Bug Bites and Bandaids

Boise, Bruneau Dunes, ID

Boise. We had set out to visit this city wondering if it may be a possible place for us to settle down, a new home amongst the rolling hills bathed in sunshine year round with a small city feel. While we enjoyed the city, played in its fountain and walked it’s nearly empty streets, we aren’t quite ready to pack it all into a Uhaul and set out. It tried to woo us and was almost successful. It spoke of peace and a life well lived, or maybe easily lived. Affordable, serene and beautiful it would be a wonderful home base. But something stood in our way of our hearts grabbing hold and desiring this city, which is unfortunate as I really wanted to fall in love with Boise. Not sure if we have gotten so used to the neroutic rush of a larger city like Seattle or just hadn’t quite found ‘it’ we left the place like one leaves a person they truly desire to fall in love with, but just can’t commit to. It’s the nice guy, the nice city finishing a little on the last. The one who could give you it all, but doesn’t have the excitement of the one that drives you a little mad.

At some point we realized that the little guy had gotten some serious bug bites at the last campground. We thought maybe we had come down with a case of fleas in our tent. Poor guy is not used to bug bites, he’s had a life well lived outside of places filled with mosquitos and biting bugs, so encountered with such bites he’s going a bit crazy itching them. To him they itch so bad they hurt and so the obvious answer is a bandaid. How many bandaids can one 4 year old go through in the course of 24 hours? I think we’re somewhere around 20 right now. But that’s better than the alternative of him itching until he bleeds. Either way, we were amused watching him try to itch his back against the screen on the tent, almost like how he dances.

We camped southeast of Boise at a state park called Bruneau Dunes. It has a view of the largest North American single sand dune. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it was breathtaking, but it had an inviting curiosity to it that led to many dune jokes. The campground was simple and mostly empty so we settled in and played a bit of baseball. I started reading the first book on my summer reading list, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard. She writes with a poetic prose that most writers, including myself, can only hope to someday produce. It’s beautiful encounter with nature and life, much like a Thoreau written by a female soul. The details of what she encounters and the way in which she sets that against the everyday life and dilemma of human beings spoke to my soul and put into words what I often wish I could see and describe in this world. If you have a chance to pick up a copy I highly recommend it.

The truly wonderful family event for the night were the showers we all got. After 3 days of not showering and traveling in the heat we were all ready to rinse off and it felt great. I love a nice shower after a few days of not showering, rinsing off all the accumulated grime and the fresh feeling left afterwards is one of the most mood revitalizing elements of living in the great outdoors.

Moving on this morning we’re driving east toward the Tetons! A place neither Nate nor I have yet gone. We can see the snow topped mountains in the distance teasing us as we know they are farther than they look. It will be another long day of driving, rewarded with an amazing place and a couple days of being in the same site.

Warm Air, Grasshoppers and Kites

Farewell Bend State Park

We began day one packing our car, finishing cleaning up the apartment, and a final storage run. This started around 5ish, following a practice campout in our living room, so by 9:30 we were on our way, a long day of driving ahead. We had planned for this with numerous books, games, and cds. I have to say I think our kids were born travelers. They consistently amaze me when we are going places with such different attitudes. Loving to be out and about, seeing new places and having new experiences I am glad they have accepted my non-homebound way of life. Very rarely do I enjoy sitting at home all day whiling away the hours with housework, or caring for the kids. We’ve always lived in rather small homes, that along with the fact that we rent leaves us with little capability to really create a home that has the space I need to enjoy creating the projects and art that would otherwise keep me at home. Space is an amazing thing. As humans we crave it, but we also long for the closeness of neighbors and friends. We live in a paradox of defending our personal space while tiptoeing around that of others. As we left the crowded, by man and trees, space of Seattle and drove toward the wide open spaces of the West I felt all the tense muscles in my body relax. I had not even realized how tense I had become. Shoved into a car with the kids and the husband pushed that space boundary and as the sky opened up to sunshine we entered Big Sky country where even the crowding of the car didn’t bother me. Living most of the year surrounded by gray clouds, I forget how much blue sky this world has and what it feels like to see to the end of the horizon, to where the world drops off to the unknown. And I love it. I am a big sky girl, I need these wide open spaces.

