Entanglements
Lately I've been spending a lot of time cutting down the vines along the side fence. We planted them years ago, thinking it was a species of bougainvillea, only to find it was a creeping vine with beautiful blue trumpet flowers. I hate to spend such effort killing something because it has put forth such an effort to live, but in the intervening years it has not only choked out the bougainvillea we planted beside it, but overtaken the entire fence. It needs constant cutting both by us and the neighbors or it overtakes the side yards, and this year has begun creeping beneath the houses and into the outbuildings. The neighbor's adult son has been complaining that tending to the vine takes him away from his video games. It grows in the intervals between when I have time to cut it, but if it takes me much longer to remove it I am hoping the shorter days will work in my favor against its life. I hate destroying something in the midst of its life, especially something that has given us so much joy, especially in the beginning, watching it's surprising and explosive growth, and especially because it's to give way to grey pavement, not new life. But I spend spare hours I can get away out there, using a half-dozen techniques to cut and pull away the vine, revealing garbage and snake skins entwined in the creepers, all the time bitten unknown insects and other creatures I can't see while hoping I don't get bitten by something else lurking there. There are parallels in that -- we all spend large portions of our lives stifling and cutting away important parts of ourselves, and not always so other parts can grow. There's probably poetry in that, but I'm no poet.
I know I will regret not writing more about my family here. Over a month ago now Max started going to preschool. When I walked him there he clambered over the stump of what used to be a leaning tree that Oscar would climb when he and I made the same walk. He is learning-delayed like his siblings, but seems less so than they were. Anastasia has made strides for a little girl who needed a therapist to teach her to crawl. She's now in kindergarten, and we are trying to get her the right therapist for her speech apraxia. Oscar meanwhile can't stop asking Star Wars questions, although he hasn't worked up the courage to watch the films. It's odd answering questions from someone whose knowledge of the franchise all comes from video games, but we are enjoying putting together his Lego Millennium Falcon which he bought with accumulated birthday and Tooth Fairy money. I suppose it's not much to write about, and that's why I don't write about it; it's more just something to be appreciated in the moment, like our night-blooming cactus flowers that close up during the day and wither in a couple of nights.
I know I will regret not writing more about my family here. Over a month ago now Max started going to preschool. When I walked him there he clambered over the stump of what used to be a leaning tree that Oscar would climb when he and I made the same walk. He is learning-delayed like his siblings, but seems less so than they were. Anastasia has made strides for a little girl who needed a therapist to teach her to crawl. She's now in kindergarten, and we are trying to get her the right therapist for her speech apraxia. Oscar meanwhile can't stop asking Star Wars questions, although he hasn't worked up the courage to watch the films. It's odd answering questions from someone whose knowledge of the franchise all comes from video games, but we are enjoying putting together his Lego Millennium Falcon which he bought with accumulated birthday and Tooth Fairy money. I suppose it's not much to write about, and that's why I don't write about it; it's more just something to be appreciated in the moment, like our night-blooming cactus flowers that close up during the day and wither in a couple of nights.