Breathing deep, pelican-style

I know. I know. It's bad.

I remember last year when my dear friend Mikaela was visiting and we were sitting at the table talking about the grand balancing act of life. "What do you let slide?," she asked. "What's the thing you let go to make the rest of it work?" At the time, I was still valiantly doing (or trying) 100% of everything at a little less than 100% - a juggler extraordinaire. Fast-forward a year later to third trimester me, working her butt off more than ever before, and I know in a second what my answer is: what I let slide is this. The blog, the creative release, the connections outside of my daily world. And I hate it, but sometimes, something's gotta give. Sometimes getting through the day takes every single ounce of what you have. Those aren't bad days, don't misunderstand me. Just very full ones, squeezed into very full weeks, squeezed into very full months.

So let's backtrack a bit, to that vacation we took that one time.

It was grand.

Some time ago I decided that the pelican is my spirit animal. Keep in mind that back in college I remember a discussion with my best gals where we voted me the lioness. So how does a lioness become a pelican? For one, she gets really tired. But what she really does is prioritize peace and quiet and relaxation above all else - above the hunt, above the kill, above the self-satisfied licking of chops. Pelicans have it going on.

The day is this: soaring above the water, sometimes alone, sometimes in a pack, sometimes with a partner. Diving in for food. Floating around. Soaring again. Water, wind, sun, air. Soaring. Diving. Floating. Repeat.

Doesn't that sound pretty magical? I'm pretty sure it's my life goal.

So on our return to our wedding locale, I spent a lot of time sitting and watching pelicans. And it made me so, so happy.



Beach. Pool. Read. Swim. Relax. Sun. Just what I needed at 28 weeks pregnant.

 

We were out swimming one day and the most miraculous thing happened. We were in the ocean fairly deep, and the water was just glittering with sunshine all around us. Suddenly, maybe 20 yards away, an enormous ray leapt out of the water, flapped its wings, and dove back in. I'd never seen one before. The wingspan was at least six feet wide, and it was miraculous. And right there.

I'm such an ocean girl, and I think Baby H might be, too. I hope she is, anyway. I love the thought of teaching her the fine art of beach lounging, the fun of wave-bopping, and the magic of breathing in that air. I hope she feels the same way about the Outer Banks that I do.

We took that vacation too late, and I swear we needed another one immediately after, but the important thing is that we got it in at all. No small feat these days.

Goodbye, Grandpa

A few years ago I wrote about my grandfather after he took part in the Triangle Flight for Honor with other North Carolina World War II veterans. It was a great day for him, and he had many more after that.

Last night my grandfather never made it home from his usual after-dinner stroll. We never saw it coming and neither did he, which is probably for the best. He lived such an active life that in a lot of ways, it's a fitting end. Just this Sunday, he was laughing up a storm with my dad's mom and two of his eight great-grandchildren. I'm so happy that my sister captured this wonderful moment.

I have a mercifully light workweek that allows me to head home tomorrow to spend the rest of the week with family. As goes with these things, I'm sure I'll come back a lot heavier from down-home food but a lot lighter from the laughter of everyone being together. One thing is certain: my family can always eat and always laugh.

I hope my grandparents are laughing together right now, rocking in side-by-side chairs and telling tales. Maybe they're even square-dancing again. They deserve it.

Home, full of love.

Remember this North Carolina, my home state of kindness and acceptance and love? That's the North Carolina I visited this weekend. I love my Outer Banks family, the way we laugh and cry together, the way we join forces for celebrations and for sorrow. This weekend, we celebrated. My Aunt Penny and her partner Allison - who fell in love as teenagers and reconnected twenty years later - had a commitment ceremony in their Outer Banks church, alongside their children. I was proud to be there, and prouder yet to call this family my own. But mostly I was thrilled to see my aunt with such a big smile on her face.

Have I mentioned that my dad is quietly the best toastmaster of all time? He is. I should write about his haiku at our wedding; it's legendary. And there was his Forrest Gump toast at my sister's wedding, and his bridge metaphor at my brother's. In honor of my Aunt Penny, he began with farm tales and ended up with my late Aunt Jill, and how her life and her loss shows us how important it is to be happy while we're here. Somehow this was tied together by my Aunt Penny's childhood schemes for ice cream. My dad's toasts should not work, but they do, every time.