So we stepped out of the car and found ourselves wrapped in a blanket of air warmed by the sun. We found summer. For those of you missing summer, where summer has not yet arrived (you know who you are) I am sorry to say that it is phenomenal. And I hope it comes to you soon. Content to sit in a small grass patch by the gas station just to soak in the warmth, my bones got warm, my blood is a couple degrees warmer, and my skin soaked in the heat. It’s like a free sauna at a spa, only filled with bright light. We stopped often for the kids and for ourselves to enjoy the day. Yes, we had a couple 4 year old meltdowns. Leaving house and home, he was disappointed to realize that it would in fact take us 7 days to get to the grandmas and grandpas. So after 8 ½ hours of the road, we were ready to arrive at our campground. We had chosen a campground about 1 ½ hours west of Boise. Farewell Bend State Park looked good on the map and even better in person. Situated on a reservoir surrounded by dry rolling hills we found an open site overlooking the water. We set up camp, got some food in our road weary bodies and reveled in the beauty surrounding us. Nate got out the kite and we spent the rest of the night flying the kite over the hill. It was almost to good to be true, except that it was true. Our souls rested, revived and listened to the slow melody played out in the sunset and moon rising before us. I dare say, this was a shalom moment when time stood still stars peeked out and all else faded away. Sometimes I fall into thinking I can find these moments in things or in feeling good about my home or financially secure, but I was just proven wrong. Again. It may take a lifetime to learn that lesson, but along the way I will take any such moment with pure gratefulness. This moment faded all to quickly as we attempted to put two exhausted children to bed in a one room tent. Then the real work began. With the crickets singing us to sleep we had many opportunities to listen to their song throughout the night. We’ll just say the coffee pot was the first thing out of the food bin this morning. But we’re hoping that they will soon adjust and we’ll all get some sleep.

Following another kite flying session and breakfast we packed up the car again and are headed to Boise. Our 4 year old is currently testing how long he can yell our names before we respond. We’ve chosen to not respond until the yelling stops and so we’re all still learning and exploring how to live in the paradox of space with the confines of a small SUV.

Did I mention that we chased and caught grasshoppers? It’s amazing to watch the little guy run with few boundaries and explore nature with some freedom. There isn’t much of that for kids in the city, so I am looking forward to lengthening the proverbial leash. It took me back to my childhood, to days spent in the grass looking at bugs, and evenings running around catching fireflies. Maybe he’ll turn out to be a wide open space kind of person too, maybe we deep down we all have that spot in our heart for endless space to run and nothing blocking our view of what lies ahead.

Flashbacks

When we first moved here, we came as a couple in a little Ford Taurus with our bikes and stuff piled on top. We leave for our first driving trip back as a family of 4 in a SUV with our stuff still piled on top. Time passes and amazing things change...people change, lives evolve, and suddenly you're 30 living life caring for 2 little beings and running a home. I still feel like a 17 year old most of the time, emotionally, definitely not energy-wise. And spiritually I often feel a bit like a toddler. But who says life has to move in a straight line? We grow up thinking we'll get married, buy a house, have a garden and a dog, then some kids along the way. Everyone will be healthy, we'll watch them grow and learn and become their own people, until they move out and start the cycle over again.

Well, in the past 7 years that little picture of mine and my husband's has been severely rocked. It took us 7 years to get a 3 year degree, an unexpected pregnancy, a difficult health situation when the baby was born, and it goes on. This past Monday, our little fighter had his official last day of physical therapy. I found myself in tears as our dear friend left for the final time. She has been the greatest gift to our family, full of wisdom and advice in a time when all felt unsure. We lived among the questions of development, we fought despair, and we hoped for the best, always trying (sometimes failing miserably) to remember that there were more desperate situations going on in the world. But when it is your little one you are hoping for, it often feels like that is the only world you can see. So PT brought us perspective. She told me stories of what other amazing moms are doing each day, bringing up children with severe special needs, dealing with constant illnesses and hospitalizations. My heart and world were enlarged by her willingness to share. And we made it, we graduated physical therapy. Hooray! What a way to start this adventure of life all over again. It reminds me of the jubilee year that the Isrealites follow in the Bible. Every 7 years debts are forgiven and all is released to begin anew, a start over button. And this is our 7th year, we get our start over button AND we get to keep the two great kids, the degree, and the wonderful community we've found along the way. But what strikes me the most is that I get the feeling that the next 7 years will be less about us and more about digging into the areas we've already come into contact with. I find myself desiring to find a way to stand alongside those moms who are working so hard each day to keep hope alive. I may not be completely free from worrying about the little guy, it's habit forming, but I feel released from worry, I just have to quit it out. That leaves so much open space to think about how to serve other people.

