Where We are Now

This week marks the move from honeymoon to transition: when husband's job resurfaces, when mother's life grows bigger than a babe, when adrenaline gives way to exhaustion, when the resolve to fight sloppy emotion flags, when the four year old erupts into strings of meltdowns and wakes screaming in the night and keeps screaming when her dad comes in, when the cheery six year old's eyes spring with instant tears at any thwarted expectation, when, in short, change hits.

Small victories mark the days: Silas's spelling "one" and holding the baby by himself, my picking Eden up from school alone, pumping for the first time (the stash of freedom begins), and remembering gratitude -- for the baby in the house, a person who continues to strike me as impossibly lovely.  That humans arrive so tiny and perfectly complete is brand new all over again.  And for people -- meals continue to arrive on my doorstep, people have picked up diapers at the store, driven S & E to soccer, taken them to the park, thrown laundry into my washer, folded mountains of clothes, emptied the trash...  *thank you*

Fall has ripped through billowy summer and arrived -- the sky yesterday was taut and blue behind yellow leaves, and today wind gusted through the huge trees all day, sending showers of leaves and acorns in the yard.  The air is cool and drying, the dogwoods deep red, and orange seeps into the edges of the sugar maples.  The world is transitioning, too, around us, its wind against our skin.