Frosted

 

Front Seat Passenger

My daughter recently transitioned to being a front seat passenger

when it is just her and I

driving,

engaged in parallel conversations,

snacking on Swedish fish, 

listening to podcasts or her poppy “pool party playlist” 

(that I secretly enjoy on my Sunday run).

When she was small and still

in the back seat, 

my mom rigged mirrors 

from all angles off the headrest

so we could see her eyes, mouth, nose 

in the rear view mirror.

When she was small we monitored

breathing, hunger, slumber

Now I angle metaphorical  mirrors toward my front seat passenger, 

attempts to monitor brain chemistry, soul, and faith.

She and I drive through Wisconsin 

moments before the sun sets at 6:00 pm

hours before the leaves finally fall

days before an election.

Years ago when 

she was a back seat bunny

gazing backward out the window 

she pondered the loss of Tempest Shadow’s horn and

requested alternative choruses of  “Wheels on the Bus”

….. Transmission uses his gears 

………Alternator changes the energy

Now she gazes out the windshield with me

and ponders other things 

I try to share all

the things I wish I would have known 

at her age

to make life easier 

to make it more beautiful

but doesn’t every mother make this attempt 

all the while the daughter cringes?

At some point we just need to start singing again. 

As I learned when I was twenty-one years old,

No one is a better DJ

than a front seat passenger.

Life Lately: Summer

We started our summer driving to the Rocky Mountains to be with many of our favorite people. But first, enjoying the drive through Iowa in June with her stunning, lush, green rolling hills. Nebraska hosted the largest, fluffiest, most vibrant white clouds and in them we found the backs of sitting ogres, a boy riding a winged dog, and other spectacular wonders. Lately, we have been cloud watching and looking up more than down. Meeting thirty friends for a hike at Emerald Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park: the friends who visited us in the hospital one day after the birth of our first child and sang in our living room “Cath” by Death Cab for Cutie in a way that still takes my breath away. The much younger friends who were still in college but befriended us early-30-year-olds and our very particular and shy daughter. The friends that became aunties and uncles. The friends who creatively gathered during the pandemic in empty Old Navy parking lots to have dinner together. Friends who brought the silliest, strangest games over to play every Saturday night. (Ahem, I'm looking at you Mysterium as my favorite). So many friends who have been so significant and so many who eventually moved away. It was beautiful to be with all of them again, in one place, cheering on my daughter who hiked in the snow to the top of the Emerald Lake in hot pink Converse. Friends taking the hand of my six-year-old son to cross the icy brook that weaved down the mountain. Lately, I am thankful for all the people who have made life so absolutely stunning and in a way I never could have imagined for myself.

I thought I would spend the summer evenings of 2024 painting and writing. Instead, I took a small detour and started a tiny new job requiring a significant lens shift and learning curve. Lately, I am immersed in podcasts and online continuing education classes studying the neurology of sensory systems, the science of play, and learning about neurodiversity affirming practices in my field from neurodivergent voices. I am trying to carry out what I am learning in a small therapy gym with fantastical play schemes that weave in all the imagination we can muster. I keep thinking back to the fact that play helps release dopamine which is a feel good hormone. When we are engaging in play AND learning new things, we are linking learning with feel good hormones. Why do we ever stop doing this? But then I think of how I am absorbing all this delicious information: over headphones while I am moving through the garden, on long walks in the evenings, during pilates videos in the early morning, on the drive home from a friend’s house, and by creating informational handouts on Canva (and making sure the pictures and font are also “just right”). My learning curve is starting to flatten and with these last few weeks of summer, I hope to find the space for painting and writing. But I can also say I had a lot of fun learning this summer too.

First collection of 2024

Undone Tulip - 2024

Happiness can be the first picked flowers of the season.

 

Life Lately... April 2024

Lately, our living room floor has been the primary surface to sit and intricately fold pieces of paper into swans, lions, and fighter jets. I find paper airplanes nose down in the red oxalis or lost in cavernous spaces between the wall and couch. My six-year-old son spent much of Easter on his own while the rest of us had a nasty stomach bug. (Lately, we have endured so much sickness!) The next day, I found no less than 100 paper airplanes parked in the living room, folded into any model he could find directions for in our origami book. He had spent the entire day folding. 


