The Bidding of Love

The sound, soft and reminiscent, didn’t register at first. As wakefulness spread across my body like a good brandy warming the belly, I realized the novel sound was a first spring rain. The ground lay white with snow still, our woods gray and dreary. But to hear and see the rain from the vantage of first morning’s light felt delicious, almost exhilarating.

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Not Fast Enough

Mud season is nearly upon us. Or, rather, under us. Soon it’ll be tracked in on muck boots, on the back of everyone’s pant legs, coating our vehicles and painting our progress towards spring. This time of year the snow is going, but not fast enough. Or so my mind whispers when I imagine putting the boots away and having the freedom of leaving home in mere flip flops or even barefoot.

Surrounded

Several times over the past week I sat down to write about the serious topics at hand and it just didn’t work. I thought I was ready, and I am, but life as it tends to do had other plans.

When it comes to writing, I’ve learned not to force it. It’s no good if I do. The words will come when they’re ready. When conditions are right. Like the weather. Or spring blooms. Or a good bowel movement.

“Mom, why is there poop on the carpet?” the six-year old asked loudly.

Periscope Down

This likely won’t be the place to get any sort of Angle update anytime soon, just as it hasn’t been for the past many months. My view is submerged. My season is hibernation. My mind is single-tracked.  And my cub is the reason.

Cubs.

Kids. Plural. Yes, I’m still jangling on that.

This Precious Time

“Go sit down, Love,” he says, rubbing the small of my back as he passes me in the kitchen.

Baby Julian’s been asleep for half an hour. And after bath time, story time, last ditch run-around time, glass of water time, and two dozen loudly whispered “SHHHHHH’s” on our part, five-year old Iris is finally in bed too.

He tells me to go sit down every night on his way to go sit down. He takes his usual place on the couch, gets out his Kindle and settles in. “I will,” I say, looking at my comfortable blue reading chair.

When Sleep Won’t Come

It seems as if the creating phase of any venture lends itself to both excitement and worry. Am I making the right decisions? Should I have done it this way? What if…? are all questions my head will flip and squish and analyze from every angle all night long.

And as the project nears completion, when there is less to be done but also less that can be changed, the stress builds.

One-Track Mind

We marked the last day of regular firearms deer season with a dinner of fresh venison and grouse. The glass door had gotten the grouse, so no license was required there. Cut very thin, lightly breaded and fried, both meats were a hit with the five-year old.

Bow season continues and muzzle loader opens this weekend, but even though he’ll likely bring home one more deer, I should get to see a bit more of my orange-clad partner now.

We made the hour+ trip to town together one day last week, and our conversation was like one from a sitcom. Both in our own separate worlds, he was focused on the hunt and I was focused on the birth. I later apologized for my one-track mind, and he laughed. “Me too,” he said sheepishly.

November

Two months in and most days we still ride together as a family to drop the kindergartner off at The Angle’s one-room school house. She loves it, doesn’t want to leave afterward and calls every one of her classmates her friend. As we were getting into the truck on that first day back in early September, she was a bubbling mass of excitement and told us as she hefted her new backpack up onto the seat that it was “the importanest day” of her life.

Her papa’s eyes met mine and we both smiled.

The Shape of Darkness

When the power goes out, as it does fairly often here at The Angle, the darkness, or rather the small light in the darkness brings the family together. Whatever disparate activities we were all up to, they are put on pause, and we find our way to each other and start the familiar hunt for candles, the lantern, flashlights and headlamps.

First, it’s an adventure. And then, when we have our more primitive lights on, for whatever reason, we always ride out the darkness together.