We’re still unpacking. The front entry to the house offers a mudroom, which we’ve cluttered with towers of broken-down boxes, and I have to climb over these in order to get in and out of my studio, which is also half-unpacked and, incidentally, chilly. In a former life, this room was a sunroom. Now, I have a pile of baskets in one corner, plastic binfuls of fabric, open boxes of different art mediums: an encaustics box, a box of kid’s art supplies (mostly kid-claimed art media made for grownups, since I insist they use the “real” stuff under my supervision), a box of stationery supplies, textile paints, watercolors, the list goes on and I wish it would never end, but it does. I’m short on space.
I’m finding a rhythm again with the kids, home-based, and feeling more stable. Last week I made a daily schedule, surprisingly fascist in its organization, and I started using it throughout the day as lifeline in this sea of chaos I sail with these two wildchildren. I noticed myself returning to the paper mostly during the early afternoon hours, reminding myself that it was quiet time, and following up with whatever needed to be done at the moment so that I’d stay on course. I found it oddly relaxing, comforting, knowing that this happens at such-and-such time and that happens at 2:30, so there was no guesswork or thinking on the fly about what to do next. For so long I’d been in transition-mode, hungry flotsam ready for anchor. It’s not enough to have the house, have the stuff, have the cars, and have the heat on. In my case, as with probably anyone, it’s not really home until you start to sink into the saddle and ride from the seat. Not quite autopilot, but operating more fluidly. Gracefully?
And I’m starting to feel like I’m home, as memory picks up and I am recognizing the seasonal shifts and nuances of the different habitat here. It has started raining periodically, like it’s supposed to. And the rain–it’s finally sinking into my head now–is not the torrential, melodramatic rain one is accustomed to in Texas, but instead a wispy, snivelling drawn-out weep, not unlike the vegetable misters in the grocery stores–that crisps the new fern fronds, standing attention over last summer’s spoils, and coaxes Spring out of the tips of each branch and stem and sleeping bulb. It smells like a florist’s shop, evergreen and eucalyptus, lily-of-the-valley, quince blossom perfection. We ate grapefruits off the tree in the yard, yesterday (delicious! like a sweet tart).
I’ve taken to a particular walking place that overlooks the bustling Silicon Valley. Today, a muddy trail where I did more skating than walking (and certainly not running). Rain has puddled in day-old hoofprints of horse and deer, a few lone large cat paws. Birds, everywhere; around a bend the quail
bolt in muffled exodus through the heather. It’s good to be connecting several times each week with the real natives of this paradise, hidden to the side of the sprawling concrete abandon of startups and box stores. We’re lucky enough to live close enough to it’s edge, in the agricultural transition zone, ripe with fruit trees and vineyards and borderline healthy air to breathe.
((sigh)) Back to unpacking…
Nicely written, Steph. Mom and I can’t wait to come out for a visit – but not until you clear the space of empty boxes. It’ll probably not be until we get back from France and the Netherlands – surely you will have it cleared out by then (…but from my own experience, I know differently).
We’re having beautiful weather right now in between the weekly Pacific fronts that swing through here from you – I can sometimes smell the faint smell of you and the boys and the faint sounds of Chas screaming out at Ford that have been carried aloft in the jet stream trailing in from the Central California Coast, just like the Sahara dust that drops over the Caribbean from the trades winds sweeping across the Atlantic.
The chickens are doing fine. I w2ill try to photograph them and send to you – you can then match them up to the photos that you took of them when they were chicks. The young Araucanas are still not quite as tame as the two Production Reds, Abby II (the older Araucana), and the Maran. Still no eggs from the younger bunch – I need to put a light out there to increase the light to 14 hours a day.
Gotta get back to work,
Love, Papa