SouleMama

SoulePapa Blogs :: Go Mama Go

The Mama :: The Manuscript

The light in the forest

Go Mama Go!!!

SoulePapa Blogs :: Into the Light

The fevers have parted.  Noses have, essentially,  stopped running.  The sun shone brightly and warmed that crusty, frozen surface of the home we call Earth. We stepped from our den of hibernation,  a place we've been squirreled away for the better part of two weeks, riding out a miserable flu, into the outside world.  What a miraculous feeling to absorb that heat. That light.  To breathe the cold winter air into recuperating lungs neglected with days of dry, indoor air. 
The boys quickly realized the sun had softened the top layer of snow just enough to make it sticky.  We rolled it in white mounds all about the yard to make a wall which soon formed into a fort.  Calvin grabbed his sled and began making quick steep runs off our mammoth snow pile.  Using the fort wall as a banked turn, he slid with a fury, narrowly missing Ezra's feet on each descent.  Ez did not peep nor move.  He sat, silently.  Content to be out of doors munching a block of snow.
Adelaide, the latest and hardest hit influenza victim, was happy to be in Mama's arms watching the action.  And Mama, delighted to be taking a well deserved writing break and soaking up some sun of her own.

Legs turned, blood pumped, eyes closed and thought of nothing but that very instant and the feeling of being.  Healthy. 

It's snowing again as i write this.  All are asleep (except Mama, of course) and I turn off each of the lights and walk out into the yard.  The flakes, big and wet, drop and silently wipe away the traces of life that were here only moments before.  Like an evening tide erasing a thousand footprints that won't ever be duplicated. 

It is magical and it is bittersweet and it is all that I believe.

SoulePapa Blogs :: Three May KooK

Kook (ko̵̅o̅k) : Someone regarded as eccentric or crazy and standing out from a group.

exhibit 1:

Dinner was late as usual with Papa at the helm and the kids were beside themselves with low blood sugar, tired bones and more than a touch of delirium.  Things were escalating in a direction that most parents would recognize and probably label as "not good."  As would I.

One had emptied the dolly carriage contents across the room, like a bad doll car wreck, and proceeded to place his sister inside for a high speed ride. The other had begun to turn out all the lights in the house, upstairs and down, rendering it virtually impossible to cook and even more difficult to properly navigate a doll carriage with your sister inside.  Even if she was shouting with glee at the moment, I could see this ending poorly.  I demanded to be listened to, as any father would, but could sense, with my extra keen nodes of perception that I've developed over these years of parenting, that I probably wouldn't be. 
Attempting to use a more subtle means of strength than the forefathers, I went with the fast and determined stride across the room and took my subject gently by the shoulders and turned him away from the light switch to engage in eye to eye deliberations.

"Ezra, WHAT are you doing?" I said in my calm, collected guy voice.

"KooKin'!!"  said he, with a smile so wide and so contagious I had to have one too.

Now, I had no idea what "KooKin' " was.  I'd never heard the word.
But, decided right then that it deserved a day in court, " Five minutes of KooKin'!!" I declared. 
"BUT," waving the fatherly finger and setting the ground rules, "I get ONE light!".

In unison, "OKAY!"  Aargh, I low balled.  "AND," trying to reassert my control over the situation, "Don't bother your mother, she's trying to work."

"Yeah, RIGHT!", a faraway voice from upstairs hollered.

"Sorry, Sweetie!!" I yell.  "Sorry, Mama!!" they yell.

"Let the KooKin' begin!"

I now have five minutes of guaranteed light, by which, I finish my cooking.  The children have a sanctioned bout of rough housing - running, jumping up and down and shouting, "kookin!" - interrupted occasionally, of course, by Papa for rules infractions usually of the, "that is going to hurt somebody," variety.  And...well, tradition is born.
So, this is how a semi-regular "Papa Style" ritual develops around our household.  Something like 1 part necessity, 1 part understanding and 3 parts lightening up.  Something like that.

Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple.

                                                  - Willy Wonka

SoulePapa Blogs :: A Moment

With Adelaide drifting through a high fever nap in the sling, the boys make halfhearted, restless attempts at quiet play.  Clearly they would rather be shaking about in goofy gyration to some raucous tunes or scaling the small mountain of ice deposited so graciously by our heroic plow guy (He may not leave much room for vehicular passage but he does set the kids up with some serious winter terrain).  But, Papa had his hands full of sad sweetness and the motivation for them to get geared and out the door, without help, was failing them in miserable fashion. 
Eventually, they geared down and sunk into some late afternoon projects.  I got Ezra a book from the shelf that I often turn to when asked to draw...well, any animal pretty much.  Good old Ed Emberley's Drawing Book of Animals leads you through a really simple progression of shapes added together to build a variety of animal characters from lady bugs to dragons.

Before long I was being handed a steady stream of drawings that each contained significant alterations to Mr. Emberley's originals although, I'm sure he would have been pleased by each.  I had no recourse but to begin covering the refrigerator with them as fast as they came.  In typical Ezra style the last drawing was not from the book but from his very own, very big heart - a tiny hand making the  "I love you" sign.  He's nice.

Meanwhile, on a train of thought far far away, was Calvin.  He had concocted a mouse condo out of cardboard and decked it with all the plush comforts a small rodent could want.  Such as a wet/dry lounging area and a tunnel to the half pipe box.  This explained the series of, "Do you think a mouse could fit through this?" questions.  He was now busily working on a trap to acquire a tenant for his abode. 

