We Don't Lick Each Other (The British are Coming!)

 

There are times, as a parent, when you need to establish norms. 

Simple things like the appropriate surfaces for disposing of boogers, whether one may or may not fart on other people, and whether spontaneously licking another human being is ever appropriate.    

So when, for instance, I see Levi lick his brother’s check, I make a firm and direct proclamation, “We don’t lick each other!” 

Or when someone picks their nose while I’m reading to them at bed time and proceeds to wipe it on the wall, I might say, “We don’t wipe our boogers on the wall.” 

As I said, sometimes you need to establish norms. 

While other families may do as they please (Licking? Why, yes, please.   Booger’s on the wall?  Of course, that’s fine art to me!) we here are choosing to dance to a different drum. 

//

“Only 19 and ½ more days of school!” my daughter said.

She may as well have been Paul Revere screaming his midnight warning, so great was my alarm. 

Good God, I thought, where have I been? What’s happened?  The hour draweth nigh!

The British, indeed, are coming. 

The British are coming and they are demanding to be entertained, to be vacation-bible-schooled and swim-lessoned, to be play-dated and day-tripped and, good Lord, I am unprepared. 

Nineteen and a half more days and me without a plan.

//

So I decided to establish some norms.

We are doing SLOW this summer.  We are eating ice cream on the porch and watching storms move through.  We are catching fireflies (if we let them stay up late enough) and getting bored enough to use our imaginations.  We are camping in the back yard because it is FREE and state-parking because it also is FREE. 

We are doing KINDNESS, which is a spacious sort of thing that pairs well with SLOW and the NON-LICKING of other people.  It will take practice and there will be sure-misses, but KINDNESS is also free and I plan to help us all be prodigal in its dispensation by the time fall rolls around.

We are practicing GENTLENESS which, good Lord, is a long enough word to be out of fashion these days, but necessary also for when our KINDNESS slips and SLOW starts to feel like stagnation.  We will not hit when we are farted on, though we may hit (its reflexive) if we are bitten. 

We are doing HOME this summer, because we’ve waited so long to find one and because having a home means making one which isn’t something that can be done without a little presence.  We will be HOME and unhappy and scraping the boogers off the wall.  Then we will still be HOME and laughing as we tell about the ones who ate their boogers and the ones who used them to decorate.  We will be HOME when the first hail storm tears through and when the first peas are ripe for picking.  We will be HOME for skinned knees and sibling frustrations, HOME for sharing and collaboration. 

We will ALL work hard, because I'm not a martyr in the making and we will knock-off before the work is done because, let's face it, it will never really be done. 

We will do vacation bible school and swim lessons and vacation, but they are not our norms, not the hub that holds the spokes of our summer together. 

The British are coming, but don’t worry, it’s ok.  There’ll be almost no licking, I promise. 

What are your family’s summer norms? 

Sucker-Punch (a story of Openness and Vulnerability)

I was so grateful a few weeks ago to receive an invitation from Amber Cadenas to write something for her blog, Beautiful Rubbish: the everyday art of learning to see.  Amber's running a series of guest posts under the topic "Tales of Beauty from the Rubbish Heap," in which she's asking several writer friends to write about story of redemption or beauty found in unexpected places.  Today I'm writing a little more of the "behind the scenes" story of how we found, then lost, then found again this old farm house.  

*   *   *

We wrote an offer on a big old farm house – a solid, happy looking place with great bones, two acres and a “tenant house” – the day after Christmas 2013.  Then we waited a week for the bank representative to return from vacation and reply to our offer.   

This was the fourth house we bid on over an eight month period.  We'd been through enough ups and downs to be cautious, but this time around we were very, very excited.  We tried to simmer down about it, but one day I brought home a stack of Organic gardening magazines I found on the free shelves at the local library, then my husband started researching chickens on-line.  Soon I was scanning Craigslist for the cabinets and fixtures needed to bring the place up to speed for a family of six.  

