A few weeks ago my dad sent me an article from his local paper, reporting that the woman who bought my mother’s bakery shortly after she died was moving locations.  I studied the photograph of the woman in the paper, who stood smiling at the battered metal work bench that had been my mother’s perch.  I thought of the hundreds of hours my mother had planted herself in that very spot, pirouetting icing onto wooden picks to make sugar roses, a feat I had watched her perform a thousand times like magic.  My mother had a gift for transforming pedestrian objects into things of beauty, which is exactly what she had done with the spare warehouse space that she converted into a charming bakery when she opened its doors 15 years ago (writing that, I can scarcely believe it’s been 15 years).  It was the fall I was leaving home for college and my mom transferred the energy she had expended on mothering me into this newborn business venture.  She often worked 12-hour days, rarely taking vacations, all, undoubtedly, contributing factors that led to her suffering a heart attack at the age of 51.  So invested was she that The Bakery took on a life of its own, as if it was a character in her story or the newest member of our family.  Over time it became her life force:  the very thing that propelled her was what ultimately snuffed out her light.

As I read the article an unexpected wave of sadness crashed over me, its reverberating ripples still washing against me days later, and I wasn’t sure why; when my dad sold the bakery nearly 10 years ago I felt nothing but relief.  But now, the sands of time having obscured so much of the remains of my mother’s life, I realized that the bakery was the only physical structure that persisted.  The house I grew up in has been sold twice over.  Even the apartment my mother was living in when she died was converted to condominiums.  Although I haven’t been to visit the bakery in years, the place where she poured so much of herself in the final years of her life, I always knew it was there, a steady heartbeat thrumming in the world.  Over the years I had come to regard it as my mother’s mausoleum, a solid touchstone of her memory.

The last time I saw my mother was a week before she died.  It was early November and we went to an exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum featuring the work of Frida Kahlo, a painter we both admired.  It was part of an exhibition on Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday where loved ones who have passed are honored.  Altars, filled with photographs, favorite foods, candles, and marigolds, are erected in people’s homes and public spaces.  Family members make pilgrimages to the cemetery where they lay out food for the departed and “welcome” the return of their spirits.  My mom and I were both fascinated by the ritual and beauty of recognizing that, as poet May Sarton says, “death ends a life, but not a relationship.”   Afterward, as we sat drinking coffee and discussing plans for her bakery, as we often did, she said a funny thing.  “If I died tomorrow, I wouldn’t have any regrets.  At least I know I died having made my dream come true.”

Last Sunday Abra, I, and a fellow group of mothers and babies marched in Albuquerque’s Dia de los Muertos parade.  I spent the week leading up to the parade dashing around town trying to find facepaint after Halloween (difficult) and dug costume pieces out of the recesses of my closet.  In the hours after Abra went to bed I transformed humble tissue paper into complicated marigolds to decorate her stroller, my fingertips stained gold and orange.  With each passing day I felt a deeper understanding of how my own mother had spent the same countless hours, stitching costumes, baking cakes, performing her own special alchemy.   As I pinned frilly marigolds in my hair and threaded calavera earrings through my lobes, the hassles of the week fell away; I smiled back at my painted reflection and thought, Mom would have loved this.

I pulled Abra’s festooned stroller from the car, a flurry of tissue paper flowers dancing in the wind.  We strolled around the staging area where homemade papier mache floats with dancing skeletons skirted the parking lot.  A sea of people, young and old, all festively dressed, smiled back at me and I thought, Mom would have loved this. We processed down the street, the world’s slowest parade, a series of fits and starts that allowed us to really take it all in.  I flung candy out to the children lining the street, who skittered to claim their loot.  I watched an old woman standing on her front stoop, a tattered sweater crisscrossed taut around her middle, bracing against the chill of the late fall afternoon.  I saw looks of sheer delight come over people’s faces when they saw our clutch of babies wheel toward them, and I couldn’t help but smile back.  A hard-looking man, thick arms blazing with tattoos, clapped his meaty palms together and shouted, “Let’s hear it for the moms!”  Even as I struggled to grasp once again the reality that, yes, I am a mother, the daughter in me couldn’t help but think, Mom would have loved this.

