Reading Resolutions

I read.  A lot.  Books give me joy.  Reading books, smelling books, listening to books being read aloud, talking about books, sharing books, buying books, walking through aisles of books, looking at walls covered in books, stacking books next to my bed…. 

My current favorite thing about books?  The way that my 9 week old daughter smiles with delight as her papa reads her a book on his lap.  She coos at the pages and chortles. Last time I tried to read to her?  Squalls of discontent.  Boobs are apparently still better than books in her world.

In a way, books - and reading - may be even more necessary to me this year than in years past.  I took one hobby (yoga) and turned it into a business, a job, a career - calling it may be, but something I do solely for myself it is no longer.  And then more recently, I took another hobby (weaving) and also turned it into a business; a fun one, a joyful one, but a job nonetheless.  And mothering?  Mothering might be my primary activity these days, it may be mostly fun, and infinitely rewarding.  But it is hardly a thing that I do for myself alone.  I feel like keeping something that is just for me, just for joy, just for fun, is important.

Goodreads reflects that I read 79 books in 2015.   Not half bad for a year in which I was pregnant and not-infrequently exhausted and sleeping 18 hours a day. My goal was 100, and I’ve set the same goal for myself this year.  I expect that I’ll vastly outpace myself and clock in at well over 100 books in 2016. 

Because here’s the thing.  Kid’s books are books.  Those numbers for 2015?  They include a Jan Brett book or three.

I’ll read novels and books on yoga and health.  I’ll read “Big Magic.” I’ll finish Harry Potter in French.  I’ll read for my own amusement and pleasure.  I’ll read to feed my own soul.  But always and increasingly, I’ll read to Avery.  We will read about trolls and treasure hunts, about ridiculous rooms with big green walls and hideous red carpets, about mice and cookies, and about moose and muffins.  

Those are books.  They count. (Though only once.  Even if I read “Llama Llama Red Pajama” 12 million times, it only counts once!)

But just to spice things up a little, perhaps to nudge me past my comfort zone, I’ve printed out a few reading challenges that have been making their way around the interwebs.  This one from the Modern Mrs. Darcy is short and sweet and fun.  This one from PopSugar is lengthy and honestly, the one I’m least likely to complete.  Because political memoirs and dystopian novels?  Not my cup of tea.  I turn pages primarily for the joy they bring me.  Then there’s this one from Book Riot, with the most diverse categories of the three.  I’m excited about this one.  Or most of it.  Again with the dystopia.  And horror?  Does medieval dismemberment porn in saint’s lives count?  I could read one of those again.  While I’m certain I could find phenomenal literature for adults, I’m really hoping that I check off “Read a book by or about a person that identifies as a transgender” with a kid’s book. 

What about you? What are you reading?  What do you recommend?

So far this year, I’ve read “On the Night You Were Born,” “Je t’aimerais toujours,” and the first few chapters of “Surrender to the Devil.”  If you were to judge by Regency Romance, Lucifer was a bona fide blue blooded Duke. 

Owl Flight

OwlFlight is a very special warp. It is Avery's warp. Our piece of it will be our very first handwoven. And when her wearing days are over? I'll chop it and sew it up into a blanket quilt for her.  Should her tastes run girly, full of pink and sparkles, it will be an oasis of blues and whites and brown splashed across her bed. I admit to finding this prospect  slightly amusing.  When she spreads her wings and launches into the world, be it college or a calling, I will bundle it up to travel with her.  A bit of mama love, always and forever. 

Here is the story of how it came about. It gets a little woo-woo, just so's you know.  

Last October I found myself in Seattle, attending a prenatal yoga teacher training alongside my mother.  I'm a yoga teacher as well as a weaver, and my mom is a midwife.  Last summer Husband and I had decided it was time to invite another soul to join us on this life path.  I've always always known I wanted children.  And finally I was ready to choose motherhood.  Part of my preparation for the journey that is pregnancy and birth and motherhood was this prenatal yoga training.  It was wonderful.  I highly highly recommend it, if you are into that sort of thing! 

