Peek!

this too

This too is October: moonlight and shadows, leaves on fire, spiders everywhere I go.  The one that made me smile most:  the wolf spider that crawled out from under the Halloween display at Lowe's while I walked through the store carrying a pumpkin and  a sleeping nursing baby.  Because yes, Flora and I went out, and even better, we went out with Glen.  Helpful husband = happy Mama.  I came home with houndstooth flannel, pink corduroys, yellow silk, and a giantly cowled and thus ribbed wool/angora blend, and cashmere--red cabled, gray, and moss green.  And a pair of boots, but they were in Rachel's size, so she's going to wear them for me.

We are making a tribe of ourselves, I think.  Days together, playing, eating, cleaning, nursing, reading.  Her companionship is valuable.  Ursula thinks so, too.   Is Rachel coming back soon?  Is Solomon sleeping?  Mama, I want to go to Rachel's house and play with her toys.  The careful lilt of her "l" in play, clothes, Flora nearly breaks my heart, as do her easy and ready I'm sorry and Thank you.  She is on the threshold of girlhood, and she seems to have her mama's resistance to transitions.  I would like this one to be easier for both of us.   

One thing we all do seem to enjoy together is sewing (cutting, pinning, needling) woolies.  I had imagined myself able to "set up shop" at this weekend's Sophronia Trading Post, but that might mean showing up with a sign, some cards, and a very few things to sell. Because, for example, here I am typing away instead of over there sewing away.  How Wonder Woman mangages to refinish an entire dresser -- start to finish -- escapes me.  Has she refined it all to an efficient science?  Are her children wildly capable and self-managing? Has her devotion to creativity and gratitude helped her train them to be that way?  I keep imagining so and then blaming myself for not being able to model the same devotion. Baby steps, right?  Baby booties for baby steps. And to be honest, I want to outfit my own children first.  And me.  And our house. And our friends and relations and their houses too.  Potholder, anyone?

Letting go of that compulsion allows more space for the other fun ahead:  the SSSBWs arrive Friday, Melissa and the Folklife Festival Saturday (anyone need iron hooks, a Boyd bowl, a sharp little sawblade knife? Sorghum molasses from a mule-turned operation?  Blackpot chicken, funnel cakes, fried apple pies? All handmade in the nearby Appalachians or on site by people who learned the craft from their people before them), another cider press gathering in Floyd. Insha'allah.

I love October, sunrise to moonlight.

I want to be this tree, to look at it so hard and love it so much that I disappear into it ... become the flame.

two days ago

October is good to me.

Today: Asa and Glen in a neighbor's woods, me at home with two sleeping girls. All of us playing with wool: me sewing (baby hats! sweaters for littles! potholders! scarves!), Asa finger-knitting, Ursula cutting and needling, Flora tangling. Granola cooling on the stovetop. Diapers drying in the cool hush of wind from the valley . A freshly painted bathroom that means another layer of making this place our own. Menaseh's Dream.

Thinking about Persephone, off to hell for her yearly report (thanks to Vyktoria for that phrase). Brushing cobwebs out of her way, turning at the sound of skittering behind her, following shadows that disappear around corners. Ideas for paintings and stories and other makings pop in and out.

The veil grows thin as the old gives way to make room for the new. We're coming up on a new earth year, a cross-quarter day, halfway between the equinox and the solstice. It feels like I'm wiping dust from the mirror, and looking, looking, looking. Past the reflection and into ... I don't know yet. But it's comforting, familiar, somehow a return.

I am intrigued by how it all fits together, when it does. And so very frustrated when the pieces just don't line up. I am in quiet awe of homeopathy, which has made the difference this time. I want to trust it, this new alignment of spirit and self. Having crazy in the family makes it hard, knowing all the clinical stuff and how different things can look from the inside and the out.

I want this part of me back, though, no matter what it looks like from the outside. The magical. The mythical. The sublime and the beautiful. The holy and mundane, the sacred and profane. It is all so much bigger than me, and when I remember that, and connect to it, life flows through me instead of around me.

And I still need to feed three children tomorrow, pay the mortgage, and can pears. If I'm lucky, Flora and I will have an easy time at the secondhand store, and I'll come home with pants that fit (corduroys! jeans! khakis!), shirts with sleeves that cover my wrists, and yummy woolly goodness. And if not, well, there's always next time, right?