a.rose

I am not good at taking pictures.  This has been well established.  But sometimes I do, and sometimes I am really happy with how they turn out, and sometimes even as much as I love words, it's best just to let the photos speak for themselves.

Sometimes I forget how much I forget, and that if I don't write it down, and don't keep notes with the pictures, it's gone. This is for me then, to keep the memory of these days a little longer. Sometimes we have friends come over, and sometimes we just like to hang out and play with them in the bathtub.  Because why not, right? Heather is extremely independent, and when she gets hungry she gets hungry.  That's how sometimes I find her eating lunches like this.  That's a pile of bacon, a slice of turkey, and a cold hotdog.  We keep it real healthy around here. We like yoga. And sometimes we just drop into downward dog. We are just so cute, is all. And this is the other thing we do.  Run and run and run. And make really cute faces. And just generally hang out. Oh look, there's me too.

This is what I want to say to my girls about their bodies, their body image, their idea of self, their self worth.  This is what I want them to see when they look in the mirror.  This is what I see. You are perfect, you. I said, you are perfect.  You. You are not sure. You don't believe. You doubt. So I say again, you are perfect, you. You have a heart that feels. Your heart laughs, laments, and above all, loves. You have a mind that thinks. Your mind plots, and plans, and most of all, performs. You have a soul that, in peaceful quiet moments, remembers. You have a soul that once walked among the stars. You have a soul that saw the mountains and ocean and sky called into creation. You are perfection in embryo - a living, growing work of art whose misplaced brush strokes can be painted over, again and again, reworked into the whole until a masterpiece emerges. You are perfection in embryo. I call it like I see it, and I can see what you will be....

School pictures are always so fun, and I have always been really happy with how they turn out.  That's a relief, I don't think I could be trusted to remember a second picture day if we ever need retakes. My big third grade Hallie: And my big first grade Hanna:

Home has always been a bit of a tricky concept for me.  Where is it?  What does it feel like, to have a home that is a location and not a group of people?  When people make small talk and ask, "Where are you from?" I always stumble and struggle knowing how to answer. We have lived here in Nebraska six and a half years now, easily the longest place I have stayed anywhere my whole life.  I actually just calculated it and until Nebraska, the average length of time I stayed anywhere was just over 2 years. Nebraska is not a place I would have chosen for myself.  So far West, so far away from family, so far from trees.  There are so many places that pull on my heart, places that, were I on my own I might try to make home.  Upstate New York, Michigan, Indiana, even Brasil or the Netherlands.  I only lived in some of those places a short time, and some of them only when I was very young, but they claimed my heart and they will always own pieces of ...

Today started off like any other day, waking up to the noiseless commotion of Devin slipping out at 4:30 to go work out.  Then my alarm at 5:00, snooze, snooze, snooze, even though I am awake and have been since Devin left.  I like to lie there in the dark, soaking up the last few peaceful moments of my day before it all gets so crowded and noisy and my head fills up with a million thoughts pulling me to do a million things and then the guilt that rides me all day long and keeps me up too late at night of only accomplishing four of them. 5:30 am and I know my time is up, the luxury of rest has passed and so I rise.  Dress myself and make last minute preparations for my four high school students to come.  Unlock the door, turn on the porch light; it is still so dark outside. Now the rush and flurry of life begins.  Students come, students go, breakfast, shoes, backpacks, out the door.  Then to the ymca where I will drop the girls off to play and I will ...

I first tried to learn how to crochet in high school.  My mom was teaching me, and it did not end well.  Tears and hysteria, mainly, is what I recall.  I was not good at it immediately, and that made me angry, and so of course like any good teenager, I quit. Years later, I had a friend who tried to teach me how again.  This time I was diligent.  I was pregnant with Hanna and so sick and uncomfortable (hernia, anyone?) and Hallie was just a year old and so the only thing connecting me to my sanity was practicing crochet.  I remember sitting on that couch, stitching and stitching and stitching but it was never to my satisfaction, in fact the only thing I could make were lumpy triangles and so I would pull all the yarn out and start again. And again. And again. Then Hanna was born and I put it all aside once more, almost deciding that crochet was not for me.  I had tried it, I had given it a fair shot, and I had failed.  I moved on with life. ...

