Twinkling Along

Little and Big Me in Yellow

2023-04-24T03:24:00.004-04:00

This is me, at maybe 3 years old....on the front steps, next to the daylilies that aren't there anymore around the big sugar maple that's gone. The sun was warm and I was wearing my Charlie Brown sweatshirt and matching yellow pants. I still love that yellow.

Its kind of pleasing and comforting to think about the ways that Little Me is still there inside, unchanged, besides my love of yellow and porch sitting. That little girl loved the outdoors best, just like I do, she also loved cooking and all kinds of other helping work. She and I love singing to acoustic guitar, holding babies, long drives in the country and telling people what to do. We love prayer, and church and stories without too many scary parts. We both love corn-on-the-cob, apples with peanut butter, smelling the coffee in the morning and the way bread dough feels in your hands when it starts to get silky from kneading. Little Me loved mornings best, old ladies with soft wrinkly skin on their arms, picking wild fruit and lying on a dog-turned-pillow in a pool of sunshine and I do too.

My boys tease me because I still like to walk teetering across mossy logs on ponds, pick up seashells like I have never seen one before and stop to peep into every wildflower. They say that I am cute, which is kind of a strange thing to hear from your own offspring, but there we are....I'm cute now. And I think part of what they mean is that they can tell sometimes that I am still Little Me inside. I have no desire to become an entitled diva who runs around demanding what she wants or run from responsibility like an perma-toddler....I have actually always kind of loved responsibility, truth be told. But, I do hope that I will always be able to look at that picture and feel that "me" quite alive and well within the cocoon of my mom costume. So much of the time I feel unqualified for parenthood, adulthood, the role of wife, the job of friend, the duty of citizen....but I feel quite able to be a child. And maybe that's a little immature of me, but I hope it represents a kind of reaching for innocence and joy, a kind of trueness through time, a simple, continuous, remembering sort of humility. Sometimes I feel like backwards is somehow the real way, like I need to remember what I was, and revert for the sake of honesty, maybe even safety. I am sure there are some things I have learned and ways I have done well to cast off what that little girl was and become Big Me, but just now, I can't think of any of them. I might be here doing the laundry and looking reponsible, trotting from the house to the car with the car key, but inside....I'm wondering what make cats ears twitch electrically when you just touch the tips of them while listening to the happy hum of the honeybees in my wildflowers as I trot past, impersonating a mom.

Winter Chill

2022-02-28T10:09:00.004-05:00

It is winter in Northern California and this week that has meant frost on the roofs visible through the back kitchen window....our garage roof, the roof of the apartment building next door, the roof behind our house where the stray kitties sunbathe on occasion and if I lean forward I can see the roof of our next door neighbors who on the left who share our driveway. They all glitter white and shimmery, blueish in certain shadowed angles and impressively opaque. There is a true layer of white, and from certain angles it looks for all the world like true snow. The boys make believe that we have indeed had a wee blizzard and we haul the banana tree and the papaya tree into the kitchen in their gigantic pots and work around their absurd bulk as we wash the dishes by hand because the dishwasher has passed away and is awaiting buriel in the driveway. You have to duck around the papaya to get to the plate cupboard and the banana tree has to be slid to the side to open the low oven door. But there is room for us all and make do is kind of my favorite acoutrement in life

And then, later in the day the sun comes out and I go out and plant pansies under our lemon tree. Its a funny life and a funny kind of winter. Thing are colder, I drink more coffee, we protect our plants now and then. The tomatoes and peppers have wilted away into brown sticks, the cauliflower keeps slowly curving new leaves around its inner core which I hope means it is secretely developing a head. We bake more and there a constantly sprinkling of slippers and socks through the whole house as people shuffle in and out on the chilly tile floor of the kitchen. I am holding on for spring which you still need, it turns out, even if your winter is frost on the roof, cold floors and setting mouse traps instead of snow drifts and salting the sidewalk. We all need that blooming warmth and the heart of God draws us back to Himself in the midst of our aching coldness. It sure sounds good to drink in the sunshine and pull it into my bones. I need it, and the revitalization that comes with it. I am always comforted by the turning of the seasons, no matter what dark frosty time settles in and nips the buds off the eggplants, there is some warm beauty coming when the sun comes out.

Tuning Back In

2020-12-10T01:04:00.003-05:00

I am sitting here at the keyboard in our silent little Orange Blossom Cottage, listening to the occasional far-off whooshing of a car off on the freeway and otherwise, nothing to be heard but the distant burble of the fish tank.

I have been distant myself, more than I meant to be. Somehow, two years blipped past and I wrote not, shared not and burbled along in the my own little corner, trying to keep the wheels turning, doing dishes and laundry and dishes and laundry as life kept on. Situations kept on oozing into different shapes and the kids kept on growing into new versions of themselves and I kept stacking up post ideas and drafts and snippets of things that drifted across my mind. Things I meant to write about and needed to think about and ought to post about and would love to share and the the pile was so tall that I think it might have slid sideways and toppled down on top of my writer self. Writer-Me may have been here in this dark corner of the house waiting to post, buried sheepishly beneath all those intentions for quite some time now. It's nice to be back.

I am homeschooling 9th grade this year, head-on into high school with enthusiastically interested and yet unabashedly inexpert energy! Ru is reading wonderful classic literature: C.S. Lewis, Ivanhoe, Shakespeare, Defoe and Churchill and the things he is understanding and connecting together impress, delight and underwhelm me by turns. He is still after all, a normal 14 year old boy. Sometimes, he is brilliantly fresh and insightful and sometimes he just misses stuff. I am leaning in toward the promise of life being long, there being seasons for everything, subconscious knowledge still counting and my own role being just a beginning in the long line of teachers and guides he will have in life. My job is not to equip him with the whole body of knowledge, its just to keep his fire going, teach him some habits of discipline, and whet his appetite for the reams of things there are to know and learn.

Everyone asks me if I am scared to be teaching high school and the truth is I'm not. Its closer to compatriot learning, he can understand and write about and read the things that I am interested in. I can imagine growing into adult friendship and an grown, peer to peer, life-share path. I am sure he will grow up and leave and differ and have areas of his life that he doesn't let me into but, I feel like he is increasingly a whole and separate person looking back at me bringing his own new things into the room and the conversation. Its encouraging and emboldening to me to know that I don't have to know all the things because he is going to be such a different person from me, living in such a different world than the one I grew up in. I also feel encouraged by the fact that his own freedom is allowing him to enrich his own high school experience and by turn our family and the rest of the students below him.

“Our children should feel that they can peacefully say anything: questions, doubts, criticism, points of view. They should feel that we are genuine interested in what they do and think. We should not deprive them of privacy, but all our words and conduct should encourage an open relationship. One cannot overestimate the value of such relationships.”
― Sister Magdalen

So, that's a little peek into the velvety corners of my inner world in the dark of the night here in California. I hope that you are all well. I have missed you. I hope to pick up the loose threads here and weave onwards, mending the holes and filling in the gaps.

Smoke, Thanksgiving, and Broccoli

2018-11-20T03:22:00.001-05:00

Dear World,

It is almost Thanksgiving. My siblings are all in Michigan, every last one of them....except me. I am there in the my soul: staying up too late with my sisters talking, cooking with mama, playing guitar with my brother, snuggling kittens and eating wild apples out of hand. I love them all and I am so glad that they are getting together and though I can't be there in person every time, I am so glad to know that we all have each other, despite our differences and busy lives. Familial connection is an elastic wonder.

We will be here for the holiday, pet-sitting for our home-going friends who all headed off in their cars to see grandparents. We are here with borrowed parakeets and guinea pigs, making pies from scratch together and test running board games for the big day. A's kind aunt and uncle who have been like bonus grandparents have invited us to come celebrate with them and so we will pack up our noisy van full of hooligans and drive the 30 minutes to their stately, elegant home on Thursday. It feels strange to say that I will be making broccoli for Thanksgiving. I said I would cook whatever would be useful and a green vegetable was the open slot. No extensive brining or searching for fancy recipes or agonizing over the decoration of pastry but also, no stress about the pie cooling properly or the meat being done all the way or the timing of the swapping of various items in the oven. It's kind of lovely to think about a day of gratitude in which I can just cook some broccoli and then read story books, dig out A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and press fallen leaves. It sounds good. Also, truth....I bought the ingredients for a small brie-en-croute and stuffed figs and I was thinking to make a little bit of my family's traditional wild rice dish. Not that I will take all those things over to dinner....but it wouldn't exactly be the holiday without them.

I am trying to come up with a classic to read next. I want something I have never read before that isn't too drippy and romantic but does feel uplifting. I can't do Austen right now, too much romantic fuffle. I can't handle Ethan Frome....too hard. I need something in between. In the meantime, I am working my way through My First Summer In The Sierras by John Muir. I am pleased and gratified by his botanical and scientific warmth in describing the world of the mountains, no one can do it better, but I am astonished at his own lack of facility and capability outdoors. He feels a little weaker than I ever expected. He's rather dependent on stuff: food, equipment, proper clothing, warm fires, etc. I think I might be tougher than he is! Not sure how I feel about that. This is John Muir that we are talking about.

