We spent the morning picking apples at Wheeler's Orchard. It was our first time and I feel as if we have discovered hidden treasure. It was only an hour away from home. The weather was beautiful. The fruit was delicious. We were the only pickers in the orchard. The farmers were endlessly patient with us. There were animals to visit and fields to run in. It was a perfect morning! We have absolutely found "our" apple orchard. Our seasonal living rhythms are beginning to take shape. My next step in learning to live in harmony with the seasons is to begin to learn processes for storing the food we gather for later. I am a complete beginner but I am hoping to learn all about canning and preserving this year. I also hope we will be able to work out a storage solution that will allow to start stock-piling more food! Until then, we have only been picking enough to enjoy for a little while. A peck of apples picked by hardworking little boys will provide a couple of pies, tarts, maybe some homemade applesauce or butter and at least a hand full of fresh apples for munching on over the next couple of weeks, of course. Our favorite part is the still the experience though. There is nothing like spending a crisp, cool autumn morning at the apple orchard with our friends. Until next year, Wheeler's!
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Sometimes, before dawn....when my brain is still cloudy... I hear his feet slapping down the hall in dinosaur slippers. Sometimes, before dawn, when the door creaks open, I see him standing there, curls disheveled and rubbing sleep from his eyes. Good morning, he says... or I'm hungry... or I wet the bed...or any thing at all. His shirt is always bunched up above his belly button. His Raggedy Andy is always shoved under one arm. The other arm hangs on the doorknob and he waits for my smile before crawling into my bed. Sometimes, before dawn, I see him there so clearly in that one second between the door creaking open and swinging wide that it is as if an entire lifetime is lived. An entire lifetime of... Two years. Ten months. Three weeks. Three days. One thousand hugs. Ten thousand kisses. So, I know him. I know it will be him. And when it is someone else, it takes my breath away. My heart swells with pride and love a thousand times a day. It breaks. It bleeds. It sinks to the floor. It turns to stone and then it melts and then it starts to swell again. They say that one day I will get used to this cardiac roller coaster ride. They say that one day I will tune it out like the hum of the refrigerator. I believe them. I just wish that day was today. How can I mourn for a boy I have never met when I have golden ringlets and hazel eyes and pure love right in front of me every, single day? I do not know the answer, but They say one day you learn to live with the guilt.
I don't know if I buy that one. Maybe it is because Once Upon A Time, I carried a boy under my heart- a boy that would crawl into my bed before dawn in dinosaur slippers. He was growing and becoming and then one day he just wasn't anymore. In one moment, the future was rewritten ...like dominoes falling. What was I doing the moment he was stolen? Was I sleeping? Laughing? Eating a sandwich? And some of Them say that it was always meant to be and some of Them say that the only disability is a bad attitude and some of Them say that my grief paints disability as tragedy and it is damaging and I have no right to these feelings at all. Maybe they could just tell the feelings that and they will give up and go away. The doctors say it is like cult-a-sacs in the brain. The blood just didn't make it down a few of those one way streets. Or something. They don't really know. After tests, and tests, and tests, and tests.... It is all essentially a really expensive shrug. But they say the thing about the cult-a-sacs.... and I picture my boy, in his dinosaur slippers, wandering the suburbs. Lost in a sea of mini-malls and beige split-levels. Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky... He is lost there and he can't find his Mama... And I spend my days mourning him and looking for him and falling in love with the fairy child that replaced him... and then missing him again and then not missing him at all and then catching glimpses of him in a cheeky grin or a car seat tantrum and then being angry that I don't get to see him more... and then thinking how silly it is to miss someone that never was.... and then wondering.... Could I find a pair of dinosaur slippers that would fit over AFO's? And this is what it is now. I don't know when it will be different or if it ever will or what They have to say about that... But today a bunch of specialist tried to make my baby do things that he can not do for a couple of hours and it hurt. In a month he starts school and it feels like losing something and maybe gaining something too. Twenty minutes ago, I caught him ripping up a book