It's been a while since I posted and it all has to do with the garden (not entirely, I've also found that having a steady job cuts into my free time fairly severely, but it's nice to have an excuse). This is the time of year that my lovely rectangle of soil and weeds begins to whisper to me at all times, day and night. This was, I think the driest March on record which afforded us wonderful days of bike riding at the park, but fewer days of comfortable procrastination from the garden.

Severe winds back in January and February tore up all the landscape fabric I had worked so diligently to lay down after first scraping the ground below free of weeds. My goal last summer was to re-fence and decrease the weeds and Tom was so amazing at making the former happen. I wanted to reduce the weeds around the garden and create walkways that would make the entire garden more accessible and friendly. I worked so hard at getting the fabric laid down, even scouring Costco for one last roll of landscape fabric they swore was somewhere inside based on the computer inventory check. Ryan was having a pretty bad go of it with the cancer last summer, and I meticulously picked out every last bit of Johnson grass, each segment of evil replicating root, imagining the entire time I was picking out evil tumor after evil tumor from his body. It was incredibly theraputic (for me - and the garden). Of course this year, the evil f-ing bermuda grass is stealthily creeping in from the opposite side...

So, last weekend I set about to really get the fabric down and immovable. (I have dreams of pea gravel covering the pathways, more on that later.) Tom had a bunch of 10-20# rocks he was taking to store on a far corner of the property a few months ago and I had him drop them in the garden instead. So the fabric now has the staples and tacks in it, but also a pretty solid chunk of igneous material keeping it in place every few feet. Getting it to that state was pretty humorous. With a sigh, the weekend before last (the weekend before that spent at a "work party" for my friends Spencer and Sarah) Tom and I realized that summer was much closer than we'd hoped - it can swing a month or so either way every year, there have been Junes when we've been hunkered down next to the fireplace, dripping raincoats by the door, and Mays where we've watered the lawn. Not Aprils, to my memory - til now. So he fired up thow mower and the weedeater and I fired up myself and the kids for a day in the garden.

Firing up teh kids is an interesting thing. I want them involved in the garden, want them to love the dirt beneath their fingertips, joyous in finding a rip cucumber beneath a perfect green leaf, happy to don hats and boots and slide down the rows of vegetables eating carrots fresh from the dirt, exorcising weeds from the garden. But, what takes an hour with disinterested tv-watching kids kept at bay on the couch takes three times that long with dirty, healthy kids. Jordan adores worms. Roly-poly bugs, too, but worms most of all. Tom dug up an area of lawn near the back porch to landscape, and emptying out a wheelbarrow of pulled weeds, I discovered the soil was rich with worms. Jordan set about rescuing them from the backyard and carrying them to the garden. SHe of course needed help turning hte dirt, gaining the pateince to watch the earth move and discover the worms, find an appropriate worm-carrying bucket, and so on. Then Sawyer woke up from his nap and got in on the action. Forty minutes later I was back laying the fabric down and looked up after too quiet a period and realized the children were inside. And the buckets were, too - Sawyer having filled his with sand from teh sand box so eh could be like his big sister who had hers filled with worms and dirt. Sawyer had a few worms, too. One less than when he began as he'd held up two pieces and told me in his special little version of pidgin English "It bwoken, Mama." As I lay down my tools and headed toward the house, Jordan appeared on the porch yelling "Mama! Sawyer dumped his bucket out on the capet!" And indeed he had. Dumped it, then spread it around - no doubt choosing the carpet as his sister had coopted the table where she'd dumped out her bucket and spread around it's contents. And so began the no worms/dirt/buckets in the house rule.

After vacuuming, I situated them on the porch with a birdhouse painting activity, and got another thirty-five minutes or so in the garden until I noticed, once again, that the porch was empty. Sawyer was in hte bathroom and if he had only used red paint it would have looked like the scene of a horrific murder. As he used at leat fifteen colors of paint, it looked like the entire cast of The Muppet SHow had been systematically dismembered and chopped into pieces in the tiny room. And so on... We're excited to get to seeds. Outside. And I'm hoping the cool weather holds a few weeks more - Jordan is so warm all the time - she said it's what drove her indoors last weekend. Every morning she wakes up naked (she never lasts a faull night in jammies) and comes out to teh living room. all winter the house averages a cool 50-55 degrees first thing, and she is immune. I'm guessing it's due in large part to the 25% of her that is Icelandic. Because it sure didn't come from my side of the family. If it's cool, she'll stay out there for hours - Sawyer, too - and we need that time as this project has only just begun...

Mondays are my days off. Last Monday was my birthday and after a wonderful day of picnicing and hiking with friends, I got an hour or two of uninterrupted garden time before my wonderful family showed up in the pickup truck, bearing gifts! My favorite and most original was the half yard of pea gravel in the back of the truck. I'd mentioned to Tom that my ideal pathway material would be pea gravel, and he got me the trial half-yard (the max our pickup can handle). I love it! It'll take a good five to seven yeards to cover the rest of the garden which is a lot more loads in the truck, but it's worth it. Adios, weeds.

