our first job

Everywhere we go, this...tragedy? (is that even the right word?) is written all over the faces of everyone we see.  We don't say anything--for the children's sake, of course--but it's there.  It's the longer-than-usual eye contact with a woman at the market, her six-year-old daughter in tow.  It's in the heavy eyelids of our post-mistress; it lurks behind the jolly Christmas music in the produce isle.  It was just beneath the bright smiles of unusually patient parents as they waited in line with their kids to sit on Santa's lap.  

Juniper was scared to death to go to bed last night.  After we clapped five times for the bears and then the lions, I announced that big, strong mama can scare anything away; I kissed her on the forehead and said I was sending sweet dreams straight to her brain, I flipped her pillow to the "good dream" side, I did everything we have ever done in any given night to make her feel safe, but last night it wasn't enough.  She cried and begged and pleaded and said she just wanted "to snuggle with mama."  Oh, I nearly melted.  I curled up with her in the tiny little toddler bed, nuzzled my nose into her damp, clean hair.  She held my cheeks and kissed my face.  I started to drift off, then remembered I was in a fetal position in a toddler bed.  The instant I tried to move an arm, to peel myself away, Juniper tightened her grip, moaned, Noooooo, and wrapped her arms fast around my neck as though she were floating out to sea and I was her buoy.

Juniper doesn't know what happened on Friday, of course.  But lying there in her tiny bed, it occurred to me that she's picking up on the vibe.  I kissed her and stroked her hair, her cheeks.  I told her that she'll always be safe in mama and daddy's house.  I told her we'll always be there for her and we'll never leave.  She kept saying, "I'm scary."  (Meaning, "I'm scared.")  I tried to get her to name what she was afraid of, but she couldn't.  She just looked around her room, stuttering, then landed on the clothes hanging above her nightlight.  "I'm scary of my clothes."  I told her I would move her clothes and just like that, she loosened her grip and let me go.          

In the words of another blogger:
"My kids do not know what happened on Friday.  I hope it is a story I never have to explain to them. Because how can I? I can not comprehend it myself, much less translate it to my innocent six year old. Children - all children - deserve to live a childhood knowing they are safe. I'll do what I can to keep that belief alive."

We do not watch, nor do we have, television.  All of the news we've gleaned from NPR and a handful of internet articles.  Still, with Juniper, I think we'll need to be more careful.  She has asked us several times if we were sad.  We told her we'd heard a story that happened far away and made us very, very sad.  And then we told her how very much we loved her and how happy she makes us.  She smiled and giggled and asked us to read her another book.

This is not what I intended to write.  I wanted just to catch you all up on our holiday fervor.  But I just couldn't sit down and not acknowledge the thing that has lodged itself into the heart of our nation.  People who never cry, are crying.

"This is our first task -- caring for our children.  It’s our first job.  If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right.  That’s how, as a society, we will be judged."  ~ President Obama, Newtown, CT  

Up next: holiday fervor.  Promise.

change

Yesterday evening, once my man came home and kids were seated at the table...I sank into his arms and cried.  I went through the motions of getting supper on the table with heavy limbs, dragging leaden feet across kitchen tile.  I squeezed my kids, smelled their hair, memorized their profiles, their pudgy hands, their stained-glass eyes, their innocence.  I was up and down.  Weeping, mad, weeping.  I became impatient over stupid things then instantly felt like an ass.  My mind wandered to the dark place of an innocent school...and then stopped, and then started.  I can barely begin to imagine the life of a parent who had one less mouth to feed that night.

There has been lots of late-night talk in our house about guns, the absurd availability of body armor, video games, our culture of violence, the huge task of raising socially responsible boys.  Boys who aren't afraid of their emotions and can own them, express them through voice.

I am sending prayers, tears, and...hope...to the people of Newtown.  But...I am pissed.  How many more have to die?  Guns are just a piece of the puzzle, but they're the deadliest piece.  I am a gun owner.  I probably always will be.  But it's true, it was easier to acquire my guns than to sign my 3-year-old up for preschool.  Nicholas Kristof wrote a fantastic column today: click here to read it.  I love the way he puts things in perspective:

"The tragedy isn’t one school shooting, it’s the unceasing toll across our country. More Americans die in gun homicides and suicides in six months than have died in the last 25 years in every terrorist attack and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined."  --Nicholas Kristof    

~Hug your children, teach them peace, change the world. 

letter to Hazel

Well, I finally hung up my garden fork and hand trowel for the season.  Last night it rained the fluffiest goose-down I've ever seen.  One foot.  You kick it and it's like kicking air.  I shoveled some snow off the garden, pulled back the old sleeping bag and harvested the last of our carrots and beets.  The fact that I am saying this in December is completely nutty.  We live in zone 3, people.  Zone THREE.  I'm okay with it.  

