Leaving Life in the NEQ

As of this morning we're leaving the Northeast Kingdom. It almost seems completely random even though we've had this discussion about one million times since moving out here from Burlington five years ago. Do we stay or go? Have we put in all this time and effort and planted our seeds just to find out they were annuals? Or has this just been an incredibly important leg of a much longer journey towards a place we've yet to discover? Isn't staying always the easy thing to do? Once life isn't so difficult is it just tedious?

If after years of saying this isn't where I imagined living out the rest of my life why was the wind knocked out of me when Jason first told a co-worker essentially sealing the deal? Why am I so anxious and shaky? We've made list after list of the pros and cons of staying vs. leaving and they seemed to balance out almost entirely. Except for one biggie. Our security here. Asking "what if" didn't leave us feeling ok about being left up in the air out here. So how to place roots when the ground is too loose to stand on your own? Would we ever feel confident enough to build or buy a house of our own again up here? We just don't see that happening anytime soon and so...

We move on. We start all over again; strangers in a strange land. A larger family than we were five years ago, carrying a bit heavier load but with stronger arms. Here we go!

My Funny Valentine

I just thought I'd mention that my most wonderful valentine in the world said a new word today. POLKADOT. It was fabulous. Absolutely ridiculously perfectly sweet. It sounded more like "pokedot" but I'm giving it to her anyway. My heart is full.

And that's my story.

Raining Introspection

It appears there's little room left in one's brain for introspection of any sort when one has an eighteen month old puppeteer stringing one along day to day as one might a marionette. The closest to feeling any sort of deepness of thought is to fit in some interesting article in The New Yorker or The Atlantic while I nurse her down for a nap or to bed. The problem there is that (A) I'm too tired to register the words that my eyes are struggling to decipher (B) I have no one to talk to about such provoking ideas for at least a few hours and so they die a slow, anonymous death and slip away into the black and red oblivion that is my useless brain or (C) I say "hmm, how interesting", ramble off the entire contents of the ten pages I've tried desperately to memorize to Jason and then drink a glass of wine and retire to Top Chef, The Office or inane American awfulness like American Idol.

Tonight though there is rain. That ever beautiful tap tap tapping of condensation falling miles to your roof reminding you that yes, you can take this moment to be present. There is nothing more forcefully introspective, besides perhaps the rolling of the ocean against the shore, than rain. I realize it's February and so I'm maybe a little just sick of the damn cold and snow and I wouldn't mind a little washing away of the three feet in the back yard. It also means that yes! finally it's above freezing which is always an incredible moment, especially here in Vermont. People were jacket less today, their mittens nowhere to be seen, I saw a woman's legs! We go a bit berserk when it hits 40 but we're forgiven I believe. It won't last and we'll be frozen hermits before we know it but we'll have a spark of hope revived. Spring is somewhere in the distance our slightly thawed souls scream.

For now, I'll just sit in this pleasant almost-silence, listening to a toddler breathe, the rain remind me of now and the buzz of a computer connect me to somebody somewhere.

A Belated Merry Holidays

Happy New Year and all that. Tessa certainly enjoyed herself with our four days of Christmas. There are still gifts for her sitting right now wrapped nicely upon the buffet, I am saving them for another day. Perhaps this will be our tradition, since I'm somewhat dying to create one of our own. A wait it out approach, a new idea of no you can't get everything at once in some crazy wrapping paper orgy on some predetermined day.

Not to say I don't get in the spirit of it all. I am very happy, thrilled, giddy even to be given an excuse to shop for the people I love. It fills me with a sense of day to day purpose in an otherwise entirely manic time of year. So I won't be preaching the same "the meaning of Christmas is lost in the consumerism of the buy everything culture that's shoved down our throats by the blahdeeblahdeeblah...." even though I totally buy it (hahaha). I love the holidays all the same. I love the lights and the simple act of wrapping up a gift and handing it over to a cousin you see once a year. The absolutely pointless fun of cutting down a tree to watch it die slowly inside your house covered in tacky decorations. I love hearing the same crappy music on the radio every year and meandering through all the wonderful and hideous crafts at the local markets. I love watching the frantic faces on the small towners rummage through our small selection of shops and knowing they're thinking "yeah, buy locally my ass, who needs another blown glass candle holder?" And I love feeling totally self righteous because I did do all my shopping locally.

I do kind of wish that this extravagence was scheduled perhaps once every two years, maybe even five. Then the thousands of people who lost their jobs right before they finished racking up another couple of 00's on their credit cards might not have considered how much they're life insurance policies are worth.

So, yeah, maybe I love shopping and wrapping and being a part of some crazy cultural insanity rooted in excess but whatever. It's fun, I got to put a blinking reindeer nose on my nephew. What's better than that?

