The view across the meadow looking back at my parents house on a sunny day in late February. The sky here is a landscape unto itself too. If you come out into this meadow at night and lay looking up at the stars you’ll fall into a pure black sky surrounded by darker than dark redwoods and doug firs making a jagged circle around the constellations. The tallest redwood in the far left of this picture is the one that can be free climbed to the top. You can see the ocean to the west, snow-capped mountains to the northeast, and forests for miles to the south.

After I was born my parents planted the placenta under this gravenstein apple tree. It used to drop bucket loads of crisp, rudy apples every fall but hasn’t produced much the last few years. I’m superstitiously hoping that my presence will bring on a good apple season this year.

The baby chicks seemed confused when I took this picture of them. They’re incredibly clever and so cute it almost brings me to tears. They’re living in a box in our living room right now. Observing their daily routine is still totally fascinating. Just watching them eat, drink, walk, and sleep fills me with a sense of complete wonder and gratitude.

Rio and Rory sitting together at Pt. Cabrillo. We walked down towards the light house to watch the waves and look for migrating whales. I saw a few spouts but no tails. Rio claims he saw at least 8 whale spouts that day. Both kids were mesmerized by the flat, blue ocean and watching the waves. The ocean looked like a lake, because it was so flat and the sky was so blue. It reminded me of Chicago the summer K. and I met when we were queer punk teenagers and I had never seen a really big lake before.

K. and Rio at Point Cabrillo.

K. mixing the dough for easter hot cross buns. What a joy it is to live with a woman who bakes such sweet smelling things. I can’t eat most of it due to my wheat sensitivity but I always appreciate the warmth and love it brings to our house to have home baked goodies.

Laying down in a patch of moss and lichen in the forest feeling totally at peace and unhinged from responsibilities. No more homework. No more final exams. No landlord or neighbors to tell me to make the kids shut up. A job that pays a living wage and feels meaningful and rewarding. No more needing to beg borrow and steal money from the government or loving parents to buy groceries and pay rent. No more sitting in traffic trying to get somewhere I don’t even want to go. Time to figure out this mess of a head I’m carrying around attached to my shoulders. Remembering to love this crazy life with all its dark times, deep losses and shifting ties to people and place. Remembering the blinding chaos and brilliant love inherent in everything despite tough times making it hard to see or touch.

I… am… a college graduate! Whoa. The reality that I’m finally done with nursing school hasn’t quite settled in for me yet. All those years working on my degree were so full with having children, being a family, and figuring out how to be mentally healthy and make it all work… I just want to slow down and enjoy life for a while, let change happen slowly and appreciate all that I have. I’m feeling a deep, enduring gratitude for my family and my home that I can come back to live and work here. To have a place to live where we can really settle down, to have trees to climb and soil to tend, to already have a full-time job, to be in this beautiful place… I am truly grateful. There are still ripe Gravenstein apples in my parent’s orchard and the last few fall raspberries in my mom’s garden. The smell of the windfallen apples rotting in the wet grass and woodsmoke in the air, the sound of the neighbors roosters and the wind through the fir trees, it seems like everything around me is calling out to me and welcoming me home. I’m filled with relief and joy to know that I don’t have to pack up and go back to the city like I usually do. I can barely believe it… I’m here to stay.

Now that I’ve started fall classes I’m feeling extra nostalgia for summer. So here’s some of my favorite Summer 2007 memories (in no particular order):

- Walking around MacKerricher with my cousin Michelle and her kids, my brother, my mom, and Katie and the kids. We found hermit crabs and seaweed holdfasts and watched an osprey diving in the waves for fish. The kids were climbing all over the rocks and tidepools just like I did when I was a kid.

- Having long talks with my dad. Watching him sleep in Rio’s bunk bed on a sunny afternoon when he and my mom came to visit and feeling a profound, nurturing gratitude well up within me.

- Going blueberry picking in Saugatuck, Michigan with Katie’s family and picking 20 pounds of blueberries in under an hour. Seeing blueberry bushes that were at least 10 feet tall and fully laden with millions of berries.

- Getting up at 6:00 AM and going hiking with my mom in the pygmy and redwood forests by my parent’s house. It was great to just have time to be together without all the distractions of being in doors and to experience the quiet of the forest in the morning time before all the equestrians and ATV riders come out.

- Discovering a place I had never seen before just above the Jughandle Staircase Trail by my parent’s house. It’s in one of these areas where the pygmy forest makes an abrupt change to mixed coniferous forest and suddenly opens up from being all dense and brushy to being wide, open with a bed of ferns on the forest floor and then high, old trees above. Someone built something there that I can best describe as a bridge, but like an arching wood pathway that just goes up along an old, twisted tan oak and can be walked on. It’s only about 12 feet off the ground but to sit at the top of it and look down the ravine into the redwoods is really awesome. What a glorious moment that was to discover it there, hiking by myself on that sunny afternoon.

