In the moment

My thoughts tend toward the patchyness of the snow on the lawn, the patches of ice along the edge of the road, waiting to grab my tires when I move aaaaall the way over for a car taking up 53% of the road, toward friendships that seem less than solid, but prove to have the unbelievable strength of a guatamalan hammock. I find myself waking up at 1:48am to march downstairs, turn off our computer. The interesting part is that none of this brings me actual pleasure - but I live in the moment. There is no ease in living in the moment, many moments of my day. I find tremendous pleasure in looking back upon the mountain of laundry that is now clean and folded and packed into 3 large hip-hugger baskets. I look forward to Rebecca's piano recital, and to skiing this weekend (assuming it warms up a few degrees). I think about large drifts of snow, that wonderous crunch underfoot walking the dog under stars that are just the exact same size as the snowflakes landing upon my glasses lense. But picking up the turds that he drops? The endless messes that I am not only on my hands and knees laboring over, but the ones I can satisfactorily think back upon, or grieve over, and those that I can hear occurring in a room I can't be in while I rock rhythmically, eyes closed, thinking my own personal thoughts, until I remember I'm slopping up honey nut cheerios into the dustpan. Living in the moment is often difficult.

Late in the afternoon, things seem to come to a head. The girl is home from school, the boy is awake from his nap. She is often tired and hungry and has no interest in homework or anything requiring her to plant herself anywhere for more than 4 minutes at a time. He is often grumpy and hungry and has no interest in anything that might require him to plant himself by himself for more than 4 minutes at a time. Therefore, I rarely get 4 minutes to myself between 4 and 8pm. Unless I have someplace to be; meeting, perhaps. Or a class that I can't take because there is no guarantee that I will make it to the next meeting. My increasing commitments to guiding, to the co-op, and to myself make this not impossible, but difficult. However, occasionally I can slip away from him, and from her, for a few hours. And in that time, I do enjoy the minutes, the moments, and the minutae of being me in a time, and a place, that also has him, and her, and them. It makes me feel glad to be, glad to have my own body, satisfied that my being me is of benefit to someone, right now.

Jerry has morning bus duty. I make the lunch the night before (usually), and leave it in the fridge. I sneak off into O's room early, when he wakes - usually sometime between 4 and 6am. I close the door quietly, and later, at just before 7am, I can hear the heavy tred of my sweet and very hard working partner clomp down the hallway and down each of the 13 stairs to the main floor. There he will wash the dishes left over from the night before, bang some pots, slam some cabinets, clink some glassware. He also makes some oatmeal, hot and delicious, loads it up with organic sugar and milk, and he and she (who has tred almost silently down the hall after pretending to brush her teeth and neglecting to wash her face) will sit together in that early morning moment and pass father - daughter secrets. The moment passes quickly, a few minutes at most, and then the yellow metal of every child's dreams, or nightmares, rolls up with lights flashing, and out she flies, from the mouth of our garage, down the glissade of the driveway and into the mawl of the bus and into her own moments that are separate forever from ours. We miss her every minute, until she is home, when we don't miss her, we are simply with her.

This laptop is runing out of juice, and though I am enjoying this moment, it's late and time for the moment to move into the bed.

Mood: thoughtful.