The advice to “take one stitch at a time” is comparable to the advice to “take one step at a time,” but when you’re stitching a little scene with houses, windows, and trees, other metaphors spring to mind. 

Such as: oh look, I’ve just stitched a shelter into place. Before, it was merely pinned to the surface, but now it is secure. 

A secure shelter.

Oh look! I’m connecting the foreground to the background, which is to say, the land to the sky. Integration. The power in that. 

My oh my! I’m flying with my needle through the sky! There will be a place for the moon tonight, the moon who is now and always has been, my friend. 

I don’t want a bonus offer. I don’t want 10% off my first purchase. I don’t wanna talk to an agent or chat with a bot. I’m not interested in your credit cards. I don’t care what you’re posting on Facebook or Instagram so remove those icons — they’re blocking your product! Also, I know you’re just complying with the law, but I don’t give a shit what cookies you use and I wish you didn’t have to keep asking me. Mailing list? Email notifications? Absolutely not! Now, why did I even open this page? Goodbye.

The world is on fire, and still I want to live.

Here, there is ice. Sleet fell during the night and now early sun sets the encased branches to sparkling. A neighborhood canopied by tiaras, a festival of light. Treachery on the road perhaps, but just look up! There: unspeakable beauty. I want you to see it. 

Every day dishes up contradiction or irony or befuddling complexity. Today I find irony — the sidewalks that have been fastidiously cleared are the most dangerous while the ones where the crunchy snow remains offer secure traction.

Sun makes the branches’ icy sleeves melt and it sounds like rain. Plippety-plop. Can you hear it? Does it do something to your soul to hear it?

Where the road dips down to the school, the field is ringed in a softening mist and though I’ve lived here more than 30 years, it is a novel sight. Funny that. How the ordinary can offer up some kind of miracle. Completely unbidden. Nature’s adornment, weather’s surprise — life still worth living. 

https://videopress.com/v/PZ4TQoZw?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

It’s Wednesday, March 4, 2026. I think I’ll make butternut squash soup. I’ve got ginger. I’ve got a chicken carcass to make stock. I have a little heavy cream to splash in the bowl and fresh cilantro or parsley to sprinkle on top.

Sounds good, eh?

