Spring 2014: Making room for baby O. Water! June 2014 November 2014: Cement poured just as the first snow falls... ...means Mama gets a fire-ring and Oscar gets a sandbox by their birthdays This years project: a woodshed. Next year's project: Bedrooms?!
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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.
I listened to this past episode of This American Life yesterday while I pruned and then read an article by Nikole Hannah-Jones today.
I want to share it with some of my own comments, but I'm treading cautiously as it's such a sensitive topic and I'm not trying to inspire lots of hurt and angry comments. I thought her information and examples of how many schools really still are very segregated, and in turn very much limit opportunities for the students in these schools, was just such a clear example of how racism continues everywhere in this country. Yes, white dudes in cowboys boots driving trucks with confederate flags and trump bumper stickers are a caricature of racism (and are just straight up A-holes) but there are also lots of privileged educated people living in blue-states, talking politically-correct, that will always want their kids in what their idea of the "best" school is, regardless of what that leaves for the most disadvantaged, AND those type of people tend to have a lot more power and money to also make it so--to be in the room when the district lines are being drawn, to drive their kids to another school, or move if need be. We don't live in an urban area with poor black and latino families living in public-housing projects, just a few blocks away from million-dollar homes and the upper-class families that live in them. But we do live in a school district that includes very poor families, and very expensive homes, that includes an Ojibwe Indian reservation, farmland, an island, and a town with a lakeview and homes that more and more are owned by somewhat wealthy retirees and "summer people." A school district that has a population that is about 55% Native and 45% white, and a school student population that is 77% Native and has 60% of students taking free or reduced lunch. As I listened to this podcast, it did make me think of the “white flight” out of the Bayfield school when open enrollment became an option to families in our area about 15 years ago. It wasn't an immediate thing that students left the district, but over time many families have chosen to enroll (and drive) their kids fifteen miles away in the Washburn School which has a student and town population that is over 80% white, with 45% taking free or reduced lunch. We live in a small rural community, so I know several of those families personally. For many, I believe it was a tough decision. I was in high school at the time that open enrollment started, allowing families to enroll their children at any school they choose, although out-of-district students would need to provide their own transportation. My mom ran a daycare in our home and I remember many of the daycare parents asking my opinion on the Bayfield School. I have always advocated for Bayfield-- saying my school experience wasn't perfect, I had teachers I loved, and teachers I didn't, I was both challenged and bored, I was bullied and sometimes the bully--I think you will have that at any school. But I also made close friends that lived on the reservation, that lived on the island, that lived a life both similar and very different from my own. We played basketball. We rode the ferry for free. I had my ignorances called out and I learned. I wasn’t teased for my Pamida shoes or using the blue reduced-fee lunch ticket in the years my family’s farm had a poor berry crop. Ojibwe elders came into our classroom maybe once a month and we practiced Ojibwe words by playing animal bingo, ate popped wild rice, were told stories about Nanabozho, beaded keychains. My class went on a field trip to my farm and my dad talked about how bees make honey and he collects it. After college and time in the city, I moved back home and knew people in my community. I’m still learning I'm not trying to judge the families that send their kids to Washburn. Some try Bayfield for awhile and then switch. Every family needs to make the decision for themselves and only the people in that family know what they are dealing with when they make a decision. Unlike the schools Hannah-Jones writes about, the Bayfield School has some great teachers and enough resources to be an exceptional school even with families choosing to enroll their kids in a different district. But I feel very fortunate that I was able to attend what naturally kind of was a "desegregated" school and that I will be able to send my son on a bus to this same school. Jen Sauter-Sargent gave me a bunch of northern-grown celery (a rarity!) at the Applefest farmers' market on Friday and I enjoyed making and eating both these soups this weekend-- modified a bit by what I had on hand and to eliminate dishes: immersion blender and cook noodles in the soup! Celery Soup Pasta e fagioli Continuing the soup kick a couple weeks later, I stayed home with O and made blanket forts and this chicken wild rice soup (with a Washburn IGA rotisserie chicken carcass of course). I think almost every lazy, sort of grumpy, whatever day I've had this fall, soup has been the perfect remedy-- uses up the garden that can stress me out with it's abundance, warms, feeds, smells good.. Soup isn't hard to cook but to make it good, it takes a little bit of work here and there throughout the day or evening, and for me this is the time of year I have more time to be at home, but need to remember how to enjoy not being on the go go (I know not some people's problem) ;)
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. tis the season for head colds and sore throats. for strategic showering-- in the early evening when my wet hair will dry in our sun-warmed little house, or on rainy mornings with my back against the wood stove. i came home from our camping trip with my nephews cold. not in the mood for chicken soup, i googled for new recipes. have been scrolling through a list by bonappetit on my ipod during in between moments for the last day and a half. tis also the season for putting up the garden. before we left to camp i helped my mom in her kitchen sort and blanch and skin and chop tomatoes. packaging them into freezer bags. later to be thawed and stirred into soup and pasta dishes. before we left on our trip I also noticed that the broccoli in my garden should be cut. came home to lots of yellow flowers. googled: okay to eat broccoli flowers? gardenguides.com says yes. boiled water while i chopped. blanched for 3ish min. remembered blanching green beans when we lived in andy's cabin while my college friend tessa was visiting. i asked her to help me time the blanching and she made a playlist on my computer of 3 minute songs to play in the background. a dunk in cold water, then bagged. one quart of garden broccoli now in the freezer. last summer i was in a good routine of putting up the broccoli and kale from my garden once a week or so. but that hasn't been the case this year. last summer was also a crappy blueberry season, so i had a little more time and energy to spare. fresh broccoli is generally affordable and available all winter, i console. i've got a pound of ground pork thawing on the stove for spaghetti, not really what i'm in the mood for but an easy dinner. flip through a few more of the bonapetit recipes. come across one that starts with 1 lb of ground pork, garlic, ginger (just had jen pick some up), cumin, pepper flakes, lots of mustard greens, rice noodles. sub kale and spaghetti noodles and i can do this. so delicious. pick all the kale from my garden that i've been meaning to blanch and freeze and make a double batch. broccoli AND soup in the freezer. dinner made. bring on the hulu...