- Seeing Rio and Riley laughing and dancing in the pouring rain outside of the Heartland Cafe in Chicago during a massive July thunderstorm. Oh, the Heartland Cafe! Katie took me there to eat the first time I met her, 8 years ago, in the Summer of 1999. We got our pictures taken in the photo booth and promised to be penpals.

- Going to Paul’s house in Sebastopol and picking Gravenstein apples off his tree. Rio and I made a game out of finding all the rotten apples on the ground and hitting them across the yard with a metal baseball bat. We were both covered with juicy rotten apple chunks and the smell of summer in Northern California: dry grass, sweat, and something tart and sweet.

- Walking in a park holding Rory and having a very small child point, and exclaim to the other small child next to them, “Look at that tiny daddy with that tiny baby! What a tiny daddy!” They were genuinely wowed by my shortness and not ashamed to point and shout about it. And they thought I was a man. That’s probably the funniest thing that happened to me all summer.

- Hanging out with my awesome cousins in Chicago. Visiting them at their house and hanging out in their back yard talking and shooting rubber bands, and going to Quimby’s and getting to browse comics and zines for a long time.

- Being at the San Francisco Trans March and connecting with lots of old and new friends and meeting new people. Marching with friends through the streets and feeling kind of bored with the marching but immensely proud and in love with our community. Seeing people on the sidewalks holding up signs saying “We Love Our Trans Brother and Sisters!”

Yay for summer! It’s not over yet!

- E.

Here’s Katie with the kids in a field in Fort Bragg at the annual Kite Flying Festival. She looks cranky because it was one of those summer days on the coast when the foggy sky is blazing white hot and she was getting blinded from squinting up at all the kites. Rio was flying a paper kite that he had just made. It was so amazingly windy that day and all these kids were flying these flimsy paper kites incredibly high and far. I tried to take a picture of some of the kites but they just looked like tiny dots against the gray sky.

This is a picture of Rory and I at Big River Beach in Mendocino. It was Rio’s 5th birthday, and we had all just gone out to eat ice cream. The wind was incredibly forceful and kept blowing sand all over the healthy snacks we packed to make up for the ice cream (gritty hummus, anyone?). This picture was taken shortly before Rory became completely encrusted with sand and tried to crawl into the incoming tide.

And here she is looking very grumpy about being removed from the riverbank. She didn’t seem to realize how utterly frigid the water was and really wanted to crawl into it and swim away. She was also mad that I wouldn’t let her fill her mouth with fistfuls of mud.

I’m not sure how I managed to take this picture of Rio making this amazing expression. All I can say is that he was at the beach doing one of his usual moves where he makes a rhythmic yowling/screeching sound while jumping and spinning in a circle at warp speed. It sounds kind of like lilting and looks a little like capoeira, but more desperate and feral. You just have to see it to believe it.

Here’s Rio riding a horse at “The Big Fun Fair” in Mendocino. He’s such a natural. The Big Fun Fair was awesome. I ran into the woman who ran the alternative school that I went to from the time that I was 6 until 11 years old. She was the main teacher there and I felt really close to her when I was a kid. It was neat to introduce her to my family and to talk to her about alternative education and homeschooling. Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of her.

Snack time. I was planning to start weaning her this summer, but I don’t think she’s ready quite yet.

Ahh, a rare moment of complete quiet while Katie takes the kids to get bagels. 20 minutes of complete, uninterupted silence! What is the best thing I can think of to do with myself while home alone? Take a sleepy looking self-portrait while chillin’ on the couch to document the experience.

This one’s a little older, I think it was back in May or April, but it’s the best one I have of my dad with both my kids.

Hit it, Rio! In the background Susan is holding back Sophia, who is eager to give the alligator pinata a brutal beating as well. Of course, this pinata must have been made of steel-reinforced cardboard, because even after all the kids in the homeschooling group each took a dozen swings on it the poor thing was only missing a few green tissue paper scales and had no visible dents. I eventually had to rip it open and toss the baggies of dried apricots into the air, shouting  HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Strawberries ripening in the sunshine on our porch. Yay for summer! Yum!

Me: Ok, let’s put on the French Cafe CD. That one’s mellow.

Rio: No, I want something that really rocks.

Me: You want something… that rocks?

Rio: I think I need to rock out. That French music just isn’t fast enough for the kind of moves I need to do. How about… The Gossip.

Me: Ok. Put on The Gossip.

So he put on “Standing in the Way of Control” and danced for at least half an hour doing all kinds of awesome dance moves. He was jumping and spinning in the air, walking on his hands, punching the air and running in circles. Afterwards he collapsed in a heap on the floor. After peeling off his sweaty clothes, he proclaimed The Gossip to be his new favorite band. “This CD rocks even more than Bruce Springsteen”, he told me between licks of his popsicle.