Lately, I keep a book of poetry or prose next to the area where I brew my morning tea. In these six minutes, I promise myself that I will not unload the dishes or try to straighten the dining room table but instead savor the words of someone else’s perspective. I have been able to read through the poetry of Mary Oliver, Bianca Stone, and Annie Dillard's short book “The Writing Life” in these tiny, sacred moments.


Spring has been cool and stunning. Lately, I design all my running routes around the areas I know are brimming with magnolia trees, bluebells, redbuds, daffodils, or tulips. Because my endorphins are pumping, I am moved by the fact that each of these plant entities waits all year to perform such specific magical blooms for a brief period. All year they wait and then dazzle for a particular moment. These flowers will never be seen again. If I blink, I miss it and will have to wait a whole year to see the next generation! And because my endorphins are still pumping and I am listening to Tim Keller, I start to relate this phenomenon to our brief time here on earth and see our little lives on par with the bloom time of the crabapple tree in her magnificent magenta. In my notes app: God’s design for our little, beloved lives. Maximize bloom potential.


Lately, we spend the cooler, rainy weekends with friends playing the game Wavelength. I love a game that brings laughter-tears, a little confusion, and a lot of group problem-solving. This game brought much joy on those evenings that were still so dark. This particular weekend I get to enjoy the “mind-reading” game with a friend’s new puppy on my lap. Lately, I am in love with a three-pound ball of curls named Bev. 

Something from almost nothing

She had a story about her seven-year-old daughter that I love to think about in spring. It was a tiny snippet of a story- a side conversation really. Her daughter would pick up fallen scraps of foliage on the concrete slab floor of a Lowes Home Garden Center and tuck them in her pockets. You know... the loose vines and leaf stems that are usually swept up at the end of the day and tossed. The flowers and their damaged stems, rolled over by carts and careless sandal feet. Garbage to most people. No one noticed her collecting the rejected scraps. Most people were looking at the full-bodied plants. Days later her mother found sedums and begonias propagating in her bedroom windows. Her daughter propagated a whole garden from damaged discard. Each spring I wonder where she is now and what incredible things she is creating from almost nothing. 

Prehistoric Love

A well preserved skull 

of a prehistoric sea monster

and its phenomenal extraction 

from the Jurassic coast

is a welcome headline over breakfast

The pliosaur skull like a dragon’s head 

so remarkable
reminds me of the stack of library books
curated by my children

sitting at the edge of the dining room:

How to Train a Dragon and
How to Speak Dragon and
Wings of Fire and even
Dragons like Tacos

Over a bowl of cereal, I obsessively scroll 

through pictures of the monster-dinosaur-sea beast-dragon 

with her fascinating narrow nose

terrifying but elegantly sleek in shape

Fragile in appearance but inevitably enduring

This 150 million year old skull

now rests on a lab table
Thin bones arch across the top of her head

pinched and wing-like

Five thick vertebrae of her spinal column 

Exit from the back center of her magnificent head
Like an incomplete stage direction 
Or a vacuum cord cut short

I remember marveling in similar ways

at my daughter's twenty week ultrasound -

the sight of her slender tibia and fibula

bones articulating 

In-utero knitting, 

fearfully and wonderfully made
Bones have a way of making me emotional

A few years ago I created a Book of Centuries for my daughter
As a way to collage and record a historical timeline of events
As a way to build reverence for the passage of time
As a way to recognize that the world was always both awful and beautiful 

The book begins in 4000 BC 

Hundreds of pages later  I added my birthday 

and then hers
The process was astounding-
expressed so eloquently by James:
“You are just a vapor that appears for a little while
And then vanishes away”
Our point in time microscopic 

Like earth in context of the universe

150 million years ago this sea monster swam and hunted
150 millions years later there was you and there was me
We are weaved together 

for a few sacred moments

gifted with sharing space on this beautiful, old earth

curled up in blankets and evening snuggles

reading through our stacks of books 

in the glow and hope of our Christmas tree

Do the Work

As with any relationship that extends over a period of time, you occasionally need to put in the work and reignite the love. I recognized that our love had faded three years ago and, with a little attention and weekly dates, I have been able to fall in love with Chicago all over again. Our friend Brandon once commented: "Nothing can replicate the layers of texture in Chicago." Now I see that extra historic and rugged beauty everywhere and it makes me smile a little extra. 
 

