The initiate

I feel tremendously blessed.

Last year during the full moon in Cancer, I gave birth. Last night saw the return of that full moon (though my son's solar birthday is still nine days away). These past twelve lunar cycles have been a year-long intensive, an initiation, a breathtaking journey down into myself--a self who is now two, in that strange human way that flesh begets flesh and produces another who is of oneself but not oneself. From breastfeeding, and sharing attachment parenting with my partner, has emerged the most intimate relationship of my life, we three. Being a mother challenges me in ways I never anticipated and brings me into bliss.

One of the most striking things, to me, about motherhood is how it's brought my values into sharp focus. I'm someone who cares about value--moral, aesthetic, etc.--a lot. Becoming a mother, with the relentless demands on my energy and attention, has burned away a lot of bullshit. Here is what matters to me: family, spirituality, creativity. I can flesh that out again--my spirituality encompasses my devotion to the earth, for example--but those are the clean bones.

So I return to this space, where for many years I've written about spirituality, my winding, earth-based path. My passion is still here. If you're reading--and especially if you've been reading for years--I'm grateful.

Embodying the abundant universe

(From the Gaian Tarot by Joanna Powell Colbert)

I believe as a tenet of faith that the universe--the Goddess, the Mother--provides what we need in abundance. Always.

This belief doesn't reside in my intellect, if you will, but in my gut. My brain easily generates myriad reasons why this belief is false; begin with the reality of poverty. But my belief, which relies on faith, isn't so much a proposition against which to marshal arguments. It is, rather, a way of understanding the world. It functions like a background assumption. (I'm well aware of problems with confirmation bias, but I'm not doing science here. Grant me poetic license.)

I think that whether or not this belief (or way of understanding the world) comes easily to you depends on the circumstances of your early life. That's not to say that we can't come to believe that the universe provides for our needs in abundance even if the circumstances of early life were meager in the relevant sense. The first step in coming to believe is realizing that we believe otherwise; for example, to realize that we're acting from an assumption of penury, that we believe fundamentally that life is hard, that we're its victims, that we're undeserving, that things never get better, that people are out to get us. Thus we uncover our operating assumptions. We work to accept that we have them (and acceptance is no small feat, though I give it short shrift here). And we begin to pay attention to all the hints we're given that assumptions of scarcity are false. When people make gratitude a practice, that's what they're doing: they're paying attention; they're counting their blessings.

(I've had a hard time with the idea of practicing gratitude because I have an old belief that I don't deserve my many blessings. Gratitude is, in my mind, and for biographical reasons, linked with feelings of guilt and undeservingness.)

Very early in one's life sojourn, one learns on a basic, physical, preverbal level that the universe provides for one's needs, or one learns that it doesn't. I think I'm lucky; I got the message, somehow, that my needs would be met. Maybe I carried that belief into this life with me. (My "soul card," in tarot, is the Empress. Both my rising sign and my Pluto carry the message, too.) Maybe my faith formed as the result of responsive early mothering. (Thanks, Mom!) Things--mostly thoughts--have happened to occlude my faith, but I think that at its foundation it's solid. It is a glorious piece of luck.

I know that as I spend these early weeks with my child, my one task, as I see it, is literally to embody for him the abundant universe. He's still coming into this life; he's new here. How is the world as he finds it? There is a lot of big, scary, uncertain stuff that he doesn't need to know about yet. But he is almost always held. We hold him bare skin against bare skin. We hold him in the sunlight streaming through our bedroom windows. We carry him, we sleep next to him, we wear him in a sling. He is never away from us. He is never left alone. We sing and babble and kiss him and make jokes. He is always fed when, or even before, he asks. There is plenty to eat. He is kept dry and clean and warm. That big, loud beast, the dog, is his friend. He shows no fear.

And there is a huge, excited, welcoming, loving community holding him and his parents. We were held during the birth by an extended network of friends. Witches worked magic for him. Astrologers watched the sky. Gifts continue to arrive. People come to visit. Home-cooked dinners appear on our doorstep every other day; his body is literally being built by the community. I'm in awe of the generosity, love, and good will engendered by this small being.

