Pulling the pieces together

If last weekend I felt pulled in many directions, at least this week I've been putting the pieces back together.

Earlier this month I got to go to Durango Colorado, right near "Four Corners", where a person can stretch out hands and feet and touch four states at once.  I like to feel like that, to feel like I'm living in all the parts of my life at the same time.  Not balancing things, but bringing things together.

This weekend, though, I did feel disjointed.  The crops came in just as K-daughter left to visit with friends, so I canned solo.  And also, but in a very different way, I talked on the telephone with a far-away C-son and his therapist.  And because of all that the weekend meant both physically and mentally, I held all my official work at bay, even as the semester looms large on the horizon.  It was a bit like being on the rack, having all the things that matter to me pull from different directions.  

It is better for my soul to live as I did later in this same week.  Tuesday, I spent the day futzing around with my kids.  We started at home; together we tackled the last of the peaches, by now ripe enough that the easiest way to get the pits out was to abandon all tools.  The boys mashed the peaches with their hands.  Oh, I wish I had a picture of that, or that I could tell you how much fun that was, both of the boys up to their elbows gooshing up the peaches for jam!

Once we washed up, I put N-son in charge of canning the ginger-peach jam.  This combination came out so well that N-son said, "Mom, we have to hide this from Dad!" (His dad has been known to eat whole jars of jam at one sitting.).  Here is a jubliant N-son with two of his sixteen half-pints.

N-son is as proud as punch.  Or as proud as peach.  Something.

J-son, handy with a knife, sliced tomatoes from our garden for the dehydrator.  I was going to make them into salsa, but we're still totally out of pint jars, so we are desiccating them instead.  

J-son is the master of the dried tomatoes.

After a bunch of fun with food, I hauled the boys over to work with me.  There's a large computer lab in the basement of my building where the boys could play while I worked.  I got to schmooze with colleagues, catch up on the latest news, and also catch up on some of the committee work I've been missing out on.

And also, I got to strengthen those connections between my campus and my kids.   I like that my colleagues know my sons, that they tell me they saw them riding bikes on the quad, that they ask what grade the boys are going into.  My sons know the groundskeepers by name; they play video games with my students.

It's nice to have topological dynamics and ginger peach jam and children all swirling around me.  I'm feeling put back together.  Feeling -- this is probably the best way to describe it -- whole again.