I've been missing my Aunt Jill so much lately. I know she's in each one of us, every single day, but some days the loss is still too tender to bear. T and I stayed at her house with my cousins over the weekend, and I found a book I loaned her when she was sick, my note to her still inside as a bookmark. We were both bookworms, both writers, both full of infertility issues, too - but that's a story for another day. She would've loved Penny's ceremony, whose "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" flash mob equaled her own church band rockin' out at her funeral in every possible way. Music unites those sisters, still. Speaking of sisters, my late aunt's daughters amaze me at every turn. (They also crack me up, as demonstrated below.)

I spent a lot of time this weekend thinking how hard family can be sometimes. It's also wonderful and worth it, but family can be tough. In those tough times, I want to do nothing more than to sit in a room with them all and just be. I think that's a good thing.

In our happy moments? I like to give hugs. Liam likes to give high fives. Take your pick.

Photos by Melissa Habit - isn't she awesome?

Kids and flowers and sky

Home is a good place to be. As seen through Instagram.

Tick tock, North Carolina

Before yesterday, North Carolina was the last Southern state without a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Before today, I also believed North Carolina was the last Southern state to secede from the Union. I just google-checked my memory and discovered that Tennessee actually seceded a week after my home state did. There goes a youthful assurance, a little piece of why I've always loved home. (Google: killing dreams since 1998.)

The truth of the matter, though, is that what matters more than when. North Carolina did secede from the Union. North Carolina now does have a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Last night was a deja vu moment for me. I saw myself driving my high school car (a hand-me down from my grandmother), with its "Jesse Helms Doesn't Speak For Me" bumper sticker on the back. I'd found it at a little bookstore in Chapel Hill that offered a discount if you could name a historical event that happened on the year they pulled out of a hat. Any nerd like me knows that the French Revolution began in 1789, so my bumper sticker cost me practically nothing. It wasn't the only lefty bumper sticker in my high school parking lot, either. We were in the Triangle of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill after all, a dynamic region for research, universities, and industry. (The marriage amendment lost 4-to-1 in the Triangle last night, for perspective.) But back then in the 1990s, gun racks still outnumbered peace sign decals. We liked to show our stripes.

Those stripes are everywhere, if you're looking for them. The problem with making assumptions about any "red" state is that it ignores not only the pockets of blue, but the legions of people working hard to change the tide in their surroundings. There's a particular kind of state pride among those who love their state despite their state, who have a seasoned respect that's deeper and more honest than sheer boosterism. Making blanket statements about regions does so at the expense of the folks working hard there to make a difference, and it's something I take personally. Change is slow, and it starts small. Bumper stickers matter. But more than that, so do conversations on front porches, at the neighborhood park, in churches, in the checkout line. This small, steady change is happening all over the South. It's why some of my favorite people are progressive women from Texas. It's why North Carolina voted for Obama in 2008. It's why my teenage cousin half my age just went to her junior prom in NC with her girlfriend, and no one raised an eyebrow.

That same cousin's Facebook status yesterday was "And we keep fighting... and we keep going," said with all the assurance of a seasoned community organizer. She knows that time is on her side. We all do. While headlines are made about irrational amendments being passed, my family and friends at home, some of whom are gay, are trying to go about their lives just as they did yesterday. They're talking with their neighbors, raising families, and adding value to their communities. Their hearts are hurting, but they know the clock is ticking. The bravery in their hearts is the best thing I know. The second-best is the dedication of those on the ground already trying to peel this thing back, already laying the groundwork for how progress will reassert itself.

Tick tock, North Carolina. The march of progress has never left you behind completely, and it won't now, either. You're too beautiful to be shadowed by hate, too smart to be labeled something you're not. Time will tell.

Girl power

I might as well be carrying around one of these this week. It's a girl power kind of time for me.

Last weekend was one of my favorite weekends of the year: folk art and prom dresses. How in the world do these two things combine, you're asking?

First up: the annual Folk Art Show at Fearrington Village. I love this show. I love the art and the energy, how down-home it feels, while still being (for me, on a budget!) absolutely aspirational. I had a blast at the Collectors' Preview with my mom and my sister.

Another reason I love the Fearrington Folk Art Show is watching my mom work the room - painting, pottery, textiles, she does it all. She's been collecting Danny Doughty's work for years, and picked up these gorgeous geese this year to add to her collection.

