Clean.

My blog is moving!

Big news, my friends! I'm moving my blog from here to my shiny new site, rachelwolfclean.com.

I think you'll find my new blog is nicer to look at, easier to navigate, and more mobile-friendly. Do tell me what you think! Then update your favorites folders, and head over to explore and subscribe.

I don't want to lose you in the switch, so I've added an email link to the front page to simplify you keeping up-to-date on new posts. 

See you there!

 

Love,

Rachel

Cold toes and rosy cheeks

Sorry for those of you who are tiring of my nostalgic "savor-this-moment" type of posts. But go with where you are, I say. And this is more certainly where I am.

At least today...

 

When I look back on when they were small, I remember endless hours strung out before us. We filled each one however we wished, with ice skates and and sleds, glue guns and scissors, tree forts and hiking trails, books and paints.

And each day poured seamlessly into the next.

That beautiful abundance of time is perhaps the one thing I am most grateful for from these 15-plus years of homeschooling. So much time! To get to know one another. To deepen our connection. To slow and learn and be.

There was no where else to be, and they have grown up just as slowly as they wished. We rarely found a need to hurry, something my children are especially grateful for (since it's something I do with embarrassingly little grace). I'm grateful, too.

But now, as life accelerates to a teenage pace, as more projects and work and obligations find their way onto many of our plates, open calendar days are suddenly scarce. When we have them I resist leaving the house, opting instead to revert back to those slow, delicious days that I remember.

 

And so yesterday, normally a stay-at-home-and-homescool day, when we had to venture out to check on something at LüSa, I decided to make the most of it. We called a couple of friends, then headed to the skating pond in a nearby valley. It was our first trip there all season, and Lupine's new skates could hardly wait to hit the ice. (Or perhaps it was Lupine who was the eager one.)

We spent a couple of hours there with friends, in the cold and quiet of the valley, laughing, skating, talking, and drinking cocoa before heading back to our safe and cozy nests once more.

Sage opted out of skating in exchange for some paid work, and I marveled at how quickly an all-play-no-work kid has become an ambitious young man.

His decision to stay back might have been what motivated me most yesterday - to tie on my own skates, to hold hands with this still young kid of mine, to play and laugh and be. Right here. Right now. Not later or tomorrow or when it's more convenient. But today - with cold toes, rosy cheeks, and the last vestiges of childhood still woven through my fingers.

 

Fleeting? Oh, my yes.

Fleeting indeed. 

 

But I plan to savor every drop.

 

 

Time

I've talked before about my bumpy, imperfect entrance into motherhood. I've shared with you my reflections on how fleeting this chapter of childhood truly is. 

But sometimes when we're standing in too close it can still be hard to see. 

So when our friends Kelly and Ray came out to reshoot our family photos for the LüSa Organics website, the side-by-side of these two sets of images took my breath away.

Especially when we realized that the first batch was taken only two years and a couple of months before the second. 

Two years. A blip. A blur!

And yet also a lifetime, during which Sage in particular transformed from little boy into young man. 

These images, caught at precisely the right moment (the first just before a major growth spurt and the latter just after) illuminated for me how very quickly these years unfold.

Because suddenly, here we stand.

I'm no longer the mother of young children.

The living room floor is free of toys, replaced instead by books and projects and research. The laundry is free of diapers, replaced by a another pair of jeans in the same size as Pete's and my own. The work of running a family - from caring for animals to cooking meals to laundry and dishes and housekeeping - no longer rests on the shoulders of adults alone, but is divide evenly among us. 

I am no longer the mother of young children. I am instead the mom of a young man and a young lady, both of them on the cusp of grown.

In an instant it happened. And here we stand. 

And as I look into these eyes and these faces I am lost for words but awash with gratitude for the time we have invested in these hearts, these minds, and these relationships.

However imperfect my mothering journey has been, today I am thankful for each time I managed to chose connection instead correction. I'm glad for the times I made space to play, or made time to refill my own cup so I would have more patience tomorrow. I'm grateful for the moments when - after I blew it as a mother - I found the humble courage to apologize. I'm grateful for listening without judgement and for simply holding space. 

I am crazy about my kids, you guys. As my kids, yes, but mostly as people. They are bright and kind and interesting and passionate. It isn't always easy (what worthwhile thing is?) and there are days when we're all in over our heads. (Exhibit A: me, the past two days, blowing it again and again.) But my dominant take-away is that being a mother is the most difficult, rewarding, transformative job I have ever had. 

I feel so grateful to have been here to witness, however blurred, their constant transformation toward adulthood.

And today I'm surprised to discover that I carry more confidence about them than worry, perhaps for the first time. 

Because now more than ever I'm aware that it's not kids I am raising - it's adults I am gently attempting to shape.

 

Though my time as a mother of kids (actual kids) is fleeting indeed, I am doing my best to raise them to be relentless questioners; forces for justice; and authentically, unapologetically, joyfully themselves. 

It's the least I can do.

Because it is exactly what they have both done for me. 

