• It’s not about you. I know that can be taken as the kind of prefeminist selflessness from which women awake screaming after 20 years of subjugation, but I mean it in a mutual sense.  You do not look at a relationship through the lens of your own need and turn out happy.  The goal, to my mind, is to know what your needs are, communicate them, and then look out for the other person’s.  When you’re both doing that?  That’s happiness.
• No person is a category.  I’ve done some rotten things in my life; I’ve hurt people I cared out.  And I am intimately familiar with the task of carrying deep regret with you as you move on.  The important point is that any sentence that begins with “He/she is a total” is bound to be half untrue, however it ends, and is likely founded on the wobbly basis of your ego talking to itself.  If you care about someone–and if you care about yourself–you interact with eyes open, not with preexisting molds to pound people into.

Wow, I thought there would be more than two.  But that’s really it.  Trawling through the reader comments to that article, you can see the battle between openness and expectation–between people who say, “what a great response!” and those who say, “he stopped being Good Husband; leave him.”  I guess it reminded me that, though I don’t do this as often as I aspire to, my best moments come from hitting Pause on the internal chatter, and remembering that I am not at the center of every problem unless I put myself there.

Dear God, please don’t let this just be a boy thing.

James is now three months, two weeks, and two days old, and today he experienced his first trauma since birth: while being carried in his rocker by an overburdened parent, the whole bundle was dropped, and James rolled out of the upturned rocker, knocking his poor little head on, of all things, a flagstone walkway.  He has a bruise on his cheek and a (swiftly deflating) bump on his head, but appears otherwise miraulously unharmed.  Unlike my sense of maternal competence.

It goes without saying that, at some point, your child will be injured.  And at some point, you’re even going to cause it.  I’m not sure that that knowledge does much to undermine the power of your infant’s shrieks, but recent experience has shown me that you can simultaneously hold maternal anguish and good-humored perspective.  Our invaluable little boy conked his head and discovered the rather frightening possibility that one might fall.  And while his totally innocent fear and pain broke my heart, I couldn’t help but smile at his little step into growing up.

Sometimes it really stinks to be a fan of liberty–especially if you also like community, self-sufficiency, and capitalism.  In my perfect world, I’d buy and sell with my neighbors, getting to know them, acting voluntarily, and letting my local market guide, but not dictate, my choices.  We’re a pretty far cry from that reality these days; it seems as if all of my favorite values–even the ones that are supposedly in vogue–are headed the way of the political dodo.  Bush’s intrusive, corporatist, imperialist Republicanism has been replaced by Obama’s intrusive, corporatist, imperialist Democraticism.  Big whoop. After all the excitement about change and hope, we still have a war; we still have DHS; we still have livestock microchipping, bank bailouts, enemy combatants, and surveillance of American citizens’ email.

As I sit here, telling our little girl why there are fireworks and why we celebrate the Fourth of July, I can’t help but think that in many ways, I’m relaying a dead story, the obituary of my favorite and most beloved idea.  I have no doubt there will be a new chapter, but this particular one is looking pretty closed.

The latest threat came this week, not from a certain infection, but knowledge of exposure, and I’ve spent the last few days alternately watching for symptoms, keeping playful hands off of the baby, and cursing a mother down at the mall in Concord who, get this, took her pock-covered child to the play area there and let her climb, open sores and all, over the equipment.  Our kids’ mom noticed, found out that the child had the highly contagious Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease, and promptly whisked Henry and Amelia away for a good scrubbing.  I’d say I have half a mind to track her down when our kids get the chicken pox, but that would underexpress the degree of my irritation.

Still, I valued this strange old-fashioned world, and it was with tremendous sadness and frustration that I watched Loudoun County turn into one big subdivision, complete with oversized highways and outlet malls.  One of my biggest motivations, actually, for moving to New Hampshire, was how much this place reminded me of the rolling green hills and small towns I’d grown up with.  Now, going “home” is mostly an exercise in remembering what used to be where that strip mall is.

So I’ve no love lost for subdivisions, but I read this morning about a new approach to development, which is as shrewd as you’d expect, but the very existence of which points to a turn in the market that I find very encouraging.  Across the country now, various developers are designing their subdivisions, not around a central golf course or “town center” filled with national chain stores, but around organic farmland.  For the promise of a permanent view, local food availability, and some slice of the rural experience for their families, people are ponying up up to three times what a parcel without that central farmland would bring in.  And, what’s more, the subdivisions are also being designed with “edible landscaping,” incorporating fruits trees and bushes into yards, parks,  and sidewalks.

I’m not going to start hoping that Wentworth is next on the list, but how cool that there is enough interest in some strains of self-sufficiency to drive development in this direction.

And, for the record, just think for a moment how exceedingly odd it is for a species to say, “You know what, for one month I’m only going to eat what I can get within the bounds of my territory.”  It’s incredible that that prospect immediately fills my back-of-the-brain chatter with concerns about everything that I won’t be able to consume: no coffee, rice, chocolate, bananas, avocados.  Not even the yummy muesli I love that starts its life in England.  I’m sure I’ll make exceptions–olive oil, for example, is a must–but how amazing that an entire diet can be based on far-flung industries, trucking in what’s been described as “edible food-like substances.”

• change diapers
• bathe children
• safely hold the baby (can’t adjust him)
• wrap his arm up to shower
• drive stick shift

I get frustrated sometimes with how difficult it is to do things one-handed around the house while holding James, but at least I do have the option of setting him down.  If Connie hadn’t hung around, either the house would be a total disaster, or Jason and I would have both lost our minds–which has really illustrated for me why people live near their families.

Relying on each other in times like this not only makes life possible, but builds existing family ties and models them for your kids, which, sadly, just isn’t something that our children are going to see very often.  My folks are in Virginia, his in Louisiana and Alabama, and here we are in New Hampshire, with a lifestyle I love and a part of the way that I want to raise the kids, but without the support network that would make it perfect for them and so much less stressful for us.  We can’t pick up and move south (and really, I’d hate everything about it except the family proximity), and their lives are all down there.  So, visits it is, I guess, and, if we’re smart, the construction of some sort of substitute.

Funny how my choice to live more simply and more removed from modern hubub was founded on the fundamentally tumultuous choice to uproot.

We’ve had a rather chaotic year or two in this household. Old relationships dying or breaking; new-ish ones shifting; new children; new stages; new living arrangements; new distance in many ways, and in some ways new kinds of proximity. Through it all, I’ve studiously ignored Dad’s sage reminder, all the while toting around books on Buddhism making largely the same point. Somehow I intellectually grasped it in that context (if “life is suffering,” quit worrying about the low points), while still looking forward to some future period of calm, viewing the notion of ongoing upheaval with no small degree of panic. And then, this morning, something finally clicked.

Things aren’t ever going to settle down. We have three kids, exes, jobs, a house, and desires that often far outstrip our means to obtain them. When we’re through with diapers, there’ll be potty training, then the “why” stage, then fighting over toys and cars and maybe even girls. There will be flat tires, busted pipes, broken stoves, a house to fix up, a yard to take care of, injuries, illnesses, etc. It’s in my nature to spend the good times hunkered down trying to save up enough for the bad times to come, and some degree of that is right and prudent. But settling isn’t a satisfying goal in any sense of the word. All of the good things in life are volatile; eliminate change and you end up with nothing but concrete. As wisecracking old folks are wont to say, “Getting old is better than the alternative.” Life is suffering. Get over it.