this week

hi folks!

i don't think that i've mentioned i'm on instagram now. 

 you can click the instagram button there on the right to see enhabiten and follow.

the past week i've brought flowers inside, kept my eye on the field out back to appreciate the changing season and the changing light, got a beautiful orchid from my daughter olivia, visited my son ethan here, where he is the new resident farmer, and of course worked on some dyeing outdoors.

i've put a couple handfuls of new things in the sale section of the shop just now.  you'll find indigo dyed shirts, watercolor pillows and more. 

take care and i hope you have some great moments this weekend.

x

liane

bullhorn

we had such a beautiful moon several days ago.  did you see?  it hung big and low, a bullhorn moon.  when i looked up at it my heart felt in the same shape, a shallow container, floating, suspended, weightless.  my daughter liv took this picture days after.  she's been watching the sunsets; looking up into the sky.

there's a field behind my new house with old apple trees and sometimes the deer come to eat the drops.  last night before dusk we spotted two.  they were alert and watching us; they twitched their tails and ears.   they ran for the woods.  we spotted a third, then, which had been out of eyesight.  it had darker fur.  

at dusk turkeys came to peck around in the same field but turkeys, being what they are, don't stir the same things in me.  

the other week a black bear crossed my path down along the road near the dam.  it just stepped right out onto the pavement.  i slowed.  it padded across and into the woods on the other side.  i hooted and clapped my hands together.  my daughter seemed less elated, less lifted up.  then i learned she had spoken about it as soon as she left the car.  a few days passed and she reminded me of it, saying, remember when we saw the bear.  i said yes, i remember.

june 29, 2013

olivia, me, eli

polaroid

from across the pond

my daughter olivia considered burlington, vermont her hometown for a long time.  we moved there when she was 2 and moved away when she was 5.  to feel it is where she comes from, i imagine what significance that place and that time hold for her.  i guess at some of the reasons but i can't ever know the feeling she has for it in her heart.  in other words, i cannot be her, can't feel her feelings.

motherhood is strange that way, being so linked but separate.

this picture has nothing to do with burlington, really, but i just received a one line email from my best friend back then.  she wrote that she thinks i'm brave.  it makes me cry with gratitude to get a message like that from her.  because she knows me.  and because i know that it's true.  i am brave.  and it feels really good to know something like this about yourself.  if you can know beautiful things about the people you love you damn well be able to know beautiful things about yourself.  it's as if knowing it makes me able to really live life.  

i took this picture the other day at a pond i've been going to since i was little girl.  

reading becky's email just now made me think of olivia.  she is so full of courage you can feel it from miles away.  or from across this little pond in our hometown.

ya ya

 

when i was pregnant with olivia i was obsessed with oranges.  i ate 2 or 3 a day.

and on this day 21 years ago i drove myself to the hospital already 6 centimeters dilated! 

(her dad had started a new job on the same day in boston, an hour away)

when she was born she had thick black curly hair and ice blue eyes.

her little brother eli had trouble saying her name 

when he was a toddler and called her ya ya.   

it's been her nickname ever since.

happy birthday, my girl.

i love you.  so much.

stars and dark rollers

my current therapies of choice: walking a few miles a day (yesterday a fox ran silently right across my path), listening to the open yale course "the early middle ages" while i stitch  (i'm thinking about plato and the allegory of the cave today) and reading a few pages a night of the orphan master's son by adam johnson.  i've been interested in north korea since watching any documentary i could find about the country and reading nothing to envy a couple years ago.   

my daughter olivia (michael was her boyfriend) and i were in a bookstore recently.  she wanted to find a book to occupy her mind.  after a 45 minute search she came back with "the orphan master's son" under her arm, having no idea it was the book i was reading as well.   

i am searching for answers and for truth.  my attention is making what was previously invisible, visible.  in the beginning of "the orphan master's son" the main character, jun do, is working in underground tunnels.  the north korean soldiers are expert at navigating in the dark without modern technology, even without light.  i'm about 150 pages into the book and there is so much that is beautifully written about light and dark.    

here's a small excerpt from the book in a time period when jun do is working on a fishing boat:

Not that he envied those who rowed in the daylight.  The light, the sky, the water, they were all things you looked through during the day.  At night, they were things you looked into.  You looked into the stars, you looked into dark rollers and the surprising platinum flash of their caps.  No one ever stared at the tip of a cigarette in the daylight hours, and with the sun in the sky, who would ever post a "watch"? At night on the Junma, there was acuity, quietude, pause.  There was a look in the crew members' eyes that was both faraway and inward.

beauty

my girl liv and i went for a walk today.  

i couldn't love another human being more than i do this beauty.

cheap light beer

a few new vintage dyed things are in the shop today.

...

this weekend i thrifted some clothes, visited my almost 21 yo daughter liv, met a friend's brand new baby eleanor, ate french toast and souvlaki and pizza and drank cheap light beer.  i also went to see the movie  the place beyond the pines.

what did you do? i REALLY wanna know!

xo

these- a few more pictures from the last snow storm here in new hampshire.

