glimpses

Texas-bound!

 We sent Eliza on a journey this week.  I mentioned a couple of months ago that our family-away-from-family is living elsewhere for four to six months  an undetermined amount of a-whole-lot-of-time.  Well, they took with them Eliza's closest friend and her home away from home, so when the opportunity came to send her along with their daughter on spring break, we said YES! and figured out a way to make it happen (you know who you are - thank you!). This involved an airplane. To another state. On the ocean. Let's just say that I've done a lot of deep breathing this past week!

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Tonight there is a steady rain that is supposed to turn to snow long after we're asleep.  Dan and Ani are bonding before he leaves for a conference...it looks a lot like this:

We are in such an interesting place right now. Our lives look normal for all the activity and busyness and figuring, budgeting, food planning, art making, etc. going on,  but there is a current underneath it all, and the kids have to be feeling it too, that is like a suspended note ringing for so long that at times you manage to stop hearing it, only to have it suddenly crescendo back into focus when things get a little quieter and you wonder what it was you were supposed to be doing (organizing? purging? packing?)...it is the sound of Waiting and of Not Knowing. It is what it is, but I feel like we're living a bit of a double life, doing business as usual while not really knowing what life will look like in a few months' time.  

But for all of that, no one is cracking under the pressure: Dan is a hero of the dissertation world, forging on, page by page, and I'm finding that when we have some time together, a meal, some reading, a game, a nap, we are eager to grab it, just for the feeling of Normal. Together.   Seeing them asleep like that, so deeply relaxed together, reminded me of the earliest days of familyhood, when the physical drain of the day leads to to that inevitable pile of limbs and warm breath, the surrender to the sweetest kind of sleep.

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And meanwhile...right now, Life kind of looks like this.