Trees Tall as Mountains (The Journey Mama Writings: Book 1)

by Rachel Devenish Ford

  Why the desire to write when it is so hard? So many things are more tangible. Chocolate is more tangible. Rocks are more tangible. Even a fish tank is more tangible. But a day is not complete without some kind of scrawling to record it. For me, a day without writing is merely that burning ball in the sky seemingly moving in an arc from one side to the other again. And again, and again.

  It doesn't matter, but I have often wondered whether I can keep trying this, trying to write this book which is so uncomfortable for me, while I am mothery and soft the rest of the time. I mean, I leap straight from the somewhat intense things that I write about, into breakfast with toddlers. I think I can balance them, though. I think I can do it. I'm hedging a lot of bets on this.

  June 28, 2007

  Today I needed to go to the post office and Kai was playing with his friend who lives here. This friend is almost exactly the same age as him, and lately they have been inseparable. The social behavior of kids is so strange, you know? I mean, five minutes ago they couldn't play without fighting, and now suddenly it seems like they have a secret language.

  Also, they make up songs.

  They both wanted to come to the post office with me, and I can't blame them, since checking our post office box is the highlight of my day. You get to put the key in the little lock and then TURN IT and open that little door and maybe, just maybe, there will be something cool in there. Or maybe there will be four PG&E bills. More likely four PG&E bills. For some reason that I have never been able to fathom, we have four different accounts for different parts of our property. When I have politely inquired, Headquarters has informed me that it is in my best interests to leave it alone. Laissez faire. Okay, I get the point, I say, but do you really need to be all mysterious about it?

  I was in a fun mom mood, so I threw a couple of booster seats in the back of the car I was driving and we drove up past the honeysuckle and around the corner and onto the highway. On the way there the boys amused themselves immensely by pretending we were driving off of the cliff and into the other cars and stuff. Great fun.

  On the way home they amused themselves (and me!) by singing this song:

  "Get up, stand up- stand up for your rice.

  Get up, stand up- don't give up the mice."

  I couldn't believe my ears. Not only was it a Bob Marley remake, it involved both rice and mice, two very cool and important nouns, which deserve more lyrical attention in my opinion. They sang it all the way back down the highway and kept singing as we took the crazy left into our driveway, past the sign, around the ponds, and back home.

  July

  July 5, 2007

  Their exuberance kills me. They wake up jogging in place, their feet twitching before their eyelids twitch themselves open. They call to each other joyously, especially the baby, now that he can say their names, always with exclamation points or question marks behind them. They burst through the door to find me.

  I am ready for them, sometimes. Sometimes I wish they'd sleep a little longer. Sometimes I fix them sippy cups of rice milk and pile some books in their beds and make them stay in their rooms a little longer. Sometimes we eat granola. Sometimes we eat fruit and I make muffins in the toaster oven. I cut them big slices of cantaloupe and little round pieces of banana and they coo like doves over them. Sometimes I stick some store bought cereal in a bowl and that's that. They always argue over who gets the red bowl. They take turns, but sometimes I forget who had it last, and that's never good. I usually have to urge them to eat, they are too excited about talking. The little girl climbs in and out of her chair seventeen times. They make silly faces at each other across the table. I suck coffee down like it's real energy and we're in a crisis.

  We read together. We prefer the small couch, where we can sit in a pile. It's a love-seat, really, perfect for us. The baby changes his mind often about whether he'd like to sit with us and listen or not. They are still and quiet, breathing into my face, the girl sucking on her fingers. They laugh at the funny parts. They interrupt. They soak it in. We go to the library, and the librarians always smile at me. They love me for reading with my kids. I feel like I get points for doing something that I'm already addicted to, which is reading, myself. "A reading family," said one librarian last week, sighing happily.

  They egg each other on. I am encouraging them to listen to me, and I am gaining ground until one of them sets the others into giggles and all sanity is lost. We sit on the floor in a circle and I explain to them that being good is really much more fun because time outs are not fun and being mean is not fun and fighting is not fun. "What things are fun?" I ask. "Being nice is fun," the older boy says. "And nice is nice!" the little girl adds, helpfully. "And inviting people over," I say. "And letting our friends play with our toys," the older boy says. "And kisses are love!" the little girl exclaims. We all agree.

  Sometimes I am good at playing. It helps if I sit on the floor. We sit and play with small squares. "Get me five green ones," I say to the girl, and she does. The baby toddles over and snatches them and screaming ensues. Learning is always going on here. I am teaching them writing with the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum (which I love) and they wriggle themselves out of their chairs with excitement. They love the chalkboard. The older boy already knows how to write, but needs some help. The little girl doesn't know her letters yet, but wants to do whatever the boy is doing. "We're learning D", I say. Then I ask her what letter we are learning. She screws up her face and says "Ummmm." Then she draws a perfect D.

  Sometimes I just lie down on the floor and let them swarm me. I have no energy for anything else. They lean their heads on my face and I smell their warm sweaty hair. We make ahhhhhhhhh noises. Then I pick myself up and start cleaning again.