Speaking of fires, the air was clearing just a little today. I love the fact that stepping outdoors didn't mean itchy eyes and instant cough. The smoggulous smoke (as Suess would say) was so terrible earlier this week that we truly didn't leave the house for many days, not even to step into the garage for clean laundry. The Camp Fire seems to be finally dying down a bit which is a blessed relief. Wednesday the weather men are saying we will have rain. We had one little spit of a shower in October but otherwise, we've had nothing for half of a year. It is amazing to me that the plants can just hold their breath and wait that long but they truly can. As soon as the rain begins to fall there will be an astonishing surge of rebirth. I look forward to gray skies that are heavy with big bulging clean rain clouds and not ash, and air that feels like clean hope and not a kick to the gut. I cannot wait to hear the sound of it on the roof and have a home day with a steady drizzle on the yard and a stack of library books!

Happy Fall, everyone...I hope the rain patters on your roof, your lungs breath free, your family gathers and your books uplift you!

Poetry Friday: Something There Is That Loves A Fence

2018-07-14T01:46:00.000-04:00

Poetry never seems to really leave me alone, not that I am asking it to...but I don't exactly beg it to stay either. I haven't written a Poetry Friday post for some time and yet when I planned today that I would join in again and post something up I had about four or five ideas for poems come zinging into my consciousness. I would never self-identify as a poet but I do love a good poem and I seem to have a lot of poems rattling around in me trying to get out.

Poetry Friday is being hosted today by Poetry For Children and I am thrilled to join in again! Check out the other contributions. Happy Summer!

Today I am sharing a poem about our California backyard. This is our first yard with a genuine privacy fence and I have to say that I love it, the privacy and the peeking over and through it to talk to the neighbors. Its amazing how much I think of Frost's poem and chuckle.

Privacy Fence
I walk the high board fence between our yards
Escorting the black hose the length of the flower bed
Hissing fallen petals, shed leaves and dust ahead of us.
Your glory vine is pushing fingers through the planks,
Spying at my boys as they lounge in the hammock
My leadwort is getting positively coquettish,
Throwing its sky blue tresses clear over the wall.
In your direction.
Neither of us mind.
You peek at me through the slits in the boards grinning
Passing bags of Cambodian shrimp chips over to us
Or dropping candy bars to my jazzed 6 year old
I bow and wave and wish you a good day
Sometimes sending over a bouquet of mint
Or a few choice stems of rose blossom
And over us, your banana cluster ripens benevolently
While my passiflora vine tenderly creeps up
Into the arms of your apple tree.

12 Years Old, Ru's Taste

2018-04-05T04:06:00.000-04:00

Yesterday my oldest son stepped to the brink of coming-of-age and turned 12. I can hardly believe we are here, teetering on the edge of the teen years. Its both refreshing and a little demoralizing to realize that here, in tween land I feel not a whole lot more grave, impressive or wise than I did when I first started parenting. I know a lot more than I did when I first started trying to be a mama to this boy who was handed to my unripened and eager self but most of what I know is how insufficient I am, how much his childhood is about me growing up and how very humbling and human it is to try to be anyone's mother. I am comforted that I am not all jaded or superior and that I am still playing, discovering, laughing-out-loud and even running and climbing trees but I am amazed that at 37 I don't feel very much like I have a corner on anything. I have learned to love parts of parenthood that scared and repulsed me (toddlers who talk back, vomit, and hosting playdates) and I have cherished the pieces that I always knew I would love (the hugs, playing sick nurse, making birthday cakes) and through all of it I am learning so much.

12 years ago, what an exhausting, scary, amazing day

Reuben, one his second day of external life.

I am figuring out how to be tougher than I knew I was, more vulnerable and open and changeable than I ever have been and man, has this boy blazed the trail in teaching me these things! I don't know how it would have gone if I had started with sweet, little complacent child as my first but I am pretty sure that I wouldn't have learned what I needed. God knew I needed this spitfire of an action figure with a taste for leadership in my life. I needed my world rocked, I needed skateboarding and baseball and graphic novels, to pet more dogs and ride more horses and hear more knock-knock jokes than I could ever have prescribed myself. I am a different woman. I sure love this kid. I love who he is, what he brings to our family and whatever it is he is about to show me about his adolescent make-a-difference, live-an-adventure self.

Here is a little peek into his world, on his second day of being 12 years old.

Reuben Loves:

Babies: He's always loved babies but the older he gets the sweeter it is that he hasn't lost his love of holding them, making them smile and knowing just what little things they need. He's a fantastic older cousin and will make a top drawer babysitter someday.
Baseball: He's played steadily in Little League for years now, never missing a season and I am amazed to see that he still is wistful over winter when there are no trips down to the ball diamond. He's a sports kid for sure and baseball has been his game, although interestingly he has no real interest in following professional games or players.
Greek mythology: He has drawn up his own family trees, read oodles of legends and stories and can tell you all the details of each of Hercules' labors. This inclination made him great fun as a fellow tourist in Italy. So many stone reliefs were unveiled before our eyes because he recognized the stories.
People: He loves groups, laughter, conversation, friends and even strangers. Always has, always will. Card carrying extrovert.
Avocados: He's always loved them but now that we live in California, the land of fresh avocados and can even get them at our farmer's market it seems like a legit part of him. We regularly split on together as a snack...half for him, half for me...although these days Pom in horning in too.
Swimming: We are about to gear up to go back to swimming lessons like we did last year before summer. Ru can hardly wait! He regularly needs two or three scoldings to get him out of the water after lesson has finished. He loves to swim, loves water and has great facility as a swimmer too. Fun to watch him learning to dive and perfect the trickier strokes now.
Monopoly: This is his favorite board game. We have the original and two other variations and he loves them all with equal fervor. I think this one may be genetic, it was my own mad love as a child too. I may have infected him.
Zinnias: They are always his favorite bouquets at the farmer's market and he plants them every year himself. He can never have just one variety and he's always totally impressed when they bloom. They look good in the packet, but even better in the flesh. He's already got a couple of varieties ready to grow this year.
Audiobooks: We are always listening to at least two together as a family and Ru is always my ready reminder to remember to turn it on during long drives. He's always loved story, hearing, imagining, telling and reading....its in his blood.
Mowing the lawn: This has become one of his personal chores over the last year. Its pretty cute to see him relishing the mowing of our teeny little postage stamp of a front yard. He sometimes mows it before it really needs it again just for the joy of the experience. I have just begun to experiment with having him string trim as an extra connected privilege.

Reuben Loathes:

Cooked squash: All the varieties get the miss. I have to say, I try to make sure nobody knows in our household but I hated cooked squash as a kid. I eat it some now but I always thought it was so squishy and far too sweet for my liking. Not sure what gets him about the whole family of squashes but he sure does skip them all preferentially.
Editing papers: This is his second year writing papers for me and although he enjoys the craft of putting down his thoughts he really doesn't like editing and drafting the next rounds. I drag him through the process of polishing the piece and adding the next layer each time, he'd much rather just bang out the story and be done, fussy he is not.
Star Trek: We showed the boys the Star Wars movies this year and so we thought as a compliment it might be fun to experience a little Star Trek too. Nope. Nope. Nope. We showed Ru the first episode and it freaked him out so much that he can't even calm his skeeves down enough to consider discussing the show. Way too scary. Ooops.
Origami: His younger brother's maddest passion completely drives Ru bonkers. He can never stick with the pattern long enough to get all the folds right or crease the corners evenly and he doesn't really care to. We are all given things we love, precisely folding paper is not one of his loves.
Saving money: He loves making money, he loves spending money, he doesn't really enjoy or value saving money. Hopefully, this will come with time but at least we don't need to worry about any miserly tendencies!
Home days with no exciting plans: His least favorite days are the days when we have nowhere to rush off to and nobody coming over. Homebody he is not.
Snakes: Something about moving Out West to the land of genuine rattle snakes has made him very nervous about the whole family. Of course, a few tweeking younger brothers have exploited his aversion and perhaps deepened it with their repeated surprising faux rattle sounds on hikes.
Wearing a helmet: He loves to ride his new bike and still enjoys skateboarding along with playing on his new ripstick he got for his birthday but he hates wearing a helmet. He is a devil-may-care child and doesn't see the point of a lot of fuss so we have to be vigilant for him and keep on the reminders. He also runs warm and I'm sure a helmet doesn't help keep him already toasty temp down.
Early bedtimes: He loves to stay up late and has no natural inclination to sleep and going to sleep early because of some scheduled need drives him batty. He'd rather flip back and forth in bed for an hour than actually go to sleep early! Total waste of time.
Scary movies: He still really doesn't like scary films although he is slowly easing away from his previous jumpy relationship with any plot tension. I am not much for encouraging scary movies anyhow to I feel like his tenderheartedness can just stay right exactly as it is and I won't mind at all.

