November is here, making it about five months since the last time I wrote in the treehouse. I know that because also five months ago today you finally showed up. Five months is too long not to write, but ever since you arrived and made my world your whirled, there is no sign of the elongated stretches of mental freedom I associate with writing a thoughtful entry on the Treehouse walls. I've hammered out random sentences in my leather journal and some semi-coherent reflections on random acts in my teaching journal, not to mention the thrown-together half-salient lesson plans that my students work so hard to endure. So yeah really, baby, you've redefined the whole idea of "me time." Just like they all said you would. If you weren't so joyful to watch while eating a book, or so very good at precision toothless smile delivery, I could focus enough to sit and compose scores of sentences revealing in detail the several years of experiences wrapped into these past four months and how all our uprooting and then settling-in time went by without the requisite reflection. I would regale my Treehouse walls of stories about my paid frolic in the national forest during your infancy while your mom remained trailer-bound sharpening her new mommy skills. Vats of vowels await use in describing the attractive tract of land we purchased in Kalispell, the move... that excruciating move an hour south into hobo and black widow spider battles and leaky faucet flood control. Floodgates of story I could devote to the satisfying challenge of teaching completely new classes and writing new curriculum in a new city with new colleagues in the only IB school in Montana, of joining the only choir in the area and getting my chops back, and of strumming on the birthday banjo and my classical guitar that I can finally play F and B chords on. I can speak long diatribes detailing true delirium at having no sleep schedule, not using the homemade desk enough and the dog not walking enough and how he misses wide open country fields. There are, of course, the weeks upon months of 2 hour sleep chunks, frighteningly frantic mornings, the ensuing clueless days, the return home to start it all again, plus endlessly rocking cradles and rhythmic pats on bottoms, sore and stretched arm muscles from devotion to holding that one position that seems to put you to sleep, at least that one time. The couch nights and floor nights require less telling, but they are funny in their helplessness.
They pile on, all the small stories that dovetail and never cease now more than ever, each new one burying an older one beneath it like a few more fall leaves. The stories I scrawl I realize, now, always scream about me and my perspective as I navigate life from the Treehouse poop deck. Now, suddenly but gently, like a vapor plowing through a quiet room, I realize all the stories that matter now revolve around you. Every story now seemingly watches out for signs of you, steps lightly over but picks up your growls and shrieks at some point, awaits your entrance. And no story seems as good without you as it is with you. How did you do that? You are now so obviously the point, the reason. You are slowly and deliberately pushing yourself out of my brain and into the only story worth reporting: the story of how you are doing and who you are becoming. Hmm... sounds familiar.
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| Sunset on the Tobacco River - last few weeks in Eureka |
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