To market, to market ...

Basil and beets, potatoes and peas, cheese from a goat and honey from bees!

I love the Woodland Park Farmer’s Market.

We pet the dogs from the no-kill shelter.
We watch Robillard’s honey bees hustle through a display.
We point out the newest blooms at Karen Anderson’s stand, and throw bean bags through rings to get a junior firefighter badge from the Four-Mile Fire Protection District crew.

There are vegetables to touch and watermelons to taste. We buy goat cheese from the Canyon City dairy, and mushrooms from Black Mountain Mushrooms in Guffey.

We say hello to neighbors we see only at the Friday market, and try to carry on conversations with other parents, watching our children pool together and race through the crowd.

After a couple of hours, the boys and I head home, loaded with bags of produce from the people who actually grow and make our food. We talk about our menu for the week, made up entirely of the day’s purchases. We shell peas and make pesto, and laugh about how pink our fingers turn when we pickle the beets.

Like most children, mine refuse vegetables regularly.

With patience, I hope they will one day learn to love them, as they are learning now to love their farmers.

Dismantle the Sun

A few houses up the street, there is a home filled with unbearable silence.

My neighbors were in the process of moving from Colorado to California. Larry had been at a new job there for just a week. Michelle and their son, Alex, had just returned here from visiting him. They were looking for a new home, trying to find a neighborhood that reminded them of Woodland Park.

Alex got sick on the trip. He contracted pneumonia, and just ... died.

He was three. Just a few months older than Kai.

I don't know how you recover from something like that. I don't know how you can get out of bed, and put your feet on the floor. How you can stand up. How you can breathe.

I told Michelle that I was sorry. That I knew there was nothing anyone could do. That I just wanted her to know that I was thinking about her. And I hugged her for a long time.

I took some fruit, and some fresh pastries from the Farmer's Market. Michelle told me she wanted to go to the market this morning, but just couldn't. I imagine there will be many things that she just can't do for a very long time.

We talked about their move, and what they'll do with the house here. And the list of things that Michelle is doing to get ready to leave. And we both cried.

I didn't know Michelle very well, or her son. I pray that I will never fully understand the kind of pain that she is going through right now.

Back home, the birds are singing and the wind is blowing through the aspens. I am trying, unsuccessfully, to get some work done. And anticipating the stomping on the stairs that will end the silence, so much more peaceful here than it is up the street.

Juggling

"Mom?" Berg asks. "How do you spell computer?"

C..O..M..P..U..

"That's too hard. How do you spell work?"

W..O..R..K

"How do you spell Mom?"

M..O..M

"Thanks."

Two minutes later,  Berg tapes a sign to my office door. It says "Mom" at the top, and "Work" at the bottom. In between is a drawing of a computer, with Berg's attempt at an international "NO" sign drawn over it.

"I made you this sign. Now you don't have to do any more work, Mom."

I try to compartmentalize my day into little pieces of time that can be doled out carefully to everything and everyone:

• Start laundry.
• A snack for one boy.
• A book for the other.
• A gap analysis here.
• Help cut out a paper catfish there.
• Make lunch.
• Do dishes.
• Call client.
• Write quote.
• Update financial spreadsheet.
• Pack for picnic.

Most of the time, I feel like I'm doing everything half-assed. Apparently I'm not the only one.

Music Soothes the Wild Beast

Kai is very good at being a 3-year-old boy. He has moments of such utter wildness that you'd think he was part beast. Maybe Tasmanian devil. Or howler monkey. I only really worry when his dad starts humming Warren Zevon's "Excitable Boy" around him.

Today Kai had none of those moments. With his brother in zoo school and all of Mom's attention, Kai turned back into the sweeter version of himself. He spent 20 minutes singing a song to the Okapi at the Henry Doorly Zoo.

Maybe we'll keep him after all.