Dear Friend...
The Tradition of Living Beautifully, Issue #66
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Dear Friend,
Recently we celebrated my oldest son’s fifth birthday. I remember when he turned two, my heart did a bit of a dip, like a sturdy yet vulnerable boat getting caught in a wave I didn’t imagine could arrive so quickly. And five, well, five seemed a-way aways, yonder on a far shore; I needed a telescope to see it, if I dared to peek. Of course, every birthday, even my own when I’m cranky because I’m not as pretty as I used to be, or as thin as I used to be, or all the other used-to-be’s we inevitably cling to, even my own birthday is a blessing, of course, because there’s only one other alternative, one many people are pushed against their will to take.
So even though our babies shed their baby stage faster than we can compute, often breaking our hearts just a bit, the birthday of a child is the greatest of all blessings, and I like to react accordingly. The night before, I set up the table with beeswax candles, pumpkins and other decor, bake things Angelo likes and put out special treats he’s only permitted occasionally, and so when he wakes up, still sleepy, having been four yesterday, but now five today, as he told every stranger we saw out and about on his birthday, he feels like he’s walking into a magical, hundred-acre-wood celebration of the beautiful blessed day he was born.
The look on his sleepy face when he comes out of his room and sees the lighted candles, the cakes and pumpkins, the genuine happiness that washes over him, makes the late night and all the preparation more than worth it. After our breakfast party, he opened presents from his father and me, and then we went to the farm for the afternoon where we took a hayride to pick pumpkins, went to the petting zoo to feed the cows, goats, alpacas and sheep, and then made a stop at the bustling farm store where we picked up a pile of apple cider donuts. We had family coming over in a couple hours, after all. Angelo helped me make his cake the day before but I used the wrong size pan and it came out like a pancake, which as you can imagine did not please me. Well it was a store bought cake this year, which was fine with the birthday boy, because it had a little spooky Halloween tinge to it (I added the miniature pumpkins when we got home because I can’t help myself.) I made sourdough baguettes and a sourdough boule loaf, bought fresh mozzarella from the Italian store nearby, and Nonna made enough pizzas to feed a football team. As his cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents arrived he lit up, almost floating with excitement, and he did such a good job waiting until after dessert to open all the presents they brought him.
To state the obvious, being a mother is busy and demanding, and as I sit here writing this I’m on my first day of feeling somewhat normal after being painfully sick with some kind of flu for more than a week. I’m sure it was contracted from a little too much party preparation piled on top of the general demands of everyday life. The list of things I want to get to but can’t unfurls before me. Among them are sewing projects, photography projects, and of course, writing projects. I have ideas of things to write about all the time; they drift past me in the midst of my days, when I’m washing dishes, going for a walk, and often, unfortunately, in the middle of the night. (I say “unfortunately” because it makes it harder to turn off my mind knowing my track record shows good ideas do, indeed, come when I can’t sleep, so staying awake is kind of “worth it.”) Sometimes I can pin those ideas down and flesh them into something that reads like poetry, and then I get to share essays like this one and this one with you. But the honest truth is that being a busy mother of two makes it harder than it’s ever been to take hold of what inspiration comes my way.
I think it was Bob Dylan who said that writing songs is like catching fish—the ideas swim past and if you don’t reel them in they swim down river where someone else will. I’ve always liked this description of the writing life. As if God is just tossing out ideas from a bucket of confetti and He doesn’t particularly mind who gets what, as long as they get caught by someone with the ability to artfully assemble the ideas for Him. In this season of life, I lose a lot of fish. Sometimes you can jot down notes and go back to the piece, and it comes together; sometimes you go back, though, and it loses its life breath. You draw close and all that’s left is bone. Here’s just a few of the ideas I’ve had in the past couple months that, although I haven’t given up on writing them at some point hopefully soon, keep slipping away from me: A three-part series on intuition; a three-part series titled, “Your Cellphone is Undignified” (I am at maximum disgust with cell phone use in company and what it’s doing to everything from relationships to dinners to parties); the ancestral body; and how making things when the world tells us we can just buy them can be a guiding, core value that anchors us. It doesn’t mean I won’t write these; it just means I wish I already had, and also that I hope when I sit down to craft them, they’ll still have a bit of life pumping in their veins.
My fishing pole remains in hand. It has nearly all of my life, but in this season, in the meantime, I wanted to send you this old-fashioned letter, this little note from my neck of the woods to say hello and tell you how life has been, and what I’ve been up to. Being sick with small kids is not so fun, as you may well know, and also Halloween is approaching quickly, and I have costumes to finish, and a second birthday crown (the baby is turning ONE!) to make and another celebration to prepare for. Plus Thanksgiving, a couple family parties, a memorial celebration in the city, and whatever else life delivers in between the lines, including a new home remodel. I have a feeling you can relate in your own way. And if you’re waiting for an update on the renovation of our country house, just letting you know we haven’t had much movement, which is why I haven’t written about it since my initial post. Things should start moving along in the coming weeks, however, and I’m dying to share it with you. We just picked up more wood flooring, and we’ve got some other things in motion so that the pieces will hopefully start falling into place. Yes, life even gets in the way of renovating the home you really want to move into.
In all this hustle and bustle, though, it sure is nice to make a cup of coffee, take a seat, and write a letter to a friend.
Thanks for being here with me, truly.
