Light on the Ridge

Achievement

2010-09-29T21:38:00.002-06:00

For the past nine months, Corin and Seth have been taking a biweekly dose of Taekwondo. These boys have learned some blocks, kicks, and punches, commands in Korean, and a healthy bit of self-discipline. During each practice, following warmups, the teacher gathers the students in a circle. They stretch, share a moment of silence and repeat their five tenents. I love hearing them recite these important life-lessons: "Modesty, perseverance, self control, indomitable spirit, etiquette, sir." Traits we could all use help with, no doubt.

The boys tested for their yellow belts two weeks ago, and after an interminable ten days of suspense found out they passed. We have some rather pleased, newly minted, Yellow Belts in the house. Now if only I could get them to practice the self control part and not the kicking part in line at the grocery store.

Test day

2010-09-27T21:04:00.003-06:00

Today, because Corin's school was out and Seth's was in, I had a rare solo day with my elder boy. These days Corin is interested in adventures, and though the gang of boys in the adventure stories to which he likes to listen happen to find buried treasure or rescue kidnapped children every second day, adventures like that in our quiet valley are a bit hard to come by. Undaunted, we set off for the Rattlesnake, equipped with his adventure necklace (lanyard, compass, two golden pens, one tiny swiss army multi-tool) some sandwiches and our current chapter book. Corin wanted to go back to the spot we'd visited as a family, whiling away this past Saturday afternoon. On the riverbank we'd stacked rock cairns in a rash of spontaneous construction. The rock piles were beautiful and oddly graceful. And we both wanted to see them again, so we didn't mind that our adventure carried us down a path we had recently trod. This time, however, Corin paused every twenty feet to lay stick arrows in the trail, just in case any other adventurers wanted to follow our lead. Arriving at our spot, we were pleased to find the rock sculptures had weathered the intervening days, and I was particularly happy to see a few spiders had been busy launching lines among them, their thin filaments catching and keeping the light.

As Kenneth Grahame characterized the river in his delightful opening to A Wind in The Willows, so it was today along the creek. All was a-shake and a-shiver - glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble. Corin and I sat beside this tossing scene, read a bit, ate our fare, explored the bank, and watched, every now and again, singular leaves twist from their branches and somersault toward the water.

After a bit of this sort of dreamy, sitting adventure, we walked on. We decided between us that anyone determined to find us would have to rely on their own wood-lore, and from there on gave up marking our trail with arrows. This was a boon to our pace. Corin led us on a trail, new to the both of us. It wound lazily uphill, dappley and fragrant. Though we didn't come across buried treasure, we were rewarded with some other great finds, amassing a hankie full of quartz and several blanched bones. One of the particularly nice things about this adventure was that it demanded quiet walking: careful muffled steps and no talking. I realized I could go in for endless adventures like this... listening to the wind soughing the p.pines, and ravens calling in the distance. All in all, a lovely way to pass a day with my boy.

Egg Share

2010-09-20T18:39:00.004-06:00

Recently Tim and I joined an egg share. Structured like other CSA programs, members pay in advance and week by week receive their share. Joining the egg share has added a nice piece of routine to our Sundays. After church we drive to the farm and chat with our chicken farmer (who also happens to be Botanie's very own office manager), Heather. The boys, in their Sunday best, get in with the "girls," as Heather calls her hens. They scatter wheat or sunflower seeds, they check the egg mobile for the day's offerings, they laugh at hens taking dirt baths. Sometimes folks throw stale baguettes, yellowing kale stems or peach peels over the fence. It's fun to watch the scrum that follows. The hens are hilarious, running hither and yon in a flurry of dust and feathers, snatching bits of the precious garbage from each other. Sometimes we are all bent double laughing at the sight. They look like ladies who have hitched up their bustles and are running full tilt about the yard. If you've ever seen Lady Cluck taking on the Rhino guards in Disney's 1973 version of Robin Hood, you have some idea what these grand gals look like when there is baguette to be had.

There are plenty of folks around this town who are far more (and admirably) connected to their food source than we are, but it has been wonderful to make this small step, to know our farmer - as the bumper sticker enjoins -and to get to know the quirky birds who lay our breakfast. And speaking of breakfast, I should add the other benefit that comes from being part of the egg share: eating real eggs. Turns out those things called eggs at the grocery store aren't. There's a world of difference in color and taste between what Heather's Heritage Hens lay and every other cartoned dozen I've bought, even those labeled "naturally nested" or "grain fed."

So between having the boys gather eggs in their Sunday finery to frying up something with a center the color of a mango, there's nothing not to love about being connected with Heather and her scrappy, sqwaky, group of feathered gals. But word to the wise, don't stand in the way if a nearly inedible treasure has just sailed over the fence, these hens mean business.

Heather, some of her girls, and the egg mobile

Hunting for eggs

Birthdays

2010-09-19T20:53:00.008-06:00

It is birthday season here in the IudiJoss household. Tim's birthday came on a cold but lovely Sunday a few weeks ago. We celebrated Corin's this past Thursday, and mine, following Corin's like ducks in a row, was on Friday. Poor Seth, my January baby. "Birthdays are not fair," he tells me, pouting. I tried to assure him that birthdays are in fact the fairest thing the world ever doles: one per person, no exceptions. But I take his point, it's a bit hard to be the outlier when you are four. Last year when Corin was reciting the cycle of our birthdays, he said, "First is Seth, then dad, then me, and then you, Mom. You have the rotten egg of birthdays." I don't think he's yet learned the phrase last but not least. As it happens, I've always been quite fond of my birthday: it comes in the best month of the year and falls on a prime number to boot. Corin's, quite fittingly since he gravitates toward order, falls on two perfect squares: 9/16.

For Tim's birthday we spent the day in Arlee. We visited our old neighbors; went for a run along our old route, the boys biking along; and finished with a picnic on my parents' land. The first snow was falling on the Missions and from time to time the clouds would part, allowing us fleeting glimpses of the fresh dusting they had just dealt Gray Wolf Peak. Running our old route was like meeting up with a favorite friend - the view of the mountains here, the flame willows over there, the goldenrod and rose hips clumped together roadside, the hay bales, like small cottages, in Doney's field. I couldn't stop smiling, and still I find it pleases me all these days later. We have a wistfulness about the Jocko Valley, I hope will never leave us. Those were such treasured, deeply-felt years: the first of our marriage, the first of our Montana, the first of our parenting.

In Arlee

Tim's birthday picnic

Corin turned seven, wearing a birthday crown all day. Among other excellent presents (a Star Wars book, some story cds, a butterfly house to name a few) he received a pocket knife for the adventure necklace he's been making. A knife seemed like a good addition since there is conceivably only a small range of adventure a person could get into with just a yellow lanyard, a pen, and a compass. A swiss army tool broadens the possibilities. And though it is the teensiest blade that swiss army manufactures, Seth, borrowing it from his brother, managed to cut himself in thirty seconds flat. We hadn't even known the knife had seen first blood, when Seth was dancing before us, waving a finger with a Yoda band-aid, and saying, "But it's ok." Needless to say, we seized the tailor-made opportunity to discuss (and make up on the spot) The Rules regarding the use of the new adventure necklace addition.

Dressed for TaeKwanDo and taking a birthday call in his office

My birthday, a blustery day, included a quiet morning of work on a short story, birthday messages from friends far and near, and a lunch out with my husband. We watched walkers pull their coats close against the unseasonal bite in the wind as we drank miso and dipped sushi in soy and wasabi. Not a bad way to pass a birthday, even the rotten egg of birthdays, I guess.

It has been a gift giving season around here, and so I pass on a gift that came to me: evening light in the neighbor's Russian elm, a slate sky above the ridge.

Canning Peaches

2010-09-09T21:52:00.005-06:00

There seems to be two unwritten rules of canning in my kitchen - start projects too late in the evening, never have all the right ingredients. Oh, make that three unwritten rules - the pot must boil over. Tonight peaches. So here's where I've gone wrong so far. In the past, I've done peaches the traditional way, which is to say labor intensively. Wash 'em, boil 'em, pop 'em in cold water, skin 'em, chop 'em, jam 'em, process 'em. But this year, since I upgraded my kitchen with the it's-not-a-blender-it's-a-Vitamix, I thought I'd cut out the middle steps and just wash and blend before jamming and processing. This is a fine idea if you want a smooth, even consistency, but I'm more of a chunky jam sort of person. So, the it's-not-a-blender-it's-a-Vitamix worked its two-horse power magic, and Santa is just going to have to deliver peach butter this year.