I have been thinking about Hanna a lot lately.  I feel like her birthday post was a little sidetracked with my thoughts of just having visited my grandma. When Devin and I were trying to decide to have another baby or not five or so years ago, I worried about Hanna.  I knew that I wanted Hallie to have a sibling, but I worried if we had one more then Hanna would be in the dreaded middle spot of a family of three children. (Assuming at that time that we would not have four). As we talked though we decided Hanna had a strong enough personality that she could handle being a "middle". And yet, sometimes I worry that because she takes care of herself so well I lost out on some opportunities to be mom for her specially.  I began to worry that's what happened with her birthday post.  So this one is for you kid, just you.  Hanna is  As I try to begin, I realize I have a dilemma.  How do you describe  in writing, a format that is by nature somewhat permane...

This afternoon while the cookie dough rested in the fridge before we carefully spooned it in to our mouths, and eventually place small piles onto a cookie sheet, Hallie and I wrote poems about spring.  Here is Hallie's: Spring, spring, Beautiful spring Trees and flowers in bloom It's so nice to see  The whole world Coming back to life In spring Here is mine: Spring needs green  like I need chocolate and she needs music and he needs broken down cars to tinker with in all his unsold hours -- and Spring needs green like the birds need a nest and bunnies need a burrow and bees need a hive to hide and sleep and store all their honey treasure and Spring needs green like the sky needs blue and your eyes need brown and my favorite sweater needs  grey  with a spot of mustard on the sleeve and Spring needs green like I need tulips and bird song and warm winds and little buds holding an infinite promise

Heather actually, as you may know, turned four in February.  I have been saving these stories up and it is finally time to share them.   Some background on Heather, she is a tiny bite size of a person (my mother's words) and she has long blonde hair that flows perfectly straight down her back.  She dances through life, to the tune of songs that she makes up as she goes. One day I was driving somewhere and she was, oddly enough, the only one in the car with me.  I don't think that has ever happened before, and I don't know why it happened on that day, which means it will probably never happen again.  But there we were, just me and my Heather.  She said, without preamble, "Mom, someday all of your kids will grow up and leave.  What are you going to do then?" And my mind just burst wide open with all of the things I have thought about, and dreamed about doing when they "all grow up and leave".  So many plans and hopes and I didn't even know where to ...

Some idle thoughts as I was falling asleep last night, and they formed themselves like this: bow strung tight bird in flight howling wind weeping rain bleeding moon let me sleep let me sleep let me sleep traveler without path wraith without wrath and so am I and so I am awake awake eternally awake in a world that feels like dreaming.

Hanna's birthday was a few weeks ago and in the days since then I have been thinking a lot about her, and about life, and have generally been overcome with all kinds of emotions.  There is exactly a week between Hallie's birthday and Hanna's and in that gap I went down to Texas to be with my family there and help out any way I could.  The juxtaposition of going from a birthday for an eight year old, to spending a week with my dad, aunt, and uncle who are all now grandparents, and my grandmother who is 95, and then rushing back home for the birthday of a six year old made quite an impression on me.  This is what I do,  and so I do it.  not sure if I am good at it, I know surely I'm not bad.  and this is what I do and so I do it.  Those in my care can be noisy, unpredictable, and at times might even appear to be broken.  But what I have is mine  and I will always claim them. When all of it comes crashing down and there is more than I can hold I...

I remember, and as I wander through the memories it feels as though I am not just remembering but living it again.  The years suddenly mean nothing and I remember how it felt.  All of me so raw and fresh and new -there was this sudden part that I was to play in life, a new role that had been anticipated for nine months but not fully understood even as it was thrust literally into my arms.  Mother. And there, that tiny body, those fingers and toes, those long thin arms and legs.  Those eyes that opened and took in the world and then, overwhelmed and confused, closed again.  This process repeated over and over until the lights weren't so shocking and the voices weren't so loud and the world began to come clearer to her eyes. Her eyes that were so startlingly blue as a baby and then deepened and greened to the color of late autumn grass on a misty day.  Not quite brown, not quite green, you aren't quite sure what color you are seeing and so you look, a...