Tucking into bed

Somebody wrote in one of my comments that my blog is so peaceful. Quiet – something like that. I wonder if she thinks my life is like that too! I think I create the blog to be this way in order to counteract the very crazy days we experience. It’s like using that quiet voice in the birth room. You know the voice…. the one that gets quieter and quieter. One of my students once said, “You know something intense is going on if K is almost whispering.”

It’s like this blog. The quieter it gets probably the crazier life feels.

But today I did spend the day outside, first with a sweater. Then the sun was so warm, the sweater came off….and all the way up to the time when I needed a sweater again. I’ve been putting my gardens to bed. Pulling all the weeds. I stacked wood!  Put things away and worked on my rock edges. My rock garden beds and driveway liners. Steady and quiet work. So needed.

Putting the garden to bed. Just waiting to tuck the bulbs in! My closest friend and I traded garden time for our birthdays. We bought bulbs together and we are hoping to put them in our new beds together. Maybe Monday?

Seeds

 

I spent the whole and entire day outside working on the projects that I have been just watching through the window. For some reason I have had no time outside these last few weeks. None. The heat had something to do with it, then it was the blooming sage.

The blooming sage.

I’m expanding the garden on the hill facing my windows. Falko took out some sage. The blooming sage and now I cannot stop sneeing – that’s a real word! When a mother of two sneezes – well you know what happens!

I gathered seeds in a jar. These are cosmos seeds. They have been re seeding like nuts and I gathered some as well to spread into the newly extended garden.

 

Outside all day! Chicken soup inside. Threw a bunch of kale in the soup from the garden. Moved rocks to form garden beds and also to line the driveway. The sun was warm on my face and exposed arms.

 

It only takes a day or two at home to make me feel grounded again. Truly relaxed. Laundry done, house cleaned. Garden worked on….. It’s all I need.

The Beginnings

Abundance of Summer’s End

 

This radish is actually quite symbolic for the way things are going in our garden! I totally forgot about the radishes planted. Kaya found it, triumphantly! I even asked, “Where did that radish come from?”

The chard and kale are huge – we cannot keep up with the greens. We have beets, but haven’t eaten them yet. The cilantro is flowering, the basil is too. We’ve indulged in many insalata caprese. The zucchini is being eaten. Every Single Day by Falko and loved, adored and revered. Seriously, he can’t seem to get enough. He sautes it with olive oil, garlic and sometimes a little soy sauce. We eat it with quinoa, pasta or nothing. Happily.

The cucumbers are being picked too. I have been making, with Farmer’s Market tomatoes, the same salad my mom made when I was little. Chopped, cubed, sliced cucumber and tomato, a little bit of salt and some mayo. (In our case, we use Veganaise – the best tasting mayo ever!)  The mayo is stained a deliciously, scrumptious pink from the tomatoes and the taste is heavenly and it sure does use all these cucumbers that my overflowing plants are producing! )  It will be my breakfast this morning.

The sun is fully risen now, Treska and Falko are off in the world. Kaya is lying on the bench across from me, her flannel bathrobe and  hand-knit socks cozy on this chilly morning. My coffee is almost gone, and cold now. I will tackle my list of things to accomplish this morning: renewing passports, food for a potluck, insurance applications for Kaya, finishing touches on a gift, breakfast and corrections on Kaya’s “California” paper.

Kaya is steadfastly working on her homeschooling. She listened to her daily Ted talk and is formulating her abstract. She is also assigned an article from the New York Times, “What if the Secret to Success is Failure?”  This is an article about “Grit” – one of my favorite topics. Perhaps you remember?

Have a lovely day, I hope to! Oh! And Treska wore her “birth shirt” today. So let’s hope it calls in a little babe!

 

This is how my garden grows…..and an abundance of baby boys.

I keep wanting and trying to write about my garden, our garden, but then other things happen. I have pictures set aside to show you my zucchini and then they grow some more and the pics become obsolete. Our zucchini is insane! Huge. Falko insists he can eat it all and we are up to 20 zucchini that we have eaten in just one week! We are seriously keeping track. We have a small ripped paper bag stuck on the fridge with a magnet. Tally marks are being made!  The cucumbers are starting to take off, and I look forward to those even more.