If you know me at all, you know I've never been much of a linear person and the kitchen seems to aid and abet my most erratic side. I can almost hear ingredients asking me, "give me a try, come on, what could go wrong?" Ginger particularly seems to have a siren song of its own and my peaches remained un-gingered only because I used the last of it this afternoon in a kale apple cucumber smoothie (try it, it's power packed and yummy). While I'm mentioning my a-linearity, I will just break here for a disclaimer in case you're getting nervous. I am very law-abiding when it comes to the actual process of canning, even remembering to adjust for Missoula's altitude. While I'll risk cooking up an odd concoction, I'm not a big one for taking chances with botulism.

So tonight's kitchen improv went as follows. I used a sea vegetable, Agar Agar, in place of the ubiquitous Kraft foods Sure-Jell. Nothing against the old stand-by, which has served me through dozens of jammings, I just felt tempted to dust-it up a bit. And then since I have not a lick of sugar in the house, and because it is physically impossible for me to dump six cups of the white stuff into gloriously sweet peaches anyway, and because, as I said, I just wanted to dust-it up a bit, I found some Agave and tipped it in a few times and then once more for good measure.

Though unsure how the whole soupy mess will turn out, I've got 12 mason jars of peach agar agar agave-sweetened butter processing away in a boiling water bath. Now I just have to scrape off the 1/4 inch of peach shmear caramelized in the burners since they'll be pressed into service again tomorrow. No doubt too late in the evening. I've got another box of peaches ready to roll and hopefully I'll make it to the store for some ginger. And maybe some lemon peel. And what do you think about a splash of balsamic?

And now September

2010-09-08T20:41:00.007-06:00

And so it has begun again. Though the mornings now find me harriedly rifling the fridge for suitable lunch pail inclusions, bellowing up the stairs for my sleeping beauties to rise and shine, and making a dash at Corin's bedhead before we suit up for the 8:06 bus, I am welcoming back the school year. The kids are now settled into their second week of school. The downside of first grade according to the two-week veteran is definitely the nightly homework. "Who invented this?" Corin asks every night, scratching at his paper with a pencil, his chin in his hand. On the other hand, the upside of first grade is clearly classroom pets. Currently Mrs. Carter's first grade has a tarantula named Cupcake Twinkle. The other day, Corin informed me that female tarantulas sometimes eat their male counterparts. I could see he was having trouble fitting this information from the wild world of arachnids into his gender norms. Girls like pink. Girls play princesses. Girl tarantulas eat boy tarantulas. Something does not compute, my schemas are breaking apart. I am told Cupcake Twinkle is soon to be joined, presumably in another cage, by a bearded dragon, name yet unknown. I guess a poisonous saucer-sized spider and a nearly-mythical creature go a long way to easing the blow of nightly homework. Corin found another nice thing about first grade - you can borrow the same books from the school library as you did last year - like meeting up with an old friend, right? Tim and I were so glad to be reuninted with our favorite bedtime reading after a summer of respite. What did we do without "Anakin's Race to Freedom" for all those months?

Seth started back to preschool, though he'd be the first to tell you that he is no longer in an Early Childhood class, but is in Pre-K. School is his Cheers, though it is Seth that knows everyone's name. When Tim and I took him over the first day, he walked down the long hall to his classroom, waving left, waving right, greeting everyone we passed by name. One would think he hadn't been gone from these folks for months. When he had hung his coat, stowed his lunch pail and put on his slippers, he dived right into some serious purple playdough. Tim and I couldn't get him to look up from chatting with his pals to hear our goodbyes. When I arrived to pick him up at the end of that first day, he had given my friend, who had signed him out for me, the slip. While she was engaged in getting her daughter's shoes on, Seth made for the door with a friend. It had just been raining and I soon found him under a downspout "taking a shower." He was soaked through and ran off laughing when I tried to curb him toward the car. There's just nothing like getting back into routine.

So September, welcome back. And welcome back, crisp mornings at the bus stop, dinnertime descriptions of recess escapades, half eaten sandwiches and untouched vegetables at the bottom of the lunch bag. Welcome back, children proud of something they just mastered, children who have stretched themselves, children who fall into bed, spent but happy. Welcome back, school.

Culinary Travels

2010-07-19T09:03:00.005-06:00

During our first day at my parents' house Corin announced, "I'll have seafood every day, of course." So with his prompting, we did eat our fill of fish. And shellfish. And chowder. One afternoon we even dug our own clams and cooked 'em up (photo above). In addition to sea harvest, we had plenty of road trips which meant plenty of ice cream stops. And in Vancouver for our pal's wedding we stopped for sushi, rounding out our coast-to-coast seafood experience. So, here's a few pics of our gastronomical pursuits. Though I'm happy to be back in Montana, rocky mountain oysters just don't do it for me like the ones served on the half shell. I'm already missing the brine in the air and on my plate. Ah well, there's always something to be missed, right?

Chowder in Bretton Woods, NH

Mugging with Mussels in Portsmouth, NH

Beach Peach Ipswich, MA

Lobster in Ipswich, MA

What would vacation be without S'Mores? DuPont, WA (Thanks Bets and Caleb)

Mint Chocolate Chip on the US/Canadian Border

Taking a break in BC. That's strawberry freezies for the boys and olives for the adults.

Sushi in Vancouver, BC

Home again

2010-07-15T08:49:00.003-06:00

We are newly returned from our travels to points west then east then west again. I think it may be a long while before I again plan to vacation on both coasts in one trip. But, two weddings, a 90th birthday, a 40th anniversary and a baby-shower later, we are back in Montana, unpacked, suitcases mostly away, and weeds colonizing the garden. The poppies are exuberant this year. Unchecked for the past month, they've made the most of their freedom, choking out the rudbeckia, putting out blooms in unlikely corners of the yard, being cheeky with their leggy leaning over the sidewalk. I have been pulling out fistfulls of them with some regret, they're so pretty it dismays me. The dill and oregano, however, are another story; it is far more satisfying to yank them and I do it without a second thought. Though I had left the tarragon in a patch of its own when we drove toward Portland last month, I couldn't even locate it when I was searching for it to dress a salad the other evening.. Presumably, it was buried beneath the fragrant oregano melee. After a few moments of scouting and a few hearty pulls, I had again secured it a perimeter and access to sunshine. But really, a person's got to admire the oregano and dill and plants of their ilk that can cover so much ground in so short a time. Adapted or fecund or downright exuberant for life, they certainly know something about flourishing where they're planted.

Our travels were wonderful and hectic. In total we slept in five states and one province, logging more than sixty hours of travel. But what's vacation if not a little hecticness right? My parents' house (that interesting experiment in inter-generational living) has nine living in it at all times, Tim and the boys and I rounded it out at 13. With my grandpa leading the pack at nearly 93 years old and my nephew Malcolm bringing up the rear at 10 months, there was always something wonderful to be observed - the huge smile Malcolm has every time he sees his great grandma, the way my dad and his 4 year old grandson tend the garden together, or my grandpa reading the morning paper and taking his coffee while four of his great-grandsons build legos at his feet. Moments like these made me smile, but let me be the first to say, I take my hat off to the current inhabitants of the Josstel (the affectionate name for my parents' hive-like home). Though four generations living in one house has its Norman Rockwell moments, it has far more dishes in the sink, loads of laundry cycling through the washer, and compromises about schedules, space and tidiness than I for one could have guessed at from afar. So, props (and prayers) go out to (and for) all there, but especially my mom who holds the whole listing ship together. Keep on, keeping on, ma'am. You always flourish where you're planted.

The Great(est) Grandparents with the boys

my folks at Crane

Some inter-generational Red Sox watching and cotton candy munching

Out for an evening

Boys at the beach:

Two Quick Things

2010-03-22T19:42:00.003-06:00

Today after school Corin created the following picture. He was completely absorbed in his work and it was clear that he set out to draw just this very picture - copying something he so clearly envisioned in his head. So, I thought I'd share today's art: The Blue Headed Dragon.

And on another note, Tim somehow fell hook, line, and sinker for the Information Age and purchased a droid phone, the new Google gadget. He spent yesterday evening loading it up with Star Wars apps, which he swears are to entertain our Jedi crazed children. While I'm taking him at his word that this is for the boys, evidence suggests (see photo) that he is having every bit as much fun tickling R2D2 as they are.

A Tale of Two Gophers

2010-03-21T14:51:00.007-06:00

Both my boys have imaginary friends and by strange coincidence both are named Gopher. You might think this would be liable to confuse the household populace. But, mercifully, all similarities between the two end with their appellation.

