“We didn’t even fight at all!” Jen exclaimed, as we recounted our trip, and what a good one it was for all of us. Ate seafood almost every day, even a serendipitous Easter dinner of Chicken Oscar at Little Bohemia on our drive home. Warm temps, visiting friends and family along the way, a kayak, a hike, a couple new kites, some well-researched spots to eat and lay our head, a kiddo that was content on planes and long days in the car, and even decided he was down for using the toilet regularly. Two weeks ago we flew to Tampa via a night in Chicago and reconnecting with a couple of my friends from college-- acquaintances then really, but who I share Chicago with and love getting to know better when our paths cross. Hopefully in our backyard next. :) We flew to Tampa for three reasons. 1) It’s the cheapest flight south. 2) We went for a week last year and were sad to leave. We loved what we were able to explore and had more we wanted to check out. I don’t remember fighting on that trip either. Maybe we’re getting our family vacation groove on. Or maybe it’s just Florida. 3) The main reason really: A friend of ours had found a nice used Jeep for us to buy and drive home. We stayed at this funky Airbnb in Gulfport, FL. The accommodations (and Gulfport) were relaxed, everything you need, not too manicured (which is a plus when bring a kid along), affordable, and half-way between hip St. Petersburg and the Gulf coast beaches. I think I could come back to this same spot every spring. There was an extra bedroom if anyone wants to join us. ;) A few recommended places from this trip and last years: -Stella’s. We went here for brunch two days in a row. In Gulfport, delicious, and queer! -Bought our kites at Windworks in Madeira Beach -Fort De Soto County Park. The softest sand I’ve ever felt. Free indoor showers. -The Island Grille & Raw Bar in Tierra Verde. Big dining patio and play area for kids. -Honeymoon Island -Olde Bay Cafe in Dunedin -St. Pete Bicycle. Rented bikes and trailer and cruised on a bike trail along the Bay. -The Conch Republic Grill in North Redington Beach In the future, I’d like to -camp or cabin at Fort De Soto or another beach park -swim with manatees? -bike on the Pinellas Trail -check out some of the St. Petersburg breweries -explore Braedonton, Myakka, and beyond… Our time in the Carolinas was the heart of our trip. It was so nice and relaxing to visit family and friends in Beaufort, SC and Holden Beach, NC. Sharing meals at home and out. Getting out on the water to kayak and fish and swim. Sharing stories around a fire. Even watching TV together. I could make a list of the places we went or ate, but really it was just about being with people who we care about and don’t get to see very often. Because they were also Jen’s family and friends first, it was meaningful for me to get to visit their homes and get to know them better. Of course, everyone we stayed with loved to hang with Oscar which made it especially relaxing for us. We knew the drive north would be long, but we broke it up with visits with friends (and their kiddos!) in Durham and Chicago, and a night at the Natural Bridge State Resort park in Kentucky. There was a moment in Kentucky when we missed breakfast at the resort restaurant and drove around hangry, when things could have gone south, but instead we made the best of lunch for breakfast, and a hike where we coaxed Oscar along by peering into tree stumps and behind rocks for bears, before getting on the road again. Ask Oscar what his favorite part of the trip was, and he replies “looking for bears.” (My favorite/proudest moment was after I was in a panic because I had accidently locked the keys and Oscar in the jeep and was in the gas station calling the cops, Jen successfully and calmly coached Oscar through the window to unlock his door with his toes.)
