Heron & Crane

Long Overdue Fall Appreciation List

Fall can occasionally be a difficult time for me.

It can be a helpful exercise to pause and give thanks for all that is good:

• spiced cider
• making soup
• many cups of tea
• Bert Jansch (rip)
• visiting family and friends
• drawing with my Son
• the crock pot and the possibilities therein
• random appreciative text messages from good friends that I miss
• new Inez Lightfoot and Sagas tapes to cook to
• Ken Seeno’s Invisible Surfer On An Invisible Wave
• Rachel’s tenderness during my difficult moments
• pizza night
• addicting television for the cold and dark nights
• walking through the sunshine and fall colors
• finding mullein and drying it in my kitchen
• drying herbs in the kitchen
• dreaming up songs

RUNNING

I used to be in good enough shape that I could go weeks without lacing up the sneakers and still be able to run a good 3 or 4 miles. That’s changed. I am starting afresh with the program that initially got me fit for running: the Couch-to-5K. It’s an interval-based, nine week program that starts you off light and eventually kicks your ass into gear.

When I first did this program, it was about three years ago and I could barely run around the block without dry-heaving. I felt so accomplished when I “graduated” and took immense pleasure and pride in feeling like I had discovered the athlete within. It feels good to return, for my health and for my sanity in the coming cold months.

Today, I finished the second week. Onward!

R

RACHEL’S LIST

• Reading fantasy novels on the front porch of my house with cold minted water.
• Studying the organ systems of the body in preparation for the nursing school entrance exam: drawing diagrams of nerve cells, of the human heart.
• Learning to swim
• Wednesday nights drinking in the cemetery and talking about kids, husbands. Riding bikes with women late at night.
• Assassin movies with Ian
• Rowan’s small strongholds of arguments (“No, it is an airplane”)
• Holding each other at the end of every day, feeling tired and good

Why This Summer is Awesome - Ian’s List

- actually built and filled a raised bed
- the little mini-vegetables forming in said bed
- completing the copper pot rack that I said I would make
- semi-regular dinners and cookouts with friends and family
- watching the flowers given to us as wedding/house warming presents blooming
- getting to know our neighbors and their dogs
- previously mentioned dog neighbor getting two new puppies
- discovering the secret wood dumpster for projects
- and last but not least, the shandy.

On Step-Parents

My step-dad is a hero of mine.  I have known him through great loss.  I have known him through great work and strength.  I have enjoyed the spoils of his hard work, embodied in the house where I spent 12 years of my life.  I have eaten vegetables that he grew.  I have worked on cars with him.  I have mourned my Mother with him.  We have laughed together and cried together.  There are many truths that I have learned from him.

And there was a time that I wasn’t sure about him at all.  He entered my life when I was about eight and at the time I thought he was kind of loud, a little funny looking, and strange.  I didn’t know anything else about him except that he seemed to take a fancy for my Mother and my Mother, for some reason, had an interest in him.  (Obviously, this renaissance man who could cook, built his own house, drove a damn Mercedes that he had restored, and basically knew how to do or fix anything had a few things going for him.)  I suppose I warmed up to him, and there were times that I cooled to him as well.  He was the disciplinarian at the times that my Mother wasn’t.  I’m not 100% sure if I ever said, “You aren’t my real Dad!” out loud, but I know for sure that I thought it many times.

And no, he isn’t my real Dad.  I have one of those.  The beauty is, they have both taught me things that the other couldn’t.  I know what I want to be as a man, and it is parts of both of these fine men.  Step or not, Jim is a father to me.  My Dad is a beautiful man who has taught me to know my heart.  Jim taught me to work on cars, and how to take a big cardboard box and roll down a hill in it.  He has shown me that there is a hidden grace in mourning your love.  There is something to his occasional silences that speaks of his depth.

There are times that I see Rachel struggling with finding her role in our family and with Rowan.  She is accurately aware that she is not his mother, and she’s not just my wife.  And on occasion Rowan doesn’t make this very easy work.  His stages with her have been many-splendored; the time that he would just hit her at first sight, when he refused to say her name, when he dubbed her “Mama Lil’ Bit.”  There have also been moments of warmth and love.  Lately he has been a little protective of his time with his Dad and will call for me while with her.  While I was older when my parents were remarried, it is a feeling that I feel is familiar on some level. 

Last night Jim came down and we had an Easter dinner together.  I looked out upon the back yard and saw my smiling son playing with his Mama Rachel.  She was smiling and having one of those moments where it is easy to know her role in his life, in this family.  I was standing beside Jim and I knew that he felt at home as well. 

This morning I drove Rachel to work and put on the Sunday Baroque program and told her that anytime I would be around Jim, or visit him in the barn, that would be on.  When I got back to the house to be with Jim and Rowan, he asked if I could turn on the radio so we could listen to Sunday Baroque.  Someday Rowan will tell his friend or lover about his Step-Mother and I know that it will be with warmth.  She is his Mama-Rachel.