we're alright

I won't start with apologies for the year and a half that has past since I wrote here last.

I won't pretend that I know I'll come back here, though I'd like to think I will.

I'd like to come back to this journal, this place where I thought about being a mom. Where I thought about family. Where I thought about how those things intersected with a person who felt like, feels like, more than those things.

The last few years have been a swirl of children: my four (with a fifth on the way in January), and my three nephews and one niece who live within ten minutes of me.

I've focused my creative energy on building up my photography (both as what I'd like to believe is art and as business- Brackish Photography, if you want to take a look).

The rest has been days spent homeschooling Gus and Arlo, while Sena for all intents and purposes completely homeschools herself. It's been avoiding housework and trying to sneak out with friends from time to time. It's been stirring meat and vegetables.  It's been reading less than I'd like and hardly writing at all. It's been the beautiful and the mundane.

Maybe I'll be back on Monday. Maybe I'll tell you about what we did this weekend. Maybe next week I'll show bits and pieces of our home. Maybe I'll sink deep into my thoughts and share them.

Or maybe another year will pass and my sister Claire and my mom and dad will lament that I stopped doing this and I'll look here again and feel a pang of regret.

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with just one

A couple of weeks ago, right before I came down with the flu and was housebound for nearly two weeks, the three big kids went to Ocracoke with my mom, leaving Tom and I with only Alamae for five days straight.

Now when you only have one child, having one child seems like quite a lot of work. Back when there was only Sena, five days straight with only Sena felt like life. A life that had difficult moments and joyful moments of joy, but very few relaxing moments.

However, once you add three more kids to the mix, going down to just one is relaxing. So relaxing that you invite yourself to your best friends' apartment for a sleepover/ mini-vacation because what's one, single kid?

We ate Mexican food and stayed up late drinking tequila and walked for coffees the next morning. We ate a beautiful breakfast on their sun-streaked dining room table and then explored their antique store when they had to go open their doors.

But really, the time spent with just one daughter was actually far more profound than a great weekend. It was about getting to see Alamae for who she is without the influence or distraction of older siblings. It gave me time to tickle her toes and carry her around on my shoulders and decipher her words. It gave me the space to fall deeply in love with my two year old girl.

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This Weekend We

I don't think my dad likes it when I post on Brackish Photography instead of posting here. He has a soft spot for Our Buzzards. 

But seeing as the great almighty Google gives preference to websites that update often, and I need that website to be trafficked in a way I don't need this one to, I posted my farm weekend pictures over there. 

I miss this place like a friend I haven't seen in ages. The type who you store up stories for. The type you know you still love even when it has been too long and who once you see, you will fall in to your old rhythm with.

For now, four kids, homeschooling, watching my niece and nephew, running a business, activism, friendships, homemaking and the like take up the bulk of my time. But soon. Soon Alamae and Jettie will need me less. There will be longer pockets where I can sit in stillness to collect my thoughts. I feel them off in the distance. 

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Now He Is 10

On Monday, Gus turned ten.

On Sunday, we had a family dinner in his honor, the menu, bangers and mash, was changed last minute to pizza and grilled sausage because the weather was beautiful and I could not bear the thought of going in to cook.

On Monday, he went to play laser tag with Tom and a friend. Tom is quick to tell that he won two of the three rounds.

Two nights ago we ate apple cobbler for dessert because it didn't materialize for his family dinner.

Tonight two friends are sleeping over. There will be a bonfire. The kids will run around the dark yard trying their best to scare one another. And my Augustus, will have been completely and thoroughly celebrated.

Which is as it should be because his very name means great or important. I know my mother eyes are biased, but I see great and important things in his future. I see his charming kindness ushering forth a movement. I don't know how large or small, but I know the world is a better place from having my son in it.

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Brackish Reflections

It started with the photography business; as I put creative energy in to it, I started to neglect this.

And then the election ripped the ground from under my feet, and I was having a hard time finding how to exist here without ranting, wailing, crying. 

I feel out of practice. There are so many thoughts swirling, and I can't quite remember how I let them come to fill the screen. 

Over the past four years, the practice of documenting my family has brought be immeasurable joy. But truthfully, I started to become self-conscious saying the same things over and over again. Repeating myself and repeating what so many other mothers are saying across this wide web. But I want to return to that even if it means I will be repeating the same few ideas ad neuseam. Even if it means the occasional rant, now and again. Because there is value in giving my thoughts space to settle. In allowing myself moments of reflection. 

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