386: christmas glimpses

On sofa: Sue, Jimmy, Megan, Jack, Sean, Jim
On floor: Ryan with Zephyr, me with Sassy, Eric with Penelope. (Chance around the corner)


This holiday:

- I learned I need to figure out how to work the white balance on my camera. These yellow photos have to go, and I still hate using the flash.
- I have decided Jimmy and all his energy really ought to come home in my pocket. I adore that kid. And Jack too, but Jack's only just now emerging.
- Waking up to a three-year-old jumping on your bed, shouting, "It's Christmas, Aunt Molly!" is the best way to wake up with only four hours of sleep. (I'm quite serious, by the way, so Ryan should take note: next time you want me up before I want to get up, jump on the bed and shout something wonderfully exciting.)
- The oak leaf made from a beer bottle was even more beautiful in person than on the etsy page.
- Some of the sweet things I loved giving my nephews: these rainbow wood blocks, this construction plate and vroom-vroom utensils, this crash car, this crocodile clacker, and this sweet wooden truck.
- Spending Christmas with little kids is the best way to do it. That, or on a big trip, like Ireland or Hawaii or New Zealand.
- I need to stay away from the sugar cookies.

385: beautiful year, may

We went to the Minnesota Zoo for the first time with our dear friend Mike. I fall in love with the Canada geese especially, the ones fiercely guarding the nest.


First Hay Creek trip of the season, and already the world has burst into green. I'm shocked and thrilled, trying to spot other instances of growth, of colors that aren't the same as dirty snow.


We go to Duluth for a wedding, and the next day we appreciate the sun on the lake.

The semester ends, and I witness my first thesis defense. I realize I have a lot of reading to do. I survive another bout of the flu, a smaller one this time, and I'm sad to say good-bye to many of my classmates for the summer, though the relief at the end of this semester overrides much else.

I've finished my first year of an MFA.


Ryan and I travel to Missouri to visit our friends Dan and Tracy, where I feed carrots to elk, eat pulled pork barbeque, and continue my book-a-day of poetry in May, a project that I'm repeating this December.


I take my first letterpress class, fall in love with the Vandercook, settle for a Kelsey platen, and buy my first press. I love wood type the most, though I suspect lead will be my type of choice, sturdier and swifter and able to survive the broadsides I'd like to one day print.


When planting this season, we find lettuce from last year, wild patches of it, and have salad for dinner. We plant strawberries and peppers and squash and ease our worm bin outdoors after the last frost.


We begin Frontenac hikes, which are torturous, but gorgeous. On our May hike, we spot bald eagles, deer, bumble bees, and wild turkeys. Ferns are out now, a plant I love in its pattern and intricacy.


We go to farmer's market stands, bring home the first produce of the year, make plans for summer trips. I survive my month of poetry and turn to novels in June.

384: beautiful year, april

I start the month fulfilling a promise to Kelly and watch her son for two evenings, one day, and I come away from the experience haggard and uncertain of ever wanting my own children. This solo-parenting is miserable, but I soon realize things change when it is a part of your own growth and change, and not a sudden trial-by-fire, not of my own flesh and blood. A sweet boy, but I know nothing amounts to the love a parent can have for a child, and I'm glad to learn the lesson of sacrifice a little early.


In our first hike of the year, we are surprised by a prairie fire on Barn Bluff. I run up to take photographs as it approaches and find myself a bit caught, getting out of the precarious situation just barely. The dogs and we have soot in our hair, in our nostrils, everywhere It's a beautiful and terrible sight, this renewal before growth.


I'm able to watch the cedar waxwings eat last year's crabapples from our trees. They're small, like cherries, and withered. I take so many shots that floor me, so close to the birds, such a change from years ago when I couldn't capture anything wild. A few days earlier, I found one of the birds on our storm doors to the basement; it must have broken its neck somehow.


Two of us get violently sick: Zephyr, whom we suspect has gotten into the compost, begins this awful shaking that appears neurological in nature. Ryan has to drive him an hour away, a drive where he vomits in the car so much that we have to have it detailed. The vet gives him activated charcoal, which makes him belch like an inked squid.

I'm also sick, the sort that has everything coming out both ends, often at once, humiliated and sweating in the upstairs bathroom. I cannot remember the last time I felt so awful, and looking back, I wonder if H1N1 was rearing its ugly head just yet.

Is this beautiful? This month has been difficult, for certain. The survival is what makes it resonate.


At the end of April, the daffodils rise up out of the loam, their sunny heads bobbing as I pass them on my way to campus. The semester is almost over and though there have been many high points, I'm mostly relieved. After two writing conferences, jury duty, and what will soon be two bouts of the flu, I'm ready to close down the running tally of failures in the classroom and begin again.

