Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

happy 28th birthday to my girl

You are twenty eight tomorrow. Twenty eight!

I remember your twenty first birthday. And before that, the day you first left for Colorado. I thought it would only be a few months, a seasonal internship.

Even earlier, the day you called me from Target. “I’m free,” you said. Your year of cross country. Your driver’s license and graduation. Your emergency appendectomy and volleyball games and love of horses and dogs and iguanas. Your Australian Outback birthday party. Your favorite pajamas and the way you loved to smell like vanilla bath products and how tireless you were in the pool. My little bronze fish. The summer you made a habitat for roly polys and wrote a care schedule that included “freedom time.” How precisely and imaginatively you played Pokemon and Zoo Tycoon. How fiercely protective you have always been of your little sister. Your first day of Kindergarten. Your first wobbly steps on that red carpet in our second apartment.

.

Of course I remember so vividly first seeing your delicate self and holding you and nursing you. That first night was perfect. You were perfect.

I remember the terrifying day I first learned I was pregnant and then the thrilling night a few months later when I had that vivid dream of your beautiful face, yet unseen. That dream was accurate; you were soon born looking exactly as it showed me, and it was only the beginning of vivid dreams about you. I have dreamt of you more than anyone in my life. Just a few weeks ago I had a very specific and encouraging dream about you that I have only told one person. I would love to tell you about it. The details have been shimmering in my body.

I also remember every separation, both small and brief like the first day of school or a difficult drop off  at day care or your Dad’s house. Certainly the longer, more traumatic goodbyes are etched in my memory.

I remember how it felt to hope and pray and worry all those years. I still feel these in cycles but have learned to worry less, to instead trust and imagine you as happy as possible.

I have so many beautiful memories of reuniting with you. I will forever be buoyed by the immense, overwhelming joy of seeing you happy and in your element.

On Trail Ridge Road, June 2015.

Many years ago I glanced at a belief system which holds that not only are human souls eternal, which means that each of us has always existed somewhere and could be born to anyone, at any time; but also that children choose their parents. I don’t know how to reconcile that.

a Christmas memory from during the Colorado years

Occasionally someone will ask me how long it has been since I have seen you, and I have to really think. Not because I don’t care or keep track, but because in a very literal sense you are always with me. I probably think about you more than anyone in my life.

You are the first person I pray for every day. You are the first person my thoughts find in a quiet moment. Alone with our animals all day long, I talk to them about you. I make sure that Dusty and Chanta especially hear your name plenty, for when you come home.

I still listen to music you shared with me in Colorado, mostly Skrillex while running. If I cook something you might like, your slim body and enormous brown eyes are with me in the kitchen. I imagine you getting all worked up about the ingredients and aroma but getting full after barely half a plate, ha!

grinning up a storm while campaigning for me
to drink some Gatorade rife with chia seeds.

Anything with a spiral shape belongs to you because you were once so passionate about the beauty of the Fibonacci Sequence.

When I hear anyone tell stories of Colorado, I think possessively, that is hers. You will always be Colorado to me. Snowball fights in April, under moonlight on Trail Ridge Road, hiking to Gem Lake and Angel Pass, through wildflowers and innumerable trees. Living with bears but not worrying because Bridget has it under control.  Remodeling your first cabin. It was tiny and perfect and strong, just like you.

I keep photos of you close as well as childhood toys and clothes. I use your patchwork twin quilt all the time but might need to stop, because it is threadbare now. I stopped buying gifts for you at holidays only because I think rationally of where you are in life now and realize I have no idea what you need anymore. A stack of gifts sits unopened in the Apartment closet. But I still have the urge to shower you with gifts every Christmas and every birthday. A basketful of treats at Easter. I would so truly love to watch movies with you and cook daal again and let you paint the Apartment for me this winter. A mural of your own imagining.

You occupy so much space in my heart, and have so constantly for more than twenty eight years, that the cold hard “fact” of not being in your life right now feels bizarre and unreal. So when people ask me, I fish for the answer and add up the months. I feel the nausea.  Sometimes shame too, because how could a mother survive being apart from her firstborn this long? Sometimes fear, both that you are better off without me and that you are not. Two awful possibilities. I always return to Love and Hope.

Is time elastic for you?

I believe firmly that it is, and that Love stretches and fills the space, the calendar, in weird ways I can barely comprehend, let alone explain.

