out of the silent planet

I have been here before. Years ago I wrote a couple daily reflection blogs like this. I was looking for a recipe that I had used before for meat ravioli (I am still upset at the horrible coups of cheese ravioli on the american ravioli market...) and I remembered that I blogged about it a long time ago. It got me looking through a couple of older blogs that I had written and I was caught up. My kids were so young. The first blog saw Nora as a toddler, and my accounts of her immediately brought me back to her little pudgy drooling self. She was amazing. In one particular post, I listed what she had done that day, both bad and good. She tried to bite Henry, threw a matchbox car at him and gave him a bump above his eye. I had also burst a vertebrae in my neck (unbeknownst to me at the time) building the ceiling in my house and was suffering from an arm that was alternately going numb and aching like crazy. I wrote that Nora spontaneously came up and kissed my hand and walked away saying "Boo boo, boo boo, boo boo. Henry had crazy curly blond hair and was an ever-expanding pit of questions. Reading these old posts, I felt my world expand and contract with the memories over and over again. 

My kids are so much older now. Henry is 12 and just grew taller than Jenny two weeks ago. Nora just turned double digits this week, and routinely does her own make up.... So much has passed. I have changed too. I didn't even have grey hair in those blogs: I look like a baby! My life has gone up hills and tumbled down them again and I am changed. It is time for me to put another year in blog form. For myself really. but I have just enough hubris to think that some of you might want to read along. Its not that my life is particularly interesting. I am not vlogging/blogging my way through Europe with my ultra-attractive girlfriend. (I actually kind of follow one of those on youtube (Lost Leblanc ... If you want to live vicariously through someone else to get yourself through the New England winter, this is the guy) I am not super knowledgable about any one topic. I am not a person of note. I am just going to try to make sense of things publicly for a year. For example, right in between the word "year." and "For" in the previous sentence I looked up over the top of my computer screen and saw Henry eating peanut butter and saltines, watching an episode of the Simpsons on his iPad and mindlessly attempting to ride a lower cabinet door like a swing. My father and I built those cabinets from scratch. I know the time we put into it. Henry only knew that it felt nice to let the hinges carry his weight for a second. His own experience has nearly nothing to do with mine. 

It is all of the little occurrences of life that add up to who we are, and yours really has nothing to do with mine, but maybe, in the sharing of these, we can gain some insight together. Please feel free to comment, I actually love it. Or start a blog of your own! I will follow right along! All of the pictures for this blog will be my own, and taken the day of the post. All of the writing, however mundane or interesting, limited or extensive, will be my own thoughts. 

I have felt a chipping away this year. Like something might be moving around embryonically in my mind (spirit?) for a while now. Maybe I can bring this to the surface a little more. These yearly blogs always start in the dead world of winter. That is why I am choosing this picture to start with. It is the trees right above my chicken coop. It snowed big, thick snow flakes for two hours last night and by morning everything was coated and silent. Silent, like only the winter can bring. It is good to start in this stillness, before all of the beauty and business of the life that spring brings shows up. I am looking forward to the challenge and focus of writing throughout the year, and if I am being honest with myself, I hope you read along.  

Dave