Someone recently asked me if I still miss my mother a lot.  “Every day,” I replied.  But the times I miss her most is when I find myself in the midst of something that I know she would have loved being a part of.  These are often small moments:  enjoying an especially tasty salad, discovering an interesting coffee house, or marching in a festive homegrown parade.  It is these times that life yawns wide, providing a space in which I connect with her spirit.  The bakery is incidental, a mere mantle of who she was.  My mother resides in the world around me – the crinkle of fall leaves, a bubbling apple crisp, the flap of a bluebird’s wing – and I honor her memory by connecting to these moments that life offers up every day.  As I held Abra snug after the parade, covering her against the cold that advanced into the lengthening shadows, Maikael captured a rare photo of the two of us both looking completely overjoyed.  It was a flash of what has passed and a glimpse of what is yet to come, a mother and daughter delighting in a shared experience.   Peering at this photo I understood, in the fullest way possible, that life goes on.

Last week The New York Times’ Travel section ran an article on Albuquerque that profiled The Church of Beethoven, described as “not church, much more than Beethoven.”  Founded in 2008 by Felix Wurman, a cellist who was seeking weekly ritual without religion, this Sunday morning chamber music series, interspersed with poetry and moments of silence, resonated with me.  All week I looked forward to going in sweet anticipation, having even arranged for a babysitter, but I awoke on Sunday morning in a foul mood, the previous night having been marked by fitful sleep brought on by another round of Abra’s teething.  When we arrived 45 minutes before the performance was to begin, only to discover that it was nearly sold out, my mood darkened.  We stood outside the converted warehouse space waiting with uncertainty for the possibility of standing room-only tickets, shifting from foot to foot as a duo of high school students played the accordion and oboe for spare change.  Everyone except me seemed to be enjoying soaking up the brisk morning sun and the music, and I wondered why I couldn’t do the same.

Once inside we stood in another long line that formed a serpentine around the perimeter of the packed room, waiting for espresso, and my black mood dug in even deeper.  Standing outside of myself it was clear that I was casting a pall over what was supposed to be an uplifting outing.  As I watched myself, simultaneously observing and chastising my behavior, I felt as if I was witnessing a runaway train that I couldn’t stop.  Ensnared in a net of my own making, I struggled desperately to escape this swift downward emotional spiral.  But like a helpless bug caught in a spider’s silken web the more I struggled the more entangled I became, inflated expectation having gotten the best of me once again.

My eyes swept over the cavernous space, which looked as if it had been outfitted from an obliging thrift store.  The rafters were strung with twinkly Christmas lights, old globes bobbed from the ceiling, and frilly lampshades were slung over antique lamps, casting pockets of warmth around the space.  The room buzzed with life:  the strains of the musicians tuning their instruments, the whoosh of the espresso machine, a timpani of chattering voices.  White light seeped through a stained glass window.  Suddenly I look to my left and notice a small vintage nightlight.  A little ceramic dog tugs at the coattails of a little ceramic boy, and the words “Let Go” are lit up at the bottom.  I point this out to Maikael, laughing, and immediately begin to feel a small shift inside myself.

It was a unique setting to listen to Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring, not a grand concert hall but a spare space.  When the conductor introduced the piece he noted that, while it has been famously arranged for large symphony orchestras, the original work was created for a small 14-instrument group like the one assembled before us.  As the opening strains of the music floated through the air, soft and slow, I heard someone cough.  I heard a violinist turn the page of her music in a papery rustle.  As the music built I heard the conductor grunt for emphasis, his fist punching the air.  I even heard the silence.  It was easy to notice these details in such an intimate setting, and by the time we reached the piece’s most iconic movement in a deep crescendo, the Shaker tune Simple Gifts, any darkness I felt that morning had been suffused with light.

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free
‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight

After listening to a local poet we hear a two-person concerto, also by Copeland.  Coming quick on the heels of Appalachian Spring, the clarinetist remarks how that work always reminds him that less is more.  “As much as we like to think that things like iPhones are making our lives cleaner and simpler, they’re not,” he says, a wave of knowing chuckles rippling through the audience, causing the man seated next to me to actually put down his iPhone.  “Copeland always reminds me that all we really need are a few well-chosen connections and activities to make a life.”  These words settle deep into me, a sentiment I have heard a thousand times in different configurations, but which pierce me differently this particular morning.  When the clarinetist introduces the concerto, he notes that while a symphony is like a city and what we’ve just listened to is a village, this concerto is like being at home.  He is right.  It is quiet and intimate; I can hear each gasping breath he takes.  As he sways lyrically to the simple tune I think of the days when people gathered at home and listened to one another play music as evening settled in around them.  I have a dawning awareness that what I was searching for when I came here today was life like a concerto, a drawing in close filled with soft, humble ritual and simple rhythms.  And while this morning has offered the place of easy repose that I was hoping for, I realize that I need not have left home to access it.  The real “letting go” is learning to take a piece of this experience with me and carry it forward into my everyday life, where the concerns of the spirit are bound by nothing more than the modest walls of home.