:: Right now I'm listening to Frances England's "Family Tree": think light, happy, banjo and these lyrics:
Hey ho, just how will it be/ when we add another branch to our family tree....

How will it be?  This is how:

Hazel Iris, you complete us.  You were the missing soul at our dinner table.  You were the link we awaited in ring around the rosie.  We always knew something was missing until you came along.  Now, we are whole.  You are the rose atop our three-tiered cake.

Tonight you stood up unaided--like, for three full seconds--first in front of dad, then Juniper, then me.  This morning, somehow, the gate to the stairway had been left open and before we knew it, you had disappeared.  I had a *feeling* and I ran to the stairway to find you, smiling gloriously, at the top.  Damn, you made my heart leap but you were so dang proud of yourself.  You are a climber.  Even before you could crawl, you were trying to climb up my ironing board.

For months now, you wave goodnight to Daddy and Juniper.  At the mere mention of "goodni..." you'll stick your fist out there, opening and closing your fingers with the sweetest grin and your tongue sticking out just so.  And tonight!  You gave your first bonafide kiss.  The real McCoy.  And guess who was the lucky recipient?  For the rest of your lives Juniper can say she was your first kiss.  

These days, you point to everything asking, Eh?  Your favorite objects are lights, fans and snow.

^Juniper had just flipped on the light to wake you up.  This is you, all sleepy and squinty-eyed saying, Eh?^

From the day you were born you've had this goofy head/ear/hair fetish.  It started with a disdain for hats.  Then, as soon as you were able, you'd pull at your ears and grab your hair while nursing.  Then, once you could sit up, you'd hold things up to your ears, or stretch things behind your head, or over your head.  And still today, you love to just randomly slap and grab your own head.  It makes us laugh.  Always.  We love you so.

^Seriously.  You do this to yourself all the time.^  

You are a snuggler.  

You love to play ball.

You can hang with the big kids.

You love Legos and other 3-year-old toys.  You want to be a part of everything.  

Your level of communication astounds me.  You sign "more" and, sometimes, "drink", but hyperventilating when I take a block of cheese out means you want some.  Rapid-fire kicking in your high chair means you like what we're eating.  Slouching in your chair means your less than impressed.  Kicking combined with back arching means you're done and you want out.  Or, you have to pee.

Generally, you prefer meat and fish over anything else.  You especially like salmon and moose.  And pomegranates.  You'll take flavor and spice over mild and bland.  You still only have two teeth.    

Besides an awkward, screechy, baby bird-like ma! ma!, you have two words.  Ba = bath and up = cup.  Two things you really love: taking a bath with big sis and drinking from a sippy cup, just like big sis.

Two weeks ago you turned one.  Oh, Hazel Iris, I love you so.  Happy birthday sweet Hazel-basil.  

P.S. Daddy says, "I want to eat you up."

no better place

How easily I get behind in the blogging world.  It makes me realize how full our lives are yet here I am, trying like hell to freeze water in a warm river.

:: Last year, Hazel was due on Thanksgiving day.  She came a few days early, but this year we celebrated her first birthday on the day of thanks, as we will every six years or so for the rest of her life.

:: For the harvest feast, we traveled north to share it with our Montana kin.  Thanksgiving at my sister-in-law's house includes: homegrown Indian corn, hand-ground into cornmeal the night before, baked into cornbread, dried into crumbs, made into stuffing, shoved inside a Hutterite turkey and baked for four hours.  Yes, we had a delicious, locally-grown harvest feast--made almost entirely by the hands of my sis.  

The kids ate first and I asked them each to say what they were thankful for.  Juniper said she was thankful for Owen.  Owen said he was thankful for Hazel.  Then Juniper said no, she was thankful for Hazel, then Sam said Hazel and they all started arguing until we pointed out that everyone could be thankful for Hazel.  In the end, we were all thankful for family.  Especially, of course, for Hazel Iris.  

 

I was in charge of the pumpkin pie, of which I had grand plans of baking individual birthday-cupcake-pumpkin-pies.  Normally, I make a mean, flaky pie crust but I doubled the batch and well...my crust was rock-hard.  We told the kids it was a bowl to hold the filling and whipped cream--they were none the wiser.  Hazel was exhausted by the time we sang to her and was far more interested in playing with whipped cream than eating anything.  Who could blame her?  

:: We spent a long, leisurely weekend up north.  There was a little elk hunting, a little fishing, a little playing in the kid's gym, we lunched with old friends on the way up, dined with new friends while there, and--my personal favorite--brunch at the hot springs followed by a snow-sprinkled soak.  Ah, one of my favorite places to take photos.  Nary a winter goes by without a trip to these springs.  (Proof?  Click here, here and here.)    

:: On the drive home, I finished Hazel Iris' birthday sweater.  (What do non-knitters do in the car, anyway?)       

:: Happy Birthday sweet girl (oooh, I've got a letter coming for you).  

My oh my.  There is no better place to be than with family.