Wearing Two Hats At Once

2018-02-20T22:32:00.000-05:00

This week I playing professional mommy and home mommy at once. I'll be in San Francisco for two whole days for a training conference for a homeschool public speaking gig that I started last summer. I am super stoked and enjoying the whole adventure of an outlet, a chance to put on a little polish and step into some different shoes. Its also so incredibly empowering to go have get-togethers with organizer go-getters who have all self-selected into a room full of energy driven, life loving, spur each other on power. I love the buzz in the room. I love that no question is too wordy or obscure or intellectual. I love that everyone wants to be there and is invested. Also, nobody follows me into my bathroom stall or puts Legos on my plate while I am eating, which is kind of novel and fantastic. I was even thinking happily of the 5 hours I will spend commuting back and forth (I am driving back and forth in the mornings and evenings) and realizing that I in no way dread that time either. I have audio books, sisters to call, mental space that is just waiting for me and all of that time will be a gift.

I was talking to another mom today and mulling over why in the world I would be making the crazy choice to drive back and forth when there will be hotel accommodations provided. It sounds massively inefficient and kind of illogical at surface value but, as a mama I have to say that it seems quite worth it to drive all that way so that I can tuck my kids in at night after they have been playing their friend's house all day. Its worth it to be able to kiss them goodbye in the morning and zip their hoodies myself, after I put all their yogurt dishes in the sink. Even a tiny amount of contact and continuity will carry us and will keep the kids feeling loved and seen in a small measure. I have also learned that I need all the hugs that we share, I need to be with my husband when he gets home from work and to savor the delicious letdown of the quiet house and slipping into bed together for a little pillow talk before sleep. It feels good to be known and seen and connected to those who love you. I also love little things like watering my own houseplants, making space to be barefoot in the backyard for five minutes alone, and putting a roast in the oven for dinner later that night.

I am also imagining that contact with my normal life and with my kids will keep me grounded in my training. I have a tendency to live utterly in what I am currently learning....in good and bad ways. I see all the trees and forget the forest even exists. I get excited about the ideas and plans I am learning and don't keep planning, home life and self-care in the viewfinder, I also get overwhelmed and intimidated by the grandness of what I encountering and have trouble chunking, right-sizing and staying in the moment. Kids are amazing at keeping you right where you have to be. You learn to spend far more time than you would ever imagine sitting patiently waiting for a shoe to be tied, you learn how very many steps there are to washing hands and how easy it is to forget any of the parts and you learn exactly how pungent a hug is and very much it matters when you make eye contact with an earnest question. These things keep me learning, they keep me stable and they keep me tethered. Its not all some kind of delirious dulcet cocktail though, sometimes these are bitter lessons that I grind through...remembering with some embarrassment and a bit of honest failure exactly where I am. Lest I get to grandiose about my speaker self, the boys and my husband are there with needs like runny noses and fresh underwear to keep me realizing that no matter what intellectual things I offer or achieve, I have to keep myself strung into the action of community and connection, even in the small humble ways and build my character alongside my brain. So here we go!
Speaker Me + Homemaker Me = Real Me

Of Broccoli and Book Clubs

2018-02-16T20:50:00.001-05:00

All the little trashcans in our house have fluffy teetering piles of tissues in them. We are fighting off a cough, cold, grab-you-by-the-throat, fevered dreams, headache that pounds when you move kind of a bug. I can just feel it trying to grab me in the back of my throat although I successfully evaded it thus far. I slept over 8 hours the last two nights and I still feel draggy. I have a sudden urge to clean the whole house, stock up on blankets, order the groceries delivered and start a pot of chicken soup. We have had a whole week of hunkering down and clearing the schedule. We cancel activities by the day as it is clear we are still fighting ear infections, coughs and fevers. As long as there is the blessed sunshine in the yard (which there is) and we can eat our lunch outdoors at the picnic table, I do not feel cooped up. It actually feels kind of good to be able to hermit legitimately and just be home together. We can take all day to do read-alouds and write letters to the cousins and fold and fold and fold the laundry.

I have been making some little brave gestures towards connection and establishing a circle to surround myself. Its time to make sure I am putting down roots here, digging in the support and connection I need, not just making do with whatever falls into my lap. The first thing I did was plan and execute a freezer meal making party which was very successful and not nearly as much hard work as I expected. I have been chewing on plans and ideas for one more in the future. There was an expansive and effervescent response when I timidly broached the topic with women I knew. Its so encouraging to know that the things you think up sound not only tolerable to other people but also exciting. I also have started a little bookclub with a friend and we are co-leading. Little stabs into real discussions and built in rhythms which might be all it takes to get the ball rolling again.

I say these are little brave gestures because they are both small, maybe no big deal to lots of people but were both scary and hard for me. I love people once they are in through my walls and there sipping tea with me kindly in my kitchen but in the meantime I am rather cowed by all the rules I know I don't keep without even meaning to, all the marks I miss as a woman, as an upper middle class person, as a Christian and as a mom, and all the ways other people appear impressively pulled together. I don't hate them for it or wish they were a little muddier for my own comfort, I actually find it inspiring to be around but, I do worry that they'll find me distasteful, embarrassing and indecent. A little of that is fine. I do want to be relate-able...one new acquaintance of mine, that I rather like, is absurdly fawning to the point where I can't seem to get through to real connection as two mamas on equal footing. I struggle with the teeter totter between vulnerability and its accompanying humility and poise and the appropriate level of attainment. Sometimes I think I might look a little over-impressive at first blush, in public but be a little bit astonishingly rough in my private reality. I think this is partly because of my love of inspiration. I do want to strive for ideals. I want to speak optimistically and I want to speak in the direction I am hoping to move. I have no problem being humble but I think some people hear my starry eyed inspiration ideas and then my humble confessions and either decide I'm an over fervent freak who needs to just get her life in line or else that I am my aspirations and my confessions are faux transgressions dramatized for the sake of personal color. Who can tell. I can only really say that real connection is the cry of my heart and something I so dearly love and yet its scary too.

The broccoli plants that I put in the ground last spring are still putting out little fairy heads of broccoli and I can't bring myself to tear them out and put in something more substantial. They have big meaty stalks that are hardened and woody like trunks and their output is both speedy and pathetically small. They seem to sprout little branches and bloom out in seedy finality in the space of one or two days. I cannot ever seem to gather together enough for a meal for the family, there is never that much at one time but, I am enjoying the secret pleasure of a few tiny stalks sauteed in butter or quick steamed to lay alongside my belated morning breakfast egg or draped across my plate of leftovers at lunch. There is no end to my enchanted love of the green things growing in the dead of winter here. I plan to never let it grow old.

Head Noticer And Keeper of Field Notes

2018-02-12T19:23:00.001-05:00

I have been snatching all the spare moments I can to analyze my children this past week. There's been several things that all have pointed that direction and like many curious projects I find that's clearly where Fate has shoved me suggestively. It started with a retreat I had this fall with girlfriends (a total wonder of thing!) where our 2,000 mph marathon talk sessions had me suddenly wandering into the territory of examining our children. We all as mamas strive to give our kids opportunities, fun, education and friends and when life is busy its so easy to just throw money at the problem and sign them up for a bunch of clubs, groups or activities and call the thing done. But, as we mamas mused together we dug up an idea, like a dusty looking rock that has a crack that shows a glowing center. What if we meditated on who are kids were, studied how they changed and evolved and tried to see them as different from their siblings and then ministered intentionally to who they were, what they loved and what things made their curiosity whoosh into flame? What if, instead of signing everyone up for a museum daytrip club we noticed that our kid was into starfish and combed our home library for applicable books and then put out a feeler to our friends for more books or experience and knowledge on sea stars and the sea? What if we noticed that our kid was a natural dancer yet instead of signing them up for drag-everyone-hither-and-yon, and mortgage-a-different-child-to-afford-it-class at the local dance academy we asked a local teen who is already dancing to come be a dance tutor three times in a row at our home?

The basic idea is a combination of three concepts:

Intentional, careful observation of our actual, individual kids and noticing who they are and how they change
Leveraging the resources we already have in our homes and our own skill-sets as individuals
Mining our community for talent and interests, abilities and knowledge that tie in

So instead of just hitting the Children's Museum because you know, they're children....they'll love it....maybe we go to the local horse farm to pet horses because we know one of kids is enamored....who knows, you might run into the farmer and you might purposely slow down and pick up rocks on the lane nearby for the kid who is obsessed with geology.

So, at first it was an idea that popped up as we mamas talked on our retreat about how to do parenting better, mused on our kids and their issues and funny endearing behaviors. Then we got talking about personality tests and I thought even deeper about customizing education to each kid in light of not only their interests but their style and needs. So cool. We spent some time later that night, journalling lists of topics and talents that came to mind for each of our children.

Then, after I got home from the retreat and was diving into some new podcasts for moms and homeschooling and learning I bumped into one with an unschooler (am only moderately unschooley myself) talking about this topic! She mentioned that customizing her child's education which is the big focus of unschooling philosophy meant that she had to study her kids as separate and dynamic topics. She keeps field note journals that are pocket sized for each child! What a thought! All observations about what makes that kid swoon with pleasure, what they are deeply troubled by and what they are super obsessed with doing all day go into her little book. Quick, jotted Cliffs Notes on her students who also happen to be her field of study. What a fascinating idea! How useful would that resource be for lesson plans, outings, birthday parties, interpersonal problem solving, bedtime discussions or those sudden gift requests from grandparents? Instead of the latest cool toy we could feed who our children were and show them that we see them not just childhood or kiddie stuff land.

