fourteen

This girl couldn't wait to be born. She emerged with her arms extended, poopin' and yellin', looking like a wrinkled mini-super hero. Fourteen years later she is still HERE soaking up life, inhabiting her slice of the world with humor and passion.  There is no pigeon-holing her teenagedness; she is goofy, sweet, compassionate, curious, opinionated, creative, dreamy, capable, and completely obsessed with apocalyptic sci-fi, succulents and hair.  

 If I did not know this girl, I would wish I did. She is a loyal friend and a sweet companion.

This year has been about sci-fi books (The Hunger Games, The Divergent Series, The Lunar Chronicles, The Maze Runner) and dance and learning to move in a growing body.  She rediscovered a gift for music, learning to play the fiddle, picking up old-time music by ear.  She would love to sit and watch her favorite movies with you over and over and over, which really shouldn't surprise me since that's how she's absorbed new beloveds since day one, and what better way to connect than over your third watching of Portlandia? Or Zombieland? Or Divergent?

meeting our new friend, Piper

She is spending the weeks around her birthday delving into new things, participating in two theater arts camps - masks and stage combat - with confidence and courage.  It turns out I've been saying a lot of the same things about you for years, my daughter, because you have been So You for so long. The way you know yourself is one of the many things I admire about you.

 Happy turning of the Sun, dear one!  I love you so much!

january

This might be the longest January in the history of Januaries (is it just me, or has it seemed really really long??), but here it is, suddenly nearly over.  Before it began we were having balmy, spring-like weather, and here as the end nears and Orion is high in the night-time sky, we are to have weather in the 50's again.  And in-between? Heavy snows for this part of our world. It's like it's March, not January, with the crazy polarized weather.  

a hike with Nugga on a warm afternoon

We've gotten back into a swing of sorts, with mornings together and a gradual drifting around lunchtime to computers, books, block towers...It is suiting us right now, which of course doesn't mean it will last, but I'm feeling like there is a great balance of structure, juice, fermentation and creativity. I am reconfirming my allegiance to down-time and the power of nothing-to-do, and it is feeling pretty good.  

Vikings game

a rabbit hole: Ani quizzes me on countries of Africa,
and we notice the Islamic symbol on a number of the flags,
which leads to looking up where Islam started,
which leads...you see how it goes.

drawing and tracing maps. just out of the photo:
the christmas  imbolc tree

An event of note: Eliza got her ears pierced! It was a family event, of course, and Dan had his holes re-pierced, while Ani and I just hung about for moral support.

In this photo, Eliza looks simultaneously thirteen and eight to me.
It's all in there, I know, but sometimes it just shines out at me so clearly.

This one is finding her Style!

There was a sleepover with Ari Beloved Jones.  They've been doing this for so many years now - the worming down the stairs in the sleeping bags to play Go Fish! before the rest of the house is up, the polite request for pancakes and hot chocolate, and oh, the giggles. I have a feeling they'll be playing Go Fish! for a ridiculous number of years to come, just because it makes them giddy.

Have you ever had Totoro make you french toast for breakfast? Mmmmm.

We are all finding ways to move our bodies these days.  The week starts Monday morning at 6:30 with a yoga class for Dan and I, and it is kind of amazing that we are able to get there and enjoy it so very much.  (On the morning of our first class - new January habit, you know - the car was frozen shut, so we had to crawl in through the back of the car - and back out once we got there - and back in once it was over, because it was still frozen! That's dedication.)  Ani is reluctant to take any classes, but one of our favorite people, the girls' poetry teacher, whose official title on her business cards is "Warrior Poet", happens to be a black belt in karate and teaches a class at the community center.  I floated the idea of attending by Ani, and the two of us signed up and go twice a week.  It is awesome to share that with her. It's a little like giggling through gym class, with your kid (please do not tell Sensei Wendy we are giggling, though she might have caught wind of it as we did our best at pushups the other night. Oof.)

And there was last weekend, the big snow, which is now almost gone, but gave us quite a nice cosy Saturday, with rehearsals and shopping cancelled, and a good workout with the shoveling.  We can say we've had a taste of winter, and big good-bye to January...

Goldfinches and a Downy

home!

a girl in her natural habitat

You might have noticed that our girl is home? Four weeks away from home, three from me and from Ani...it was maybe a little too long, she says.  But what an adventure! She was invited to Seattle to visit friends she's had since she was born; Laney and I were in prenatal yoga together and often rode the same bus to work while we were huge and lumbering.  A few months later, she and her little family moved into our building, and we spent almost every day of that first year of our kids' lives walking, nursing, talking, and concocting amazing lunches for ourselves to eat on the floor and drip onto our babies' heads.

These people are some of Eliza's deep family, and I didn't give her trip a second thought, except to say that there was no way she was traveling across country by herself!! Through a combination of a second trip in one month to Wisconsin, a serendipitous midwest wedding, and a generous and willing Laney, who accompanied Eliza home, it happened.

We had one day with Laney before she turned around and went home, and when we could stop talking for two minutes, she found ways to connect with Ani, who doesn't know her well, as she was only one when we left Seattle. 

 I think they connected.

eliza's community art book

thirteen

We have a teenager, and she is wonderful.  She has the sparkle she was born with, and she is warm and curious.  She wants to know you and what you are about and if you've met her once she will greet you with a hug the next time around as if you've known each other forever.  

She arrived early (I know - it was exactly on time, but I was new at the mama gig, and she was early!) and has been ready for the next thing since that moment. 

We travelled to Maine so we could spend her birthday with dear friends, and omigosh, the puppy play that comes with these big kids - the limbs and the wrangles and the laughing! It was awesome. We used to watch Esme's big sisters sprawl across our couches with their friends, legs crossing legs, a jumble of bodies.  We're there.  Maine was exactly the right place for this kid to turn thirteen.

Teenagers generally get a bad rap in the world, but I don't get why.  This feels like the brink of so much possibility and goodness.  The creativity, the life force, the big big love. If I weren't your mama, I'd sure want to know you, Eliza...