Without Me

I just closed the door of big black car and sent Silas off on his first play-date without me.
When his friend's mom offered to pick Silas up this afternoon, my first reaction was amazement at the freedom that would ensue -- Eden napping, Silas off with a friend who was not a babysitter, whom I did not have to pay, no strings attached, simply boys playing. Uncharted waters.

Yet, as I sensed his wee hesitation when I bucked him into their strange car, and as I watched them drive off, tinted windows obscuring his face, I was struck by how much of the rest of our lives will consist of separation; he going one direction and I another. In such a short time, it will be hard to remember these days when I crave even an hour on my own.

And I must say, that now sitting here without him, I feel a little sad.

In Defense of Butter - or- How Christmas Cookie Baking is Going

Well, I have used 6 sticks of butter in the last two hours. Fortunately, I haven't eaten them all. But I do keep thinking about the Parisian sandwich -- I don't think we've talked about that enough. How IS it that Parisian sandwiches have visible pats of butter the length of the sandwich AND cheese and ham, yet people eat them for lunch regularly in France? I recently was sifting through a bunch of my grandmother's recipes and when she came to any sandwich recipe (of which there were surprisingly many), it began: "Generously butter each piece of bread..." And yet, like many French, my grandmother was a lean person. I think our society carries far too much fear of butter these days, don't we? Churned cream with a little salt -- it does add a lot.

Which brings me to baking cookies. I haven't actually baked any yet but have been making batches of dough -- glazed lemon cookies from a recipe I tore out of a magazine last winter; Ben's mom's sugar cookies that Silas and I will roll out and ice tomorrow; and, most intriguingly, Brown Butter Spoon Cookies with Jam.

There have been a few glitches along the way, like a paper towel falling into my bowl of carefully squeezed lemon juice and sucking it all up. Or water sloshing into my pot of carefully browned butter that was cooling in the sink. Or flour measuring. I have taken to measuring flour with a 1/3 or 1/2 c measuring cup because they fit into my flour jar (yes, wide-mouth kitchen jars are on my Christmas list). And I often lose count, even when I know that I often lose count and concentrate. When I couldn't slice the chilled lemon cookie dough without it pulverizing, I knew that once again, I had mis-measured (as I had earlier with a pumpkin cake).

Despite all the setbacks, though, I think cookies will ensue.

Twiggy Foto Pics

Chi-Lin Sun took some pictures of us the other day. She has a magical way of capturing children in their everyday way... Check out her beautiful work here.

Here are some gems from our tromp at the bay:

A Morning in Paris

I love how tastes, like smells, can magically transport us. This morning in the middle of a string of errands, Eden and I pulled into my favorite market for a cappuccino and a bite to eat. Wearing boots, candy cane striped tights, and dragging a bulky Handy Manny backpack behind her, Eden walked into A Market with me. I didn't want a muffin, cinnamon coffee cake, or gooey pecan roll (though they all sound like a perfect afternoon snack right now), but something savory... I asked about the Parisian sandwich I've eyed every time we've come in, and just as I'd hoped, butter, cheese, and ham filled the narrow baguette -- exactly what I wanted. The bread was crusty with some chew, and the combination of ham, salty smooth butter, and creamy, slightly sharp cheese -- perfect. With the first bite, there I was, standing on a grey Paris street, beaming.

The Annual Argument

Ben and I got our Christmas tree yesterday and ended up having the same discussion we have every year:

Bronwen walking over to the car: Have you tied the tree to the roof yet?
Ben: No, I'm just going to hold it.
Bronwen: Hold it to the roof from inside the car?
Ben: Yes.
Bronwen: You are going to hold the tree?
Ben: Yes.
Bronwen: With one hand?
Ben: Yes.
Bronwen: Out the WINdow?
Ben: YES.
Bronwen: while we DRIVE?
Ben: yes.
Bronwen: 35 mph and around corners?
Ben: It will be FINE.
Bronwen: Ben---

The conversation goes on and on like this until segueing into exasperation. How would you explain to the person behind you whose windshield your tree just smashed that it wasn't tied down because you'd decided "just to hold it"? Unlike most years when I march back into the tree lot, muttering to myself as I unravel 20 feet of string, and march back to the car with the tangled mess of it, this year I gave up early. I couldn't bear the ridiculousness of the argument -- or the fact that, once again, we were having it.
Ben: "This is going to work fine -- I'll just tie net around the tree to the roof rack."
(tie the net to one side of the roof rack so that worst case scenario -- hopefully -- the tree just rolls off the roof and hangs along the side of the car hiding us from anyone who thought a Christmas tree was tumbling off the roof and about to hit them).

