dragon dinosaur with butterfly wings

story of this week (stress).
this week i am not sure. it was a festive weekend, with parties and parades and puppets. yet this week i am not sure. my friend asked me tonight, how has my relationship with finn changed? i could hardly explain that--she last knew finn a year ago, when he was 2. yesterday he liked the funny face i made and so he said very seriously, looking at me with a gravity, "mama, i love you." he's never said it just like that, stopping everything else to say it, that's why i was so glad. that's what i told her to explain the change in our relationship. finnegan is a person now--and he can be considerate, or pushy, or easily frustrated, or easily happy and dancey too. he danced under spiderwebs today as lauren beat-boxed a song in the "party haunted garden". i am impatient far too much, always hurrying him, moving him along, getting him buckled in, saying i'll be late for work, or late for meeting someone, or late for storytime,or his preschool, or puppet shows, i am always late, it is always happening that way. hurry up! buckle in! mama, you're kidding? that's what he always asks. because sometimes i do a crazy gruff voice because i don't know what else to do, that's how bad i freak out when stresssed. mama you're kidding?

a story of parts/ hard glittering & being taught

story with an inability to know anything precisely.
this is a story from general to specific about right now. i have been teaching. did you know i am a teacher? even though i don't know how to be one, and often i feel i don't know how to help students. many of my students have led extremely painful lives. i know many people have. but right now i feel the burden of my students' lives; i feel the heavyness of them. three of my students could not respond to the simply journal prompt of "describe a childhood memory" without crying halfway through. in the sense that they say something like "i can't finish this journal i'm crying now". childhoods full of abuse, shame, murders and violence, abandonment, no love. wars. disease. poverty. all that, you know. what do we do? here we are, hanging off each other's hands. what do we do?

i can't talk about this anymore not because i'm crying but because i don't know what else to say. feel too plaintive and exposed. how does everything connect?

love and empathy sometimes seem like drowning forces, though i know they're really good. this story is also about how i realized recently that finn didn't know i was a teacher. he knew i went to work but didn't know i was a teacher.

i have been grading. i have been falling asleep at the keyboard at one in the morning, grading and planning. i have been behind. dishes have stacked up. my life is there, precisely, in the middle of that stinking pile of dishes from tuesday through friday. now i sit here, bilberry and honey lotion rubbed into my feet (by me), friday night, showered, dishes done, blogging.

we went to a parade today! we have also done fun things recently like--visit the raptor center (where they care for injured birds, like owls, eagles, kestrels)with kid-friends annika and ellie.

i thought i'd include some pictures of me being a writing teacher. just to try to integrate, figure out how it's part of all this, this that i am. see it's a part!

finn has been crying out "i miss the sun, i miss the sun". . .on rainy days, and just when darkness hits so fast so quick at 6:30 now. . .

another part of my story right now is that my book of poems is going to be published! by rescue press! it doesn't seem real yet, seems unreal. i don't know what it means but it makes me happy! and now i feel free-er to concentrate on other poems, in some way. thank you!

lately i feel like i have the capacity to let things go, to exist, to just feel blessed (hopefully). blessed not in a blind, bland way. blessed in a hard diamond way, as in, i am learning this, and it is hard to learn this, but i am. i am being taught, recently. i feel teaching-ness all around: taught to let go, taught to not force things, taught to be resourceful and soak beans (simple), taught to be able to change, taught that things don't go according to plan, taught that one can scrape by in a very very close scrapey scrapey way and not die because of it (of course), taught so much about giving gifts; what giving means, and how it can expand things and also hurt things. i don't know. my head is swimming with learning. i hope i can get it all. i take notes by just sitting here. the bare beauty of what is, hopefully. mind-can, mind-cup, mind with major arteries, awake.

lights and "comfty" places around our october house (because that's what finn says)

from the fossil gorge again, with huge ravens and ancient iowa ocean (in autumn)

we went one day last week, in a gorgeousness that is now past. . .we'll try to hit the woods again this weekend but i fear that recent rainstorms have knocked all the leaves loose. no yellowness, perhaps, for us. we'll see.

thinkin about, lately: rocks. and how much i like them.

a happiness of sunpatches, grass, running (hickory hill park last week)

we went on a walk in the darkness with the moon

october moon walk story for you
it started out that we went walking when there was some daylight left, but then had to turn back home to get dinner out of the oven (quiche). fragmented walk. the moon was out when we returned to our walk later. it was a half moon and it was october. and it is. we counted pumpkins. we put seeds in pockets. some of us had our pants on backwards. one person had on lightning shoes that streaked orange in the dark. or, the darkyness, as he liked to call it. there were questions. the dog, q, was good. now he constantly asks for stories: tell the story about birthday, about the walk in the woods, about the house, about the time we built the lego castle. stories of halloween. tell about the moon, and the walk we went on in october. that night, he asked me to tell him the story about the people who live in the house and love each other.

looking around this is what i see

some more photos from last week; getting into pumpkins, rivers, rocks, brooding skies:::::::::::::;