He affirms my faith in all things good.

Not yet

Still no baby; looks like s/he's coming in 2009. Morale is flagging a bit here at chez Inanna, though I know this is all perfectly normal: the lateness, the emotions in reaction to lateness, trying to keep busy, trying to stay focused, wondering what we could be doing differently while knowing, somehow, that everything is unfolding as it should. I got into the birthing tub tonight to try it out and watched the bright crescent moon rise through the window. We've created such a beautiful, loving space. I'm quite happy in this, the very definition of liminal space.

Adonis and my sister have shoveled out the car and gone for Thai food and dvds. I'm curious to learn which movie they manage to agree on. Another member of my birth team is coming over to hang out and braid my hair. I'll likely fall asleep early.

May She hold you close as we all tumble into the new year.

Parenthood, flexibility, fear, and politics

I took a personal day from work today, wanting to rest, work around the house, and write. I've started the dishes, cuddled with the dog, read some blogs, and had some oatmeal and tea. A bit of writing, and then I'm upstairs to finish unpacking the bathroom. I want to spend as much time as I can preparing the house--I work slowly and deliberately--but it's felt difficult to do while working full time, caring for the dog, running necessary errands, getting enough rest.... I'm a Pisces. We're easily overwhelmed. Lately I've been thinking about this quality a lot and trying to find some value in it, rather than just hating it and wishing it weren't true. If I know that I get overwhelmed easily, and I'm practicing acceptance, what is the healthiest way to proceed, and what gifts can I discover?

Last night Adonis and I attended our first Birthing from Within childbirth class. I've felt so much serendipity around our pregnancy so far, and very little anxiety or fear. (I just want the house to be ready!) All indicators are that I'm healthy, the fetus is healthy, and things are proceeding normally; we've opted for very little testing or intervention of any kind, preferring to embrace the inevitable mystery of the process, and that feels like the right choice. We feel utterly blessed to be working with our calm, hugely competent, compassionate midwife and her apprentice, a Witch with something of an attitude. The childbirth class is just us and one other couple; the other pregnant woman shares a first name with me, is due a week before I am, and lives with her partner two blocks from us. Like us, they're first-time "older" parents. The teacher is certainly Pagan-ish if not Pagan. Both Adonis and I were relieved after the first class to have an intentional space for focusing on the birth. Sometimes little bits of doubt creep into my brain--maybe we should be doing things some other way, having sonograms, planning a hospital birth--but then I'll have an experience, like attending last night's class, that confirms for me the way we've chosen to do things.

My family has been relatively chill, for them, but it's clear that they're taking on the worry-work that is eluding me. That bugs me. I'm sure it's a good lesson for parenthood to be dealing now with disagreement, conflict, and their fear about my choices; there's going to be plenty about the way Adonis and I parent that my own parents won't like. But the shock for me has been how my parents apparently don't care what my reasons are. They don't want to be reassured. They don't want explanations. They don't want to--or can't--hear why I value what I value. They just want to express their own fears and opinions and then hope I change my mind. There's no dialogue, no conversation. I think of the premium I place on gathering information, thinking things through, listening to my intuition, consulting my values, consulting my partner...and I marvel that these people, my people, don't use the same methods or value the same things. Didn't they encourage me to think critically? Didn't they teach me to consult my own heart and conscience? I thought they did. Maybe I was wrong. It's unsettling and weird to realize--at my quite advanced age, I know--that in an important sense, they don't care what I think. They don't want to understand what I'm doing or why.

All of this led Adonis to make an observation with which I quickly and easily agreed, once it had been articulated: when we're parents, we want to engage our kid(s) in conversations about what they believe and value, and to listen and sincerely try to understand, even if we disagree. I feel as if my parents maybe tried to do this when I was growing up, but I haven't felt that openness from them in a long time.

Something that's very true for me, though clearly not for everyone, and probably doesn't have to be true for everyone: to love me means that you care enough to hear what I believe and why I believe it.