Corin's Gopher made his first appearance one sunny day when Corin informed us his friend lived under the lilac in the yard. Tim and I thought Gopher might be a short-lived member of our family, but he's proved to have unexpected longevity. He's been with us three years and in that time has been a generally genial, interesting member of the household. He keeps to himself mostly, residing under the lilac in the warm months and in the crawlspace through cooler ones. As we all can't be perfect, I must mention this Gopher's two regrettable habits. First, like a sneak, he sometimes turns the radio on in the middle of the night (especially if they boys have been pushing its buttons and have inadvertently set the alarm). This habit does however confirm his existence in the minds of several family members. His second regrettable habit must be called "encouragement." When Corin is upset with one or another of us, Gopher often whispers inaudible unmentionables in his ear. These Corin affirms with statements such as: "You're right, Gopher. What mom said is totally stupid."

Photograph by Gopher

Seth's Gopher joined us sometime in the past year, but what he's lacked in longevity he's made up in activity. As I mentioned in the last post, he is a handy hockey goalie. And as the weather is warming, we find he's equally skilled at soccer. He's industrious as well. I'm informed he has a job fixing cars with the grease monkeys at the end of the block. This Gopher is always up for trying new things: college last week, preschool this one. His age is variable - sometimes he is thirty-six and sometimes four, but just this Thursday I had it on good authority that he is exactly seven and seven quarters. Given the plasticity of his habits, he's a bit hard to pin down, but this serves his intrigue. Seth's Gopher has several sisters (I'm told one is trying to be my particular friend - an advance I'm staving off). As for bad habits, there is some discussion that a portion of the nighttime radio hi-jinks might be attributable to this Gopher. This is, however, a matter of great dispute.

Seth and Gopher Playing

So, friends, imaginary and otherwise, I hope you all are well. And I hope that you, too, have friends of variable age who reside under lilacs when the weather is amenable. They make life endlessly interesting. And, when it comes down to it, who doesn't need a friend to whisper in your ear or always be ready to take a turn in goal?

2010-02-27T14:08:00.013-07:00

Gray in Missoula today. But we've had sun: a week of intermittent glory, great blue shadows on Mount Sentinel (rather than winter's gray ones dribbling down the canyon) and songbirds shaking dust out of their calls. It is all welcome. Though this winter has been mild and almost snow-less, my thoughts still turn,when the clouds break, to spring . Sunshine recalls me to myself. It's odd, when the sun comes out, I invariably feel half myself has been missing and suddenly I've found it again. Life takes on a richer cast when punctuated with bright lit patches and deep blue shadows. But, the gray Missoula winters do serve their purpose in making me more aware of the rare full-spectrum days.

Things here are in pleasant routine. Other than the hiccup of strep throat from which Tim and I are both recovering, our weeks are passing with a nice rhythmic normalcy. Between school days and tae kwan do, lego building and drawing, the boys are mostly occupied. Corin's class recently had their 100th day party, celebrating, of course, 100 days of Kindergarten. He came home with a crown and a smile.

"I am 100 days smarter."

For his birthday, Seth was gifted a new hockey goal and sticks - a very fitting present for our athletaphilic child (Thanks Jeff and Elsie!). He has turned the house into an iceless rink and presses us all into service as his opponent. Seth's team, the Deers, has a roster of two, consisting of Seth and his imaginary friend, Gopher. Quite fortunately, Gopher is always willing to play goalie. The opposing team (usually me or Tim or my cousin Kara) is invariably the Spiders. Corin, necessarily, roots for the Spiders.

The Deers Offensive Line

Tim went to Ecuador in January, a trip with some of his favorite people in the world, a trip and landscape which filled him right up. He returned to a busy season at work: lots of new production, some staff changes, and the search for a new work space. Botanie has outgrown its shell. He just settled on a new location and now the work of moving (gently!) twenty thousand bars of curing soap commences. Did I mention how proud I am of him? This business used to be housed in our basement in Arlee and I melted oils on our kitchen stove. Now Botanie needs 5000 sqft of workspace, several employees, and kettles that hold hundreds of gallons. As if growing the soap empire isn't enough to keep him busy, Tim and a friend just launched another business, Northside Software. Northside has a brilliant product for tracking your laptop and locking down files in case its lifted. Check it out at www.nsidetrack.com.

As for me, I'm happy and well, working on some writing projects, taking some runs in the north hills and generally enjoying watching the days get longer. I've been thinking about Annie Dillard's perceptive little sentence: How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. And I am, as no doubt you are, trying to be aware of these days, as they come, wonderfully, one by one by one.

Walking

2009-11-29T21:38:00.011-07:00

In my book, it's a great day ifwe get out for a walk. One of the nice things about living where we do is that when it comes to walking we have lots of options. Do we want a treed trail by the creek (perfect for a gray, wet day)? Do we need a walk in the open up the gulch (Sun!)? Do we want a climb and a vista (any weather will do)? Each of these walks works on me in a different way, but not one fails as a mood lifter. So, here's a few snaps from some recent walks. Enjoy. I did.

Walk #1

Walk #2

We found a fort!!

2009-11-03T14:31:00.004-07:00

Corin snapped this picture the other day. I love its simple lines and single palate. There is something about its spareness that I find restful without being dreary. Its wonderful really, this view he captured. It is our stairwell, a place I am always charging through - hauling heaps of laundry down, running up to retrieve socks for the boys, dashing down to answer the door/phone/child's tears. It took my son sharing his view for me to see the space in a new frame, to see its arching quietness and cathedral-like rise. Its been there all along, but thanks to Corin, I now know to pause and look up.

Things in these parts have been well. We All Hallows Eve'd it with the neighborhood, meeting friends from the Northside at the new Kettlehouse before everyone started their door-to-door rounds. Tim and the boys carved pumpkins while I put the last touches on Corin's costume (Vincent Vampire Bat from the Zoo Phonics program his kindergarten uses - at least that's what the five dollars of felt, glue, thread, and wire was meant to approximate). The boys had a great time, coming home red-nosed from the cold and bright-eyed with the haul.

Corin's pumpkin

Seth: a big helper

Vincent Vampire Bat and Fooball Guy

One more picture from Corin to finish off the post. Some days this is what I look for, just that bit of blue sky that makes all the difference.

September going, Frost coming

2009-09-30T22:44:00.005-06:00

With a temperature drop forecast for overnight, this evening found all four residents of 706 Howell in our boulevard with mixing bowls and bread baskets, pulling in the last of the garden. Tonight, the counter is elbow deep in romas and early girls. I think out of sheer necessity of finding the coffee pot, I'll be putting up tomatoes in the next few days. I clipped the rest of the basil, that massive green tumbleweed in the kitchen corner. We found several toddler-sized zucchini hiding under broad leaves. These are now hiding in our neighbors' cars. Corin and Tim were delighted with unloading these on our unsuspecting friends and I'm happy to have my load lessened by two. There are already enough green monsters lounging on the counter.

Bowl of Greens

Boys and Beets

Not one...

But two.

Tonight, we turned on our heat for the first time this season. Around the kitchen, this year's mouse keeps scurrying in and out of view, but never toward the trap (which has caught only Seth so far). When the clouds lifted this afternoon, I could see snow up Pattee Canyon. It seems, all the seasonal markers are in place. Autumn I salute you.

2009-09-22T22:35:00.005-06:00

Let me just say there are days when what I need is this:

What am I supposed to be seeing? you might be asking. Nothing. Just unbroken, unpunctuated, roll of grass on a hillside, a simple tawny arc against blue sky. Some days this is what I set off to the hills looking for. For me, the uncluttered view seems to reduce life to its elemental components: earth, sky. And still these are more than can be taken in.

Reading Aloud to Ruth

2009-09-20T21:30:00.006-06:00

When I was fifteen my Grandmother Joss died. She died with all her family standing around, singing the hymns my sister plinked out on the upright. The cancer took her quickly at the end. She was bedridden for just a few days, and we sat vigil only the last night. At least, this is the way I remember it, if memories from half a life away can be trusted. These days I am reminded of my Grandma Joss because my friend Ruth, with whom my grandma shared a birthday, is seemingly nearing her end after more than 100 years of living. In the past few weeks, Ruth has lost her limited mobility and taken irretrievably to her bed. She is visited now by visions of her parents and her siblings, all of whom have passed on. She reaches for things only she can see. Tonight, while I sat with her, she stretched out her arm and motioned toward something in the air. "Has anyone fed John and Fred?" she asked. I leaned closer to her. "Who's that?" I asked. "They weren't taken," Ruth added and, though she said it weakly, whatever she could see seemed to give her some satisfaction.

