Life These Days.

The Grand Tetons

It feels like life these days is a series of snapshots, moments, that I play back in my mind, looking back and wondering how in the world it is that it goes by so quickly in the long-run, and yet so slowly in the moment.  The rollercoaster of daily chores, the beastlings, the random outings and busy-ness we create for ourselves revolve around routine meals interspersed with playtime and children's shows.  If Matt and I can get in a good conversation, have a laugh, a drink and get in an episode of a fun show, I call the day a success.  This is not the wild adventurous life I imagined for myself, in plain terms.  It is intense in very different ways than I'd thought it would be (everyone chronically underestimates the utter madness and reciprocating joy of parenthood).  But it's wonderful.  Better in so many ways than I ever thought.

Despite this, up until about six months ago, I clung to the absurd tendency to construct my views of what my life should be like based on the idealized life of 26-year-old-me: newly married, adventurous, unfettered and with decent amounts of disposable income to fulfill my dreams and whims (generally interchangeable).  So many of those things are no longer true, sadly in two cases and happily in all the others:

- I'm so glad to no longer be a newlywed despite the happy expectation, promise of that time period in my life.  

- I'm still adventurous despite having very different outlets for that personality trait than I did ten years ago.  

- I am quite fettered - this we know, and we love (though they may drive me crazy half the time).  

- And the disposable income, while not overrated in its ability to add to the quality of life, it is neither here nor there in this rumination, really (except that I will say that it is shockingly expensive to raise three kids).  

Six months ago a bubble burst.  I had to redefine those stubborn, outdated "perfect life" terms as something more realistic based on what I needed, and not necessarily what I wanted.  That didn't sit well with me and I fought it, with frustration, desperation, jealousy, annoyance and denial.  There were so many things I wanted - and why shouldn't I have them?  

- I wanted to travel as much as 26-year-old me.  I can't. Not yet anyway. 

- I wanted to live in a very specific beautiful place that I love - my living, breathing watercolor, as I like to think of it; a place that inspires me daily, despite my husband having little chance of finding a good / fulfilling job in that place, and despite it being a somewhat arbitrary obsession.  I can't.  

- I wanted to be independent, not have to lean on people like family or friends.  I can't.  

I desperately need the support of my family and people I care about, in ways I never knew or admitted before.  And it seems that for ten years I've refused to admit that until that need literally grabbed me and shook me and looked me in the eye and said, "Why are you still pretending you're not desperate to go home? Why are you still pretending you don't know where home is?"

I don't know.  I don't know why I do that.  It makes no sense.  And so this impending manifest destiny leading me home has washed over me like a warm, unstoppable wave.  At first I was dragged, kicking and screaming, until I saw that it was inevitable.  Suddenly, the reality became a positive one; rather than fighting the current, I went with it and actually found I was excited.  Right now, I'm at the crest of the wave, happy but impatient because I am waiting to crash down into a whirlpool of change and upheaval, with only the promise of landing on a distant but familiar shore at the end.  At lease there will be many familiar hands waiting to lift me up when I do, unlike every other time I've ever crashed into a new life.

I am trying to enjoy the view, enjoy the feeling of being suspended in the air, on a beautiful ride.  I'm looking around, trying to absorb what I see and experience and feel from this perspective that will soon be gone.  It feels good to accept this new reality, finally.  There's not much to let go of, practically speaking, here in Utah.  And there is charm and magic in suddenly taking on an adventure I never foresaw wanting to take on.  But it's hard and it's frightening and I oscillate between excitement and being overwhelmed. One day I'll look back on this first voyage of my life as grown-up-me and think how beautiful it was, with all its stops and wanderings, and amazing discoveries (no matter how much I hated or complained about them in the moment).  I'll think of all the interesting things we did, and how lucky we were to do them.  Because one day soon, I'll be in my cozy new house on that new shore, finding new things to be inspired by.  But this time, I won't be on an island.  I'll be surrounded by familiarity and people and that will make all the difference.  Because a life worth living is a life shared with those you love.  It is neither here nor there - it's not any "where."  It is in the moments and memories and happiness suspended between you and the many souls that love you - an invisible tie that doesn't bind.

*  *  *

Here are some impressions of life over the past six months in random order.  It has been busy and beautiful but I'm ready to leave Utah when the time comes!

Antelope Island views

Sparkly little birthday boy.

