ZIG ZAG MAMA

If You're Going To Make A Splash...Make it Big

It appears that my adolescent children have not cornered the market on hot and cold running angst.
No siree...

In an effort to combat three days of near constant panic-attacks, I packed up my smallest child (whose size, by the way, is a poor indicator of his capacity to unleash holy hell), and headed for one of the only places that I always feel good: the woods.

We settled ourselves by a creek that babbled with layers of rhythm and pitch, a dozen little pools spilling a dozen little falls. The blackberry brambles were lush and green and the light filtered in through the bare branches of the cottonwoods. It only took two minutes for my heart rate to slow and my breathing
to deepen. Zeke spent a content hour scrambling over rocks, collecting sticks, and keeping an eye out for hungry coyotes, mule deer, and black bears. Immersed in the healing power of nature, I felt totally, completely at peace.

I stooped down to photograph a bright green leaf against the brackish grey of the river bottom....

Splash!

I was no longer staring at the leaf, but at my camera, sunk, by a well-aimed stone, to the bottom of the river.

The previously still forest echoed with the sounds of a shrieking duet.

I rushed to dismantle my camera in the ridiculous hope that a nights drying would miraculously cure my waterlogged Canon...

As of this afternoon...the camera is fully operational (except, of course, for the parts that were broken pre-baptism).

My blood pressure has once again returned to normal-ish, and I dare say, I think we'll try the whole woods thing again this week, but this time, I'm keeping Zeke's quick little hands in my clear little sight.

On The Verge of (yet another) Beginning

9:30 pm, on the verge of a new beginning. A cosmopolitan and a lemon drop martini down the hatch, one kid nestled with his dreams, and the others busy with the creation of memories that will be theirs and theirs alone.

It has been a bustling week, teetering on that precarious apex of excitement and outrage. Indoor skydiving, wall-to-wall parties, Chinese acrobats, robotics classes, a trip sheer up the side of a snowy mountain, a cousin who struggles to breathe, the merciless bombing of Gaza, a family singing beside Hanukkah candles pooling on the broken Wurlitzer organ, neighbors tumbling through the sky on a backyard zip line, welcoming the New Year with stubborn and ferocious joy.

So, the tiny-boy-child was deeply, devastatingly disappointed that his snowman did not actually come to life.

So, the man child moped his way through the Hanukkah season.

So, the boy-struggling-to-remain-a-boy child botched some of the wiring on his delicate, hand built, maraca playing robot.

So, the woman-child reads her way through ever waking moment.

So, my dear husband is away this New Year's Eve, playing music to earn bread.

But, as the bombs fall on Gaza and my sweet cousin Daniel clings to life, I have never been so acutely enamored with all the precious nuisances of our hectic little lives.

We are amazingly, dazzlingly rich...so bumblingly, brokenly blessed.

As I used to write on the very last page of my childhood journals...

Here we are at the beginning. A new door.

Happy New Year.

Wake me at midnight, will you?

shifts in the weather

I've written a slew of post over the past week or so...they're all snug in my draft box, and I figure they'll remain there. Posts that are too long. Posts that go too deep. Posts that display my insides, my conflicts, my hypocrisies in bold relief.

So, in lieu of those posts...

One exceptionally brief anecdote (free of the back story, commentary, and discourse that accompanied it in the other posts) and some pictures from the first day this year that even remotely felt like autumn.

The anecdote:
It is Rosh Hashanah. I am hunched on the floor, near the front of the crowded synagogue, Ezekiel perched in my arms. We are waiting for the wailing of the shofar.
The sound peels through the synagogue, the cry of a mother, the sobbing that serves as call to the soul. There is an awed silence throughout the entire crowd...well, that is the entire crowd save for Zeke, who is clapping wildly and shouting with enthusiatic glee, " I can hear it! I can hear it! I can HEAR it!"

The photos:

Rain be damned, we (and our neighbors) snuck in a bit of outdoor playtime at the Audubon Center at Debs Park.  It is a wonderful little spot, with an abundance of free-form, hands on activities for wee folk. The center will even loan you a jogging stroller or a backpack stuffed with binoculars, maps, birding guides, and a compass. Oh, and it's 100% free.

 

In the above photo, the kids are adding water from the pond to water that is being hand pumped from above (see next photo) to create a waterfall.

loss for words

been busy. been in and out of town. been kinda flyin' under the radar.

forgive me. i'll get back in the swing of things. i will. i will. i will.

in the meantime, a coupla pics of our fairly low key trip (with hubby's fam) to cambria and big sur...

(i suppose the lowercase is indicative of my mental state).

do notice that zeke is flipping the bird in this particular shot...to you? to me? to his father? to the various and sundry government agencies raiding the homes of documentary filmmakers and arresting journalists at the rnc? who knows...