While Ruth slept, I perused the literature the hospice agency had left on her kitchen table. "Vision-like experiences are real to your loved one and are common in the transition from life to death. Most often these visions are comforting." I do not remember Grandma Joss reaching for unseeable things, but watching Ruth do so is stirring and not, as I would have expected, unsettling. Something seems very close, very real, to her. She reaches toward it, grasping. Perhaps she is seeing through a crack in that final door.

Before leaving Ruth this evening, I sang her a lullaby, sitting on her bed and patting her head as I do my boys' at night when they cannot sleep. When I had slipped from her house, the screen door swinging behind me, I cycled home, grateful for the feel of my legs pumping the pedals, loving the smell of the river as I took the bridge across, aware suddenly of the life I have in my body, the gift of it. When I returned home I hied to my bookshelf and traced my finger through the poetry section looking for a very dog-eared copy of Jane Kenyon's Otherwise. I riffled through the pages looking for her poem Reading Aloud to My Father, knowing there was something in it I needed to read. Finding it, I read as follows:

I chose the book haphazard
from the shelf, but with Nabokov's first
sentence I knew it wasn't the thing
to read to a dying man:
The cradle rocks above an abyss, it began,
and common sense tells us that our existence
is but a brief crack of light
between two eternities of darkness.
The words disturbed both of us immediately,
and I stopped. With music it was the same --
Chopin's Piano Concerto -- he asked me
to turn it off. He ceased eating, and drank
little, while the tumors briskly appropriated
what was left of him.
But to return to the cradle rocking. I think
Nabokov had it wrong. This is the abyss.
That's why babies howl at birth,
and why the dying so often reach
for something only they can apprehend.
At the end they don't want their hands
to be under the covers, and if you should put
your hand on theirs in a tentative gesture
of solidarity, they'll pull the hand free;
and you must honor that desire,
and let them pull it free.

Ruth is pulling free, just as all those years ago, I witnessed my grandma do while we stood around her bed singing "It is Well with My Soul." When my grandma finally passed, I went out to her drive and lay down to watch the bright and silent procession of stars overhead. Something I had seen that night, words could not reach and the house seemed too small and crowded to contain. I needed the limitless Above at that moment. Now, being with Ruth as she sits upon the threshold and catches glimpses from that great elsewhere, I feel I am again bearing witness to that uncontainable and limitless something that happens at the outside limit, the flush margin, of this precious and passing life.

In Memory

2009-09-01T20:56:00.004-06:00

Last week our neighbor from Arlee passed on. For six years we lived next door to her, our houses sitting on opposite sides of the long dusty drive we shared. Many an evening Tim and I sat at her kitchen table swapping stories and parrying jokes with her husband. Once, she beaded me two slim barrettes - sky blue with red triangles. She wrapped them in brown paper and slipped them quietly in my hand. Christine, quiet and giving, cared for people in a way that was almost sly it was so unobtrusive and modest. On Friday evening, as I left the community center in Arlee where Christine lay with an eagle feather fan in her hands, a full moon was rising over the mountains. The night was purple. The moon was white. I thought of this valley that Christine had loved her whole life and how the moon slid above it, hanging just so over the mountains. And I thought what a perfect tribute to her: it rose as she did - quietly, unobtrusively, and so bright.

Summer Idyll

2009-07-25T09:42:00.008-06:00

Summer in Montana is such an idyll. With rivers to float and lakes to paddle and creeks in which to soak, we seem to build our days around which body of water we plan to jump in. The boys are finally old enough to take up Missoula's number one summer recreation: the float. This involves innertubes, some sunblock, and a long, lazy stretch of river. We drop in, float for several hours as the river winds us between tossing cottonwoods and willow brakes. The osprey wing overhead. The swallows dip and dive. In a few hours, when the river has carried us far enough, we get out, pack up the tubes, and get ready to do it all again. Soon.

Our garden is in and making good progress this year. The poppies were a riot of red for a solid month. When they had finally run their course, I immediately began missing them. There are few things so dependably and deeply cheering. Now the Shasta daisies are blooming and the rudbekia is filling in. The bees are heavy in the lavender and Corin just plants himself beside the lavender patch and watches them at work. Tim, the vegetable garden warden, warns me zuchinni are heavily forecasted for later in the week.

The boys and I joined some friends camping last week. We had our cars packed with tents and sleeping bags and swimming gear and sand pails and sleeping mats and marshmallows and tea pots - just the sort of camping I disdained and vowed never to do before I became a parent. It was a great trip. We plucked a few huckleberries, jumped in the lake, made s'mores. When the boys went to sleep, dropping off easily beneath the tent flaps, I sat and watched the sky, the stars bright and blinking between dark-boughed ponderosas.

And so the days drift by. I keep thinking I'm sure to hear R. Frost's oven bird one of these days, calling its mid-summer song ("the question that he frames in all but words/ is what to make of a diminished thing?"). But I guess my answer to summer's impending end is to jump in the creek, float the rivers, pick raspberries, roast marshmallows, take a picnic up a mountainside, kick back in the grass under the blue blue big sky.

Father's Day

2009-06-22T16:49:00.009-06:00

Yesterday, on Father's Day, I received several pictures from my grandfather of his father, Carl Johnson. Among them was the picture above: my grandfather as a young boy (between Corin and Seth's present ages from the looks of it) sitting with his parents. I love this picture for many reasons, among them that my grandfather looks very much himself. There is something about him that has held steady all these years, resisting change despite the eight and a half decades that have been added to his life since he and his parents sat, that day, for the photographer.

One of the pleasures of receiving photographs of one's ancestors on a day set aside for honoring fathers is the quiet harmonic this creates between then-time and now-time. It is easy in the course of dailyness to forget we owe our very lives to continuity that extends far beyond us. But here are some pictures that remind me of the story in which I stand.

My dad: this is the last picture that was taken of the two of us before his subdural hematoma two summers ago. Thankfully his was a complete recovery, but this picture still chills me as it captures us hiking-tired, happy in the sunshine, and unaware of how close we'd come to losing him in the next six weeks. We stand atop Cathedral Ledges, a favorite family hike (taking the Boulder Loop Trail, of course, and finishing by wetting our feet in the river that runs along the Kancamagus). Never one to miss the vista, my dad enjoyed, that day and always, the getting there and the coming back. In this he is not unlike a famous New Hampshirite who once wrote:

Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

It seems that shortly after our hike, my father would climb a paper-white trunk toward heaven, till the top dipped and set him back down. And how grateful I am for that "coming back."

My paternal grandparents, Howard and Florence Joss: This is a picture I took of them, having paused the film of their wedding day in 1936 and applying my shutter to the screen. I love their smiles, my grandmother is radiant as she was her whole life, my grandfather looks entirely happy and proud. Grandfather Joss died when I was in third grade and I remember little of him beyond the tremendous jars of pennies he collected, the way he called my grandmother "Doll," the warmth with which he joked with us children.

This seems an appropriate Father's Day photo. Taken last month in Pennsylvania, Tim and his dad confer about bait while the boys await their turn to fish. And below is the sweet little sunny who obliged to be caught (posed for a picture and released).

And a final Father's Day shot. Taken several years ago when Corin was not quite three and Seth was a baby. Tim, wonderful father, strolls with his sons. The ridge ahead is filled with light and shadow, like all life. Carrying one, a hand on the head of the other, Tim walks, drawing them along, up the path.

Kwaheri Than

2009-05-27T22:13:00.004-06:00

Kwaheri - is swahili for goodbye, or literally for joy. My cousin Than, who has been doing grad school in Missoula for the past two years (and spending a great deal of prime studying time at my kitchen counter streaming Manchester United games and drinking highly sweetened chai), moved from Missoula today to return to Kenya. He has been a regular part of life at 706 Howell over these past two years, a sometimes soap-employee, a master at the grill, a great uncle to the boys and a willing wrestler with them, a cheerful pusher of the jogging stroller on our runs. When next I'm hiking with the kids and have to carry both boys downhill, I will miss my walking companion and fellow pack horse - just as I will tomorrow when I set out only one mug for midday chai.

So, Than, if you read this, all joy to you, kwaheri. You'll be missed. The kettle is on. Rooney just scored for ManU. We'll see you soon, Mungu akipenda.

Our Fair City

2009-04-25T20:07:00.007-06:00

Missoula is a happily situated town, the beauty of which seems to present itself when one gets a bit above it. Tim and I took the boys hiking up Mt. Sentinel last weekend. The trail leaves from the University and in a series of steep switchbacks climbs toward a huge concrete "M" - the city's most obvious landmark (could there be a more literal use of the term?) - fixed to the mountain's side.