Our life begins and ends with greens. Kale in the morning with eggs, now zucchini too. Chard in the evening, arugula salads. Insane amounts of greens and still never enough. Our garden is growing and it is manageable and abundant. I am grateful to sleep next to my beds – they are a mere 5-6 feet from my own bed – a wall between us and a big window that is mostly open. My zucchini leaves, large like kites, blow in the breeze and that is what I hear in the morning and the evenings as I lie in my bed. Or in the middle of the afternoon as it is now – in bed. In those jammies, those pink and green ones that I have an abnormal bond to. Definitely felt much joy as I stepped out of my shower and saw them, waiting for me, hanging on the towel rack.

And the basil, let me write about the basil. We are used to filling garbage bags of basil, dumping it on the counter and then processing it into pesto to enjoy the entire winter. This year, we have less, so we keep waiting, afraid to pick it and eat it. The cilantro feels the same to me – yet today – the feathery tops of the cilantro beckoned over the beet tops and I worried that tomorrow may be too late to harvest it! Today it will not happen – I can see it here, from my bed, but the memories of two baby boys being born today and the early call of another keeps me here, cozy, snug and with only my tea to lift. No greater working for me. I should be sleeping, I know it.

So today, Treska and I returned from the second birth, tired. Her eyes were heavy, her face still bright and we made eggs and steamed chard. There is something so very grounding about walking to the garden, picking food, washing it, steaming it, eating it. So simple, so yummy and so energizing.

We ate outside, in the sideways sun, a baby hawk (we think) making its first calls. Like a whistle. The dogs lay near us, snapping at flies and we slowly ate, with some conversation, but mostly just finding energy to shower, and to get in bed.

We speculated on the chances of the next call. Do you think we’ll sleep for one hour? Maybe two. Will I wake up in the morning in my bed still? It’s a futile exercise.

Returning home this morning after a 3 a.m. birth, I never, ever would have imagined I would be there again, only one hour after climbing into my bed. Treska’s unlined face was creased with her pillow. (Kissen im Gesicht…..) Off we went, again.

One would think, after 11 years of this on-call schedule , I wouldn’t find myself absolutely shocked each time I receive a phone call that a baby is on its way. But I am – each time. I can’t believe it. I don’t know why. It’s fun getting those phone calls. I love it.  And there I was, again, with my daughter catching babies. We did a newborn exam today, together, and in the middle of the night, in the water, she caught her first baby with the help of our newest midwife, Madrona. My daughter caught her first baby last night. I am grinning and giddy about it.

Weekending

A weekend full of joy, fun, friends, outdoors and birth!

Celebrated our 16 years of marriage today. A feat. I am so proud of this. I’m proud of the work and the love that has gone into this relationship and this family we’ve created for our daughters – and for ourselves. With all its imperfections – there is so much love.

Attended a quick yet intense birth with my daughter. Treska is now officially an intern for the summer! What pure bliss it is to attend births with my daughter. To do prenatals, postpartums and to see the incredible growth and learning. We walk together in the evenings, with the dogs, and we talk about midwifery – to process together is beautiful.

Watching our garden grow. We got a late start this year and so every day we look and wait and watch. Zucchini is up and beginning it’s second set of leaves now! Everything else, except the cilantro, is up too! 

Kaya planted a flower garden. We bought some flowers, because her seeds didn’t come up while we were away….

Oh and so much more this weekend. We began our Saturday morning with a 5K fundraiser to fight cancer and honor Elizabeth Gilmore. Elizabeth founded the Birth Center in 1978 and is battling and struggling with brain cancer.  A refreshing walk with good friends. Our first visit to the farmer’s market which is beginning to boom with abundance – and greens! We celebrated the 60th birthday of one of our closest friends ever, a sunset party, yummy food and margaritas (with salt on the rim – yum!)! We ended our weekend with a dinner at a local and organic restaurant, the Love Apple.

It was a perfect weekend.

