The In-Between

We’re just coming off a nearly seven week stretch of continuous work days. Some of my “work” is just participation in school-related events, and some of those events are really wonderful occasions: the engagement of two former students (one a young woman who backpacked on the Long Trail with me for almost three weeks, and the other a young man who lived with us when we were dorm parents for a group of kids), the celebration for another former student who is beginning medical school, the annual fall musical, the boys’ soccer team playing in the state championship game. It’s all good stuff, and I love what I do, but when I add to this the actual work, whole months can go by without me stopping to notice, without getting any exercise, without any dinners with Sam that aren’t pressured by reading or grading that needs to get done. A whole seven weeks of Quinn have passed in a relative blur.

When so much time passes like that, I start to get run down, worried that I’m missing important things or wasting precious days. And then, when I’m out of practice being mindful, or I’m out of any potential routine of eating well and exercising, I worry that I’ll be so far gone from healthy that I won’t be able to ever get it back. I sit down to write and don’t have anything to say. I look in the mirror and don’t have anything to say. I stop sleeping.

But in the nearly two months since I last sat down to write, some wonderful things have happened. I went to my twentieth college reunion with my three best friends. We had a tiny little hotel room for two nights, with two tiny beds for the four of us, and we were happy and without complaint. When everyone arrived, we fell immediately into old patterns. Each set of former roommates gravitated automatically to sharing a bed. We laughed for hours, told and listened to stories, retraced some of our old steps: running a morning 5k together, climbing to the top of the fire escape that looks out over the lake, sitting at the bar, four in a row, at the brewery where we used to always go. I still live near our old stomping grounds, but for some reason I never go to the old places we went. College was a pretty magical time; it’s just not the same without them. 

Still, none of us would go back if we could. Life is too sweet right now, with all of us still living in the happy here and now--no divorces so far, no cancers yet, no teenage crises or traumas to endure. It’s all just stories of trying to keep it all afloat, stories of funny moments and the shared insanities of the little people in our lives. For now, it’s all just a looking forward to more brightness still to come.

Quinn has been wearing her coon skin cap a lot these days; often with Mardi Gras beads.

And there was a lot of brightness with Quinn in this past month and a half too. We've made continued progress treating each other kindly and dealing with the meltdowns--hers and our own. One tired morning, after barely getting out the door, Quinn called to us from her car seat. When she points, she uses her middle finger. She wagged that middle finger at us from the back seat and lectured us all the way to school: "Mom! Dad! I do not like those angry faces. I want you to work on making happy choices today, okay? I am so serious about this. Happy choices! OKAY?" By the time we arrived at her school, she insisted we needed to hug each other and make up, even though we had never been fighting. We're just spreading the love around it seems, around and around and..."Mom! That will make Dad so happy right now, okay? Go ahead...give him a hug." 

Quinn is also starting to take ownership of some "chores" around the house these days, like plugging in all the white lights when we come home to a dark house, setting the placemats and napkins on the table for dinner, crumpling paper to start a fire in the wood stove. She's in a "big girl" bed, with the front finally off of her crib, and she's quite proud of that. She went to see Shrek the musical with me at school, which she loved and still talks about, and she went trick-or-treating for the first time on Halloween (just to one house, my friend Meg's across from Quinn's school). Quinn chose her own Halloween costume of course--she wanted to be a butterfly--and she made suggestions for ours too: she thought I should be a "scary tiger mom," which I thought was ironic, and she wanted Sam to be "a scary princess," which I thought was, well, hilarious.

Quinn and Ansley were Meg's first trick or treaters in her new house.

This is the slightly more put together outfit Quinn wore for her school Halloween Party.

These are the things I need to remember when the malaise of early November starts to set in. After the leaves have fallen, and the cold has settled, and the clocks have been turned back to add more darkness, I have to carry the bright spots with me as I enter the nebulous transition to winter. It is undefined time, a place I’m not good at being, and if I'm not careful I can lose track of myself in these grey days.

Driving home from a friend’s the other night, after a much needed break, a gigantic owl dipped down in front of my windshield and glided in front of me over the dark dirt road. I hadn’t seen one in a long time. At four o’clock this morning, I woke suddenly to the yip and howl of a coyote in my back woods. I haven’t been able to write anything in weeks, but peering out into darkness, the coyote in one ear, Quinn’s sleeping breath nearby in the other, I wanted to open my computer right then. Finally, I thought, I feel awake.

At six o’clock I came downstairs to let the dogs out and was happily surprised to be greeted by winter--three fresh inches of beautiful white snow. I watched the first spot of light begin to grow on the clouds over the ridge. Quinn padded quietly down the stairs. 

“Hi, Mama.” 
“Good morning, sweet pea.”
“Wanna know how many times I love you?”
“I do.”
“I love you like crazy…”

The syntax is whacky, but that’s the beauty of it, of course. 

“Mom? Wanna look at the mountain with me?”
“I do.”
“What colors do you like best?”

All of them, thanks to you Quinn; I like all of them.