My home is currently steeped in the mysterious and mythological. Gavi is reading/ re-reading The 39 Clues series, and Jesse & Keren are into Percy Jackson. History, mystery and mythology entwines in both. It seems appropriate that when I sat at the computer and started iTunes the song "Icarus Is Falling" by Steve Krause (a good friend who just put out his 2nd album) started up. (I have my fav mellow songs on a play list set to shuffle.)
Today I had to take Jesse for blood work for his HSP. This disease has been quite the trip. At Sick Kids residents knocked on our door to check out Jesse's rash (actually small hemorrhages on the skin). When we went out Saturday night, our friend Patrick (a pathologist) excitedly asked to see the rash, and today our Pediatrician's med student was practically giddy at the idea of examining Jesse. I find myself in the strange position of educating the next generation of doctors. Jesse has a text book case, and countless times I have described the progression of symptoms watching med students and residents examine Jesse's rash with the same joy and wonder in their faces as Jesse when he first saw the circus.
[Shortly after Keren was born the Clyde Beatty Cole Brothers Circus came to Jacksonville, NC. Jesse and I rose at dawn and drove to the site to watch the big top being erected. We sat on the tailgate of our van drinking hot cocoa in the morning cold as the tent was slowly raised. Afterward, we wandered through the paddocks checking out the horses, zebras, and elephants. I have been to the circus many times, but only that day did I really get to experience the circus, not to mention a special morning with my son. We returned later that week to watch the show.]
Driving up Wilson Heights Blvd there is an open field to your left. (I think it's used for practice for city services.) Currenly it's a beautiful smooth, unbroken expanse of snow. Rising up in the middle is a bus station. It serves no actual bus line, and sitting there it has a Narnian feel, and I expect to see a beaver waddle up to catch a bus or to speak to me.
Strangely the smooth snow is making me think of Hawaii. No, not in that way. It's amazing how easily we forget to look around us and enjoy where we are. Even in Hawaii it is possible to miss the rainbows. Winter is actually a beautiful season. Snowflakes are amazing! I've taken to wearing a wool coat instead of my ski jacket most days. When the snowflakes fall on the wool they don't melt immediately. Against the wool I can see the crystal structure of each individual snowflake, the winter equivalent to the wonder of a rainbow. Barukh Atah Hashem... oseh ma'aseh b'reishit; blessed are You, God, who formed the wonders of creation.
We're still in limbo. Sean has neither orders to stay in Japan, nor to go elsewhere, nor to come home. It's a strange state, and I half-expect a phone call at any time from him saying I'm on a lay-over in Chicago, my flight lands in five hours. When people ask what's happening or when Sean's coming home, my answer is "sometime between today and May."
It is thought that 80% of those with ADHD have a genetic predisposition. Given that my children were doomed. (Interestingly in the Percy Jackson book series, half-bloods, that is the children of mortals and Greek gods, often have ADHD. It is a trait of artists and heroes, dreamers and visionaries). For those of us on the border, stress is something that can push you over the edge. I don't feel stressed, but my home clearly shows I am. I keep beginning tasks only to move on to something else, and to something else, and to something else. I have dozens of half-begun chores and ideas, but few completed. It's making me a bit nutty, but also very hard to control. The piles and lists grow. Eventually it'll all be done, but for now my normal obsessive organization is suffering. There are, however, peanut butter cookies and blueberry cake to eat. On the plus side, a few jobs that had been put off indefinitely have been done. The amazingly ugly light fixture over the medicine chess in the kids' bathroom is gone. The hole and wires capped. Many paint cracks in our walls are fixed (although with a house that's almost 50 years old there are more to fix). After a year and a half in the house we've settled, and I've moved into making it our own.
I love the view from my kitchen window. I am sitting at the computer (when I should be making my lunch) with the window in front of me. The trees are dusted with snow. Squirrels jump from branch to branch causing small avalanches. Sometimes the come to the window as if to say, "Where's the leftover challah from this week?!" The sky is white today above the trees, but bright. A light breeze is blowing, just barely moving the branches. Sometimes hawks visit from the nearby ravine. There's a calmness outside that easily transfers to a calmness inside.
Now if only the squirrels would do my laundry...