Home

I keep writing posts in my mind. I had started to wonder if I would ever write in here again, I played with the idea of not writing anymore. A few reasons for that, I probably won’t go into. I thought I would stop writing, but I realized over the last two weeks of not writing, that I really, very much enjoy writing this blog. It’s a very settling and grounding way for me to keep track of our life and to share it with my far away friends and family who are keeping up with us.

We are home. My gosh, I love it here. I love our home.  It’s so peaceful and quiet. It’s beautiful. It’s lovely to be home.

Our time in Europe was incredible. It was rich and busy and full of reconnections and insight. There were definitely some challenges that, I hope, moved me forward. I’m not sure, but now, in retrospect, I can take the time to think about all of it.

Our flowers are blooming here – flowers I never even knew were here. It is a lovely perennial garden that we have. We have finally, very late, begun our garden. (Actually, we have a super short growing season here in the mountainous desert. Our last frost is June 15th (hopefully) or when the snow melts from the tops of the peaks of the mountains!)  Falko made me two raised bed frames for Mother’s Day. So Tuesday, he filled them with earth and mushroom compost by the pick-up truck load. Treska and I planted them beautifully.

I felt ecstatic to see how manageable the beds were. Small – yet I think they will yield plenty of food. We planted cucumbers, zucchini, arugula, beets, chard, cilantro, basil, purple kale and left room for more. We’ll have tomatoes too! The garden will be neat and tidy – Falko hooked up the watering system – so it is simple and functioning well.  Treska and I actually measured out the rows with a measuring tape! We both really wanted the beds to be aesthetically pleasing as well.  It feels peaceful and not overwhelming. It only took two days of work to get them made, filled and planted! I hope for abundance!

 

This is why I Blog!

These are the moments that I crave. For some reason I have been loving chopping vegetables. It’s the time I find myself stopping and thinking. There is just one simple focus. I try to still my mind, but it’s really almost impossible. So I think and think and think while chopping veggies and making soup. (Yes – the same soup I always make. Squash, coconut, curry – Um – yes – we did eat that two days ago. Nonetheless…..) I was actually thinking a bit about this blog. It’s been on my mind a bunch today, because suddenly a ton of people are reading it! Seriously. I don’t know how or why – but my “hits” have gone waaaaay up. (Many links from Germany and some from this stunningly presented, consciously written  and inspiring blog that I love!) It’s kind of exciting. It made me think about why I started this blog in the first place. I began this to document our homeschooling and farming journey for family. It was a way to show our family (near and far)  what homeschooling is all about. I wanted it to be a reassuring document – something I could look at feel a sense of accomplishment. I do. I can really see what we have done and what I would still like to do. I can see our shortcomings easily! Homeschooling is a big part of this blog – the main part maybe. We didn’t farm this year on the large-scale that Miranda Canyon Kinderfarm was – but I loved the documentation of Treska’s HUGE garden this year. (I talked about this shift in this blog post here.) So where is this blog going?

It’s a journal of sorts. A journal for myself, my family and anyone else who enjoys it. I’ve begun finding ways to talk about being a midwife here. I am very much enjoying this part of the reflection, because it is such a huge part of my identity. My family and midwifery are so completely interwoven that is difficult to separate. Treska was 5 when she attended her first birth with me! Kaya was nursing when I attended my first birth. (My let-down reflex happened at every first cry – soaking my pink scrubs.  I began apprenticing in a Leipzig women’s clinic – and they all wore scrubs!)

My challenge is to find a way to talk about birth and midwifery without telling any identifiable birth stories. I wish I could talk and write about birth as candid as I would like to! I would love to write about the insanity of the complications we sometimes address and deal with. I would love to describe the faces of the mamas as they first see their babies, I’d love to write about my own fears and anxieties that present, I’d love to write more. I am figuring out a way that I can write these stories and to give insight into this life here. I so love reading the blogs of other mamas, farmers, homeschoolers and midwives and especially the ones who give a true insight into their world.