On Saturday, my favorite girl gang - my three cousins! - arrived to shop for their prom dresses. Two prom attendees, with older college student sis acting as shopping consultant, plus me, my mom, and sis = too much fun for one 12-hour shopping day! We were successful, by the way - both girls ended up in amazing dresses that suited them perfectly - and were perfectly different. I've said it before and I'll say it again: my cousins give me hope for the universe. I love these girls like mad.

As if this wasn't enough, I had a very special lunch date on Sunday with my oldest pal in the world, Allie, and her brand new baby girl! Baby L was born in December and I can't wait to watch her grow up to be as amazing as her mom is.

Just two days later, my dear friend Kate had her baby girl, too. I get to meet this new Baby L in Austin next month, and I'm counting down the days to see those cheeks in person!

Okay, okay, I still like boys... but for a few more days, I'm just going to soak in all this girly goodness. Can you blame me?

New Year's, then and now and next

Five years ago, T spent New Year's Eve with my family in North Carolina. He'd never met them. Just days before, he'd moved back to Dallas, while I was still living in Albuquerque. Life was a wee bit uncertain. There was a lot I didn't know, but one big thing I did: bringing this guy home to the family for New Year's was the best idea I'd ever had. Here we are that night, all shiny and new. T's still sporting his short politics hair. He hates this photo, and even though it doesn't flatter either of us, I can't help but love it, knowing that hours later he'd whisper things in my ear that we both already knew, but were both waiting on him to vocalize. (As usual, I'd jumped the gun weeks earlier.)

Five years later, we've come full circle. We were home in NC for New Year's Eve again with the family that he's firmly a part of, in a position so secure it's hard to believe there was ever a time when we hadn't yet used the L word. In a twist of fate that I'll choose to believe was just the universe giving us a year's worth of bad luck all at once - and not a cliched representation of the decline of passion after marriage - we didn't even kiss at the stroke of midnight this year.

T was sick. Miserable. Bedridden with the flu. Holed up in the bedroom of my youth. The entire weekend.

It was a very Influenza New Year's Eve. Oh, how times have changed.

Folk art paintings now take the place of Smiths posters up in my old bedroom, but there's still something sweet about tending to a sick husband in your teenage bed. Poor guy.

Downstairs, we tried our best to be festive without him. After five years of making memories in this house, his presence left a hole. But I set out the party supplies anyway.

My nephew Liam kept calling it a birthday party. And so during our "calendar birthday party" without one of our own, we ate smoked fish, beef tenderloin, green beans, and cheesy grits. We played games. We laughed at the kids and hugged a new puppy. We wore flats.

But most of all, we fervently wished for a 2012 that's a little luckier for our crazy crew, with a little less sorrow and stress than the year before. I'm fairly certain this was my family's wish in 2011, too. We're a patient family, I suppose. Although by the looks of her kitchen chalkboard, my mom may be getting less patient...

T tried to make it downstairs for the ball drop, but couldn't do it. Hence the saddest and cutest New Year's Eve text message I've ever received, sent from two floors above.

Now that he's feeling better, we've decided to just redo New Year's. We have lots of fun plans this weekend... why not add in a romantic countdown? So if you're out and about in DC this weekend, keep an eye out for two weirdos whispering to each other and checking the clock at midnight. There will most definitely be kissing this time around.

Homeward bound

Headed down south to the land of the pines...
I'm thumbin' my way into North Caroline

Coming up for me, tonight: a belated North Carolina Christmas, with some New Year's festivity thrown in for good measure. 

Europe is grand and all, but as we know, there's just no place like home.

Happy, Happy New Year to you all... I'll catch you on the flip side, with all the fresh excitement of a new [letterpress] calendar.

xoxo

"Why are you so far away?" (she said)

I'm reading South of Broad right now, and loving it despite its initial chapters of overwrought, floral prose. I wasn't sure I'd be able to get past the insufferably long, overwritten sentences at the beginning of this book, although they did serve as excellent fodder to entertain T with dramatic readings. (Note to all writers: if a reader has to stop and gasp for air while trying to read one of your sentences aloud, it's probably too long.) Fortunately, Pat Conroy settled down the rhetoric once he introduced additional characters and stopped simply expounding All Things Charleston, and now I'm hooked.