It was blazing hot this weekend and I didn't get out much to the garden as Saturday was given to a birthday party and another "work party" and Sunday was a "tax party" at a friend's after a mid-day massage I'd scheduled for a new client. Today I was back out there, weeding a bit more, clearing the weeds from a borrowed rototiller which reminded me of unwinding hair from a vacuum cleaner we loaned to our upstairs tenant. After putting the kids to bed, I went back out for the last few minutes of daylight and worked into darkness, a two-thirds moon offering enough light to identify border weeds that escaped the tiller but not illuminating any spiders or other pests, a lovely effect! It was windy and cooler today, and the dust that raking the weeds kicked up was disappointing, Grapes of Wrath in mind as the hills go slowly and much too early to brown around us. But it is blissful, being in the garden. I love working the soil, planting the seeds and waiting for the first green nibs to reach for the sun. I love that progress is evident week to week, that my children know how much hard work goes into each bite they take. Focusing on weed eradication (not making thigs grow) and growing very little last year was soemwhat painful for me. I grew a bunch of hot peppers, actually - mislabeled starts at the nursery yielded three or four lants of spicy jalapenos and such rather than sweet bells for the kids to enjoy, but they made for outstanding pico de gallo which we consumed by the half gallon every week.

I am so antsy to get my little seeds in the ground, the small yellow tips at the end of black irrigation tubing like a nursing mothers breast above them, everything in sync. Last summer when I got plantar fascitis I could work on my knees and be pain-free. Two summer before I was near bursting with Sawyer and loved being in the garden with Jordan although the raking and hoeing were not so good on my back. Claiming the garden when we moved in five years ago reminded me I had my space, empowered me in the huge decision to take on thirty years of debt - I wasn't buying just a house but also the land; earth from which I could plant and pull food for my family. We talk about the cost of putting in the garden every year and I am trying to get a system down to where it is cost-effective. We put money into fencing, landscape material, a compost bin. As weeds are less of a problem, the garden will be easier and easier to manage each year. I have read so many gardening books, know so much more than I did when we began, but am stunned by how much more there is to learn. But I love every moment of it, every blister, callous, every month of brown fingernails. I grow my spirit in the garden - the rest is pure gravy.

These hands

I don't like the title "masseuse." Even "massage therapist" is a little sketchy, and "bodyworker" is way too open a description. What I do is so far from the tawdry stuff that happens in massage parlors in Vegas and the seedier parts of big cities. We need a new job title. Or better yet, the sex workers do.

I love my job. I'm not sure what took me so long to come back to massage. I went to school for massage seven years ago, went straight to work in a spa in Colorado, which was the best thing I could have done while everything was still fresh from school. I really got to put into action everything I'd learned and get that great body-memory going, where I don't have to think about what I'm doing, the knowledge and ability are present in the body as well as the brain. On the way back from CO for river season, I got pregnant. River season happened, then baby season, and maddage was puched to the back burner. And there certainly has been a "before and after" mentality with having kids. But a lot of it is fading - in a great way. I'm re-owning parts of myself that were there before kids and I kind of forgot about. Like massage. Maybe I'm far enough away from having my body owned by babies to feel like I can access it's other skills. Running a marathon last summer was part of the journey back. As was acting again the year before. Now I've got massage again - not that I ever stopped, but I sure slowed down a lot, and for good reason. Having children has given me a deeper connection to my own body, and an even greater admiration for what the human body can accomplish (and how it can hurt, mend, heal, recover). Seeing bodies in miniature and watching them grow at rapid speed is a pretty great opportunity to remember all that anatomy as well.

The main benefactors of massage in the intervening years have been my parents - my mom and my stepfather anyway - and my siblings. That's been great, actually. Today for the first time I gave my dad and his wife massages. My dad isn't exactly a massage devotee. I'm pretty sure he was voted "tightest hamstrings in the world" for about 57 consecutive years. My younger sister went with him to his first ever massage about a year ago. Here's how she described it: "The massage therapist said he did great. After 45 minutes he actually even started to relax - a little." Getting him on the table took some coaching and then I just resorted to firmness as we do with the kids. "Get on the table, Dad." And it went pretty well. I can hear people saying 'eeeew, that's wierd." But it's not. My dad is a doctor. All my life he's been sticking flashlights down my throat and soemtimes even jumbo q-tips for throat cultures. (He called it "the stick." I'm going to have to start calling massage something, too: "the table." I need ideas.) If my dad wasn't a doctor and stuck q-tips down my throat anyway, you'd be right to think that was freaky. But this was pretty cool. He's been dealing with some spinal and nerve and muscle issues for a long time and we were really able to talk a lot about it, to make some progress. It was really very satisfying to be able to give my dad advice, to be going over anatomy with him and offer him options that might alleviate some of his pain.

It was great to work on his wife, too. Decadent, she called it. I really feel that massage is another way we have of communicating - like music. She is a musician and owns that as a wonderful gift to offer others. Massage is a form of communication as well - not only of massage therapist to recipient, but of that recipient to be in communication with his or her own body. We are often so cut off between our body and our mind and it's great to be able to bring that consciousness about.

I've been working mostly at a chiropractor's office - a wonderful chiropractor who has helped me immensely and whom I adore - he and his whole wonderful family. It's been a wonderful opportunity to get reacquainted with massage, and working with people actively seeking relief from a doctor affords me a wonderful oportunity to approach massage as a concrete way to make a marked difference for someone in that interaction.

