When Chas was somersaulting in utero, around seven months, I began to stew up a birth quilt for him. At the time, Ford had checked out a book from the library that I found terribly inspiring, Ducklings and Pollywogs by Lizzy Rockwell. The guache and watercolor illustrations were flat but the compositions rich in detail, and I’d find myself oggling the pages when I was on the phone, or sipping coffee. It was the theme that most intrigued me: paying reverence to a small pond throughout the year, noticing small changes, seasons. So I chose to use a pond theme for the quilt. One afternoon I tore the colors I loved out of old magazines, and after I had a collection, began to assemble them on a page in my sketchbook. After the arrangement seemed right, I picked up a glitter pen and made droplets fall upon the water, adding rings of vibrations through the pond, as if I was looking into the water during a rain. For more interest, I started drawing black eyes of frogs. I cut them out and pasted them onto the paper (I had made about twelve little compositions). After that, I was in love.

Of course, after selecting fabrics and playing with applique, I chose a composition based less on cryptic eyeballs peeking out of the water and more on the idea of lilypads, or pods, on the water. Something more evocative of how I felt as I sewed: healthy, whole, very pregnant.

I handpainted the watery background, staining the kitchen floor with aqua splatters. Scraps of pond colors littered the hallway floor, beneath the table where I worked. Natural specimens lined the window above my sewing machine: reeds, willow blossoms, seed pods and empty chrysalises. With my machine, I sewed ripples in the water fabric with gossamer thread, sandwiching soft layers and different textures of cotton. I tied the quilt with different shades of green, like the aquatic plants that slide between my toes when I wade.

Chas noticed the circles one day, very young, and smiled, running his finger along the seam of a circle. I was so pleased.

And I like the way it turned out, myself.

I awoke this morning at 4am, staring up at the smoke detector’s red light staring back at me. Fat raindrops clinked on the dry gutter, the pats becoming crowded until the sound showered the roof with a roaring rain. I tossed in bed, restlessly wondering whether I’d closed the car’s sunroofs, until the rain became steady and sedate.

We had a playdate this morning. I love it when our home is full of kids, reassembling pretense and climbing over each other, cutting up the quiet order with their happy chatter. In the front’s wake, the sun shone brilliantly through zero atmosphere, as it does on mountaintops. While the boys played with the Millenium falcon on the driveway, I picked up a transparent purple beach ball and a racketball racket, volleying the ball against the garage door. I could slam it satisfyingly hard, with all my might, and it would cheerfully float back to the racket without complaining. Occasionally a gust would blow it towards the yuccas, but I’d run after it, flip-flops flapping, and slam the ball back towards the house, losing sight of it to the blinding sun.

The oaks and grasses sparkled in the sun but barely waved in the rolling wind, while three red-tailed hawks spun round overhead, crying into the canyon. Black vultures weaved in and out of each other, as commuter jets suspended long white threads behind them all, high up in the stratosphere. The Texas Mountain Laurel, blooming violet and happy, smells like grape bubble gum. The weatherman proclaims a weak year for wildflowers; we haven’t had enough rain.

It’s night now, and the moon has gilded the landscape with pale white light. I am counting all the toys I’m too lazy to go outside and pick up: two kids bicycles, a basketball hoop, several balls, two or three cups, a frisbee and a Tonka truck. They shine and sparkle under the constellations, and I could release the kids to play outside as it is, if they weren’t leaden with sleep in the bed. Besides, the coyotes are beginning to wail.

I awoke this morning at 4am, staring up at the smoke detector’s red light staring back at me. Fat raindrops clinked on the dry gutter, the pats becoming crowded until the sound showered the roof with a roaring rain. I tossed in bed, restlessly wondering whether I’d closed the car’s sunroofs, until the rain became steady and sedate.

We had a playdate this morning. I love it when our home is full of kids, reassembling pretense and climbing over each other, cutting up the quiet order with their happy chatter. In the front’s wake, the sun shone brilliantly through zero atmosphere, as it does on mountaintops. While the boys played with the Millenium falcon on the driveway, I picked up a transparent purple beach ball and a racketball racket, volleying the ball against the garage door. I could slam it satisfyingly hard, with all my might, and it would cheerfully float back to the racket without complaining. Occasionally a gust would blow it towards the yuccas, but I’d run after it, flip-flops flapping, and slam the ball back towards the house, losing sight of it to the blinding sun.