I was thinking last night about the tight group of friends who comprise the heart of the novel, and how so many of my favorite books, movies, and even television shows involve a central group of friends who grew up together over the years. I'm absolutely guilty of romanticizing that sort of camaraderie. We romanticize what we don't have, after all, and my life couldn't be more different than the hometown experience. I'm lucky enough to have friends all over the place, from all sorts of chapters in my life, and many of these friends are as different as could be. I love that about them. If I hadn't gone north for college, I would never have met my fantastic Boston Girls. If I hadn't gone west for graduate school, I would never have met my amazing ABQ crew (or my husband, for that matter). If I hadn't followed T out to Dallas, I would never have met the Champagne Thursday girls. And now that we're in DC, we love the new friends we've made and the new life we're creating. We are constantly evolving.

Despite the knowledge that I wouldn't trade any of what I have for staying in the same town with the same people forever, I still adore wondering what that would feel like. I'll never have kids who'll go to high school with the kids of my high school crew. Most of my high school crew left town like I did anyway. I won't see my college friends at weekend football games or alumni events. Most of us live too far away, and besides, we don't even have a football team anymore. I'm not able to walk over to my graduate school pals' house anymore for breakfast, hashing out the previous night and planning how we'll take over the world tomorrow (oh, how I could use those breakfasts these days!). Heck, my pals don't even live together any more... marriage and babies and all. Time marches on and moves us farther apart geographically. We all visit and stay in touch regularly, but still.

I understand the logic of distance, but my heart can't help but pine for one endless "Big Chill"-style reunion, minus the suicide (although the drama of one person's husband impregnating someone else in the group with his wife's permission would be... exciting?). And while my choices mean I do and always will fly around a lot to see my favorite people and their offspring, how much would I love for them to all be here with me, living in my neighborhood?

Here's a song for today from my friend Ann, who is part of my "Nightswimming" memory, and in comments notes that she feels the same way I do about that song and about that long-ago weekend. Ann left the Triangle like I did and now calls Nashville home. She sent me this clip over the weekend, which immediately  prompted me to tell T to develop some Nashville clients so it'd be easier to get out there regularly. That's exactly how my world keeps getting bigger, by the way. Is it crazy that I sometimes wish it was small?

Thanks, Ann, for knowing this song would make me as happy today as it would have in 1996, sitting in your living room drinking boxed wine. I raise a glass of Franzia White Zin in your honor, and send you a long-lost hug across the airwaves.

OBX State of Mind

Another nine days on the beach, another nine days spent wracking my brain for ways we could live there. But before I start getting all mopey on you about *having* to come back to my adorable row house in a town I love, let me just pause and say how thankful I am that I have family on the Outer Banks who make it easy to spend as much time there as I do. What a great little trip.

Two of my cousins are here with me, softening my beach landing back in DC. They brighten up pretty much everything.

Girl power, again (and always)

We're leaving behind ripped-up floors and ignoring our packing this weekend for a very important cause on the Outer Banks: three of the best girls in the world... my cousins!

I get to be Stage Cuz again and cheer on Zoe, who's starring in her high school's Thoroughly Modern Millie, as Millie (of course). I get to hear all about Sally's prom, where she stunned in the dress we shopped long and hard for. And I get to give Sophie a huge congratulations hug, because she recently decided to transfer not just majors, but colleges, and couldn't be more excited.

So. Well worth leaving behind a house that smells like polyurethane, don't you think? I'll also be borrowing some key items from my parents - a dolly and furniture cart. Yes please!

So these sore bones are headed to the beach... where if nothing else, T and I can at least catch up on some sleep. We're staying at the inn where we got married, so on top of all this family girl power, there should be a little bit of romance thrown in, too.

To girls! To family! To wedding locales! To rejuvenation! To sleeeeeeep!

Have a happy weekend, everyone! :-)

My kind of empowerment

Much of the work that I do is incredibly small scale. This might seem incongruous from someone who worries about large-scale problems and in other days had big dreams of changing the world. To me, the older me, this shift makes sense. I can sit at my desk and dream about a better government or a happier world of women, but most of that is beyond my grasp of control. Helping folks create better places to live, though - stronger communities, more complete streets, better food systems, more dynamic ways to get around and to connect with the rest of the world - those things I can have a hand in shaping, and do. I've graduated to a perch where I not only say that all politics is local, but I actually mean it. My definition of politics has expanded to make room for this interpretation. In my mind, our streets, our neighborhoods, our towns and our interplay with all of these layers is incredibly political. We vote every time we eat, shop, and make big decisions. They're different votes from the ones that happen in November, but they are votes, and they are absolutely as critical to how this world of ours looks and operates.