and he threw his hands in the air like a bandit and belly laughed and it was perfect. And I ordered an extra wide pair of dinosaur slippers online. I have been obsessed with "the olden days" for as long as I can remember. I devoured historical fiction. Books like Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, Secret Garden, Little Women and the American Girl series were my magical gateways to golden days gone by, days I longed to be a part of. I loved the notion of the simple, quiet lives, close-knit communities, self-sufficiency, and old-fashioned ideals...and maybe, if I am honest, the dresses. Until I had Liam, I used to say that I was born in the wrong century. I can't keep up with the quick pace of life these days. I never have the latest and greatest anything, and usually cannot even see the point in whatever it is. I often feel slow and out of place and decidedly uncool. But...there is nothing quite like having a life-threatening pregnancy complication, emergency birth and premature baby kept alive by machines to knock the romanticizing of the past right out of you. Suddenly, the past is just a dark and scary place where you and your baby would be dead and you are feeling quite ready to embrace modern medicine and modern technology. In fact, you sort of want to wrap yourself up in the safe cocoon of modern living and never look back again. But, after a healing period, I discovered there are still things I envy about the way people lived so long ago; however, most of the things I love have more to do with simple living than those "olden days" I used to long for. Things like cooking from scratch, sewing and knitting, an abundant kitchen garden, less technology, more walking, slow living, room to breathe... and, maybe still, those dresses. These are the simple things I want to capture for myself and for my children, even in the fast-paced, "latest and greatest" time that they are growing up in. My hope for them is that, many years from now, their childhood will stretch on for ages in their memories and it will be full of lazy, quiet afternoons, wild adventures in nature, cooking lessons from mom, crunchy beans plucked straight from the garden, and maybe just a little bit of unsupervised trouble. I hope that they will remember that we made hot chocolate on winter nights and snuggled up with movies during thunderstorms and went to the farmer's market on Wednesday afternoons for eggs and milk. One of the ways I am attempting to slow our lives down is through seasonal living. This is something I am just starting to embrace and I am still quite new at it. All it really means is being more aware and accepting of the seasons and the changes they bring. It sounds so easy but once I really started diving into it, I became aware of just how out of touch I am with the rhythm of the seasons. We are taking the re-introductions slow. I am throwing the windows open and turning off the air conditioner. We are spending as much time as possible outdoors in all sorts of weather. We are figuring out when to plant the things we want to eat in our garden and we are learning to eat and store food in season. This week, our local strawberry farm posted that the strawberries were ripe, so that meant that this week "seasonal living" was picking as many strawberries as we thought we might need this summer, since the strawberries we planted this year will not produce fruit until the fall. On Thursday of last week, without any notice, I slathered the boys in sunscreen, packed them in the car and declared it Strawberry Day. ,The boys impressed me with their picking abilities this year! In spite of growing tired after an hour, we still managed to bring home about 15 pounds of strawberries! We brought them home, cleaned them up and sorted them into three categories: For Eating, For Baking, For Freezing. We then spent the afternoon turning them into strawberry limeade concentrate, strawberry lime popsicles, strawberry coulis, and lots and lots of whole frozen strawberries for smoothies and ice cream and other various things. The boys have put in their requests for strawberry muffins, strawberry cake, strawberry shortcake, strawberry pancakes, and many other versions of baked strawberry goods, all of which end in "cake," so a strawberry baking day is in our very new future. We also brought a bucket of strawberries for our shared snack during forest school today because sharing is caring! I hope that one day, as spring rolls around, the boys will begin to anticipate Strawberry Day. I hope in the winter their mouths will water at the thought of spring and strawberries. I hope one day they will associate the taste of a sun-ripened strawberry with springtime and playing outside and planting things in the garden and soft grass under their bare feet. I hope when they are 90, they will savor a bite of strawberry cake and think, "It is just the way my mother used to make it every Spring."