Then, here I find myself at just post-Christmas gift buying time, true....but heading into birthday season at our house and I am doing what I always do and trying to think deeply about each kid and what thrills them and what they are missing and what they dream of. I always do this, gifts are pretty important to me and I love thoughtful giving. This year though, it seems like part of the big picture lesson. One more chapter in the book Fate is drawing me through, "Here's your lesson of the hour...study your children, learn them as they unfold. Be their very best noticer."

Your Plans Are As Unique As You

2017-11-02T00:45:00.002-04:00

Halloween was last night which means that today is the beginning of Christmas for me. I know it sounds overblown to some and like we are perhaps jumping the gun but this is the way that I can maintain sanity as a mama. If I give myself more time, I can enjoy my pumpkin spice lattes and the leaves turning color while I plan my gift lists and read to the kids from the holiday book basket. Its the best time ever to get my ducks in a row and even to get a little private celebrating in before we are traveling. One of the hardest things about traveling for the holidays is the feeling of no personal celebration, no ability to be the mama myself for the holidays. We are all living our own individual lives and I know that part the secret to my own happiness is an earlier and earlier start on the holiday season. I use a Christmas planner and a couple of books in a haphazard fashion, I scroll Pinterest and I scribble lists on odd papers....and also, I fly by the seat of my pants. This is me after all.

None of those formulas for how many gifts to buy or when exactly you should begin making cookies and storing them in the freezer are exactly right for any exact year in my exact life. I do like the concept though....so I try to come up with my own personal targets and magpie into my plans those that do seem to align. The point is to enjoy and relish the bustle and prep, the weight of responsibility that comes with being a merriment creator and the freedom and mental space that can come from a little more time coupled with some plans and systems.

This week I am revamping our breakfast menus and schedules for some of the same goals: more space, simplicity, bustle, and responsible feeling motherhood. There are things to put in line and ways to trim our old meal ideas so that they fit our new schedule and the changing interests of the palates in our home. I wish we fit some vanilla template but none of these things work that way. We nature journal, but not like anybody tells you to. I just bought, leafed through and then sold a book on How To Teach Your Child Shakespeare because we were doing bits of it already, some things were useful additions and lots of it needed to be passed on because we have a plan, its just the one that we are creating ourselves at our kitchen table. Its an interesting evolution to see myself both becoming a planner and also recognizing that for our individual house, nobody can hand me the plan. Plans are dynamic and shifting, we outgrow them and get bored by them, and all of our households quirky oddments will never be in anybody else's list.

Here's the marching to the beat of our own drums...ah yes, but marching to a beat! Lets all plan our own plans and come up with systems by being the wise observers and sensitive curators of our own people and lives. There's no easy out, nobody can do the work of life for you. But, after all....Halloween was just last night, you have time and so do I.

Friends Who Drag You Out Of Your Cage

2017-10-20T13:05:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was one of those days that I was reminded that I need socialization as much as the kids. I can be a little prone to isolation as an act of protection. I feel so inadequate and unable to appear "right" socially. My kids are wild, my house is too messy, I never have cool snacks in my day bag. When I am feeling depleted it's so easy to cut out all socialization because it seems draining and I must to just keep on and cut the fat. But, you know....it's no short cut to bliss. I am a creature made to live in the warm circle of a village and I wither badly by myself, no matter how much it seems like a clever way to streamline my life.

I am just blessing my friend today, with the wild kids and the also lived in house, the friend who hugs me every time she sees me and never lets go first. I texted her and said, "I am so droopy." And she said, "Remember that group field trip you never signed up for? Its today. You should come. I'll call the organizer and get you in and I'll buy your tickets so that when you arrive if you're late you can still get in." And I put everyone in the car and went. And she hugged me so tight when I got there and we went on the hayride and the corn maze and petted the goats and hugged some chickens and we all felt better.

I love and hate that other human beings who are dicey and intimidating and seem like the hardest thing in my life sometimes are also the place to go for a boost, for being truly seen and where I can know that I am not alone. Its kind of maddening but its so right and true as well.

We are going away for the weekend to a cabin in the mountains for some apple roasting, fireplace stoking, tea drinking retreating as a family. Just us and a bunch of plaid blankets. I am so glad I am going into this weekend with that feeling of social warmth on my back that I thought I was too overwhelmed to reach for. I need to retreat and to step out. There may be no short-cuts but only the necessary, true, brave action. I love that God is wise enough to put people in my path to disrupt me and pull me in while teaching me to be still at once. It's like He knows what He's doing.

Words On The Platter

2017-10-18T00:33:00.001-04:00

Sometimes, in order to get going again we have to push the ball down the hill in some small way. I have been long fallow here and now I'm back and grinding away like Sisyphus but in an attempt to help things take on their own momentum and joy, I'm just going light. This is my little kick off the edge.....here I am, with my pen in my hand again.

Lets just marinate in some goods words, shall we? It seems like a good way to begin. Here are some of my own, personal favorites. Which ones did I miss that you love the sound or feel of?

Utterly Enjoyable Autumn Words

Decidious

Scythe

Persimmon

Harvest

Cornucopia

Shadow

Cider

Sheaves

Snuggle

Golden

Quilt

September

Russet

Blaze

Fog

Rusted

Flannel

Crimson

Chanterelle

Meander

Crackling

Maple

Smoke

Squash

Harvest

Spider

Candle

Crisp

Aspen

Marigold

Hazel

Scarlet

And then, just because delicious words make me think of poetry, in a When You Give A Moose A Muffin Style....lets have a classic poem by James Whitcomb Riley. I like to imagine my farming great-grandpa, suddenly possessed of a desire to write poems speaking out these lines while he stumps along from orchard to barnyard to his masonry trimmed farmhouse where I was this summer. I miss him and I wish he could know my little boys and that I could marinade in his comforting presence and imagine they will turn out sturdy and reliable and warm, like him.

When the Frost is on the Punkin

BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock,

And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock,

And the clackin’ of the guineys, and the cluckin’ of the hens,

And the rooster’s hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;

O, it’s then’s the times a feller is a-feelin’ at his best,

With the risin’ sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,

As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

They’s something kindo’ harty-like about the atmusfere

When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here—

Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees.... (click here for the rest)

The Seasons, As They Really Are

2017-09-06T15:25:00.000-04:00

Here in the Bay Area we have arrived at September like everyone else but here it doesn't mean cooling temps and getting out the scarves and the tall boots. Just when your mind and the American Marketing Machine has you most primed for autumnal bliss, Cali has me all whip lashed. September and October usually hold the warmest, most classically summery weather. We have popsicle afternoons and pool dates and though the apples are ripe and we do indeed need to start prepping for Halloween, its best done in tank tops and shorts.

We have not had a particularly hot summer this year and there have even been times when it felt a little too chilly so it feels so odd to remember that its expected that we get this heat wave and start using our A/C now.

I am thinking about how in the world I can catch some of that fall flavor in summery ways. I had an iced chai tea the other day because......autumn flavors + summer temps. I want to start making roasts and wearing my hair down but its time for a little bit more warm weather celebration before we get there.

Time to go apple picking and plan one last camping adventure at the same time. Californian Autumn means a different thing and I have to start adapting in my own mind to this reality that is my world and my neighborhood. I love hearing and seeing all the seasonal markers that are different here and owning that fact that we have seasons....just different ones, or even the same ones with different markers and signifiers.

I wanna be the kind of woman who is curious about her world, open to her own microsmic environment and the story that its bringing. It may not be what I am primed for, what the general public talks about or what I have ever seen before but...its mine. Really, in some ways this is the story of what I am learning as a grown-up in general the last few years. My marriage, my kids, my housekeeping, our schooling, my reading schedule, my art career, my own professional life and personal development, my spiritual unfolding...none of them seem to trot down the expected trajectory. I am trying to let go of what I thought I'd have and see and know and instead wipe the slate blank and draw what I really see, like they tell you in art. Instead of drawing the projections of my own mind and expectations, what people tell me I see or should see....instead, in faith, I'll just step into the season I am really living and try to learn to love it in all its difference, and variation and cope with the odd bits and sooth my own nerves about how it isn't what I thought it would be.

Because, truth.....its what it is and its also beautiful, even if unfamiliar.

End Of Summer Notes

2017-08-19T04:09:00.002-04:00

We are going tubing down a river tomorrow morning and I should be in bed by now so that I will be awake bright and early to make everyone omelettes before we leave. (Boys who go places with no food are not boys you want to go places with.) Instead of sleeping, I am up folding laundry, contemplating the moving away of one more friend, obsessing about my homeschool plans and trying to decide how to wedge in one teeny stay in a rustic cabin in the mountains before the holidays. So many things going on and suddenly it feels like everything is speeding right up.

I told Ru and Nib that they could both sign up for fall baseball since we skipped out on the regular spring season. Argh! I am such a lazy mama....I don't wanna do it! I have the hardest time convincing myself to be ambitious enough to arrange friend play times and classes or activities of any kind. Nib has incessantly nagged me all summer long to take him fishing and I only managed to do something about it once when we were in Michigan sleeping 20 feet from my in-laws private dock. Better a little than nothing at all. Ha. But, seriously....I think I need to just take myself to a local bait shop or a pier and let some old men school me on how to catch the local fish and how in the world to fix up the fishing rods I have but have not in proper order. I am considering one of those cushy trout ponds for a personal boost as a beginning.