Is that quite right? Of course my parents love me; of course they care for me. Yet still I feel this lack--a fundamental way of being cared for that I get from my partner and many of my friends and teachers, but not from my family of origin. That care expresses itself in wanting to hear what I have to say, wanting to know what I believe, and valuing the fact that I value something. It's a way of taking me seriously. It is, I believe, what Iris Murdoch means when she talks about "loving attention." It requires curiosity and flexibility on the part of the parent, the lover, the one who cares, and it requires a temporary suspension of fear and ego.

Now all of a sudden I feel like I'm talking about reasons to support Obama over McCain this election. And I am. McCain is the inflexible, calcified, ego- and fear-driven, dismissive patriarch writ large. So is Sarah Palin, for that matter: age and sex don't define these things. While McCain and Palin are both so readily dismissive of women's health and other items on the "liberal feminist agenda" (not that he has a damn clue what that means; I was still shocked to hear him state the matter so baldly), Obama and Biden appear utterly believably as good dads--literally, not in an archetypal sense, though that, too, must matter. Obama is able to convey his flexibility, curiosity, and devotion to the best in people while running the most impressively tight and creative campaign for president I have ever seen. One of McCain's slogans may be "country first," but it's pretty clear he's really about himself first, foremost, perhaps only. Obama, on the other hand, really appears fearless, and he appears largely to set his ego aside in pursuit of a larger, shared good.

Meet Gryphon

Last Friday we brought home our newest bundle of joy. No, not a human baby; we still have several months to wait for that. The newest member of our family is a lovely adult pit bull, whom we've named Gryphon. We've waited a long time for him.

I have a fondness for many non-human animals (and a Pagan respect for all), but ever since my sweet Lugh radicalized me, my heart belongs to pit bulls. They're profoundly people-focused dogs, loving, loyal, and affectionate. While they can be horribly abused and exploited, they retain their optimism and love for people. It seems like it's nearly impossible to damage the heart or soul of a pit bull. See how the Michael Vick dogs are doing? (For lots more information about pit bulls, see the links in the sidebar.)

Gryphon was left behind in an apartment to starve to death. He was in bad shape when he was found and brought to the SPCA in a city north of here. That SPCA, like most, still, alas, is a kill shelter, but Gryphon's execution was stayed for a long time because he was a favorite of the staff. Still, after a year, no one had adopted him. (Pit bull adoptions are problematic in that city because of prevalent dog fighting. Also, he's really big. And he really looks like a pit bull.) When Gryphon started to show signs of kennel stress, some volunteers at the shelter called a pit bull advocate they knew and asked if she would take him, thereby saving his life, and try to place him in a home. She tried for a year. She attempted one adoption, but when it quickly became clear that the people had adopted him for the wrong reasons and it wasn't a good environment for him, she took him back and decided to keep him, even though her Lab was increasingly jealous and destructive, and even though she doesn't have a lot of money and works two jobs, which necessitated leaving the dogs at home for up to 12 hours at a time. Not ideal or what she wanted, but an economic necessity. On those days, Gryphon would spend up to 12 hours in his crate. But when we met him, he was clearly healthy and well-socialized, a testament to her devotion as well as his temperament.

The foster mom took down all the posters advertising his availability. But she forgot to take down the one at our SPCA, the one where Adonis and I volunteer. The day we closed on our house, Adonis went to his dog-walking shift and saw the poster. Somehow we'd missed it before, even though we always look at the SPCA bulletin board. He took a photo of the poster with his iPhone and brought it home to me. He called and talked to the woman. We went to meet the dog, out in the country about 45 minutes' drive from our town. After spending about two hours with him and his foster mom, we knew he was ours. We called her the next day and told her we wanted to adopt him. She was thrilled.

The next weekend we went to visit them again. We talked with the foster mom about our experience with dogs and pit bulls. She called the volunteer coordinator at our SPCA to ask about us. And then, last Friday, we brought him home.

