My boy

My little boy calls to me. "Mama," he says, "I  need to talk to you."

I ask him to scoot over so I can fit on the edge of his bed. His eyes look weepy though the tears haven't yet begun. I brush his blond hair away from his eyes, off to the side of his forehead, following the direction in which his part has long taken it.

It's bedtime, half past seven, the time when sad thoughts and bad thoughts come out to play. The time when busyness is no longer a helpful distraction, the time when the mind starts to rest. Or does it?

"Third grade has been a hard year for me, Mom."

"Really my darling? You seem so much happier than last year. Tell me!"

"Oh yes, it's been a very good year, but sometimes, at recess, it's so hard."

My gut starts to clench for him, as I recall the way kids start to act when they're eight and nine and ten. When there are ins and outs and cools and not-cools. When playground cliques change daily but are painful each time around.

My boy is truly kind. He always has been. It doesn't occur to him to be mean to anyone. It's been hard to watch others be mean to him. There have been a few, as there always are, and even though my boy is hurt, he refuses to hurt back. "That's just not right, Mom." I want to punch those kids in their smug faces, but my boy is right. And so I help him figure out ways of standing up to them in a kind, logical way. A way that he can walk away from feeling good that he's stuck to his moral guns.

"Well, X started a club, you see. And he invited some others to join. I said I wanted to join and he said, 'Well you can't unless you pass a test perfectly, and then maybe I'll let you onto the low class side."

Come to find, my boy would be the only one on the low class side, if he passed this ridiculous test.

My boy and X are friends. My boy is stung by this betrayal. He doesn't understand.

"Mom, there's no way I'll get 100% on the test." my boy says, and he crumbles in slo-mo. His beautiful face pinches, as if trying to stop the inevitable deluge soon to wet the pillow on which his head rests. The tears come, and his thin shoulders seize, up and back, up and back.

My heart is aching as I kiss the tears away and try to think of something, anything I can say to ease his pain. I tell my boy that I'm so proud of his kind soul and that unfortunately, not everyone is so. I tell him that sometimes, life is mean and hard and confusing. I tell him that friends don't issue tests, don't put friends in low classes.

I hug him until I worry I'm upsetting him more and then I gather myself and tell him something funny to make him laugh. A momentary reprieve.

"I love you, Mom."

Oh my sweet boy, I love you too.

Separating the curds from the whey

This morning, I logged into a private Facebook group and found my first free-write prompt. I'll be doing this every weekday for the next fortnight, and I'm burning with anticipation. I've cleared much of my calendar during this time, so that I can fully immerse myself in this small group session entitled Blossom. 

The name seems so apropos of everything right now. Of the determined flowers budding and blooming despite an elusive spring. Of the clouds of pet hair swirling at my ankles no matter how often I vacuum, winter coats shedding away in preparation of warmer temperatures to come. Of the bubbles of promise I see atop many a vista and even in the challenges that motherhood so often pitches forward.

This time of year is so busy. School is starting to draw to a close -just over a month left!- and it seems we've been celebrating something for weeks now and have weeks of the same ahead. Celebrations are the best sort of living, so I certainly don't begrudge any of that happy goodness, but they do keep the dance card full.

In such a whirlwind, I feel indulgent taking -making!- this time for a pursuit without an end goal, and yet, maybe that's all the more reason to simply say yes to an opportunity that spoke deeply to my soul.

Yesterday, on the way home from the boys' swimming lessons, we tried to visit a farmers market off our usual course. We were foiled from every angle- no parking, a bathroom emergency, two broken ATMs. I gave up and drove us home in a frustrated snit, irritated that something the boys both wanted to do with me was being snatched from reach.

But once home, Jack decided he'd rather go on a bike ride with Tom, and Tom had just gone to the ATM so could give me some money, and Oliver said he really wanted to go back to the farmers market. So we all did all that, each what we wanted, and it was wonderful.

As Oliver and I approached an impressive cheese stall, he said, in between giant bites of croissant, "Let's get a weally stinky cheese here!" Everyone around us smiled and softened, warmed by a little boy loudly crying out for a relatively unusual six-year-old's snack.