In the smallness that remains

I remember when you were new, tucked into the sling, your thumb in your mouth and your fingers brushing your brow. I felt the warmth of your smallness curled against my chest and the slow and steady rhythm of your breathing.

I bent forward to inhale deeply that intoxicating scent at the top of your head. Like every other mother before me.

Babies grown and gone, they still remember that smell.

 

And I inhaled of you again.

 

Let's linger here. Let's take this slow, I thought.

There was no need to race you toward bigness, because small is just right, too.

I didn't want to hurry you.

I had watched your brother grow from baby to toddler to boy before my eyes. In another instant you would both be grown, me holding memories where children had once been.

Why rush it along? It was my last chance. 

 

And so we lingered.

 

I said yes to long nursings and longer snuggles and to you asleep by my side in the stillness of the night. There was never any hurry, and I said yes to you growing up as slowly as you wished. 

The sling remained your nest, my arms your branches, my hand your sturdy hold. I let you set your own pace, because there was nowhere else to be but here. There was nothing else to be but small.

And then you grew.

Beautifully and magically you grew, from baby to toddler to girl before my eyes.

In another instant you would both be grown, me holding memories where children had once been. Why rush it along? It was my last chance.

 

So even still we linger, savoring that smallness that remains.

 

And then this week you looked at me with hopeful eyes. The same impossibly big, impossibly blue, impossibly deep eyes that peered up at me from your sling when you were brand new and I inhaled so deeply of your scent.

"Can we have a mama day," you asked standing at the brink of bigness? 

May we linger in the fading smallness that remains?

Oh, yes.

Please. Yes.

Right this minute, while we have the chance.

Yes to walks and snuggles and adventures. Yes to games and stories and projects. Yes to tea and popcorn and giggling, cuddled up together once again.

Yes to climbing trees and making plans and lingering here in the slow sweetness of this day - together.

Yes to savoring your smallness while we can, if only for another day.

 

And even now - especially now - there is no rush for either of us to be anywhere but here.

In the the beauty of the bigness as it melts away the smallness that remains.

 

Originally posted in 2015.

I remember when you were new, tucked into the sling, your thumb in your mouth and your fingers brushing your brow. I felt the warmth of your smallness curled against my chest and the slow and steady rhythm of your breathing.

I bent forward to inhale deeply that intoxicating scent at the top of your head. Like every other mother before me.

Babies grown and gone, they still remember that smell.

 

And I inhaled of you again.

 

Let's linger here. Let's take this slow, I thought.

There was no need to race you toward bigness, because small is just right, too.

I didn't want to hurry you.

I had watched your brother grow from baby to toddler to boy before my eyes. In another instant you would both be grown, me holding memories where children had once been.

Why rush it along? It was my last chance. 

 

And so we lingered.

 

I said yes to long nursings and longer snuggles and to you asleep by my side in the stillness of the night. There was never any hurry, and I said yes to you growing up as slowly as you wished. 

The sling remained your nest, my arms your branches, my hand your sturdy hold. I let you set your own pace, because there was nowhere else to be but here. There was nothing else to be but small.

And then you grew.

Beautifully and magically you grew, from baby to toddler to girl before my eyes.

In another instant you would both be grown, me holding memories where children had once been. Why rush it along? It was my last chance.

 

So even still we linger, savoring that smallness that remains.

 

And then this week you looked at me with hopeful eyes. The same impossibly big, impossibly blue, impossibly deep eyes that peered up at me from your sling when you were brand new and I inhaled so deeply of your scent.

"Can we have a mama day," you asked standing at the brink of bigness? 

May we linger in the fading smallness that remains?

Oh, yes.

Please. Yes.

Right this minute, while we have the chance.

Yes to walks and snuggles and adventures. Yes to games and stories and projects. Yes to tea and popcorn and giggling, cuddled up together once again.

Yes to climbing trees and making plans and lingering here in the slow sweetness of this day - together.

Yes to savoring your smallness while we can, if only for another day.

 

And even now - especially now - there is no rush for either of us to be anywhere but here.

In the the beauty of the bigness as it melts away the smallness that remains.

 

Originally posted in 2015.

Looking back

Fourteen years ago, when Sage was just one year old, we wrangled him into Pete's old leather jacket on the day after his birthday. We propped him up on our vintage purple couch and took a few photos (on film, of course), the mid-day light streaming in the western windows of our little hillside home.

I remember laughing as we tried in vain to stuff his little arms into the massive sleeves. There was no point even trying, so we wrapped the coat around his shoulders instead. He smiled away happily - no teeth yet, but lots of gums. 

Looking back at that face, it's easy to remember our life then. What was hard, what was good, and all that had yet to come.

Each year the jacket photo tradition was repeated.

I remember details of our life in each picture: which house we lived in; if they were pre- or post-seizures; before or after our move to town; when our family of three became four. 

And like a metronome, this somewhat silly, somewhat sentimental tradition marks the rhythm of my motherhood, reminding me of the constant flow of time. That nothing lasts forever. 