The oaks and grasses sparkled in the sun but barely waved in the rolling wind, while three red-tailed hawks spun round overhead, crying into the canyon. Black vultures weaved in and out of each other, as commuter jets suspended long white threads behind them all, high up in the stratosphere. The Texas Mountain Laurel, blooming violet and happy, smells like grape bubble gum. The weatherman proclaims a weak year for wildflowers; we haven’t had enough rain.

It’s night now, and the moon has gilded the landscape with pale white light. I am counting all the toys I’m too lazy to go outside and pick up: two kids bicycles, a basketball hoop, several balls, two or three cups, a frisbee and a Tonka truck. They shine and sparkle under the constellations, and I could release the kids to play outside as it is, if they weren’t leaden with sleep in the bed. Besides, the coyotes are beginning to wail.

I awoke this morning at 4am, staring up at the smoke detector’s red light staring back at me. Fat raindrops clinked on the dry gutter, the pats becoming crowded until the sound showered the roof with a roaring rain. I tossed in bed, restlessly wondering whether I’d closed the car’s sunroofs, until the rain became steady and sedate.

We had a playdate this morning. I love it when our home is full of kids, reassembling pretense and climbing over each other, cutting up the quiet order with their happy chatter. In the front’s wake, the sun shone brilliantly through zero atmosphere, as it does on mountaintops. While the boys played with the Millenium falcon on the driveway, I picked up a transparent purple beach ball and a racketball racket, volleying the ball against the garage door. I could slam it satisfyingly hard, with all my might, and it would cheerfully float back to the racket without complaining. Occasionally a gust would blow it towards the yuccas, but I’d run after it, flip-flops flapping, and slam the ball back towards the house, losing sight of it to the blinding sun.

The oaks and grasses sparkled in the sun but barely waved in the rolling wind, while three red-tailed hawks spun round overhead, crying into the canyon. Black vultures weaved in and out of each other, as commuter jets suspended long white threads behind them all, high up in the stratosphere. The Texas Mountain Laurel, blooming violet and happy, smells like grape bubble gum. The weatherman proclaims a weak year for wildflowers; we haven’t had enough rain.

It’s night now, and the moon has gilded the landscape with pale white light. I am counting all the toys I’m too lazy to go outside and pick up: two kids bicycles, a basketball hoop, several balls, two or three cups, a frisbee and a Tonka truck. They shine and sparkle under the constellations, and I could release the kids to play outside as it is, if they weren’t leaden with sleep in the bed. Besides, the coyotes are beginning to wail.

I would love to have a fancy hardwood barn and dollhouse for the kids to play with. But they are expensive! I think I made a smart decision to recycle some boxes from Costco, fashion a good working barn from them and gesso it for the kids. One morning soon, we’ll get around to “decorating” it. Until then, it’s been getting good use as it is.

Since I can’t have my own Hanoverian gelding, I bought a pretty one at Target. It’s a Schleich and I named it Claus. When the boys ask me to play, I tap it across the rug in a meditative half pass left, then right, then I a collected canter around the rug’s perimeter. Chas will pick up a heifer and follow my little program. Ford picks up the Velociraptor and shrieks, thrusting it through the upstairs doorway, attacking the little brown rabbit.

And there you have it: the farm play “corner,” which actually is sitting atop Chas’ birth quilt, atop the chaise in the living room. But we carry it all over, sometimes outside. See more corners here.

In 2000, the experts told us it would take on average about one year to conceive, after throwing the pills in the trash. I googled (on Yahoo, at the time) “trying to conceive” and followed my nose to babycenter, which suggested the use of a basal thermometer to predict the time of ovulation. On the way home from Point Reyes, I stopped off at the Long’s drugstore in Mill Valley and found a ten dollar basal thermometer on the bottom shelf. Smiling at the clerk, I stepped back out into the rain and into the world of possibility. I felt control and the hand of science on my shoulder.

Some mornings I awoke at six, to journal, and I’d forget to take my temperature until I was already comfortable on the sofa. Irritated, I’d drag myself back into the bedroom and wake Damon up with the tiny BEEP BEEP BEEPing. Then, I’d turn the corner, reach into the medicine cabinet, and pull out my chart. I’d have to squint my eyes to plot the coordinates.

Other mornings, I’d open my eyes to bright sunlight, staring at the ceiling with fatigue. The chart made its way to the bedside table, out of convenience, and the beeping and recording would commence. Those were dreamy mornings, before children, when the sun could rise up high in silence. When the scrub jays would wake me up, rasping among my zoo of potted geraniums, spilling over the balcony.