In all seriousness, I do want to have and to show ambition. I am not interested in avoiding all work and having my kids end up resentfully annoyed at their own inability to participate in anything because I dragged my feet for all eternity. I am however, loath to sign up for baseball. I love watching how they learn from coaches and build friendships on the team but I truly hate rushing off to practices and having our whole life filled with practice and games.

So far, I have still not received a note about Little League starting up for fall season.....so who can say. We must not butcher our chickens before they're hatched.

I have been harvesting the little volunteer Sungolds in our garden for the past couple of weeks. I was a little nervous to see what would appear when they began fruiting since I know Sungold is a modern hybrid and not very inclined to end up true to kind. I have been very surprised by satisfied by how very like its parent this tomato has appeared. I have the same juicy, sweet/tart little golden marble fruits and have been merrily filling a folded over pouch in my shirt with them pretty much anytime I find myself lingering in the yard. I have also been picking arugula, some tender second and third flush broccoli and our first very late crop of peas. The peas never seem to make it inside to the house, the kids like them too much. I'm all for healthy snacking however, so there's not much fuss to make over the issue.

The boys and I are working more on nature journalling and have been pulling out our paints to sketch things up a little from time to time. I am still trying to use our journals for a chance to record and research new species to us since moving Out West. Speaking of new species to us...we recently revisited the trees I noticed this spring when they were blooming. I thought they were maybe apricots or peaches but this time of year I could clearly see that they are almond trees. So amazing to discover that there are so many exotic nut trees scattered around. I sometimes feel like I know a lot about plants and animals and that outdoors and that I can feel confident in my knowledge. And then I think about things and realize that I am still humblingly unknowing in many ways and make absurd sounding rooky guesses. I only just realized this spring that the leaves of apricot trees look nothing like peach tree leaves and that I had been walking right past them all my life and not noticing. And then, there's the almonds-look-nothing-like-other-nuts-they-look-like-peaches foul up that I made in trying to learn what was along the highways. I can't believe how much there still is to notice and know and understand....even about the common things. One new fun tool I have been playing with as I learn is the app iNaturalist. Its actually kind of amazing. You take a picture, it notes your location via gps and then identifies your find. Super empowering. The boys love it. We end up running around at parks snapping pictures of things I would normally just shrug at.

Summer isn't quite over yet, even though school is starting next week so I am looking forward to a few more beach days, a little blackberry picking, a pie or two, a rodeo and a music festival. Autumn will come in its time but I'm not quite ready.

Poetry Friday: A Piece About Perspective

2017-07-28T23:18:00.002-04:00

Happy Poetry Friday! Its been a long time since I participated but I'm back in the saddle, summer fueling my creative side. Today is the day I share an original poem, hopefully one I made up just today and join in with other poets and poetry lovers to share our work and the work of those we admire. Today our host for Poetry Friday is Mitchell Linda over at A Word Edgewise. Go take your morning cup of coffee over tomorrow and glide through all the stacks of wonderful poems. Such a great way to open your mind for the weekend and to take it all out and shake out the wrinkles before a new week begins.

This week I am sharing a poem that was begotten via a poetry prompt from our hostess. Thank you so much for the beautiful first line, Mitchell Linda... This took me happy places. I was thinking of the very common scene in my backyard with my four little boys playing together and losing things together over the garage roof or over the fence to the neighboring yards. Lots of great images and meaning layers there if we look at even the simple and mundane scenes in our lives.

Above Ground
"Don’t worry—there are ladders."
He told his little brother after they
Sailed a balsa glider quite out of reach
Onto the garage roof.

He was just deflating, melting into a
Puddle of heartbreak on the sidewalk,
his kindergarten joy sailing out of reach
Onto the garage roof.

His big brother lifted his chin with a finger,
And gave a wink towards the rungs
And pulled his hopes upright again
Onto the garage roof.

How many times I could have rallied
If I could only learn to look up myself.
Remembering that there are ladders
Onto the garage roof.

Reading Stack and Summer Lull

2017-07-28T01:12:00.002-04:00

This week we are back in the swing of our own life again, finally. Part of the challenge has been not only settling in after a bunch of travel but also just changing our own set-up here at home. A is at yet another new job (he adores change and stimulation) so we have a new schedule to digest and wrap into our life. Its also a new season and the school year approaches which, as they say in You've Got Mail:

"...makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address. "

So, that right there is justification for self-organization and assessment and the sort of things I spent the morning on today: making up a new daily schedule, printing off my weekly goals, re-writing the kids chore chart (everyone gets a new chore at their birthday and everyone had birthdays). I am hoping to be absurdly organized and get the chore chart laminated and slapped with a matching dry erase marker in the next week. I have printed attendance charts for the coming school year (state law here in California for homeschooling) and have subscribed to a printer ink program so that we won't have any last minute panics about papers that are finished but need to be printed the night before co-op. Its a good time of year.

We are also in the middle of the lull season. We have had our travel and our excitement and now its time for things like grilling in the backyard, taking slow evening walks, watching the weed patches for caterpillars to raise and checking to see if friends can come over to play. Its the rest in the garden when the extremely fuss-free daylilies bloom, the dramatic peonies and foxgloves are over and the zinnias aren't ready yet. The roadsides are all chickory and oatgrass, no blooming trees anymore and not much else in view besides the gentle endless sun and the tiny basking fence lizards blinking at each other.

We are reading several read-alouds since I can't seem to ever get enough sitting around together reading at this time of year and the kids are just as excited as I am about all the options. We are listening to Pollyanna in audio form from the free and delightful Libravox collection and also reading the third Harry Potter book, The Prisoner From Azkaban which occasionally gets too exciting and full of plot tension to for relief we retire to Swallows And Amazons which is the best for firing the love nature and sense of capability in little boys, not mention a love of sailing....also on the stack at the moment is Dandelion Cottage, a vintage favorite about a group of little girls who play house with an abandoned cottage in their northern Michigan village. The boys always wish we could find a nearby house that's empty when we read the next chapters, and they start eyeing up the empty lot nearby.

We recently finished Girl Of The Limberlost (added to my narrow list of favorites) and More All Of A Kind Family (book 2) all about our favorite, laugh-out-loud Jewish sibling set, total fun and lots of interesting cultural discussion to boot! We plan to read the rest in the series of both books. Ah! So much good fun, take-you-away storytelling and interesting stuff to talk about together. We love our read-alouds. The new schedule at our house means we start breakfast early so I am stretching it out a little so that we can linger at the table together making up for the early start with a little reading at the table while we sip our tea and coffee and digest a little. Kind of lovely to find you have the time for some new little nugget of enjoyment. Shift and tweak, it isn't all difficult and grinding.

Tips From The Slower, Italian Life

2017-07-26T20:01:00.000-04:00

Italy. Time to talk about it a little bit. The big thing I want to talk about is culture, the way Italians live day to day...although the food and sights and history were epic, of course...not in any way to detract from the gorgeousness of it all.

Italians do three big things differently than Americans which look to me like they would revolutionize family life and the mania of existence. I cannot stop thinking about these items and I'm still chewing on how to incorporate them into my life here and wondering how in the world they managed to create and maintain such a different standard for normal than we do.

They wash all dishes by hand. To make sure this happens, they don't own dishwashers. We AirBnb'd our way through the country and nowhere, at any stop was there a dishwasher but every single kitchen was equipped with a dish rack. I talked to a few Italians about this and they think dishwashers are wasteful since they take up space and use more energy than a sink of hot water and your own strong hands.

They hang out all laundry to dry. Another appliance that no Italian homes seemed to have was a dryer. I specifically rented places with a washer so that we could minimize our luggage and our spending by doing our own laundry as we went....not at one house was there a way to get the items dry quickly. They had lines or racks and maybe a big bucket of pins....but that was it. Get hanging. The most elegant sections of town have clotheslines at the windows.

They cook real food and eat it at tables. Always. That means no eating in cars on the way to practice or school, no dashing off to meet friends with a sandwich in your hand, no sipping a milkshake on the way out of work, no microwave in the kitchen and little consumption of packaged processed foods and a very high rate of cookery literacy. Nobody in Italy feels like eating real food that you made yourself is fancy. Its just normal. It took us a little while to figure out this rule and we made fools of ourselves a couple of times by snacking in public before we caught the drift. But now that I think about it....I'm smitten.

I can't help chuckling, envisioning American households trying to do without dryer, dishwasher, microwave AND snacking.....however similar this prescription is to my own anomalous upbringing. Most of our country is locked to these conveniences. What an interesting proposition it is to consider their elimination and think about what it would do to us. I think the big change would be a massive slowing down. You cannot run a life at top speed with no convenience cooking or on the run eating. You can't quickly run Junior's baseball uniform through in the short cycle and have it be of any use when all you have is a clothesline for step two. So much of the way we live is both facilitated by our convenience items and locks us into the trap. Italians also don't have every child enrolled in 4-6 different extra-curricular activities which eat up proper meal times and space for laundry sessions.