In fact, with so many new people I'm working on these days, it's something of a decadence to work on my family. My mom and stepfather took all the kids and partners and grandkids to Mexico for a week to celebrate my mom's 70th birthday. It was an amazing trip. In Mexico I finally got to work a lot with my brother-in-law, Ryan. That Allison and Ryan could make it was amazing. He was in pretty rough shape the whole trip. Terminal cancer will do that. To be able to give some pleasure, to alleviate some pain was pretty great in a totally selfish way, for me. It's easy to feel useless on the face of something like this, to want to do something but to feel powerless. And I got to make him feel good, a bit. He even had that look of being blissed out after a great session that ended with a scalp and face massage. And it wasn't from the morphine! I gave my sister a massage (ok, I just checked and this is going ot sound so weird, but it's not!) while he was lying next to her in their bed. Pretty cool, just hanging out together, all of us chatting, but giving her some relief from the stress that hs permeated her life these last months (and years, really), and he being able to be present for it. Witnessing. It was really important for her that we were witness to what the cancer has done to him. and it alleviated her despair and loneliness in the face of it. But writing about this, it occurs to me that it was equally important for him to witness her experiencing pleasure and vice versa. Comfort. (Man, it's hard to write words associated with massage and not have them sound potentially sketchy. Sigh.)

I love working on my entire family, even my other brother-in-law who complained, but whose neck hurt so much he had to go under the hands for a bit. I have massged my mother-in-law, and that was a pretty amazing step in our relationship.

Another massage experience that has been really rewarding has been working with my friend Spencer. He's the biker daddy fighting multiple myeloma who is a good friend. Hidden bonuses of that have been great adult conversation with a friend, great music, adn the chance to actually help in a productive way. And his wife always thanks me for the sessions as well, says the next 24-48 hours are better for her as well. For me it's been pretty amazing to bear witness to how his body has changed in the weeks I've been working with him - this incredible deciline the first three weeks in diagnosis, and then this plateau in terms of physical decline, but a myriad of other changes as drugs to fight the cancer and fight the symptoms caused by the drugs to fight the cancer flood the healthy and unhealthy parts of the body and wreak their havok. It's good to bear witness to his physical fight as well.

I like this job. I don't say that a lot, unequivocally. There's usually a caveat, a "but" that reveals the negative. The thing I haven't liked about so many jobs - I think WHY i've had so many jobs, is the lack of feeling like I'm actually DOING anything. Executive search - some moments of job satisfaction but a lot of frustration. Marketing river trips? A lot of spinning wheels. Selling truck parts? Do the math. Acting - in plays and in the rare good film or tv experience I had - is very satisfying. Doing the crap stuff not at all. And I don't have time anymore for doing the crap stuff in anything. I like having a job where I get concrete positive results every day. I love that I facilitate people coming back into relationship with their physical being in a positive way, allowing them to experience positive feelings from their bodies I think helps us reclaim ownership of them - bearing witness to our own selves.

I am awed by Ryan and by Spencer and by what their bodies endure, and that they don't let it weaken their spirits but in fact strengthen them. I am grateful for the oportunity to let others reconnect with their bodies, grateful to feel of use in how I spend my time helping to support my family. I am proud to bear witness to all of the people I serve and humbled by their presence and belief. In "My Grandfather's Blessings", Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. writes ""Perhaps we can only truly serve those we are willing to touch, not only with our hands but with our hearts and even our souls. Professionalism has embedded in service a sense of difference, a certain distance. But on the deepest level, service is an experience of belonging, an experience of connection to others and to the world around us. It is this connection that gives us the power to bless the life in others. Without it, the life in them would not respond to us."

When I put suncscreen on my children I call it a massage. It becomes less something I am forcing on them and more of something we are doing together, soemthing that we enjoy simultaneously. When I am thanked for a massage by someone, my immediate reaction is always to thank them - genuinely. It is rare that someone believes that the experience benefitted me as well. But it does. Should I ever feel resentful of "having" to do a massage, I will know it is time to walk away from it. For now I am staying, firmly rooted in the joy.

While piling all our gym stuff into and out of the car the other day, I thought "We have enough stuff here for an arctic expedition." Then after a moment I had to amend the thought: no one would take THAT much stuff on an arctic expedition.

I am preparedness at it's best and worst. Out of my car we could likely survive a week stranded on a snowed in mountain road (though we wouldn't be stranded as I have chains), enjoy both a warm water and a cold water swim vacation, assist in multiple accident scenarios with our first aid kit (done that), and switch comfortably between three climate zones and engage in appropriate sporting activities in each.

Overkill maybe, but everything's in there because I've needed it at some point and either had it or didn't. There's a lot, mind you, that we don't need in there as well. I'm sure you have it, too, if you have kids: chopsticks, random crayons or markers, glitter, colored pipe cleaners, plastic knives (less helpful than spoons or forks which seem to magically morph into said knives), hair clips, dessicated baby carrots, stale pretzels, doll clothes (but no doll), fifty non-working pens and thirteen pencils with the tip broken off (and no sharpener). Less necessary, but infinitely more difficult to remove permanently from the car. I don't love the volume of this, the fact that every time the kids get into the car more stuff goes in and they always get out empty handed, but I like the preparedness of my car contents on the grander scale. Check this out.