And so here we go, another adventure, another chance to broaden our minds and worlds. While we are fortunate enough to choose to leave a home and be transient for a bit, going from place to place, subject to the whims of Mother Nature, others don't have the choice. There are families living in the wide world, moving constantly, searching for the next spot of rest. Our intentions were never to mimic this life or to delve into it, I can't help but think that we may encounter a small bit of the stress that a transient life can reek on a family. We've already seen our 4 year old take the stress to a whole new level, more tantrums, more clingy behavior. Kids feel the uncertainty of not having a home, they can't look forward to what's coming next or plan ahead to handle the onslaught of emotions. So our job as parents is to plan for that, to empathize, and to love hard. My new phrase for them has been 'home is with us, when we are together, it's not a place, or our stuff, it's our family'. Tomorrow we leave, and we will be challenged in this. I'm looking forward to it, to building memories and a foundation for raising our children amidst and in spite of adversity.

I guess this is my social justice blog. Sometimes empathy comes as we choose to enter situations, sometimes it hits us smack in the forehead throwing us for a loop we never expected, but were glad we encountered. May our loops of the last 7 years not go unnoticed in our hearts, may our jubilee release us into finding jubilee for others, and may our hearts expand into the wide open spaces.

The Last...

We've been busy this week with the first of the lasts. We had the last day of preschool and now the last of the packing and furniture to be finished. This is officially our last week in this apartment, and to be honest I am so happy about that. Sure, there will be a tear or two as we pull away next Saturday, but I wouldn't have much heart to not feel emotional about stepping away from what our four year old considers home into a wide abyss of blankness.

We'll clean up our stains and paint over any nicks we left so that the next family to live here won't even know we existed. There's something very transient about life that I like to remember from time to time. Being reminded that our stories belong to us and beyond those our children remember that's as far as many of our life stories will travel. It's sad to my ego, to the part of me that wants so badly to be known as somebody great and remembered for all of time, but the rest of me knows it is as it should be. Very few lives travel beyond the circle of their own family and community, and if we all tried as hard as we wanted to make our names known there would be very little actual community or family left.

For now, my husband and I carry the memories for our children. We have their stories locked in our hearts and someday we will share them with the kids. All the 'I will never forgets' and the 'I can't believes' mix with in us to create the piece of earth and space that is us. And so to us, their names have been made known. They are the fiery, ardent, gift of God and the hopeful, generous lioness of God. In these days of lasts, we remember how those names have played out already in their short lives. The spot where the first puzzles were put together and the tenacity that took for such a young mind. Places where arguments were held are the same spots forgiveness was given and laughter rang out. The room where an impatient fetus burst forward to life and roared her first breath. The carpeting that may have not endured 4 lives so valiantly and ferociously lived.

We lived here. And we lived well. We did not live perfectly, but we lived fully and within this space we were created and molded. As we move on the lasts become new firsts and new firsts become more stories to be remembered and told and within it all, within the ever changing movement of life we will remember each other here. I am grateful for this, that a space was provided for us to live this life and that although that space is no longer home it is not the last of us, only a place from which to move forward.

Muddy Fun

Each week I take Tuesday night to get out of the house and reconnect with the side of myself that loves to play competitive sports. You may never know it by looking at me, or even by talking to me, but I love to play a competitive sport once in a while. A couple years ago I joined an outdoor volleyball team with the city league. A good solid team, good enough to win our share, but not so good that I feel like I am the worst player. Well, two years later, two pregnancies, one baby, and my body is not in the shape it once was. But they graciously put up with me again this season. I am learning so much from them and getting better!

