nomad this

Sept-Oct 2022

There is poetry in these days but I don’t write it. In the wake sleep wake pattern of long nights with our crying son. In the sniffles of a sick baby and the raspy breathing and my mama heart clenching. There is poetry in this move, in the uhaul passing through hill country and purple flowers and 20-second rain showers, taking us to the beginning of the rest of our lives but far away from family and home. 

There is color in the newness. In this town’s railroad tracks and our mouths numb from eating too-spicy food again and the green humidity and the red mosquito bites and our cream floor tiles and Williams shrieks and laughs when kaleb tickles and kisses him on the couch. 

We are waiting in the in between, we are new to this town, we are asking for help unloading our truck, we are learning the right temperature for our thermostat in humidity, we are buying tennis rackets and eating more lasagna than we want.

We 

Are

Time is passing in a funny way and it’s been two years of marriage 

And five years since home from the mission and 

seven years 

since done with high school and I will be 26 and I forget to write in my journal now.

I grew up.

Got too big for the playground now I play with my baby boy on the ground and stroll on long walks around the neighborhood.

I listen to the school kids on their recess break and I puzzle that was not just yesterday anymore and my soccer team is all married and some are already the parent on the sidelines with the orange slices. 

I look around this Texas air and the light falling in through the window onto tall green plants and I am looking for the poetry in my life, I'm cultivating it and the Texas growing season is funky so I don't know when it'll come, but I will harvest. I will harvest powerful words and feelings and lessons learned through moves and separations and growing up and I will be richer than I ever thought 

with my baskets and arms full of 

(mosquito bites & burp cloths & moving boxes & my husband &)

this. 

MIL is watching hallmark

I am not a hallmark movie

my house is messy, I don't brush my hair and I purchased foundation for the first time for my wedding

I am married to a man who is not Prince Charming 

(and I’m not cinderella)

and sometimes we go to bed angry

and sometimes I'm tired at the same time he is 

and it hurts.

"love is meant to be an adventure"

is it?

Love is quiet, a slow gentle hum that is 

sometimes sad

sometimes breathtakingly simple (and I cry happiness)

sometimes so big I could share it with the world and have leftovers

sometimes hurts like 

my ankle,

staying home Saturday and Tuesday and today 

laying in bed at night angry, crying

and it is also precious like

Willy (chubby knuckles fussy hours left-cheek-dimpled-squinting-eyes laugh) 

kitchen swing dances

gardening at sundown

My life is not always Christmas 

drenched in romantic moments and background holiday music

I have not arrived at happily ever after

take a bath in some authenticity

hear the fights

touch the tomato stems

take the fall and still trust your husband 

laugh with your baby boy

stay up through the night with that baby boy

pack up and move

struggle with your mom

learn over years to love yourself, really honestly love who you are

I am living the human experience

and it is 

full.

when

(written March 17th) 

Day four. 

Day four, waiting for your day one. 

month 9, waiting for breath 1.

year 25, year 25, rows of little socks (with sheep, and geese, and little bear faces) in the top drawer and stomach cramps telling me we're getting closer to our first years as us with you.

day four, waiting for your day one. 

day four practicing Deux Arabesque, wistfully thinking about playing it as I'm in labor with you, but our downstairs neighbors will probably be sleeping and we’re still on

(monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) 

day four thinking it’s our last day before your first day

Day 4 of waves rocking you closer to us

Day four, waiting for day one

looking left

look left.

he's driving, we're passing malls from freeways, dark through the window and in the car and I'm frozen looking at his face.

There's a feeling in the car. There's a feeling when I look left.

The feeling is spreading warmth in my chest, I feel it in my face and my hands, the warmth, and there's a tingle on the rims of my eyes and a pleasant tightness behind my eyes and this is part of how the moment feels. Its overflowing.

We sound like car-at-night sounds. Passing cars, music from a phone/bluetooth (I don't remember which song), he's probably talking or singing along,

and I am filled with this feeling and the feeling of wealth. abundance. complete bliss. This is wealth. He loves me. He is good. I love him. We are here. These moments are passing and we'll be parents soon.