Abra is taking her first wobbly steps into the world.  Like everything she does – from her delivery into this bright life, to the way she eats, to how she learned to crawl – her progress has been slow but steady.  She has been cruising for months, using anything at standing-height to help propel herself around a room.  For weeks I’ve listened to others’ declarations that she’d be walking “any day now,” knowing from past experience that she was nowhere near that milestone.  Although her personality is just unfurling from its tight coil, I can already tell that she is someone who must fully master a skill and feel confident in her abilities before moving forward.  This is nothing like me.  I have always crashed through life, leaping before I look, my head often lagging behind my heart.  I rarely read instructions, intuiting my way through thick problems.  I throw caution to the wind.  Needless to say I was a very early walker, and as parents are wont to do, I projected my own unfair expectations on Abra, assuming that she, too, would follow my trajectory.

After doing everything in my power to encourage her walking, I finally accepted the words that I had spoken so hollowly to every person who asked if she was walking:  Not yet, but in her own time.  As soon as I released my death-grip on the idea that she should be walking by now, she lunged from the coffee table to the couch, her little legs hitching forward.

I know that Abra has a great deal to teach me about patience and letting go.

I have never understood why parents spend so much time fawning over their child’s developmental milestones, the ones that every single human being passes through at one time or another.  Now here I am, snapping so many photos of her first steps in the world that I could create a flip book of her journey.  I have taken dozens of video clips trying to capture a significant sequence of sturdy steps, and I watch them over and over and over again, as if each loop will reveal something previously unseen.  Puzzled by my own behavior, it finally dawned on me as I was running this weekend – my old, practiced legs having carried me thousands of miles over a lifetime – that I wasn’t trying to memorialize a moment so much as I was seeking to understand myself.  Each time I see Abra working hard to master a basic skill that I tend to take for granted, such as eating or walking, I can’t help but marvel at the fact that I went through the same process.  I think of the years of slow and steady practice that were involved in allowing me to run for a full half hour around a sunny park on a crisp autumn morning.  As I learn to be a runner, huffing and puffing my way through the trees, I reach a point halfway through my run where I feel like giving up.  I remind myself to take it one step at a time, to concentrate on the slip of trail just in front of me and no more.

I love the motion blur.

On Saturday afternoon, as light streamed through our bedroom window, Abra launched herself from our desk toward the middle of the room, a clear runway of carpet stretching ahead of her.  Usually she takes a few halting steps, her arms raised overhead like a goalpost, a smile stretched gleefully over her face, before tumbling down.  But this time I stood in front of her with arms outstretched, urging her forward.  As I shuffled backward she confidently walked toward me, taking one and two steps, then a dozen, then a record twenty before falling down in a heap.  Struggling to understand the difference between this and previous attempts, I realized that she had been focused on me, that proverbial slip of trail just in front of her.  And in one gasping breath I suddenly understood a basic fact that had somehow escaped me all these years:  My own mother or father had been by my side as I took the same tentative steps into the world, agonizing as I teetered and threatened to fall flat on my face.  I was overcome by a rush of love and gratitude as I thought of the hundreds of hours that someone stood by my side, waiting to catch me if I fell, teaching me to move through life in the only way possible:  One foot in front of the other.  No matter what divergent roads our tired legs may have carried us down, despite the loneliness we sometimes feel, we all learned to walk with the help of somebody else.

I scanned the airport terminal, searching for the woman whose face I only knew in profile from the black and white photo on her website.  It was funny when I recognized her from behind, a full-length shot in Technicolor, her back arched over the car rental counter and head dipped in concentration.  I’m not sure if it was her height, – I’d always imagined her to be tall – the argyle-print totebag that rested at her side, or the low ponytail gathered at the nape of her neck, but somehow I knew it was her.

We embraced, familiar strangers, marveling at how luck, fate, circumstance – divinity – had brought us together across the impossible bridge of time and space.  I’m not sure who found who in the universe of the World Wide Web, but we began visiting one another’s virtual “homes” shortly after each of us began blogging two years ago.  We exchanged emails from time to time, and while we didn’t really “know” each other, something told me that I’d like her if we ever had the chance to meet in person.  But it was Kristen who created the momentum for actually making that meeting happen, a plan hatched in the Twittersphere, a wouldn’t-that-be-cool idea soon developing into a concrete reality.

