counting by cicadas

It is a cicada summer this year. Every night at about 8 or so the quiet woods behind our home are suddenly filled with the distinct sounds of cicadas calling to one another from the trees. It is an unmistakable sound. It's a sound that I have come to associate with those dog days toward the end of the summer, those last halcyon days before school begins again and life returns to a more predictable, responsible pace. I have always loved those days. Every summer there are cicadas, but this year is the end of a 17-year life cycle so there are many more than usual and the deafening clamor coming from our woods are a testament to their numbers.

I remember the last cicada summer. It was the summer of 1996. I spent that summer in St. George, working a little and playing a lot. At end of July just when the cicadas were picking up steam, I met a boy. Once I met him, I thought him to be the funniest, most interesting person I had ever known. I still do. It shouldn't have worked. We were far too young and poor. We had so much school ahead of both of us. We really were still children. But. I only wanted to be with him. So I fell in love with the great love of my life to music of the cicadas. The next summer, when I married him, there weren't so many, but there's always a few in July and they played at our backyard wedding.

While those cicadas were sleeping we have traveled far. In our now 16 years of marriage we have lived in 12 homes, in 5 states and in 2 countries. Between us we earned 4 degrees. We climbed mountains, we rafted rivers, we ran races. We failed, we succeeded, we kept trying. We fought, we made up, we decided we could not do without one another. We had babies of our own, babies who will stay with us only a little longer than a cicada sleeps. And that's the thing we learn from the cicadas. On the surface that 17 years seems so very long, such long time to be sleeping, but now, I can see all the water that has flowed under the bridge during their nap and it doesn't seem like enough time. So much of my life and flown by in these last 17 years. We have grown and changed and come so very far. I can't stop wondering and dreaming about where we will be when the baby cicadas from tonight wake up.

Photography courtesy Erin Dahl Photography

better with him

(photo courtesy Sara Weihn)

Today is July 23. If I was a good wife I would have written this post five days ago. Ergo. I spent the morning in Tulsa with my girlfriends and I came home in the afternoon to a husband with a raging migraine, poor thing. It was very romantic. We aren't really that kind of couple. But we are really happy.

We quibble over movies and we search for new hole-in-the-wall restaurants. We watch the Office and French steam-punk movies on Netflix. He bikes, I run. He talks through his tax transactions with me, I tell him all about playgroup gossip and sewing techniques. We get the same jokes and can finish one another's sentences. We married when we were barely more than babies and we grew up the rest the way together.

We waited seven years to have children because we really liked being with each other. We wanted to be selfish. We went to Denny's at 3 in the morning and we slept until noon on the weekends. We never had much money but we had a really lot of fun. We lived abroad and moved a lot. We found out that we were really good at some of the things we loved. We worked multiple jobs and went to school and came home to heaven, because that's where the other was.

We had a beautiful a baby boy and bought a grown-up house. He learned his profession and I learned to stand on my own two feet. We leaned on each other. We had another beautiful boy and started again in a new city. I learned how to fix and make things, he learned to believe in himself. Our boys are delightful and one of the great joys of our lives, but we miss each other lately. There is always so much to do. I admit to missing the freedom that came with being penniless nomads, the gobs of time to be together. Just together.

We have been together for 14 years, married for 13 and it feels like a lifetime. It is in a way. My lifetime, so far. All of the best parts have included him, they wouldn't be the best without him. And the best parts keep getting better.

sons of the father

I don't need any more children. I don't know if I will have any more but I am absolutely, perfectly content with my two little boys. Yesterday afternoon Johnny smilingly brought me the hinge off the back door in three pieces. I nodded sagely and put them back together. You see, Tommy had done the exact same thing at about this age. I spent about two months reassembling hinges in our Madison house, now it's like second nature. My beloved mother-in-law recalls similar incidents at her house about 32 years ago. This morning my husband walked outside to find an armadillo in the front yard, he immediately rushed to take a picture for the boys to see. (unfortunately it's kind of blurry and bigfoot-ish) He spent his lunch hour looking up better pictures on the Internet and talking about armadillos in our sunny kitchen. They ate it up. Tommy followed me around quoting made up facts about aardvarks for ten minutes. Tommy told me how the satellite station near our house that looks like an oversize golf ball is for when giants play golf and that only giants are taller than Daddy. He insists his hair be "mohawked" every day for school. He also insists that I make his brother's hair "crazy". Johnny, when being pursued for a diaper change, will wait until I reach him, drop to his knees, crawl between my legs and away at full speed, giggling hysterically. He toddled (video soon) around my house yesterday nursing an apple, he worked on it for close to two hours. They wrestle, they shout, they giggle, they snuggle, they whine, they climb, they take-apart, but never put back-together, they whisper only when completely inappropriate, they sing their own words to hymns. They are three-of-a-kind. These boys are all that I need in this world. or the next.

hypermiling

This is Tymon's truck. It is a 1999 Toyota Tacoma. It has about 30,000 miles on it. It gets 17 miles to the gallon. The last time we bought gas for this truck was May 23. Awesome, right? How did we accomplish such a feat you ask? Ty has been biking to work. It' s only three miles from our house. That was part of the reason we were looking in this neighborhood,because we wanted him to be able to bike when weather permitted. We lived here almost a year before he ever rode his bike. We never got around to getting it tuned up and the roads were not so great for biking. When gas prices got close to $4 a gallon Ty decided it was time to give it a try. It gas been so good for him. He gets a little exercise every day, a little sunshine, it's a stress reliever and I think he likes how the other guys at work think he's crazy to do it. Today it's raining cats. The gas tank is empty so he drove to work and stopped at the gas station on the way. I know he didn't want to do it- he's been putting it off for days. Who knows, maybe this tank will last until Halloween. Is it wrong to be a little grateful for a gas hike that finally motivated us to do what we should have been doing all along?