equal day // equal night

Last night was perfect beauty. Not quite summer, not quite fall. Standing in the middle of the equal day and the equal night; the space between seasons. We made a fire and watched the sun slide its glow over the just-starting-to-change leaves and past the roof line down the windows. A perfect amber light. 

While Chris and I moved the chicken tractor and admired the flock; and the whole everything of the homestead, a near nightly gratitude practice; Freddy let his imagination unfurl into the mud kitchen and over the hillside. The dogs were there too, of course, and thank goodness for their ever presence now especially as they amble through their golden years. Almanzo will still leap high on occasion for a frisbee. Jeb mostly lounges and watches. He waits for Freddy to scratch his flank and remove his collar. Tuti will try to eat as much chicken shit as she can before we notice. She is very cute but she is very gross. 

I love the way the evening unfolds this time of year. The call to set a fire and eat dinner outside and just take it all in. Every little drop of these shimmering days. Before the first freeze, fires in the wood stove around the clock, and the constant tending that is living a winter in the North.

Freddy and I did the big grocery shop Sunday morning. We had stretched it as far as we possibly could and we needed the hefty resupply that speaks to a fifteen-year-old man-child living on the premises. It took far too long and we both mostly decompensated, entertaining ourselves and one another with the gobble gobble gobble turkey song that we learned once upon a time from who knows where. Freddy’s just about got the whole thing on his own now. So close.

Once it was mostly dark and the smores were eaten and Chris had read three or four or five of Freddy’s current favorites, I was called in to snuggle. He was so tired and I knew it would be so short and honestly I never hesitate no matter how long it might take. Even if it sticks a fork in my evening and any of my ambition. After he was a turtle egg that hatched a time or two he crawled into the freddy -sized cave of my body.

He was doing some kinda whisper singing and when I asked him what it was he said that he was telling himself a story. I said I loved that so much and did you know that Eider tells himself stories all of the time and he has since he was even smaller than you? It is how Eider has always decompressed and self-regulated and it is something that the rest of us are likewise soothed by just in our own proximity to the behavior. It is sweet and simple, tender and so wonderfully pure. Freddy said he could tell his story for both of us and while I held him he continued to mumble-whisper-sing, sometimes a piece of the turkey tune, a lyric or two, sneaking in.

I choose to give myself to the stories. To the worlds that he’s building for himself, for me too. I give myself again and again to these moments of peering through my child and into the infinite. I want to hold nothing back. Why would I? How could I? So that I might save myself from some unknown future and utterly unavoidable devastation? No. I surrendered long ago. And I am reminded to renew my commitment to this path so many times every single day. This is it. This is the way. Surrender infinitely, through all eternities. Through sickness. Through loss. Through departures. Through change. Through all of the endings that will each come when I am far from ready. Such gorgeous devastation.

In this life we all lose. It is guaranteed. And the most enormous triumph in the face of that singular horror is to give it all without hesitation and right into the face of fear. Yes to this. Yes to him. Yes to me. Yes to the shattered love of mothering.