Before Liam was born, I was in the middle of one of the busiest seasons of my life. Ryan and I had not been married for very long and we had just bought a house. I was attending school an hour and a half away from home and would drive to and from classes 2-3 days a week and I had a lot of homework. I was also working and I was pregnant and I was exhausted. I often felt like I was barely treading water. One morning, I arranged to go into work late because I had a doctor's appointment. Liam wasn't growing properly and we were sent to the high risk doctor to figure out why. During that appointment, I was sent to the hospital for observation and I called to let my boss know that would probably not make it in that day. I thought we would be in and out and life would return to its normal lightening speed. And then...Liam was born and my world came screeching to a sudden halt. I remember marveling at how just a couple of phone calls and emails could make my entire life disappear. Every worry, responsibility, and obligation was instantly erased. From that moment on there was only waiting... and Liam. I could not drive for several weeks and so there were many days that I would sit at home and wait for Ryan to get off of work so we could go to the NICU. I remember one particular day I spent sitting in our overstuffed recliner for hours. I stared at the bookshelf beside me, telling myself I was going to pick a book out and I was going to read it because I had time to do that sort of thing now. But I never did. I just sat there, my legs tucked up underneath me, and I prayed....sort of. I would like to lie and say that I prayed the prayers of a good and faithful human being... but I can't because I did not. Instead, I let God know that if he let anything happen to this baby, I would hate him forever... and then I begged for the baby to die now, right now, before I really knew him and loved him and if God could do that for me, if he gave me that, I would still hate him.... but maybe not as much. Yeah, it was ugly. At that point in my life, I could not imagine anything more traumatic than Liam's birth and hospital stay. Now, I can. Seven years later, and that time in my life barely ranks on the Awful Things radar at all. This is partially because far worse things have happened and this is partially because.... Liam. If there is anything at all to say about Liam it is that he is worth it. He is worth every ugly tear I cried over his tiny body. He is worth every moment of sheer terror, desperate longing, overwhelming despair, white hot anger, and crushing love. He is worth every sleepless night and every early morning. He is worth every doubt, insecurity, and utter failure I experienced as I learned to be his Mama. And these days... he is worth every eye roll and flounce and slammed door and insult he can throw at us. He is worth every angry word and reluctant apology. He is worth the exhaustion and the confusion and the frustration.... because in every single moment in between all of that, and sometimes even right in the middle of it, I look at this boy of mine and I see pure magic. He is magic. Liam never asks to be held any longer. Not even when his legs are so tired and we have been walking forever. He used to lean his belly against my legs with his arms stretched up to me a thousand times a day, but he does not do that any longer. Not ever. Liam is shy now. He resents the attention his blue hair brings him. He mumbles thanks when people comment on it and tries his best to blend into his surroundings. He used to thrive on attention and bask in the glow of people's adoration, but he does not do that any longer either... and it is hard to get used to. He does not want to be kissed and he rarely needs my help getting dressed. He can make himself lunch, brush his own teeth, tie his own shoes. He walks to the neighbor's house alone. He rolls his eyes and sighs, "I know," when I give him instructions- any instructions- because he pretty much has this all figured out already. I know that this is how it is supposed to be and I love it most of the time, but every once in a while I realize that the early days are over now... and they slipped away so quietly that I barely even noticed them go. If I had noticed, I probably would have dug in my heels a little bit and thrown a bit of a tantrum so it is probably better this way, but, every once in a while, the finality of it all takes my breath away. My baby boy is seven years old. I have had to say good-bye to a thousand versions of him already and there are so many, many more to come. I miss him so much I can hardly stand it and I love him so much I can hardly stand it... and I am so grateful that I have been given seven years to be this tortured. I did not deserve it, not even for a minute, but being able to keep this boy for however long he is mine has been the most beautiful and complicated gift I have ever been given... and I still never take a single day of it for granted. Last month, my parents, brother, and future sister-in-law (*cough*hint*cough) met us at a state park near Monroe, Louisiana for a little get-away. It was simple and relaxing and, while the area we stayed in was not affected by the recent flooding, it was still shocking to hear what the people of Louisiana are going through so soon after we left. This tragedy is definitely weighing heavier on my heart than I think would have been possible without our recent visit. We stayed in a cabin at Lake D'Arbonne State Park and it was lovely. The boys had a great time just hanging out at the cabin, walking down to the lake's edge, swinging in Uncle Ethan and Aunt Bianca's hammock and relaxing. It was also nice to have uninterrupted time with family. The second day was also Dexter's birthday so we drove to Monroe to celebrate with a trip to the Louisiana Purchase Gardens and Zoo and the children's museum. We practically had both the zoo and the museum to ourselves. I think the highlights of the zoo were the boat ride down the bayou and the awesome splash pad, but I also really enjoyed the beautiful Louisiana kitchen garden and the delicious figs the gardener shared with us. After a fun morning, we had a picnic lunch at an amazing playground right outside the zoo and then drove six minutes to the cute little children's museum in downtown Monroe. (There are no pictures of Liam following because he was having so much fun he was basically just a blur of legs and hair in every photograph.) We wore our little birthday boy out and had to wake him up for his "Rock Star" family birthday party but it was worth it. Exploring new cities is always an interesting and satisfying experience. Uncle Ethan and Aunt Bianca thrilled Dexter with a lifetime supply of fruit snacks. They lasted less than a month for this little fruit snack monster but he was so happy. I asked him what he thought about this present and he looked at me and said, "Hmmm.... yummy." The very best part of the vacation was unhurried time with family, of course. It was just so nice to have them around, with no place to go and nothing to do but talk and play games and enjoy each other's company. Thank you for the memories, Louisiana!
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WHO AM I?
I am Michelle: a wannabe hippie in love with a bonafide geek. We also spawned. I spend my days with our four wild, beautiful boy children and I overshare about our life online because I am a Millennial and that is what we do.
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