Bittersweet Bubbye

OK, so this picture might seem a little odd so let me explain. We're moving! This is Jason pointing to the beautiful exposed beams on the kitchen ceiling and waving bub-bye. Tessa seems a little perplexed in the background but it's her daddy and he does weird things all the time so whatever.
I don't really know how to take it all in. Night after night lately Jason and I have sat up talking about how wonderful this place is. How we've changed it and how it's changed us and how no matter where we go or what we do this will always be our first house. It's the setting for our engagement (in the front yard under the tree during a blizzard), where I told Jason I was pregnant (sitting on the couch in front of the wood stove), it's where I labored for the first 12 hours, the first house Tessa came home to, where Percy has spent the majority of her 4 1/2 years, where we've had more than a handful of holiday dinners and celebratory meals. It's where we've both gotten to know each other and ourselves in all our ever changing roles; as husband and wife and mama and daddy and breadwinner and child-raiser. Don't get me wrong, we've frozen our tails off in this house, we've burned money in last ditch efforts to appease the old spirits that let us sleep here (believe me their presence is strong and does not go unnoticed).
We joked for the first two years that we felt like pioneers who embarked on this journey out of both naivete and a kind of wanderlust. It sounds counter intuitive, we wanted to explore and so we settled down, but we found and saw and learned things about creating home-space and being a part of history. I love this house and before I even leave it I miss it. The warmth of the wood stove, these salvaged bowling alley counter tops, the porcelain farm sink we drove down to the seacoast to pick up, the old fireplace in the kitchen, the creaky floors, the antique-y door latches in place of knobs, the beams in the kitchen.
We're so good at romanticizing the past that we've begun it before we've even left it behind. This house has been more than a backdrop it's been an active character in our story. A protagonist and antagonist at once. We wrestled with it's quirks and it's thrown mirrors in our faces. It's humbled us and our egocentric minds thinking we could just move in and move out; that we wouldn't wholly change ourselves, our lives before we left.
Four years, three months and three days we'll have had this house. Or rather, it's had us.

Something New This Way Comes

I can only say hallelujah! Seriously. Something's gone right in this country for the first time in a long time and I have to say I'm just proud as hell to be a part of it. Watching Obama's acceptance speech last night my body tensed up, I honestly didn't shed a tear, I was just too nervous. I expected something to go terribly wrong. I think it was just this fear that I've been infected with over the past eight years that is still running through my veins. Billions of tiny frightened cells repeating their wicked words "nothing works here". The part of my brain that houses conspiracy theory has been firing off warning signals for weeks now. But there it was in all it's flashing numbers and colors glory. 333. He's in.
I watched the faces of those 250,000 people crowding into Grant Park in Chicago and longed to be there. I wanted to be hugging strangers and crying on camera. I wanted to be kneeling down on that stampeded lawn and thanking my personal higher power for the opportunity to be witness to this day. Instead I was home which was actually more heartening, my deeply dreaming daughter a floor away oblivious to the monumental moment that was occuring. Jason and I were actually in the kitchen cooking up an eleven o'clock feast when we heard screams coming from the television in the other room. We ran in and saw the students in Selma dancing and crying and jumping all over eachother. They called it. He's in.
We stayed up and listened to his speech which by all means was beautiful and articulate and Obama-esque. Watching his face though you wouldn't have thought it was one of the best moments in this country's history. You'd think he was giving a concession speech. He was a bit solemn, a bit reserved. I wanted to reach him and shake him and scream in his face "damn it you won!!!" I chalk it up to exhaustion and disbelief. Today hearing the MLK and Lincoln pieces of his speech over and over again on NPR I got goose bumps, I teared up every time, I actually started laughing and crying at the same time. I picked Tessa up and swung her around and taught her to clap her hands and squeel when I said "Ba-Rack O-Bama!". Then I felt a little too obsessed. I just want to somehow ingrain these days in her memory. I want her to feel this excitement somehow.
There's a copy of the Boston Globe taped up facing out the back window of my car with a giant headline reading "Historic Victory" with a gorgeous shot of our man below it. I wrote beneath the photo "YES! WE CAN". (I would've gotten the NY Times but nobody had any left!) The local baker in town motivated me, he also put up a modest paper and ink sign loudly reading the same slogan in his shop door. I just want to feel connected in this moment to the rest of the country. I want to, for the first time in my life, really feel hopeful for the progress that this nation can still achieve in a relatively short span. I want to know that we are indeed getting better and I want to be a part of that change.
He's in. Thank whatever God you will. He's in. Now I can breathe.

Hard Day's Night

So Tessa is absolutely fab-u-lous. The problem is she knows it. Damn it! When people say, "oh isn't she beautiful!" Cue direct stare, smile and wave.

We're dealing with a diva already. I kid you not the child would snap her fingers at me if she could figure out how. Instead she has found many different ways of getting her point across including, but not limited to, whining at an ever increasing pitch, hanging onto my legs and pushing me in the direction she wants me to go, throwing herself in a full backbend, smiling while biting her bottom lip and pointing at desired object, sending telepathic messages, attempting to run on air, hugging and kissing with mouth open then biting my cheek and laughing.

Today was a hard day. She is just very very non-stop. She's very independent and willfull. She will walk down the sidewalk by herself, she will eat the broccolli raw before I get a chance to cook it, she will not sit and eat in her high chair she will not eat anything at all should I press the subject.

Oh My God I'm so scared to death of her in 12 years. I must take control now. But how?! Jason laughs and tells me this is what I get for trying to be AP. My mother laughs and tells me the terrible twos are a joke it's really the terrible one through fours nobody tells you till it's too late. Everybody laughs cause it's funny when it's not you.

It's not as bad as it sounds, I think. I've just had a hard day. Jason's gone to Saratoga on business and as of now, 9:30 pm, I'm sure he's out at some bar with work guys having a beer and talking about work crap. Poor guy. (rolls eyes) I don't have it bad either at the moment. I'm sitting here next to my half empty bottle of wine, trying to get in as much leisure time as possible watching three different shows at once, a book open and typing this up. Ah, what a peaceful night. Meanwhile, the monitor heaves and shifts as Tessa almost wakes up again and again and I sit on the edge of my chair wondering if I should just brush my teeth now or if I really will get to before she starts to cry again.

I'm being over dramatic perhaps, but really it's hard to imagine doing all of this over again. Everyone I know with babies is talking seconds and I just look around and start to wonder why I'm not really catching the baby fever.

Uh. There she is.....