Had someone told me when I first dreamed of your face that a time would come that I didn’t see you in the flesh for this long, I… Well I cannot say what I would have done, but it would have been incomprehensible to me. It still is, and yet.

You have proven your independence and your inner fire so many times, in ever more daring and beautiful ways. You have survived more pain, abuse, close calls, and disappointment than most people know, and I am sure there is much no one knows at all. But there is also a wealth of Joy and experiences we would all love to hear about.

Jocelyn, you are finally past so much. You are so loved, not just me but by a big family who misses you. You are so filled with talent and strength and beauty. This world was made infinitely better when you joined it. You have a terrifying life force for which I have always been grateful. Now more than ever.

I trust that you have made a beautiful and genuine home for yourself. I trust that if you are dating anyone, you feel like you can be yourself with them and are receiving all the love and respect in the world. You are so good at making friends and maintaining community. I trust that your friends appreciate that they have in their midst one of this world’s finest artists, most loyal companions, and smartest adventurers. I trust that you are doing work that brings you more money than you need so you can play and explore and enjoy your life. I trust that Bridget still loves to hike and that she still fetches rocks. I miss her too.

If your thoughts turn to me, to home, to anyone here, may they be warm and strong and feel good. A woman should always feel most at home with herself, of course, but I pray that you feel at home here again too, in your own time. May your memories and curiosities about Home assure you that you are safe here, that you are only loved, and that a lot has happened in the past few years to bring peace, healing, and understanding. Room for life to grow for everyone.

I hope someone is helping your birthday feel extra special this year. You deserve it.

I love you so much, baby.
Happy 28th birthday!
XOXOXO

a happy, messy look back at 2021

Closing out the year 2021, I feel maybe more wide-eyed and open-hearted than ever in my life, which is wonderful. I also feel a bit weirded out by how quickly time has been passing. Lots of my friends feel this way, too, about the speeding clock, and theories abound about why this is happening. Whatever the reasons, our days and months seem to be gaining momentum. In the New Year, my remedy for this sensation will be to schedule in more free time, more protected white space for play and spontaneity, and more rest days that I can redeem however I need to at that time, trusting in my overall work product. Trusting that life can and should contain more wiggle room.

Looking back over the past twelve months, I am in awe of all the hard work and dazzled by all of the intense Love. I am deeply grateful for the relief sent our way, for the grace supplied to handle difficulties we have never handled before, and for the fresh inspiration. I feel a gorgeous weaving together of sincere effort and desire, and it is thrilling.

As last year began, we spent time with Handsome’s cousin, Shane, and his beautiful little family, while they were in Oklahoma to bury Shane’s dad, Wes. It was a profoundly sad time but a happy reunion too, and we were thankful everyone was healthy and safe enough to be together. During their stay, Oklahoma was blanketed by snow and the farm was without power for several days, so that was definitely a memory maker! We did our best to cling to New Year’s Eve traditions and have fun outdoors when possible, and we just covered each other in love.

During that visit, while cooking dinner for the group, I received a phone call from Jessica that changed everything. She and Alex had just decided to get married! The engagement was no surprise to us, but their timeline was: They set a date exactly two weeks from the date of that phone call, ha! So we were thrown immediately into some of the most joyful, also the most feverish, most love-drenched planning and farm beautification days ever. Jessica and Alex were the picture of young love and true, warm-hearted family love. They deserve the world. As I type this, these lovebirds are fast approaching their first anniversary!

Handsome and his team at the Public Utilities Division made history with their unrelenting work and fierce, talented attention during Oklahoma’s Polar Vortex and all of the precipitating (no pun intended) energy crises. It was a long, cold, challenging season for them, and I am so proud. He coined the saying, “We’ll keep them alive today so they can hate us tomorrow,” and my smart husband got to be on television press conferences with Oklahoma’s favorite ASL translator. Who remembers this guy?? He was amazing.

We celebrated Easter outdoors with our local family!! The tulips and daffodils were blooming, the sun emerged with extra early heat, and everyone brought their pups. I remember feeling hope for normalcy, something even bigger than the seasonal dose of excitement springtime delivers.

Eventually vaccines rolled out, and we were thankful to partake. Beyond thankful for our health and our family’s health, thankful for the preservation of life so far. We know intimately that not everyone has been so lucky.