A moment of silence washes over the house.  I stop to breathe and realize how amazing it is to be home for a few weeks while SouleMama finishes her manuscript.  Shadows lengthen and the sun gives us a last brilliant display of light as night falls all around.  No two days are alike.  What a beautiful place.

SoulePapa Blogs :: Act Global Think Loco

Mid - Winter.  Snow, freeze, sun, melt, rain, freeze, snow, sleet, melt ... repeat!! 
It's a cruel lesson in expectations and reality.  Spring too far off to ponder and winter too long to believe.  Waking up in darkness so cold it freezes your heart and slows your brain.  The heat sneaks past a veil of clouds and warms your cheeks for a brief glimpse of how things could be if only...if only you lived. SOMEPLACE. ELSE. 

Wood stoves, furnaces, car heaters, bundled children, shovels, plows, ice, sand trucks, scraping windshields, running noses, frozen toeses. 

All that winter fun, so wondrous in those early days of snow,  loses its luster and seems like so much effort for the brief moments of joy it now brings.  Digging deeply into the recesses of your brain to retrieve that scrap of memory which you will drain for all its comfort and hope.  Beach sand.  Bicycles.  Warm Breeze.  You strain to imagine.

Holding tight to that last tattered shred of sanity.  Keeping that warm glint of resolve in your eye.  Letting that icy realization pass over you that this season of darkness will continue.

We move on and scour the horizon for those bits of light.

Man, I love Winter and its challenge to us that we find it's beauty.  Wherever we can.

Calvin Blogs :: twistie ties for my tree

{photo by calvin}

"First, you cut a really long string. Then you cut a really long string in another color. Or you can use the same color, but then it's hard to see. You put the two strings together, and one person holds one end and the other person holds the other end. And you start twisting, but in opposite directions. So if one person goes one way the other person goes the other way. And you twist for a really long time until it's tight. Then you very very carefully bring the two ends together, and the string will get all twisted up. Quick, you have to tie a knot on both ends of the string. And then it's done! A twistie tie! You can put it on your tree, or you can hang it on the walls, or you could keep it in your car for when you need rope to pull you out of the mud and snow and stuff. Just kidding. Bye!"

SoulePapa Blogs :: The Mama

Thank You SouleMama readers!!  For all of the kind, encouraging and touching responses that you've shared with me during my time here, as interim SouleMama.  It is fulfilling on so many levels, to put words and thoughts and feelings out there to share with this community.  I also get a greater appreciation for the effort and love that Amanda puts into this space.  Not to mention the time she puts into her crafty creations, her books and, of course, her children.  Well, perhaps I will mention that time.  The many nights I crash into bed and fall asleep to the productive sounds of SouleMama, emanating from her studio.  The corresponding mornings where I have the unenviable task of peeling her from the bed, before I leave for work, to spend her days with three growing, beautiful yet oft times, demanding children.  Sometimes, even I don't know how she gets it all done.  Maybe it's the power inducing combo of ice cream and wine.  Maybe it's the children that sneak into her studio and perch on a chair just to chat with mama and "help" for a few minutes.  I guess maybe it just has to do with love.  She shares a lot of that (She doesn't share the ice cream).

I know this is an interesting chapter in our lives and we've heard from and been inspired by so many of you out here.  For that I give a heart felt, Thank You.

SoulePapa Blogs :: At Water, In Water, Am Water

At the banks of the river, they climb and laugh and play and make noise.  I find myself staring into the current, mesmerized by the flow.  Into, over, around and down.  Unmercifully, to the sea.
I float and it holds me, suspended on time.  The water of my ancestors, evaporated into dust and rained down to us, filling pools and spilling down mountains.  The very people that worked this river and looked into it's depths to see those before them. 

The sounds of my children playing returns my attention and I warn them to be careful, the current is strong right here.  They recognize it as a force to be respected and adjust their course.  The present is where they live and I am happy to be here, in it, with them.  Maybe one day they will look and see the reflections of the past and stare at them like I do.  Now we walk the banks and swim in the pools and the kids look downstream and ask me what's around the bend.  I haven't been down there before I tell them, but it looks beautiful.  Let's go.

SoulePapa Blogs :: Pirates, Brothers

Bread is broken and torn as the gluttons chew, slurp and belch their way toward a surly contentment.  By nature, a distrusting lot, they hover over their keep like vultures with an eye to the side ready to repel an enemy combatant or a fellow vying for extra scraps.  They sleep.  Heavy and loud but always, always with an ear to the ground, monitoring the perimeter. 

Drawn to battle, like eels to water, trouble finds them quick and often.  They fight and growl and gnash teeth, clashing metal and flesh in an enraged storm of natures most volatile child.  Man. 

When the opportunity to beat another does not present itself, they scrap each other.  Naturally, they are brothers.  Born into a competition of ancient, biblical proportions they are powerless to resist.  But, as hard as they go at it, at no time are they more powerful, more invincible as when they fight back to back.  Swords arching to defend the family against all that comes.   

When things look bleak, their knees weakened and the end near, look closely, you'll see the most amazing thing of all.  They are smiling. 

SoulePapa Blogs :: Seven

Happy Anniversary Week Sweety!!

Yeah.  You guessed it.  This is me on my hands and knees digging up the blueberry bush where I lost my wedding ring, earlier this summer.  You're right, I know.  I should have gotten it resized rather than wear it on my pinkie.  That's behind us now and the blueberries are gone and here I am looking intently for my ring.  Under the blueberry bush.  Although, I think I might need a metal detector.  The one Calvin made, by duct taping a refrigerator magnet to a stick, isn't working.  Anyway...

I love what you create.  As a Mama,  As a Wife,  As my Best Friend... 

I love you.