So, today was a trial. A few doctors appointments. Some of them mine.

A few tears. Ditto.

A friend said "stop torturing yourself." Because I do. Don't you? Don't you wake up at three a.m. and start fretting, sure that you can't possibly wait until the morning to start setting things right?

A friend said "maybe you don't have to do all of it, right now." Because I'm sure I need to. Right now. Not later. Now.

::

And then,

Callie.

Again.

I know it was just because the crowd had shifted out in the park, and she was bored.

But she rescued me.

She came in and said "can I help?"

She chopped and she sauteed and she cried (onions). And she learned (how to cut an onion.)

Mostly, she just stood in the kitchen with me.

And then,

Lindsey.

She came in and said "oh! can I set the table?"

::

Look, this is not the way it goes, all the time.

But, tonight,

they rescued me.

Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?

::

In the doctor's office, I read an article while I waited that said that happiness is not found in having all the material things one wants, but in having "successful interpersonal relationships."

Fancy.

But,

I'll buy that.

More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

tt

p.s. tears unrelated to the doctors' appointments. just to save you any unnecessary fretting.

p.p.s. are you tired of leaf pictures yet?

Right outside our front door stands a Japanese maple tree. I can see its branches from where I sit now, without craning my neck. When I sit out front, it makes a canopy that ends a few feet from where the steps to the house begin.


From both of these spots-my desk and the front steps, and also from certain vantage points in the kitchen-I can see and hear what is going on in the park. What this means is that I can be out there just a few seconds after I hear Anna crying, or the kids quarrelling, or if there's trouble between the neighborhood dogs, or the UPS truck comes barrelling down the road.

They are out there, all ages mixed up together. Playing (now) in the leaves, and giving the little ones red wagon rides, and hopping back and forth across the creek, and the big kids texting each other (from a distance of twenty feet. please, someone explain this to me, someday), and all of them running back and forth from park to house to house.

The thing is, I just can't go sit out in the park every day, even on a stellar fall day like today. I wish I could. I wish I were the person who could walk away from the kitchen, the laundry, the computer. But I get very antsy, if things aren't all in place by a certain hour.

You know that hour. When it all falls apart. And, if on top of everyone being hungry and dirty and just a little bit sketchy about how much homework needs doing, I still don't have dinner going and things in place, we're poised for disaster.

Because when all is said and done, and the kids are fed, clean, and finished with the day, I do not want my work to begin.

I want our night to start.

So, it's a hard choice, on these days when light is fleeting, but nights are chill and dark, to sacrifice time outside early, for calm and peace later.

But, I'll tell you, when we're sitting on that couch, feet to feet and finally at rest, I'll be ok with how things went, this afternoon.

More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

tt

Sunday night::"and all was quiet and peaceful in the country."*

So much to think and tell about from our day, today.

But for now, I just wanted to stop in here and say goodnight.

We had our first fire of the season, out back, when we came home from the city tonight. It was a long, good day, although there were many tears.

I actually have decided that tears are good. It means you are feeling something intensely, good or bad. Imagine the opposite. I'll take the tears over that.

The last tears of the night were Anna's, shed as we read *The Little House * to her for the first time. I think that those are beautiful tears.

More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.
tt

Friday Happiness [Public Bookstore]

[work visible here by: Stephanie Dennis, Ilse Schreiber Noll, and Bret Wills]

The show is up, and we think it is excellent. Much black and white work in the exhibit, as this first issue of the 'zine is black+ white, so we were looking towards that as we edited the selections. But some color, here and there, lending the gallery overall a clean, cohesive look that we love.

We encountered some delays when we received the first printing of the book; we had used an online self-publishing site, and we were disappointed with the quality. So we started from scratch and went with a different printer.

Now, back on track, we are ready to move forward, and excited to get this project, six months in the making, on it's way.

::

We are also looking forward to this weekend, and the New York Art Book Fair, put on by Printed Matter. Can't wait to see all the inspirational work that others are doing. I have a feeling Tim and I will come home from the show reinvigorated and with our heads full of ideas for our next project.