Sometime during the warm months last year, I cannot remember exactly when, we finally met some longtime neighbors and struck up a new friendship. Rex and Cathy live down the road from us, and their German shepherd (Max) is a neighborhood celebrity. It was with the excuse that Max and Klaus become buddies that we started talking, and soon enough we all just clicked. It turns out that their (now grown) daughter grew up as best friends with the little girl who grew up here, in our house at the Lazy W (but long before it was the Lazy W, ha)! Rex and Cathy have quickly become two of our favorite people. A very happy development this year.

If I look back on the gardening year of 2021, I will remember mostly flowers. Lots of different lilies, hydrangeas, zinnias and marigolds of course, some sunflowers, shady beds full of soft impatiens, blooming sage, and even roses. Gosh so many roses! I will also remember the castor bean plants that my running friend Mike gifted us in the form of bizarre, prickly, sappy little seed pods. The plants are ultimately sky-scraping, elegant monsters. I will also remember the okra. Oh good grief, those plants produced three times per day all summer long! Okra and tomatoes were the bulk of our little farm’s food production this year. My focus was more on flowers, to make sure we had lots of bouquets for our vow renewal. It was a fun diversion, but I’ll get back to food in 2022.

2021 was the year that we almost lost Rick Astlee, the bully duck, thanks to an attack by Johnny Cash, the bully goose; but Rick convalesced in our bathtub for two weeks and survived to enjoy a happy summer with his guide duck, Mike Meyers Lemon. Klaus was enraptured, and we were relieved. It was also this year that our chickens enjoyed a free range experiment, which we will repeat after winter, once I have figured out how to protect my gardens better.

In spring, Lady Marigold celebrated her first year with us. She has grow daily into a bossy little hand-fed, spoiled rotten, circle-zooming miss fancy pants. We lubb her.

Our nieces and nephews insist on growing up. Chloe has her driver’s license? Connor is speaking Spanish??

Our own beautiful kids are healing and growing in their own ways, both with and without us, proving that we are only vessels or conduits for God’s Love, not the source. He is always the Source.

We learned so much about friendship and family and social evolution, about teamwork and thriving in harmony. Community has taken on new and deeper meaning, as I know many of you will agree.

We celebrated out twentieth wedding anniversary with an outdoor vow renewal, which was definitely postponed once and almost postponed twice, for monsoon-level rainstorms! We were surrounded by friends and family and could not have felt happier or more in love.

Not much travel this past year, despite having tried. Three good trips were all cancelled at the last minute due to covid outbreaks or upswings, but we barely pouted at all. It seems like life at home, on this farm, with each other, has become so nourishing and relaxing that we recharge just fine, right here. We did make one quick getaway to the Palo Duro Canyon area in the panhandle of Texas, which was absolutely enchanting. We enjoyed that quick visit so much, we intend to make a longer adventure of it soon. Rent a cabin, go for long hikes, pack our own groceries to cook, have some no-cell-service kind of romance. We love that it’s a Klaus-friendly trip.

All the hardscape improvements we made to the farm during the first year of pandemic have held up, and this year I think we mostly just added gravel. Lots and lots of gravel, ha! We also bought a zero-turn-radius riding lawn mower, which makes life so much easier. We also hosted the Master Gardeners for a second time at the end of summer, also nearly derailed by a freakish monsoon, but gosh that turned out to be a wonderful memory maker too.

The fifth annual Lazy W Talent Show was a huge success! We hosted it in October and called it “Fright Night,” and everyone brought the Halloween vibes! So much fun. That will go down in history for us.

Mom and Dad hosted Thanksgiving this year, and Gen was in town, wahoo! We were missing Jocelyn, Dante and Deaven, and Joe and Halee and their magical boys (stationed in Spain right now). But we ate their share of turkey and pecan pie and stayed fixed in gratitude for everything and everyone. I will remember Thanksgiving Week 2021 as one especially full of games and laughter, team efforts and shimmering affection for each other.

Christmas was overall the quietest holiday of the year, and honestly we needed it to be that way. It felt restful and intimate, and it gave us time to just soak up Jess and her beautiful little family, and we slept a lot that weekend. My heart has felt comforted and joyful, just as the carol offers.

I ran one speck less than 2,121 miles this year, which means absolutely nothing except that I stayed healthy and consistent, uninjured and very happy, and overall a bit stronger thanks to more regular gym days. I have actual running goals for 2022, wahoo!

Of course there have been heartaches, there always are, and there always will be. But I feel content. Well seasoned. I feel good despite the hard times, or maybe in part because of them. God has grown us so much this year.