What is hard in our life ever shifts, what is good continues to ebb and flow, and what had yet to come arrives slowly with each passing year. 

When Sage was small I would sing "Sweet Baby James" to him while he drifted off to sleep. Do you remember that line "with ten miles behind me, and ten thousand more to go"? (I always sang it with "us" instead of "me".) That line always hung in my mind. 

Because then it was true.

Today it is not. 

And this year (as if to prove the point) quite suddenly and surprising us all, the jacket fits.

Fifteen years have flown by, and that baby - the one who turned my life upside down and made me into a mother - is nearly grown.

I went to the basement this morning and pulled out the pictures from the first five years (pre-digital) and loaded the rest onto my screen. And as I look through those piles of dusty jacket photos, one per year for the past fifteen, the flood of memories come rushing in.

I'll be the first to admit that the baby years can be unreasonably, incomprehensibly hard. No, perhaps not for all parents or for all babies, but for many of us they are. For us it certainly was. 

No one warned us that it would be so hard, and we were thrown into it blind. Disoriented and exhausted I remember wondering, "Why?! Why did we do this?"

And why did no one tell us it would be so hard? 

Perhaps the why is this: they grow. They grow and they change and they amaze you and inspire you and fill your heart with the most indescribable mix of hope and fear all in one go.

And suddenly the person who stands before you has taught you more about yourself, about life, about love and trust and courage and patience than anyone else you have ever known.

And those gray, foggy, tear-streaked baby days? They fade. They stop hurting. They become nothing more than stories.

Maybe that's why no one warns you. Because everything that comes after shifts your perspective forever.

Or perhaps it's because they think that if you knew you might not have the courage to do it anyway. 

And the cost is worth the reward, a thousand fold.

What is hard in our life ever shifts, what is good continues to ebb and flow, and what had yet to come arrives slowly with each passing year.

And it's not just my teen who's growing up before my eyes. My daughter is doing it, too. Nearly 11 now, she knows who she is better than I did at twice her age. Confident, bright, a shining light in the darkness.

And before we know it, this jacket, too, (made a lifetime ago for her mother's mother's mother) will fit.

And all too soon October will cease to bring with it our annual ice cream bribe and an afternoon spent marking time out in the yard.

So what can I say, mamas of little ones, except this: if the chapter you stand in is unbelievably hard, know that you do not stand in that pain alone. Do what you can to simply survive this day. Remember to eat, to drink water, and sleep when and if you possibly can. Find forgiveness and grace wherever you're able, and just make it through today if that's the best that you've got.

The dishes can wait. The laundry can wait. Everything but you and this baby can wait. 

You're not doing it wrong. It's just that sometimes it is unbelievably hard.

(And no, despite the constant questions you must field, babies aren't designed to sleep through the night. Tell them to stop asking.)

Find help where you can - in a neighbor, a partner, or a friend. You weren't meant to do this alone.

 

If it's not so hard for you right now then simply savor. Savor the taste of your coffee in the morning, the sun on the October hills, the respite of a hot bath, a long walk, or a good sleep.

But most of all savor these amazing people who picked you (flawed, imperfect, human you) to lead them along this path. 

And know that each day brings with it another chance for you to be amazed.  

Parenting wasn't meant to be easy. But it was meant to change you in ways that you never imagined. 

 

Strength and beauty

Lupine started taking ariel silks this summer. And as a parent, it's hard to explain my experience watching her dangle from her ankle with no harness or safety rope a dozen or two feet off the ground. 

I mean honestly. Think that through.

It's an exercise in trust.

Trust in the silk, trust in her teacher, trust in her abilities. Trust in her knowledge - after only a handful of classes - of how to wrap that gauzy strip of fabric so that it will hold her tight and keep her safe from the unforgiving tug of gravity.

Parenting is like that, isn't it? A life-long exercise in trust, in allowing, in letting go. In trying not to hold our breath as they venture further and further from the safety of our orbit.

 

So as I watch her hanging precariously by her ankle I whisper to myself, "She's fine. She's fine. She's fine."

It's my mantra every time she (or any of her friends) ascends the silk. I've been whispering it for years, any time either of my kids steps further from the safety of my arms and into their own wonderful and unscripted future.

 

And aside from my process watching her, what of her own experience up there on that silk?

What about learning the lesson, just before puberty - as a girl growing up in a culture that has managed to sexualize and objectify all that she may become - that strong is beautiful. That the latter can not truly exist without the former.

That their beauty is their strength. Be it physical, intellectual, creative, or emotional.

Because up on these silks? These girls are beautiful. They are inspiring! But their beauty is only an extension of how powerful and confident each of them truly is. No apologies, no passivity, no "I can't" - just a group of rough-and-tumble kids exploring their power as they grow into womanhood.

I mean truly - how beautiful is that?

And they climb and they soar and they learn to trust their bodies and themselves.

Beauty from their strength. Not the other way around.

What a powerful message for them at this age of between.

What a powerful message for us all.