From the moment that the wheels of our car gripped the interstate for our hour-long drive to Kripalu we started a conversation that continued virtually uninterrupted, save for sleep, for three days.  Although the conditions of our lives and our backgrounds are decidedly different, we quickly unearthed many invisible threads that bound us together, threads that weren’t obvious from a casual web-based relationship.  We connected immediately over things big and small:  motherhood and chocolate chip cookies, career angst and fresh-baked bread, the work of Jhumpa Lahiri and an abiding fear of silent breakfast (a Kripalu policy).  In between yoga classes and writing exercises we discovered a shared taste in literature, swapping countless book recommendations.   Despite the fact that we both have young children in the house, making sleep as precious as gold, we slouched against the cinderblock walls of our simple room telling stories long into the night and spinning inside jokes, that most private of gestures.  More than once I glanced at the glowing red numbers on the alarm clock, silently promising myself that I’d go to bed in “just 10 more minutes,” but would find myself laughing an hour later.

At the end of each workshop session, Dani would lead us in a brief meditation.  One morning, as the fog rolled through the green hills just outside the expansive window of our meeting room, I gently closed my eyes and let the words wash over me.  We were directed to send loving thoughts to ourselves, a loved one, a “familiar stranger,” and I thought about how this particular year has brought me into contact with so many of these unique kindred spirits.  I cherish my long-standing relationships that exist in the comfortable, worn grooves created by years of treading a joint history.  But there is something sparkling in creating a new connection.  It is heartening to take a leap of faith with another person, the shared trust that exists when each party dives in head-first without knowing exactly how the other person might “turn out.”  As Kristen and I sat comfortably shoulder to shoulder in the airport terminal awaiting our respective flights home, announcements booming over the loudspeaker, I realized that there is something magical, akin to alchemy, in transforming a familiar stranger into a friend.  For somewhere between the countless hours of conversations, the car rides, the walk in the woods, and the shared meals, we had made that the silent, delicate passage into genuine friendship.

The older I grow the more these relationships – forged not through similar circumstances but through something deeper – mean to me.  I find I’d rather spend what limited leisure  time I have in the company of others with whom I share a deep and abiding connection, from familiar strangers to emerging friendships to those true-blue souls who have seemingly always been there.  Whether it’s stoking the fires of a long-standing friendship or kindling new ones, I am increasingly willing to go the distance – both literally and figuratively – in search of these “soul connections.”  Some might think I’m crazy for traipsing around the country to spend time with people I barely know, arguing that engaging “familiar strangers” in the virtual realm takes us away from the people who are present in our “real” lives.  I’d say that having the opportunity to meet these familiar strangers in person opens the door for them to become something more.  Sometimes I have parted ways with people knowing full well we’ll never see each other again, even as we call “see you soon!” over our shoulders.  But as Kristen and I plotted plans for a future adventure – someway, somehow we are going to converge on a writing conference next year  – I knew without a doubt that, when I step off the plane next year, she’ll be there waiting for me.

Remember how, when I returned from my retreat with The Tribe, I concluded that my work for the year involved “manifesting a new reality?”  Part of that process was captured on film by my very talented fellow Tribe Member Sarah Gervais, a photographer and social psychologist who blends her two passions into a fascinating project called Repicturing Women. (She is also the one who coined what has now become an oft-repeated phrase, “The Universe has room for all of us.”)  On her site she features women — herself included — exploring their relationship to their bodies.  I am honored that Sarah decided to feature me at her site in this interview.  Thank you, Sarah, for the opportunity to be a part of the good work you are doing in the world.

On Thursday morning I made my way through the still-dark streets, my headlights searching the road for other signs of life and finding very little.  By the time I made it to Nissa’s house the sun had begun fingering its way into day as the pale moon still glowed above.  A small circle of women, just four of us, quietly gathered on tree stumps while I promptly planted by sneaker in a bed of cilantro.  After whispered introductions our first assignment was to find a spot in the garden that spoke to us and to write about it for a few minutes.  We’d visit this same spot in a month at the conclusion of this course, “Inside, Outside:  Learning About Ourselves Through the Garden.”  As someone who is constantly attuned to change – and of what stays the same amidst the chaos – I loved this idea.  My eyes scanned the overflowing, wabi sabi garden in search of inspiration.  I considered the sunflowers, whose gigantic heads drooped and lolled over the fence.  I thought about the lacy veil of beans.  But ultimately my attention was called to the pumpkins, which I first mistook for watermelons.