The Double-Sunrise Shell

I like picking up stones and shells to mark experiences. It's taken me a while to realize that relationships are made up of a lot of unremarkable finds -- gravel, beach pebbles, skipping-stones, broken shells. It's a rare day when one finds a green stone on a beach or a large piece of sea glass, or a pebble shaped like a heart. But these, of course, are what keep us looking.

When I was home for Thanksgiving, I started thinking about this one evening when my dad and I sat in the semi-dark living room speaking more honestly than we usually do. His tenderness during that conversation is one of the perfect white stones I will carry in my pocket.

I realize that I wish relationships consisted of those remarkable moments all of the time -- the close, intimate, and undivided ones. I am reading Gift from the Sea* by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. She talks about how the stages of early love, friendship, and even parenting are "pure" -- they exist in the sweet spot of fresh, early love where a relationship is a world unto itself, unhindered by the responsibilities and complications of life. In this early stage we are "loved alone" -- completely and exclusively, outside of all other affections and distractions; we are, as Donne says, in that small time, each other's whole world.

From Lindberg's chapter "Double Sunrise":

"We all wish to be loved alone. Perhaps, as Auden says in his poem, this is a fundamental error in mankind.

'For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love But to be loved alone.'

...In discussing this verse with an Indian philosopher, I had an illuminating answer. 'It is all right to wish to be loved alone... mutuality is the essence of love. There cannot be others in mutuality. It is only in the time-sense that it is wrong. It is when we desire continuity of being loved along that we go wrong.'"

"One comes in the end to realize that there is no permanent pure-relationship and there should not be. It is not even something to be desired. The pure relationship is limited, in space and in time. In its essence it implies exclusion. It excludes the rest of life, other relationships, other sides of personality, other responsibilities, other possibilities in the future . It excludes growth... One learns to accept the fact that no permanent return is possible to an old form of relationship; and, more deeply still, that there is no holding of a relationship to a single form. This is not tragedy but part of the ever-recurrent miracle of life and growth. All living relationships are in process of change, of expansion, and must perpetually be building themselves new forms." (73-75)

Though what she says holds true for all relationships, I have thought about it especially in terms of marriage (the relationship she most specifically addresses here). Ben's brother Zack is getting married in February. I have loved watching him and Beth the past few months-- how they talk to each other under their breath in a way that's almost their own language, look at each other with small smiles tucked in the corners of their mouths, wend through their weeks popping in and out of thrift stores, and photographing each other in greenish light. Fresh love.

Watching their world has also heightened my awareness of what a different world Ben and I now live in -- a world orbited by two dancing moons, a world with lots of life to maintain. But Lindberg reminds me that change can be life-giving, a mark of expansion and growth, that instead of trying to return to an old form, we can work to reconnect and create new forms. She talks about how we can rediscover "the miracle of the sunrise" shell (the rosy early stage where two are joined by a perfect simple hinge) when we duck out of life's rush together. "What unexpected joy... to leave the children, the house, the job, and all the obligations" and find the "sudden pleasure of having breakfast alone with the man one fell in love with... Nothing [to separate each other] but a coffee pot, corn muffins and marmalade." (70-71) (I don't much like marmalade, but that sentence makes me want a whole jar of it on the kitchen table).

For now, I am off to make breakfast with Silas -- not quite the same, but doesn't it help to remember his downy-headed little self while he is yelling the entire house awake at 6AM?
And yet wouldn't I be even more exhausted had he stayed that nursing baby? (Oh, so grateful not to be in that stage any longer!) Reminders all around...


*If you are not familiar with the book, a little background: each chapter is an essay based on a different shell she's found. She writes from a bare-bones beach house during a week of solitude. The book, written in 1955, pre-Feminist movement, is definitely dated in parts, which she addresses in an afterword, but the heart of her musings stand true.

Eastern Early Winter Reminders

*the magic of static sparks in the dark
(winter's version of fireflies)

*chapped lips

*sock lint (I realize how seldom we wear socks!)

*that jet lag means that even when dog-tired from small people who rise early, I may still be wide awake Christmas shopping online come bedtime...

*the fun of tromping through a field of papery poplar leaves, watching Eden learn to lift her knees and kick foot-fuls as she goes

*the sink into quiet during stretches of cool, grey days

*traces of my parents in the mornings: a kitchen that smells like coffee and newspapers sectioned on the table

My eyes are tired, but it's good to be home this week...
(the other home)