Mount Sentinel is the far eastern boundary of the Missoula Valley and the town spreads out, ambling west, below the pitch of the mountain. The view from there is a good one and the boys had a great time picking out parts of their known world - the airport in the distance, the bridge over the train tracks near our house, the park they like to frequent, and the river winding the length of the valley. It is good somehow to see our world from above, to see how expansive the land and how nestled the town, to see the valley bend away in the far west where our vision cannot follow.

My boys on the M

Missoula's north hills are tinged yellow with arrowleaf balsamroot, a bright, silver-leafed member of the sunflower family. It grows in squat clumps all over the hills and is in full and glorious bloom on south facing slopes. Today I took a run and saw the lupine are soon to follow. At this time of year I can't keep away from the hills. I tell Tim I'm going to take a short run, I'll be back soon, but then I find myself veering toward the hills expectantly. Next week, when whole hillsides are full with deep blue spires of lupine blooming aside bright and broad arrowleaf balsamroot, when the meadowlarks are singing, and the rain is pulling across the far end of the valley in dark squalls, I might just have to sit down and give the rest of the day up for loss (or gain).

In other news - Tim invested a hefty sum in the Flowbee last year. You may remember the flowbee commercials from the mid 80s. This special "As seen on TV" item is a hair cutting system that requires the use of your vacuum. I was skeptical, but now after having more than made our money back by not spending on numerous children's haircuts (and several adult ones as well), I have converted to the Flowbee way of life. Thursday night was hair cutting night at this house - the boys all got fresh dos as did Than. So there's my product testimonial - if you have squirmy kids and a good vacuum, make the investment.

Flowbee

Happy Easter

2009-04-12T21:55:00.004-06:00

A bright Easter here in our corner of the world:

Egg hunting:

A Corin moment:

A Seth moment:

Ice cream break:

Seth with his princess posse:

2009-04-05T21:50:00.005-06:00

Spring break has just passed us by. On Wednesday, I was on the phone with my friend Ann watching a squall dump sleet on our doorstoop and making plans to meet up somewhere indoors when Ann said, through a sigh, "This is such a misnomer. It is neither Spring nor a break." All week long, we dodged intermittent snow storms and drizzle on our outdoor forays. And Seth spent the later half of the week dodging in and out of a fever and sniffles.

This weekend however, made up for it in spades with a glorious, long awaited, riot of sun. The whole town seemed to be trying to restock on vitamin D in one compact weekend as people with winter-pale legs donned shorts and hit the trails, nodding to each other with wide, giddy grins. We took a picnic to the park, broke out a yardful of sports equipment (soccer balls: 4, wiffle bats: 3, wiffle balls: 7, batting tee: 1, bikes: 4, frisbee: 1 bright orange cones: 6) and generally moved between sunny patches.

While the boys played tackle frisbee in the yard, I made good use of Saturday afternoon's sun by running up Waterworks, along the ridgeline, and down the other side to drop in on Kara for tea. Along the way, I saw mountain bluebirds flitting bright against the straw-colored roll of the land, and stopped to watch a red tail draft upward. Later, Kara and I walked up the side of the hill behind her house, and watched the evening creep across the valley. Somewhere near us, a western meadowlark trilled its lilting song, leaving me foolishly, dreamily, happy. More sun is forecasted for the week, as is school for the children. Two facts which tickle me with their promise of an embrightened return to routine.

Indoor Camping

Watching a Bald Eagle

Gray Day at the Creek

Seth bidding adieu to snowman remains

March Snow

2009-03-29T19:38:00.002-06:00

And so it snows.

Pictures and more

2009-03-17T22:59:00.005-06:00

I just spent this evening with my dear friend Ruth. We looked through photo albums from Choteau, Montana where Ruth was born in 1909. Our friend, Patricia, unearthed the albums, an ancient suitcase, and an exquisite handbag from Ruth's attic today. So tonight, Ruth and I looked through one of the albums. She had not seen it in years. In this album, all the photographs were taken in Choteau between 1903-1913. It was interesting to sit with Ruth as she looked through pictures of her hometown, the jail was here, she'd say, we lived down this street, over there. The pictures were full of men on horses, men posing in front of a herd of sheep, men sitting atop a wagonload of wool, a dozen horses harnessed and ready to pull out of town (25,ooo pounds of wool was written below the picture in Ruth's mother's careful hand). There were photographs of Charlie Russel paintings, pictures of Flathead Indian encapments, and landscape photos of gulches and canyons, waterfalls and peaks.

It was incredible to open this book with Ruth and see bits of what she saw, see the care her mother had taken in composing shots and laying out the album. When I came home, I started back to work on an essay I've been fiddling with about growing up in Ipswich and, while trying to think of the way to describe the pleasing simplicity of First Period houses, found myself thumbing through photos. I hadn't meant to mimic with myself what I had just witnessed with Ruth, and, oddly enough, didn't think about the concurrence until later. But the activity of looking at scenes so familiar made me realize the odd impossiblity of ever communicating the fullness of what is meant by we lived down this street, over there.

There is not much to report from our wing of the world. Seth continues in his pursuit of all things sport, while Corin continues with craft projects and imaginary play (the living room was a zoo today and Seth a rabbit - you can guess who the zookeeper was). Yesterday, we marked Corin's half-birthday and, this morning, he was pleased to find he could still fit into his nook on the counter despite now being five and a half. Since he was proud of his half birthday he decided it should also be the birthday of his current favorite stuffed animal, Stripes the Dragon. Corin proceeded to host a birthday party for Stripes complete with party hats he made and several presents wrapped in the majority of his beddding (which somehow had migrated to the living room). Despite my protestations that the cupcakes I baked were for St. Patty's Day, Corin somehow transformed the evening into a celebration of Stripes and by the end Than, Kara, Tim and I found ourselves chorusing Happy Birthday to a stuffed animal. We drew the line at lighting a candle for Stripes to blow out, relying on the logic that, as a dragon, Stripes blows fire and thus would have difficulty de-flaming the wick. And so goes life with a child gifted dually with a full-bodied imagination and the powers of persausion to draw us all along.

Stripes' Birthday Hat

On Saturday, Seth was lent a skateboard from his buddy Marquez and has spent every day since his prize borrow practicing the technique. So far, he seems to be gaining a knack for powering it along and has completely mastered the art of the dramatic fall. Recently, Seth also built a bike trailer for his indoor trike, which is useful for giving Eeyore rides. Between the two of my boys, I am continually amazed at what they come up with and how they are each so entirely, unmistakably, themselves. Besides keeping me on my toes, they keep me full of humor (most days!) and always in fresh wonder.

Boarding

Bike Tralier

The Biking Man

Midwinter spring is its own season...

2009-02-18T21:19:00.008-07:00

....There's a little Eliot for all you fans of Four Quartets. And as the good Thomas Stearns wrote about this season, "Between melting and freezing/ The soul's sap quivers." We have indeed landed in the season full of betweens. We wake one morning to hearty frost flowers and the next finds us hatless, tromping through melt and mud. Robins have joined the waxwings and, from time to time, I hear a honking overhead and find Canada geese passing high and away, tending north.

Today, the boys and I walked with some friends along the river. The trail was a patchwork of thawing snow, muddy ground, and gravelly patches. The northhills, lit against a deep slate sky, seemed straw colored, gold-like, rather than frosty, and all the red-twigged willow along the riverbank flared brightly. The soul's sap does seem to quiver in these days, reaching toward spring and all its attendant renewal. Though I love the winter palette and the snap of cold that makes me sit up and pay attention, I start feeling like an animal pacing its pen after awhile. The relentless melt and freeze, the sodden mud of the turning season demands a sort of amiability with transition that I can only sometimes muster. Our friend, Jack, calls this season Sprinter. And while indeed a unique hybrid, the name with its intimations of swiftness is a bit misleading. We had snow in June last year and not a freak storm but the tail end of months of near daily rain/snow/hail squalls, so perhaps this stretching, in between sort of season should be called Marathoner as it does indeed demand endurance.

The kids too are feeling the midwinter spring in their own ways. Seth clamors regularly to ride his new bike, a business which depends on me standing about on the sidewalk to push him every few meters. Thus, his riding and my having the time and mental clarity to stand in front of the house for half hours on end must coincide, and when they don't he stamps his feet and pulls at the door before turning to ride his indoor trike like a terror across the house.