After Lugh died last fall, we had hoped to adopt again within six months. But our landlord forbade it, not because of anything we or Lugh had done, but because our adopting Lugh had apparently strained relations with the neighbors, who didn't want a "dangerous" dog living next door. We were crushed, and our resolve to buy our own house was strengthened. Was it a coincidence that we learned about Gryphon the same day we closed on our house?

Gryphon is bonding beautifully with us. I'm surprised at how swiftly and easily it's happening. We've set him to a routine to increase his sense of safety, and we're spending as much time as possible giving him exercise, love, and attention. This fall we'll begin obedience classes. We'll slowly transition him to the homemade diet we feed our dogs. Molly's "Animal Wellness" flower essences are wonderful allies, and Gryphon, Adonis, and I are all taking the "New Beginnings" essence. Soon we'll have a ritual to welcome him formally to our family. And this weekend he'll get his first bath.

Last night during our evening walk, we approached a group of children outside a small daycare center in our neighborhood. We were soon surrounded by six small children and the proprietor, a woman who proudly announced that she was grandma to two pitbulls. Gryphon stood patiently while the children petted him and asked questions, even if he was more interested in grazing on the grass. A man who I think was the son of the daycare provider and father to a couple of the children came over and showed his daughters again how to approach a strange dog (first ask the owner's permission, then let the dog sniff your hand, then stroke gently under the chin; never pat the dog on the head). He asked me questions about whether we'd rescued the dog and where we'd found him. As we moved on, the man said to me, "it's a good thing you did." I'm so used to encountering fear and anger from strangers about pit bulls that I almost started crying in gratitude.

Then we arrived home to a friend who'd come over with treats and toys to play with Gryphon. Lucky dog. Lucky us.

Baptism

(The Guardian [Queen] of Water from the Gaian Tarot, by Joanna Powell Colbert)

Still no internet connection at the new homestead, so blogging hasn't been possible. That should change today. Also, things have been a bit hectic while trying to get settled in the new house.

My dad called Sunday morning and said, "is it true that you're not going to baptize your kid?" Oh boy. Talking to my mom later that morning, she said, oh yeah, he's really upset about that, he keeps saying "that's the final straw, I'm disowning her." (What you need to know about my blustery but very loving parents: they would never disown me. Dad threatened to disown me for having a child outside of legal wedlock, but then he helped us with the down payment for our new house, so you can see how that goes. They adore Adonis, and my mom says that we have the best marriage of anyone she knows--except for the part where we're not married.) Both my parents would prefer that we have the baby baptized. My sister, who is a formidable advocate for us, told them that I wasn't going to do things the way they would have me do them, so they just have to suck it up and let it go. My mom is actually kind of adjusting to this idea. Oh but it's difficult for me, the oldest and always a good girl, to "let them down" by doing things my own way.

Why not baptize the baby? Well, there is the obvious reason that Christianity is not my religion anymore. But that's not my main reason. I would even consider baptizing my baby for my parents' sake if I could get past the symbolism of baptism. Yet I believe strongly in the symbolic value of ritual, and how ritual enactment in part constitutes reality. The ritual message of baptism is this: human beings are born innately sinful, in pain and blood from a woman's body, products of a sinful act; being born human, from sexual intercourse, and of a woman necessitates purification, the cleansing with holy water. And to this I say, bullshit. Human beings are not innately sinful. To be born in the midst of blood, sweat, shit, and ecstasy is a holy thing.

I like the idea of an elemental blessing. I imagine that at a Wiccaning or Pagan baby naming ceremony, though I've never attended one, the child is blessed with earth and fire, water and air. In becoming human we become one with the elements, and to enact that symbolically seems a good thing. So we'll have a ceremony, and there will be a sacred cup filled with water, but the ritual will be something altogether other than a Christian baptism.

Making my own way

I come from a highly opinionated people. It's a joke in my family--and at the same time completely true--that we each think we're right and others are wrong. About anything. Always.

