Now and again
Posted on | April 4, 2007 |
On the windowsill in a tall glass vase, the leggy branches I cut from the forsythia and the lilac bushes a week ago have exploded into a riot of delicate yellow blossoms and green leaves; stamens licking the warm indoor air, waiting for kiss of the honey bee that won’t arrive. Instead, the cat rubs up against the branches, her coat dappled with evening sunlight.
DH is practicing guitar, and the melody circles me. It lilts and flutters, like birds lifting off high wires in unison to wing the peripheries of the field before alighting again. He’s gotten good, recently, under the instruction of a teacher for the first time in his life, and I like the way his practice has become the soundtrack for my thoughts; the way words weave gradually, to the rhythm of his song.
Last night we lay, chest to belly on the couch and talked about my worries and our dreams. I say my worries, because they are mine mostly. I’m somehow prone to lurching into worry anytime there isn’t an enchanting or certain goal in front of me. I’m the kind of girl who needs to be able to lie on the top of a grassy knoll, arms akimbo, looking up at the dark bowl of twirling stars, and have the flashlight and the star charts and the information guides about every single constellation.
I’m the girl who disembarked from the airplane at the tiny Puerto Rico airport without any plans for lodging, or transportation, or even a destination in mind. But I was also the one who had read Lonely Planet cover to cover, and dog-eared every back-door eatery and local beach and the place to get the best chorros. I wandered for days, no—weeks—through Florence, Italy, without any plans or specific sightseeing goals, and yet, I had the background info on every statue, fountain, cathedral, piece of art and small gelato joint I encountered. I can’t help it.
So when it comes to our life: mine and his and ours together with our two-year-old gorgeous little tow-headed Beansprout, I get listless and unmoored when we don’t talk about plans or have any long range goals on the table. I need things like rosebushes, which have always spoken the eloquent language of staying put to me, and I need things like raised garden beds, and bonfires, and dinner parties and blueprints for building a barn and a studio. So when we don’t talk about these things enough, or when we don’t talk about them at all for months on end, I become frantic and anxious and uncertain. Then I start inadvertently unraveling all the exquisitely beautiful bits of fabric that make up the patchwork quilt of the life we have together.
Wanderlust bites me, and spreads across the map of my body like a blueblack bruise of longing. I quaver, reading paragraphs about Trinidad or the Solomon Islands or Morocco, and want suddenly and fiercely to upend everything and just be off. I feel shaky in the everyday bushel basket of my life, as though with the least little jostle I’m apt to send all the fruit tumbling out, comparing myself first to one single friend and then to another set of friends, new lovebirds, who are still starry eyed virgins when it comes to living in the thick of love and family. I start checking the emergency exits and scribbling escape plans on bakery napkins while eating bagels with the two amazing guys who fill my days with their huge long-lashed eyes and easy grins.
I forget that right here, where we are, is a hard-won sweetness. I forget how much we have here : this house, with its hundred-year-old barn timbers and it’s expanse of soapstone counters and farmers sink and honey colored floors, is something we’ve only just acquired, with our bare hands and much love, and ounce after ounce of determination. I forget that this boy of ours, who stopped me the other day as I knelt in front of him on the kitchen floor, and said, “I like your earrings mama, they’re pretty,” as he fingered each abalone disk, is someone we’ve known for just two short years. I forget how when we’re right, we’re right like the taste of a ripe summer peach.
I forget how our love stretches out on either side of us like the guy-wires that keep bridges and steeples and trapeze artist’s hoops aloft. I forget how it has lasted, and I forget how it keeps guiding our lives back to safety and solace, or at least back to our bedroom where we make love in a hot furry of kisses. I forget that it’s been almost eight years of knowing this man, of loving him, of laughing with him, and sometimes because I forget, I toss myself at odds against what we have made together. Then I fleck the pages of my days with tears and worry; I lie restless at night, I overanalyze and over-calculate and grow easily fragile and frantic like a bevy of startled quail.
So last night, belly to chest, listening to the sound of his heart beating and feeling the warmth of his skin rising up through the cotton of his shirt, we talked about our plans and our love. How for once, for the love of god, will I just settle down for a while and quit inadvertently sabotaging the entire thing because I need everything mapped out and planned to the nth degree before I can just let go and wing it?
He laughed when I kept telling him how I need him to remind me over and over again of what it is we want, here, now.
“Because I forget,” I said.
It’s true, I really do.
So he looked at me with his languid topaz colored eyes and told me again: We want to settle here for a few years, make a garden, keep chickens, gather a big circle of friends close, and become a small but certain cog in the wheel of our community.
Every fiber in my being hums in resonance. Yes, I want this. But also this: that after giving it a fighting chance, we can up and off into the wild blue yonder if that’s still what our fancy craves.
He’s game for that too, my big muscled Italian with his espresso habit and his guitar melodies. Game for living in Italy for a year, or exploring the beach towns of California or Hawaii. But for now, here, it’s almost spring and we have a garden to plan.
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25 Responses to “Now and again”
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April 4th, 2007 @ 9:41 pm
i loved this glimpse into your psyche, not that every other post isn’t, but especially this one. i’m on the verge of a big change, and there’s that in between space where I’m comparing what I have and what I want…except in my case the right choice is to switch gears…so I’m ready to go! I’m glad we’ll get to continue our peaking into your lovely, bucolic life for a little while longer…
April 4th, 2007 @ 11:02 pm
The beauty of your writing always leaves me wanting more. Just like a good book, I don’t want the entries to end. Thank you.
