This week, for example, he came home with a stack of math problems and set about doing them cheerfully and even, I would say, with relish and zeal. And zest. He talks about them, kind of smacking his lips with the deliciousness of it. Meanwhile, I vaguely looked over the packet in the interest of parental involvement and immediately felt a build up of static cling in my head. I don't remember all my dreams this week but I sense that one involved panicky toil over just such a stack of problems.

In contrast but related, Wednesday he got the chance to go see Obama speak in downtown Denver. After a little convincing related to the okayness of missing Bear Club and the once-in-a-lifetime-ness and the crowds-will-be-fine, he agreed to go. "How was it?" I asked when he got back, excited for him. "Good," he said in that slightly accented monotone which means he did enjoy himself, however little he may effuse. "What surprised you the most?" This is a little conversational gambit I use sometimes to get around the "how-was-it-great" problem. He was silent for a while. Sack of potatoes silent. He might have been thinking, or he might just have been absenting himself from a difficult line of questioning.

"Well? Anything? What was most surprising?"

More silence. Then: "The snow."

Well. Okay then. The snow. You'll be able to tell your grandkids you saw Obama and it was great, it snowed.

Falling

It took them four hours, but this entire pile and more made it to the back yard.

So we're rushing toward Halloween, costumes ready, pumpkins grown and picked, pumpkin lights up. Ordinarily this is one of my favorite months. Warm days, cool nights, perfect conditions for training the children in quasi-agricultural labor, which as everyone from Agricola on knows is the best possible thing for their little characters (now if we could also encourage them to engage in that labor outside the home, i.e., on someone else's payroll, we'd be gold. As it is I'm out $30 bucks after a particularly vigorous bout of weekend Helping.) The kids are doing well--it's kind of a golden year for both of them, possibly the last one ever (at least that will occur in tandem). After all, Si starts Middle School next year. Life as a nuclear family will only go down from here.

It was our anniversary last week (fifteen years!). We spent it as couples at a certain life stage do, which is to say wedged into tiny plastic chairs at a school function:

M, at least, got to stretch his legs a bit.

It was also the anniversary of this:

That tree is really one of the best aspects of the neighborhood.

See? Still looks good, with 100% less noxious drywall dust.

Life is good, and yet Life, she is kicking my rear end to the curb. I am spending these idyllic fall days either weighed to the ground with trepidation and sadness or gliding along in a haze of denial: my mother is sick. This is as much as I want to say, because this thing that is happening is her private event and I have a feeling if I say anything it will flop awkwardly over into the realm of saying too much. So to summarize: the color of this fall is grief. I am alternately prostrate and hopeful, as are we all. Well, except the kids. They are still, and hopefully will get to remain, delightfully oblivious that anything bad could happen to the people they love.

Octobery

One of my Facebook friends posted this last week:

40 miles of trails, all dirt. Two wheels, no engine (except my legs). Huge vistas. Gold autumn leaves. Blue sky. Home to green chili stew, a Myrcenary microbrew, my dawgs and cats and the love of my life. A perfect day. So grateful.

I left this comment: "This sounds like pretttty much my perfect day."

Then I thought: uh, I think. That would be enjoyable, right? Or is that just something I used to like and now I like something else? What do I like?

Yup, it's official: I don't even know what a perfect day is anymore. I count a weekend good if I:

1. Clean all the things;
2. Get a good long run in and sling some dirt and branches around in the back;
3. Spend some quality one-on-one time with the kids; and/or
4. Do something. Like: take the kids to a new park, go for a hike, go camping/skiing, etc.

For example, this past weekend we did this. Enjoyable? Yes. Life-affirming? Hmm.