Happy New Year, friends. I hope your pain is eased and your joy is rekindled. I hope your faith is stronger than ever. And I hope your dreams begin to come true right before your wide open eyes.

“Open yourself to every possibility,
for there is nothing your heart can imagine
that is not so.”
~This Tender Land,
William Kent Kreuger
XOXOXOXO

and just like that…

Just now while doing breakfast chores, I was praying for Jocelyn and something wonderful happened.

((an old photo of the boys with fresh hay…xoxo))

For several days I have been aggressively and tediously flaking hay for the bachelors from what is perhaps the most tightly wound large bale I have ever seen in my life. It is also wrapped in not wire, not netting, but twine, and lots and lots of it. It’s like a five year old wrapped a gift with cheap tape. The blue nylon twine is buried and criss-crossed in deep crevices throughout the hay, making the already tight spiral of tangled dry grass nearly impossible to loosen neatly. Every day is a slow unraveling task. Chipping and shredding, really. Generally this task is kind of fun, actually, I’m not complaining. Raking hay can be therapeutic, like collecting manure for compost or pulling weeds. It’s a repetitive motion and gentle physical exertion that makes it easy to get lost in thought, or prayer. But the twine has been a frustrating block.

So today I was chipping away, flaking off small, not pretty, tufts of hay to slowly collect into heaps for the boys’ breakfast, praying for Jocelyn. Praying for her to remember the best moments between us, from childhood to Colorado and everything in between. Praying for her to feel needed and appreciated and valued, to feel safe and warm when she thinks of home, to separate trauma and fact and fiction, to resist and replace the brainwashing, to grow whatever seeds of love and hope and health are in her heart. I swung my straight metal rake again and again, and suddenly the tines caught another strong, skinny bit of blue twine. So I stopped to cut it apart. (So much twine you guys.)

As soon as my scissors snapped the twine, it popped apart like a champagne cork! And a thick, fluffy, luxurious band of soft hay collapsed at my feet. I don’t know if you have ever felt that, the release of more hay than you needed, but it is wonderful. Hay falling at my feet is one of my favorite sensations, maybe because it is so clearly proof of lushness and abundance. Every day I hope it will happen, but as you might imagine, this particular large bale has been stingy with the magic.

Anyway, today it did happen. I couldn’t believe how much gorgeous, sweet smelling hay was being trapped by a single strand of blue nylon twine. It really doesn’t make sense. It hit my very cold toes (three cheers for wearing flip flops in December), and I stared at the now very lopsided large bale. Then I collected the food into my big green basket and called Chanta, Dusty, and Meh over to feast.

It hit my heart that God has worked this way in my life over and over again.

He has many times released fears or shame or toxic relationships, or simply erroneous thinking, in one powerful godly breath, thereby triggering cascades of goodness in my life.

And He can do this with my girl, too. He can release her from everything in one moment. All that goodness in her life can cascade again with the snapping apart of one lie or one dark thought or one influence or one circumstance. She feels far away but also very close right now. I hope that the blue nylon twines keeping her bound up are snapped away gradually, gradually, then all at once. She deserves absolute freedom.

((a very happy day on my first trip to visit her in Colorado))

I feel momentum building and a deep peace growing. Thank you so much for your love and continued prayers. Please let me know how we can be praying for you too! Tell me what blue twine needs cutting, so the hay can fall thickly at your feet.

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,
saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil,
to give you an expected end.”
Jeremiah 29:11
XOXOXO

new aquarius moon, senses inventory

Today is Thursday, Februrary 11, 2021, this winter’s New Moon in Aquarius. According to my journal, it is Day 332 in “quarantine,” although that word has shifted meaning over the months. Nearly a year, though, since all this started. Amazing.

In Oklahoma we have just 36 days till spring and 63 days till danger of frost has passed. My friend Rose will like that number play. In the mean time, we are already bitter cold and bracing for an historic snow storm this weekend.

Earlier today, I spent a few minutes taking a Senses Inventory. It felt like a good day to mark the moment then deeply inhale fresh energy.

SEE: A stack of thank you cards I am writing for our Outreach projects. Two vases filled with dried wedding flowers, mostly roses. Verdant houseplants in almost every direction. Shiny clean mixing bowls drying on the kitchen counter. Handwritten notes from my friends Kelly, Lori, and Brittany. Brightly painted artwork. Snow and frost covering everything I see outside, in the south yard.

