Uncategorized

11.09.07

The Hook
Ford, Santa Cruz, The Pacific, Uncategorized (5)

I made it past the breakers, beyond the brute slap of the Pacific’s arm and the ramming plunges of whitewater, onto the mammoth back of the ocean. It swells and heaves beneath me. I feel so small.

I paddle farthest out, and behind me, everyone bobs atop their boards, all in black, all watching the outside. Suddenly, floating above the emerald heft, I relax in between sets. I circle to face shore, sitting upright. My feet tangle in the slick fingers of kelp that sways in a world beneath me, a mystifying, pulsing abyss. Sea otters hump three feet from my board, unashamed, and I smile and wipe snot off my face while they cavort and roll in a large circle around me.

I swing outside again and see nothing under the white curtain of fog. But back on the shore, I watch the boys and Dwight take turns sliding on the sand, learning to skim, climbing the cliff rocks. Chas is wearing a red baseball cap. That was a good idea.

Damon, yards behind me on his big banana longboard, puts both fingers to his eyes, then one finger points outside. I turn my back. A tremendous hussy of a wave shows me her hand, and my face falls. I am sucked offshore in her slow inhale, and in the green-gray glassy shadow, where I watch the kelp reach skywards, I draw a pillowfull of air and slink off my board. That’s when the beginner follows her stomach, covers her head, and plunges round and round to the place where leashes become necklaces, surfboards rocket, and the ocean smacks a big fat bubbly sign on my forehead that reads “DUMBASS.”
10.08.07

Moffett Field
Daily, Exploring, Ford, SillyValley, Uncategorized (45)

Ford and his friend, Revan, study the model with anxious eyes, and eager fingers tap the glass and track the belts. Revan’s father is about to take us for a ride on the VFS, Vertical Flight Simulator, and five astronauts were in the sim only hours before.

The building smells like a well-oiled metal shop and the hi-gloss waxed terrazzo recalls the set of 2001; the interior hasn’t changed in thirty years. But it feels oddly comfortable to me; like the industrial white and ochre interiors of Texas A&M, where I hung out afterschool with dad, about that many years ago.

We’re in the shuttle cockpit. The boys land it at night onto an airstrip. During our visit, the mechanics work downstairs on one of the elevator motors, so we have to imagine the horrific vertigo; the boys crash five times before landing correctly. Still, I find myself covering Chas’ eyes as the tarmac lights swallow the shuttle, and all is then black.

The kids laugh and touch every archaic steel switch on the console, poring over the data screen, trying to make sense of the complex code of numbers and letters, and I, scanning the code with them, get a sense of what they’ve been going through this year, as they have slowly begun to string letters together to form words, and understand the translation of larger numbers, how to scan linear strings of data. Folds upon growing folds of intelligence, carried by wild chariots of grubby abandon, tell us everything without words; wonder behind the flood of simian awe.
09.24.07

summer’s end for fall
Uncategorized (2)

Now that I’m back, I notice that Leslie has tagged me for a meme. I kind of need to be forced to make a list. This fall is off to a chaotic but downright joyful start, so it’s right to sit down and prioritize.

Gotta start with a fun project. The boys and I are going to hack our way through this book and write about it

Now that the canoe is christened for the season, I want to slip it in here and camp out later here.

And make costumes for them and me. I also want to take the funk up a notch around here, and variations on these would look fantabulous around our house.

The motherf#$ing gophers have me planning my defense, graced with these, finally,
among some of these.

Time to grab a board and suit , finally, and learn. Or die. I’m tired of being curious.

Inevitably, I’ll envision what I’d like to stock a few acres with when we move back to Texas in a few years.

The rest is business as usual. Yadayadayada.

What about you? What’s on your autumnal agenda? And have you been tagged yet (not having been online much lately, I wouldn’t know)? If you haven’t, then here! Now you’ve got the baton.
09.11.07

tales of a duffel bag, part 1
Daily, Exploring, Uncategorized (6)

I’m sitting in the rocking chair in the corner of our bedroom, and the soft yellow lamplight bathes the tousled bed and the the daisies on the bedside table, both closets stand ajar, with light spilling out the doors. Ford’s drawings, tacked upon the wall here and there, rise gracefully off the wall under the occasioanl breeze. It’s quiet, nothing but the drone of the window unit, but I can still hear my ears ring. And that, my friends, is the peace my ears deserve at the end of an afternoon with my own children.

I finished unpacking our bags from the past month’s travelling, all piled upon the floor and covered, by now, in a smattering of white dog hair. The clothes from one bag drained coarse sand in its wake as I walked to the laundry room; those were from our paddling trip up Mendocino. They smell of campfire and redwoods and ocean. I already want to drive back.

