So we are finally in the new apt. Leah is at camp, Jesse is working steadily and in fact getting his first paycheck today. I started training for baking this week. This has been quite a year. I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that I am moving into my second year on my own. Still have sad feelings, still difficult to visit the farm and some of my interactions with Mike…but mostly I continue to unfold, to feel content, to be astonished at my own strengths. How to sum up a year? Here are a few pictures of the view from my porch of my old apartment, forever a place of saving grace in my heart.

Hand-cut, hand-bound journals, using original illustrations and prints:

One of a kind button-hole stitch sketchbooks and journals, utilizing old paper, including maps and pages from old books.

Pamphlet books, hand stitched, hand printed.

Garlands of fabric, paper, photography and prints.

Prints of my illustrations.

Notecards.

This wedding guest journal was a custom order from the bride…She saw the soft cover journals at the Bauble and loved them, but was concerned that they were not sturdy enough to pass through the many hands at the wedding. So a custom hard cover “banker’s” book for her! Vintage bankbook covers, extra reinforcement at the hinges, buttonhole stitch.

Spring color, grace in simplicity, my mother’s day gift from Leah, not in that order.

Two feet of wet snow.

Heavy, man.

Well, here it is. A little earlier than expected perhaps, but still, in all its glory, the first highly anticipated snowstorm of the year. Of course, I’m wondering if this is all being overblown, the weatherfolks are whistling with excitement. The kids are hoping for a snowday, and adults are too, really. Not like the end of last winter, when the 5th, 6th 7th snowday became a day of hell. Bored children and long hours of darkness stretching before us. The cookies had been baked, projects pulled out from musty hall closets and abandoned, movies watched and the walls slowly closing in. No. this is the first of it, this winter. The snow is endless, steady, and I’m excited to sled, excited to take my kids down the big hill, traipsing up and down till our fingers and noses demand hot cocoa, and the warmth of my apartment. There is baking to be done, Russian Teacakes and Cornmeal Pecan biscuits, gingerbread and decorated sugar cookies. It must be the new space I live in, both literally and figuratively, that makes me yearn for a traditional Christmas this year. Soup to be made, lights to be hung, hearts to be mended. We’ll get a small tree this weekend, bought from the local landscaper. We’ll wrap a few presents, make gifts for the teachers, deliver goodies. Its the first big snowstorm of the winter. Cold clear breath, warm golden home. Arrival.

Here is my view. In the mornings I watch the sun graze its way across the rooftops of surrounding buildings. mornings are brisk, sometimes sunny, today rainy and dark. Still, the yellows and oranges of the maples stand brightly, almost magnified by the gray skies.

I love living here, slightly above the rooflines, staring out into the treetops and telephone wires. My house in the country, although cozy, especially in winter, was dark, heavy, with stone walls and deeply set windows and low ceilings made for the German born people who built it almost 150 years ago. Here, I welcome the light, and it streams through every window, across the deck boards and even seeps through the blinds which I close at night. I can’t help but see the significance of this. I need light like this. Illuminating, uplifting, clear and easy to see in.

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. -Joseph Campbell

Sometimes I don’t even know if I know HOW to take care of myself. I have been immersed in my roles for so long….mother, wife, that I find myself here, alone in my apt and I’m not even sure what to do with myself. I want to find a distraction, something with which to avoid this void, to lose myself in. Instead, I insist on staying here. I breathe, in, out, letting myself feel these walls of loneliness slowly, with steady fingers. Its not so bad, really. Letting the hurt shift inside me a bit at a time, feeling.

Its sad to me, that when a relationship ends, we want so to blame, to hurt, to rage. Sometimes there is no one to blame, or both of us to blame. Sometimes we come to the end of a road and it just changes direction. I know that sounds trite, but its how I see it. My relationship with my husband has changed. My hope is that we can forge a new relationship, that we can work together out of respect for what we have had. There is a grand misconception out there that it is harder for the person who has been left. I would say it is different for that person than for the one who leaves. I left. I decided to forge ahead with my life the way I wanted to live it. I grew tired of riding the same wheel over and over. I hurt thinking of how this hurts my husband, how it affects my children, of the things I have given up. Of the hopes and dreams my young self, 19 years ago, embarked upon. No one starts a life with someone seeing the end. I hope no one does. So this is about grieving too. Letting go.

So I let go, again and again and again. I want to clench, I want to fall back on old habits, I want to push away the hurt and fear. Sometimes I do. Mostly I don’t. Mostly I sit alone, handling myself tentatively, cautiously. I cry. I fume. I get up and make a pot of coffee, pick up a pen and start again with my work, my art, my words. And I get myself through.

I have taken things for granted. But since my separation I am undeniably and painstakingly in the moment. Its really all I can do, to survive this roller coaster I am on. And the silver lining is that I am seeing things, pausing in moments, aware. Yesterday, bugs and grass seeds suspended in the late afternoon sun. People like ants seeping across the hilly running course. My son, grimaced face and sweat, moving across the grass. Golden light.

These are the things I know: my children’s voices, the touch of their faces, shoulder blades like wings on him, softer on her. The finest of hairs, the wariest of smiles, the joy of re-connecting. Sun-lit, crinkly eyed smiles. I am, oddly, or maybe not, more present when I am with them than for years. Where have I been? Lost in the routines, the struggles, the daily, while the hours fly and roll by me like wind.

“When the wind was fresh
On the hills
And the stars were new in the sky
And a lark was heard in the still
Where was I
Where was I?”

-Feist, Now at Last.

I am here now. And how to stay? Aware and pulsating, the life inside me and around me teeming?