There are also those days that the baby just keeps crying.   And he can’t seem to fall asleep very long.  And he is so tired.  And you are pretty tired yourself.  And those lentils you were excited about making?  You burn your arm in their steam when you lift the lid.  And they don’t turn out as good this time anyway.  And you don’t get a chance to take your walk.

Yes, I guess there also have to be those kinds of days.

After two beautiful days of Thanksgiving, we drove two beautiful hours home.  The first hour the sun was setting.  The second the towns were glowing.  The car was so warm we didn’t want to get out, so we looked at lights for a while and then stopped at the diner to eat eggs while the baby slept beside us.

Our bellies were full when we got to the house and we turned up the heat.  Rest is lovely and home is good.  Welcome home.  Happy Thanksgiving.  Thank you.

That you make friends so easily.

How you love to look out at everything.

The way you like to stretch and reach.  You’re a boy that hates to be confined.

Your many, many faces.

“Adam, look!” I said, tipping my head toward the living room window.  He looked out, into the window of our neighbor’s sun porch where her lion of an orange cat was sleeping.  “Look how fat he is and how happy on that afghan!  Now THAT is a cozy cat!” I gushed.  “He’s even cozier than Eliot,” I said smiling at my own kitty.

Five minutes later, Adam found him snuggled up in the cradle.  The cradle Eliot hasn’t once tried to sit in since Reed came home.  I swear, he was getting back at me for saying that our neighbor cat is cozier.

He has been sneaking into the cradle ever since.  And I can’t just shoo him out.  When I try to pick him up, he makes himself as heavy and cumbersome as possible, especially when I have a baby in my arms.

Punk cat.

– “Read my book,” the novelist said. “Are there breasts in it?” asked Brad. “Oh just grow up,” the man sneered. He didn’t notice Brad’s left hand reaching under the workbench for the .357 Magnum he kept taped there for just this eventuality. “I’m a serious novelist,” the man said quietly, “and I’ve won many awards.” But those awards weren’t going to save his skin from some serious perforation now. No, sir. BLAM BLAM BLAM.

-Garrison Keillor

I ran into this great article by Garrison Keillor the other day.  I hope you just click on the link and read it, because it is is short and clever and funny.  But in case you don’t, it is about writing and reading and people who get MFAs to write things about pale reflections in drifted snow (have you read things like that?  I sure have).  I found it very encouraging, as I have written nothing about snow with pale reflections in it.

After a few weeks that left me feeling totally braindead every time I looked at a notebook, I have found myself returning to writing.  It feels like returning home from a trip to a house that is somewhat out of order.  It feels homey and messy.  There are so many things to get in order.  Notebooks of poems here, jots and observations scattered all over the place, that project that is kind of started in three notebooks and fully begun nowhere, that novel that keeps bugging me, the short story I thought was no good, but is actually rather nice…I’m a mess of notebooks and projects.

I can’t imagine it any other way, really.  I considered stopping work on my novel while I worked on some other things that might have more publishing potential.  But try as I might, I just can’t get Joseph and his world out of my head.  So I’m stuck with it and a homey messy writing time, much of which I doubt will ever be profitable.

On the other hand, I ran into a man on the street that used to come into the coffee shop.  I hadn’t seen him for a very long time.

“Are you still working on your novel?” he said.

And I said yes.  And it sounded nice.

From Laura Z.

I love talking walks in the rain.

I love soup on the stove and bread in the oven when it’s cold and wet out.

I love that this town is dripping in pine boughs and twinkle lights.

I love the crinkle sound of onion peels.

I love taking my time at the grocery store.

I love the look of streetlights on wet streets.

photo of me and t. reed by aunt gretchen

“But here I am in my life, and I know I am not here as a representative white male American human, nor are the birds and animals and plants here as representatives of their sex or species.  We all have our ways, forms, and habits.  We all are what we are partly because we are here and not in another place.  Some of us are mobile; some of us (such as the trees) have to be content merely to be flexible.  All of us who are mobile are required by happenstance and circumstance and accident to make choices that are not instinctive, and that force us out of categories into our lives here and now.  Even the trees are under this particularizing influence of place and time.  Each one, responding to happenstance and circumstance and accident, has assumed a shape not quite like that of any other tree of its kind.  The trees stand rooted in their mysteriously determined places, no place quite like any other, in strange finality.  The birds and animals have their nests in holes and burrows and crotches, each one’s place a little unlike any other in the world- and so is the nest my mate and I have made”

-Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle

Walking home from the library with a little boy on my chest and Little Men under my arm, I watched the geese fly overhead.  I always seem to be out during the twilight hours, and the geese always seem to fly low over this town.  On sunny evenings, their bellies are white with light.  But today was grey and their bodies were black against the blue of the clouds.

I may be a morning person, but I think I have a twilight soul.

The street was quiet and Reed’s tiny breaths were loud and warm against my chest.  I absently plunked a piece of pine and crushed it between my fingers to savor the smell.  I often do this when I am sad or lonely or particularly apathetic.  But today, I was only glad and content.  I also pluck pines out of habit.

My cat was on the doorstep of my house, waiting to be let inside.  The three of us entered together.  The kitchen still smelt strongly of the peppers and garlic and lime that had been simmered with beans for lunch.  The cookie dough I made this afternoon was out on the counter.  I had forgotten that we were out of eggs, so instead of baking them, I snacked on another spoonful.  They were made with sucanat.  I like the way it crunches between my teeth.

The morning light coming through our bedroom window while Adam sat bent over the cradle holding Reed’s hand.  And Reed cooed and squeaked away talkatively while he looked at his dad and his dad looked back and replied.

The afternoon light warming the living room while I napped with a baby on my chest, which is like napping with a cat only about 100 times sweeter.