I was feeling lonely and then this happened: And all was better.
Not just because my kiddo is awesome but because I now also had an awesome photo to share with my loved ones. (This was just a month after I had purchased my iPod… the closest thing to a smart phone I've owned.) First a joint text to my wife (who was on a sailboat) and our baby-daddy, who immediately replied: “😍😍😍” Then to my college roommate in Boston. “He used the potty! Haha. That cat is so cute and sweet. You sent me a photo of poop” And of course to our bestie Kate working hard in the Colorado wilderness. “This was pretty amazing to come home to :)” The next night, bartending with my friends at Big Top, no longer lonely but a little overstaffed and bored, I could send it to Kaite and enjoy her awesome face and laughter when she opened it. My friend from college sent an email asking for coming out resources for middle schoolers. This was my reply: "Books. When I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen--before I claimed queer, before I had kissed--I found a book list of YA novels with LGBT characters. I liked the books on this list because the stories felt real, no dragons or vampires or serial killers, and the characters had more depth than babysitters and blonde twin sisters. Those coming out stories for me were not just about coming out as gay, but about beginning to name yourself, your identity, your people, your path. I found the list on the internet, a newish thing when I was thirteen, probably a yahoo search for YA novels. I don't think I searched LGBT, wouldn't have known to put those letters together yet, but because the internet was so new and uncluttered, I happened across it. I haven't been able to find this list from my youth again, but when I google "LGBT YA novels" how awesome to see lists upon lists. Even a "10 Best New YA Books That Explore Sexuality for 2015." There were so many YA books written in the last year with LGBT characters that there can be a best ten? Amazing. I think the first identity I claimed was that of "reader." Before I could read the words, my family tells me, I would pack a bag with picture books and carry it into the yard. Sit on a stump and turn the pages. Content. For all of my childhood, my home away from home was the library in town. My name marks the slip of so many library due date slips, often again and again, not because I needed more time to read them, but because I read all that interested me and then returned to my favorites. Roberta, the librarian, would ask me for lists of books I wanted and I took the job seriously. So when I found the LGBT list, I wasn't shy about writing down the titles that were missing from our library's shelves (most, if not all). Roberta, as she had always done, ordered any she could through interloan, and as she had funds available would purchase books from my list to add to the library's collection. My reading now is more sporadic. I need the right book to hold my attention through the distractions of my son, the internet, chores, work. But sometimes he nurses peacefully and I can open a book in my other hand, my thoughts quieting, and then a chapter is finished, my son asleep in my arms. I lay him down in his crib and can return for another chapter, can steal just a little of that precious nap time for myself, this first identity--before queer, before career, before wife, and mother. To be a reader. This morning, the page held my attention even as he wiggled in my arms and poked at my eye, in a place between play and sleep that we all like to stretch out in sometimes, especially on a snowy Saturday morning. His eyes still open, I lay him down in the crib with his wolfie. He didn't sleep, but he didn't complain. I read, sometimes the same sentence a few times, as I listened to him kick at the covers, move around. A little while later I hear him quietly flipping the pages of a favorite board book. I don't know that 'reader' will dominate his identity like it did mine. There is so much else that interests him these days--dogs, tractors, other people's smartphones, pulling his sox off... But I love sharing this moment now of reading alone together.
As I was on the internet making my recommendation list for you, I realized that my library has a really impressive list of YA LGBT books. (Thanks Roberta!) Some I have yet to read, but now want to check out soon: the miseducation of cameron post, down to the bone, keeping you a secret... Some of the titles I recall from that first list are: annie on my mind, deliver us from evie, and the perks of being a wallflower... I wish I could remember more. A couple books I read and liked in more recent years are: the house you pass on the way, and saints of augustine. Also, awkward, and skim, both graphic novels. And I found this list which seems like a good one. What are some of the books you recommend and/or teach with you students? How's that going? What are you reading these days? I just started shotgun lovesongs. No gays in it, but the author and setting are from northern Wisconsin. You know what is hard to find? Books with gay mom characters. Jodi Picoult wrote one that they have at our library (sing you home) but it looks cheesy and I kind of prefer queer books written by queers. Oscar's awake now, so I'm gonna send this before it doesn't get sent at all... xoxox! |
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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