It only took one month, one spike. One night? Clockwork. Looking at Ford, as he sleeps with rosy red cheeks and a tangle of blonde curls beside me, I can’t say I wish it had taken longer. But it was a year-long program, and we took the weekend workshop. It wasn’t supposed to be this easy, and I, torn between pride and guilt, hysteria and fear, stood there staring at the pink line in the bathroom for ten minutes. The countertop was cluttered with tears and cosmetics, the pregnancy test commanding my focus. I looked up, smiling with red eyes and a wrinkled forehead, naked in every way, and carried the test to Damon. And the last thing I remember from that night was him, holding me and laughing, wondering why I was crying, running his fingers down his chin as he does when he’s trying to make sense of someone else’s imperfect logic. This time, however, with a hint of pride. We’d done good.

SPT

The lake today breathed a joyful sigh of peace before spring break arrives, next week, to slosh her with boat fuel, beer and music. Polly and I stood thigh-deep in the cold water, prattling about this and that, while Atticus and Ford rollicked on and off the diving platform. Chas and Tabitha teetered chest-high in the wakes from the occasional ski boats, the water slapped playfully against the banks and the youngsters, who didn’t seem the least appalled. What I thought was a minnow and then maybe a tadpole turned out to be a mayfly larva, swimming like a snake an inch below the surface. As I lifted it out of the water atop my palm, it walked along walked along my hand with surprisingly deft strength against the water’s surface tension. In order to take a closer look, Ford did something I cannot do anymore: he lifted the insect between his fingers and carried it away.

Most children enjoy letting slugs wander across their arms, caterpillars creep over fingers. Dad brought a jar of grasshoppers for the kids to play with last summer. Chas sat and picked them, one by one, out of the jar, letting them crawl all over himself. When I was Ford’s age, I remember picking up insects in this matter-of-fact way. I had Stag beetles, tarantulas, and pet grasshoppers, large, shiny red-on-black grasshoppers that I kept in mason jars. And then one day, I picked up an earthworm. It was cool, pinkish-brown and very long. I wondered at it’s sleekness, imagining that it could stretch to great lengths if it wanted to. So I pulled it gently between my fingers until it cracked in two places, exposing its tragic red insides to me. I remember dropping it, as I have seen Ford abandon his kill, only I felt sick. I still feel sick. I wonder what Ford feels, when his fingers erase another small life. Lifting him over the bank, as we were leaving, I noticed a very small gossamer wing on his arm.
(Sigh.) The mayfly?

It is midnight in early March, and I’m hearing what I can’t bring myself to believe: a mockingbird serenading outside on the telephone pole.

“Mom, where are we going?”
“We’re going to the store, so you can get a new hat and so I can get some yoga pants.”
“Why are you getting new pants?”
“Because Daddy says I look silly in those grey lounge pants, you know, the soft ones.”
“YOU DON’T LOOK SILLY! YOU LOOK AWESOME!” he yelled from the backseat. He yelled!

We drive to the Pedernales River this morning for a hike. It is quiet around 11:50 except for the last of the churchgoers leaving mass. We cruise under a weary, overcast sky that echoes a landscape hardly awake from winter, except for a lone quince tree blazing pink alongside a truckstop. 290 is growing. What was once a frontier escarpment of limestone and prickly pear is now claimed property of “Muirwood” and “Oak Haven” and the mycelium of other residential real estate developments. But the road itself is still old. We climb and descend each hill like a motorboat on choppy water, tossed about by the scars of traffic and extreme temperatures on the road, our eyes following the varicose veins of long asphalt-filled cracks in the pavement. Scores of Open House signs are everywhere, in short trains of five or six (per builder) they picket the shoulder. There’s a balmy southern breeze and the American flag at the Pulte Highpointe Information Center is at full-mast, waving gloriously. I wonder how many prospective homeowners will visit this trailer today. A part of me can understand how a person would appreciate a home, like the ones I see beyond the trailer, sitting on two green acres and surrounded by white ranch fencing. Perfect for your one-horse family and sidekick goat.

People driving along this road must buy a lot of pottery, rustic metal art and deer antlers; every other store has a side yard filled with chimineas and yard art. Sheet metal silhouettes of cowboys leaning against imaginary walls are among them, so you could (if you wanted to) lean one of those buckaroos against the entrance to your ranch, right there next to the gate. So everyone would know your home was cowboy-friendly, supporting all cowboy-related endeavors.