But it wasn’t until the last day, the day before we would hear back, that I really let myself get excited.

It felt so right . . .

 

Follow me over to Amber's place to read the rest of this surprising story, won't you? And while you're there, be sure to click around to get a flavor for her writing.  Thanks so much, Amber for this lovely opportunity!

 

Photo credit: www.jeremybinns.com 

This is a Mother's Love

God is the source of all love; whenever we show love, whenever we experience love, we are experiencing an aspect of God.  For me, the role of mother, as one who loves and is loved, has been a revelation of many aspects of God's love.  The following piece, gracefully published by SheLoves Magazinel explores the texture of this mothering love which reveals one small yet important aspect of God's deep, unyielding love for us.

 *   *   *

“...the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.” – Gerard Manley Hopkins

Silent and still, like a gray stone nestled inside the evergreen, she is almost but not quite hidden from the world. Tucked in and under, behind the bushy green branches, a Mourning Dove sits on a nest like none I’ve ever seen. Wide and spacious, it opens out around her like a cupped hand holding her body, her warmth, her eggs.

She caught my eye one day gathering sticks near the foundation of our house. Her body, soft and gray, moved with purpose: picking, choosing her wares before flying to the pine tree, then back again for more. Later, my kids confirmed the nest and the eggs it held: her treasure, hidden.

Waiting for the bus with my older kids one morning, chilled by April’s soggy wind and rain, I think of her sheltered there. What wisdom led her, I wonder, to that place of safety, that tiny harbor within the boughs of the evergreen tree?

Click HERE to continue reading and leave a comment over at the SheLoves site.  

Gratitude (the first day of shorts weather)

. . . for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his. . . 

- Gerard Manly Hopkins

 

Long and leggy, doe-eyed, 

she walks with confidence, 

a gentle fawn, a young colt.

He is all angles, sharp protrusions, 

limbs like the branches

of a young tree.

They both wear socks 

pulled up high because 

they don't know any better.

 

And then there are the little ones.  

Isaiah with his gentle roundness - 

a gum drop, a plum, a dumpling, we say

searching for words to express.

Levi, bare-chested in the sun

his shoulders thrown back, goggles on,

he stands on the picnic table, "working."

These ones pad along on bare feet, 

toes like ripe berries,

soft and sweet, fresh.

 

It is the first day of shorts weather,

the beginning of shoe-less summer

and all around me limbs unveil 

earth's sweetness, lovely.  

This post is linked with Five Minute Fridays on the prompt "Grateful." Click over to read more posts.

Settling in to Spaciousness

I’m still tip-toeing around this place like an uncertain guest.  Stopping to pause at every window, checking to see that the sky is still there.  

Stepping across the road to retrieve the mail, the old corn field opens before me like the ocean.  Waves of grain lap at my feet and the sense of spaciousness is palpable, there in that vertigo moment on the edge.  Walking out across our own field with the twins, I feel conspicuous, exposed, as a hawk glides against the clear blue sky above us.  

One early visit, before the big move, we found evidence of the hawk’s appetites.  A squirrel’s tail, tufts of feathers and fluff scattered under a giant pine tree.  I wonder about the chickens we’ll keep and the kitten (s) I hope to have one day, I picture them crossing the field under that narrowed eye. 

 

//

There’s a Mourning Dove building a nest in the smallest of the pines, a fluffy overgrown Christmas tree.  She lands near the base of the house gathering the exact pieces she needs to build a safe place for her eggs.

We all hang close to the house, garage, retreat, these things seem more familiar somehow and I work, spiraling through in expanding circles, to make them more familiar yet.  The sound of laundry in the dryer, the smell of peppers, onions and garlic sauteed, these are the twigs and leaves with which I line my nest.

//

Last night, while I swung on the old porch swing, Isaiah found a bird’s egg, a small pinkish orb.  I expected it to feel like air in the palm of my hand, the nothingness that it was, but it carried a weight of its own.  It was cold to the touch and showed just the tiniest sign of impact. 