I mean, these aren't bad. Family time, tending the home hearth, exploring the great world around--in a rather small-scale and time-limited way, but still: out! about! breathing the open air etc.! These are the things of which a good life is made. So what if a good weekend falls into two categories: good because it helps me get rested and caught up to face another week, or good because for at least a few hours I get to step off the endless merry-go-round of routine. So what if while I'd call a weekend like this good, I'd hardly reach for the superlative "perfect." Good is good. To paraphrase Annie Dillard, a day spent tinkering in the yard and playing educational games with the kids isn't necessarily a good day, but a life spent doing such things is a good life.

I used to dream about having a place to garden. Now I have it. It's nice.

Then why does this life feel so limited? Why do I read my (childless, freelance writer) friend's post and sigh deeply, wistfully, as though I am sitting in my cell at San Quentin and watching a little biplane fly by, perhaps with the occupants inside laughing and clinking champagne glasses?

(Grass is greener. Duh.)

Well, fine. There probably is a grass-is-greener element. Maybe if I were living a life in which I could see a beautiful fall day and decide to hit the trails for a 40-mile bike ride, I would be thinking wistfully of Life with a Family or Life with Affordable Health Insurance/ 401k/ steady paycheck that didn't require hustle. Or maybe I would be living my dream life. I really don't know. (I'm pretty sure I would miss having the kids, despite all their whining and meMEme-ness and preferred habitat: suburban big city-ness. The steady paycheck, though. Hmm. If I could have "paycheck," hold the "steady"--well.)

I really would miss this guy. Most of the time.

I'm going to have to file this post under "things to think about later," though, because wistfulness aside, I'm not planning to jettison any part of my life right now. The 40-mile bike ride, and the life that can easily expand to accommodate it, will have to wait. Is this selling out? I suppose so. Jack Kerouac would not approve, or Katherine Mansfield, or Percy Bysshe Shelly. But I'm not living in a Beat novel. My life is more like Trollope. And even though the romantic Beat poet living in my psychic attic may wail and rage, I can't really hear her right now, because the kids are making too much noise. What I want most of all at this particular (fifteen-year) moment in my life is to provide a steady stable for them to bed down in. Prudence and moderation: these are actually my desires right now (can you believe I'm saying this?)

He appreciates it, though. You can really tell.

Corn and other signs of fall

Well, for those of you who haven't noticed it, fall is definitely here:

Although you might be forgiven for not noticing, what with it being so dang hot. I'm only sort of complaining, though, since as of the itty bitty mini cold snap we had a week or so ago,  the garden had only yielded two (2) ripe tomatoes. The cold snap didn't manage to frost, at least not in our yard, so the tomatoes pulled through and now are turning out all sorts of ripe fruit. Yay tomatoes, etc.

Only slightly snaggletoothed.

We used the weekend to do some seasonal things, like visit the corn maze. I'm actually not sure how I feel about corn mazes. They're seasonal! And smell like hay! And are harvest-related! I like harvest things! Buuuut...they're also kinda. Well. You know. You kinda don't do anything except wander aimlessly through tunnels of corn. Maybe if I were alone I could get into the whole maze/puzzle/ brain growth aspect, but as it is I spend most of my time running after disappearing kids calling out, "Don't get too far ahead! Wait up! Don't turn until you make sure we're all there!"

This is the first time we've done the corn maze during daylight hours.

It's definitely in daylight. Still vaguely ominous, though.

Also kind of fret-inducing.

Especially when big brother's in charge.

We did make it all the way through, though, which was a first.

Anyhow. There are a lot of fret-inducing things going on chez Melospiza these days, so maybe wandering half-distracted through a maze of living organism was just the thing for a hot Sunday in October.

Madame Helen's School for Fine Stuffed Animals

As I said in my last post, it will surprise no one if Helen becomes a teacher. Yeah, sure, she vigorously denies this possibility herself ("I want to be an ARTIST"), but come on, her favorite game right now is playing school:

Class is in session. She calls them The Children. As in, "The Children are having recess now, so I can brush my teeth."

She works very hard at it, since she has to be both teacher and nine students. 

