Alone together

An unexpected plot twist found Mae and me traveling alone together over the weekend.

As we zipped in and out of Whole Foods for dinner for the car, as we sped quietly along the highway listening to non-pop-music, as we snuggled closely in the guest bed usually reserved for children only, I realized that we'd never done this before. 

My family and I remarked on this repeatedly over the course of the weekend: Mae and I had never taken a trip alone together. 

It was lovely. It was harmonious. It was restful and peaceful and fuzzy and I felt like a good person. Like a decent mother. Like all the doubts I have about myself were based on nonsense.

We checked activities off our list. We enjoyed most of them. We had our favorite breakfast at our favorite spot; we went shopping for clothes; we went swimming, went out for tacos, saw some college gymnastics. We caught a movie, we rode our bikes. We napped. I napped. There was knitting. There was even wine, even adult company and conversations. And pie. Two kinds. 

My middle child is on middle ground - that peaceful lull, the eye of the storm? Between toddlerhood and pre-teen emotion. Middle Mae.

Tonight we found ourselves alone together again. With Gilli passed out on the couch after work and Bela on a trip to the DePaul Women's Basketball game, Mae and I read two chapters in Harry Potter. We ate fish sticks for dinner. We snuck ice cream. Gill woke up and we all took a strangely pleasant walk in the dark to the girls' school, to wait for Bela's bus to return from the game.

We stomped in mud. We splashed in puddles. SOME of us kicked off our boots and rode the teeter totter in the snow.

And the bus came, and from the bus descended Bela and her cloud of tweenage drama and all slowness disappeared in a puff of dramatic smoke. Things got loud and fast. There was crying and yelling and talk of skipping school due to embarrassing posters and presentations gone wrong and no one, just no one liking her. 

And I became mean mom. Tired mom. Doesn't know how to handle 9 year old drama mom. Needs a good self-help book mom.

Oh dear, sweet, dramatic Bela. I love you so. Maybe we could use some time alone together.

Signs of spring

The girls have been pestering me about Spring for days on end now, as though I had it in me to magically turn the seasons - or at the very least, to know the specific day this incredibly long winter would change its course.

Mae has been especially persistent.

How many more days? This, she asks every morning.

My response is aggravating: Same as yesterday. Minus one.

But MOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM!

Same as yesterday. Minus one.

And yet there have been signs. Robins. Yes! Robins! And we're above 20 degrees. And the sun, it's different, has more power to it. More glowy warmth, more gold in my living room after 5:00pm.

 And who can forget the Spanish Compositions?

Every Spring semester, just when I think I can't take one more day of cold and gray and drear, my students turn in their first drafts of their first compositions.

In the moments of my life when the professional burdens pile high, you will be sure to find me head first in my wool cabinet, going through my yarn. And so this too, this retreat into my wool stash, it serves as a harbinger of Spring around these parts.

How many discarded projects I came across I don't care to admit. The dollar amount in yarn alone is embarrassing, not to mention the hours spent knitting something that was never worn. Never even finished.

I brazenly scooped up all the half-finished lace scarves, the single socks and the worsted weight sweaters missing sleeves and yokes, along with the impossibly tangly and knotty bundles of unusable yarn, and I marched them into my sewing room.

And instead of grading, instead of tallying, instead of planning, I did this.

A mess of mercerized cotton.

Cotton, wool, silk. Impossible.

Winding, winding, winding.

Making progress! 

Over the course of the last week, I have spent several hours just sitting in there, untangling yarn, unwinding sweaters, winding them back into usable yarn, for a second life.

And I have been happy. So, so happy.

The sun illuminates our living room in the most beautiful of ways these days, for 13 minutes each late afternoon.

Gill shadow head

Here it comes.