HEAR: A rooster crowing about either his breakfast or his love life, maybe both. Klaus snoring gently after a busy round of morning chores. My husband’s muffled voice filtering from his upstairs office, firm and authoritative, serious, on the verge of angry. (Edit to add: he was definitely angry.) Also, music from the kitchen, a rotation of Lana Del Rey and Billie Eilish.

TOUCH: Hot, tingly hands from scrubbing dishes. Legs bouncy and energetic, ready to run! Nose raw from constant Kleenex attention this week.

SMELL: Bleach cleaner, dish soap, freshly baked cinnamon pumpkin bread, and the cold. The cold has a fragrance today.

TASTE: Oily aftertaste of the unsalted pepitas and raisins I ate while baking earlier. Tepid water laced with liquid biotin drops, not quite citrusy, not too good.

THINK: Reflecting on a wonderful dream I had last night. Also thinking about Jocelyn’s first cabin in the mountains, the one she remodeled, and of the time I visited her in April but we got snowed in. We got donuts and made coffee twice and her houseplants were thriving. Later, we hiked on Trail Ridge Road by moonlight. All of Colorado’s magic was housed in her petite body. Today, here at the farm, feels like that day, and I can’t stop thinking about it. About her.

FEEL: I feel amorous, romantic, silly. Also widly hopeful about everything in the world that matters deeply, especially our family. Not the kind of hopeful that is gripping and determined, but rather, the floaty, shimmering, giggling kind of hopeful, like something wonderful is about to happen. I am also very excited for deep snow at the farm, movies, cuddling, and playing games all weekend.

Share details from one of your senses with me!

XOXOXOXO

“I knew it would happen today!”

Three seperate times this week, a question has found its way into my view, and I cannot resist exploring it with you:

What if you woke up to discover
that all of your prayers had been answered?

One version of this idea was related to health and fitness. I woke up feeling great, which led to being curious about how different my routine would look if every bodily niggle was healed, every aesthetic hope fulfilled, and all my energy topped off. Would I run more miles, or less, and how would other activities like pilates and yoga fit in, if I am moving to feel my best instead of solving problems? Would I go on more adventures instead of exercising, or would I still need that time alone?

Then I was indulging in how different our family will feel when Jocelyn rejoins us (again). How complete and alive we will be with her among us again. What a blinding joy that will be!

I hang onto the vision I had in December 2019, of her and Bridget walking up to the kitchen door on a sunny day. She is all smiles, her enormous brown eyes wet and bright, her sweet olive skin, equal parts woman and little girl. She opens the door tentatively, and we hug fiercely without missing a beat. Everything good floods in. All the love. All the colors. We are crying from laughing and laughing from hugging. Without reservation, she tells me everything she has been through these past few years, and I listen without giving advice. She sinks in. We missed each other so much. Bridget remembers us and brings BW rocks to fetch, and everything else falls away.

Jocelyn tells me that she can fix Dusty’s hoof if I want her to, and she gently chastises me for not riding Chanta like she knows I want to. We share new music and movies and cook dinner together. She likes that I still listen to the songs she gave me in Colorado, and she tells me all about her new romance. I do my best to relay my sorrow about her Dad. She is home forever this time.

Then.

I think about how much happier my husband is when his work is rewarding, how it’s not the exertion or the hours at the office or the extreme multitasking (he can handle anything) so much as it is the deep satisfaction of making a difference in the world and with his people. This is an ongoing miracle unfolding in our life, and I wonder how much better it still can be.

I am excited for post-pandemic family time, free socializing, hostessing, volunteering, travel, all of it. What will it feel like to throw a party again, to drive to New Orleans and the beach and to eat in restaurants? To annoy my friends again with attack hugs? So good.

We are just weeks away from true springtime, and that familiar knowledge, despite the arctic air headed for us this week, helps me feel some of this more concretely. The relief!

I can think of dozens more big miracles my heart craves and how it might feel to realize they have happened. That they are unfolding. Often when I am running at the lake or on trails, my mind is just playing movies, visualizing the fruition of our deepest hopes. It’s the fabric of prayer for me, the beautiful unfolding of all those petitions.

In fact, they are unfolding already. That is the root and truth of my faith. That everything is just a matter of time and trust. Everything expands and grows. Everything is subject to the power of Love, and on some level it already accomplished. Every good thing is very much worth the wait. Hang in there, friends.

“I knew it would happen today!”
~Shrek musical
XOXOXOXO