Chicago has been amazing; it’s changed so much! We spent some time in Millenium Park with E.’s cousins, playing in the fountains with the faces of Chicagoans that spit water at you. It was so hot that day, I was really glad everybody had the fountain to play in, especially Rory. Seeing those cousins was really neat: Rio learned more about shooting rubber bands and extracted a promise from them to mail him all their bottle caps.

We’ve spent a lot of time with my seven siblings and my parents, including some time up in Saugatuck, Michigan in their beautiful, tall, narrow tower/cottage. At the top level, which has two balconies, you’re level with the tops of the trees! Saugatuck has the last remaining pull-chain ferry in the Midwest, which was great fun for Rio. He even got to turn the crank.:)

Rio, Rory, and E. got to experience their first ever legitimate thunder storm, complete with sudden drop in temperature and pressure followed by howling winds and lots of close up lightning. We were at the beach when it blew up, so then we dashed over to the Heartland Cafe for dinner. We ate in the screened in porch area, and Rio kept running out the screen door to dance in the heavy rain on the sidewalk. It was funny to be at the Heartland, where I have so many memories of eating with McKay, and where my mom used to take me when I was really little with her cousin Pierro (sadly deceased). I also took E. there eight years ago when we first met and, on that very first day, we got a photo booth strip there. They still have the photo booth but it was out of order, so no new strip…:( If I had a scanner, I would scan the old one.

We spent a relaxed evening with my lesbian aunts and I got to thank Jonean for all the help she gave me when I was 13 and coming out as trans (she was the first adult I told). They’re going to visit us in the bay area in January!

There was also a family reunion of my dad’s (Irish/Scottish) side of the family. One of my uncles didn’t make it, which was sad, but I got to see my much older cousins who I don’t usually see, which was awesome. They’re all doing well, it seemed.

This trip has really reminded me how much I love and respect my family despite our totally diverging interests and values.

And also that even though I like peace and quiet and fear for the future of our planet, gritty urban areas really resonate with me and I miss them. Growing up in Chicago was great for me and, if Chicago was on the West Coast so E. could be close to family, I would totally move here.

K.

It’s a little hard to accept that we’ll have to pay the same amount we’re paying now for our two bedroom to live in a one bedroom, but I know also that we are very adaptable, don’t really have that much stuff, and all actually like to pass stuff on…

Rio and I went to see the musical Gypsy at the Palo Alto Children’s Theatre last night. The show went kind of late (10:30), but he loved it. It was a little strange to see a cast of kids/teens doing burlesque and swearing for an audience of kids/teens and their parents, but also really cool. Obviously it wasn’t as scandalous as it could have been, but I’m sure it led to some funny discussions on the way home!

Rio’s interpretation of burlesque is that the focus is on really small, really fancy costumes. Which is pretty accurate.

Katie

Our plan for a while was to move to Portland ASAP and buy a house. Now we’re wondering, do we even want to buy a house? It has this awesome potential to be a cozy, creative space for us to have our own home just the way we want it, but I’m not exactly eager to focus a lot of energy on finding the perfect place to settle and then investing time, more energy, and all our money into making it feel right. Renting has some cool things about it, like being able to just move if we want to, and travel, and take our space a little less seriously.

I’m still waiting to hear back from the school of nursing about whether or not I can get my clinical rotation switched from Stanford to Mendocino County. I’m really hoping that they will approve my request so we can move up there for a while. I’m saying that I need to do it because of my dad’s health so I can be closer to him, which is absolutely true, but I’m also craving more time in the country. I really can’t see us living there for an extended period of time, but 6 months to year and a half of hanging out in Fort Bragg and doing all the stuff I love there sounds really good right now. Living in the bay area has really made me appreciate my hometown and the land where I grew up so much more than I ever thought I would. I know the opposite will be true, too; if we go back and live there, I know after a while I’m really going to long for the social and cultural stimulation that urban living provides.

So, we thought we had a plan. And now… Are we, or aren’t we moving to Ft. Bragg? It all depends on the school of nursing approving my request. If we are, what then? If not, where else? Do we want to save up money and then quit our jobs and travel? Should I become a travel nurse and we’ll move to a new town every 3 months? Should we *gasp* reconsider staying in the bay area, despite crazy housing costs and terrible public transit? Still move to Portland? Are we destined to find a place to homestead and farm and leave the big city behind? Is there an ideal place for us to call home, or are we more nomadic by nature? Every time we swear to something we find ourselves going back on it and realizing that there are very few things that are really certain.

Things that are certain:

1. We will homeschool both our children until they either want to go to school or are old enough to move out.

2. We will all go crazy if we don’t have enough social stimulation and connection to community.

3. We want to spend as little time as possible working and driving and as much time as possible doing things we like, even if that means less disposable income.

Katie and I are both rebel free-spirits at heart. We keep telling ourselves that we are free and open to whatever comes our way and that we just need to resist the urge to plan everything out and let things happen. Ok, happen! I’m ready!

- E.