::

Other than that event, this is one of those weekends where the girls' social schedule trumps ours, so mostly we'll be driving and picking up from various birthday parties. The thirteen-year-old crowd now apparently are no longer into sleepovers, so much, but rather into having parties that run well after the grown-ups around here are usually in bed.

I'm personally of a mind that if you are going to keep my kids up past ten o'clock, you should keep them overnight. Although, I'm not a big fan of sleepovers, either.

I'm a lot of fun, huh? Oh, don't worry. I'll get over it.

After all, it's the weekend, again. And this one promises to be cool enough for the first outdoor fire, a big scarf and my favorite boots, and definitely something cooked long and slow in the kitchen.

Certainly that's worth staying up late for?

Enjoy the weekend! Thanks for reading.
tt

Go.

We went apple picking today with twenty-two people, and there wasn't a wrinkle in the entire day.

I am here today to say go. do. live. feel. eat. touch. spend. take. give. laugh. yell. cry. get out. reach out. stop working. get working. climb. fall. hurt. heal. hold. hope. fumble. fear. reach. react. act out. bite off. make do. make new. make from scratch. borrow. beg. share. love.

It's all we can do.

Do it now.

Go.

{Who knew apple picking was so inspiring?}

More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.
tt

Drive-bys

We have spent so much time in the car this month. This month. I mean, really...we've been driving for weeks.

Usually, we do our fair share of driving. One of our favorite things to do is set out with a car picnic and no set itinerary...maybe a direction to head in, or one thing that we have in mind to see or do (or more likely...eat). But we drive and drive and look at houses and towns and people-and it's inspiring and exciting. That may sound ridiculous, but it's true. We get all excited about what we're seeing, and have some of our best conversations and most productive brain-storming sessions when we're just aimlessly driving around looking at eye-candy.

I don't usually drive. We're very 1950's in our Sunday drive roles: Tim drives. It's his thing. He even washes the car before we go out on a long drive. Although don't tell him I told you that. He might be a bit proud to admit it. Sort of like I wouldn't want him going and blabbing that I clean the house up a little extra, if I think people might be dropping in for a visit.

Anyway.

This summer I've done way too much driving, without him. I don't like it. Besides the fact that I always get dangerously sleepy the minute I get into a moving vehicle, I just don't like it.

I like to sit back, put my feet up, daydream to the soundtrack of our day, playing on the radio. Hand over some snacks, maybe reach over and rub the driver's shoulders a bit. Reach back and hold the arch of a little foot, to soothe a four-year-old into complacency (wish me luck...).

I like to be a passenger for once. I feel like I'm always the one driving the train at home, so to speak.

On our drives, I'm just a passenger.

::

These are some photos I took yesterday from the passenger seat. I like them a lot. Brief little glimpses.

More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.
tt

Into the woods

It's all cold rain and wind today, perfect for staying inside, making cookies and soup, reading, playing games, and napping. It's a chance to live a bit of late-fall up here in Maine, where we've only known summer, before.

The last day all of us were together here was hot and sunny and perfect, and we took a long walk to a path through the woods, at the end of which lay the spectacular expanse of the sea.

Having reached my limit of near-death experiences for one vacation, I quickly ushered us all away from the cliff and back into the woods, where the kids commenced making fairie houses.




It's a hard and fast truth of life that if we had planned to have the kids spend a happy two hours in the woods building structures out of sticks and moss, it probably would have collapsed into a whine-fest. But when they fall into an activity organically, they get into a rhythm of their own making; they laugh more, complain and criticize less, encourage and collaborate with each other.




It's a beautiful thing. And when it happens, I'm grateful for every minute of it. I know right then that this is what we'll all remember.

These are the days. Thanks for reading.
tt

I'll tell you right off the bat that she's ok.

Anna fell off the dock yesterday.

Anna fell off the dock yesterday, without her life vest on.

