Today, I am sharing part one of an essay I began three years ago. It was an essay I wrote over the course of the winter when my son was one-and-a-half, and we lived twenty miles inland in what I’ve heard called “The Snow Belt.” True to that name, we got a lot of snow during the winter I wrote this essay, and I think part of my desire to revisit it now is because of our lack of snow this year.
During our time living in “The Snow Belt,” I began to really pay attention to various tracks in the snow, in part because I was home alone with a toddler all day everyday, living on a dirt road twenty minutes away from anyone that I knew. I pushed Daniel in the stroller or pulled him in the sled down the road to the little creek down the hill every day. On our walks, I looked for any sign of life, anything to prove that I wasn’t as alone as I felt.
There is so much that has changed in my life since I began this essay, and as I continue to work on it, I envision adding in some of those shifts. We now live in a village, the dog lives (very happily) with our next-door neighbor, we have another baby. This story feels ongoing, a way to make sense of the changing world, tracking what is in front of me and what I have left behind.
Tracks, Part One
It has been quietly snowing for two days, a delicate snowfall that hardly accumulates, just dances in the slight wind before softly touching the ground. The world seems quiet, our reasons for leaving the house dwindled to a snowy walk in the morning, maybe a sled ride around the yard in the afternoon. It seems everyone is hibernating. The geese have gone, the neighbors migrated to Florida for the season, and the tourists are fewer as we dip deeper into the new year.
On our daily walk, the dog pulls at the leash to sniff the snow, his nose digging until he finds the source: a slice of discarded pizza on the roadside. He follows deer tracks in the morning when I let him out to pee and returns twenty minutes later from an adventure he cannot tell me about. Daniel and I pause down the road to look at turkey tracks in our neighbor's driveway, the same rafter of turkeys that amble through our backyard every few days, pecking around in the snow to find what is buried underneath. The dog sniffs rabbits out from under our deck, and at dinnertime, a family of five deer walks the path behind the garden, stopping to graze on what's left of our discarded pumpkins before disappearing into the woods. I have only seen the deer family once this week, but there are fresh tracks every morning. There are tracks everywhere.
We add our tracks to the mix–my boots and Daniel's sled. My ski tracks from last evening when I used the last bit of light to get a moment of exercise. A sign that we are here, even if we mostly disappear inside. I wonder if the deer can imagine the activity behind our closed doors: the toy trucks that race up and down the hall, crashing into the baseboard. The music we dance to while making dinner.
I don't know where all these tracks lead me. I have noticed the chickadee's "fee-bee" call for three winters now, and it still surprises me when the world is cold and I expect quiet. The tracks and the bird calls are evidence of unseen life. Mice create tunnels under the snow, and we boldly think they have abandoned us. Winter springtails allude us for months until a warm day in January when they suddenly gather on top of the snow, and we are reminded that insects exist, not only to bother us.
I can try to follow the tracks, but often, suddenly, they vanish. Sometimes, even the dog leaves no trace when he runs away, and I worry about his return. A whole world outside of my world, nature existing without me. I do my best to learn lessons from the landscape, but how can I understand the complexity of a world that existed long before me? The snow keeps falling, and I swear the world is silent. But then, a tree snaps overhead, and I hear the call of a bird I cannot see. I go inside, and it all continues without me.
This morning, there were no tracks. Just eight inches of fresh snow draped on everything, the pines hanging heavy under the weight. I shovel as well as I can with a toddler behind me, stopping often to pull him in the sled or pick him off the ground when he tries to waddle in his snow gear. I move a shovelful or two of snow, sing-talking to my son to keep him entertained, making up tasks so he feels included. "Can you follow Mama while she shovels and stomps down the snow?" Stomp, stomp, stomp; we make up our own dance, laughing at our silliness.
Everything with a toddler takes this kind of effort. Tasks that could otherwise take one hour take three. Or, more likely, they don't get completed at all. We do what we can, shoveling paths in the snow and quitting long before any real progress has been made. No matter, Dada will be home later and can make more progress without us. Or Grandpa may stop by with the plow truck and save us all the time and effort. Either way, we can't do anything alone.
My toddler seems to innately want to help, to contribute to our family by shoveling (stomping) snow, helping to make dinner, and feeding the dog. Even at only sixteen months, he wants to work alongside us.
All this slow progress, these days where nothing is accomplished, teaches me. I dig paths in the snow slower than the fresh snow is falling and somehow pay it no mind. My son draws my attention; his attempts to help are so sweet and essential, even if he does nothing to increase our productivity and, quite truthfully, harms it. I give him my shovel, and he sways under its weight; our work paused, but his eyes alight. Suddenly, the work is abandoned. We lay in the snow, and I teach him the importance of snow angels.
In the earliest days of motherhood, I mourned my lost productivity. I wanted to be everything at once, to continue creating and working at the rate I did before. Women are praised for being the same after a baby, and I needed to prove I was still me. But being me has nothing to do with work or what I create–I am every bit "me" while lying on a couch feeding a newborn as I am while writing poetry at my desk. My output looks different, and my purpose feels different, but I exist and interact with bodies around me through both acts, even keeping one tiny body alive.
Sometimes, motherhood itself feels like a winter season. The work more demanding than in other periods, survival complicated by a change in the atmosphere. Whether cold wind or a toddler's persistence, both require a shoring up to manage.
The snow has fallen for weeks, giving us a winter experience that feels all-encompassing. Each day is dictated by the weather, our adventures in the yard or down the road driven by the depth of the snow or the wind chill. We didn't step outside this morning until nearly noon, and even then, the snow looked untouched.
The smallest animals are digging tunnels under the snow; there are tiny holes here and there to allow for airflow to a subnivean freeway. The rabbits have retreated under the deck long enough for their tracks to have disappeared entirely. The dog still knows they are there and spends an entire hour circling the deck, jumping on its surface in an attempt to scare them out. They prefer his goofy threats to the cold and remain huddled near our foundation for warmth.
The snow keeps falling, and we continue shoveling paths to unburying ourselves. But the toddler draws our attention and we leave the snow to pile up.
Swim Club
Follow this thread to stay updated with swim club details. We are swimming tomorrow, Sunday, February 25, at 2pm in Glen Haven. Meet in the large parking lot next to the red cannery building (there is an old boat perched on the beach here).
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Things I am connecting with this week:
I am reading Barbara Kingsolver’s collection of essays entitled Small Wonder, written in the aftermath of 9/11, and finding many of her words–from notes on political consciousness to the climate crisis–to be relevant today. She writes from a place of responsibility and engagement. One quote that has really stood out thus far: “At moments I have to stop taking in more news so I can consider what I’ve gathered so far and pay attention to my own community, since that is the only place where I can muster a posse to take on our own local disasters of the day. Sometimes I have to make a simple, straightforward effort to do just that, so I will feel less like a screen door banging in a hurricane.”
In the vein of mustering a local posse to take on the disasters of the day, next week is the Michigan presidential primary, and a group called “Listen to Michigan” is asking voters to vote “Uncommitted” on the Democratic ballot. This effort is to put pressure on President Biden to demand a ceasefire and end the funding of Israel’s war in Gaza. You can learn more about the movement on their website.
I can’t stop listening to Madi Diaz’s new album, especially her song “Kiss the Wall”.
Thank you for reading! I will share part two of “Tracks” next week.
Cheers,
Mae
My kids are mostly grown now, but i felt this all over again. “Sometimes, motherhood itself feels like a winter season.” Such a great description. Shoring up. And hunkering down. We learn so much from the seasons and creation. Your writing is beautiful and so calming. Thank you.