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It all starts with a cause. In this case an everlasting love of Fleetwood Mac and adoration of the gypsy woman Stevie Nicks. We’d been drinking too much, jamming up the jukebox at The Creamery with Fleetwood to the point people'd groan when they see Hayley walk in that direction, even if she’s just going to the bathroom, and cheering “Stevie for President” all summer long in an intoxicated late night haze. As soon as Hayley mentioned she had scored four front row tickets back in September, it was on. Crucial in an epic trip is the whip and sweet matching shirts. It just so happened to work out perfectly that I have this shiny new (to me) 4Runner named after the one and only Stevie. And for Hayley's 29th (again :) birthday we'd had "Stevie for President" shirts made by our awesomely talented friend Becky at Bizy Does It. First stop, Surly Brewery to catch up with Deni and enjoy some frothy treats. Naturally we over-ordered, chatted, and laughed our way through shenanigans. We could have stayed long into the evening and migrated upstairs to check out the Brewers Table that has come highly recommended to us, but we had a schedule to stick to. Let the Stevie prep begin. Get the girls out of the Bayf and into the city and you can count on a few things: delish food, specialty beverages, belly laughs, high heels, a little extra make up, because city and we can. I mean getting ready is half the fun. The show was great. More than great. Magic. One of those hard to articulate kind of experiences. Stevie sang, told stories, insights, and reminded us that "we could be whatever we wanted to be." To love freely, love deeply, and hang on. It’s a simple message but somehow the experience made if feel so much more like a pilgrimage…
It’s a funny thing, thinking about how an artist, an experience, or even the loss of an artist can mean so much to you even though you hardly know them. But what I’m realizing as we navigate a year of artistic loss, its that you connect with these people, their messages because they give voice to your emotions. They help you learn about and express yourself in a way that otherwise leaves you lost. We share a room on the top floor of her aunt’s crazy old house where her cousin’s kids usually stay. Two mattresses on the floor on either side of the room where the ceiling slants with the roofline. We are both tired from travelling, but stay up late talking in the dark. Like college. It’s been fifteen years since we shared a dorm room, but it’s always just as easy. I keep thinking of more to say and ask, but finally will myself to sleep. We have the next four days together. Perfect late breakfast of baguette and cheese and honey and pear. Make a loose plan for the day: take a train into the city, get off at Notre Dame and see how far we wander. Unsure of how to dress--colder than I anticipated and threats of rain, but at least in November there is no line to enter the cathedral. We walk north to place des vosges, buy a macaroon and a meringue tart to eat in the park, then over along the canal. On the sidewalk above there are booths of antiques, and Leslie is pulled in to look. All the old stuff stresses me out to sift through, like helping mom clean out my grandma’s house. I don’t want to accumulate stuff. My attention drifts below to houseboats, decks garnished with plants and bikes and furniture. A playground on the other side. I’m missing Jen & Oscar a bit. I imagine sitting together in a pretty spot and watching him play. We cross the river and walk toward the latin district. Find a cute bar. Order wine. Contemplate the French words on the chalkboard menu and then find out they aren’t serving food anyway, just charcuterie. The waiter brings a huge plate of deli meat and bread. I wish I could bring this all home with me--Leslie, the wine and bread, new places to explore. Import it into my life once a week. I’m glad we have these days to catch up, but miss when we were able to have a weekly scheduled lunch date. I remember her sad face during our last college lunch together. Me saying, we’ll always be friends, we’ll visit each other. Her saying, but it won’t be like this. Each morning we sleep in, visit with Aunt Sally and eat a little something, take the train into Paris to wander together, take the train home for dinner in the dusk of city, of the supermoon behind thick clouds. We find our way below the Louvre to buy perfume. Eat crepes and ceasar salad with students talking American politics at the table next to us. Visit D’orsay in the rain. Marble sculptures. Famous paintings. Wander into a gold-gilded room on our way out. Drink rose'. Admire the stylish older woman at the table next to us in a feather coat. Sally makes us paupiette de dinde with wild mushrooms for dinner. Then MontMarte and buying art. Onion soup. Shallots in basil oil. On the last day, Beaujolais Nouveau Day, Sally takes us on a walking tour: “Leave the Austerlitz station and walk through the botanical gardens and around to the Roman Arena. After leaving the arena, cross the street and walk up the stairs to reach rue Mouffetard. When you walk back up this