383: a few scenes from yesterday

Ryan spent a lot of yesterday flinging snow at the dogs and Jimmy spent some of the day shoveling the shoveled snow back onto the sidewalk.


We were woken at two in the morning to the steady cry of Jack, and I squinted at Ryan, whispering, "I guess I have to stop bragging that I'm such a heavy sleeper." We teased each other, while we waited for the cries to ebb, Ryan asking me if I thought leprechauns wished they could fly, and me saying, "Roll over so I can spoon you, gas-y-pants." We're quite romantical, you see.

More pictures tomorrow, and apologies to Jack for the imbalance as his older brother seems to be the star of this collection. This is what happens when one is upwardly mobile, has a full set of teeth, and can use declarative sentences.

382: beautiful year, march

I met Louise Gluck, one of the amazing benefits of being an MFA student and even more, the events photographer for the English department.

But this semester is fast becoming difficult: I missed the first week of classes due to Palm Beach, another few days of classes for AWP, and then I was selected for jury duty, which took away the week before spring break. I don't know it yet, but there are still more reasons lurking around the corner to keep me from my studies and students.


I learned to make cheese with three women I greatly admire.


I scrutinized the landscape for signs of spring: anything green was victim of my lens, any hopes of snow melt and bulbs protruding. There were none to be found in our patch if Minnesota.


But when Ryan and I spent my spring break in Michigan, we found buds on the trees and crocuses pushing through the bracken in her front lawn. It's a quiet but slightly mournful visit; my grandmother's missing her husband is acute.

Winter has pressed down hard on my soul.

381: beautiful year, february

I went to AWP for the first time, which was both spectacular and overwhelming, as everyone said it would be. Ryan lost his last grandparent around the same time, so he couldn't accompany me to Chicago, and I had the king-size bed to myself, ordered room service and read from the massive stack of books on poetry I collected at the book fair. I saw Carolyn Forche again, and she called me "my Molly," which had me glowing for some time, I ate edamame for the first time, and I love the sounds of night in the hear of the city.


I also had a poetry reading of my own in a Barnes and Noble with Greg Watson, whose book had just been released.


We brewed beer and took hikes up Memorial Bluff in the snow. I fell in love with Leisel Mueller's work. We kept warm beneath down blankets.

380: winter visitors

Today we had a lucky visit: Meryl and Shawn came down to do a wee hike with us, one that was disgustingly humbling for me, but neither one, or my husband, or my two dogs, made me feel crumby about being a wimp. I've upped another one of my medications as of last night, doubled it, with all kinds of weirdness coursing through my veins, and my stomach took a little tumble, a front-loading washing machine off-kilter, and Meryl stood there with me, talking about beloved friends in the program, her own sweet pup (who has un-sweet tendencies but is still so loved anyway), Hedgebrook, and family holiday traditions.

After, Meryl made us sandwiches with ingredients from Seward: hearty bread, bean sprouts, sweet peppers, avocado hummus. Ryan and I took on a kale and white bean soup, all of this, by the way, vegan-style, the recipe of which I cannot find online but will share shortly. We had homebrew and New Glarus' Snowshoe, and we discovered the bit of trivia that Shawn has never even tasted a beer (something I probably did when I was pre-elementary school, sipping out of some silver can, while my father ate doo-dads and watched tennis or maybe a Michigan-Ohio football game, rocking back and forth and cheering), which is truly unique (could we ever brew a beer worthy of that break-through? probably not, and I really respect that).

Apologies for these quiet pictures: standing at the side of the path, cross country skiers swooping beside us, I was glad to have company as I tried to keep myself tied to the earth, and that kind of pause allows for a series of small observations. Most of the time, I was concentrated on my desperate attempt at not toppling to one side, my temperatures swooning (there was one moment I shed scarf, hat, mittens, jacket, scooped snow into my mouth, and not long after, I felt the chill of wet snaking up my pants), the ridiculousness of these medical efforts on display. I am pleased I kept all manner of lunch down today, which is a terribly sad accomplishment, but the biggest comfort is always spending time with people I care about--and husband, Meryl, and Shawn, are all such very good people. I don't mind the deep-winter (oh, solstice is tomorrow?) wonkiness sometimes.

Tomorrow: book club with a series of still more favorite people (we read). A trip to the post office for what will be belated holiday gifts for many. Packing up for our Christmas trip, one that will be chaotic with two small children and four big dogs (oh, but with the best kind of chaos). Thinking of so many of you who fill my heart up to the tippity-top, the tolerant and all, my love to everyone this holiday season, and more monthly celebrations to come.

xo