The subjects are spelling, gymnastics, soccer and drawing.

She has not missed Silas at all this week, by the way. Or claims not to. "Do you like getting all of our attention all to yourself?" I asked as she rode her scooter to the bus. "Yesssss," she answered, cackling a little.

I miss him, though. He'll be home tonight. Then all my chickens will be under my roof.

Another heartbreakingly beautiful weekend. I spent it in the usual ways: cleaning, chipping away at projects, watching sports, and snatching moments when I can for reading. I maybe spent more time at the latter than usual, doing a little comfort reading (Room), but I did manage to show up here:

Sports are fun, but it's really about the snacks

Where we ran into more old acquaintances--we knew two girls on the opposite team, plus the coach. The whole Kidsport craziness--the endless idyllic days dragging out endless folding chairs and applying endless rounds of sunscreen and cheering, endlessly, for the team that either wins or doesn't win, broken only by the perhaps-longer-than-necessary trips to the bathroom or the car or escpaing, hooky-like, to the nearest coffeeshop--is made marginally better by the social aspect.

Still a little uncertain about actual game play

It's still kind of tiring. On Sunday I didn't even try to drag Helen to Si's early game, the one that started at 8:30. Instead we biked over to the local kid triathalon, in which two of her friends were competing and which struck her fancy enough (I think it was the medals) for her to get sulky and grumpy and want to leave because "I wanted to do the race. Why didn't you sign me up, Mommy? You're MEAN." So: next year, triathalon. Then we came home and cleaned. That is, I cleaned, and took comfort-reading breaks, and Helen spent 2.5 hours closed up in her room administering spelling tests to her stuffed animals. They all did very well, although I think there was a little grade inflation at work, because even Carrots, who got an A+++, spelled animal wrong, and no one did worse than a B+ despite some test-takers having long lists of meticulously misspelled words.

It will surprise no one if she becomes a teacher

Sometimes it feels a little like we live in separate families--the baseball family and the everything else family--so in the afternoon we roused ourselves and went over to Si's second game. The social aspects of that crowd are less congenial, now that we're on a new team and only know a handful of other parents.

It was a quiet weekend. The rest of our time was spent packing for Si's week of Outdoor Education with his school--his whole class will be spending three days up in the mountains, playing trust games and orienteering and who knows what else. Si is up to his ears in excitement, mostly at the opportunity to pack (like me, he loves packing a list of supplies) and also about the bus ride.

Oh the busy days of now

It was a beautiful fall weekend--no, an exquisite fall weekend, and we did all the sorts of things a family should in this event. We went to a Rockies game, we watched some fireworks, we stood about on the sidelines of a soccer game* and two little league games**. I went for a run along trails brushed by yellowing leaves and ripening plums. I strategized about making wild plum jam and chokecherry jam. I bought plants and planted them in the yard and now one edge of the yard is looking better, definitely starting to look better, less like the chicken-scratched flats of a tarpaper shack and more like something you'd like to rest your eyes on while you have a drink. We had dinner with friends (the long-delayed BBQ I complained about earlier, in fact). There was a sleepover and a birthday party and neither one was at my house. I cleaned the floors.

In spite of all this, or, probably, because of it, I spent the entire weekend holding my breath while I dashed from one thing to another and by Sunday night I was in a vicious, hectoring mood. I need to improve my practice, I can see. My living-in-the-moment zen practice.

*Helen's first. I now have two children in organized sports. This is both a wonderful thing and sort of a slow torture.

**I managed, regretfully, to attend neither. The secret saving grace to having multiple children in multiple activities is that at some point it becomes physically impossible to be present at them all and while this doesn't exactly provide free time, it does provide some respite. Except on the times, like next weekend, when everything is staggered and there is neither free time nor respite--nor time that would normally be occupied by doing things like, say, brushing teeth or securing food.

But am I grateful? Yes. I'm grateful for it all, and already feeling melancholy about its inevitable end.