My kids have watched while I assisted at a car wreck, latex gloves and first aid kit in hand. They have needed the helmets, the changes of clothes. They've been able to swim in the wetsuits without it being on the schedule, they've recently become addicted to the jumpropes. I've certainly never felt like I had one too many diapers in the car, and I have been glad that I've had the balls, the blankets, rackets, the hats, gloves, mittens, and the snacks (the fresh ones, not the dessicated carrots). I see it as readiness to embrace the possibilities that are so abundant in our lives.

The real reason, most likely, is that it keeps happy the little part of me that is and always has been ready and willing at any time to jump into the car and hit the open road. I even keep an old pair of running shoes, shorts and shirt ready should I forget my gym bag, or find unexpectedly an hour and a trail and two empty car seats.

Life is not only a highway or a road, for us it might well be a river, pool, park, field, court, snow hill or mountain trail. And we're ready to live it. We're also apparently just about due for a good car vacuum job as well.

As far as preparedness goes, I love that Sawyer sleeps with his tennis racquet, prepared for midnight dreams of tennis or racquetball matches in which he is suddenly not bound by the lack of coordination and vertical ability of being two, but rather floats effortlessly across the court, hitting each shot without losing any of his usual laughter.


I also love that we have friends who are prepared as well. Seth who packed a first aid kit in his kayak for a spur of the moment kayak trip with Tom on Weber Creek. I am grateful that he went with Tom, grateful that he patched him up so beautifully. I am glad that outside the confines of my car, our community is poised in preparedness. Tori came running the moment I called and asked if she'd mind putting on her nurse's cap. She wasn't prepared with the saline solution she needed to clean Tom's wound, so she went home and got it and came back with Marek and Stella and Zoe as cavalry. Nothing like having a nurse's husband saying "Dude, that definitely needs stitches," as he watches his wife work on your head.

When we descend on the park en masse, we are prepared: more bikes, helmets, scooters, jumpropes, sweaters, lollipops and snacks than we could ever need. Need a tissue? Check. Bandaid? Check. Goldfish crackers? Check. Shoulder to lean on? Double, triple, quadruple check. When someone in our ranks gives birth, or the most healthy and hardy among us comes down with a bizarre and rare waterbourne disease, or is diagnosed with something we wouldn't wish on our enemies while still managing to be incredibly grateful and awesome, we rally.

Good friends are gearing up for an epic match against the big C and the community is getting ready as well. We're just as ready for the hard times as the good. Tennis rackets or fundraisers. You name it. Perhaps our community is simply a macrocosm of my car. But without the stale pretzels - preparedness at it's best. After all, nothing's better about an epic road trip than having a wonderful place to come home to.

Disco Balls and Fur Coats

My children are FAB-U-LOUS, and I mean in a very groovy, dance to the beat of their own drummer, wearing plaids with stripes AND polka dots kind of a way. And I love it.

This comes, mind you, from a woman who, in fourth grade had an official "pin" day every week or two where I wore on the front of my red shirt every pin I owned in my substantial pin collection. My scoop neck shirt was scooping dangerously low by the end of the day, but given that I wasn't in touch with my appeal as a member of the feminine gender until, oh, about twenty years later, I simply worried whether all the pins showed up equally. Pin equality.

My siblings probably don't remember the pin days as fondly as the fact that EVERY day I wore one of a collection of terry cloth headbands with small stuffed wings (or horns, given my mood) attached to each side, or baseball hats with either a rainbow arching dorkily over the top or wings, again, on each side. This, of course, is merely the tip of my fashion disaster iceberg. Sadly, once the realization of my fashion uniqueness (a favorite artifact of those days? My unicorn mug with necessary rainbow and the words "Heather - Unique" emblazoned on it)dawned on me, I spent the next fifteen years dressed only in shades of, as my mother christened it, "forest": olive green, chocolate brown, and black.

So, the day Jordan came out of her room wearing colors and patterns together that in all seriousness made my eyeballs sting, I told her how beautiful she looked and we went off to school. I haven't loved my "forest" years - in fact, I see myself as sort of stylistically paralyzed. In my teenage years my mother had her colors "done" - and ours, too. I was a fall, I think, and I took that seriously. Gone were the days of spring pastels and the ripe jewel colors of a "summer". Fall meant muted colors. Bare tree limbs. Evergreen boughs. I couldn't keep straight those shades of red that were warm or cool, couldn't discern whether they were "blue" reds or "orange" reds and so I went to black and brown. I had some interesting pieces in these colors, I think, and some funky coats and jackets to help dress them up, but it's taken motherhood to get me to embrace once again color.


Having a girl is interesting - we don't want her mired in thoughts only of how she looks. When I bought her a faux leopard winter coat, Tom said, "Here we go," but I was thinking something the opposite. Jordan doesn't dress to look like other girls. She spent a full year, 1/5 of her life ONLY wearing dresses or skirts. A small part of me wanted desperately for her to want to wear blue jeans, but she was entirely tomboy in her tutu, so it was more of an internal rebellion against my mom's highschool rule: we had to wear a skirt or dress at least once a week. She's eased up and does dresses, skirts, pants, jeans, and of course, still dabbles generously in nakedness. I want her to care about how she looks to the point that I want her to want to wear clean clothes that fit and are good quality, appropriate to some measure for the situation, and that she feels good in - I want her to not care if they match, if they are in style, if they are what so and so would wear. We call her leopard coat her "rock star" coat and I like that. We all want secretly to be a rock star - or something a little wilder, cooler, different than what we are. Being able to dress in a way that nods slightly at that wild side is a great way of self expression, I think.

