On the cusp

Jonas,

I have a half-finished letter to you that I wrote three days before your due date (and, as it turned out, 11 days before you were born). I remember that evening very clearly; Egidijus had already gone to sleep and I was entering that brimming-with-anticipation stage as I waited for the first signs that your birth was imminent. I couldn't sleep, and felt as though I had so much I wanted to communicate to you, though I didn't know you yet.

Here is the beginning of that letter:

Aug. 11, 2008

11:02 p.m.

Dearest Jonas,

My father wrote a letter like this to me before I was born, and so now I am writing a similar letter to you. You have been very quiet lately, getting ready for your big debut, no doubt. I am trying to prepare, too, though I am struggling to be quiet. Today was my first day off work, but I couldn't resist a bit of house cleaning. I want everything in its place before you arrive, before we bring you home to live with us in our little house here on Monticello Road.

I am writing this in the living room; the glow of the monitor is the only light in this room. Asher, the cat with extra toes, is sleeping on the couch. Your father and the dogs - Rube and Holly - are asleep in our bedroom. Rube and Holly are curled up in their den at the bottom of our closet after a day of playing at camp. Bitty, the black cat, is likely asleep under the bed, as that is her favorite spot. Soon it will be the whole mess of us in the tiny bedroom; your bassinet is ready to move in there the day we bring you home.

Now again, I have that anxious feeling as I await the birth of your brother, Silas. But this time, my anticipation is tempered by the realization that while I am in the final days of this pregnancy, you are in the final days of being an only child. And while you may have fleeting memories of this time in your life, you are unlikely to remember what it was like when it was just you and me and your dad.

There are hundreds (thousands?) of pictures documenting this time of your life, and little videos and momentos as well. Yet, I find myself wishing I could somehow capture it for you.

You are the child who made us parents. As the firstborn, that will always be a double-edged sword. It locks the three of us in a journey of discovery that is both miraculous and, at times, frustrating in its unfamiliarity. We have watched life unfold through you over the past 22 months, from those first days after you were born, which were filled with such stunned awe, to your first smiles and noises and words and movements, to now, when we can communicate with you with better clarity every day.

Each day has been miraculous. Perhaps that word is overused in parenting, but how could it not be? As a parent, you create life and then watch that life evolve. You see your influence on the process, but in other ways, it seems so driven by an inner force that is intangible and timeless. And this force of life and humanity lives and thrives inside you, my precious little boy.

You are full of life. Full of wonder. You love to play with your little farm animal set for hours at a time, creating elaborate dramas in your mind with them, setting them up in different configurations, running about the house with them (and hiding them, much to your mother's ire.) You love music and request very specific songs from the backseat of the car. You love to dance. You have had a sense of humor since you were only a few weeks old, and that sense of humor has only grown over time. You are silly. You are sweet. You are cautious and gregarious at the same time. You are sensitive.

You don't really understand that you will be a big brother in just a matter of days; you are simply too young to grasp that concept. I know the transition will have its bumps and bruises. But I hope you and Silas will grow to be friends and confidants and allies over the years. I hope our family continues to thrive and flourish.

Because we have thrived and flourished over the past 22 months. Your father and I adore each other; we are each other's favorite person in the world. I never imagined happiness like I found with him, and never dreamed I could spend my life with someone who made me feel so comfortable.

Your father and I had a beautiful life together, and it was full and sweet and lovely. But your addition to it made us a family. You have brought out strength and capabilities in each of us that we would never have known otherwise. You have shown us joy.

Thank you.

A parent in the making

Perhaps it was the coffee this morning -- I've been unable to go without a small cup due to pregnancy headaches -- but today anything feels possible.

Which is good, because reviewing this page, I see my last post was on February 6. That was 11 weeks ago. The new edition to our family is due in eight weeks. Time is moving quickly.

It has been 20 months since I became an at-home parent, and if I imagine the list of goals I had in my mind when I started this, I'd say I've met about half of them, with the other half, the more nebulous half, awaiting fulfillment.

I figured out:

1) How to be at home all day with a child, without (most of the time) feeling hemmed-in, which was more challenging than I envisioned.

2) How to balance basic household chores with full-time parenting, so that while the house definitely looks like a disaster area several times a day, it looks picked up and cleaned up just as often.

3) The snack/diaper changes/lunch/nap/repeat rotation.

4) The whole running-errands-with-a-baby/toddler thing, although recently I feel I maybe don't have that mastered anymore.

5) Traveling with a baby, and now a toddler, which requires an incredible amount of planning, preparation and flexibility.