Valentine B

I had wanted to do something lively this past Valentine's Day
but the family was either down with or recovering from Influenza B.

People laughed when I spelled out it’s full name in text
“It sounds like you are speaking from the Victorian era. Just say “the flu,”” a friend suggested.

After enduring a 103 temperature for three days, you just want to make sure people know.
It takes you out- mentally and physically.
This isn’t just a cold.
It’s Influenza B. It feels like something Victorian. 

So Valentine’s Day with a husband and daughter deep in their fevers.
I am just coming out of my own fever dream.

My six year old son is sitting at the kitchen counter 

We watch the sun go down on a romantic evening for other people.
I turn on the local college radio station and am surprised to hear a popular mainstream tune from the eighties.

They are taking love song requests from the public tonight and 

I can tell the nineteen year old hipster disc jockeys don’t quite know what to do 

with a request for Leather and Lace by Fleetwood Mac 

for Molly.

“We’ll take a look in the disc library,” they say, uncertain.

I love every moment of this interaction. 

This radio moment brings me back to life.

Happiness.

The song eventually floods my kitchen and my son asks to add it to his playlist 

(which mostly consists of thumping warehouse club music from the nineties and 

every version of Carol of the Bells).

He asks if he can make everyone toast for dinner and

we pull a stool up to the toaster.

This year my Valentine is learning how to wait 

thirty seconds 

until the heat of fresh toast warms the butter enough to spread easily. 

He is thrilled every time the bread “pops” 

My Valentine carefully serves his family with a proud disclaimer that

he, indeed, made their Valentine dinner.

Abandoned Shopping Carts & Skeleton Keys

Ben and I bought a house in our favorite neighborhood in the fall of 2019. It was a tiny red cottage that could pass as a camp cabin in the north woods. Instead, it happened to be settled in a tiny urban art district of our city. Inside, the plaster walls were cracking and coming down in chunks. Several gas leaks were discovered upon inspection. Floor tiles chipped as our shoes passed over them and there was an eery feeling one might fall through the stairway if not careful. But there were also treasures: a framed black and white photograph of Ronald Regan in the dining room, a beautiful crystal doorknob, a front door with a skeleton key positioned in the keyhole, and a 1950s painting of a lone cowboy.

Ben and I are typically drawn to houses in serious need of love. We tour a curious house simply because it piques our interest and we wonder how bad the interior can be. Over the past six years we have placed bids on a handful of older homes in our city. Homes with giant oak and elm trees and floors that gloriously rock and groan. Homes hosting quirky, dreamy little rooms with floor to ceiling windows that could make the best art studio or cozy attic libraries with their slanted ceilings. I adored a home once owned by a painter who had no less than 200 big, beautiful oil paintings overlapping his expansive bookshelves. This artist had died several years before and the house, his books and busts, paintings and plants just sat. Entering his home was a museum- it was beautiful and also existential. We considered homes that were gutted and then abandoned with no record of what taxes would be because it had once been property of the adjoining synagogue. We tried so hard to buy the home that had a bathroom without walls but a guest house that my sister-in-law was ready to rent for her gyrotonic studio. We know the homes next to Kate’s parents with their deep, urban forest backyard. We wander the neglected overgrown gardens that you can tell were once abundant in roses and wildflowers. These homes carry stories that I love to try to see. All of these homes were just a touch too expensive for the work that needed to be done. All of them needed to be gutted and restored to their intended glory. We put in bids we could afford, we dreamed for two days while we were considered, and then let the dream go when someone had more cash. We try not to drive by these houses too often to see what could have been.