Meanwhile, Corin, my perpetual nester, hunkers on our wide window seat, known in our house as the Owl's Nest, and plays CDs at full volume while coloring pictures of rocketships. At this point into our partial thaw, I could paper the boys' room and half the hall with rockets depicted in various space scenes (It's a rocket and the sun. It's a rocket and Jupiter. It's a rocket and Saturn. It's a rocket and Pluto [pronounced Plu-doo in this house]). Mostly I have been heartlessly papering the recycling bin. The other day, my mother called me from the far end of a closet cleaning project to ask if I wanted any of the artwork I had produced as a young child and which she had saved, lo, these thirty years. "Mother," I replied (horror cracking my voice), "Don't you dare."

But, whether or not the sun has come out to play, we try to pile out of the house, finding that any outing is good for us. Yesterday, the sun was gloriously out, and while the east coast was being pounded with snow, we had fifty-three degrees with high blue skies. The boys and I drove up to the local farm where Than works. We stood on hay bales listening to the pigs grunt around their slop, then walked the muddy two-track to the hoop house. Inside, 300 heritage breed chicks scuttled around heat lamps and water dispensers. Outside the chick nursery, a squadron of bees buzzed about the grain grinder, their dark bodies zigzagging near us before veering sharply away. Corin, hatless, coatless, and muddy-shoed, surveyed the bees like a man in a dream. When he caught me watching him, he smiled and said with a happy hush: "Just like summer!"

Hockey Guy

A game of chase in the North Hills

Out for a walk

The view from here

2009-01-27T21:11:00.006-07:00

It is still January, the month that goes on and on. I thought I'd catch up with some pictures from the past few weeks. The view from here is full winter. I keep coming upon flocks of cedar waxwings chirruping their high pitched "bzeee" from the top of a cottonwood or between the berries of a mountain ash. I know they winter over in Montana, but somehow they make me hopeful for spring. Is it too soon? I think I can answer my own question: it surely too soon to even let that word flutter around my mind. And yet the sight of the waxwings does seem to warm me.

Goldeneyes, on the other hand, make me frigid. On Sunday afternoon, we all walked along the Clark Fork River in the middle of town. Great floats of ice drifted west with the current and a strong wind blew out of Hellgate canyon, sweeping down the riverfront. As I looked at the river, I noticed dabbling peaceably mid-river were a brace of goldeneyes. Unlike mallards, these ducks dive entirely under the water, making small fishlike flops as they arc under the current. Bundled in my boots, coat, hat, gloves and scarf, I felt a little awed by the goldeneyes and their adaptation to such a living. I should think there were easier ways to go about the business of survival - flying south for instance - but evidently it must work for them, and the competition for this coldwater niche didn't seem so tight. Let's hear it for feathers and a nice layer of fat.

We have only had a slight dusting of snow since our last big drop a few weeks ago. I'm hopeful for another round so we can again hit the local ski trails. Until that happens, we will continue to content ourselves with walks. Than and I took advantage of some sunshine the other day to walk the boys up Waterworks Hill. Though it was sunny on the northside of the hill, the Missoula valley was still socked in with an Inversion (capitalized because it is certainly a presence, if not a proper proper noun). If you don't know what that is, count yourself fortunate. Let's just say when an inversion is caught in the valley we can be socked in for days. When this happens I find myself thinking, "I seem to remember there was a mountain around here somewhere. Now where did it go?" When the inversion thinned enough above our neighborhood for us to remember where the mountains stand, Than and I ran the boys up top. Actually, Corin ran himself and remarkably speedily too. Seth had to be carried as he accidently left the house in one of his shoes and one of Corin's (if you would like to know how that happened, you may direct your inquiries to his Uncle Than) . The following pictures are from our delightful walk.

Looking into the Inversion

The view the other way

A Frosted Mount Jumbo

100 Years Young

2009-01-13T22:07:00.006-07:00

Our dear friend, Ruth, turned 100 today. Twenty or so people gathered at her home to celebrate this momentous birthday. The Missoulian even pitched in by running a feature on our special Centenarian. For the past two and half years, I have been making meals for Ruth two nights a week. What I thought was going to be a part time job, has turned into an incredible gift: a friendship with Ruth that is immeasurably important for me, and the chance to be part of an amazing group of people - the community of folk that love and care for Ruth.

Ruth and Patricia

Ruth sees opportunities for joy everywhere. Everyday things - the colors in her garden in the summer, the taste of a fresh strawberry, the light flooding in from her front window, a glass of warm milk at bedtime, the voice of a friend reading the paper aloud, the neighbor's cat who pops in for a visit, the blooms of the forsythia her mother planted - are all cause enough for simple and profound joy. There are fresh beauties all around, if you care to look. Ruth, who rarely leaves her home and lives almost completely in three rooms, has taught me to see the expansiveness of what is before me, even when, or perhaps especially when, it can seem so small, so limited. I cherish my dear friend: all the cups of tea we've shared, all the books we've read together, all the times we've just sat watching sparrows pick seed from the feeder, each moment unfolding simply, beautifully before us.

Friends enjoying one another

Skiing!

2009-01-07T21:27:00.004-07:00

Than and Kara and I took the boys for a ski yesterday - well, we skied and the boys rode along, Seth snoozing and Corin enjoying the sleigh ride. "The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifting snow. Oh, over the river and through the woods... " In this case I was the horse attached to the buggy. But what a beautiful afternoon it was. It snowed while we were skiing and the trees kept sloughing great heaps from their boughs. Even though I was huffing it up hill and down, it felt great to be out amongst the trees, alongside the creek, in the twisting snow.

Doubling as a Pack Horse

Kara on skis

Than and Kara: Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Afternoon

Happy Birthday Seth

2009-01-05T20:26:00.007-07:00

On Saturday, we wound down our holiday season by celebrating Seth's third birthday. Seth's birthday arrives right when I am ready to be done with festivities, so the poor guy gets a bit of a short shrift. However, we did manage to make some birthday cupcakes, light some candles and throw together a bit of a party. It all turned out and he was pleased to finally be three, an age to which he has been aspiring since Corin had his birthday in September.

After two weeks of vacation, festivities, Christmas, New Years, birthday, sledding, and snow, I awoke this morning with one thought in my mind: routine! Monday morning, I salute you. Peanut butter and jelly packed in a dinosaur lunch sack, I salute you. Hats and coats and mittens and snowpants, I salute you. School drop-off, I salute you. I am always glad to see the holidays come and always glad to watch them go. I love feeling my days and weeks restored to their normal course, like a river regaining its banks. And so, not without gratitude for the past few weeks of holiday-time, I was pleased to take my children each to their respective schools this morning, and come home for a few hours of work. For everything, there is a season.

On another note, I received a bird book for Christmas that is filled with recorded bird calls. Seth loves the call of the Willow Ptarmigan and won't let us turn the page or play any other call. Over dinner this evening, we found ourselves trying to imitate the call with varying degrees of success. Tim was the unqualified winner, though Seth also does a creditable job. I highly recommend that you listen to the sound of the willow ptarmigan at this link: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/audio/Willow_Ptarmigan.html

If you listen to the link, you'll have some idea of what our dinner table sounded like this evening. You are welcome to join us for dinner any evening, price of admission: one Willow Ptarmigan imitation.

Happy New Year to each of you.

Merry Christmas. Happy Boxing Day

2008-12-26T17:53:00.005-07:00

Snow Angel

When my family spent a year in Kenya we became acquainted with the British (and post-British colonial) holiday known as Boxing Day. Boxing Day, December 26, (also known as St. Stephen's Day) was originally a day for charity. One can almost see a high-minded British lord giving his servants a special hamper of meats and sweets on Boxing Day. But despite the wonderful tradition, I have now seen another side of Boxing Day also fitting of the moniker. In this era of internet shopping and shipping at the holidays, my Boxing Day was full of breaking down the mountain of cardboard in my kitchen and making repeated trips to the car to pile the recycling. I am happy to report that my kitchen is mostly cardboard free. And now I have only to figure out what St. Stephen would have had to say about it.

We had a wonderful white Christmas complete with snow falling through out the day. The boys were appropriately giddy in the morning and spent most of the rest of the day (post gift opening) laying about amid the assorted fragments of ribbons and packaging and wrapping paper, playing with a few new toys. In the late afternoon our neighbor, Leslie, came over and we all went sledding, flying down the hill farther with each trip as we wore a track through the knee high cover. In the evening, Tim and I took the boys to our friend Ruth's who was celebrating her hundredth Christmas. Together the five of us had dinner, eating from Ruth's beautiful Christmas china, and enjoying the 97 year age span. It was a great end to Christmas day, celebratory and warmly full. I hope you each had a holiday that was warm and bright and truly merry.