We are part of the way there on some of this stuff....intentionally slowing down and maybe even purposely hobbling ourselves so that we have excuses to stick to our slow living. We have four kids and no dishwasher and I had already been doing a bit to beat back the snacking obsession after reading Karen Le Billon's fresh, enlightening book about French food culture and parenting.

There is still room for improvement. I do have a big black microwave (that I am terribly bad at remembering to clean) that is squatting on my counter-top. I'm not sure I need it. I mean, I use it....but mostly for things like heating a mug of water for tea because we are too lazy to use the kettle that particular moment, cooking artichokes (because they take forever on the stove top) and melting butter for eating seafood. I'm not sure its bad to have one, per say....but I can see than they keep me on a fast track. I'm not sure that's good.

We are trying to cut back on our eating on the run. If you didn't get a chance to eat at the table...its worth considering if you could just wait until the next meal. Eating genuine meals shouldn't be rushed into eating in cars and while running down the sidewalk. We should just make time to eat together properly, even if it means not making it to our appointments sometimes. I think that's a good goal.

And now I come to the clothesline, coiled in my garage... I have space in my yard, a dry climate that's great for clothes hanging and a bunch of clothespins waiting to be used. Its time to hang a line at my house....the summer months could be great for hanging out our laundry and saving some electricity while utilizing those UV rays and freshening things up a little. Slowing down is possible.

Woodpeckers From My Life List

2017-07-25T01:04:00.000-04:00

Today, on the playground I was distracted from a truly delightful mommy conversation by the lisping call of an acorn woodpecker! Right there in the middle of a suburban play area, across from the plastic twisty slide...there was a colony of acorn woodpeckers, Melanerpes formicivorus!!! I took a minute away from my totally normal friends who are not magnetically drawn to woodpeckers and got to see them working away at peppering their telephone pole cum larder with holes, each one a storage hole for a meticulously shelled acorn meat. Totally exciting! I had wanted to see these guys ever since reading about them as a little girl. Most woodpeckers are pretty solitary, feeding from suet at windows around other individuals but mostly operating solo unless its mating season. This woodpecker builds a larder of acorns together with other frien

ds, male and female and shares nesting and incubating duties with other couples....its like a commune woodpecker! So California! I love it.

When I was maybe 10 or so my sisters and I found an old woodpecker nest by mistake. We were knocking over deadwood in the area of the woods where we liked to play and we snapped open a deceased maple tree about six inches in diameter and there, in the snapped open trunk with a carved open cavity with the old nest, a shockingly minimal pile of woodshavings leftover from the excavation in the bottom. We were pretty fascinated by it and I remember feeling so lucky to find such a hidden thing. Google "downy woodpecker nest" and see how many people are getting glimpses inside of one. Its a pretty rare pleasure.

Anyhow, this was a whole new woodpecker that I had never seen before....we have no woodpeckers here in our yard at Orange Blossom Cottage, just jays, towhees, mockingbirds, crows and lot of assertive little hummingbirds. I miss them. They are a fixture of northern feeders and were an iconic part of my childhood bird watching. I used to leaf through field guides and make mental lists of birds and flowers that I wanted to see someday that seemed exotic and faraway...things that had range maps that were nowhere near Michigan. And there I was, a responsible 36 year old mother, transfixed by the sight of a one of those birds on my imaginary lists, while suburban mothers around me offered their children goldfish crackers and placidly reapplied sunscreen. Its truly fantastic how life doesn't always wait for a "natural moment" to hand you a wonderful pleasure. I had to take a minute to swallow down my mania before I was ready to go back and join the group again. Some of the best victories have to stay private because only truly odd people can sometimes understand our own little fixations.

We spent a long time more lingering there while the kids shrieked and ran through the splash pad and we moms had many enlightening, comforting and hilarious conversations, someone got stung by a yellow jacket and we pack and unpacked our lunches over and over as kids ran in and out of our circle taking and returning bits of food and stray flip flops. I love a good playground lingering anyhow, especially if its with ladies that fill my cup and make me smile but my favorite kind of open ended recharge session plus a childhood bucket list item....that's a secret victory if ever I heard of one! And its only Monday, folks!

The Movers And The Stayers

2017-07-19T00:20:00.001-04:00

Summer is here, and I have not been. That's the way with these warm weather months....all digging in the yard until way too late to make a proper supper by accident, reading way too many books and going on way too many exciting outings, catching up with all the friends and forgetting entirely those I communicate with online and far away. Please, let's pick up where we left off and carry-on with grace flowing around us to fill in all the gaps and distances and things I forgot to share and mention. We'll all catch up, shall we?

First of all, the elephant in the room we went on a stupendous trip to Italy. Totally amazing.

I have to write a post on several of the things I thought about our trip. So much to process and so much to share....more on that later.

Secondly, so much else is going on with us. One of my very close friends is moving away, the garden in our second year here at Orange Blossom Cottage is finally starting to come into its own, we had a really fun trip home to Michigan to see so much wonderful family, I have been doing some homeschooling public speaking this summer, and we are still ever in pursuit of giving ourselves a rich vibrant life with lots of space and breathing room in it.

Having a close friend move is a new experience for me as an adult. I realized once when talking with my husband that I had never been dumped by a boyfriend...although I'd dumped guys several times. It was a strange self-discovery. Did that mean I was selfish, pompous, picky, or lucky? I felt like I had kind of missed out on a rite of passage and the ability to claim normalcy in some tiny way. Weird how all the things mean things sometimes. Having a girlfriend move away and leave me is like this too. I have left several times, been guilt tripped, sobbed over and begged to stay. I've had people tell me they could never replace me, that they were mad at me because I had to move or resentful because I didn't consider them in my life location plans. But, through all of that I have always kind of played the same role. Tried to thank the stayers for their love, their loyal affection, their sharing of their time and lives and feelings and tried to walk the balance of showing just enough of my own feelings about moving to make sure that my humanity shows but be strong enough to comfort my friends and help them imagine a good future while not letting the negativity and depressing guilt get to me. I've never been the stayer. My gal is leaving and while I don't resent her adventure or the stress of packing up and shifting all her worldly goods to a new state....its surprisingly complicated for me too....even though I have no real clear role in the moving and shaking. I'm all conflicted about how much to show my cards with her. Do I cry in front of her, tell her exactly what she means to me or try to just keep it light and cheer her on while crying on my own time? Or is it some back and forth seesaw of behaviors. I don't want to be clingy and desperate but of course I'd love to make sure she knows that I care and that I will deeply, rawly miss her when she's suddenly not there for random roadside berry picking and hilarious girl's nights.

This relationship stuff gets me in to trouble in my marriage too. I want to be strong and independent and never have my husband be suffocated by trying to "be there for me" but I really want to be real and open and wear my heart dissected open on my sleeve. I think the thing that really gets me is that I so badly want reciprocity. I want to be sure that I share like he shares, that he wants my dirt and my pain as well as my hips and my best jokes. I start to feel gun-shy when its not clear that we want the same depth. Nobody wants to realize retroactively that they were an over-sharer. Ain't nobody got time for that!

I worry about this kind of thing with my friend too. I want to communicate my pain at her loss and my adoration of who she has been in my life at exactly the same level she discloses with me. I'm not sure I want to feel the same...just control what I tell her to visibly be her emotional twin. I'm always the emotional one, the deep feeler, the raw transmitter and sometimes its fatiguing to be judged as the eternal mess or the out of control girl or the person who is never done processing. I don't mean to be that way and when my feelings stay inside of me it mostly doesn't feel that way....its only when I leak them in disproportionate amounts and people get their measuring tools out and point them my way that I look a mess and seem like a problem. I wish there was a neat way to let my friend know that I will miss her exactly as wildly and deeply as she misses me and that I will probably culture some even darker and deeper feelings that she'll never know too and it all means that she's been really very special to me and I wish her the world. I'm lousy at being what people expect or want although I am one of the most people aware and over observant humans I know. Its tough to wish you could be just right and feel blind about making it happen. Moving is hard, even if you're staying.

Good thing there is shiny, crinkly swiss chard in the garden and orange roses by my front door, the sound of children's laughter in my yard and more phone calls than I can answer from people who love me. Summer ain't so very bad, even if its lumpy in places.

Lucid Dreaming, Joy and Exegesis

2017-04-07T11:06:00.001-04:00

I have learned the skill of lucid dreaming, knowing that "this is just a dream" is a useful edge when I am trapped in a nightmare like I was early this morning. I can change elements of the story occasionally and if that doesn't work I can exit the dream on command. I woke myself, eject-button-style, when I realized that the story-line (telling my boys to clear the table, item by item by item while they ran off to other parts of the house after each fork or napkin) was only imaginary and that I didn't actually have to walk through that scenario in my sleep as well as in my waking hours. I woke up and lay there in the dark laughing about what a cheated dreamer I was, my brain having nothing better to conjure up for either dream material (if it was a dream) or scary nightmare fright (if it was a nightmare....which I decided was more likely). How lame!