“I never knew how a pumpkin started:  small, round, hard, striped the color of seaweed.  But before that it sprang from a bright orange flower, a starfish in the garden, a soft tropical flower right here in the high desert.  Clubbed hands cascade and twist their way over the cool ground, the spiny stalks keeping you at a distance.  Just as the rest of the garden is beginning its slow descent back to the earth, singing its swan song, the pumpkin is just beginning its journey.  Soon these dark green globes will flame a brilliant orange:  waiting to be carved into toothy grins, baked into Thanksgiving pies, rending their seeds.  Its insides are scooped hollow, a reminder that all the best parts dwell deep inside us.  ‘Grow,’ says the sign looming above the pumpkin patch, its letters etched in cool metal.  That’s what I’m trying to do:  to cast aside the protective shell that keeps me from risking, digging deep into my flesh in search of the soft, tender parts that are my life force.  All around me one journey begins as another ends.”

I love this banner that hangs in the garden

I’ve never considered the garden a place of contemplation, but as I huddle for warmth against the cool morning air I am beginning to see why people retreat to these leafy oases.  Although I love the idea of growing my own food, gardens have traditionally been a source of stress for me.  I don’t know anything about caring for plants and my approach has always been slapdash and haphazard, the result of which, you can imagine, hasn’t been good.  There has been nothing intentional about my method, and I limited my time in the garden to the bare minimum required to keep it alive.  Sometimes days would pass without thinking about the garden, and when it entered my consciousness like a thunderbolt I raced out back to find a zucchini the size of a loaf of bread, tough and woody.  Unlike Nissa, who is clearly in her element, exuding quiet confidence, I am as wobbly as a newborn foal here. Her reverence for the garden is clear, and all around us Nissa points out lessons for living a life.  “We need to thin out the carrots,” she explains as she points to clusters of frilly shoots that have just begun their ascent out of the earth.  “They’re sort of like people:  they don’t like to be crowded.”  As I continue to misidentify plant after plant I am delighted when I recognize a verdant patch of strawberries by their telltale leaves.  Nissa laughs.  For years she had unsuccessfully tried to plant strawberries from seed.  Then, she believes, a tiny strawberry seed from her compost bin made it into the soil, the result of which is a burgeoning patch of strawberries.

I turned the story over in my mind as the day wore on.  How often in life do we try to bring something to fruition through brute force?  The more effort we exert, the worse the results.  The moment we stop trying so hard things just happen, exceeding our wildest expectations.  We let things unfurl in their own time and watch a miracle take hold.  This is the lesson of my life these days.  I’ve tried to manifest a new way of being through rigid schedules, regimes and timelines.  I’ve tried to coax new life out of dormant seeds that weren’t ready to sprout.  I’ve been going through the world with a battering ram this past year; I am the hard green pumpkin, waiting impatiently to turn bright orange.  Perhaps I am here not to learn about how to become a better gardener so much as a better person.

“One race there is of men, one of gods, but from one mother we both draw our breath.” ~ Pindar

Standing at my bedroom window, peering through the slats of the blinds, I watch the falcon perched on an obliging branch, focusing intently on the ground below.  I have seen this falcon – or one just like it – before; I am almost positive there is an aerie in my neighborhood park.  I cast my gaze downward, where it falls on a fuzzy halo of downy grey feathers limping lamely along.  A baby dove.  “Maybe he doesn’t see it?” offers Maikael.  Just then, the falcon wings its way to the wall that the dove is slowly inching his way along, eyes trained down, eliminating any doubt that it hadn’t seen the dove.  “Should I go chase it away?” asks Maikael. Torn between protecting this defenseless creature and letting nature run its course I bite my bottom lip and contemplate what to do, the thought of this tiny chick becoming lunch piercing my heart.  I feel as if I’m watching a real-life nature show unfold before my eyes:  I hop up and down in place, wildly flapping my hands like a mama bird in distress, nervously awaiting the outcome.  Suddenly the falcon swoops down, talons extended, and scoops up the dove.  In a flash they are gone. Maikael and I exchange a bewildered look, truly shocked by what has just transpired.  “I guess there’s a reason that falcons are called ‘birds of prey,’” I say, flatly.

My mothering instinct often surprises me.  That I feel this way toward my daughter isn’t a mystery, for it is what I am biologically programed to do.  But since giving birth to Abra this need to protect all living creatures leaps up out of some hidden crevasse I never knew existed, always astonishing me.  Perhaps it’s because I’ve never thought of myself as particularly maternal.  Although I played with dolls as a girl I never imagined cradling my own, fashioned not from plastic and nylon but skin and bones, someday.  While my friends declared that they wanted to be “a mommy” when they grew up I was already envisioning a future as a writer or an artist, believing the two paths to be mutually exclusive.  Choosing to become a mother was never a forgone conclusion but a decision made late in the game.  When I was pregnant I worried that I had been born without a mothering nature and that my baby would suffer because of it, not understanding that the latent instinct to mother was birthed right alongside my daughter.