Snow Walk on Monday

Happy Boys

Opening Presents

Ruth with her Christmas china

Earth stood hard as iron

2008-12-21T22:03:00.007-07:00

While the rest of the northern half of the country has been being socked with massive snowfall, we have been cold cold cold but relatively snow-less. The boys have been making due with the drifts that cover the ground, but their snow angels are poor specimens with bits of grass peeking through.

Tonight however, upon leaving church after the advent program, Lessons and Carols, we walked outside to find we were being snowed upon with large lacy flakes, the kind which meander down, twirling. It was a wonderful sight; the car was blanketed in the hour we'd been away from it, the trees reaching with full arms. Tomorrow I will take the boys sledding, we will have cold noses, we will pack snowballs and make hearty, grassless angels.

Lessons and Carols is one of my favorite services of the church year. Year to year it is the same: nine readings interspersed with carols. We sing some of the most beautiful hymns in the book, the ancient "Of the Father's Love Begotten" written by Marcus Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (348-410), the modern "A Stable Lamp is Lighted" written by Richard Wilbur (b. 1921), a former US poet laureate, a 15th C. German carol, "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" and the 19th C. "In the Bleak MidWinter" written by poet, Christina Rossetti.

There is something about each of these, a line or phrase, that keeps me coming back to them. In the Rossetti poem it is the whole of the first stanza "In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, long ago." In the German carol it is the repetition of the words, "when half spent was the night." In "Of the Father's Love Begotten," I love the words "he the source, the ending he." And in the Wilbur poem it is the beginning of the final stanza: "But now, as at the ending, the low is lifted high." There is such richness to these words, I could walk the hard freeze of my winter landscape all day and never wear through Rossetti's image: "frosty wind may moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone."

We have been busy this week with holiday things: Botanie's christmas party (our first year with enough employees to warrant a party!), our friends' annual white elephant exchange (we got a pocket screwdriver set, but missed the yodeling pickle) and several trips to the post office to mail off packages. The boys slept by the tree with Tim on Friday evening, a special holiday tradition that I remember seemed so magical, so wonder-full when I was a child, cozy in my sleeping bag by our glowing tree. This year, it was fun to come down to make my tea in the morning and find all three of my boys still fast asleep around our beautiful fir.

And in case you were hoping, as I was, that the Montana Grizzlies would come up with a National Championship, it was not to be. They lost (badly) to the U. of Richmond Spiders, who wrapped them up 24-7. The restaurant where we watched the game was not so jovial as last week when the Griz took the semi-finals. This time the cheering was replaced, for the most part, by groaning and other noises of exasperation. And Corin was duly pleased with the change in the decibel level.

Only a few days until Christmas, the snow continues to twirl and drift outside, and I wish you each a season that is full and bright. I'll leave off with the first stanza of the Wilbur poem:

A stable lamp is lighted Whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices, and every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry, and straw like gold shall shine;
A barn shall harbor heaven. A stall become a shrine.

Winter Finally Arrives

2008-12-14T21:46:00.004-07:00

Until Friday evening, our Missoula winter had yet to arrive. Last week when we cut our Christmas tree, the day was 50 degrees and we were shedding coats, the children pulling their sled through mud. On Friday night, however, the weather finally caught up with us and the thermometer has since been hovering around zero with a wind chill far into the negative twenties. We woke on Saturday morning to our first snow of the season and shoveled our walks only to have them covered again by blowing drifts.

I guess the season of wet boots, soggy mittens, piled snow pants, and snowy hats littered around the door has officially begun. Though we bundled the kids and ourselves and tromped around the yard, making several snow angels and eating a few handfuls of powder, we didn't last out-of-doors for long. The wind was too blustery and the cold far too biting for any prolonged enjoyment of our first snow of the year. Instead we turned to the old indoor standby of the holiday season: cookie baking.

Our friend Mayumi was with us for a day before heading back to Japan for the winter break. She and the boys decorated Christmas trees, stars, bells, and candy cane cutouts.

The boys ate more frosting than they decorated with:

Our weather for the coming week looks like a prescription for more hunkering down:

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
-1° F \| -15° F -18° C \| -26° C	2° F \| -13° F -17° C \| -25° C	9° F \| 0° F -13° C \| -18° C	11° F \| 0° F -12° C \| -18° C	11° F \| -6° F -12° C \| -21° C

With a high of -1 tomorrow, I think the boys and I will be doing all our Christmas baking in the next few days. And, hopefully, finding less sugary ways to beat cabin fever.

On another note altogether... some of you may know that I have a sort-of-secret love of football and am thus pleased to say that the Montana Grizzlies are headed to the National Championship (Division 1-AA) after a big win over JMU (for you few VA folk that might be reading this). Tim and the boys and I joined my cousins and our friend Elsa at a local restaurant to watch the game and found ourselves along with the entire population of diners and drinkers yelling and giving high-fives to everyone around. The only person not enjoying the win was Corin who thought the whole thing was "too loud" and in general doesn't like it when adults are acting atypical - which for us watching televised sports, much less yelling loudly in public places, certainly qualifies.

And on a final note, Seth has been donning his Santa hat and walking around crouched and growling, like a T-Rex. We couldn't figure out what he was doing until he started repeating: "Santa Claus" (growl) "Santa Claus" (growl). It was then we realized he had confused "Claus" and "claws" and was acting in accordance with how he thinks Santa Claws would act. Sort of makes for an interesting twist on the old guy, don't you think? Sounds like a scary movie trailer: Better watch out, better not cry, better not shout I'm telling you why. Santa Claws is coming to town.....rrrrr.....

O Tannenbaum!

2008-12-08T21:55:00.005-07:00

The tree is up. And beautiful.

Kara and Than helping the boys decorate

Tim trimming the top

Seth snitching Tim's tea

A Winter Outing

2008-12-06T20:57:00.007-07:00

Since moving to Montana, Tim and I have grown a fondness for wispy, wild-harvest, Christmas trees. While some might call them (as several members of our family have) Charlie Brown trees, our love of them grows every year and their tree farm counterparts have begun to seem a bit overdone. I mean no slight on those tree-lot types as I've spent a good many cheery Christmases huddled around them, its just to say that our sensibilities have migrated during our years in the west. When we lived in Arlee, Tim and I would walk out our back gate and slip into the hills behind our house to trim a small scraggly bit of fir. We never knew whose land it was and never once saw another person tramping around back there.

Since we've been in Missoula, we've just selected a tree from one of the many tree-kiosks that spring to life in parking lots across town. The boys and I have waited coldly stamping our feet and blowing into our hands, while Tim has stood up one tree after another for our appraisal. This year, however, we decided to do it right.

On Thursday, the boys and I drove to the Lolo National Forest headquarters to buy a permit ($5) which entitled us to cut one tree (under twelve feet) from anywhere in the forest, save designated recreation or wilderness areas. Today, the four of us, met up with our good friends the Earnests, and bundled off to the Lee Creek drainage just beyond Lolo Hot Springs. The year has been remarkable for its lack of snow and unseasonably warm temperatures. Our friends have a tradition of harvesting their Christmas tree up Lee Creek and usually have to snowshoe in some distance beyond where the road is closed, but as there was no snow this year we drove up, parked to one side of the narrow two-track, and jumped across the small creek. Ally and I set up a winter picnic: oranges, pumpkin pie and almonds, hot chocolate and peppermint tea. The kids got down to the business of munching and climbing over logs while the dads scouted out trees. In a few minutes each family had a beautiful fir and plenty of extra greenery for door swags. The sky pitched gloriously blue above the ridge and we sat enjoying the sunshine, the winter light, the sound of the creek shuttling by. I have loved every Christmas tree that has ever graced my life, but this one stands alone for its memorable retrieval.

Winter Picnic

The boys

Corin, Seth, Ella, Margaux

Lindsay and Ally

Ice on Lee Creek

December Opening

2008-12-02T22:30:00.009-07:00

On Sunday, Corin and I built an Advent wreath, pinning evergreen clippings around four tall tapers. Each time we pulled a fir branch out of the pile of pine, spruce and cedar clippings, Corin exclaimed, as if recognizing an old friend, "Doug Fir!"

We lit our first Advent candle last night, watched the flame flick on just one long purple candle while the others sat dark, waiting. There is an asymmetry to this that is somehow compelling...