  We work together. They hand me clothes to put on the clothesline. They fight over who will get to give me the pair of purple pants. The purple pants become the Holy Grail. There is a meltdown. Nobody is giving me the purple pants. I will get the purple pants for myself. Dirt is thrown. Then they smile sweetly through dirty faces and hand me clothes again. We do dishes. The older boy carefully stacks them in the dish drainer. The girl moves them from the rinse water to the bleach water. I wash. The baby eats out of the scrap bucket and scavenges for food on the floor. I catch him and send him out of the kitchen, and he falls to the floor and cries.

  We swim in the river. I put them in their swimsuits and we traipse down, my pale legs glowing. They are brown and sweet and nutty, and when we jump in the water they become incredibly weightless, like babies. Sometimes the older ones swim by themselves, with their life jackets, and I play with the baby as he floats in the inflatable hippo. Sometimes I hold on to them and we float down the "rapids" or the "rapins" as the girl calls them. We love this time of day best. The minnows nibble at us and the trees rustle above us, and the kids find me beautiful rocks to bring home for my beautiful rock "collection." Usually there's another meltdown when we leave, most likely from the little girl. We walk slowly home while she cries and pouts. It is nap time.

  The younger two sleep. I make coffee and sit with it, nursing it. I take a minute just to sit, and then the older boy and I work together. Sometimes he plays outside with his friends. If he can't find them, he insists that he doesn't play by himself, so I get him to help me. If I don't mention the word "play" he usually starts playing with something. A couple of sticks. Some rocks. A truck. Sometimes he watches "Really Wild Animals" and sings along with the cheesy songs. I do office work or clean cabins or cook food or do all sorts of other odd piddly things until it is time to get the other kids.

  We eat with everyone. We do more dishes. The Superstar Daddy takes photos or sings or does card tricks. We wander home (across the land) at some point. We have bonfires, with marshmallows. We read some more. I kiss them. I close their door and collapse on the couch. Then I get up and put a load of laundry on.

  At some point they have become a force. We do everything together. They are my kids, there are three of them, and they take up 80%
of my thoughts.

  We don't own a lot of stuff. We have this family of ours though, and they take and give more than I could have imagined.

  We may be moving soon. We are thinking out of the country. Out of North America. And I keep thinking, over and over again, that I am just so glad that we move together, that this thing called family will come with me, now, wherever I go.

  July 26, 2007

  The kids are shooting up. Seriously. I think it has something to do with the summer warmth; they are like the pea seedlings that I have in peat pots on my porch, stretching for the sun. They run around in our forest, on their feet which are constantly needing a new shoe size, pretending to be cats in Cat City, or werewolves. (They have no idea what werewolves are- a friend of theirs brought werewolves into the game, and Kai and Kenya think that a werewolf is a nice kind of wolf-dog.)

  The kids are shooting up, and their new favorite thing is gum. Especially sharing gum. Out comes the gum package and out come all the little hands, and then there are four little jaws moving, chomping away. I particularly like Kai's face as he's chewing gum. It's awfully grown-up, I guess, to chew gum, and he always seems pretty stoked on himself. He shoots me glances. Notice how I'm chewing gum? his glances say.

  But yesterday there were some gum thieves that rustled through here, opened the drawer, and took the rest of the pack. They left their evidence- crumpled gum wrappers- on the floor of the house. I had a talk with the leader of the gum thief pack, about the evils of gum thievery. Also about how if you accidentally drop your gum out of your mouth while you're chewing it, you're just done. It's trash now. Okay? And there are ways of keeping gum in the mouth so that this doesn't happen.

  *

  I feel rested. I took a time of listening, a break from the online world. So I've been listening. I've also been gardening, and knitting, and contemplating the life changes that are descending upon my family. I've been spending time with friends, doing some sketches, and working around here.

  I came out of my listening time sure of a few things. One is that I am an artist and a writer. These are the things that have always fed me. Soon I will be working on making more space for these in my life. Another is that there may never be the perfect balance that I'm (or any of us in this predicament are) looking for. Motherhood is a messy thing, it is relational. All relationships are messy, and especially ones with small people who have the social skills of raccoons: Always making a mess and grabbing your stuff off of the table. Parenting is an art, but it is an art along the lines of homesteading, or juggling, or being a street performer with a purple hat for change.

  Writing requires solitude. It needs to be fed, there are breezes that need to come and tickle you so that your wells can be refilled, and it requires the kind of thought that is deep and hard to be roused from. Being a writer means being away, dreaming of another place, and mothering demands absolute presence.

  And so. In my life there is a tension of away and not away, and I think that I need to learn to love it, rather than shrugging away from it all the time. It's something we do, isn't it? We try to get away from the things that pull on our muscles and make us work so hard. But these are the things that God brings us to shape us, and maybe I can learn to embrace that frustration that comes when I have the best idea ever, and can't find the time to write it down, or when I'm with my kids, but wishing I could finish that inspiring book.

  Another thing I came away with is a really exciting idea for a story. It dropped into my lap, straight from heaven, or actually the seed of it came from the real story of a friend, which is still from heaven, in a way.

