Day by day

Posted on | May 21, 2007 |

Saturday: It hit me in the middle of the night, up again, one more time, because of the small inconsolable wailing and flailing of a sharp elbow having, night terror dreaming, teething Bean, that I was officially one step away from going insane.

I told DH as much, in a whimpering whisper, having already burst into tears at least once between the time I got home and the time I went to bed, and the next morning he let me sleep in. Until 10:40. When I woke up on my own accord, stretched a leisurely stretch, and basked in a hot shower.

At 7:30 he took Bean and went to breakfast and Home Depot and to the coffee shop for freshly roasted beans and the market for a list items we’d run out of, and he left me with the entire bed to myself, with all the covers and the pillows are fluffed just so and the slatted shades drawn so the room stayed wrapped in yummy semi dark but the window was open to let the sweet fragrance of spring waft in.

I was beaming all day.

Sunday: Some people probably (no, definitely) will think I am strange because I derive a great amount of joy from doing yardwork… But I really do. I’m always happy when I have the weedwacker in my hand, it’s loud whine drowning out any stray thoughts, so that I am simply there in the moment, watching the grass and leaves fall in swathes. I spent the morning doing this in the lower meadow, cutting a huge square where we plan to till for a garden, while above me, on the lawn, DH circled back and forth with the mower, Bean perched on his shoulders. Watching them together like that always makes me burst into smiles. Bean clutching two handfuls of DH’s summer-curly hair, both of them grinning wide as they make the turn nearest me, waving.

Then we started on the chicken coop, which, after several debates (not all were pretty, either) we concluded would best be made not in a new structure, but in our existing “barn” shed that once housed a horse before we came to own it. The floor is entirely being reclaimed by nature, but the walls are stick-built and sturdy (ha! knock on wood!) and the roof seems to still work in spite of the moss growing there (or perhaps because of it.) We spent several hours cleaning out all the left-over planks of flooring we’d tossed there hurriedly last spring around this time, when we were frantic to be finished with flooring and could not yet fathom living here.

It seems like it’s been such a long, long time since that time of nailing floor boards and longing, our days painted with worry and exhaustion. Here we are, a year later, and I’ve planted rose bushes along the front of the house and scattered native wildflower seeds down the bank and found purple trillium growing along the old stone wall at the edge of our land. A year, and everything is different.

Bean spent the evening zipping around the wide expanse of our kitchen and livingroom floor on his bike. A few weeks after we bought it, he can now steer and pedal like nobody’s business. He’s getting reckless in that little boy way: looking over at us and grinning while he steers in entirely the opposite direction. He rarely falls. It will be a different story on the packed dirt of our road, but inside, where the floor is smooth and the way unobstructed, there’s no stopping him.

Monday: Before 7 and the sky is gray and I’m huddled in my bathrobe smelling the heady scent of lilacs that my sister picked and brought to me before she left (I miss you!) and listening to the birds calling back and forth. We have a pair of Orioles. Bright orange and black brushstrokes fluttering across the canvass of green woods. The first time I saw them, I held my breath.

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