I’d like to be as authentic as possible here. It’s hard. I do come home from births exhausted, weepy, and emotional. All birth is not joy – some women have a really, really hard time and gosh it is hard to support them. Sometimes. I do have hard parenting days, homeschooling ideas that have totally flopped and I have had some hard things to think about and move through this year (who doesn’t?) and I wonder how to document it all without just presenting the “sunny side.”  I want it to be real.

My kids read the blog and love it. Treska teases me a bunch whenever we’re having a sweet moment. This morning she narrated, “Lying on the bed, in the sun, talking to my daughter. Gosh, I love her!” It’s funny, we laughed. It’s true, and what I see and understand from this is this:  She is recognizing the sweet moments to savor that I see.

And that is why I blog! To document our sweet moments. To savor them!

I Hope the Memories will be Amusing!

I wonder what it is like to be the daughter of a midwife. Sometimes I hear statements like, “My home away from home is the Birth Center.” Yesterday after a long night and an early morning, Kaya was dropped off at 8ish at a homebirth. After that we went to the Birth Center, she came with me, book in hand. She called down the hall, “Mom – how long will we be here, aren’t you off today?” I said, “I’m just going to settle this mama in, and do one appointment.” Kaya laughed – or was it a snort? Joan said, “Well a midwife’s daughter knows what that means!” I guess that means, “Who knows? I have no idea how long we will be here. Things change every minute!” As Kaya left, she said to our receptionist, “Well! I’m sure I’ll see you later!”

She does well – that Kaya! I can’t be upset with her. Out of 402 births, she only resisted once! Yesterday there was a lot of running around. To a homebirth, to the birth center, home – oh God! Run back, “She’s going fast!!!” Yesterday was the first time, really, that Kaya couldn’t make up her mind of what to do. Usually the plan is in place, and yesterday in my moment of running out the door. (When that phone call comes, I have to speed. It can be intense! A drop everything and run type of deal.) Kaya couldn’t decide whether she should come or stay with our neighbor and make pesto. In her frozen moment, I made the decision for her, brought her and it worked well. But I panicked. I have never seen that reticence. It was different yesterday since it was a homebirth. Usually, if there is no other plan in place, the girls will come to the birth center, settle in, do homeschooling or, if we have a low number of apprentices, help in the birth room. (This only happens if you are Treska and LOVE birth.) Homebirths are trickier. Sadly, we only do about 10 percent homebirths. These last two months, however, the majority of our births were homebirths – and so the surprise calls that happen when Falko isn’t home can be more challenging in regards to the kids.

It worked out well with Kaya yesterday. She had a good book and the home happened to have an 8 week old puppy that needed entertainment. The day was beautiful, crisp, sunny. She sat outside in the courtyard, with the smell of fallen leaves, and an adorable puppy sleeping at her feet while she read. She could hear the familiar birth sounds, the friends and family coming in and leaving the house. The sisters of the mama, who were younger than Kaya, came out and played with the puppy intermittently. She was content, and I was relieved!

Treska loves the excitement of birth, loves the surprise and is always hopeful that she may be able to be helpful in some way. She likes the energy of the birth room, loves the singularity of birth and is happy to sit in the kitchen with the birth bustling around her.  Kaya would rather not. She will immerse herself in a book as far away from the birth activity as possible. “It’s not my calling, mom.” She doesn’t like the disturbance and the unpredictability. She likes more routine and structure and I have to really, really hand it to her – because she does so well with the spontaneity of birth. (401 out of the 402 times!) She mentions often, how strange it must be for other kids looking into her life. “My life is very different from that of my peers, mom.” Just the other day she said, “It’s just normal, mom, that you get up and leave a dinner quickly. It’s normal that my mom is on call, but that wouldn’t be normal for other kids. Their moms don’t get up and leave for the night!”  I think she is just realizing that this is unique to her family.  She’s grown up with birth, being on call, surrounded by midwives and apprentices, and pregnant bellies. Her second home is the birth center.  I started my first internship when she was 5 months old and still nursing. Every time there was a birth my milk would come in and flood the front of my pink scrubs (in Germany we wore scrubs). The oxytocin was stimulated by the cry of the newborn.   Kaya has truly grown up immersed in birth. It’s the most natural thing in the world for her!