Last week we played in the rain. Tonight we played in the mud. There's something about a bunch of adults squishing around in mud up to their ankles that makes me giggle like a school girl. It started out with us all tiptoeing around the puddles, saying we weren't about to dive in the mud that smelled a bit like cows, and only daring to touch the ball with our fingertips. By nights end, our shirts were smeared, our arms were tinted a muddy color, and our ankles had splatters of mud sprayed up and down them. And we were smiling. It wasn't our best night of volleyball, but it was the most fun I've had in a long time.

There's something to me about being in the dirt that brings out my truest self. It's a part of me that gets pushed aside by the to-do list. The piece of myself that that drowns in chores. But tonight reminded me of a core essential to my being, I love hard, dirty work. I'm not talking about organizing a coat closet, or scrubbing a baseboard. What I have come to find is that my fondest memories in life revolve around play (laughter) and working alongside someone in the great outdoors. In my core being I love to work, to laugh, and to sweat with other people; to build, to get dirty, and to accomplish something very concrete. In our common labor I have found myself closer to strangers than I often come to people I have lived beside my whole life. To reach outside of my own situation, to go beyond my comfort zone and stop tiptoeing around what needs to get done brings me to a point where I can accept that life is muddy. There aren't clean edges, there isn't a antibacterial wipe to save us from all danger. And so often I need to stop living that way and start digging into the mud to uncover the joy that can still be found.

The mud was fun. And tonight I regained a part of myself that has been sleeping away in my clean little life. I feel renewed, ready to find the next patch of mud to play and work in. I wonder what those places are for you, the parts that get ignored in everyday life, that disappear by expectation or busy-ness. The parts you'd like to reconnect with...you don't have to share it with me, but share it with someone important to you. And maybe we can all start to search life out together, making the circle of joy larger. Combining work and vocation, piecing together passion and practicality. Being a small contingent of 'can do' in a world that works so hard to teach us we can't. I hope you find your mud. And I hope that my mud is a lasting reminder of what my heart delights in, and not just the pain of extra laundry.

Sunshine

Sunshine. It's happiness all bottled up and delivered to us. Our skin drinks it in, our souls recharge, and our moods improve. It's gotten a bad rap in the past few years, but I dare say that it can transform a person in one mere afternoon. I've lived in a basement the past 18 months, which feels a little like living in a cave. Sure, we have a whole wall of windows at the front of the cave home, but the rest of it is pretty dark, even on the nicest of days. Winter in a home like this leaves me moody, a bit depressed, and deeply cranky. So when the sun peaks its beautiful face out into the NW gloom of spring, I head outside for the day. I like to pack up the kids, the outdoor fun (we like frisbees and baseball), and spend the time soaking in some happiness.

I grew up in the Midwest which is known for its icy winters and hot, humid summers, but the one constant that I always loved was the sunshine. As a child I would play in the snow all day while the sun warmed my face and come summer time I spent my days riding bike or swimming while the hot sun browned my skin. I miss that constant here in Seattle. The sunshine is so unpredictable, it sort of teases you with one nice day only to go into hiding for the next seven. Then it bursts out in full glory, everyone dons a bathing suit for a week quickly followed by a week back in a raincoat.

Today was one of the glory days. A day that is breathtaking. The sun and air were warm, filling our cold, damp city with a little piece of gold. I was happy. My kids were happy. I won't go as far as to say there were shiny happy people singing songs...but it was close. As we sat in the sun playing and relaxing I was hit with a sense of gratefulness for the simple beauty of life. A life spent with family, getting to know each other, learning to love well, and hoping. Always hoping that life will someday be this good for my kids, even if that just means they will be able to spend some time wiling away the day in the sunshine.

So while we continuously look forward to the adventure in a few weeks, one thing I really look forward to is recharging my internal solar panel of happiness to get me through another winter. I hope the sunshine will find us all and may we revel in its beauty, gulping it in for winter will quickly come. As in life, darkness is always looming and while we would like to live without it, we cannot. And we cannot survive it without the light. So I leave you with this Irish blessing, and a hope for a transformative summer.

May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rain fall softly on your fields.

And until we meet again, May God hold you in the hollow of his hand