So the mechanics I have down. It is the grace that is missing.

The grace is comprised of the extra touches that really enrich the life of a family and make childhood memorable. I wouldn't say this is void in our lives, but I want there to be more. I feel like too much of my time and attention is absorbed in housework, running errands and (*ahem*) time spent online. Time for creativity is lacking. That is where I need to put my focus.

I try not to chide myself for not getting it 100% right from the start. It takes time to learn the basic mechanics of parenthood, or at least for me it did. It took me a solid year to figure it out with Jonas. After that year was up, I started taking on some at-home work: babysitting and freelance writing and editing. Balancing those elements with the basic day-to-day tasks was a whole new ball game. The grace was left wanting.

However backwards this may sound, I am hoping Silas' birth will ultimately be a vehicle to the kind of home life I am envisioning, as much as visions can ever become reality. If I end up taking on more editing work after Silas is born, I hope I can do so in a way that is less invasive. I very much want to find a place for paid work in my life, but not at the expense of providing our family with the kind of life we desire -- the very thing we set out to capture by making the choice for me to stay home in the first place.

Snowy morning

The product of a very snowy morning and the first time Jonas has "helped" me bake. He prefers tomatoes (which he calls "Moe-toes") to cookies, but he certainly enjoyed dumping the ingredients into the bowl.

This snowy morning turned out to be the beginning of our second Really Big Snow this winter. It occurs to me that in the five previous winters we have spent in Virginia, we have had perhaps six inches of snow total each winter. This year we're at five feet and counting. Although I don't love snow enough to live up north, I do love it enough to relish another weekend snowed in with my boys.

Case study

It occurs to me frequently of late that my life seems to be tracking weirdly closely with the collective consciousness of the United States.

There, I said it. I am a microcosm of 300 million other lives. Not to overstate my importance or anything.

Here are the facts: Like much of America, I have come to the realization in the past year that I have too much debt, that I have been living beyond my means, that I need to scale back in every facet of my life. That gardens are good. That shiny things are usually bad.

These are not entirely new realizations for me, and in fact I've been moving in the direction of Shoeless Hippie for sometime. But my convictions in these matters have accelerated over the past several months. Except, whereas the average American is probably buying grocery store generics to save money, forgoing an additional widescreen TV and considering whether they really need to expanded cable package, my version of scaling back seems closer to Going Amish than anything else.

The desire: To live sustainably in a modest, naturally-built home on a plot of 25 or so acres in a rural area. To grow 75% of my own food. To make 25% of my family's clothing and textile needs.

I appear to be on the cusp of a new life chapter. Or perhaps the cusp has passed and I am now in the early pages of that chapter. Cusping tends to be something one identifies best in retrospect. But in any case, it is a very new and delicate and tender notion that has taken root -- one that involves a complete life change my current existence into some that, while not wholly unrecognizable, would be radically different.

Bloom

Jonas turned one year old on Saturday, prompting a host of emotions. I can remember the days leading up to his birth with near-perfect clarity. Yet, the weeks that followed -- when he used to sleep in his bouncy chair on the kitchen table, when he was so tiny he slept in his Moby carrier for hours on his daddy's chest, when all but his tiniest newborn clothes hung off him -- seem distant, and believably a year ago.

Of course there is a part of me that wants to freeze him in time. Every year as my birthday approached, my mother used to say, "Ok, I'll make you a deal. You can turn [insert upcoming age here] but then you are stopping." It was a joke, but I was always so eager to get on to the next age. To be a big kid and sit at the back of the bus. To be old enough to go to high school. To be old enough to drive. To be old enough to leave home and go to college. To be old enough to drink. To be old enough not to feel so young and foolish and clumsy anymore. Now, of course, I'm approaching the age where I would happily take her up on that offer. But it took nearly 30 years to get there.

The day before his birthday, Jonas decided it was time to start truly walking. He had taken his first steps on August 1, when we were up visiting my grandmother in Arlington. And since then, if you set him on his feet and he was in the mood, he would take a few steps - five or six or seven - before dropping to his knees and crawling the rest of the way to the desired destination or object. Crawling was faster and easier. But on Friday, something switched over and he spent more than 50% of his time walking. On Saturday, it was 75%. And Sunday, it was 90%.

This has come amid a flurry of changes. Beginning during our trip to Iowa earlier in August, Jonas started eating much better. Never a picky eater, neither was he a big eater. But, perhaps inspired by the farmhouse, he took to eating much larger meals during our time there. He also started behaving much better in the car. Both of those changes have continued since we returned to Virginia. He also began speaking more clearly, and added at least five words to his vocabulary in the 1o days we were in Iowa. That increased vocalization -- I'd say his vocabulary is about two dozen words -- has also continued.

