This Moment

Playing along with SouleMama today. In her words: {this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.



With a newborn, every moment is a single extraordinary moment, I'm finding.

Papa

There is something profoundly beautiful in seeing my partner care for our son. As a youngest child with not a lot of extended family, Steve doesn't have much experience with babies. To complicate matters, his physique, all long lines and angles, doesn't seem to lend itself to cradling little ones. Holding his first infant this past fall - our nephew - he was so nervous and uncomfortable. Unsure about where to put his hands and how to support such a little body. I think the experience may have given him more trepidation about holding our own child, rather than less. But when he held Silas for the first time, he did so with confidence and deft. The two were made for each other. He is always eager to pick up the babe and shows him nothing but tenderness. It would seem that this should be surprising to me, but it's not. Sure, I had my concerns about both of our abilities as parents, but once our child was actually here those concerns evaporated as instinct kicked in.  

Postpartum

The day after Silas' birth I drew a hot bath and closed the bathroom door. I poured an herbal healing tea into the water and just started sobbing. I cried because I was in the physical space of his birth and was overwhelmed by the magnitude of what we had just done. I cried because for the first time in nine months I was completely alone in a room. I mourned the end of my pregnancy and with it the feeling of mastery that I had gained in regards to my physical being and actions. I cried because I saw in the mirror a body that I didn't recognize. Not the beautiful fullness that had come on gradually that I had nurtured and thought was perfect, but also not the pre-pregnancy body that I had comfortably known for so many years. I had expected the postpartum period to be filled with tears, I just didn't think they would be own. But, they were good tears. Cleansing tears.

It's so easy to feel lost. To feel as if I spend a majority of my time nursing my child and the two hours in between just waiting for the next feeding. But, Silas and I are slowly finding a rhythm to our days. My focus is to allow this time to be what it is. To not feel as if I'm not doing enough or that I should be doing anything at all. To just allow this time when I have a babe in arms to be just that. It's a challenge, though.

Introducing...

Silas Karl Cable

He joined us on Tuesday morning. At 9 lbs. 13 oz. and 21 3/4" long, our "little" boy was born at home into the water after just shy of 9 hours of labor. Today is my 31st birthday and I can't imagine a better gift. We are smitten.

Weekend Review: The Bucolic Plague by Josh Kilmer-Purcell

This was an incredibly enjoyable and quick read, but I'm finding that I'm having a hard time putting it into some sort of context. In the "city-folk-turned-country-living" sub-genre of memoirs, the goal is generally along the lines of self sufficiency or frugal living. This is not the case in The Bucolic Plague: How two Manhattanites became gentlemen farmers. In it, Josh Kilmer-Purcell tells us about how he and his partner Brent stumbled upon a million dollar historical mansion on 60 acres in the middle-of-nowhere-upstate-New-York, purchased it as their weekend home (living in Manhattan during the week), and the follies of their first year in this situation. As two individuals, each with six figure incomes, this is not an outline of a lifestyle that most people can emulate, but they never pretend that it is. Kilmer-Purcell is very aware that their situation is unique and he is just trying to share his story, which just happens to be incredibly funny, honest, and relatable.

During the week, Josh works in advertising and Brent works for Martha Stewart Omnimedia, but on the weekends they travel 4 hours north to their weekend home where they garden, help to keep goats, and generally enjoy country living. For Josh, this is an opportunity to return to his Midwestern upbringing and on New Year's Eve he reveals his resolution to find a way to live full time at their farm. Cashing in on their New York connections, the pair start a mail order artisanal soap business. To support this venture, they build a lifestyle website featuring tutorials, blog posts about the farm, and guest writings by the locals. But as their weekends become more and more work and less enjoyable, their relationship begins to suffer and all seems to be lost when they both face financial crisis in the economic downturn.

I liked this couple and I was rooting for them the entire time. It's not the bumbling city boys in the country story that one might assume it to be (although there are moments when other people come to visit and they do bumble), but it's also not a how-to manual for simple living (although it provides plenty of inspiration for undertaking things like gardening and home food preservation). It is a story of love of people and of place, of honest living and building a community, of reaching out and finally finding home.

We have snow!

We survived our first blizzard of the year. Unable to get out of our garage, Steve stayed home from work yesterday. I got to enjoy the snow day; drinking cocoa, reading, knitting. Poor Steve had to shovel three-foot-deep snow from our entire driveway by himself. I bundled up and contributed a couple shovel-fulls, but Steve had himself convinced that such exertion would send me into immediate labor. And with a driveway full of snow, that was not an appealing prospect. So, at his insistence, I waited patiently inside and had a host of warm beverages and soup ready when he finally carved out a car-wide path to the road.

This is the front yard. Most impressive, but not pictured here, is the five foot drift in our backyard.



Mutterings of "I hate Iowa" could be heard for most of the evening.