From the Crow's Nest

Last Tuesday, I was driving F & L to their swim lesson and from I-94 east I saw the sign, “Crow’s Nest” nestled in the strip mall. Immediately, I was five or six years younger, back in Santa Cruz. P. and I took the drive down the coast on our "get-away-Thursdays" from the heat and beat of Silicon Valley to the Crow's Nest. The memory was visceral: I could taste the salt air and feel the sun on my face. The baby in my belly kicked, bringing me back to the gray slushy highway as we approached our exit for swimming. Amazed at where P. & I are, given where we've been, I pulled into the parking lot.

P., myself, and baby F. at the original Crow's Nest, Santa Cruz, CA

This morning, I found it hard to rise in our current nest and take flight. I’d been up with L., our newly minted four year old, from 3 am to 6:30 am. That’s why when P came in to wake me with a command, “F. needs to get to school it’s two minutes to 8,” I bolted, “What?!” Threw back the covers and my grogginess, half grateful for the extra sleep, half resentful for the rushed wakening.

I was extra tired from this weekend when I was in a bad way—irked by the clutter piling up in our home like the winter snow banks that line the city streets, layer after layer, no time to melt. Katie, your feng shui help in our bedroom set off a domino affect. The simple act of no cell phones or computers on at night near our beds does permit for better sleep! It is like I I'm no longer on! Nothing pinging me. These small, cleansing acts set me on course, craving clean lines, no clutter, and clean counters.

So last night, I was first roused at 3 am, not initially to L., but to a blood curdling shriek and the clamoring of the trap that we set in the eaves of our attic this weekend. Hoping beyond hope that our hunch of things living in there was wrong; the clamor, the sound of something wild dying, jostled me from the deepest of sleep into a vague wakefulness: Was it the boys? No they were still asleep. And the image of a mama squirrel witnessing her young die before her eyes infiltrated my dream. A cruel trick we played, that eave serving as a safe haven form the brutal winter winds now no longer safe. What had I done? Perhaps I dreamed it I thought.

I drifted back to sleep with dying squirrels, and no sooner did L. cried out, “Mom! There is a bug in my bed!” Box elders reemerged in our home, after a brief winter hibernation. Could it be them? Was he awoken like me, from the dying animal? I am not squeamish about Box Elders like I was when we had mice four years ago. My fear of mice consumed me. At the time, I was nine months pregnant with L.. I called P. home from work crying wolf, “Labor!” because of our brazen mouse that emerged in daylight hours and our bemused dogs that laid there and watched him. I stayed frozen standing on top of our couch, white knuckling the phone, until P. returned. 

Nor the time period two years ago, when I feared deer ticks. I was pregnant with K., we lived in Gloucester where ticks defied winter temperatures. Ticks tormented me (and my family because of me) into de-clothing after each hike/swim. We would undress on our deck that overlooked the Atlantic. Clothes peeled off, turned inside out to check seams, tick highways. This ritual guaranteed me utter assurance that these tiny, worrisome bugs stayed outside. Untethered to me, to the napes of my babes necks. (The one time one lodged he chose to nest on my oldest boy, in that tender crevice of the neck. Scarred by the experience of unsuccessfully de-ticking him, the tick's body broke off while the head remained.)

It was not until we moved to Santa Fe where ticks were less of a threat and mice were more apt to build nest in cars than homes that I shed these fears. So a Box Elder bug, while annoying, does not instill fear. I pulled my weighted, pregnant body, out of bed to check L.’s cry of a bug in his bed. No bug. No need for the wipe I held in my hand ready for the collection. Settling L. back into bed, I climbed down his bunk ladder to return to sleep. Only I don’t fall asleep like P. does, readily and greedily, I take time and for the rest of the night it was a dance with L. I’d finally sleep, he’d wake, he’d sleep, I’d lie awake, and so on. I should have taken this as a foreshadowing to this morning's events.

View of the Atlantic sunset from our deck as we de-tick!

The rushed drop off of F. at school, and a pick up of a Spanish decaf latte, I came home to L. screaming again, only this time, “Mom, I threw up!”

And boy did he!  In the bedroom, that houses our version of Lego Land, trailing through the hallway, with the grand finale in our bathroom! Yes, Monday morning was off to a happening start-but after the weekend of the doldrums over my hair loss, (but that is another post for another day), I welcomed the fact to not be obsessed by dark thoughts and thrown into immediate action. As P. rushed in with paper towels and disinfectant. (I was utterly grateful for him in this moment.) I ran downstairs only to return to a cleaned up L. But an undressed K. no diaper even, but poop all over the bathroom. His unsuccessful attempt to use the potty independently.

Well we won a ticket to stay home and decompress. No music class, no outings, just the invitation of winter sunlight streaming in through the open windows, and nothingness before us. And I realized all too soon my school mornings will be solo mornings. In five short years, they’ll all be at school and I’ll be without the “Hold mes!,” their demands, the "reeeaaad to me" requests, their morning companionship. The thought besieged me, slowed me down to enjoy my present—all of it, the throw up, the poop clean up, the littles near me. I don’t mean this in a Polly Anna-ish sort of way. It was just a visceral realization like that moment last Tuesday on I-94 when I was thrown back into Santa Cruz. Suddenly, I was looking at my boys from my own second story crow’s nest. And gracefully circling over the chaos of the morning, I found gratitude. Even joy, to begin to tackle the clutter of our second story. I hung the Batman and Spider Man decals I bought for the boys room in November, unpacked the pictures from our fall move from New Mexico, and dusted them off, wiping away the red earthen dust I grew to love, that still coated their glass. (A bittersweet moment realizing that the dust that collects on them now will be white, the filaments that readily float in winter sunlight.) I even rearranged our bedroom furniture. The boys played Legos and cars beneath my feet, and settled into my bed  for sick-induced TV time. 

The weight from this weekend lifted, clean lines emerged and a red lamp that we purchased in San Jose, CA no longer fit this space. For a moment, as things cleared away I could observe it all unobstructed-revealing panoramic views of the Atlantic to the Pacific, to the Christo de Sangre mountain tops, finally resting my gaze on the ravines of the mighty Mississippi.

Our sweet dog on a hike collecting the red earthen dirt I love, on her paws.

(* By the way the wild animal killed in our attic eaves, a flying squirrel—light in color, part squirrel, part bat. Sad.)