Impressionistic Bison.

Ogden Valley sunsets never get old.

Needs, not wants.

The world did not end that day.

Happiness.

Hygge Home.

Frozen salt flats.

Snow swimming.

Peachy porch time.

Millions of peaches.  Peaches for me.

Unidentified beautiful sky.

The serendipitous discovery of pop cream / ice corn at the zoo.

Big western sunrises too.

Yellowstonin'.

little old me with a little old blog: 2014

It has been five years, shy 3 days, since I started Aesthetic Dalliances.  I went back and read my first-post-ever, and laughed at how apt the description for my blog still is.  Though lots of things have changed about me in five years, almost nothing has changed in terms of the random and varied nature of my blog.  I have become, admittedly, a less prolific blogger, but then three international moves and two kids will do that to you.  On the other hand, I still thoroughly enjoy the process of photographing and writing about the "generally uneventful and exciting (in my humble opinion) dalliances I indulge in."


It's interesting to me to ruminate on the multifarious (what a great word :)) nature of the past five years since I started writing Aesthetic Dalliances. Back when I started this blog, in the first post, I closed with a quotation that was a hope, a wish for myself - something I feel I hadn't been able to embrace entirely at that point, but which the past few years have brought more into perspective:

"Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always."
Rainer Maria Rilke

2009 was a high.  The second half of my first and only successful pregnancy, a beautiful spring in Londontown, culminating in the birth of our first, and probably only, biological son.  The winter of that year was filled with discovery, travel, and marination into the feeling of being a family of three - a thrill unparalleled and unrivaled by any other experience to date.

2010 marked another wonderful era of friendship and growth: between Roman learning to be a person, and the fact that we suddenly had more friends in London than we knew what to do with, I remember that Spring and Summer in London as probably the happiest time we spent in the UK.  It came to a climactic halt as we dove into the Middle East, quite literally, and commenced the first half of the short but eventful 10 months we would spend in Abu Dhabi.

2011 was marked with equal parts sadness and joy with our goodbyes to the UAE and all the friends we'd made there, but a great hello as the USA welcomed us back into the fold and showed us the many splendors of Portland, ME, a place that, to this day, I am deeply in love with.  No more Arab markets and five star holidays; just lobster shacks and trips to the Eastern promenade in the car with my sidekick Roman, and proximity to family - which felt like a breath of fresh air after more than four years abroad.

2012 was readjustment and reverse culture shock: loving Maine but suddenly feeling that we somehow didn't quite fit in with our American counterparts, looks from people wondering why we'd ever choose to live in the Middle East, questions about just-strange-enough diction and endless nostalgia for the life abroad we swore we were ready to end, but actually kind of missed.  Halfway through the year we moved to Denver, and that half of the year flew by in a blur of readjustment and, finally (!), adoption paperwork.

2013 was particularly patchy.  It was a tough, stressful year for us as we fully settled into yet another new city and hunkered down into the quietly-but-intensely difficult reality of waiting to adopt a child. On the other hand, we made wonderful friendships in Denver and found ourselves in perhaps the most hospitable neighborhood - Stapleton - we'd ever lived in.  By November, two painful, failed adoption matches later, we'd decided to buy a house.  And then, as fate would have it, Alexander came.  And his adoption was finalized on the same day we signed on our house.  All of this left precious little time or desire to blog although I still came back to it when my heart felt it needed a little something that was just mine.

As we start 2014 I have several goals - the first, with a newborn and 4-year-old, being survival in a happy, healthy kind of way.  The second is to be more consistent in posting on Aesthetic Dalliances, and even slightly more thematic.  I will be trying out lots of soup recipes on here, for one.  I have also joined a couple of knitting groups in Denver and have completed some projects I want to share.  Once the dust storm of my life has truly settled, maybe I'll even get back to watercoloring.  Oh, and stay tuned for our grand return to Vacationland on our first-ever beach-cottage vacation as a family in August. :)

So, life is different, but not all that different.  And, mostly, it is good in all the same and a couple of new-but-welcome ways.  In the end, it's still just little old me with a little old blog.

As in 2009, I'll close with another quote by Rilke, one of my favorite poets, whose words do encapsulate one of my lifelong goals, and express a thought that seems particularly apt as we move into another exciting new year:

"The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things."
Rainer Maria Rilke 

I sure hope so.