We'd all been down there for a couple of hours already. Blue skies, warming in the sun, eating crackers, goofing around, jumping off hand-in-hand (not me!), paddling about around the dock. The girls kept coaxing Anna to come in, telling her it's not that cold. Making her laugh by counting to three and then all leaping in. But she wasn't buying it, this day. She stayed on the dock with Tim and me, the whole time.

All good.

We were getting ready to go...collecting towels and flip flops and life vests: even the big girls wear them down there, sometimes. Just for fun: they're all strong swimmers. But Anna, she puts it on in the house and wears it all the way down Pink Street, and all the way back home.

We have it all gathered up, and have even turned to walk towards the ramp.

And then:
Callie shouting "she fell in!", and me, still thinking she had the vest on, not even moving quickly- smiling, even, thinking Anna must have decided to finally go for it.
The sound of Callie jumping in, and the sight of Anna, her head above water now, but with the duckie towel wrapped around her, pulling her down, even as Callie was holding her up. Grabbing on to the dock while gripping underneath that little shoulder. Wrapping her up in dry towels and cradling her like an infant, holding my breath as she coughed out water and started to cry.
Callie collapsing next to me, still in her wetsuit, and looking stunned.

And Anna's next words, and all of us laughing: Callie was wrong. The water is too really cold today.
Everything is ok.

::

A few years ago, when Lindsey was six or seven, we were on Block Island with my family-brothers and parents and cousins and all. Anna was an infant, and Tim and I strapped her in the Baby Bjorn and spent a few hours walking around the island while the kids were all together with the rest of the family. When we came back up the hill to the house, my niece was waiting in the driveway with the news that Lindsey had been hurt and we had to go to the medical center immediately. She'd been with her older cousins at a make-shift petting zoo, and had been bitten by one of the animals. She'd lost part of one of her fingers.

The horror I felt when I first saw her hand is with me to this day. I didn't let her out of my arms for the next several days, and by the time we'd returned home, I'd blamed myself so completely for this accident, for not being there, that I could barely tell people what happened. Everyone told me not to think that way, that it wasn't my fault. But Tim and I knew: if we'd been there, it wouldn't have happened. We just knew.

::

We were wrong. As parents we all have a catalog of near misses, tragic events and dangers-real and imagined-that haunt us. And I know that when my kids were little, I, for one, really believed that if only I could be with them all the time, I could keep them from harm.

But now, even as I know I'm doing all I can to keep them safe, I know that there's only so much I can do.
Even as I'm keeping them close, I know its as much my job to let them go.

I just don't know how to balance the terror of what could happen, against the freedom of watching them grow.

::
Obviously, the thing with Anna yesterday is a different case. We're still not sure why her life vest got taken off-something about wanting to wrap up in her towel, like her sisters. We know that it is our job to keep a four-year old safe around water. We know that Anna can swim well enough, and certainly if not Callie, some one of the seven of us would have gotten to her in time.

But.

Last night, long after everyone had fallen asleep, and before the lobster boats started revving their engines at four thirty or so, I went in and scooped up that little girl, and brought her in to our bed, and lay there just holding on.

At least I can still do that, for now.

More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.
tt

Pink Street, day five.

Hello. I have a moment here, where the house is quiet, and the computer is beckoning me. That hasn't been the case much, for the past few days. I've been doing all sorts of wild and crazy things, instead.

Like reading. And sitting and staring at the ocean. And taking walks.

But...
I don't want to give you the impression that it's all peace and relaxation. There are six kids here with us, after all.

Listen, I do love it here, and I do love the enthusiasm and joy that the girls bring to being on vacation. And,mostly, I love that something about this house, and the air here, and the water all around us, conspire to make the things that drive me nuts at home easily tolerable.

But...
I'm still doing four loads of (sandy) laundry a day. I'm still patrolling the kitchen like an armed sentry-particularly since one little marauder could take out a key ingredient for a meal, and the closest place for suitable provisions is a forty minute drive away. The kids still quarrel- although to be fair, not very much.