I often feel sorry for Sawyer when it comes to clothes - he's got some fun button down shirts, "party shirts", but nowhere near the rainbow array of his sister's closet. He does manage some pretty wild matching of shirts and pants, which boggles my mind given how boring a lot of it can seem in overview. He likes to add flair, though, in the form of funky hats or a borrowed scarf. And when the girls are picking out clips for their hair in the morning, he's right next to them. He does have fabulous hair, like his dad. Tom opts for self expression through facial hair and head hair and Sawyer has his Dad's mop. Right now, it's a different color, but one my friends swear women would pay hundreds of dollars to recreate in the stylist's chair. It's getting to a length now that it's reverting to the indefatigable mohawk that showed up at about four months old. His hair and his smile - that'll get him through. And, I hope, a penchant for clean shirts, nice jeans, and the occasional well put together shirt and pants set. Nothing wrong with a little pride in your appearance, I say.

Last week we ran into the head of Jordan's school at hospice. I had just stopped to admire a grown up "rock star" jacket hanging on a rack. "I almost bought that for you," she said, "but I didn't know if you'd wear it." I crossed a line just then, out of the forest and back towards my youth. I don't want to go all the way back to winged sweat bands, but I do want to be recognized as someone who'd wear a rock star jacket. I want to dress a little more like my kids. Less conformity, more joy. She bought it for me, I cleaned it and I've worn it. And plan to a lot - even if it's just over my workout clothes on the way to the gym.

My kids wear about 90% hand me downs which fits right into our belief systems about a) not spending what we don't have, and b) not buying more of what the earth doesn't need. It goes right from us to other families and I'm still amazed by what's in storage waiting for my siblings to pony up a niece or nephew. There is joy in seeing clothes your kids have worn on a friend's child, and vice versa. And joy in seeing how differently each one wears it.

Jordan had her 5th birthday party last week. The third disco party in a row, and it was fabulous. I dressed up, Jordan dressed up, some friends and some kids did as well. Someone brought the perfect music, someone was painting kids faces, adults ate and drank and talked, kids ran wild, everyone danced. Her parties are legend, not for their craziness or for how perfect they are, but for how joyful they are. A disco ball, Cincinnati chili, dutch oven birthday cake, and as many friends as we can possibly pack in our house make them wonderful. We ask her what kind of party she wants - she's been to all types and we love the variety - and she without hesitation says "disco." I hope we can keep that spirit alive in her for a long time. Inside and out.

I am thinking about buying a pair of ski boots. And it is my daughter's fifth birthday. You may not think these two things are in any way related (and neither did I until I wrote an e-mail to my twin sister about both of them), but they are.

I grew up skiing. I love skiing. I haven't been skiing in about four years for various foot and womb related reasons, and i am itching to get back. I would be camped on the mountain right now, seats out of the mini van, trying to convince my children that we were having "fun" and myself that seven minutes up on a lift and under three minutes down a run wasn't enough time to consider my children "unattended." The idea of putting myself in ski boots is probably the single biggest reason why I haven't been back. I even bought snowboard gear and spent two days learning because the boots were comfortable. But those were the last days on the mountain before the foot breaking/pregnancy winter chapters and so I wasn't good enough for there to be any associated longing with getting back to it.

I was writing my sister for any advice on ski boots she might have. I still own as my primary boots a pair I inherited when my stepmother passed away twelve years ago. She last skied in them about five years before she passed. They have NEON on them from the first time around for the fad, the foam or padding or whatever inside of them is by now so packed and condensed I think they qualify as a size nine on my size seven feet. But they are less painful simply because their pain is not compounded by the additional agony of a $600 dent in my bank account. It is shocking how much torture devices can run. The last time I tried new ski boots I was weeping on a chairlift in Canada with my sister next to me, I feel little hope for this next round, especially since I've broken each of my feet in the intervening five years, not to mention the double case of plantar fasciitis that still whispers round my arches. And I tried, I really and truly tried to find boots - in fact I am pretty sure that I am on a "no longer welcome" or "do not rent to" list in every ski shop I've been in for the last fifteen years. And I am by no means a difficult shopper in any other regard.

Okay, enough about ski boots, other than to say that the main reason the subject upsets me so much is because of how deeply I love to ski. It gives me a high, a feeling of joy unattainable through any other sport I have tried, not to mention that it's tied to some pretty fabulous (and not) memories of skiing with my dad and my sister and friends and former boyfriends and current (ha! only!) husbands.

Now for the daughter part. I gave birth to my daughter five years ago, at home with both my sisters and my mother present alongside the midwives. Other than the fact that it was MY body she tunneled through, I would say WE gave through because of how involved my husband was with the birth. (WE labored, I provided the canal, thank you very much.) As other mothers know, there are no words to convey properly what that experience was like, what a tunnel it was for me given my emergence as a wholly new person on the other side of it. Given how long, involved, intense and clearly painful it was, my sisters and mother were probably pretty changed for it as well. My younger sister drove the next day to New Mexico from where we lived in California and said she was nearly all the way through Arizona before she'd convinced herself once again to even consider birthing her own children. My gratitude towards my sisters and mother for their part in the birth, my gratitude towards my husband for welcoming them to such a profoundly personal and life changing experience is also monumental.

