rudderless

15 Months

Dear Roo,

In the whirlwind of coming home from our trip (and preparing for our next adventure, next week!), I almost let a month’s birthday letter slip past me.

But don’t despair. I only almost forgot. How could I let this month pass us by- with all that’s happened? For one, we went to Maine. Which was so much fun. Something about the adventuring, or the lack of distractions to fight over, or friends to see- it brought you and Sophie together. Suddenly you are a team. I remember feeling closer to my sister when we were away together. You two are amazing, standing at my feet chanting, “Gummi, gummi!” Together, you emptied every cabinet in our Maine cottage. Tonight you had on pink and purple tutus, chasing each other in circles trying to steal the other’s balloon. John looked at me and said, “Something’s going to happen because this is just too good.” I find myself treating your new relationship with kid gloves. It seems so new and fragile. I have to remind myself that your bond is much deeper than anything a few tears could break. It’s now and forever, and it’s so incredibly special to watch it take shape.

Besides discovering Sophie, you discovered apples in Maine. Apple was one of your first signs and first words- “Ap-ful.” We were walking at WoodenBoat one day and found a crabapple tree. You couldn’t stop saying it and signing it and gathering as many as your tiny hands could carry. It’s like it was put there for you. SOphie found butterflies, you found Apfuls. I pulled half a dozen of them out of your mouth, all sour with tiny teeth marks. It was a thrill.

I won’t soon forget you standing on the Town Dock in Sedgwick, looking out to where our boat will be next summer. It’s like a light went off and suddenly you signed and said, “Boat! Boat! Boat!” Your first boats, in the Benjamin River. How appropriate.

My other favorites are “bobby” for body (with a raise of the shirt), and “booby” with a milk sign, in any number of public places (now I know why people call it “Chichi” and “Cook” and “Lulu”). Box and duck, ba-oon (balloon), da (dog), ah-choo, down, up, shuuuu, bath- so many words I’ve lost track. New ones everyday.

You are something else, sweetness. Cuter than the day is long. Happier than happy begins to say. So smart, so funny, so immensely full of life. You are becoming one of the big girls so quickly. Sophie leads you all over town, holding your hand. One of my favorite memories of our trip to the Children’s Museum was seeing you and the two Sophies crawl into bed in the Japanese house, all tucked into a sleeping bag on the bamboo tatami mats. It was a giant playhouse to the three of you, and you were truly playing with them, amusing them as much as they were amusing you. You walked out holding onto each of their hand’s, giggling all the way.

The glee on your face was something you could bottle and sell as an anecdote to any depression. It was perfection.

Thank you for being my beast. Happy birthday!
Love, mama

Further Reasons to Love Maine

More than ever, being in New England reminded me of how much I miss seasons. In the Keys we have the pleasant winter, and the terribly unpleasant summer. It works for some, but not for me. Most of my spirituality is wrapped up in what’s outside the door. Tide cycles, weather, seasons and the turning inward and outward that comes with passing through winter and into spring. More and more, I want to center our girls’ learning, and our family’s seasonal celebrations, on what’s unfolding outside. It’s very hard to explain a fall equinox to a three year old who can’t see the leaves fall off the trees. There are people who find their heaven here in the tropics. The clouds are spectacular, and I’ll never forget crossing some threshold in Biscayne Bay, where the water went from brown and murky, to the brilliant tropical turquoise you only see in pictures. It is beautiful. But wow, am I ready for a different kind of beautiful.

The second reason to love Maine- people! We bought our land five years ago after falling in love with the location. We don’t have relatives, or even friends nearby. We got a sense from the stores, libraries, schools, and innkeepers, that there were like-minded people in Brooklin, Blue Hill, and Sedgwick. There’s an organic food co-op. People build and sail beautiful boats. Our neighbors (who we’ve only spoken to by phone) have a wonderful off-the-grid house. All seemed good.

On this trip I took three or four walks in the neighborhood with the girls. We walked past a well-restored yellow house with a tricycle, a Prius, and a double stroller in the driveway. Sophie took note of their trampoline. Too much stuff to be summer people. And clearly, they had kids. I didn’t think much of it until I saw them setting up for a yard sale on our last day in town. We stopped by that night and as it turns out, Jim and Heather Cassidy moved to Brooklin two years ago after falling in love with the place. They have two young daughters, and in a few days, will move onto their sailboat (sound familiar?) to take a cruise down the Intracoastal Waterway. We have Jim to thank for putting us in touch with the local who’ll install our mooring, which we hope to be floating on next spring. We met some of the Cassidy’s friends- great people with kids who were super nice to Sophie. Walking away with our purchases, we knew it was perhaps the most gratifying hour we’d spent in Brooklin. Our suspicions were confirmed. We won’t be resident aliens. We’ll have our people in Maine!