street, wind your way to the Paris Pantheon. After that go down the rue de la Montagne de Sainte Genviève. When you get to the bottom of the hill, along the Seine River, stop at the Shakespeare and Company book shop. You can then continue with Notre Dame across the river.” So glad to have this walk documented. Look forward to sharing it with Oscar someday. How many people have walked down this same street? How many that I knew? We eat lunch at a more “touristy” restaurant, but it still tastes good and is only ten euro for three courses: soup, paprika chicken and fries, apple tart. Share a bottle of wine with Laura and Kelvin, Sally’s other house guests this week, friends of her daughter. Walk along the river to the Eiffel tower. See it sparkle. Our legs are tired from walking. Make a detour to the grocery store on the way back to buy wine and gifts for home. Share a bottle of champagne at home with Sally in the kitchen. Talk about our families and children's books. Laura and Kelvin arrive home and we eat raclette (shaved cheese) at the large table for dinner. On the plane now to Minneapolis. Chasing the sun. A slowly widening orange horizon. Watched Ghostbusters on the flight to KEF with Les. Never really been a fan of action movies, but this one so good for so many reasons: smart, funny, women (and that wink), can’t wait to share it with O in a few years. So glad a movie like this exists now. That Leslie feels the same. Our overlapping feminism. Talk about grandmas, boston marriages, the Bechdel test, Kate McKinnon and all the rest of the funny smart girls that are ruling right now. She suggested we say goodbye as we got off the plane, but I didn’t because I knew we would then be in line together, which was true, but then we were through and rushing away to stand in line at our busy gates. I tried to find her and give a better hug, but there was a sea of people between us and they would board my flight any minute. I watch another movie on my flight to MSP. Infinitely Polar Bear. Reminds me we all just do our best, don’t really know the answers. It lets me cry a bit. Feeling emotional today. Didn’t sleep great last night. My period. Transition. Looked forward to this trip all fall and now it’s done. But I’m ready to be home. With my family. In our little house. To plan our bigger house. To talk about Trump with my parents. To wait for snow. Don’t have to wait long as there is snow on the ground and specks in the air as I train and walk in the dark and cold to Lila’s lit second story apartment. Refreshing to be outside when others aren’t, after a day of airports and planes. And then welcomed into Lila’s cozy space to lay and chat. Share uncertain feelings about Trump and what’s to come, shock of his victory, sorting through the surrounding fears. What is useless panic? Are there ways to challenge? To prepare? The pull of Standing Rock. Debate ideas of going back to another way of living, closer to the land, my views on how the affordable care act is not as affordable for rural people, somehow jump to memories of college rugby days, a time of my life that was so formative and now feels so far away. Glad though to know Lila then. And now. Sleep. Shower. Wake up to a text from Jen of her birthday buck. Make tea. Lila wakes. Recommends the book Ash, a queer cinderella story. Maybe her favorite book. Listens to the audio version often. And it talks about a time that thinking was beginning to split between the old witchy medicine, fairy tales, etc. and male doctors and their methods. Why did that ever come about we wonder together? Patriarchy? Men wanting to be the ones in the know, even when they were just pretending, playing out their experiments on our bodies, murdering, “doctor knows best.” Help her bring her car to the mechanic, then start home. Took 35w out of the city, but then exited onto 8 towards Wisconsin—fewer miles, driven at a slower pace, should get home about the same time. I’m sitting now at a quiet clean McDonalds in small Chisago City. “Gateway to the Lakes” written on the water tower. Pop music. Shy teenagers filling my order. Two breakfast burritos, a hashbrown patty, and milk for five dollars. Even fill my thermos two-thirds full with hot water, and give me a packet of real honey for my tea. A very long travel day. Goodbye to Jen and Oscar. Drive to Minneapolis. MSP to KEF to CDG to DUS. Waiting for flights. Various trains. Getting a message to Steph that I’ve arrived at the station a few miles from their house. And then she is there, opening the door to the kebab shop, with month-old Luisa Maria wrapped in her coat. We are together in her car, the same one we rode in three years ago from her wedding in Cologne to Annalisa’s wedding in Pantelleria. She is giving me a tour of her house. I am sitting on her couch drinking peppermint tea with Portuguese honey and brandy. My long day is over and I am so happy to be here. I sleep upstairs in a nest of blankets. Wake up wondering the results of the election, and am a little worried that I don’t have a celebratory message from anyone. Take a shower and then go downstairs where Steph is on the couch, nursing Luisa. “I am so