time – On the Horizon Line

Trimming wee talons (and other tales of time)

Cutting our kid’s nails is kind of like wrestling a small iguana, except iguanas don’t drool.

Back when I had a 9-5 job and no kid, I always knew what day of the week it was. I was also way better at watering the plants regularly – once a week like clockwork. And I used to remember whether it had been one or two weeks since I’d washed the sheets (or even three).

Our plants are barely hanging on. The sheets are rarely clean. I can’t tell you the date to save my life. But our baby has given me a new way to mark the passing of time: by the rapid growth of his sharp little fingernails. Instead of a calendar, I now measure time in nail clippings. The passing weeks are quantified by the small snippings of dead keratin that fly into the cracks of the couch, never to be seen again – just like all the many moments that passed while my child’s nails grew long.

When we finally agreed on his name, I had no idea how apropos ‘Talon’ would be. His little claws sometimes seem like an animate part of him. They dig reminders into my breast when too much time has passed between trimmings. I appreciate the claw marks. They are a physical indication of the quickly fading months of his infancy, vivid hash marks that tally the blur of diapers, smiles, coos, and tears (mine as well as his).

The act of nail clipping is a rite of passage in itself. I cried in fear the first time, holding him tight and averting my eyes while Rob braved the miniscule nails, already so long at birth. And I cried in commiseration the second time, when Rob accidentally nicked his thumb, unleashing Talon’s first howls of pain. After a couple of months, I finally felt confident enough to clip his nails on my own.

But, like all things with parenting, as soon as I said to myself, “I’ve got this thing down,” the kid proved me wrong. Now Talon bucks and protests when I try to trim his wee talons. It’s kind of like wrestling a small iguana, except iguanas don’t drool. If I get two nails at a pop if I call it a victory. It’s a test on my perfectionist tendencies, a challenge to my need for symmetry.

To be honest, I don’t mind Talon’s jagged, imperfect edges. They ground me in the present, especially when the fingers behind those nails reach for my hand and hold on to my heart.

P.S. Check out the new “look” on our website, and let me know what you think!

Parenting, Reflections on Life

Living Luxuriously in the Creases

“I had plenty of time

when my daughter was a baby,”

my friend tells me.

“It was just lost in the transitions.”

She means the transitions

between eating and sleeping

between dishes and laundry

between what was and what is.

Motherhood means dwelling within these transitions.

Residing in the space between one necessity and the next

nodding to the time that slips away

and surrendering all expectation.

Inefficiency is the name of the game

a game that moves at its own speed, just as

yellow leaves fall slowly, inexorably into the creek

and the creek flows slowly, inexorably into the sea.

I wallow in the throes of inefficient adoration

the crinkle of a brow

the grasp of a hand

the gurgle in a breath.

I used to minimize the transitions

to live more fully in the spaces before and after.

Now I linger luxuriously in the creases and joints that

link what I used to call ‘real life.’

The time that is lost while I linger in the transitions

is simply an exhale of breath

an internal rotation toward accepting

the beauty of the present moment.

Family and Friends, Reflections on Life

You are all with us.

We just changed the clocks back again. Every time we gain another hour, I feel a tangible stretch in my connection back home. Our next time change — in just a couple of weeks — will span an entire 25 hours. We’ll lose a whole day as we cross the International Dateline near Tonga, and I’ll be ever further from the daily routine of my loved ones in the States.

I’m approaching the outer limits of time spent away from my family. I can feel that time accumulating in my bones and in my breast, weighing heavy as I dive down to see tropical coral and exotic fish. I’m curious how the weight will change as more months pass — will I just wake up one morning and declare that I simply must fly home? Will I grow used to the separation and learn to live with the weight more easily?

After five months out, everything back home is captured in a lovely rosy glow. A glow that purposefully enhances the good and fuzzes out any ickiness. I can picture our neighborhood, my parents’ kitchen, my sister and her big dog walking by the creek, our king-sized bed that’s bigger than the boat we’re now living on. I miss it all. But I’m not ready to go back yet.

I think about my friends and my family every single day. You are all with us out here: under the water, counting the minutes until the passage is complete, marveling at colors and stars and sharks, bemoaning the rocking stove, exclaiming at the number of sharks, laughing at the absurdness of floating a small boat across a giant s ea, changing the clocks back surely but slowly as that small boat keeps sailing west.