Mendocino is like Provincetown, Mass, minus the saltwater taffy stands; everything about the town digs up vacuous memories of freshman orientation in Cape Cod: the ageing middle class, tie dyed tee shirts, burgeoning blocksful of B&Bs, cottage gardens, picket fences, and storesful of kitch.

But we only spent an hour or so downtown; we camped at Russian Gulch state park.

We practiced knot-tying and sm’ores-eating and echo-making

boat-ramming and sea-dogging

It’s the kind of place where, if you have a plank to paddle upon, you can skim your way mellow up Big River; listen to eagles and the drift of seawind weaving through swaying flats of saltmarsh; look down past your oar into cleargreen depths of bull kelp and eelgrass,and let your eyes guide you up beyond mammoth timber moorings (once used by Russian pelt hunters).

And when the tide returns, you can drift seaward, out of the gentle, giant embrace of coastal redwoods and into the wild expanse of the Pacific. It is a place to feel very small and, among all ages, full of wonder.
08.21.07

If I could just post one photo from the party
Chas, Daily, Uncategorized (54)

I’d be a very decisive person.

It’s hard! trying to photograph kinetics well in a blacklit bowling alley.
Chas was airborne most of the time; those balls didn’t weigh him down one bit.

We have a handful of sweet moments that translated to image. For instance, here was Chas, just after he had taken…

…this image:

And Ford grabbed to Polaroid himself to capture a little Whitman craziness:

and a little mommy/daddiness:

Then Damon took a mellow polaroid:

and turned it into something absolutely fabulous:

Cheers to indecision! If it weren’t my bedtime I’d post them all.
Oh! And cheers to Daddies that stencil tshirts for birthday favors!

and cheers again to Chazzy!
08.17.07

To Chas, on your Third Birthday
Chas, Daily, Uncategorized (92)

Hi Chas, Birthday Boy, Mister 3,

Three years ago I walked down the white fluorescent aisles of Target with a package of toilet paper rolls, counting the bear hugs I’d felt all evening get closer and closer: twelve minutes; eleven minutes. Passersby smiled at the cute ball of you underneath my little black dress. I remember checking out, squinting at the red formica and conceding that you were ready to be born into the world, and that I’d help you once I’d unloaded the groceries at home and packed my overnighter.

Two hours later, you were banging on the escape hatch as I walked the halls of labor & delivery. Shortly after that, as I sat on the edge of the bed, my back all but in an actual vice clamp, I grimaced and felt the floor flood with warmth. I looked down, my flip-flops drenched in amniotic fluid; I looked up, and nearly puked. I think I may have puked three minutes or so later.

When the night sky began to toss and turn, bluing the atmosphere with its conscience, you crowned. I pushed twice, really hard pushes that channelled eons of mothers into Om, and out you slipped, all purple and dense and strong, wet-cry muted once blue-eyes met mine; you squinted uncertainly, then frowned at me, and I knew that you were a robust soul, and that your name couldn’t be Owen. It had to be Chas.

+ + +

We had fun today making some cupcakes for your birthday. You wanted to make devils food cupcakes, easy enough. Every now and then I couldn’t help smelling your head full of blond wildhair, my eyes closed, as if I could keep it , in my zeal, tucked within the corner of my heart. As if I could oncork that heavenly little boy smell of ozone and compost, the faint smell of detangler mixed with other unidentified sweet funk (possibly cake batter, it was hard to tell in a chocolate-scented kitchen) and smell it when you are no longer in the house, but far away in college, or possibly on a steamer ship to the arctic, or hiking the sierras, or hanging out in your girlfriend’s parent’s house for the holidays. Wait, please never do that.

And please never stop telling me that cake makes yur muscles grow big and strong

But I can’t bottle your boyhood any more than I can expect you to stay home every holiday. Instead, I’m catching little whiffs of it whenever I can: as you crack an egg into the mixing bowl,

while you ice a cupcake;

And (as you can see) I’m taking pictures often, too; I’m really trying to, at least.

When I’m at a loss for words is when the camera shutter flutters.

Sometimes I’m taking pictures and hardly exhaling at all. Or looking back at them as I am doing now, and wishing I didn’t have to.

Time stand still please, just a little longer?
08.05.07

cosmos
Gardening, Sketchbook, Uncategorized (1)

My favorite summer project: the packet of cosmos seeds;
Demeter’s yield from last summer
Rattles softly in the paper, in my shirtpocket.

I walk across the dry grass,
Four curious feet scampering behind me.

One tears open the packet and shakes the seeds
They cascade like rain into the other’s hand.