My brother was there for my son's birth, though somewhat more peripherally (especially in terms of his view of the actual process). Given the fact that Sawyer was faster but sunny side up, my brother deserves the same accolades for helping me through and for bearing witness to the experience, but since he doesn't (and has never wanted to) ski, and doesn't (and has never wanted to) have a uterus, I'll leave him out here: I want to ski. I therefore need to wear ski boots. The comparison? I want my sisters to fulfill their desires to bear children. Therefore I want them to go through labor and delivery. I don't want them to be in pain. But I do want for them to experience the profound and life changing joy that it brings. SO I guess I do want them to be in pain if that's the cost of their joy.

I'll admit, if you're not a skier - or if some sort of sport or art or activity doesn't bring you a feeling of joy or freedom or whatever it is like I am clearly craving, you don't get this. And you might NOT get this at all because, it just occurred to me, I am somewhat distancing myself with this analogy from the fact that five years ago I birthed - WE birthed my daughter. Distancing myself because even thinking about it, sitting here in front of my computer, I am overwhelmed with gratitude and joy and with soul-searing awe at the fact of it, and the FACT of my daughter, this incredible person, this magical thing living and breathing in the room next to this one. It is almost too much to think about in its entirety.

My husband is out of town - I shooed him out when he had the opportunity to visit his siblings who he doesn't see nearly often enough due to distance and time, and with whom he is, as he says, tight. I encouraged him to go now, when all three of them and their families are healthy rather than just visiting in event of emergency or illness or grief. To be alone in our home with the hugeness, the reality of this incredible girl we created and who since we created her five years ago has quite clearly taken the reins and created herself, is somewhat humbling. "Really? Me?," I want to whisper, creeping quietly around the corner to peer into her bedroom., "I did that? We did that?"

When asked what I'll remember most about this milestone (and I can hear her, twenty years from now insisting I remember in detail all about it), I think I'd say the enormity of her passion - for everything. For reading, for friendship, for swimming, for righting wrongs - or if she is the one wronging, for doing it fully, completely and with gusto. I will remember that small pockets of the house smell like strawberry candy or gingerbread or vanilla icing or cherry cough drops because she is so into Strawberry Shortcake dolls. The 8" ones that have their own smell, outfit, insane mane of hair, and long and ridiculous name. I will remember how glad I am that she loves Strawberry Shortcake and not BRATZ dolls that inspire five year olds to start hooking and make the Barbies that were banned from my house look like miniature statues of Mother Theresa. I will remember her clomping around, sans underwear (it's lucky she remembers clothes at all given her early years) in gorgeous dresses with her clog boots and parka on. I will remember the sweetness with which she treated her brother (85% of the time), her symbiosis with her papa, and the fact that I knew without a doubt that Hilary Clinton should feel lucky that she's not in competition with Jordan for the title of the First Female President. I will remember how she seemed underwater finally free from the constant workings of her already fabulous mind. That underwater, even though she was a more advanced swimmer, she was also her most playful and joyful self.

It's terrifying to know how little I'll remember twenty years from now, I know, because of how quickly these five years have passed and how I feel underwater myself, coming up and gasping in breaths of moments to cling to, memories like buoys that anchor us and prove: We've Been Here. We Survived. It Was Fabulous.

I am grateful to be a mama at all, awestruck that I am responsible for having brought this little being INTO being. I am insanely proud, I am dumbfounded by joy. And although I remember the pain of it fairly clearly, I'd take being struck by it each and every time I am with her because the joy of the encounter would far outweigh it's effect.

I guess in the end I should buy the boots, put on the gear, make my way up the mountain. Above all else, my daughter teaches me bravery on a daily basis, and it's been quite clear for five years now that I'm one of the ones she came here to teach. Pain is nothing when the outcome can be this rapturous.

A new parental milestone: the first time we got served breakfast in bed! We found it easy, apparently, to fall back into our old routine of going to bed WAY too late back at home. So when 7:30 rolled around (yippee, actually - this is a lot later than they'll be able to get up come Monday) both the bug and the fox were up immediately. Sawyer had woken up at 5:30 but had gone back to sleep and was in Jordan's bed, Jordan was in our bed, and I was in her bed with Sawyer (yes, some nights we do play musical beds, don't you?) We all crawled back into the parental bed, and when Sawyer continued to cajole us to "Wake up! Wake uuuuup!", I said, "Why don't you guys go make your papa coffee in bed?" Jordan said, after a pause, "But, Mama, I don't know how to do that yet." So, I mentally amended the list of New Year's resolutions, and suggested they make us breakfast in bed instead. Same answer. I didn't say anything, I was still caught up in the fantasy of coffee being brought to me in bed. So when they brought us, a few minutes later, two brimming full bowls of dry oatmeal, imagine my delight (true, actually. Aided by my imagining it was a steaming mug full of hot coffee).