It is funny to think of yourself as one way, only to discover that a concept you built your identity around doesn’t, in the end, prove to be true.  I still wouldn’t describe myself as “the mothering type” – if there is such a thing – but the instinct is there.  I watch a little boy skid off his bike in the park and find myself clutching my throat, adrenaline racing.  A snaggletoothed girl stares back at me from the newspaper, and when I read that her body has been found in a river I feel genuine sadness for this nameless face.  I pick up someone else’s crying baby without a thought.  I worry about the lithe toddler who has lost her parents at the botanical gardens.  My heart aches when the helpless dove is spirited away.  The abstract has been made personal, sympathy replaced by empathy.  Perhaps it is true that we are all mothers to one another, tending to each other’s aches, ministering to our needs, soothing our collective souls.

Now I stand back and watch Abra confront the world head-on, her bumps and bruises the evidence that, like all of us, she is engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the universe.  She eats a cherry, her eyes bulging as the thin ruby skin catches in her throat, causing me to shudder.  I lunge the moment her chubby knees slip in the cotton candy pool.  One moment she is steady and the next she is not, tumbling into a great heap of gasping sobs, and I am by her side in an instant.  It is just the beginning.  I wonder what bird of prey is looming darkly on the horizon.  But I know now what I couldn’t trust when I was pregnant:  there is an invisible net that supports her, the delicate threads that bind one life to another.  They are the gossamer strings that suspend us all.  My instincts have come out of their hiding place for good, and should they fail me, I take heart in knowing that another mother will be flapping her wings, watching, waiting to swoop.

We snaked our way through the dusty valley, curls of smoke rising from the blue mountains that loomed in the hazy distance, searching for the turnoff.  Passing by a beautifully manicured golf course, a surprising sight in this desolate nowhere, we were finally stopped by an orange “Road Closed” sign.  An officer from the Bureau of Indian Affairs pressed her palm out the window, informing us that the Las Conchas fire, which has claimed over 145,000 acres in two weeks, had made the route impassable.  “So is the Cochiti Feast Day canceled?” we asked.  “Not as far as I know,” she said, indicating that we weren’t even on the right road that would lead us to the pueblo.  We turned around and passed the gas station, the attached mini-mart dark and shuttered in honor of the festivities, and nosed our way back along the winding road.  After another false start we turned around again, and then again, as if we were playing a crazy game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, finally following the line of cars at the unmarked intersection.  “I can’t believe there isn’t any signage,” I remarked to Maikael, who dryly responded, “Are you really that surprised?”

As we parked our car at the foot of the pueblo, bass voices and drums booming in the distance, two tourists tumbled out of the car next to us.  I knew they were tourists because they complained that a two hour trip from Taos had taken them nearly four, and the woman asked frantically what time the activities had begun. “When I called the pueblo office the man could only tell me that it would start somewhere between 10 and 11,” she fretted, clearly unfamiliar with the approximations that rule New Mexican time.

We followed the sounds of the singing and drumming to the plaza, where scores of pueblo members and visitors ringed the dusty square.  In the middle danced every shape and size of man, woman and child, circumambulating the crusty earth.  Some were covered in seafoam paint, others striped in black and white.  Some shook giant rattles.  Other wore fir boughs in their hair.  The sun bore down hard as one wave of performers made way for the next, an event that would stretch on for hours, a never-ending chorus of sound.  Although all homes are open to visitors on Feast Day, we had been invited to dine at the home of an acquaintance, the first time in six years that we’d been able to attend.  “Just ask for the Governor’s House,” Rose had said, assuring me that everyone would know the way.  After asking scores of people who had no idea where the Governor’s House was, we finally received vague directions.  Abra and I stayed at the car while Maikael disappeared down the dirt road, returning minutes later.  “That’s the one,” he said, pointing, miraculously, to an adobe house situated on a small hill just above our car.  “But nobody’s home.”

We sat in the car, the baking midday sun plastering us to the seats, while we considered what to do.  We hated to turn around after coming all this way, after all these years.  But it was hot, Abra was fussy and, having prepared to enjoy a feast, we were famished.  Just then, Maikael looked up and said, “Hey, isn’t that Rose?” Our friend’s eyes met ours and she let out a squeal of delight, clearly surprised that we had actually made it.  We hugged her, equally surprised that we had found her.  Inside the cool house my eyes wandered to a small altar, a framed photo of Rose’s father propped against a towering statue of the Virgin Mary.  Ceremonial drums were stacked alongside the big screen television, a collision of past and present.

