Postcards from the past: 4 Februaries ago

I believe this was the first snowman he ever really helped me build. Birds and rabbits feasted on the vegetables only hours after we turned them into eyes, mouth, nose and hair. Lil E thought it was hilarious. It was snowy but not too cold, sunny but still crisp. We were living with my parents, already four months into an open-ended living arrangement that I couldn't map out when I packed up laundry baskets full of his little leggings and jeans and Pull-Ups and favorite stuffed animals. I have no idea what I took of my own,  just that most things made their way bag by bag to my parents' house that winter.

I was working hard, fighting hard, thinking hard. I was barely sleeping, and when I did, my dreams were full of anxiety. It was my first month of full-time employment in several years, and well into the many visits to the courtroom.Lil E was at his same old preschool co-op, but now the only child with two homes. He was safe and loved and nurtured there. But some of the teachers couldn't listen to the magnamity of the situation and other mothers said horrible, judgmental things to me for leaving, for getting by in crisis in the best way I could at the time.My parents were out of town that month and I shoveled and shoveled and shoveled their walks. I sweat underneath my down coat, cried tears of frustration in the bitter cold. I don't every detail of that February, but I can feel the emotion of that time well up even as I type where we lived and what we were doing. It was a sad and scary time. But there was a stillness in my heart that I remember vividly. I heard a voice from deep within that told me to keep on. Eventually everything would bloom.

It's why I love this photo and this face -- because it says, Look what we made together.

Sometimes I think back on those days and weeks and months...and hell, years...and I want to cry. Other times, something happens or someone appears in my life and all that trauma is triggered and I get all protective and worried and can't sleep. But most of the time, I look back on these photos, remember these moments and I think that it stopped being sad a long, long time ago. I think how happy I am to be right here. To be working from my desk in my own place. To see the snow fall outside and not worry whether we will have a chance to play in it or how much work it will make for me. To know that we have everything we need to get through, to build something up out of whatever we have at home, around us -- to make a statue of snow with arms outstretched and leaves reaching up to the uncharacteristic winter sun.

I look back on this February and I think how grateful I am that I cleared that path, that the little footsteps behind me are now running freely ahead.

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Postcards from the Past: The second New Year's of his life

He was a year and some change, and it was the first holiday season he was aware anything other than bright lights and nap interruptions were happening in his life. He stared into Christmas lights, fascinated. He laughed at the dancing Frosty the Snowman in my parents' living room, pushing the button to make it wiggle and sing over and over and over again. The four meager toys Santa brought were a bounty. And then came the New Year.

My brother was in town. He was still a bachelor and those were the days when we all convened at my parents' in our pajamas for brunches and card games and to watch movies. Lil E fit in snuggly. His legs seemed to stretch out endlessly in his fleece zip-up onesies. His hair was everywhere. His gap-tooth grin and big brown eyes made him so him. He was talking up a storm at that point, and had just started taking his first assured steps. He was so much fun.

We spent New Year's camped out with my brother, playing games and order pizza and ribs and putting the baby down long before midnight. My parents were out at a party and so we had more room than usual to be silly and put together somewhat of a celebration. Before Lil E fell asleep to the sounds of fireworks already being set off hours too early at the park across the street, we took these photos to say goodbye to 2005.

My brother and I are signing the year with our hands. Lil E is perched atop my shoulders, paci popped in, hands laced through my hair. My as-yet-undyed hair. I may look very recognizably me there, but I look at these photos from my days as a part of a family of three -- as a stay-at-home mom in yoga pants and a little lip gloss, who is convinced she will never be able to move out of a cave of an apartment and tries desperately to fix it up each holiday on a budget of only a few dollars, who has no idea that her first blogging job and the beginnings of Sassafrass are waiting only months ahead -- and I think I look so very different.

And then I see this photo, taken a few days later the first time I shoveled our walk with Lil E toddling behind me, and I see the spark and the sense of adventure and the way I am squeezing E tight to me, and I think, "Ahhh, she's been here all along. Different clothes, different hair, different life. Same woman."

Was this lady ready for all that was ahead? Probably not. Perhaps. Of course she was.

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