April 5th, 2007 @ 12:23 am
beautiful
and you can come explore this california beach town any time you want!
April 5th, 2007 @ 7:53 am
Beautifully written! I was much like you just a few years ago…always feeling like there was something else, something more I’d be happier doing, constantly questioning the current path.
I don’t know what happened, but it’s almost like one day I just woke up, looked around me, looked at my life and realized I was so happy it hurt. Yeah, I still want to travel, yeah, there are so many things I want to do and see and experience, but for the moment, I am perfectly happy with the now.
April 5th, 2007 @ 8:54 am
My experience has taught me that my soul does not lie somewhere hidden inside me, nor is it somewhere “out there.” Instead, I find my soul in the things of this world: the freshly-scrubbed blue tile countertop in my kitchen; the deep-green beveled edges of my lawn after it’s just been mown; the startlingly bare shoulder of woman smiling warmly at me; the heady sense of discovery while conjecturing about quantum mechanics; spreading a fresh coat of primer, then two good coats of paint across the sill of a 50-year-old window. When I stop paying attention to these things, I become restless, moody, ill-at-ease, dissatisfied for the very simple reason that my soul has become malnourished. My experience has been that my self’s reading of the state of my soul is never wrong, and — now — I never ignore it nor deny it for long. My truth is that my soul needs many things — sometimes, it seems, everything — and I forget that only at enormous peril to my self.
April 5th, 2007 @ 9:06 am
i love the way you think and the way you can record your thoughts. i wish i was so eloquent with words. i can’t wait to read your books one day.
tara
April 5th, 2007 @ 9:19 am
i’m in my own version of this space right now. the sentence you wrote which said, ‘Wanderlust bites me, and spreads across the map of my body like a blueblack bruise of longing.” gives a much needed voice to my own daily experience. Thank you for your beautiful writing, ideas, feelings and images.
April 5th, 2007 @ 11:03 am
beautiful post, sounds all to familiar to me!
April 5th, 2007 @ 11:04 am
OK. At work. Trying not to cry. I love this.
April 5th, 2007 @ 11:17 am
So fabulously cohesive and relatable.
My mom would describe your prepared/unprepared attitude about adventure as “belt and suspenders with no pants on”.
April 5th, 2007 @ 11:43 am
So beautiful the way you describe all the possibilites to experience in life. I know this feeling so well. Just when I feel happy with my home and how we are living, I get anxiety I haven’t seen or done enough and that I should be doing it now. I tell myself I will do them, I will. Maybe not now but somehow.
I cannot wait to read a book written by you. Your words are mesmerizing.
April 5th, 2007 @ 12:32 pm
This is why I need to constantly have projects planned to last me years. I have papers scattered in every room, taped on walls, with sketches and measurements and pictures of things I want to buy, paint color cards attached to these plans. Because if I don’t then I seem to forget why I am here to and I want to run away and start over again. It’s kind of hard to settle down after the chaos of moving a couple of times, isn’t it???
You have told me before that you wish I had a blog. I couldn’t possibly put my thoughts to words like you do. YOU are brilliant and I too cannot wait to read your book. What is the magazine that you published in??
April 5th, 2007 @ 1:04 pm
I so love how you tell your story.
April 5th, 2007 @ 3:14 pm
Every time you show us your heart, I just fall in love with you more and more! I love that you know this about yourself - it’s crucial. This piece was so full of wisdom and spilling over with spring light - now go plant that garden! And take lots of pictures! (I know you will.)
April 5th, 2007 @ 3:41 pm
amazingly beautiful words…
April 5th, 2007 @ 3:44 pm
a beautiful thing to read on this Thursday afternoon. We women are complicated. I need to know myself better…the way you know you. About the only place in this world that I’m not looking for greener pastures is in the arms of my husband.
April 5th, 2007 @ 4:00 pm
Christina, I’m so with you when you talk about having “those plan conversations” every once and a while — just as a check in, a reminder. They get me excited, but I also worry when they don’t happen naturally every few months, and I spin into those dark places you describe. I forget how good life is right here and now. We’re pretty lucky that we have men in our lives who are patient with our emotions and tend to take everything in stride.
And even though we got 8 inches of snow here on Wednesday, it is spring and time to plan a garden. How much better does it get?
April 5th, 2007 @ 5:08 pm
Wow. Wonderful. This is my first visit, but I’ll be back.
April 5th, 2007 @ 8:42 pm
Stunning story. Beautiful!
April 6th, 2007 @ 12:32 am
Truly beautiful!
April 6th, 2007 @ 4:33 am
Your writing is beautiful and so is your life.
I’m sure it will be filled with both secure at home coziness and many exotic travels to far off beaches.
April 7th, 2007 @ 12:22 am
This post brought tears to my eyes–so beautiful and so TRUE–this is what happens after the “happily ever after” of the wedding, the baby’s birth. This is the hard beauty of building a life.
April 12th, 2007 @ 3:28 pm
Yes, that’s it exactly. Thank you thank you thank you for saying it so well.
April 12th, 2007 @ 3:28 pm
Yes, that’s it exactly. Thank you thank you thank you for saying it so well.
April 16th, 2007 @ 9:48 pm
Completely understandable, where so many of us are in the spring time. It’s easy to find oneself searching the flight lists to see where the cheapest escape might be but also love the grounded reality of life. Take a small road trip, celebrate a new town for a weekend!