A listened while I related my silly, exhausting dream, annoyed that I had experienced nothing beyond my hum drum real life. I chuckled at the joke that my own daily living had passed for nightmare material to my brain. Not scary, no....but draining and negative, for sure! And then, A said, "Yeah, you know, I'm struggling with that same attitude of unwilling participation with math with one boy right now, each problem means dragging him back into the task and forcibly directing his attention. I wish I knew what to do to fix it." I mused that I had been studying on that for quite a while myself! How to get the boys to not only do their work but also to learn to cultivate a good attitude while they do it? Oh, to get them to be self-motivated with desire to complete the things they are given to do, with a love of the feeling of satisfaction, the value of industry and skill to find joy in the simple tasks! I get so endlessly sick of the starry-eyed yearning my boys have for video games and the heel dragging, eye rolling attitude they have about helping the family with any kind of work!

I lay there in the dark in my bed and there was silence for a second and then I added off-hand that despite all my searching, the only technique I had turned up was the super bland, usual "leading-by-example thing." We could improve that....and suddenly I was reeling mentally in deep conviction. How often do my boys hear me complain to my friends about the endless laundry pile or sigh heavily before I start washing the mountain of dishes, put off making my own bed because even the process seems discouraging to me or gripe at the end of the day about my righteously earned feeling of weariness??? Oh dear. So, I have no clever ways to teach loving work (bribes don't work so don't even say that....they only teach love of the bribe) except to learn the lesson myself and demonstrate it to my sons so that see and feel around how it is to love your work, to enjoy your own output and to feel useful in your own mundane place. What if my children never absorbed the lesson until adulthood when they were responsible for reminding themselves to work and only then learned to be cheerful about mowing the lawn, helping with carrying in the groceries and picking up Lego after Lego after Lego? Would it be worth it? Would I put in the effort for that end-goal? Absolutely. One thousand times yes!!!! What if I knew that my boys would never, ever "get it" but my own life would change and I would have the virtue I so badly want them to develop? Is it worth it to work simply for my own improvement and the knowledge that I could live my life with the ability to find warmth and goodness in the things I now claim are the bane of my existence? Yes, if it were a sure thing, I'd do it then too.

Suddenly, my mind flew to my friend who I had been wracking my brain to help. This particular pal had been complaining about the grind of her life, the way everything seemed the same and she had nothing to look forward to. I had been thinking about how to suggest ways for her to add thrills to her existence. Could she paint like I do? Write on the side? Get away for ladies nights out with friends once a month? Maybe she was in the wrong career and taking destiny in her hands and changing jobs no matter the cost and work was the thing! This particular friend is rather taken with scriptural advice so I had been looking through scripture for something to support my intended suggestions. Alas, I had been able to find only instructions to: "work at whatever you do with your whole heart," "render your services with good will, working as to the Lord," have a "cheerful heart [which is] good medicine while a crushed spirit dries up the bones," "enjoy the good of all your labor for it is the gift of God," "commit your work to the Lord and your plans will succeed," "work with enthusiasm as if working for the Lord," "excel in your work because you know your labor is not in vain," know that "where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" and know that "all hard work brings a profit."
And if you can believe it, I had stopped my exegesis there in a spirit of annoyance at not being able to find anything useful. *head desk*

Here, in the early hours of the morning....the words barely out of my mouth that the only thing I had thought of to help my boys was the boring suggestion to lead by example, and with a litany of scriptural inducements towards humility and joy in mundane work running ticker-tape-style through my mind...I laughed out-loud. Maybe my decision to categorize the dream as a nightmare and my reaction to eject in disgust from the plot were illustrative of something important and maybe it had been given to me as a dream to help me reexamine something I needed to learn. Isn't even teaching and re-teaching unwilling pupils, correcting their work kindly over and over and over....the work I have been given? Why am I complaining about this? Why am I not working to find joy there?

I had intended to teach honesty to my kids and share vulnerably that "Mommy understands your feeling of sloth" and I had accidentally stopped there and not progressed to teaching the vulnerability of Mommy wanting to learn love of industry too, and the authenticity of the fact that sometimes I need to change my own attitude to make things go the way they ought to. There is nothing in any of these things that is actually bad, I'm lucky to have so many dishes to wash, so many clothes to fold, to have all these little boys to teach and to have a husband who humbly asks me to pick up the slack he can't carry instead of doing in all himself or hiring assistance. These are gifts. I need to shoulder my lucky burdens like I'd pile so many presents into the car after a Christmas visit....with gratitude and cheer, showing my sons, my id and my ego the truth of intentional, grateful industry and how it triumphs over the lie of drudgery.

"Work hard, but not just to please your masters when they are watching. As slaves of Christ, do the will of God with all your heart.
Work with enthusiasm, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people."
Ephesians 6:6

The Pre-Teen Prep Zone

2017-03-31T02:39:00.000-04:00

The other day Ru went off for a big boy day in the redwoods with friends, no mama oversight, not even any drop-off....just a handed him a packed lunch and waved as he hopped in the car with friends and took off. Its a wild new phase. I feel the tug of the crazy scheduling stuff yanking on us a little more as he gets older and we start to dip our toes into the world of the pre-teen, more independent zone. I am trying to help him get out on his own a little more and make sure I provide opportunities for stuff to do and space to build his own interests and world but keep the center of our life calm, teach boundaries and continue to help him nurture connection to home and those who love him. He has been texting with one of his grandmas this year, spending time having solo phone conversations a little with his other grandparents and writing private handwritten letters to one of his cousins.

There is also a lot of cozy family stuff still happening here at home to keep us grounded. We have folded Sabbath dinners into our life and moved them around from Saturday to Sunday and finally landed back on the traditional Friday night with our tea party tradition melded with the Sabbath meal. We have been hiking once a week together as a family which is a good practice in being outdoors and free together, learning about our California environment together and practicing understanding both parents and their differing styles of activity and direction. We have also been doing lots of read alouds. We are reading the Harry Potter series now (book 3) and also in the middle of Swallows And Amazons. We just finished The BFG which was really popular. We also try to take afternoon walk together through our neighborhood in the old time slot for quiet hour. As the boys get older I find that I am struggling to find more space for physical activity than for quiet. There seem to be so many times I tell the kids to just be quiet and to occupy themselves and to sit still and listen and to apply themselves and less opportunity to push them towards physical exertion. These are a few of the little home rituals that I am building in to try to keep life sane and warm, and build connection. Special Time with each boy, Family Meetings, outings to make sure that each kid feels celebrated occasionally and date night for Aaron and I are works in progress but are also part of simple routines for connection.

I have been watching Ru get more independent and thinking about all the ways I can support that leap to individual space and yet help him learn to respect advice, work towards closeness and feel understood and valued. I have the following on my reading list:

The Teenage Brain by Frances Jenson
Brainstorm by Daniel Siegel

He has taken over cleaning up the table and the floor under it after our evening meal and I have given him Pom as an apprentice to teach about the job. He decides what needs to be done to clean up and simultaneously gives directions to Pom and works himself. Teaching someone smaller is a good way to learn. He's also learning more and more in school. He's reading pretty fluidly and pleasurably on his own and he has been reading chapter books in his own time and we also have one that he is reading aloud to me (for fun and for the sake of correcting inflection, rhythm and pronunciation on trickier words), A continues to tutor him along in math (I'm impressed....fractions at 10!) and he is writing papers and diagramming sentences this year for the first time in conjunction with our co-op. So much new stuff. This week we added a run around the block every day, and when I told him his new assignment he said "Once? I think three times is better." So three times it was. Here we go racing around this new block in our lives, trying to stay tender to all the learning and then newness and then beauty and let go of my fear, relinquish the worries and open my hands to the strange things I feel intimidated by.

Italian Dreams At The Equinox

2017-03-21T01:16:00.000-04:00

Happy First Day of Spring, Friends!!!!
This past week we had a night when it was truly warm out....the bikes and scooters got hauled out, the shorts got tried on and the shoes got kicked off at the door. In no time at all, after a little shouting over the fence to each other the neighbor kids and my boys had made themselves into a little pack and were running through our house and yard and then back to the neighbors yard hatching plans for making things out of cardboard while I worked on making a pie for dessert. Yes, they shredded cardboard all over the living room, yes they hurt each other's feelings a couple of times and yes my oldest preferred to play video games instead of playing but it was amazing. They were unbelievably happy and it felt so right listening to their silly ideas and happy banter, watching them help and inspire the little ones in the group together and then hollering over the fence to their grandma and mom when I sent them home at dinner time. What fun! I pray all the time that my house becomes a place that other kids want to come to, a place where people get together and laugh a lot and breath deep, where they can be themselves and feel comfort and scheme up plans together. I hope there are many more days like this ahead of us.

It truly has started to warm up to what feels to me (Californian import alert!) like summer weather. We've had a couple of family dinners on our picnic table under the lemon tree again and I've put on shorts myself once. Yesterday the high was 83 degrees. Pretty amazing! I am sure it will dip back down into the 60's again and we'll have more rain before its truly time for warm weather, this is only a preview. Its pretty delicious to feel the sun again and to feel comfortable kicking off our shoes indoors and out and to even feel hot again. I'm ready. The roses have started to put out their flush of red-tinged new leaves, the winter chanterelles have petered out beneath the oak trees and the plum trees have finished their bloom and dropped their white petals all over the neighborhood. Its time to start scouting out last year's forest fire locations in the mountains to see if I can get in on the legendary spring morel hunts that happen as the hills warm up. And its time to start putting in the garden and figuring out what trellis to get to support jasmine vine on the corner of the garage.