Well it’s birthday month here in this house and I found this suitable birthday post in my draft file. If I’ve already published it, sorry, but I don’t think I have. It was mostly written in 2017. How universal is the tendency to lament through a distorted lens? These days I like having cleared off counters and floors free of piles of clothing and slipcovers that are tucked in. Gone are the days when the kitchen was a perpetual mess and when shit was piled up everywhere. And I mean everywhere. People would come in and if they were of a certain cheery mind announce, “Oh! You can tell someone creative lives here,” as if I wouldn’t know what they meant. Others would judge quietly and struggle to keep their eyes from roving about and cataloguing the mess. I prided myself for being comfortable with chaos and it really wasn’t an attempt to rationalize my lax housekeeping. I genuinely considered it a strength and resented the fact that it was never gonna be a quality extolled by teachers in those parent conferences which were never a breeze and in fact were often excruciating. From the very get go.  All those lectures from pre-school teachers about consistency, like that was ever gonna happen. Like it was the only thing that contributed to a child’s well being.  “He’s angry.” They said when one boy was two and naturally implied that it was my fault. How was my tone of voice? Did I stick to my “no’s”? What were our routines at home? Did we have any?  I came home stung, wringing my hands with self-recrimination convinced that one boy’s stubbornness and the other’s hyperactivity were my fault. There I was yelling. There I was completely strung out. There I was, pregnant and/or nursing and not getting a single good night’s sleep for five fucking years. I once heard a woman say she’d given up nursing after three weeks because it interfered with her sleep and I almost fell over. Were we even from the same planet? I committed to on-demand nursing and while maybe we’d all have been better served by my being rested, I gave the boys that. My mother died when I was carrying our second child. I keep talking about this, I know. My brother was on the West Coast. My sister was very active on her trajectory to self destruction about an hour north. And Ken’s sister, though nearby, had two kids roughly the same ages. Ken’s mother had been gone even longer gone than mine. We were so strapped for cash that baby sitters, vacations, and even pizza were out of the question for many years. You might yell too if you couldn’t find your keys. Years later I’m not sure how much blame to shoulder. After all, society reflexively, maliciously, and systematically assigns fault to mothers. Perhaps a little refusal is in order? And besides, a little emphasis on NATURE in the nature versus nurture argument isn’t going to offend anyone at this distance. Remember that wonderful advice of Don Juan’s in one of the Castenda books: stop taking sides with reality? Instead of crafting memoir as prescription, how about letting it be? Which is a lot like saying, how about letting yourself be? Like the day I mixed up cement to make stepping stones embellished with broken plates instead of cleaning the kitchen counters. Or like all the times I took the kids to the golf course for sledding instead of staightening the downstairs. There were trips to the Science Museum, the Aquarium, to the park in Brookline with the play structure shaped like a pirate ship. All those choices? Solid. Clearly better activities than picking up clutter. Today, I’m going to act as if a blog post can affirmatively counteract a tendency to let memory warp in the direction of personal failing. Memoir as prescription. There is so much that I did wrong or simply could have done better. It was hard for me to be consistent. My temper flared (not abusively, I hope – though yesterday I came across three-year-old C’s story about a mother who yelled and then threw her child in the river). Is it terrible that this makes me laugh out loud today? The choices I made as a harried mother with very little support (and certainly no housecleaning services) weren’t always sound — but whose were? During those hectic stressful joyful years, I consciously sacrificed housekeeping in favor of playing and making things and getting out to do stuff. So many trips to Audubon’s Drumlin Farm! There’s one boy sticking his head between the rails to get a better look at the goats. There’s the other calling out to the pigs. There’s the hawk with the wounded wing in its temporary cage and here we are hollering “hello!” to the echoing dark of the big barn. We didn’t limit ourselves to the well-peopled areas. Off we went down dirt roads behind the visitor center, walking along fields of corn stubble under a big bowl of sky. Look boys, there’s the drumlin! Let’s think about glaciers, about massive floes of ice with the power to move mountains. And remember, the big high mountains are the babies and the rounded-off low ones, ancient. Funny, right? Feel free to get muddy — what’s a little dirt, especially in a semi-kept house? In warm weather, we’d stop at Dairy Joy on the way home. Soft serve dripping everywhere. Remember that long plastic bin filled with ziti? It was the rectangular kind generally used to stow out-of-season clothing under the bed. Having quickly calculated how much better the entertainment value a few boxes of pasta were than say, a trip to the Science Museum, I liberally poured box after box into the bin. We were stuck home for some reason. The boys’ cousin was visiting. Let the contractors who were in the house look at me like I’m crazy. This was fun! Remember how happily they drove their trucks through mounds of rattling pasta? Remember the ziti necklaces we made before emptying the bin? Also: Crane’s Beach, Loblolly Cove, Good Harbor Beach, the Essex Wolf Preserve, The Habitat (also Audubon), the Old North Bridge, Cold Spring Park, Newton Cemetery (for the ducks), Wellesley Town Center (also for the ducks). We went to Acton to see dinosaur bones and to the Science Museum in Boston to look at snakes in glass cases and to stand agog in the lobby watching the story-and-a-half mechanism with its traveling ball and ingenious moving parts. We went to construction sites to watch the trucks. We went on a whale watch out of Gloucester and saw a big one breech. We ate fried dough at the Topsfield Fair. Picked apples in Sherbourne and rode the serpent train at the Harvest Fair in town center. There were sports:  hockey, soccer, T-ball, skating, more soccer, gymnastics, soccer, skateboarding, and track, track, track. There were guitar and drum lessons. There were plays in elementary school and all those birthday parties. I made dozens upon dozens of Christmas cookies each year and filled Easter baskets with candy and trinkets. For everyday, there were thumb print cookies and chocolate chip cookies. I knew the tollhouse recipe by heart. There were doctors’ visits, learning disability evaluations, sensory integration interventions, IEP meetings (both boys), teacher conferences, medications to try, OT,  and calls from the principal (fortunately, only two involving the police and neither resulting in an arrest). That shit was time consuming, I probably don’t need to tell you. One son had a thyroid issue in middle school that required annual ultra sounds for a while. The other broke his left arm twice and needed surgery. We didn’t go to restaurants much, especially in the early days. Once at the diner in Newton Centre, I asked out loud, “Why don’t we do this more often?” Oh look! There’s the little one writing on the mirror next to our booth with his hot dog! That’s why. There were home-cooked dinners something like 340 nights a year. And while the boys did go through their white food phases (you know, that period when you almost succumb to the ideas that ketchup is a vegetable and pretzels are health food?), they did eat their salads. Yes, I served delicious salads with homemade dressing almost every night of their childhoods. There’s a routine, one I stuck to. We read to the boys in turns, meaning we swapped boys and books nightly — which is how my husband and I ended up reading exactly half of the first five Harry Potter books. I might not have done so otherwise, but when the last one came out and both kids were prepared to read it on their own, I devoured it – because I could? When other families went to Jamaica or Florida, we went sledding on the golf course over by the JCC and built snow forts in the backyard. Speaking of the JCC, we were members for a few years – tumbling classes and fun in the pool (only the indoor one, alas – we could not afford membership in the outdoor pool). We belonged to our town lake, decidedly affordable, where there were swimming lessons. We went to California twice (when they were young and later), Oregon (elementary school) and Colorado (high school). We went camping in Maine, Oregon, and all over Massachusetts. We saw the Ringley Brothers Circus once, Cirque du Soleil, STOMP, Japanese drummers, Habib Koite, and during one misguided Christmas season, half of “The Celtic Sojourn.” Movies not so much. In one kid’s film, thinking myself to be among people who were used to tolerating disruptive children, I let the young one run around the perimeter (he wasn’t yelling or anything – just running, round and round and round — did I mention hyperactivity?) A woman growled at me: “That child’s a MONSTER.” We didn’t try that again for a while. We painted, knit, sewed. There were Lego and wood block creations in every room for a lot of years (and yes, that means I know how excruciating it is to step on LEGO bricks). There were Calico Critters and Play Mobil pirates and tons and tons of Beanie Babies. One American Girl doll. We visited friends in Maine and friends on the Vineyard. There were lots of trips to grandparents in Schenectady, sometimes spiced up with Air Shows, a tour of the race tracks in Saratoga, or hikes in the Indian Kill Nature Preserve. Happy Birthday boys! You’re the best things that ever happened for me!!