For a long time I was part of a profession--academic philosophy--that encouraged the formation of strong opinions, carefully defended to the death. I wrote an academic and political blog, back in the early days. It had a fairly large readership, for those days. Many of my cohort from early blogging are still writing, doing excellent work, and establishing and maintaining high profiles. I commend them. But I rarely read them, and I even more rarely envy them. For me to write that blog, I had to work myself into a state of righteous outrage on an almost daily basis. That was my fuel. Much of the rest of the time I was depressed. It didn't work for me.

I used to argue politics all the time. Hell, I was professionally trained to argue. I loved it. But I burnt out. Now, I even sit out on political discussions among friends. I don't gather data. I don't try to defend any views. The whole concept of reasoned argument, which used to be my raison d'etre and my holy grail, bores me. I still respect reason, but it has assumed a more, shall we say, balanced and reasonable place in my life.

Part of what I had to learn--thank you, mystery school--is just how unhappy I was making myself by clinging forcefully to my beliefs and my conviction that they were right, that I was right. It's as if I was holding my worldview tightly, clinging to it desperately, when what I really needed was to wear it more lightly. That's a practice. I'm working on it.

Of course, as is the way with families, it still drives me absolutely freakin' crazy when someone in my family refuses to entertain the thought that just because I'm doing something differently from the way they would do it, it doesn't mean that I'm wrong, where wrong gets cashed out as "naive, misguided, idealistic, romantic, potentially harmful." I am idealistic and romantic. Really, it's just who I am. (My part of fortune lies at 30 Aquarius, for Goddess' sake.) But that doesn't make me hopelessly ineffective in the world, unrealistic, unreasonable--though according to my family's running narrative, it does.

You know how having a baby can make everyone around you crazy? Like everyone has a gazillion opinions and horror stories and they need to know the sex right now? And why don't you want to know the sex right now? And oh, aren't you cute and young and naive, you have no idea how much work it's going to be raising a child? (Do you know how much work it is getting a Ph.D. if you haven't tried? No? I didn't think so. Bite me.) I think that as these things go, I'm getting off pretty easy. Maybe it'll get worse as I get more visibly pregnant. But I live in a community where people don't automatically freak out if you say the words "home birth," where there is some acceptance of trying things a different way. (Only in the United States, where something like 97% of births take place in hospitals, is "home birth" a weird thing.) I think my family is showing admirable restraint so far. But I've been pretty clear with them that I don't want their fear to mask and express itself as concern that I don't want what's best for my kid, my partner, me. Because they really do know me better than that.

So here, just for the record, are some ways in which Adonis and I plan to parent our kid, things that might bother some people, Goddess bless them.

• Non-medicalized prenatal care from our awesome midwife; no ultrasound or prenatal testing unless deemed medically necessary
  
• Home labor and birth (my sister will be there; she's attended a home birth before)
  
• No baptism
• Wiccaning (we plan to give the kid a Wiccan name to use until s/he comes of age and chooses a her or his own magical name)
  
• The kid will have my surname (my family is actually fine with this)
• With dogs as integral members of the family, not accessories
• Celebrating the sabbats and esbats

You know, crazy stuff.

As you can see, it's all pretty abstract. We don't know who it is who'll be joining our family, so we just have to wait and see. We're flexible. I think that will serve us well.

Edited to add: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the big one. Unmarried, we are, as a matter of principle.

The temple of Artemis

A year ago I was meditating here.

These are ruins of the temple of Artemis near Ephesus, in present-day Turkey. The temple was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was the home of the famous many-breasted (or bull-testicled) statue of Artemis.

On the day I visited, there were several men selling reproductions of the statue, set up on tables near the ruins. Though I'd tried to haggle over prices (it's expected) throughout my time in Turkey, I'd also kept to the practice of not bargaining over the price of magical tools. (I'd purchased a knife to use as an athame and several goddess statues.) I picked up the statue that called to me and asked the man, "how much?" "Dollars, euros, or lira?" "Dollars," I replied, thinking of the $10 bill I had in my pocket. "$10," he said. Done.