...

and, i wish you could have heard my girl singing this treasure of a song on our late night car ride last night.  priceless.  she can make fun of something better than anyone else i know.  she's my quick-witted child.  this girl is great company.  not much gets past her.  she's a story teller with stories to tell.  

liv, my sweet, it is indeed a dirty free for all.  but i'm here for you.  and you be one funny kid.

xx

this day

liv's room

 ...

 what i've been doing today:

sewing- there are new fisherman cushions in the shop.

hoping to strip paint with a paste of washing soda and water from a couple old wood frames i got at the swap shop.  i'm not sure it's working...

soaking hemp canvas in the iron vat.  it's the last of several dips to reach black.

from my spot at the computer at the table..

do you know i don't have a passport?!  it's a real crying shame.  i've traveled in canada and been to puerto rico.  i've flown to the west coast and to florida (of all places.  sorry if you live in florida.  where i visited just wasn't for me).  

this year i am gifting myself a passport.  i am a person who needs a passport.

...

i am sitting here in the early morning appreciating the cool winter light.  i am also listening to the noises of a sleeping house.  i hear the dog snoring on the sofa, the hum of the refrigerator, lots of scratching in the walls from squirrels and mice making themselves at home.  but mostly i am hearing my daughter sleep fitfully.  i wake her once to ask if she is having a bad dream.  she says no and falls back to sleep.  she goes back to her bad dream and her tossing and turning.  

it took me a long time to realize your kids go lots of places you cannot go.  you can only ask them about it and hope they can tell you.

my precious

i did a little post for the etsy blog series saved from the fire yesterday.  here's a link to it.  i could only choose one thing to save for etsy but i wanted to show you some of the other things over the next week or so that are significant to me.  

first is this little sweater i made for my daughter, olivia.  it's one of the first things i ever knitted.    she must have been about 2 years old.  she wore it all the time and as you can see it's gotten a bit ratty.  the pattern is an elizabeth zimmerman one called baby surprise.  it's knitted in one piece and comes out a funny shape till you sew up a couple quick seams.  you have to have faith in this one.  it's wonky till it's done.  but it's an easy stockinette stitch.  i managed it as a beginner just fine.  and as a side note, i lived in burlington vermont at the time and bought my yarn from all time favorite jamie harmon.  

olivia keeps this in her room.  she tells me that when/if she has a daughter she wants her to have it.  how much this mother loves that is more than i can tell.

edipul fwess

this is a picture of two of my kids on the left with their cousin on the right.  it was taken maybe a dozen years ago.  ethan is 20 now and liv is 18.  crazy. 

this picture is sitting next to me in my office propped on an old slate blackboard.  tangentially, it's a giant vintage blackboard which used to be in the high school here in town.  i grew up with the guy who takes care of the school...building and grounds....and he knew i would love it so when they got new ones he drove it over here in his pick up truck and surprised me.  good man.

anyway, the picture...when liv was little, say between the ages of 4-6, she refused to wear pants.  i had collected a bunch of thrifted vintage dresses for her and every morning she would wake up and say..

"i want to wear an edipul fwess." 

translation: beautiful dress. 

i'm getting choked up thinking about those days.  that funny saying of hers and that sweet sweet time in our lives.



olivia

olivia is my middle child; my only daughter.  she turned 18 yesterday.

something i haven't written about here are the struggles we've had over the last few years with chronic illness.  olivia was diagnosed with something called indolent systemic mastocytosis.  mastocytosis is a mast cell disorder.  mast cells produce histamine.  her mast cells go crazy and her body produces a lot of histamine.  this can be acute and life threatening but it can also cause chronic pain. 

i was up multiple times a night with her the first year she was so sick.  she was sick in bed for days on end.  i can't really even describe that time to you here.  in fact, when i got my coffee and sat down to write you something i had no idea i would launch into this.  sometime i will try and do it justice and really tell this story. 

but olivia.  i have never met someone so strong and lacking self-pity.  she put one foot infront of the other.  she never said "why me?"  and believe me, i said those words over and over again in my head at that time.  why her.  anyone but her.  there was just one time she broke down emotionally and this is what she said to me: "i'm sorry you have to go through this."  she said this to me.

but today she is doing somewhat better.  the past few months she has been going to school most days and living a relatively normal teenage life.  when she was first diagnosed we were told there was no cure.  we were told that maybe within her lifetime there would be one.  now they are testing different iterations of a drug which seems just a few years away from a cure.

one thing we realized a couple years into her sickness is that she also suffers from chronic debilitating migraines.  meaning she has migraines a few times a week which last sometimes days.  which translates into having migraines, um, all the time.  i've never had one but i can tell you that this has been just as painful for her as the mastocytosis.  the thing which really helped her to start to function and have a life is taking migraine medications.

i never liked the saying "you don't get what you can't handle in life."  it seems fairly sadistic.  i consider the fact that she has to live with this an outcome of bad luck and bad genetics.  but at the same time, i know many people would not have been able to handle this with her monumental strength and grace.  i am in awe of her as a mother and as a woman.

there really are so many pieces to this story.  how this changed how she experienced being a teenanger.  how it affected her socially.  how it feels to be just starting out in life but already know pain inside and out.  she is a gifted writer and i hope someday she can tell this story in her own words because i know there is so much more to this i can't imagine.

so now you have a small piece of this story and our family life.   will you join me in wishing olivia a happy 18th birthday?  i wish her every possible happiness a mother can wish.  she has taught me so much.  she is truly amazing.