  Meanwhile we are moving through summer and today I really need to get some of the seedlings replanted, and this baby blanket needs to be finished, pronto, and it's shopping day, and the kids are calling, not too patiently.

  July 28, 2007

  There is a little bookstore that sells used books, in one of the small towns to the north of us. It is wonderful. And I mean wonderful in the anthropological sense, with is something that has been at the top of my list of senses, these days. The raving anthropologist in me has come out to play, gibbering and scratching out diagrams and charts in the corner, while everyone else is just drinking their coffee.

  We are moving. Much remains to be decided, and there are about—oh—twenty thousand details to be worked out, but this much is sure: it will happen. (How do you like that for surety?) And so my anthropologist is thrown into a flurry, binoculars out, notepad, a stack of books from the library.

  I want to capture every little thing that I can about this unique place that I now live in. I have become obsessed with the culture of the back country of California, here in the woods, and the hills that were logged in the 40's and 50's, by the rivers and the ocean.

  And, so, walking into the bookstore again, I was delighted. It was dark, very dimly lit. The bookshelves stretched to the ceiling. The books on them were labeled and categorized nicely, but books were everywhere. In corners like driftwood, stacked on chairs, stacked in boxes, propped against any available space. There were animals everywhere, too. The shop had the distinctive smell of many animals living together in a small space for a long time. There was a friendly dog who followed me around while I shopped, and put his head on my knee while I squatted to find something. And cats were flung around like the books, like something a wave dragged up on shore, only dry, and contentedly purring.

  The desks at the front of the store were covered with papers and a couple of old televisions, more books and coffee cups, newspapers and pencils. I met the owner to buy my book and we talked to each other over the stacks of paper. He was older with a long white beard, wearing Carhartt overalls and a white t-shirt, a hat perched precariously on his head. Somehow, hoping that I would find a paperback edition of the book I was looking for, I hadn't brought enough cash with me, and I came up 50 cents short. "Oh, not to worry," he said. "This'll be fine."

  In the center of the room there was an altar. Many, many religions were represented. It was the crowning touch to a quintessential moment for this region. The laid back commercial style, plenty of beloved animals, and a pasted-together collage of spirituality, set upon a formica table with a cat curled up on it.

  The man was so friendly, joking with me about my many quarters, laughing about the shine his dog took to me. I love the people here, love their friendliness and I have been changed by living here. I took my book and one more piece of experience and left with a smile.

  July 31, 2007

  I love the mornings in my cabin. We have this great natural air-conditioning here, since it cools down so much at night. We open all the windows in the evening and when I wake up early to sit with my coffee and book it is chilly enough to make my toes cold. I know that soon it will be warm enough, hot, even, hot enough for a desert lizard, so I don't mind. I love the quiet.

  I am mulling over the fact that the Leafy Boy is starting to really talk. He looks at me earnestly and tries to make sentences. "Mom-mee," he says, "Aww Dah, DAWN." Which of course means, Mother dearest, I'm finished with the delightful banana you broke into pieces for me and would love to get out of this highchair contraption you have strapped me into.

  But really, this means that soon I will have three talking children in my life. Three children to call for me and tell me long and involved stories, and to say things to me like, "You didn't get my juice yet," in an extremely demanding (one might even say hostile) tone of voice, which is corrected continually but can't seem to change, in its three-year-old way. Where will I take my brain to rest it? Sometimes I just want to wring it out, you know? Or put it in the creek for awhile, to cool it down.

  And Kai's stories. Don't get me wrong, because I listen with all the love that a doting mother can give to her son. But they—I don't know—don't seem to really go anywhere? We start out with a dinosaur, which is sad, or something, and we end with a dinosaur which is sad or something. But it seems to be important to Kai to get all of this out, so I will listen to these
fifteen minute stories about the dinosaur who continues to be sad, but once again, where will I take my brain to rest it?

  Or Kenya. Kenya is in a stage which I like to call the pure nether-regions of emotion. She is emotive in the most wonderful and terrible senses of the word, and she doesn't have stories that don't go anywhere, but what she does have is a mighty decibel range. She has a powerful set of lungs, that girl, and she isn't afraid to use them. I am helping her to channel her emotions into more effective ways of communication, but at the same time I am awed and impressed by her passion. She is everything I wish I could dissolve into when something doesn't go my way. And my brain is melting.

  And Baby Leaf is talking, and he says his words with pride, because he can communicate, he can let me know what he wants. And he loves to babble, so sometimes he just does that. He is heartbreakingly cute. And when he kisses me he puts a chubby hand on each side of my face and leans in and puts a sort of raspberry on my lips in imitation of a kissing sound, and it is wet and scrumptious and I wipe Leafy drool away from my chin while my heart melts.

  What do I need a brain for anyways? This is birdsong, an aria, a bow over the strings of a cello. Childish voices, singing and yelling and laughing. Distracted, absentminded, my mind is filled with the most beautiful clutter, and silence might be the emptiest luxury, after this.