The egg that fell, lost from love and life was found again with much rejoicing, no matter its sorry state. 

//

Just before dinner we pull out a kite, a cheap plastic red and black ladybug and I watch from the driveway’s macadam as John throws the bright flag wind-ward, tossing it toward heaven until it catches on breath unseen.  The four of them spin there in the open field, faces lifted toward that bright blue while the bit of red soars, dancing.  Isaiah runs in giddy circles, then falls to the grass, rolling, as Levi and I walk out hand-in-hand to join them.  

Something ancient in us whispers there is danger in wide, open spaces, but a deeper voice draws us to the edge.  There is another eye that watches; the hawk is not the only one and we too were made for soaring. 

This post is linked with Playdates With God. and Chronicles of Grace.

In a Direction Unexpected (a Birthday Reflection)

 

Thirty More Years, by Wendell Berry

When I was a young man,
grown up at last, how large
I seemed to myself! I was a tree,
tall already, and what I had not,
yet reached, I would yet grow
to reach.  Now, thirty more years
added on, I have reached much 
I did not expect, in a direction
unexpected.  I am growing downward,
smaller, one among the grasses.

April's showers are hanging on with tenacity even now, as time's hand is poised to turn the calendar's page.  Today, April 30th, is my birthday and the day promises to be every bit as gray as the day before, with wind, rain and even thunder.  There are flood warnings in effect and roads coming and going are sure to be closed, but I'm grateful to be spared the wind tunnels that have made their way through the south and midwest this past week.  

April does not seem to want to let go gracefully.

The Red Bud tree by our old house, the one that was always in bloom for my special day, is waiting still to open its blossomed fingers.  This I know because I drove by the old neighborhood the other evening, marveling at its smallness, the cramped corners on which we lived.  

I've long loved this Wendell Berry poem and its words resonate this year as I feel poised between the pages of my life.  Three years ago I was surprised by the doubling of our family, the exponential expansion of my role as mother.  And now here I sit, just days after registering those two tornado boys for a small and local preschool this fall.  Two hours, two mornings a week and freedom is looming on the horizon (hallelujah!). 

"In a direction unexpected," Berry says and I nod my head amen.  

Looking up these three years later I can't help but wonder at the way life moves us along, quiet streams unexpectedly expanded by torrential showers and we are carried somewhere new - made into someone new - just like that it seems.

//

"I think it's just that we keep getting slapped in the face by how hard life actually is," I said over plates heaped with ham and potatos, corn and fresh greens.  We were talking about this valley of middle life (which you may say I've yet to reach) and how it sucks the air right out of you with its sometimes fierce wind and rain, the kind of weather that moves through like a locomotive.  

We wondered whether it was because we were coddled as children, not the way children are today (of course) but sheltered none-the-less.  But now, some days out from that conversation, I know we have no one to blame for the way life hits you in the gut.   If we were sheltered it was a gift, a grace, like that garden so long ago and the garden itself and its maker bear no to blame for our leaving.  

//

Glynn Young, posted this poem on his blog the other day:

Unexpected Storm

He was expecting the storm
when it arrived, almost
suddenly, without portent or
warning, simply arising
in front of him.  He held on
as it raged, tearing at his skin,
sharp nails with stinging points.
They found him there, still
holding on.  He did not know
salvation was in letting go.

One of the keys, it seems, to being able to endure the "direction unexpected," is the willingness to let go, which is easier said than done.  

This, I guess, explains the wind and the rain and the rising water, all of the things of life, both good and bad, that push against us, moving us along, out of the narrow channels and into something deeper and wider than what we thought we might find or even want.  

It's out here, in the wilderness, the dessert, the wind-tossed sea, that we find God most often.  Not the small, safe God of our childhood, but the wily One, the One who plays hide and seek among the stars, the One who sings with a voice both deep and wide.  

It is here that we find ourselves again made small, as Berry says, "like one among the grasses." And on the days when our hands are open we can see that this is a good thing, a very good thing indeed.