The temple grounds were ringed with blessed thistle, which made me think of the epithet Thalia Took assigns to Artemis, "defend your boundaries!" I sat at the foot of the column you see here and meditated, surrounded by a few friends. Someone snapped a photo of us. A friend commented later on how it was the fertile women in our class--those of us still bleeding and hoping to have children--who had meditated in the temple, gathered around the column, while the rest of our class explored the grounds. Artemis is a guardian of children and animals, and She is traditionally invoked by women in labor as a Midwife.

Much has changed in my life since I sat meditating at the temple a year ago. The Mother took our beloved Lugh, something we can't pretend to understand but which we know happened as it should. I invoked Artemis on Lugh's behalf, several times, and I will invoke Her again as we adopt other dogs. I've invoked Her in her Amazon aspect on my sister's behalf, as she faced breast cancer. And in six months it will be my turn to invoke Her in childbirth.

She has accompanied me since before I knew I was a Witch, at least since I was an voracious young feminist, if not since I was a child who loved the wild places. And there is something of Her in me: guardian and fierce protector.

Blessings

It has been an inward season for me, even as the world has burst forth in bud, bloom, and green. I'm astonished that it's almost Midsummer, and almost my ordination day. I'm pressing my dress and shawl (the one John brought from India this winter), and polishing my silver pentacle (the one Adonis brought me from Arcata) in preparation for the day. My ordination as a minister of healing arts is strictly speaking non-sectarian, but I'm pledged to the Goddess, and this is another rite of passage on that journey. I'm terribly proud of myself, and tremendously grateful.

There is an old poem that speaks of blessings raining down like blossoms. That is what life has felt like. I'm pregnant; our baby is due at the winter solstice. We conceived six months to the day after our beloved Lugh crossed over. And we've finally found our house: a sweet old house with beautiful gardens that border those of a friend--she's already suggested that we build a stone circle where our yards meet--four blocks from where we live now, in a vibrant downtown neighborhood. We move in August. Adonis is making plans for the birthing room; so far my contribution has been to order prayer flags to hang over the altar.

I've been spending a lot of time in bed, as much as I'm able, and I've been drawn to reread novels that are spiritually important to me: so far, Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver and The Mists of Avalon (though I can never bear to read the last 200 pages, after Arthur's duel in the realm of fairy). If you have suggestions for novels that have been importantly to you spiritually as a Pagan, please leave them here.

The lioness, 1910-2008

This Beltane season has been beautifully liminal for me, for several reasons. I'm holding that liminal space in my body and breath.

Last night around 9 p.m. my beloved grandmother passed beyond the veil. She was 98 years old. She died holding the hands of both her daughters, my mother and my aunt, who talked her over and beyond. It was a peaceful death.

She had been dying for several weeks. I got to see her two weeks ago, to tell her I loved her and to hear her say that she loved me. My grandma was a formidable woman, someone who taught me unconditional love, the kind of love I can feel in my bones. Dying, she was radiant with light. I held her hands, then her feet. I watched her face. I sensed the presence around her, knew that our ancestors were holding her, waiting for her to join them. I expect she'll be one of the first I see when it's my turn to cross over the threshold again.

About a week ago, she had a vision of the Mother--for her, Mary. She called out, "Mother!" At her bedside, my mom said, "is it your mother?" Grandma shook her head. "Is it Jesus's mother?" Grandma nodded. My mother was slightly appalled, also amused; Lutherans don't believe in the divinity of Mary. But I know Whom she saw.

One of the last things she said was, "life goes by too fast."

Blessings, safe passage, and safe return, beloved one.

What makes us wise

Today is the first day it's been warm--in the high 50s--and sunny. After spending the morning cleaning house, Adonis and I spent two hours walking around the neighborhood: getting mochas at the coffee shop, stopping to talk with friends and neighbors working in yards, assessing the little house for sale that we have our eye on, pausing to love up the neighborhood dogs. It finally feels like spring. (How I long for a garden and dogs! My dad cautions us not to buy a house just because we want dogs, but of course that's exactly why we're buying a house. Oh, and it's a good investment. Unlike most places in the U.S., my little town hasn't been hit by the housing and mortgage crises. Prices continue to climb. Why do people move here? Don't they know winter is six months long?)

