While August takes its last breath, Autumn has come to Ireland. Those late night sunsets and early morning wake-up calls giving way to dark skies in time for bed. Matt crouches beside an outdoor fire, smelling of Colorado and camp singalongs. We fashion smores here with chocolate digestive biscuits, which is really the better way to do it, anyway. Who hasn't lost a Hershey square or two from lack of melting?

This was meant for Asher's birthday, but company and cool rain postponed the crowning event. He's not keen on cake, but could live off biscuits. And marshmallows on sticks. And cardboard, but that's beside the point. It's still summer holidays, and we - who never plan much more than a week in advance and dread the long days and endless Wii fights - we are eeking out a bit more of this season.

Fall is my very favourite thing, as we Americans calls it. My Irish friends think it's such a strange name, lacking the colour of Autumn, the rhythm of it. Whatever name you choose, wherever we are, my favourite memories are coloured in Autumn. They smell of Autumn. And when he strikes up the chiminea and I open our window, I smell chili cookoffs and football season and first day of class and falling in love. 

I bounce and stir on a hayride, waiting to see if he'll touch my hand.
I trace Chicago leaves as they turn and drape the city streets.
I ride my bike to the bookshop, feeling every ounce of fresh freedom.
I am pregnant and cuddled under a blanket on a balcony, counting kicks.
I see my mother and her umbrella at the meeting of the waters.

In Kansas, come this time, I am always desperate for it: this smell, the crackling, the turn of the weather. But here, it surprises me with its promptness. Autumn arrives on time in Ireland. Early, even. And before I know it, before I prepare myself with pumpkin spiced recipes and early season sweater sales, I am homesick. For everywhere. 

I can't help it, can't shake it, but I wouldn't even want to.

Soon, I'll be homesick for this memory, too.

Writing with Heather of the EO for Just Write.

Tossed about and wild

We've been to the edges of our little island. Such cold and windy days, we have to be careful from falling straight into the sea. On these daredevil patches of land and rock and sand, I try to open my eyes to it. The gusts, the force, the might. I stand on a field of baby white flowers, they barely notice it. It's all I can do to keep upright.

Even on our road on a mild spring day, the wind knocks us back on the balls of our feet. There's a breeze INSIDE my house, my friend says, and she speaks truth. Rattling our windows and moving our curtains. The wind here is wild. My hair here is wild.

This week, headed into the city, we ran in place. Reaching for the bus with the wind holding us back, moving so slow but with so much exertion. It wasn't our lack of will, but the resistance. Arms of nothingness reaching round us.

In Kansas the wind brings storms, thunder, green skies. The humid warmth of them telling us secrets, "It's coming," they say. We'd open windows to the gusts, smelling the air. Thunderstorm day and we'd run out to chase it.

No thunder here, though; at least not today. Hardly even a drop of rain with these winds. It's just where we lie, up against the jet stream, surrounded by waves. And out my window I see the leaves, the buds of flowers. A tree already in bloom, tossed about and wild. I wonder how they hold on, these pale pink blossoms on the gale force days. How do the newborn leaves survive, the trees bent back, running away from the sea?

God made them this way. Trained for millenia. It's the only answer; it's in their roots. We've no idea how strong they really are.



anything tossing you about today?

A million tiny plastic pieces :: 31 days of messy parenting {day 6}

The heat is on. Our living room is filled with moving boxes (for fort-making, not yet moving). A million tiny plastic Lego pieces are spread throughout the place. Cartoons in one room, radio theatre in another, and Downton Abbey is in the queue for the unpacking and washing of winter clothes.

For right now, in this moment, we're at peace. And they are pretending and creating and laughing. They're happy.

And cleaning up can wait until tomorrow. Or the next day.

Autumn is here. This is how we're celebrating. How do you celebrate this change of seasons?

Today, you are the sea

Oh how I missed you, water and waves. You are only a Great Lake, but I can pretend. I don't mind. Today you are the sea.

He points his finger, yelling "Beach!" He was one week old when we first took him to the sea, when water and wind first splashed his wee baby face. And now he is nearly three and his deceptively fast legs take him home.

There is just something about watching them splash and run, roll around in the sand, fly into the surf with abandon. They are squealing, hopping. They are dirty and wild. We have no rules here, no wash your hands, no don't touch that. We are young and free for the next 90 minutes.

I hold my breath and take in the scent, the breeze, the sky.

Today, Lake Michigan, you are the sea. And we... we are young and free.

The emotional weight of a high pressure system

When the clouds roll in and no rain comes, I feel the high pressure system rising in my bones. It's a dark day, with heat and humidity bearing down, and I want to lay in bed under the gray metal lamp reading and writing and not at all cleaning or cooking.

I put them into quiet time early because it's too hot for a walk to the park and the tv has been on too long. They've been fighting and hitting and I think, "Oh, summer just started! Let's not do this for three months straight, ok?"

I'm pleading more with myself than with them, for if only I was more consistent, had a routine, kept a clean house, or was wiser with discipline. If only I could figure this thing out. If only I could do it all (or even one teeny tiny little bit of it). If only I knew when summer was ending... I think then I could make it to the finish line.

They are so good with their round cheeks and loose teeth, plastic swords flying through the air and tortilla chips broken by stubby toes. I feel so incapable of being all they need me to be: mother and teacher, home and security. We run into one another in a cramped apartment slowly shedding its cluttered skin (packing up and selling off for an unknown move date in an unknown future). They trip over books and my knee hits the chair and I yell out loud to no one, yet only really to them and those cheeks, "I've had it!"

It is quiet time under a dark, dry sky. He sings loudly from his bed and she escapes, bringing me Lego heads. This is summer. 

Day Four.

31 days of LIVING in transition :: falling into autumn {day 19}

Isn't autumn/fall the most beautiful of all transitions? With that in mind, get out! Enjoy it! Revel in the fact that transition is a natural order of being. Nothing is intended to remain stationary forever.

31 days of LIVING in transition :: the seasons {day 8}

I originally wrote this post in May for Five Minute Fridays... so I'd repost some thoughts about the changing of seasons and bracing for the unknown.

***************

When Seasons Change...

In Ireland, the only sure way I noticed the seasons change was by the placement of the sun in the sky. I knew winter was coming when I found myself squinting through my windows around dinnertime. I realized summer was on it's way when the boy woke me up hours before he needed to be dressed for school. The change in temperature was so casual, so incremental, that it held no clues for the seasons. It was all about the sun - or lack thereof.

Here, in Missouri, the seasons come quicker and heavier. The temp spikes early. The sun starts to burn a little. The grass turns green again (an anomoly here, as the grass is literally always greener in Ireland). The rain comes and the thunder booms. It is spring, nearly summer, and I love - LOVE - this time of year here in my homeland.

ok, so this is kansas actually - but you get the idea

And yet, I know there's still change ahead. Not just environmental change, but geography change, familial change, work change. This season our little five-person-unit is in is not meant to last forever, or very long, at all. It could be changing quicker than we realise, like summer coming to the midwest before we're ready for sweat on our brows. Or it could be longer, quieter, hardly noticeable, as we slowly see the sun rise higher and later into the day.

I don't know where this seasonal change will take us exactly, or when it will take place. But I feel it coming, I feel my body readying, and I can sense that the disorder that my life will soon become isn't really disorderly at all. This was how He made us: to change, and ebb, and flow with the seasons.

I hope I'm ready.

***************

Interestingly enough, five months later, and our life here is pretty much the same now as it was then. Except I'm maybe, just maybe, a little more ready and still a little more scared.