Fall of 2019, however, we found ourselves agreeing that the little red cabin could be a once in a lifetime opportunity and our offer was accepted. At the time of purchase, several families we loved lived one or two blocks away from this little piece of property. Lake Michigan, sweet friends, shops/ restaurants/ ice cream, an el stop, and a Metra stop were in walking distance. In February 2020, an architect stamped his approval on plans for a stunning restoration that Ben had drawn and designed for the house. We could starting building by summer. We imagined so many things that this new home would provide. Our kids would be able to walk one block to Sesame Street or cross the street to the twinkle lit front porches of their friend’s homes. Just before we turned the stamped plans in to the city, Ben and I spent a weekend in the Fulton River District for my birthday. While strolling through streets way too hip and young for the likes of us, I asked if we could pause for  a minute and really assess whether we had the sincere energy for another home project while also raising young kids. We could submit the plans in March 2020. No big deal.

I don’t think I have to spell out the uncertainty and chaos that mid-March 2020 brought. Our lives, the lives of people we loved dearly, and the places we frequented all turned inside out along with the rest of the world. I think of the science experiment where you add pepper flakes to a shallow bowl of water and then drop the tiniest bit of dish soap in the center of the bowl to break the water’s surface tension. The pepper flakes rapidly repel and spread out away from the soap epicenter. What used to be a collection of like-matter explodes, splits, and the collective is no longer. Part of my 2020 experience included a big, unwanted, drop of soap touching down on our sweet spaces and people.

Lately, I have big feelings anytime I hear or read anyone’s account of February, March, April, May of 2020. I believe this is a delayed counter effect of the emotional shut down many of us needed to do in order to move through that season of the pandemic. Thawing from that experience took more time than expected. I noticed the first hint of a thaw in 2023 when my kid’s favorite podcast had a tiny listener ask how they produced the show in April of 2020. This simple question and answer brought me so much unexpected grief. I realize that I am certainly not alone in this painful after-processing and that our losses were mild compared to those that experienced significant illness, death, neglect, abuse, and loss of careers. I imagine there are others out there who find themselves blissfully driving along an interstate when suddenly something on the radio just brings the flood of emotions.

Like everything else, our home-building dream turned inside out and warped. It took a few years to completely accept. We sold the little red house exactly a year ago. (Another time you can ask me about the overgrown yet communally protected memorial pine tree, the ice shed that traveled throughout Wisconsin in the beginning of the 20th century but was now rotting in the backyard (also communally protected), the price of lumber in 2021, the brief hope we had in Ron, the petrified body of a flying squirrel in the bathtub, and the abandoned Valli Grocery shopping cart (that Bailey and her mother saw first!) in the driveway that finally signaled this dream was dead.) I also have a really, really good realtor recommendation! 

This past fall I expand our search to upstate New York and Vermont just for fun. Ben zeroes in on Rhinebeck, New York after enjoying a delicious falafel sandwich in their downtown followed by a breathtaking mountain view of the Catskills this past August. But our families are here in Chicago-land and we know that this is the exact time to be with them. And once in a while friends decide to stay and buy buildings themselves and they become family. Things will be different when we are twelve years older but right now, this is where we love and are loved.

So here we are: unmoved from the small house we gutted/ continue to restore with Ben’s talent and our hands. We groan at the amount of work that is still ahead if we choose to stay here for another ten years. We should win a Nobel Peace Prize for the wildlife that we allow to live in our roof. I realize that it is such a gift to have a home but I question if it is dull to stay in one space for so many years when my social media is filled with world-schooling, sleepy oceanside towns, and so many friends who have relocated to the mountains or other fascinating cities. 

But as I cool down from a Saturday morning run, I find our playwright neighbor out in the front yard with her aging white cat. “He’s too blind to be out here alone anymore. We now come out here together so I can supervise. He mostly sits and talks to the fern,” she explains, pulling her sweater around her tiny frame because it is cooler than we expected. Indeed the cat is meowing at the lone fern. It is in moments like these that the mundane becomes magical. I have hundreds of these stories from this street that we didn’t plan to stay on for more than a few years. I share in these tiny moments of ordinary beauty, knowing that one day I will look back with nostalgia at this very chapter of my life and want to spend a few moments here again. Participating.