Safe passage to the Cassidy family, and a toast to the arrival of fall, whatever that means in your neck of the woods.

Butterflies

There are many wonderful tales from our time in Maine and I will tell all that I can remember, but the one that stands out as my favorite has to be Sophie’s butterfly adventure. Woodenboat Magazine and the Woodenboat School are located in Brooklin, ME, a stone’s throw from where we stayed for the week. Their campus is breathtaking and better yet, completely open to the public. Imagine- in Florida, there would be a big gate and an admission fee and all sorts of rules to use land as beautiful as theirs. But we were free to walk through their beautiful fields and do a little drooling over their boats. Sophie caught sight of a few yellow butterflies and disappeared over the fields, chasing them. She chased and chased through short and tall grass for nearly an hour. It was seriously the most running she’s ever done in her life. Completely unprompted, just because it felt good. She snoozed off her workout in the car while John and I drove all over Blue Hill looking for a butterfly net- anything to foster this crazy love for our fluttering friends.

We had no luck finding a net, but on our morning walk the next day, Sophie started collecting wildflowers and leaves for “a butterfly picnic.” She was convinced that if we could gather just the right things, and make honey sandwiches, with little acorn-caps full of water, the butterflies would come to her “and be easy to catch.” The logic of a three-year-old is just so brilliant.

So while Rosy slept, we collected a stroller-canopy full of mushrooms, autumn leaves, wildflowers and ferns. Oh how I wish I could take that walk every day. Our picnic was delicious and a great deal of fun, even though we forgot the pretty vase and had to use a water bottle. She chased a few promising specimens and then decided that they were too shy to come eat with us. We should leave their tiny offerings in the field and let them enjoy. Smart girl.

I was a little overwhelmed by it all, feeling like my love for all things hippie-Waldorf and “natural parenting” was coming to fruition. The picnic was enough to convince me that we are leading her in the right direction, and that Maine is where we belong. But as we were leaving our friend’s house in York a few days later, on a cold morning, John noticed a sluggish little butterfly on their front walk, still warming his wings. He carefully, carefully scooped him and up and came inside to show the kids. Sophie got to hold it, every so gently. She had caught a butterfly.

Now we are home and she is building fairy houses in tree roots at the park. It makes me feel good to know that with what bits of nature we can gather up, and what stories she writes in her mind (and there are lots of them), she can be entertained for literally days on end. Like the butterflies, her experience was everything we were hoping to find, and then some.

Boston!

Where to start? We’re back from almost two weeks of vacation in New England. We were all looking forward to the trip, though I was admittedly a bit apprehensive about how the ladies would do with all the traveling and new people. Turns out I had nothing to worry about. Not one thing. They rolled through every stop, they reveled in their new friends, they loved the weather, the city, the country, the beach. It was grand. GRAND I tell you. And it was the ultimate motivation for getting aboard the boat. We miss our dear city of Boston. We cannot wait to get our hands dirty building in Maine. We have an application and contacts for getting our mooring in the Benjamin River, minutes from our soon-to-be-homestead. And best of all, we saw friends old and new who we look forward to getting back to. I said to John more than once, “I don’t want this to be my vacation, I want this to be my life.”

Gushing aside, we started in Boston and were blown away with the changes downtown. When we left four years ago, they were just starting to lay the Greenway over the now-submerged highway. It’s done and traffic patterns are so much more manageable. The North End is connected to the rest of the historic district. People were sunbathing on grass on top of I-93. Brilliant. We stayed in the Charlestown Navy Yard, a location I’d recommend to anyone, but especially to anyone with kids. There are restaurants and playgrounds steps away. We took the MBTA ferry (that John used to operate) to and from the waterfront. Once you’re parked in the cheap garage, there’s basically no reason to drive.

Our first day was our chance to play tourist and do the things we wouldn’t have done prior to kids. We started with Sophie’s first taxi ride, followed by her first T experience. We walked through Boston Common to the Public Garden, the nation’s first botanical garden. Sophie LOVES flowers. She was in heaven. The real ducks in the pond proved less inspiring than the bronze statues (”Statuas” as Sophie says) commemorating Robert McCloskey’s story, Make Way for Ducklings. Rosy fell madly in love with “Jack” and we had to pry her away so that other people could visit the mallards.

We hit up a playground, got a Finagle a Bagel (oh my) and walked to the waterfront. We were just crossing Northern Avenue to the wharf where John used to work when we looked to the left and spied a beautiful carousel on the new Greenway. Sophie had been asking for weeks to go on “a carousel with beautiful horses.” It was like this one fell out of the sky just for her. She was the only kid on it. Perfection.