At the other end of the house I could see a dining room table set with dishes.  “I got up real early to cook,” said Rose, who scurried amongst a throng of Crockpots that sat at the ready.  We gathered around the table, and soon a host of small bowls were placed before us:  posole, red chile, enchiladas, green chile stew, and a medley of salads.  Unsure of Feast Day etiquette, I followed the lead of my tablemates, who took only very small portions – the intention is to eat at many homes – and quickly exited, making room for the next wave of people who sat patiently waiting in the living room, like the vestibule of a restaurant.  “There’s room for two more at the table,” called Rose, the makeshift hostess.  Afterward, while Abra contentedly crawled around the floor, we spoke with state senators, old friends and family members.  A group of firefighters, brought in from Fort Apache, Arizona, to fight the blaze that roared just a few miles away, even stopped in to eat a quick meal before returning to the trenches.  A chorus of “thank yous” and a wave of gratitude followed them out the door.

Abra started to yawn so we decided to head for home, an hour away and a world apart.  As we drove back to Albuquerque my mind drifted, reflecting on the day.  So often life here in the Wild West is frustrating, filled with hazy directions, dead ends and unexpected detours.  What I find maddening about this place is what I find maddening about life in general:  where are the clear sign posts to guide my journey?  While I know that no such thing exists I keep beating my head against the cosmic wall, always searching, rarely trusting.  Nothing ever unfolds quite as I expect it to, and yet through divinity I end up arriving exactly at the right place at the right time.  There is a reason New Mexico is called “The Land of Enchantment,” for it is here, on days like this, that we enter the flow of life, celebrating small wonders, the fellowship of others, a bounty to share with friends and strangers alike.

I wish I had photos to share of all the wonderful sights I took in last Thursday.  But in accordance with pueblo custom, no photography was allowed.  As I overheard one woman say, “We’ll just have to keep the memories in our mind’s eye.”  Instead, enjoy the above shot, which captures one of my favorite parts of living in New Mexico:  the incomparable sunsets.  Like my friend Lindsey, I’m becoming fairly obsessed with taking photos of the sky.

This past Sunday I went to a lovely tea party with a new friend, something I had been looking forward to for many weeks.  One of the unexpected pleasures of these early days of motherhood has been the women I never would have met had maternity not thrown us together.  The party was held in the airy ballroom of an historic inn, a place that’s come to mean a great deal to me over the past year.  It’s where Maikael and I spent our anniversary last July when I was eight months pregnant. It’s where we enjoyed a leisurely early spring dinner in March, a desperate reprieve from baby.  It’s where I spent my first Mother’s Day on the sunny veranda.  In a cosmic twist of fate, this new friend of mine used to work at the inn before she became a mother herself.

Seated in a sunny corner of the ballroom, we enjoyed tea sandwiches served on frilly three-tiered trays, frothy fruit trifles, delicate cookies, and savory scones.  We sipped iced tea and picked our way slowly through each course, filling the spaces in between with intimate conversation.  We talked about our mutual struggles with this new phase of life, sought each other’s advice, and shared our histories.  One of my favorite phases of a relationship is the “getting to know you” stage.  Every story is new, every exchange rife with possibility.  Because I am so rarely able to get out and enjoy these kinds of decadent, quiet afternoons anymore, these experiences mean so much more to me than ever before.  As the ballroom slowly emptied we lingered just a few minutes more, scraping the crumbs from our plate, sipping the dregs from our tea cups, until the inevitable couldn’t be prolonged anymore.  The ripe anticipation of this day, which I had held in my palm for so many weeks, was over.

As I drive home, still relishing the details of the afternoon, the blackberry clouds roll in, creating a sagging curtain that hangs low and heavy overhead, threatening rain.  Each afternoon for the past few weeks the air has grown thick and humid and just when it looks like the sky is ready to unleash its fury, the clouds retreat, the air thins, and everything returns to normal.  Day after day this same dance has happened, a pas de deux between us New Mexicans and the elements.  But on this day the skies finally opened up, first sending fat raindrops to dot the simmering concrete like splattered paint, followed by thick sheets of rain that pound my little car.  Monsoon season is officially upon us, a reminder that the beginning of the end of summer is here.