As much as I want him to stay right as he is today, watching this flower of life unfold is so miraculous, so enchanting that I wouldn't want to rob him of the chance to change, to grow, to blossom. It is a new state of emotion when you have a child: wanting something for that person. On behalf of that person. Yes, if you are fortunate enough to find a true partner in life, you experience that feeling. But when it is a child you are raising, the feeling is so much stronger and so much more prevalent.

I want things for myself, I want things for Egidijus. I want things for my family and my friends. And I am devoted to doing what I can to bring about those things for the people I love. But there is no length I would not go to for Jonas. It is just one of many new emotions that his addition has prompted.

So many new things. What did I do with my time before? What did I think about? What did I desire? Were all the places he occupies within me empty before, or did his birth simply create new spaces?

The road not (yet?) taken

This posting has been delayed, not out of lack of something to say but out of lack of knowing how to say it.

FloydFest was just as enjoyable as we had hoped -- more so. Jonas loved all the music and, with the exception of one very brief nap, spent seven hours dancing - in his stroller, on our shoulders, in the grass. Dancing, dancing, dancing. His ability to find a rhythm after only a few bars of a song just astounds me. He must be on dozens of cameras; every time I turned around someone else was taking a picture of him. The Duhks even noticed him waving his arms back and forth while he sat on his daddy's shoulders. Our little extrovert. Incredible.

Floyd is every bit as beautiful as I remember it. The elevation is nearly four times that of Charlottesville, which sits in a valley. This means you can see a lot further from the top of a hill around Floyd. Growing up in Iowa, where you can see for miles upon miles in every direction, I find that I crave that kind of vantage point. Living in the foothills or among the trees is nice, but I need to be able to see some distance, otherwise my brain feels muddled. I spent two years in Vermont feeling like I couldn't think straight. And one of the main reasons we bought our little fixer-upper in Belmont is because of the view of Monticello, Brown and Carter Mountains out our back door.

But, as is my tendency, I remain unsatisfied. I want to see even more. Ideally, I'd like to be able to watch the sunset without feeling like I'm missing some significant part of it because it dropped behind a mountain range or hill.

But that's a really minor thing. What is far more alluring about Floyd is the mix of folks there. Born-and-bred, transplants, aging Hippies, new-age Hippies, back-the-the-landers -- all represented in Floyd County. And yet, everyone is so darn friendly to one another, and to strangers. There is some kind of simpatico that has developed there that makes it the most comfortable tiny town (population 450) I've ever stepped foot in.

We were last in Floyd in September 2006. We thought it was beautiful. We thought the vibe and the mix of people was exceptional. We toyed with the idea of settling down there. But, it is rural, there isn't a strong economy and we didn't feel ready to start our own business, or whatever we would have to do to make a living in a place like that. And, we found our little house in Charlottesville, which was just meant for us, and the rest is history.

But our trip last weekend proved that the pull toward Floyd and all it represents remains strong. Despite how much we love Charlottesville. Despite how much we adore our little house. Despite all of our friends. Despite everything we envisioned when we bought and then renovated our place -- the images we've had of how we might expand it, the love and time we've devoted to making a nest for ourselves. Despite it all, a feeling lurks that there is Something Else out there for us.

So this week I slowly churned through this new feeling. The vision of the homestead up on the backbone of the Blue Ridge. Among the eclectic mix that comprises that community. With our own businesses. A different house. Potentially chickens and goats. Land. Country life.

But leaving Charlottesville. Leaving our beloved house. Leaving our friends. How could we think of such a thing? Why not be content with what we have? Why look for anything else?

I half-hoped I could answer this conundrum before writing something here, but it hasn't happened. And I don't think it will any time soon. For now, it is something to chew on, to roll around and around in my mind until it is smooth and familiar and I feel I understand its dimensions. And the correct path comes into focus.

Festive

We are headed to FloydFest this afternoon -- our second time in Floyd and our first time at the festival. I have no idea what to expect, but if I can fly to Lithuania and back with a 10-month-old, I can handle a crowd of hippies with an 11-month-old. 

We loved Floyd when we visited in Fall 2006. I first heard of it on a public radio show about Virginia attractions. They discussed FloydFest and the town itself, which aspires for a marriage between hippies and country folk and, by most accounts, succeeds. 

We pondered setting up our household there before we stumbled on the little house here in Charlottesville. We made the right choice, but perhaps Floyd remains in our future yet.