Damon used to work on the King Ranch. When he was in high school, he had many different roles on the ranch, and his least favorite was the caballero duty of processing freshly-purchased cattle for their new life on the King Ranch. And since he worked during the summers, I’ll begin the description of setting to include blistering heat and dust. Add to that, a two-foot layer of bull shit to stand in (and I mean literally), the smell of burnt flesh, the bustling sounds of hydraulics and metal and groaning cattle.

There’s a short list of duties to perform on the newly-purchased stock: a bloodbath of dehorning, branding, castrating and immunizing. You corral cow into the chute with a cattle prod. If it’s female, the most effective way to move her is to stun her with a cattleprod to the clit (I kid you not). If the cow has horns, you take a large pair of tree pruners and slam, slam, slam them together until the horn lops off, trailed by a river of blood from the marrow (since the horns are, after all, a part of the cow’s skull). While the cow is bleeding out, you take a branding iron and burn the famous running W onto its hide (a cow may have many brands over the course of his or her life). Then, if it’s a bull, you have to castrate it. It’s a systematic thing, really: you slice with a razor blade, pull them out. Period. Lastly, you immunize. If you look up occasionally while injecting, you can pound the huge hypodermic needle accidentally into your own leg, as Damon did. While all of this is going on, the Mexican laborers will take a few testicles and fry them over the same fire that’s heating the branding irons, a sort of freak show snacking. And at the end of the day, the laborers will often take a long latex rubber glove, the kind used for artificial insemination, and fill them with the leftover balls to take home. They’ll leave, smiling and proud, holding a bloody bag of bluish-pink cow balls to cook up later, for themselves? For their family?

Yes, we are in the middle of country with a capital K, as in Kountry Kitchen, Kountry Klutter and Hill Kountry Kabins. I had to retype these names a few times to get it right. It was difficult.

The river is low. The river bottom is worn smooth, and deep crevasses bore through the bedrock like swiss cheese. I hold my breath as I boulder with Chas in the backpack over deep divides, and gasp when Ford leans over edges, peering into the whirlpools. We stop to investigate fossils, embedded everywhere along the riverbottom terrace.

On our walk back up the trail, I stop in my tracks to listen. I hear a slight symphony beyond our parade of noise: Ford is belting out more White Stripes, while Chas is simultaneously repeating Dvorak’s New World Symphony (to the three syllables “Hi Daddy, Hi Daddy,” over and over again–amazing in itself!). Everyone stops, and we all hear it, the distant sound of geese underwater. Looking up, we see birds flying in V-formation, due North, but they are clearly not geese. In a less-focused, more carefree jaunt, these are actually Sandhill cranes flying at about 2000 feet. We watched as they flew over the river, paused, and dissociated into a flowing fabric of cranes, wafting upwards on thermals in freeflowing spiral, resting their wings as they ascended. For about three minutes or so they did this, until one set course and the rest followed, straight into V-formation once more.

We learned three new things on the longish return hike uphill:
1. open-toed sandals and sand do not really mix well, according to a 4 year-old.
2. Ford will knock down any structure, no matter how sacred, to prove his power over inanimate objects.
3. Chas will always attempt to get in the water, so never take him out of the backpack without preparation.

The past two days have been unusually exhausting. I’m not sure if it’s Chas’ being sick, or missed sleep or, quite simply, Ford, but I rarely feel so mentally drained. I sit down to write, and feel nothing. It’s a dull, cottony feeling. I type three sentences, erase two. Type ten sentences, erase eight. I am not making any sense, and my stomach feels sour.

It’s not so bad being tired and numb, but it’s awful being blind to what’s running underneath, although I have a feeling it’s symptomatic of sleep deprivation. I’m standing in a pitch dark cave without a headlamp`, groping for a wall to guide myself towards someplace concrete, and hopefully in the direction of light, although I’d be content just to feel a wall to lean on and hug. Why can’t I just sleep at night, when it is dark? Why does my body want to stay awake, even if my mind is asleep? What little time there is to claim, after they have all gone to bed, is very little in exchange for the sacrifice of mental clarity (or something remotely similar).

So tonight (and for the next week) I am signing off an hour earlier. I want to see what happens when I redistribute the weight on the scales. It is 11:15pm, and the laundry is piled up, the toys are still scattered across the house, there may be a pile of spaghetti on the kitchen floor: I am TOO tired to tackle it now, and power to the bug that discovers it first. I’ll clean up in the morning.