There is something about this time of year that causes me to wax nostalgic, especially this year.  Perhaps it’s that “beginning of the end” feeling.  Maybe it’s the fact that I was married on the cusp of the monsoons, or that my daughter was born at the tail end of the season.  But nearly every day I am reminded of what I was doing this time last year.  When I wake up refreshed, I am reminded of the sleepless nights that plagued the end of last summer.  When I exercise I remember those early morning swims, the only form of physical activity that I could manage in my late pregnancy.  When I receive invitations for first birthday parties from the friends I took prenatal yoga with, I can’t help but remember sitting in a hot yoga studio this time last year, talking incessantly about our impending births, aware that everything was about to change.  As I took an early morning walk around my neighborhood park this past Saturday I was reminded of my baby shower, held exactly one year prior.  I reviewed my mental photo album of everyone in attendance and realized how scarcely I see any of those women anymore, shocked by how a year can so dramatically alter the cast of characters in one’s life.

Now the rains are here, clearing out the smoke from ravishing forest fires, soaking the cracked earth, washing everything clean.  In the scope of a year the monsoon season is brief. But it creates a bridge in time, connecting the fullness of summer to the first whispers of autumn.  It is a season unto itself, a reminder of how quickly things can change, how everything has a season, how some periods in time bring us back to ourselves over and over and over again.

Here is Abra just moments after her first monsoon rain, hair plastered to her head!  She didn’t know what to make of the rain.

When Maikael told me he was leaving on a business trip for two weeks, I recalled how I felt the day he returned to work after Abra was born.  I wondered how I’d ever manage taking care of a newborn, all by myself, for nine whole hours. Those same doubts crept up on me again and, wondering if I could survive providing Abra ‘round-the-clock care for two weeks, I quickly booked a plane ticket to visit Heidi in Las Vegas.  She has three young children, and if anyone would know how to handle whatever pediatric emergencies and pitfalls might befall us in Maikael’s absence, it would be her.  Plus she had a spare crib, extra car seat, and umbrella stroller, making solo travel with a baby as easy as it would ever be.

Although our most recent trip to Portland was a disaster, I was convinced, as I always am, that this time would be different.  Despite the fact that she had the set-up that most traveling babies only dream of, the unfamiliar surroundings left her feeling unnerved throughout the trip.  She cried when she was held; she cried when she was set down.  She cried when I left the room, even when I was plainly in sight.  She whimpered as we snaked our way through the lush gardens at the Bellagio, the throngs of tourists too much for her.  She became so upset one night that she vomited all over the kitchen floor.  She did not eat, she did not sleep, and after Heidi and I tried everything to soothe her, it was clear that she simply wanted to be in the one place she loves most:  home.

When I was pregnant, Maikael and I would pass quiet evenings imagining who this person under the swell in my middle was.  I remember joking, “I bet we will have a total homebody,” not quite believing that a couple that has visited over 50 countries between us could produce someone who prefers to stick close to home.  Part of our decision to have a baby in the first place was predicated on the travel success stories of our friends with small children.  We had seen first-hand the infants who dozed in carriers, the babies who slept through the night in strange houses, the ones who sat quietly on their parents’ laps in noisy jets, which buoyed our confidence in the (naive?) belief that we could continue to travel in the same way we always had.

After an exhausting fortnight apart, I worked hard to clear the calendar so that we could spend a quiet three-day weekend at home.  Abra and I met Maikael at the airport, and after a few moments of confusion and hesitation, Abra clung to him like a monkey.  That evening we enjoyed dinner and drinks on our patio, something I look forward to all year but that we haven’t been able to do all summer because of the smoke produced from the wildfires that are ravaging our state.  We pawed through souvenirs, flipped through vacation photos, and shared stories of our time apart.  Over the weekend we turned off the phones and made waffles.  We took a walk and ate strawberry shortcake.  We watched the skies open up and produce a much-needed rainstorm from the safety of our local frozen yogurt shop.  We curled up on the couch and watched two movies after Abra was nestled snugly in bed, a first in nine months.  We enjoyed an outstanding 4^th of July lunch at a dear friend’s house, but made sure we were home before dark.  It was one of the nicest weekends I’ve spent in a long time, circling ever closer to home.

I have been a “go-er” my whole life, always propelling myself from one adventure to the next; the irony that I have a child who prefers to stick close to home is not lost on me, nor do I think it’s a coincidence.  A friend recently shared with me a quote from Zora Neale Hurston that I have been turning over in my mind.  “There are years that ask questions and there are years that answer.”  It got me thinking about the seasons of our lives, how there are periods of expansion and contraction, activity and stillness, effort and ease, sowing and reaping.  And yes, there are years for going and years for staying.  We don’t plan to quit traveling – it’s too integral a part of our lives – but in this season I think I have something to learn from being content at home, a place I’ve always shied away from.  Perhaps it has something to do with learning to be comfortable in my own skin.  It’s time to stop moving for awhile, to cultivate a life centered around home and hearth, to settle into the quiet moments and unexpected pleasures that the ordinary world offers up each and every day.