Tomorrow is the new moon in Aries. Even as the cold days have lingered here in the north, I've felt the shift in energy that early spring brings. I'm moving more, working off winter's lethargy, and feeling stronger, more vital. I have a renewed taste for raw, bitter, green things. I'm starved for sunshine. Adonis and I seem to occupy the slightest lull, a suspension, before the activity of summer commences. Beginning this week, we're both traveling. Adonis is headed to New York City a couple of times for work; I'm headed to Atlanta to do healing work and visit my good friend; and we're traveling home together at the end of the month to celebrate my grandmother's 98th birthday.

I've been thinking a lot about happiness. This past year has been challenging for me: lots of intense growth and new life emerging, but also, and perhaps not coincidentally nor paradoxically, stark confrontations with mortality and grief. It's been just six months since I lost my beloved Lugh. On that very six month date, last week, my sister had cancer surgery (and is doing well). I'm learning something about the kind of happiness that depends on things going my way, and about the kind of happiness that can arise independently of felicitous circumstances. I'm thinking about happiness as a spiritual practice and what that entails for me. I often dream of that lyric from Sinead O'Connor's song "What Doesn't Belong to Me;" I take this to be a profound thealogical truth:

And the goddess meant for me only joy.

House!

(Art by Melissa Harris)

My friend John, a horticulturist, says that you can always tell a witch's house by the common weeds being cultivated in the garden. John is currently traveling in India, so I haven't been able to tell him the big news: we're buying a house! We signed the papers to begin the process today; we close in the spring. And I already have plans - heck, I've had them for years - for planting nettles, burdock, clover, mugwort, dandelion if necessary... Do you think the neighbors will mind? Do nettles keep the deer out, or do the deer just eat them along with everything else?

Adonis and I have found our house, and we're thrilled. We love the house itself, a solid mid-century ranch house with a wall of windows looking out over the large yard, woods, and the distant hills. The property, just outside the city limit, abuts a natural area with miles of hiking trails, acres of woods, and two reservoirs. We step through a gate in the backyard onto the main, three-mile trail, popular with dog-walkers, runners, bikers, and cross-country skiers. A ten minute walk through the woods takes us to a swimming hole. Farther up (or is it down?) the creek is a more secluded swimming hole at the waterfall. The location is quiet, and beautiful, and about a five-minute drive from downtown.

We plan to fence the yard for gardens and dogs. The lower half of the house is an apartment that we'll rent and, when we can afford to, we may convert the house back to a single-family dwelling (though it seems huge to us). There is a fireplace with a lovely "modern" (1960) stone chimney. Did I mention the windows, the light? There are plenty of renovations I'd like to do to the interior, but those will have to be budgeted in terms of time and money. I look forward to painting and figuring out how to do things cheaply.

I wonder if we can build a firepit in the backyard? Wiccan ritual and barbecue at my place; maybe the neighbors will come and bring potato salad.

I'm a bit giddy.

Mi sobrino

A year ago, my nephew was born in Bogotá, Colombia. The young woman who gave birth to him, already the mother of a young son, had hidden the pregnancy from her family. He was born at her home, and the next day she dropped him off at the hospital. From the hospital he was moved to an orphanage, where he lived for the next three and a half months, until my sister and her husband traveled to Colombia to welcome him into our family. Now he is a laughing, thriving, astute, beautiful, and happy baby.

This weekend, over 50 people gathered in my sister's backyard to celebrate his first birthday. It was a huge affair, catered with delicious food, with games for the kids, bubbles and sidewalk chalk, and 100 cupcakes made by the auntie who can bake (not me). I heard that there had been grumbling from some quarters that it was a ridiculously extravagant party to throw for a child's first birthday. My sister - Aries sun, prosecuting attorney, cancer-survivor - replied, with fierce mama-love, "no one was there to celebrate his birth; that will never happen again."

We drove six hours each way, and now we're home again to start the work week. Adonis and Lugh are fast asleep in bed, and I'm about to join them.

Feliz cumpleaños, mi sobrino. Te quiero.