sorry, Magdalen.” She says as I come into the room. I send Jen a message. Begin a scroll through Facebook, to see what people are reading and sharing. Spend most of my morning on a collection of Opinion pieces from the New York Times. Steph is on her phone too. We read aloud the bits that resonate: “For now, we need to breathe, stand tall and adjust to this new reality as best we can. We need — through writing, through protest, through voting in 2018 and 2020 — to be the checks and balances our government lacks so that we can protect the most defenseless among us, so that we can preserve the more perfect union America has long held as the ideal. We have to fight hard, though I do not yet know what that fight looks like.” I am glad to be with Steph. She has always helped me see American politics from a different perspective. (Years ago, expressing embarrassment about having Bush for President, she succinctly replied, “We had Hitler.”) This time though it really does feel like we are in it together. Comparing the shock of Brexit, to the shock we are feeling now. Returning to conversations from previous visits with Steph and Martin, Annalisa and Mattia, all frustrated with the anti-immigration/racist thinking that has been building in their countries as well. Germany, worried about a population decline, gives money to German families that have children, and yet maintains a strict immigration policy. Immigrants and refugees arrive daily on Italian shores and only the very minimum of support is provided to house, and feed, and integrate them. Annalisa provides counseling to immigrant and refugee women for free two days a week. Mattia, her husband, works as the director at a refugee center, but the working conditions are so stressful and underfunded, he knows he needs to make a change. I hold Luisa, smell her new baby small. Roll it all around in my head--- the possible consequences for my family, for other Americans, for the world. Try to find a bright side: Elizabeth Warren 2020? Or someone I haven’t heard of yet, the best person, to lead after this, that we can all get behind. Steph chops potatoes and salad. Luisa sleeps. We play briscola. Think of going for a walk, but then it is raining again. Facetime with Jen and Michael and Oscar. I had texted Michael earlier: “Thank you for holding my wife and son when I can’t.” Now he reads aloud words from his fiance: “The world shifted last night. Some voted for it, some voted against it. Some didn't vote. But we are all responsible for how it works. And we are better together than we are separate…” The next morning, I make us an “American” breakfast of eggs and leftover potatoes. We pick up Annalisa from the airport and then drive into Cologne for a few impromptu hours in the city: walking past the cathedral on our way to a free concert (Luisa’s first), a stop at the bookstore so Steph can nurse, and I can find a map of South East Asia, and then kebabs “on the hand” to eat on our way home. The rest of our time together is exactly as Annalisa had predicted in the email/poem she sent to us the week before (with my pics added and elaborations in italics). US! meeting luisa maria hugging you and seeing your beautiful faces...hair...bodies...hands seeing martin and hearing his bursting laugh walking around steph and martins home smelling it lying on their coach chatting for hours drinking tea holding luisa maria seeing steph breastfeeding her (maybe?) yes, and seeing my bloody nipples, steph adds waking up at night with luisa crying loud (maybe?) the parents yes, but not so much their guests cooking and drinking wine afternoon walks around their neighborhood their homemade bread for dinner looking at old photos and taking new ones listening to steph and magdalen speaking their funny Italian steph and martin’s marital bickering in German, all of us conversing in an evolving English, in translations, in body language, and so much laughter talking about life, lives, and about meanings remembering and dreaming looking at maps planning wisconsin winter january 2018 australian reunion 2020-something? talking about luisa maria and oscar for hours listening the 2 mamas sharing mamas experiences all of us sharing our challenges, joys, and heartbreaks of tracking ovulation, fluctuating hormones, AI, IVF, miscarriage, birth always always dreaming the days of our kiddos growing together maybe listening to a trumpet? or two? posing our butts sleeping under the same roof and seeing your pajamas making breakfast together laughing and crying This time, I totally don't care about places (except for "The Home"), but only about US!!!!! Now it’s Sunday and I’m on a train to Paris to meet Leslie and her Aunt. Unlike the first long travel day, this trip is not exhausting, but exactly what I need. City center to city center. Four hours to reflect on my time with Steph, Annalisa, Martin and Luisa, on my time away from Jen and Oscar, on my time to come with Leslie and her Aunt. I scroll through the pictures I took and the pictures Jen sent me of Oscar. I am so grateful that I can have this time away and that they can have this time together at home without me. Animals in the house and all.