The weekend following the training, I attended a workshop on the Energetics of Fertility taught by a goddess of a woman named Taylor Phinny.  (Seriously, she's amazing and wonderful.  Check her out, especially if you are in the Encinitas, California area!)

It was a wonderful weekend: meditations to connect with the womb space, with the principle of Divine Feminine energy.  We spoke in depth about energetic self-care for fertility, about practical ways to honor the monthly cycle of fertility and cultivate the feminine self.  She gave me an energy healing session that I count among the most powerful healings I've ever received, clearing an energy block inherited through the line of my grandmothers.  

I saw my womb as Cerridwen's cauldron, awaiting souls to rebirth into this world of ours.

And then, in our final meditation together, she took me even deeper.  Guided me to a forest clearing where I met with my children.  Watched them from the trees as they played with other shining young ones, then welcomed them with open arms and teary eyes.  We sat together, walked among the trees, and then we traveled North.  They found their papa's sleeping self and said hello.  Bear hugs all around.  

Coming back to myself, to my body in the yoga room at the workshop, Taylor offered me chalks and paper.  And I drew.  Sketched out the essences of my children.  Soul portraits.

In those few minutes in deep astral/psychic meditation space, I knew these shining souls intimately.  Deeply.  Irrevocably entwined.  I felt them around me the following months, waiting for just the right mixture of genetics to choose to be conceived.  For a while I was equal parts terrified and excited, because I was nearly sure that two would jump in at once.  Twins seem like a lot of work.  I'm pretty happy they decided to take turns!  

Early in the pregnancy it was clear to me that the child I had drawn as an Owl in flight was going to be born.

Spirit drawing.  Soul portrait.  Yeah, I'm more than a little woo-woo! 

When I began contemplating what to weave to welcome the inhabitant of my womb into the world, I knew that it had to be this. Blues and browns and greys.  OwlFlight.

If you keep your eye on 14 Mile Farm in the coming years, I can tell you now that you will see wrap warps based on the soul portraits of each of my children! 

Warp Details: 10/2 mercerized cotton in herringbone twill.  

Wrap pieces as well as cowls will be available by draw. 

One wrap will be sent out as a traveling tester.  

If you are interested in hosting the tester and/or to be first to find out about pieces for sale, join the 14 Mile chatter group on Facebook. 

Lessons of the New Moon

New moon at midday.  

We're settling into new rhythms around here. Forming new patterns that, like a broken twill, seem disjointed up close but resolve into recognition from a distance. 

Life has a new center.  

Home has a new meaning. 

Sleepless nights wash away resistance. Diapers, nursing, sleep, and incandescent smiles unearth the blueprint of a family. It is everything I reached for and everything I never could have dreamed. 

It is blissful and sometimes at 3 am I cry with the frustration of a wakeful baby who needs nothing more than to hear my heartbeat under her ear as we rock back and forth. Back and forth.  

Friday was the new moon, the dark moon, the pause before the journey back to full; a time for releasing the past, a time for planting seeds of the future. "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end," the song croons.

On Friday I pulled out the 6 month size clothing in which to dress my 6 week old daughter. On Friday our dog died. 

Thursday night, truly Friday morning very early, we gave him his third dose of IV fluids in a week.  All week he wouldn't eat, would barely drink.  

I nursed him with special spoon-fed meals between nursing my daughter. On Thursday he was brighter, he ran around the yard, he licked Avery's head. The vet had said it was a bad sign if he started vomiting again. Thursday night he was vomiting, and stumble footed.  

Crazel Hazel boy.  

He's gone to the land of endless trails, infinite feather beds, and boundless treats.  

His passing has unsettled this tender new nucleus of a family. Our hearts are tender, the cats are on edge, our other - now once again sole - husky is missing him. We all need extra hugs, extra pets, intentional inclusion in each other's habits.

And Avery? Avery is my metronome. Arms to hold, heartbeat to hear, milk and nursing. Her needs are simple and constant. Their disjointed patterning and my disrupted sleep resolve themselves, through the distance of mourning, through the distance of recalibration, as a healing rhythm. 

She draws the household in around her, creates it home. 

She limns the blueprint of family, drawing us each - just as we are - within it.  

Life has a new center and we all are living in its messy beautiful heart.