As the weather has taken a turn for the more winterly, “fun” becomes a more concentrated idea limited to the area around the house, which both simplifies and exacerbates our challenges. Sometimes it’s in the house—getting screen time, as we call it, like at Thanksgiving visiting my in-laws, when people congregated around the wood stove with laptops (see River, Council and Uncle Noah, below, as seen through my mother-in-law’s camera)—and sometimes it’s going out.

Now, rather than going out to catch poison ivy in the grass, the kids can step out to do a little sledding on the hill we have for a back yard. That is, if we had sleds. We have instead an ample supply of snowboards, some attached to bindings, and some not. We also have a long toboggan, and a curious piece of equipment known as a “snow skate” that we have in the past allowed the kids to use—but not this year, River decided (perhaps hoping to preserve it longer, since it is his after all).

Sending the kids off to “sled” on a hill without actual sleds is asking for trouble, but they have managed, and a kind neighbor brought over an actual, bona fide, real plastic sled the other day for us to borrow. For some reason we have managed to avoid purchasing sleds ourselves. The toboggan works well for longer rides but on our short hill, I can see that it’s a little tiring to lug up and down. Riding the snowboards, the kids are learning to stand up, but without bindings it’s a bit of a joke, and more often than not they seem to be learning how to nearly skim off one another’s heads and limbs as they barrel down. It’s a good thing the hill isn’t any longer than it is.

In the meantime, we parents get to stay inside and do what we like to call “organizing.”

For River, this means looking me in the eye and telling me, “I’m really motivated to demolish the kitchen cabinets now.” I try to tell him that I have just gotten to the point where I think I can sort of manage mentally and emotionally after our move, that I have just about gotten a handle on where some things are located in the house, and I may be ready to sort of live here for a while. His idea of feeling comfortable is to make major change. As he mentioned to me in the past, if the house feels “finished,” he feels uncomfortable.

So, demolishing the kitchen cabinets works fine for me as long as I don’t have to go anywhere near the kitchen until it’s all said and done. Or perhaps we could arrange some form of permanent care for the children during the time period, so I can help. I am happy to help. I love renovation work. I just don’t think it combines all that great with a lot of other stress and responsibility.

For me, the stress is less than it used to be. During the summer I whittled down what I was willing to handle so much that I felt almost as if I was handling nothing at all. That wasn’t good either, I found, but I have been able to build up slowly what I feel I can handle, sort of starting from “scratch” (I can pretend). With winter arriving I feel ready to face challenges a bit more. It’s my husband I’ve been more concerned about: for him, the stress seems only to have accumulated once a few deadlines were met toward the end of summer. And he’s talked about feeling like he has an itch that he can’t scratch with one particular project, which makes him grumpy and worried. As the responsibilities at work pile on, they’re certainly not going away at home.

But we both face each other at the end of the day more or less trying to pretend as though everything is alright. This is after several instances of me suggesting that maybe we’d be better off going our separate ways.

I will probably always default to thinking that marital problems must necessarily lead to divorce, and in order to be honest to myself, I have often felt that I need at least to be able to talk about that. The fact that I can, and we still stay together, is hopefully a testament to both our flexibility and our commitment. I don’t want to fake it in this relationship, but I also want to be able to admit that I’m happy even when I am also going insane with frustration. It’s all somehow part of the same mixed bag of family life; I suppose I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Fortunately, my current lifestyle allows me time to sit and ponder, to reflect on the meaning of life, at least when I will indulge myself in this activity. Sometimes I have too much time for that; at others, not enough, but I’m grateful for any. I have tried to use such time to find myself again and to remember to focus on a few basic needs I have to meet for myself. It takes conscious thought on this subject to get around to that, years after such involved, intense parenting in contexts that weren’t always good for me, when I lost track of myself. The self may be overrated, but it still needs some attention once in a while.

This time of year, when the sunlight is scant, is not among my favorites. My whole being hungers for light. But when I take a seat near a window or stand out in the frigid air trying to get a little nourishment during daylight hours, the low angle of the sun stabbing into my eyes can be unpleasant. Sitting outside doesn’t work well, either, since it’s cold. I set up a little office nest for myself that works out alright for the purpose of sitting and pondering. It’s not a source of great satisfaction, this time I spend to think and ponder, but rather one of necessity and function, something I need to do for survival.

If it were up to me and I could pick any place to do this on a daily basis, it would be near a large body of water, or on a mountain top, or deep in a rain forest, and not in my dinky little home study where the light is dim and the walls are still this pink color I can’t stand… but I’ll take what I can get, and hope to move on to better thinking-spots as I can find them in this new house I am slowly growing to like.