Last year's life plan was aiming for a bigger house and another baby by 2020 (even has a note about how women's fertility goes down exponentially at 38). But lately, Jen and I have been talking more about maybe not having a second kid. Making it easier to have adventures with the adventurous kid we already have, to have quiet, to host exchange students, to include friends, to be alone if we want. This summer Jen took this famous travel blogger out on a sailing trip with Marita and Sophie. We follow her on facebook now, and the other day she shared this article by an Austrialian mom that does extended travel with her six-year-old daughter. My heart-rate quickened as I read it and explored her blog. The same sort of breathlessness I felt when I searched for flights to Europe on my kayak app the other day and realized I could fly to see my friends in November for less than $600. Now I'm wondering if 2020 is maybe the year that Oscar and I should go overseas together. January in Hawaii (with an extended layover in LA to visit Davi), February in Austrailia, March in Southeast Asia, April in Tbilisi and Lisbon, home for our birthdays.... These are all places I often dream about traveling to and/or returning to. My friend Jaime lives in Waimea, Hawaii with her husband and two kids (one a year older and one a year younger than Oscar). She posts the dreamiest pictures on facebook of their everyday life--making mudslides in the jungle, hiking on lava rock, babies on the beach. It was also in a past life plan that we would fly there last April, before Oscar turned two and could still fly free. Then we had an abysmal blueberry harvest and I had to send Jaime this email: "I feel like throwing a toddler tantrum right now because I SO want to come and reunion with you, but I really don't think it's going to be possible this year. Getting vacation time is NOT the problem... my schedule is pretty flexible and that time of year especially is the best time to be away, but I don't think I'll have the money for a flight+... the farm had it's worst season season since my brothers and l have been salaried and we likely won't be getting our salaries again until next spring (which is about a third of jen and my's monthly income) and all of our savings went into building the washhouse this summer... (we have a shower!) i know i'll be able to pick up some work this winter, substitute teaching if nothing else, and we'll be able to pay our bills and eat and go on close to home vacations, but if I'm being honest with myself, Hawaii is a luxury I can't afford this year... WAHHHHHH!!! it's a good life though. i chose to be a farmer and mom and live where we do. and i have no regrets. just wistful longings for reunions with friends, Hawaii vistas, and a shopping spree at REI... ha.. someday. how long are you planning to live there? Of course if you ever want to reunion on Lake Superior, there is a ton we can do and I would LOVE to plan and coordinate it all." And she reassured me, we still had time: "The kiddos and I will come visit you sometime soon... don't you worry! I love me some great lakes action! Also, I'll probably grow old in Hawaii. There's time for you to visit here, too. : ) My sister's farm took a huge hit this year, too, on account of all the rain. It must be so stressful to be so reliant on uncontrollable circumstances . . .I really really commend you and your positive attitude about it all! We can have many many many more reunions all over the world. Love Love Love!" I regularly fantasize about (and googlemap) vacations that connect the dots between people I'd like to see and places I'd like to explore. A road trip we did when Oscar was 5 months old was like this, a night of camping in the U.P, breakfast with my college athletic trainer (and the first lesbian mom I knew) at a diner in Flint, Niagara Falls, meeting up with my college roommate and staying for a long weekend with my Uncle's family in Ithaca, back through Ohio to see Lex, and Oberlin, and then of course Chicago, Davi, Sara and Lauren. Really though, it was a bittersweet trip. Beautiful in the U.P and Ithaca, but too much time on the interstate in between (googlemap hours do not equal real travel time, especially when traveling with an infant). Nice to reconnect with people from my past, but often difficult to line up our travel schedule with their work week. Sharing a drink in the evening and being able to introduce Oscar was so special, but left me wishing for more time and less distance. Could around the world be better? International flights and Interstate highways can be equally overwhelming and stressful. The longer flights call for a longer stay, so more time to be with friends and also more time to miss Jen and the rest of home. I was an exchange student in Australia when I was in high school and haven't been back since, partly because the flight and jet leg were so hellish, that I've vowed I'd need to go for at least three weeks, to justify it (and well as the expense), and fully be able to reorient night to day, summer to winter. But I never thought it would take me this long to return. My mom grew up in Papua New Guinea and attended boarding school in Brisbane. Her family moved back to the states when she was 18. She also thought she would go back someday. She finally made it to Austrailia in 2014, when she was 65. She says she'd like to go again. Maybe she'll meet Oscar and I there in 2020. I thought of her so much during my first time there: These are the birds, the flowers, the upside