For now, it's just me and him. I'll look back to this forever. 

These will be brief days that went so quickly and we'll never have back.

We'll have good things ahead, better. 

But this, is so good. It tastes like the sweetest flavor I know, to be here tonight in this car, me and him, long drive home, looking left.

love like berries

Logic from pre-marriage, a 2-years-ago draft:

love like raspberries.
I can go a month without eating raspberries and still love them just as much. the period of time between raspberry eatings doesn't change how much I love them once I'm eating them. I function very well when I am not eating raspberries and my lack of raspberry eating doesn't ruin my life, distract me terribly, or sour everything else.

With Kaleb, I never see him in the daytime anymore and hardly at night. Normally just a few minutes in the morning, and some weekends. It's hard. I'd like things to be more like my relationship with raspberries. It's so much easier. With Kaleb, I am going to go six months or several months without seeing him, and it's going to be hard. He won't be around, for me or our kids, sometimes. I hope that at these times we can be more like raspberry eaters.

I also don't get really sad and function poorly at the prospect and fear of knowing someday I won't have raspberries for a few months, or knowing that they might be a scarcity in my life. No, I love them and there will always be more at some point and that's alright.

literally, he's a drug. 

(drugs don't serve you. . . 

raspberries do)

making gold

The child wears no shoes.

A traveling man, sandals worn thin 

he sways raggedly, eyes in mourning

Grim legs have borne many knights far 

(they are) come too late for their king.

Too late for his final breaths.

too late yet thousands of years remain, transfixed, 

pulled by their heartstrings to their master's, to the chords he played.

by His fiber that winds the world in from the great spool of His heart, bringing to him

bringing feet and hearts tearing at the Earth pleading

                    Take me to Him!

Let me feel the heather where his blood will fall

tread with pain and tears His walk

let me feel his gaze, his 

real

-ness and I will follow!

Follow.

                            Blood so thick it has dyed the angels' wings

                His love strong and brilliant it turns the world

                Gold

the sky, 

our walls melt

                He re forms life

He 

is the alchemist

And a man in chains begs Please Lord, Please

(this man is me and many others)

beg without a voice for who can speak now,

beg Please, we (the thousands of years) watch him in the garden 

His Clasped hands and white knuckles, his fervent eyes raging at 

Pain so great He called it mercy, He calls it obedience.

Silent night, holy night

an infant rests unknowing

The sky is spun of gold, threads to eternity

and they are thick with hope

a baby

There's a kid inside me, but I'm still a kid, but I'm 25. 

Sometimes the kid kicks me and so I know there really is an actual person inside my body.

So completely weird I don't know what to say. 

Foreign. Strange. 

. . . Nice. 

Scary.

Really happy. 

sometimes sad. 

I've been changing a lot, my body and life has been changing.   

9 months is a good amount of time to begin to wrap your head around it, though, I think. 

Intentional thoughts intentional thoughts intentional thoughts about

intentional thoughts about giving birth, about my body, about giving birth, about sleeping well at night with a soccer ball inside my abdomen, about giving birth, about

listening to intentional thoughts now and its helping me feel better about 

myself and everything and i love this kid, it's strange. 

We call him his name and talk to him and talk for him, 

we know when he comes out he won't talk at all for a long time,

He'll probably sleep, mostly, at first. 

He's big now he weighs 2 lbs and is over a foot long and that's all inside me and it kind of jiggles when I run.

I heard he can get the hiccups in there, and I smile thinking about that.

Hey bud we love you.

Hey bud we love you.

Hey bud, we really love you a lot. 

(which is kind of strange and foreign and yet honest and constantly felt by his

mom)

I feel kind of weird saying baby so I call him a kid or kiddo or little guy but he'll be a baby not a kid when we meet

intentional thoughts about that day intentional thoughts help me look past fear to the cute kiddo who i already love and help me love my body and trust it love that day and trust my body love and trust my body have confidence have confidence and have confidence and peace. 

I love when he kicks.

Hi bud.