We are going to be taking a trip to Italy this spring....a big, life-dream type drive down the coast of the Mediterranean after a good soaking visit with A's brother and family in the north part of the country. They are creative, homeschooling, free-wheeling, deep-living folks so I forsee late night discussions, amazing early morning coffee on the balcony and cousins running around planning highjinks every minute of the day. The boys talk daily about this part of the trip and are at least as excited as we are about the visiting family together. I think they will also love the chance to see so many ancient and beautiful sights but, they have no concept of that kind of a trip. I have tried to explain a couple of times what an amazing thing it would be to see Da Vinci's work in person or walk around the Colosseum but the boys seem kind of meh about that whole aspect, but they have no scope and also no experience. It might hit them once we are there....or, (and I must be prepared for this) it might never strike them as particularly cool. This is our trip really, they are along and we hope to draw them into the wonder and joy whenever possible but they have their own adult life and travel futures ahead of them too. Its easy to make your kids the focus and forget that this is your one life and the best thing is sometimes to live your own life with intention and gusto and let them watch.

Calling My Sisters In The Eye Of The Storm

2017-03-08T01:48:00.001-05:00

Last night I made my first ever trip to the Emergency Room with Pom. A glass floor lamp fell on him and cut open his lip in two spots and it took a little while to clot. He wouldn't hold still and let me examine it for glass and was really panicking so, older brothers and I rushed around the house collecting extra shoes and my purse and everyone's jackets and made a panicky little trip to our local ER. He was fine. No stitches, no glass in the cut.

This afternoon a close friend's little toddler had a serious finger laceration and a we had a mutual shaky stomach prayer session over jerky texts. It flooded me right back into that scary spot I was in last night. I was so taken back in by the undertow of the feeling that I stopped what I was doing and told the women who happened to be around me and we stood there with mama tears in our eyes and prayed out all our worries and then hugged each other and hugged each other some more.

Then this evening another close pal reported that she was just in a serious accident and although the car is smashed up and she is feeling very wobbly emotionally....they are all okay. Whew.

I am tempted to say that it is all too much. Enough with the emergencies and the accidents and feeling vulnerable as a mama. Sheesh! But, you know....I was talking to my new friends today at our homeschool co-op and we were discussing emergencies and I mentioned that I sometimes worry about who to call if I need a hand, if I can't reach my husband, if I have to troubleshoot a scenario that's scary...and we all laughed when I realized out loud that the right people to call are the other women, patiently listening to me and also dealing with this kind of thing. We mamas have to have each other's backs. Its great if you have a spouse who is willing to field questions from his desk at work or a mother-in-law who can drop everything and come over to drive you to the doctor but when in doubt, a person who is in that same boat and knows that mama panic personally is the right person to call. There's something very bonding and healing about going through emergencies together, about the feminine connective instinct to nurture which echoes and calms your own reflexes and about the community of collective feminine experience open to your needs in a moment of desperation. I certainly have no desire to wish more emergencies on my community but, I'd love to be equipped to help my sisters in the neighborhood and the other mamas in my co-op. I'd also love to build an instinct to call another woman or two when things are rough and plan to lean in to the safety net of others when I emergencies crop up.

Sitting here thinking about this way I want to live made me remember the time last summer when my next door neighbor lady had an emergency and I happened to see the rescue vehicles arrive. I peeked over the fence nervously and smiled and waved at her when she was scared and I ended up helping her call her daughter, bringing her a cup of calming tea and just sitting with her and giving her hugs until her daughter arrived. I forgot that I did that for her and how good it felt. If it felt good to me then I have remember that it will be just as powerful for others when I let them help me. Yes, I only have one car, I don't have medical training, I don't know the area super well but, I know people who can help with all those concerns....and I can provide Bandaids, mugs of soothing tea or lend my phone out to a mama who needs help. Lets have each other's backs, lets call when we are scared and lets quite trying to be self-sufficient and step into interdependence. This is womanhood.

Springtime Shifts

2017-02-11T02:12:00.000-05:00

Its been a good winter....again, and I am loping on into a New Year, February already a new notch in my belt. There are big fat buds on the apple tree that leans over our fence, the snails are out doing war with the cole crops in my garden every night and the acacia trees are flouncing along with their yellow blossoms all down the freeways. Its the first of the really solidly spring blooms...before the poppies are spilling down the hills like orange sprinkles or the bottle brush trees are a standing in fierce crimson array on every street corner. So wonderful to live in a place where winter means green, and lush and damp fog laden moss. I have to get my tail down to the redwoods again, haven't been for a couple of shameful months...the trees call in this kind of weather.

I have noticed that in the waste space along the freeways there are some old forgotten orchard trees...I saw them for the first time last year and assumed they were cherries but missed a chance to go see them close up because we were so busy with baseball. They are just opening to peak bloom right now and I managed to park and run over to check some out on a side street near an overpass. They are not cherries, but maybe some kind of plum or peach. I am curious to see what/ if any fruit develops as the summer goes on. Lovely to feel homey enough where I live to be able to start picking out little curiosities like that to keep tabs on.

I am starting to feel pretty settled. I have places for most everything in the house, I am starting to feel like our possessions are trimmed down to an amount that more closely match this space. I have people to call in case we are trouble, know the neighbors, have the mailman's name down and even occasionally run into folks we know at the grocery store. Its such a good feeling to nest in more firmly and feel the amazing mix of wonder at the novelties but comfort over the known.

Spring is coming and I am working on tuning up my life and schedule...working out all the little ways things can be tweaked and adjusted and let go and removed. Isn't it wonderful to remember that we are the stewards of our own lives?

Here's What's New Right Now:

I have been making meals for families with new babies or sick members at our church and homeschool group as a little way to contribute to the community.
I am cutting back on fruit and coffee and going back to a more strict interpretation of paleo eating.
I am trying a new sleep schedule (to bed before my husband) to try to get 8 hours and still have morning quiet time alone.
Minimization has come back into my life in a firm manner.
Watching the boys play piano is inspiring and I have been planning to get my fiddle back out for tune up and learning.
I am painting weekly now thanks to standing babysitter dates.
We are not doing baseball this spring.
Taking Zumba in addition to yoga.
I am signing up for another year with Classical Conversations.
We are planning a big trip to Italy this spring!
I cut a bunch of length off my hair after it kept breaking and breaking.

What are you shifting and changing in your life this season?

Electric Blankets, Furnaces and Other Warm Thoughts

2017-01-18T01:30:00.000-05:00

Our furnace has made me so glad that we live in California. The wires got chewed by rodents and suddenly everything flickered and then cooled down to a rather brisk temperature. At first we thought maybe the kids were messing with the thermostat but we quickly realized that it was something bigger than that and our heat was caput. Its usually pretty warm here and the cool temp in the winter is usually kind of 60ish but its been in the 30's at night and the 50's during the day this week. This morning when I got up to make breakfast I could see my breath in the kitchen. I was laughing over the fact that I live in California and I was turning on the oven and standing there rubbing my hands over the opened door before I started breakfast. It feels so cold when your body has become used to 60-70 degrees all of the time.

It does feel rather seasonal though! I have to say that I grew up pretty prepared for this. It makes me think of wood fires and power outages, stacking logs by the cookstove and getting into bed with our coats on when we came home from a trip away during the winter. There's something good about learning to be a little bit tough. Coffee and tea are amazing when its a frosty 40 something in your kitchen. Also, snuggling with your man never felt more alluring.

A bought me a heating pad for Christmas, though I am embarrassed to admit that this California girl wanted one in the very worst way. It has been the most delicious treat to slip it into my spot under the quilt and turn it on as I do that last pick-ups around the house and brush my teeth. By the time I get into bed, its made my side of the bed into a glowing little oasis. I am now contemplating an electric blanket.

My grandma had electric blankets, I think she really was the only person I knew who had them. I sometimes could use one when I slept overnight at her house. She would let me have one but I couldn't sleep with it on all night. We would go to sleep in side by side twin beds, the wind off of Lake Michigan making the gentle whoosing sound that it always does. I would lie under that electric blanket and we would make gentle conversation together before sleep: "What do you think we should do tomorrow?" or "What shall we have for breakfast?" It was always a little bit of a guessing game with Grandma, trying to think of something that would be special and make her feel inspired but nothing too demanding or rich feeling which she would never have been okay with. My grandma was a slightly imposing woman who wanted to be seen and elegant and illustrious but practical and frugal at the same time. I would float my ideas her way in the quiet room, both of us tucked in up to our chins, while the waves outside shushed rhythmically. She would mostly listen to me and then say. "Aha!" in response like she often did when I told her my plans or my thoughts. And then pretty soon she'd tell me that it was time to turn out the light and she'd remind me to turn off my electric blanket with a click, we'd goodnight each other and then I was lying there in the dark, wiggling my toes under the fading warmth and listening to the waves rock me to sleep.