down constellations of her childhood. Some I knew for sure, because they will still in the songs she sings (Kookaburra) or the potted plants in our living room (Hibiscus), but what about the familiar plants and animals that we just know from growing alongside, not remembering or ever knowing the name. I so want to be there with her. To have her point out the parts of her I never knew. And I want her to meet my Australian friends and host family, to know the bit of Australia that is now a part of me. Southeast Asia is a place I have never explored, but been more and more been interested too. Kate left yesterday for a month-long biking trip in the mountains of Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Michael leaves tomorrow for three weeks along the coast of Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Both of the women travel bloggers I've been reading seem to spend more time in this area than anywhere else. I've checked out the website on the International School where the Australian mom blogger enrolls her daughter for a month. Maybe? Kaite's been and wants to go back (this will link to her story of amazing beauty and near death encounters when she finally writes it). Jaime's suggested it as an adventure destination. Maybe Oscar and I have friends meet us there? There is a ring I wore in high school that I found in my mom's jewelry box. She bought it, she thought, in the Philippines, when her family made some extra stops on their trip back to the states, after they left New Guinea. From Bangkok, we'd fly to Tbilisi, Georgia. My dad has traveled to this country over a dozen times during the last fifteen years. First on a volunteer assignment with Farmer to Farmer, in which he suggested blueberries might be a good crop to introduce. Then a couple years later, he was asked to come back as a consultant on a three-year USAID project to introduce blueberries. During that time he invited Gio, the son of his closest friend and stakeholder, to stay with my family and work on our blueberry farm for the summer. I was home from college and glad to have a friend on the farm. When I graduated from college a couple years later, I had money saved to reunite with Steph and Annalisa in Europe, but they had conflicting schedules and only a week of overlapping available vacation time. Gio would always ask me in emails, "When are you going to come visit my crazy country?" So I emailed back some dates, and booked a flight Tbilisi instead. We drank lots of wine, I learned to toast (which was a great skill to have as my close friends started to marry a few years later), I watched really bad music videos (the ones the station could afford to buy, Gio told me), visited some crazy old ruins, and bonded with the family that was my dad's home away from home. The other day, pruning blueberries across the row from one another, I shared my round-the-world fantasy trip with my dad. He has already signed on for the Georgia leg. From Tbilisi, it will feel like a short flight really, to get to Lisbon. As our time together in Austrailia was coming to an end, Steph (from Germany), Annalisa (from Italy), and I made a pact to not say goodbye and instead plan our next trip. A year and a half later. Summer 2002. We could borrow one of their parents' cars and make a big loop: Spain, France, Germany, all of Italy to Pantelleria, a small island between Sicily and Tunisa where Annalisa's mom had grown up, then Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Portugal, where Steph's mom was from and that side of her family still lived. Would we be able to drive across Northern Africa we wondered? Would it be safe? My mom did it, Steph offered. We didn't have the time and money for the big trip we planned that day, but we did meet up for three weeks in 2002 to complete a smaller loop: Cologne, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Salzburg, Brescia, Venice, Frankfurt. And we continue to meet up. In Seattle. In Sicily. For our weddings in Wisconsin, Cologne, and Pantelleria. Last summer they came and met Oscar. In three days I'll fly to Germany and meet Luisa, Steph's baby. We still haven't made it to Portugal. We somehow knew to save that one for the kiddos, maybe.
Jen crawled up in the loft to sleep at 9pm last night and Oscar was down shortly after. I climbed the ladder to the loft and tried to sleep as well, but it wasn’t happening. Instead I enjoyed a quiet hour to myself to read my book (Barkskins by Annie Proulx) and make a list of things to do before I leave on my trip to Europe next month. Renew contacts prescription. Slaughter pig. Buy new shoes? I slept hard from 10:30-5:30, but then was awake again… finally climbed down to visit the outhouse, and then read some more, and list some more. Dinner ideas this time. Ham and vegetable soup. Curry chicken. Nestled sausages. I check the time on my iPod and see I have a message from my German friend Steph. Two mornings ago I woke to a message from our Italian friend Annalisa, telling me that Steph had her baby, and all was well, a sweet picture attached. This one includes more pictures and a personal message. Only a couple of my close friends have had babies since Oscar was born. Because of the distance, I sometimes forget to include Steph and Annnalisa in my list of close friends, but they really are. Maybe the distance makes it easier to stay close in a way. We can fall out of touch, and then catch back up every few years when we can make it work to be in the same place again. Last summer they both made trips