So, why, then, do I feel different here? I feel like I have more space: space around me and space in my head.

There is that fact that the big girls have a whole house to themselves: a barn-like structure attached to the house by a breezeway, with a sleeping loft and couches and music and games. Anna's in the "dorm" room in the house with us. Next week, when we're down to just three girls, the other two will move in with her. I'd feel funny having just two of them all the way out in the studio.

Like everything else in our family, it's a numbers thing. Six is a lot.

There, I said it. It's a lot.

It's a lot of people to keep track of, and to keep happy. It's a lot of personalities to accommodate and a lot of bodies to clean up after. It's a lot of food.

Please understand, I'm not looking for sympathy, and I'm not even complaining. I just want you to know that no matter how many pretty pictures I post, or in how many ways we are the luckiest family on earth, it's a lot.

And maybe the first person who needs to recognize that, and give me a bit of a break, is me.

Being here all together-and we've "made it" to day five beautifully-has made me appreciate both sides of things perhaps more than I have been lately, in the thick of "real life" back home.

Things are wonderful, and things are hard. That's just life. And that's more than fine.

And now, I have to go. Anna just dropped a bucket of beads all over the floor, and I can hear the marauders girls coming back from the dock in search of lunch.

I can hear them coming down Pink Street, and they are laughing.

More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.
tt

Greetings from Pink Street.

Things are good. Very good.

There will be more, but this is all for now.

More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.
tt

Monday Morning

Hi. It's a good morning.

The weekend was so full, in the best of ways: of friends and family, girls and boys, lots of food and presents and nice, long walks (with enough berries poachedgathered for cobbler). My newly-minted teenager has been sleeping past noon. I figure, that's ok for now. For August. School days will come soon enough.

::

I am off tomorrow on a little adventure with my girls. My tech-director is trying to fix me up with the proper equipment to stay in touch while I'm away, but it might be a little quiet around here for a while. As excited as I am to get up to Maine and start taking pictures, and as much as I know I'll want to share about being there, meeting friends, spending time with my family in a different place, all the things we'll do and see: I'm also looking for a little space from the screen and keyboard. I've been finding that it looms larger than its fifteen inches when I'm at home, and longing for a distraction from chores.

I don't think I'll be longing for any distraction from the now, this week.

::

From here on in, we're in the thick of the things that we wait for all year. Our August of being together, somewhere other than home, is literally what I day-dream about all year long. I know- because it is true every year- that it is different up there. That we are different. A little more relaxed, a little slower, simpler. Dare I say (kids?), a little quieter. More connected.

And every year I vow that I will take a little bit of that back home, and make it stick.

I think, that this past year, I did that more than ever. And I'm looking forward to this August, and what comes after, and hoping I keep even more of the state I'm in, when I'm in Maine, when I come back home.

I wish that you all bring a little bit of your vacation-selves home, too, to hold you over until the next time.

More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

tt

ps::my tech-guy says that I'll have e-mail up there, for those of you who need to get in touch with me. I might even check it now and then. And I'll be back home for a few days next week. 'Til then!

This girl...

is really friendly,
and curious,
an excellent student,
and funny.
Really funny. I mean, this girl has a sense of humor.

This girl...
is a great friend,
an excellent babysitter,
and an even better sister.
Even if she can be a little bossy.
Because she knows what's what. She knows.

This girl...
can ride a pony over jumps two and a half feet high,
has a really good eye,
is very organized,
and has an extremely sensitive sense of smell.

This girl...
is a computer whiz,
loves the color green,
and has feet the size of her mother's.
But still likes to cuddle up like when she was a little girl.
Sometimes.

This girl...
is really good company,
gets car sick,
is an incredibly talented writer,
and dreams of travelling,
going out into the world,
taking pictures,
but says that she will send little presents back home,
like maybe a scarf she finds in a shop somewhere,
that she knows her mom will like.

This girl is thirteen.

Happy Birthday, Caroline. I love you.

More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.
tt