No matter where one starts to clean up around here, you’re bound to find some ponchos. Basement, trunk, garage? Ponchos! Orange ponchos, blue ponchos, green ponchos. Folded ponchos, ponchos with stuff sacks, solo ponchos, and ponchos in pairs.

We camped as a family back in the day and probably every time we made our preparations, I couldn’t find the ponchos I’d bought for the previous trip (see post “Losing things and finding them.”) Of course I’d buy new ones because camping without ponchos was inconceivable.

We have ponchos and back up for ponchos. I could open up a poncho shop if I was inclined to run a shop, which I am not.

Speaking of shops, last night while settling down to sleep, I got that ka-ching notification of an Etsy sale. To say it startled me would be an understatement.

Surprise quickly slid into dismay. First question: do I still have the thing that I just sold? Second question: if I still have the thing I just sold, will I be able to find it?

I’m happy to report that the answer to both of those questions is yes.

While I’m sitting here lampooning myself, it is snowing again. While I’m using two thumbs to communicate to you, I’m wondering about my tone (is it smug? is it feisty?), and it is snowing again. It’s supposed to snow all day.

The snow doesn’t care what I think about it and I’m not exactly sick of winter yet, but I am starting to wonder if there will be any end to it. March 1. Today is March 1.

Sometimes, things in life confound us, bore us, test us, perplex us. Sorry to be so opaque here, but this weekend I am thinking a lot about how my thoughts govern my reality.

When I was 15, I visited a friend whose parents had a copy of the book Psycho-Cybernetics. I read it voraciously over the weekend and my friend’s parents were gracious enough to give it to me. I’d pretty much forgotten about it but last night, by chance, somebody did a 42-post thread on the theories in the book.

It’s a lot about how we carry around an internal set point which determines the level of freedom, happiness, ease, and success we can achieve in life. No significant change can occur without addressing that set point, is the idea.

I’ve long believed that we each come into life with a bundle of anxiety that is unique to us. This idea appeared in a Cosmopolitan Magazine article back in the 70s, an idea which my mother espoused with some frequency and for which I naturally held her in disdain. How stupid, I thought. How simplistic. I believe they referred to the bundle of anxiety as a “bouquet.” Really? But I gotta tell you in spite of my initial rejection, the notion that we each carry around a somewhat immutable quantity of anxiety is one I have come back to again and again, particularly raising children.

I don’t know if I had a firm opinion about nature versus nurture before having children, but I’m pretty sure I would’ve tilted toward nurture. After having children, however, it was just so obvious that they come in in a certain way that the balance tipped decisively toward nature.

Like — boys loving trucks? I think it’s fucking genetic. I didn’t make them love excavators. They just loved excavators. Garbage trucks were a source of great happiness in this house for many years.

Of course it’s all more nuanced than that. (But I will tell you that when one of my boys asked for and got an American Girl Doll for Christmas, it became clear pretty quickly that he was mostly interested in her stuffed dog and travois).

My dog is sleeping after our snowy walk where I only slipped twice on black ice.

Anyway, thank you for listening to my ramble. I’m gonna go put a couple ponchos in the giveaway bin and bake some blueberry muffins.

(Also today):

If you are on threads, you should be able to access the post about the book.

https://www.threads.com/@viktorzlatic/post/DVRf1XhDf53?xmt=AQF0wTM7GNfmHx6Lvm-RrG_oqJz6zw0XHf0JMnYtSDi-dNxoxL66ymP74Ya_FJNIg0y7JXU&slof=1