It has been a particularly busy week. And we only have two midwives until November. That means we are on call 24/7 for until then! We’ve only had two births this week, but it has felt like we have had 5. I’ve been gone for a part of many nights this week. Today will be a day of recovery. (I think.) I hope. Yesterday’s (literal) speeding around all day and high emotion stimulated by the pressure of having to move fast, plans almost falling through (don’t even mention the Ski Swap around here….), guilt about not helping with pesto, and tears of JOY when the baby was finally born to a little mama that I had grown very, very fond of. I so wish I could write my birth stories up here and somehow it wouldn’t be a breach of confidentiality. I am privy to amazing stories: Beautiful, heartbreaking, intense, joyous, terrifying, funny, intimate and authentic. I do write them down (sometimes) to tell later. I’d love to write a “Baby Catcher”  (by Peggy Vincent) type book when I retire. Oh, well – in my 80s or something. I never want to retire, never want to stop being allowed to be with woman while they birth!

I hope my children will remember:

speeding down dirt roads to the sound of Joan’s voice on the speaker phone saying, “Hurry, she’s WILD!” and packing random food items in a basket to sustain the long nights, the phone ringing in the middle of the night, the automatic check to see if my car is there in the morning, the “where will I be today?” question always posed, the moans and groans of labor, the cries of the newborn, the patience and long hours of crocheting, knitting and embroidery, the nap in the middle of the day, reading outside of someone’s homebirth and the constant hellos my children receive at the Farmer’s Market and Cids by women with big ol’ bellies or little newborns, the gory details overheard in the car or at the table, (Moooooom! Not at the table!) the stack of midwifery and birthing books everywhere in the house, the exhausted mama in bed sipping coffee, the long conversations with my partners discussing all the details of a birth or the clinic day, the ever-changing apprentices

as rich and beautiful.  I love this life – I’ll take the high emotion and roller coaster timelines any day over the consistency of a life without birth. I am hoping my daughters will look back and tell the story of their childhood with love, amusement and happiness. Gosh, I hope so!

In the middle of it all – we will harvest our gardens and move forward, enjoy our lives and the excitement of what it brings us every single day.

 

 

Yesterday's Harvest

 

Carrot Harvest! Scrumptious Color……

Kaya was doing a little math homeschooling – munching apples and Treska asked me to come outside. We were going to take a look at her garden – perhaps get some Bachelor Button seeds to save for next year. Her pumpkins blew me away –  big and beautiful – orange! Lots of winter squash and of course tons more zucchini. Her cabbage is thriving – need to make even more cole slaw!   She mentioned she had a few carrots! She had TONS of carrots out here – she gave me a pitchfork and we began loosening the soil around them and like an easter egg hunt we began pulling them up – more and more and more! I had thought that our short and small carrot season was over. I didn’t even know they had survived and grown this huge! Beautiful! I worked steadily in the garden with the pitchfork and steadily pulled up carrots – digging them up so as not to break them.

Treska had a blast with my camera and reversed the roles for a moment. It reminded me of what it was like last year. I farmed last year – a lot. I was outside working and harvesting, planting and weeding almost every day. I think. I actually don’t remember how much I was out there – but it was a ton. It was a part of my routine and I knew that my every free moment would be outside, in the farm working. I was tired in my body last year. I liked the feeling and remembering it felt good too. I like knowing that I have my garden (this garden) to work in – knowing that Treska created a huge and abundant garden for our family to eat from this year. I can be as much a part of it as I would like.

I’d like to to be in the garden more. Or – just to be at home.   While I worked pulling out carrots, Treska brainstormed about her garden next year. She talked about the size, the plot, the fencing, which vegetables she would plant – she talked about her seedling business and had lots of lovely ideas. We discussed seed saving and how important it is. A sweet time together in the garden as the sun was sinking. It’s a special light we have in New Mexico in the evenings and especially in the fall. It’s important to see it every single day. To absorb it and find the awe every day.  Anyhow, the contrast of the green leaves with Treska’s purple and pink polka-dotted tights and black clogs  would be stunning in any light!