Quickly, we get to work.

One seed, every few inches, seems scant. We plant two,
sprinkle with water,
and summer flies on by.
No rain, only sun.
We water together,
sometimes alone at dusk,
as baby owls talk over us
up in the pine tree bough
and the crickets start trilling.

One day in July, they pop atop tall green plumes
punctuating the feathery foliage: a blitz of purples, pinks and white.
The nasturtiums cower in awe, shouting loud under-shadow
But they can’t compete, only enhance the stature
of the tiny pack of seeds
that exploded by some miracle into our summer landscape
and framed our reference within the course of this year.
08.04.07

Where we paint in August
Daily, Uncategorized, Young @ Art (10)

It’s not really all that hot here, by Texas standards. But this is California, so everyone here complains of the heat. Californians love to whine about the heat. They whine because they feel entitled to the good weather, now that they’ve spent 2 million on their fixer upper (read: they have)and because many of them, including ourselves, don’t have air conditioning. Oh God! What does one do when it’s 92 degrees outside and one can’t stay cool? You DEAL. But we deal in style. We bring the art studio al fresco, kick off our clothes, and paint like little devils.

It’s really easy to bring the studio outside. One easel for two kids, a couple of clamps for their paper, a stool or chair for a workstand, and a big (really really big) bowlful of water underneath the easel.

We paint; we paint paper and we paint each other. We paint the rocks and the easel, too. We paint swirls and stab paint and squish it between our toes. Tempera is a friendly medium. And when we’re finished, we wash up. A hose nearby makes a handy shower, and it splatters the tomato plants, sending tangy green-red notes into the air. That alluring smell of the garden in late summer, when everything is basking and ripening, sends us reeling; we can’t help ourselves, we spray everything: the walls, the trees, the easel, the sky. And despite the antics with the spray nozzle, we still patter into the house with bluegreen hands, streaking the hallway walls.
08.03.07

Routine Assessment
Chas, Daily, Exploring, Ford, Thinking, Uncategorized (3)

Once in a while, I have a day, maybe a few days, of dysfunctional funk. Sometimes I think it’s my mind’s clever way of alleviating boredom. The day is inevitably sunny, my children are particularly joyful, my husband–syrupy kind. It matters none that he’s remarked n how beautiful he thought I looked, nor that my dinner was delicious. It matters none that I sat on the floor and played Legos with my children, made a lego woman for chas with boobs, made a rocket with Ford; nor does it matter that I rocked and read and rocked and read and read in bed with happy pillows tossed at my head, midafternoon. It isn’t enough that I was able to watch them paint in the garden, watch them paint their toes, then their feet, their legs, their tummies: a robot here, a Dalek there, a rainblow of tempera-covered rocks beneath a wet easel. Smiles, laughter. Running, oh the running: unhinged and impulsive, a Thoroughbred on fresh green grass, and then the wind kicks up, and he bolts, breakneck, a half-eaten mouthful of grass falls at your feet. Or a string cheese wrapper.

On days like this, I pore over yesterday’s photographs. I rediscover beauty to validate my perception. See? I noticed that! I’m not dead. I SAW that!

I noticed a jumble of sea-jewels,

a tangle of mermaid thread,

grass, whispering along our walk

I caught the salty smell of Chas, whirring past me on the trail

and the soothing lull of a calm Pacific afternoon, heavy sand, horizontal bliss

a little vertical tension.

and the coastal summer smells of dried wildflowers, trampled ice plant, baby seal poo and low tide, trailing on the sweet sound of swaying grass and Ford, who had just told me this was his new favorite beach ever.

So why the dull face, woman?

Just throw the ball. I’m here all day! How about you?
07.20.07

About
Uncategorized (194)

My name is Stephanie, but you can call me Steph; in fact, I’d like that.

I have two little boys that you’d swear were on meth half the time, but I assure you they aren’t. We save that stuff for ourselves.

I’m married to Damon. We moved one year ago to the fringe of Silicon Valley to work someplace different after enjoying for several years in Austin. We like living here, and I think you’ll get a sense of that when I write, but we dearly miss Austin.

Still, we are busy every day carving out a life here in a gentrified cul de sac off the Silicon Valley rat race. We live on an acre of old orchard in Saratoga, in an old unfenced farmhouse where we can swing and garden and play make lots of noise. When we’re not outside, we’re inside painting, making music, building lego spaceships and tearing the house apart. All at the same time. But I’m the one who paints every day.

I LOVE hearing from you. You are one reason this journal is public! But it’s also because I want to remember these small details and accomplishments that are making this the time of my life.

steph(at)sicore(dot)org

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