These days are short on light. The sun rises just a little east of south and draws a shallow arc across the valley before setting again. While the daytime skies have been a little flat and gray, the night skies have been incredible. At this time of year, I am always happy to see the return of the winter constellations; I love seeing Orion back in the sky, I love catching sight of the Pleiades (my knowledge of the star groupings is minimal, so I feel a bit like Corin yelling "Doug Fir"- any familiarity pleases me). Last night the moon, Jupiter and Venus looked close to each other, though as Tim explained to the boys, while holding several tennis balls aloft in demonstration, theirs is a closeness of perspective not a closeness of distance. All the same, the convergence was beautiful on a clear December night - and well worth tramping into the dark street for the view.

Today, the boys and my cousin, Kara, and I walked the gulch trail behind the ridge close to our house. There is something wonderful about this trail- it is just a pitch of the hill away from downtown and yet seems a completely separate, nestled world. Corin skipped ahead of us wearing his father christmas hat (with'Lindsay' written in sparkles across the fold) over top of the green stocking cap Kara knit him for his birthday. I love watching Corin move through life, still so much at ease with himself, still innocent of the self-censure that is sure to come before long. Who knows if next year he will still think wearing his mother's old Christmas cap atop another hat while skipping up the trail is a good thing to do? But for now, while it lasts, I mark it with gratitude and try to keep up as my two boys step sure-footed down the trail ahead of me.

Pictures from the gulch:
Corin in his caps

Seth

Kara and a red-berried Mountain Ash

Cloudscape above the ridge

Visitors

2008-11-30T15:49:00.003-07:00

On Friday evening as I was closing the shades, I looked out the window and saw two small puppies huddled outside, looking forlorn, dirty, and lost. Tim and the boys went outside and brought them in, fed them some leftover turkey, and got them warm. They settled happily into life here, and the boys cherished great hopes of adding them to our family. Tim and I were up with the dogs three times through the night, cementing the decision we had made before they were even in the house, that they would not be staying. There were moments of wavering... however, the pups went to find other homes yesterday evening. Just in time for Christmas.

The Visitors

Boys and Dogs

Happy Thanksgiving

2008-11-28T15:07:00.007-07:00

A good thanksgiving day Thursday...

On Tuesday evening, Tim and I made pumpkin rolls, a favorite Thanksgiving tradition we inherited from his mom. This is a time consuming, though ultimately tasty process. It involves mixing and baking the rolls, then rolling them in floured towels while they cool, then unrolling them the next day and spreading the cream cheese frosting inside, then re-rolling, dusting with powder sugar, serving and eating! Here is Tim mid-process.

On Wednesday, the boys and I brought one of our pumpkin rolls up to our neighbors in Arlee, another special part of our Montana Thanksgiving tradition - and likely the thing we do that most closely parallels the traditional, though highly-revised, Thanksgiving story: The west-arriving settlers appreciate what they've learned from Native Americans regarding how to live in the New World. Every Thanksgiving, we too are reminded of our own gratitude toward our first Montana friends, Snuse and Christine McClure, who are native, and who taught us a good deal about what it is to live in the West.

Thanksgiving was a bright clear day and full of friends. Our good buddy, Steve, flew in from Vancouver to celebrate the holiday with us. There were 12 here for dinner, though, I think, we must have had food for 30. A warm, abundant, time, just as Thanksgiving should be.

A brisk walk along the creek on Friday (and a last piece of pumpkin roll) rounded out the holiday festivities, just in time for Advent to open before us.

Steve and Corin: Tree Climbers

Along the Creek

While Away

2008-11-24T20:26:00.005-07:00

Last night, I returned from four days in Portland, OR. It was a perfect trip starting and ending with three hours of driving between Missoula and Spokane (from where I flew the rest of the way). Three hours of silence and solo time are a rarity in life and I was grateful for the time to be alone driving through the spare winter landscape of western Montana and the Idaho panhandle.

In Portland, I attended my cousin's sweet-heartfelt-joyous-fun-memorable wedding; huddled around a bistro table with my mother and Auntie Jill eating croissants; watched the mist rise on the Clackamas river; talked talked talked with far-flung family; attended church with my cousin Lukas and friend Suzy; walked around under arching empty trees with great black branches.

Tim and the boys held down the fort in Missoula. Their boy-time ran to more frozen pizzas and rootbeer floats than was strictly necessary, but, high fructose corn syrup aside, the boys had a wonderful time palling around with their dad. Tim and Than took them hiking up Mt. Jumbo on Sunday, which was deeply blue-skied, and at the house the boys invented games to keep them well occupied.

Hiking on Jumbo

"We don't have a fire truck, but that's ok because we have a fire bike."

Fresh and Clean Menagerie

According to the church calendar, this past Sunday marked the close of the year. Advent, which begins next week, is the opening of the church year. Somehow my trip to Portland seemed a fitting end - a restful space - to close out the year and get ready to begin all things again.

Time and the way it bends

2008-11-16T21:37:00.005-07:00

Recently, Corin has grown an interest in all things outer-space. The recipient of a closet cleaning, the dramatic play area of his classroom acquired several old computer screens, calculators and switch boards - enough to launch the boys' rocket ship fantasies (so to speak). As a result, along with a healthy dose of imaginary adventures to distant planets, Corin has a sudden and real interest in the workings of the solar system, the concept of living on a planet, the idea of the sun being one among billions of stars in a single galaxy among billions of galaxies. As someone with little knowledge of astronomy, I have turned to that ever-ready source of good information: youtube, in order to help my son (and me!) have a better appreciation of the universe and, as the Book of Common Prayer would call it, "this fragile Earth, our island home."

Here are two great videos to help put things into perspective. Or, if you are like me and rather prone to feel your sense of proportion and place go a bit wobbly when you start thinking beyond the planet, then these may serve to blow things right out of perspective.

Planets and stars in scale: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfs1t-2rrOM
Journey to the edge of the universe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr7wNQw12l8

Annie Dillard writes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: "We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what is going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise."

I had not thought of that quote in quite awhile and found it coming to mind after this little space odyssey that has been opening up before us. The thing is, the swaddling band is not dark but light - filled with stars and galaxies beyond counting - and somehow it seems like it would be easier to comprehend if it were pared down considerably: wonder gets a little dizzying when you start adding zeros.

However, taking the wider view does not necessarily demand astronomical forays. This very place is stocked with wonder enough. On a recent rainy Saturday, I took a small personal retreat with the Montana Natural History Center to go on a Glacial Lake Missoula field trip. During the last ice age, a large lobe of the Purcell Glacier impounded a vast lake behind it filling much of western Montana with water. This lake, known as Glacial Lake Missoula, contained more than 500 cubic miles of water which, when the ice dam broke, rushed to the Pacific, scouring and chaneling Washington and Oregon on its way. I do not understand the geology of all this, but am told that this happened many times over. Geologists dispute the numbers of fillings and emptyings of the lake, but agree that it happened dozens of times (I believe a conservative estimate is in the 40s). The land on which I walk about, I take my sons' hands to cross the street, I have made my home, this land was under more than 950 feet of water.

We walk about on an old and vast lake bottom. Perhaps, this is nothing so very wonderful, the world has long been changing and will continue to do so given the arc of time. But somehow, when I take my boys up on the surrounding mountains where the lake surface used to lap and when we run our fingers over the rocks, ridged and rippled by that long ago water, the place stretches me, even as it destabilizies my capacity to "look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what is going on here."

Whether wondering at a landscape that was filled and formed by water, or losing my senses to the vastness of our solar system, (...much less our galaxy, ...much less our universe), I feel the stretch and bend of things that extend so endlessly beyond my small concerns, and somehow through this I meet again, as if for the first time, the here-now of my own life and home.

Rainy Day

2008-11-13T13:24:00.007-07:00

It has been a blustery day here, one in a string of several we've been experiencing. The wind has been pulling the last few leaves from our apple tree though a handful of apples continue to cling. A pileated woodpecker visited our tree again today. The boys and I sat watching him, our elbows resting on the low sill. His bright red head flashed amid the gray branches and gray sky, a welcome visitor, surely.

Here are a few recent pictures.

The boys looking very serious.

The four of us at Rob and Becky's wedding last month.

Corin and I enjoyed canoeing in New Hampshire.

Welcome

2008-11-12T20:31:00.002-07:00

This blog is a new undertaking for the heretofore blog/vlog/twitter/facebook/myspace -phobic Iudijoss clan. However, it has come to our attention that we do, in fact, enjoy checking other people's blogs and find it a good way to get a sense of the day-to-day with at-a-distance friends and family. Thus if you are interested in checking in on us via the blog, we welcome you.