to the U.S. with their husbands. Steph and Martin in July and Annalisa and Mattia over Labor Day weekend. When I booked my ticket to Europe last month it seemed surreal that I would be able to see them again in just a year’s time, and even more surreal that I could plan to travel on my own. Ten days away from my kiddo. “I have black kitty, mama.” I hear a sleepy voice behind the curtain that separates the crib from the couch in our tiny house. “I awake!” The field outside our door is still warming to the new morning sun. I lift my not-so-baby into my arms. “Shh… It’s early. Do you want me to hold you for a bit?” Grab my book from the table and we nestle together onto the couch. A chapter or two later, a little hand is not so sleepy anymore, reaches up to pull my hair, grins behind his nook. I can read maybe one more interrupted chapter as he moves into play, pulling trucks and books from the shelf. “This one, mama.” He pushes his book over mine, and I give in. McElligot’s Pool and My First ABC. “I hungry, Mama." "What are you hungry for?" "Ummm... Candy?” “Well, Mom said she wanted to make pancakes this morning.” I say loudy. Jen groans and climbs down from the loft. Still messy haired and sleepy eyed she is boiling water for coffee, mixing pancake batter, starting on the pile of dishes in the sink. I pull a half packet of breakfast sausage from the fridge freezer. In my search I toss out smushed and icey hamburger buns. I hand an unmarked container to Jen for identification and she says irritably that it’s too early in the morning for her to judge. “Why?” asks our toddler in his most annoying tone and I watch Jen cringe. “Let’s go get the mail,” I suggest to him. Pull hoodies on and smush a hat on his head. Oscar and I build an epic train track while Jen continues on the dishes. The dishrack full, Jen drains the sink of dirty water and takes a break to eat pancakes with us. “Even though it's Sunday, I do have to feed the huskies today.” She says, Applefest as explanation. “I could go either way about the going in for the parade…” I say a little later and she agrees. “I’d paddle bark bay though,” Jen suggests. My godparents own an A-frame cabin on the thin strip of sandy land that separates the bark bay slough from the Lake. This summer I had the opportunity to ask if we might stay there sometime, and we managed a short stay in August. “Cabin?” O asks, remembering our visit in August, or two weekends ago when we took our canoe to the Chippewa Flowage where my parents rented a cabin, I’m not sure. “Yup. But first we need to feed the huskys. Wanna help?” Jen asks and then turns to me sulkily, “But first I need to finish the dishes.” Reluctantly, I offer to finish and Jen smiles for the first time all morning. The joke in our house is that nothing makes me happier than when she does the dishes, but now she tells me it goes both ways. It does feel good to finally have the house sort of in order. The temps dropped dramatically this week and I spent much of yesterday going through clothes that had piled up on chairs, the floor, the car— laundering the dirty, sifting out the too summery, small, or worn. Jen and O get back from the dogyard. We have just enough lunch meat and bread for sandwiches. We load the canoe on Jen’s jeep. The passenger-side door is falling off, so I climb over Jen’s seat to get in. It’s a short paddle to the cabin, but feels good to be on the reflecting water. When we came out in August it was just for a Friday evening through Monday, with a paddle-commute to work Sunday late morning, returning after bar-tending that night, paddling in under the full moon. Although short and interrupted, it was some of the most relaxing time during our busy season. Also the day trip out the week before to check it out and sweep. And this trip now to pick up the pak-and-play we left in case we made it back for another overnight, but now the temps have dropped and our schedule has filled. On our paddle back, we make plans to have a broomball party on the slough this winter. We grab a few groceries at Ehler’s on our way through Corny and then take winding out-of-the-way backroads home while O naps. Jen points out which roads we’ve dogsledded over, or where she wants to run the dogs next. When we stop to pee, me climbing out my window, Jen tells me of her plan to hook a team of huskys up to her jeep, as she bends down looking under the front bumper for a spot to hook up the line. There isn’t a better season for driving the forest roads. The leaves changing color all around. The logging clear cuts lending their own beauty too, opening up a new view for a limited time. Jen points out a spot where she’s taken slash for firewood. I tell her she would enjoy my book—so far about woodsmen and sailors. As we drive I am also grateful for our re-newing forests, to be able to live amid so many trees. At home Oscar plays outside, while Jen puts in another post for the woodshed she is building us, while I make soup. |
AuthorsMagdalen Dale and Kaite Sweval grew up a layer apart, overlapping and paralleling. Belonging to the shores of Lake Superior and yet not quite belonging. Laughing and dreaming on the bench outside the ferry booth as Mag passed the time and Kaite chose her time. Left to explore as soon as they could. And then as adults returned home, perhaps to their surprise. But glad to have each other... ‘cause we know there is strength in the differences between us and comfort where we overlap. Archives
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