currently

The best may not be ahead or behind, but right now.

staying alive

I found myself fashioning a cat costume from a paper plate, black ribbon and tape before the sun came up, buttering bagels and sprinkling cinnamon for breakfast.
Skimming an article about the urgency for carbon-pricing over coffee.
Unloading clean dishes, reading Ada Twist again, overseeing arpeggios and etudes, untangling earbuds.

Making an online pledge to the new pediatric mental health hospital, compiling cheese and crackers and cucumber slices and salami for second breakfast.
Folding other people's clean clothes, reading a few chapters of my own.
Mailing a thank you note to the organizers of last week's Planned Parenthood event.
Walking the boys to the ballpark, lounging in the hammock, looking for hope in the clouds.
Looking for science to tell me the world is not coming to an end.
A knotted skein, really, all of it. The snacks, the checks, the walks, the words.

Ruminating circumstances completely out of my control, standing up for humanity in my own very small ways.
Protecting the past, preserving my sanity.
In doing my best to get behind a few life-positive causes outside my immediate plea, I did not do a single thing to heighten awareness of Batten disease today.

Meanwhile, since he tired of the cat costume, Hank's been wearing nothing but undies and several mardi gras necklaces, plastic beads wrapped together in a mess that won't let go.

And I think that might be what I feel most like, a mess that won't let go.

flying

I watched Tolliver fly a small metal USAF plane around the perimeter of our yard a few days ago, watched him step from one flagstone to the next, buzzing his lips and moving his hand up and down through the air.
He is seven, but he seemed so small for a moment, lost in his own imagination. I felt, momentarily, like an outsider, like an admirer, watching him.

I love being his mom.
He tells stories like he's conducting an orchestra, hands stirring the space around him.
His bottom drawer spills basketball shorts like lava, his mouth spills sometimes, too. He is flammable gas, a brain constantly blooming with ideas, a mind on fire with opinions.
I mean, he can be intense. Like a mouthful of Pop Rocks - they’re great (he’s great) but you don’t want a whole mouthful of them at once.
He's known for, at our house anyway, a bit of a hair-trigger temper. Though where can you feel safe enough to rage if not at home? He knows we love him no matter what, and now is the time to try on big emotions.
For a fairly small being, he has mostly simple requests - Can we go to Target, May I have a playdate, Please let’s make root beer floats?

Several days ago I came downstairs to find Hank re-dressed. He wanted to match Tols, and they worked together to fold up his original outfit and find something that looked more like what his brother had on. (basketball shorts, obvi)

Tolliver is aware in ways that surprise me.
Watcha doin', buddy? I asked as he and the airplane made another pass by the patio.

His answer came swiftly, unreservedly, the way words leave children’s lips simple, sincere, before adulthood has learned to complicate the poetry out of them with considerations of reason and self-consciousness: Just flying.

I know, I think to myself, you are.

strawberry patching

While the big boys were at Camp Invention, the three of us snuck away to pick berries.
Hank has been reading Jamberry on repeat, and asking for weeks when we could go strawberry patching.
We finally found a day with free time and an open farm. And then we got this brother a haircut.

together

Most days I cannot say who is learning more, me or my children.

But I do give thanks for the apparent answer, which is both, together.

the Wilds

We'd never taken the boys to The Wilds, a conservation center located on nearly 10,000 acres of reclaimed mine land in rural southeastern Ohio. We learned about the Federal Reclamation Act and artificial insemination and African painted dogs. And while Tuck may have taught the entire tour group everything he knows about hellbenders, Hank made fast friends with an ostrich.
I appreciated the reminder that not all the wild things live at my house, and the boys are already asking to go back.

Hola, summer!