Now it's three days later and we've had an eventful night mixed in with the drive back toward our regular sleep schedule - Jordan got very sick, we think food poisoning. And very sick for Jordan isn't really all that bad: she threw up (horribly and violently, preceded by even worse uncontrollable sobbing) at about 10:00pm, and another few times before falling asleep finally for the night at 1:30am. Her experience two months earlier with the stomach flu had been much worse, a long night of vomiting every five minutes until dawn, Sawyer doing the same thing in our bed with Tom. Musical beds for other reasons, mainly the changing of sheets. It's easy, though, in the morning when it's clear that they're on the mend to laugh about it, to hold them close and wish it would never happen again but to count your lucky stars that it's an unusual experience, not a way of life or a step in a long decline.

A few hours later I was on the phone with my twin sister who had changed her sheets as well, her husband, however, was the sick one, and there wasn't any laughter or relief in her voice recounting the episode. Her husband has terminal cancer and it's been a few years of an unbelievable battle on their part - one that has precluded any attempts at having children or planning for a future beyond the next few hours, days, weeks or at most months. I want for my family my acts of faith in the future to be regularly making deposits into my kids college plans, not making flight reservations for two months down the line. But it has forced the realization that everything is an act of faith in this world. Marriage, having children the grandest displays of all. Not faith that it will all turn out alright, but faith that you'll endure, I suppose. Faith that your heart will survive the potential for loss that comes with all that love.

When people ask what it's like having a twin, the only thing that is really different now, in my adult life, is to have someone who IS me genetically living a life so different from mine. We have always felt like different people, haven't ever had strange feelings of not being whole if we're not with the other, but we are identical twins so I can look at her life and see myself in it, see how things take strange twists, how we can't plan for everything in life.

We're trying to decide whether to have a third child or not right now. We have two gorgeous children who are, so far, incredibly healthy. It feels like a monumental roll of the dice to me. It's been an especially hard year with friends and children of friends and parents of friends going through terrible illness and suffering. Way, way too much death this year and it's felt like very few victories. Amazingly most everyone around us has endured, most still seem to have faith identifiable by just the ability to look forward, to move on, to continue to risk loving the people in their lives regardless of the capacity for loss that creates in them. This thought, of having another child, just by it's presence puts us in a precarious relationship with faith: if we choose to try again, that is one kind of faith, by not choosing to embrace hope and try are we not embracing faith or are we holding on ever more tightly to the possibility of what we've already created?

A part of me wants to have ten more children, put that much more love into this world - but again, there's that mirrored potential for loss, for illness, for things to move away from the joy so abundant now in our lives. But it is that much more love. And maybe that next kid will be the one who knows how to make coffee at 6:30 in the morning. Or how to cure cancer. Or how, like they all do, to give the most unbelievable hugs that help lessen the pain of the loss and add power to the faith that still remains.

We're home from Christmas in Santa Fe after a loooong New Year's Eve on the road back to Lotus. Tom had been at the wheel for over 11 hours when at midnight I kissed him on Highway 58 entering Barstow, CA, two sleeping angels in the back blissfully unaware that we were leaving 2007 rapidly behind us as so many miles of traveled asphalt while in front lay the blank canvas of 2008, ready for exploration. When we told Jordan seven hours later when she awoke that it was not only a new month but a new year, heady with enthusiasm over newly hatched resolutions involving triathlons, the bettering of ourselves, and the reduction of our collective carbon footprint, her response was all you'd expect from a nearly 5 year old girl: "January! That means it really IS almost my birthday!"

Christmas went on way too long this year as it always does - we started so early with pre-Christmas presents of advent calendars and salt and pepper shakers and Christmas dresses from wonderfully doting grandparents. As a parent, with your children on the receiving end of that much joy, it makes it esecially hard to drive home the true "reason for the season" - that it isn't all about gifts - when every day there is another box, another wonderful aunt or uncle sending something new and exciting. We have them both spend serious time and effort on thank you notes, and we try diligently to acknowledge who gave what book or toy when it's read or brought out, but the sheer volume makes it somewhat overwhelming - my father-in-law who has a relationship only with my children and not with any of his other children or grandchildren (not his choice) sent a box with 27 individually wrapped presents - and only 5 or 6 of those were for Tom or myself. Just keeping track of what he gave us is overwhelming, much less keeping track of what each of thier six grandparents, 8 aunts and uncles thought of, shoped for, bought, wrapped, and sent many miles for their enjoyment.

Rather than give in to hopelessness, I saw volume as opportunity. With 18 hours of driving in front of us, I loaded up a bag of presents and envsioned a parceling out of gifts every 90 minutes or so through the entire trip, thereby lightening our load as boxes and giftwrap were eliminated at each gas station (an action that takes another emotional toll on me at Christmas). In reality, we fell so easily into the driving through the night schedule, there were just a few hours left on Saturday to dole out gifts. There was a frantic ripping into paper and the roulette aspect of Christmas inevitable with so many presents: one of the favorite gifts this year has been a $1.45 paper streamer wand (I remember receiving them at various points throughout my childhood, they seem to break at the most opportune point of climax, just before they'd cause a huge fight or interest would fizzle out). The most promising is often the first one forgotten: out in the cold is the overwhelmingly horrible Polly Pocket Shopping Magnetic Board. Upon opening it, it ellicited excitement and the frantic dressing of the two dolls in the two favorite outfits until one didn't stick exactly right, one magnet sleeve ripped from a magnetic shirt and tragedy rapidly began to outweigh joy. Which is good, because when at 2am I accidentally had nudged the board for the fifth or sixth time causing it to scream out in a shrill and soulless voice "Polly wants to go shopping with you!" or something equally inane and completely oposite the values we're trying to instill, if I wasn't completely incapable since elementary school of even the slightest amount of litter, I would have flung it into the middle of Hwy 40 in the middle of AZ and watched in righteous yet petty joy as a semi hauled it's full load over Polly's already flat form, rendering the voice of the horrible thing forever silent.