We ferried home and rested, took a long walk through the Navy Yard, played in a playground for hours, and finished the day with our dear friend, Bobby, at our favorite pizzeria in the world. Santarpio’s is officially still the best pizza we’ve ever eaten. It was great to be home. It truly felt like home to us.

more tomorrow . . . .

Meg

The internets are reporting the arrival of Juniper Diane Winnecour. My friend, Meg, managed to have herself a baby!!!

June-bug, my oh my what a whirlwind of awesomeness you’re about to enter. Meg is some kind of special. We lived together on a tiny island in Everglades City for only a few months, but she’s one of those rare people in the world that charms the living daylights out of everyone around her. Everyone wants to be with Meg. They want to be in her kitchen. They want to be in her boat. They secretly hope that some tiny bit of her optimism and honesty rubs off on them. When our time in the Everglades came to an end, I was really a bit heartbroken to say goodbye to her. I can count on just a few fingers how many times I’ve seen her since, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my life was made a bit better for having been a guest in her room for two months. She has sent me, and written me some of my most prized possessions- always artful, always thoughtful, always true. She heard me through my romance with John, just as I had the pleasure of listening to her stories of Josh. What a special time.

You are such a lucky little bean to have joined the world of Meg and Josh. I cannot wait to meet you.
Love to all three Winnecours.

Exhausted

I’m cooked.
My folks have been here keeping the ladies busy while John and I work on the boat. Climbing in and out of a crowded hatch a dozen times a day is an act my body is having a hard time remembering. Crazy to think that soon I’ll be guiding two little bodies down into the boat, a dozen times a day.

But the work is so satisfying. It reminds John and I of a time when it was just the two of us. In the midst of the dust and drilling, the heat and the grime, it feels good to be together. It feels especially good to be finishing this little house for our little family. It is now and forever ours; our ticket to the world.

Meanwhile Rosy’s contracted some mysterious stomach ailment and poops all the time but hardly ever pees. Talk about tugging at the angst of a non-vaxing, swine-terrified mama. She’ll be fine, but she’s not sleeping when I’m sleeping (she’s fine until I get to bed, and then all hell breaks loose), so it’s been a rough three or four nights. As my mother would say, with kids, “there’s always something.”

We leave for our first real family vacation in two short days. Lazy, chilly mornings in Maine await us. I have to remember to print the inumberable confirmations and directions, to pack the appropriate reading material and DVDs and sweaters (!!). It will be thrilling to be back in New England.

And just think. We’ll be coming back to a home almost ready for a trip back home.

Rainbow Cupcakes!

Today we made rainbow cupcakes for my Mom’s birthday. We make a lot of rainbows and talk about light dividing into colors. It was fun to reinforce the rainbow principle in such a sugary way. And slightly magical to mix 6 different colors of icing.

I usually make my own cake, but today I used a box and our own icing. It’s stupid simple- a stick of butter, 8 oz package of cream cheese, a cup of powdered sugar, and a few drops of vanilla. Because cupcakes are truly all about the toppings.

R-O-Y-G-B-V and Happy Birthday to Mom, and to our common-law-brother-in-law, Corey Long!

Last September

I’m so happy it’s this September and not last September.
Thankfully the worst of the colic was beginning to end, but Rosy was still so fragile and wild and time-consuming. I remember feeling so detached from every part of my life but the part that was functioning just enough to take care of her. She would just erupt at a moment’s notice. Crying, pewking, all of it. Poor poor baby.

This September she goes to bed at 7:30 every night like clockwork. Bath, books, kisses for her Daddy and “Suuu-feee,” then a quick nurse and she’s asleep on the bedroom floor. She wakes with the sun and sits quietly on the couch absorbing her daily dose of signing video while I make coffee. She LOVES to sign and is now speaking more words than she signs. “Boot” and “shoe” may be my recent favorites. She says “thank you” when you give her things. She is as happy as the sky is blue, as cuddly and giggly as a baby can be. She is absolutely everything I was dreaming about last September when I had her Moby-wrapped to me all day long.

Now I get to live vicariously. My close friend Meg is 41 weeks pregnant. Baby is apparently quite content to stay inside forever. So I’m sending some good vibes her way . . . I’m wishing them both a safe passage and a happy entrance into the world. I pass along the guarantee that no matter how hard the work might be in those first months, every wee bit of it pays off. Treat her with compassion and patience, hold her close, respond to her needs- it seems obvious, but it’s not always when you’re in the thick of it. You will rock this motherhood stuff. You are one amazing woman. And soon you will have a wee person who stomps through puddles squealing with joy, decked out in an oversized raincoat and pink sandals. It is truly as good as it gets.

Happy birth, Mini Winne!! We’re loving you from afar.