September Love, In Pictures

Zach's first day of third grade, and first day at Cherry Creek!

Julian's first day of preschool!

Happy boy.

Julian and his best friend, Reid.

Zach and his best friend Greylon, Reid's older brother!

Gabe is quite the adventurer outside!

...and inside :D

With energetic boys, sometimes the bikes come inside...

Walks with the Boomers! Nichole and I thought our husbands were adorable pushing the strollers. Hahahaha :)

 Dave consoling his baby <3

These two....

<3 <3 <3

Daily quiet time....

Life at the lake!

Special treat for my boys... steamers on the porch steps!

Walking home from buddy's bus stop with his holy trinity of sleep-time: binkie, bear-y and blankie. :D

Stories with Dah-Dah. (can you spot the sleep-time trinity? :D)

Tracking mom during hurricane Irma... (she was fine)

Boulder Ridge Wild Animal Park. The birds are the best!

Lovin'

Bumpin'

"We struggle with, agonize over and bluster heroically about the great questions of life when the answers to most of these lie hidden in our attitude toward the thousand minor details of each day."

-Robert Grudin

Gift from the Sea

"For to be a woman is to have interests and duties, raying out in all directions from the central mother-core, like spokes from the hub of a wheel. The pattern of our lives is essentially circular. We must be open to all points of the compass; husband, children, friends, home, community; stretched out, exposed, sensitive like a spider's web to each breeze that blows, to each call that comes. How difficult for us, then, to achieve a balance in the midst of these contradictory tensions, and yet how necessary for the proper functioning of our lives. How much we need, and how arduous of attainment is that steadiness preached in all rules for holy living. How desirable and how distant is the ideal of the contemplative, artist or saint- the inner inviolable core, the single eye.

With a new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has to do primarily with distractions. The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with it's thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls- woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life. The problem is not merely one of Woman and Career, Woman and the Home, Woman and Independence. It is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center; how to remain strong, no matter what shocks come in at the periphery and tend to crack the hub of the wheel.

What is the answer? There is no easy answer, no complete answer. I have only clues, shells form the sea. The bare beauty of the channelled whelk tells me that one answer, and perhaps a first step, is in simplification of life, in cutting out some of the distractions. But how? Total retirement is not possible. I cannot shed my responsibilities. I cannot permanently inhabit a desert island. I cannot be a nun in the midst of family life. I would not want to be. The solution for me, surely, is neither in total renunciation of the world, nor in total acceptance of it. I must find a balance somewhere, or an alternating rhythm between these two extremes; a swinging of the pendulum between solitude and communion, between retreat and return. In my periods of retreat, perhaps I can learn something to carry back into my worldly life."

This passage from one of my favorite books, Gift from the Sea, sums up my heart attitude toward life these past few months. How to live with the inevitable and necessary duties and distractions of life that pull parts of me away from the whole- how to hold onto and foster the parts that make me me, such as creativity and independence, even though they're at odds with my outward life. I struggle with this so much, and that's why I've been so focused on simplifying my life as a whole. I don't want to lose parts of myself. I had an epiphany reading the analogy of the swinging pendulum- what a perfect way to describe the possible balance that could be achieved in a mother's life. Balance does not come from smoothing down and simplifying everything outward- it comes from embracing the outward and all it's distractions and making inward retreats a priority. I love the word retreat. Re-treat. Giving yourself a treat (the treat of solitude) over and over. I feel like I finally understand and am figuring out how I can navigate these precious child-rearing years and still keep the main parts of myself intact.

This book is amazing, and if you haven't read it yet I highly suggest you do!

Summer Rain.

An old roommate of mine has a dad with a purple heart.

If you don't know what that is, it's a military medal you're awarded when you're wounded in battle. He was in Vietnam. He was on disability afterward because of his injuries and didn't have to work, so he hung out with us a lot. We called him "Pops".  I'm not sure if it was just the 60's that never left him or just his altered mental state since the military, but he was crazy. I mean craaaaaazzzzy. Cray Cray. For instance, once time he did something nuts (can't remember what), and I said, "Pops, you're crazy." He choked and spattered and started screaming and laughing and told me that's the best thing anyone has ever said to him. I couldn't believe nobody had told him that before.

(By the way, he is still alive. I'm writing in past tense because neither of them are a part of my life anymore. Nothing bad, just time and distance. You know.)

Anyway. Pops was a hippie, straight up. From music to philosophy, it was like he never left the 60's. We had The Beatles in common, which was cool. He was simultaneously amazing and terrifying, fun-loving and nasty. He would say the sweetest things to his daughter (my old roommate), but when they fought he was downright violent. Not in actions, but in words. And he was open about his... shall we call it perversion? Lots of talk about past orgies, really anything sex related he was very comfortable talking about. Not super detailed or anything- just enough to slap you awake in the moment. At first it made me uncomfortable but after you get to know him you accept that it's just how he is.

I know that sounds bad- especially if you uphold a high moral standard regarding sex, which I do. I also am not going to pretend that people like that don't have worth or that I'm better than them. He was the father of my good friend, not a peer I was consciously making part of my social circle, and I held a certain respect for him simply for his age and life experience. And believe it or not, I tend to be drawn to crazy people. People who are outliers, who others think are weird. Those kind of people are unashamedly themselves, they hide nothing, and they make me feel like I can be myself. They are the least judgmental kind of people I've ever met. But I digress...

Pops had little nicknames for everyone. I actually don't remember what he called his daughter, but I remember what he called me- Summer Rain. For the longest time I just laughed and went along with it because he was crazy Pops and that's just what he did. Then I went through a rough season and was in need of some encouragement. One day when he stopped by to visit, I asked him why he called me that and yes, I was totally fishing for compliments. Hah!

He said the first time he met me, I had a way about me that was different. I brought a warm, relaxing peace about me, mixed with a happy energy. He said my presence felt like summer rain; cool, refreshing and life-giving. Now Pops saw the good in everyone and other people had special nicknames too. I'm sure if they asked him about their names he would have come up with something equally personal and meaningful because that's how he is. But I still couldn't help feeling so moved by his words, and I've thought about them often since that day.

Cool, refreshing and life-giving. What a compliment. What a wonderful idea to embody, being as refreshing as summer rain... to bring a warm and happy energy into any room I enter. I can't say this is how I always am or how anyone else besides Pops perceives me, but I like to keep it in mind as I journey my life and when I meet new people and do new things. It's a goal of mine, in a way, to live up to that idea as best as I can, with grace. Who knew military-induced insanity could produce life-long encouragement to someone?