I burst with pride, and we tasted with abandon, ultimately buying four hunks of lusciousness with varying degrees of stink.

Last night, I grated some atop a bowl of sauteed greens, warm tomatoes and roasted asparagus just grown and picked at a friend's parents' farm (A of the tubs of tomatoes last summer fame). A and her husband came for dinner Friday night, to talk tomato canning (because how better to deal with a billion pounds of freshly-picked tomatoes) and catch up, and brought with them said asparagus. 

We shared a meal, some wine, stories and tips. I served dessert, her husband the next day left a shade-loving plant on our porch because I'd mentioned our yard was not on the receiving end of rays.

Kindness and connection blossom and spread in the friendliest sort of viral ways. In unexpected ways and in unexpected places. Especially if you let them.

beauty and growth in unexpected places

Thoughts big and small

I am bone-tired this morning. Even my heel-pads ache. I gardened, ran and worked out yesterday in addition to taking Jack to a trial French class, going to the market, and actively negotiating Wii usage for hours, so there's all that, but still. 

Last night, Tom and I made a simple but superb spring dinner last night and then sank to the couch like weights dropped in a stream.

springtime caprese

We finished Episode 1 of the new documentary, Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies (based on the book by Siddhartha Mukherjee). Despite the heavy subject, it's really, really excellent. Toggling back and forth between past and present, it provides, through the sobering lens of pediatric leukemia, a thorough sense of the evolution of cancer understanding and treatment which is both fascinating and hopeful. You want to kiss the feet of the brave doctors who have persevered in the face of kids dying horrible deaths and then go hug your children and send gratitude for their health into the skies.

fava bean and mint puree; we slathered this atop griddled bread

I'm now sitting quietly on my couch, both utterly tranquil and stressed about how soon this peaceful solitude will end. T took the boys to swimming lessons about a half hour ago, so I gather I have just about 40 minutes left to read the paper and finish this post and my coffee. Naturally I know that's impossible, and while I will be happy to see the boys rush through our door and regale me with news of their progress and which Dum-Dum flavor each chose, it is mornings like these, when much of me wishes I had the whole day ahead of me and alone, that I feel so very stretched by motherhood.

yogurt chicken with aleppo and lemon, caprese salad, sauteed asparagus/english peas/Brussels sprouts and pecorino

Yesterday, after meeting Jack's French teacher and surveying the classroom, I hugged him goodbye and said I'd be back at the end.

"Je t'aime, Mom."

"Je t'aime aussi, Doodle."

What a soulful love that little boy is. I want to give him every opportunity and walk alongside him as he forges ahead in life. But that giving tends to tip the scales away from time to pursue my own interests and goals. In the most unequal of moments, I feel as if the early years of motherhood strongly suggest I put huge swaths of my life on hold. Daily. For a long while. 

I don't resent that, but it compounds the challenges of motherhood which are already great.

Friday night antipasto dinner with strawberry lemonade in wine glasses. Festive!

Children are not goals. I have hopes for my boys, sure. But other than feeling confident that I'm raising terrific humans, I don't derive from mothering them the sense of accomplishment I do in finishing an essay or laying that last bag of mulch. Nor do I feel I should, for children are people not pursuits.

the antipasto platter

At times it is utterly thrilling to feel yourself subsumed by something, but in other moments, it's discomfiting. As if a force beyond your control is reeling your soul away to an unknown land. Do you know what I mean?

a pile of zucchini-feta fritters

I love my boys with such fierce desperation. Yet within that cocoon of love I sometimes feel bits of myself slipping away, as if on a boat that's loosed its moors. I don't feel I can push back on them in the way I do T or friends; not yet at least.

Surely this is one reason so many people speak of parenthood in terms of sacrifice. I'm not totally comfortable with that word in this context, except in the most denotative of ways: there are, literally, sacrifices made (financial, for example).

But, I chose to have children, so it seems unjust to then burden them or our relationship with the guilty connotations of words like job and sacrifice. And so for now, I find my way, in moments stolen and planned, in the words swimming through my head and committed to the page. And I am grateful for it all.