In this ground-up perspective, the projects that appeal most to me are ones that engage citizens to grasp their own futures and shape the direction of their communities themselves. As such, I've been thinking about home this week - but not the home that raised me (the Triangle of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, brimming with higher education and technology). Instead, I've been thinking of my grandparents' home, the home where I'm related to over half of the local church cemetery, where the farms tell stories and history is passed down in the land. That home, Bertie County, is struggling, as is most of rural America. Our outdated agricultural subsidy system has created winners (enormous corporate farms) and losers (family farmers), and Bertie County is full of big-system losers in that sense. With farms dying and real industry hours away, the youth of Bertie County has historically been faced with an incredibly difficult choice upon graduation. Do they stay in their dying community, or do they leave and succeed elsewhere? In this respect, the youth of Bertie County is the same as the youth in any inner city. A better world is one where there are better choices for the kids of our farms and our cities.

This is where Project H Design comes in, which is the reason you're indulging me on this introspective rainy DC morning. I believe that we create community organizers every time we engage youth in their own community, every time young people take a stand in their towns, their cities, and their farms about how their world should operate. All politics is local, and all change begins with us. In Bertie County, change can begin with a different kind of chicken coop. 

Project H is an award-winning design and sustainability project (see kudos here, here, here, here, and here, for starters) based right at "home" in Bertie County. Its Studio H project teaches high school juniors at Bertie High (where my dad was once a football star, where my cousin was valedictorian) how to implement good design in their own community. Project H teaches by doing with, not talking to. The kids build their own future, quite literally, in their own town. Project H's lessons can be applied anywhere.

Project H's dynamic co-leader, Emily Pilloton, gave a TED talk last year about what Studio H does, why it's different, and why it works. I'd love for you to watch it. Studio H's project this year is to build an open-air farmer's market in the town of Windsor, home of Bunn's Barbecue and the kind of fading historic downtown strip that makes my heart soar with revitalization possibilities. But this isn't about Windsor, or about me, it's about all of us. Give Emily, and her students, and this little corner of swampy farmland that I happen to love, a chance today. They deserve it.

Crazy like a fox

This morning I was on my way out of town to our Virginia office, sitting at a red light on Constitution Ave, in between the White House and the Washington Monument. It was a gorgeous day, bright and sunny, hinting that maybe, just maybe, the weather will warm up soon. I was the first at the light; traffic was stopped. Suddenly, from my right - The Ellipse of the White House - a gorgeous red fox appeared at the curb. Its tail went up, it put down its head, and it raced across the lanes of traffic toward the Monument, directly in front of my car. Once on grass again, the fox raised its head high and raced up the hill.

I was flabbergast. My head shot to my right; the guy next to me was on his phone and didn't appear to have noticed. The drivers in the traffic lanes across from me looked zoned-out and bored. Had I really been the only one to see this gorgeous creature dart across traffic in the middle of the city, racing from one green oasis to the next?

 source

I'm taking this morning's fox as a stroke of luck, a good omen, a sign of magical moments to come.

North Carolina was certainly full of them last weekend: a terrific folk art show with my mom, a new painting to call my own, a day spent shopping with the whole crew for my cousin's prom dress. There's nothing quite like 12 hours of family shopping time to test everyone's goodwill toward one another. But wouldn't you know it, we were laughing all the way through. 

So DC, then, which is feeling rather un-magical this week... We halfheartedly bid on another house yesterday. We only liked it, didn't love it, and I think more than anything else I wanted to stir the karmic pot a bit, throw something into the universe and see what I got back. Our lowball offer reflected our low level of excitement, and we didn't get it. Which is fine and all... I just needed to do something. I suck at waiting. Our location of choice has such a deficit of listings right now you could throw tomatoes on the real estate map without the splatter hitting something for sale. T's studying for another certification exam. I'm realizing the Oscars got away from me a little bit this year, and playing in the kitchen instead of going to the movies. I'm okay with that. But all of this, really, just feels like me biding time. Which again, I don't do well. Quietly waiting for change to happen upon me makes me nervous; I'd rather have a hand in creating it. I want to be like that fox, hurdling myself across danger, racing into unknown territory, launching new chapters with force of will alone. I also wouldn't mind having super-cute ears.

Mrs. Fox: "You know, you really are fantastic.

Mr. Fox: "I try."