The irony is that I think they GET the reason for the season. Their school does a fabulous job of teaching about may of the holidays people celebrate, gently and firmly redressing attention away from gifts and to wonder, joy, celebration. Our favorite part of Christmas last year was the four of us bundling into the mini van with Tom's guitar and freshly baked cookies and showing up on the doorstep of five or six completely unsuspecting friends and caroling our hearts out on Chirstmas Eve. Because this year we'd be in Santa Fe, we caroled early, and it's hard trying to check off the caroling when there's packing to do and still a few days of school to meet with open eyes after late nights on front porches. We were excited to go to Santa Fe, but there's always a strange feeling of being stretched between the past and the joy of building future tradition through the experience of being fully immersed in your own home and community. Don't worry, I get that these are wonderful issues to have at the holidays: so many relatives to share the joy with, so many homes to be at home in. We love hosting at home the best, but I love going back to NM every now and then to relive traditions there, to bring the joy of who I am now as a part of this family into my parents' worlds to remind them of why my absence is actually evidence of the growth of our greater family. At least, that's how I deal with the latent NM Catholic guilt that tends to rear it's head this time of year.

"I love Baby Jesus," Jordan's told me on more than one occasion. And I smile benignly and nod my head and wonder if it's the early shimmerings of guilt that elicits this comment, or a saccharine mimicing of something she's heard from someone convinced of their own righteousness - or I'll hapily concede, from someone with absolute and total faith. It reminds me of what's always been the creepiest part of Christmas for me, the idea that not only is Santa watching to see whether I'm naughty or nice, but there's Jesus' trump card - the threat of eternal damnation if I think too much of my own wants and not enough of the sacrifices made for me. I don't mind that Christmas isn't so much about the birth of Jesus anymore, that it's been usurped by our culture into a nondenominational celebration. I love building new tradiitons and having what matters be what song we choose first on each porch and whether we've made enough cookies for everyone we want to visit. I loved the ritual of the Catholic Church and so many of the teachings, but I know plenty of people, including my own mother, for whom it has provided more pain than joy. And so I choose a Christmas of our own making. Jesus is invited of course, but there are other houses to visit as well.

On the excessive present note, we just finished oppening the last of them tonight, saving the last five that we bought one another for the very end. I think I envisioned that this would be the most meaningful gift-opening moment. I think instead it was the most stripped down, the last step to conquer before finally falling into our own beds. And indeed, Sawyer is under his covers still holding his new tennis racket - pink, with Dora the Explorer on it. Jordan's has Dora as well and it certainly might be in her bed if Strawberry Shortcake adorned it, but clearly only Dora is badass enough for the sport. Jordan shows promise with a racket, with all sports, really, so I feel pretty confident that even though she's not sleeping with hers, it'll soon earn a place in her heart. At least I won't lie awake on nights insomnia bubbles gently through my brain envisioning a Safeway truck shredding it into oblivion somewhere between Barstow and Flagstaff.

There are thank you cards to write, miles of them, nand the last of the New Years' photo cards to get out. Ironically, someone stole the three bolted down blocks of mailboxes on our route, sixty in all, last night. Having forgotten to place a hold on our mail, it's likely our box will be of the most bountiful for the theives, packed full of cards, some checks, and I'm sure a present or two in the oversized parcel boxes that were also liberated. When we got a phone call from a neighbor informing us of the theft, I immediately mourned not for lost gifts but for the Christmas cards I count on to watch friends' babies grow, to keep up with friends who would be closer if there were time enough to get to know them better. And we do, at least moderately, through these cards. Although there is so much to do after a long trip. I am glad to have been with my parents at Christmas. Travel, especially home, is exhausting on so many levels, not the least of which is dealing with the inevitable clash between who I was then and who I think I am now, the inevitable small irritations of loved ones toward each other, what can only be terror at one spouse watching the parents of the other and wondering what horrifying traits will be unlocked in their partner by the wicked keys of time. But there are the replenishing moments as well: the overwhelming joy of watching my parents fall more and more in love with my kids and watching my kids yank my parents joyfully back towards youth. The relief as well as sadness I felt as we drove away is just what I should be have experienced on departure, I think, from a successful trip.

We're home, with its piles of laundry and endless to do lists, but we're together, safe, whole. And as I start to put away decorations and bags to reuse again next year for yet more gifts, I'll be counting every last blessing of 2007 and of Christmas this year. Including the strength of will that enabled me to save Polly Pocket for the hospice resale store pile rather than environmentally having added her to my ever present mound of guilt. The last strains of "Angels We Have Heard on High" are fading in my head, and I hear Jordan and Sawyer singing, at the top of their lungs, each of our names in place of the chorus (I remember wondering for a few years who this Gloria chick was, too). Jordan, Sawyer, Mama, Papa, Grandma, Grandpa, all the aunts and uncles' names elongated to 13 syllables sung at top volume. Each and every one eternally glorious.