~:: Déjà vu ::~

I have sold myself into service; into slavery have I given myself up:

to a pair of dark puzzled eyes,

to a pair of bluish-greenish-grayish eyes,

to great round eyes filled with a roguish and innocent delight.

Children – the delivering of them, the bringing up of them, the providing and guarding and training of them – not for the fainthearted; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

the patient Sully

The desire to provide for them never goes away, even when they are grown.  But it’s a complex thing, taking care for someone else – sometimes you give delights, sometimes the providing is best done by withholding what you could have given.  Thinking—it takes constant analytical thought—factoring in spirits and personalities, needs, wants, fears.

The first little animal I ever made, knitted in the round – requested by Gin for Max from Itty Bitty Toys by Susan B Anderson.

Each little animal in the book is made to be sleepy, and the patterns include a blanket so that the child can bundle up the sleepy buddy.

Gin crocheted her own blanket, and the first thing Max wanted to do was button the puppy up snuggly.

Do you offer safety or risk?  Relief or challenge?  It all depends on the child – the mind and the moment.

Here is what I noticed this morning as I was trotting my mile and a half along the gravel roads of Gin’s area of Santa Fe:

while I am a tree and fern and grass and bright creek sort of person, I am still taken by the sweep of sky and hill and mountain of this desert place.  At home, they keep snatching farmland and throwing up developments – one house sitting in the other’s back pocket.  That happens as cities grow, a thing that seems almost cancerous to me.  The soul needs views – to remind itself of its smallness.

Gin’s present house.

But the sky inevitably disappears, the mountains over-layed by rooflines.  In places where there are forests, you don’t often see the mountains in the distance, but in valleys like ours – you should be able to see them— and the whole arching mystery of distance and sky.  Tall buildings are going up downtown, now.  The city calls this progress, a word of which I find I am not over-fond, and that I appreciate mostly in reference to medicine and technology.

And you end up with artists for neighbors – houses with studios semi-attached.  Bronze statues in the front yard.

At the end of progress, shouldn’t we human types find ourselves more gentle, less intrusive?  An enhancement of beauty rather than an interruption? I like the thought of human impact as being care taking and almost invisible – but government has pretty much proven that those two things seem to be mutually exclusive.

Anyway, what I’m saying is that I like the way that, in this part of New Mexico at least, the restrictive covenants insist that the houses remain traditional, and that they not intrude on the vista in any way taxing to the soul.

——-=0=——-

Well, I’ve cleaned out the dishwasher, caught up with the laundry (not really – this is what we hear very often around this house: “Really?  You just pooped? AGAIN???” So there’s always a little pile of changing pads and washcloths waiting beside the washer); we’ve wrapped presents and made wreaths and played cars and magically transformed boys into dogs and gone to Karate and eaten well and slept poorly. And I have almost finished what is probably the last pumpkin hat I will ever make (that makes them collectable, you know – and most valuable for their peculiar flaws).

proof that I was here

It’s been a great week.

But now I have left my daughter behind.

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I wonder how I did it.

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