Painting, Playing #SmallWonder Link-Up

Sophia asked for art supplies for her tenth birthday and a friend dropped off a huge bag filled to overflowing a few days later.  “I should’ve asked for art supplies for my birthday!” I said, admittedly jealous.  She opened them that night and sprawled them all around the living room floor.  But in the days and weeks after, they sat in her room untouched.    

“When are you going to paint?” I asked the one night after dinner. 

“When I think of something really good to paint,” she said.

“Then you’re never going to do it,” I said.  She huffed and shot me a deflated look. 

“I don’t mean you can’t make something great,” I said, “It’s just, if you wait until you have something great to make, you’ll never do it.” 

She shrugged.

The next time we went to the library I stumbled across a book, Painting Lab for Kids.  Each project focused on a specific skill set.  The ideas were bright, fun, and encouraged experimentation.  I grabbed it for me among the usual stack of Geronimo Stilton and Super Heroes for the boys as well as Sophia’s stack of Nature Encyclopedias.  I looked through my painting book quickly one night before bed and saw Sophia paging through it later the next day.    

Then one random night in the middle of the week I pulled out the book, some hand-me-down canvases, and dug in.  The project I chose involved layering thick swaths of paint in different colors, swirling, then scraping them to make designs.  I tried it once, it was interesting.  I tried again. 

Dipping and scraping, I used an old driver’s license to smear paint, while the kids swirled in and out of the kitchen.    

“What are you making?” they asked.  

“I’m just playing,” I said.  And I was. 

I took a toothpick and carved elaborate flowers in the wet colors.  Then I painted over it, hoping it would somehow show through.  It didn’t and I moved on.  I found a glass jar and began stamping circles, twisting the jar upside-down in two shades of blue.  I liked it, so I kept going.

“What are you doing?” my daughter said.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “I’m just playing.  Why don’t you pick one of the pages and try it too?” 

Miracle of miracles, she did. 

The technique she chose didn’t work terribly well and she grew frustrated, but I kept minding my own business.  “You can always paint over it if you don’t like it,” I said, over and over again. 

Finally, she loosened up.  In the end she found a color scheme she liked, swirling greens, yellows and oranges on the canvas.  She grew pleased with her painting when she stopped forcing it and started playing.  No longer so focused on the outcome, she began to enjoy the process.

 

We were just playing. 

It’s been a week or two since then and I'm feeling the urge to paint again.  I’m eyeing those canvases, wondering if I have the chutzpa to start all over again, painting over the old with something new.  

*   *   *   *

Only 16 spaces left!  I'm super excited to be joining with Andi Cumbo-Floyd and Shawn Smucker to organize a weekend writer's retreat this summer at God's Whisper Farm in the beautiful mountains of Virginia.  Visit Andi's website for more info!

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.  

What if we chose to deliberately look for small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God?  

That's my proposal - that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  You're invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder.  Don't worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right - you're welcome to come as you are.  

While you're here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.   

Resilience (#SmallWonder Link-up)

Resilience

Across the street winter rye,

tall and green, shimmers and ripples

in the breeze.  Heavy rains bend

random patches, large swaths flattened

like giant deer beds.  A thunder storm

with wind and rain beats down long

rows across the street.  Paths,

not of destruction, but of bending to

a stronger force.  When the sun returns

the bent rye rises and stands again.

Friends, #SmallWonder will be taking the week off as summer begins and my family and I head to VA to farm sit at God's Whisper Farm.  We'll gather again on Monday, June 13th.  

*   *   *   *

I'm super excited to be joining with Andi Cumbo-Floyd and Shawn Smucker to organize a weekend writer's retreat this summer at God's Whisper Farm in the beautiful mountains of Virginia.  Visit Andi's website for more info!

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.  

What if we chose to deliberately look for small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God?  

That's my proposal - that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  You're invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder.  Don't worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right - you're welcome to come as you are.  

While you're here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.   

Establishing Summer Norms (We Don't Lick Each Other!) #SmallWonder Link-up

This is Isaiah,offering me some of his ice cream cone.  

He must have been about 2 years old.  Check out those sweet curls! 

(I'm re-sharing this post from 2014 as we gear up for summer here again.  The twins graduate from preschool this Wednesday and the older kids are out June 1st.  It's such an incredible time of change and transition for work-at-home Moms like me involving fun and memories as well as a dramatically increased workload.  Lord have mercy!)  

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 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 (it's 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. 

*   *   *   *

I'm super excited to be joining with Andi Cumbo-Floyd and Shawn Smucker to organize a weekend writer's retreat this summer at God's Whisper Farm in the beautiful mountains of Virginia.  Visit Andi's website for more info!

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.  

What if we chose to deliberately look for small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God?  

That's my proposal - that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  You're invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder.  Don't worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right - you're welcome to come as you are.  

While you're here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.   

The Worst Mommy (#SmallWonder Link-up)

(That's my girl.  She turned 10 this Friday!)

I’m up to my eyeballs in laundry when my almost ten-year-old pops into the room.  She’s been outside jumping, running, and playing with her brothers while I whirl between cooking dinner and the endless sorting and folding of clothes. 

“I’m going to try to start calling you ‘Mom,’” she says, “instead of ‘Mommy.’”

My heart lurches as though she’s announced a plan to move to Australia in the morning, to join the circus, to fly far, far, away from me. 

“Oh,” I say, casual as we mothers must be when feelings are on the line, “why?”

I don’t remember her reasoning exactly, but in essence, it’s time to put ‘Mommy’ aside.  Then she hops onto the toilet, continuing our conversation with the door wide open. 

“Remember when I told you to stop calling me ‘Mommy’?” I ask. 

“Yes!” she exclaims, “Why did you do that?!”

It was when we still lived on Franklin Street and she was five, maybe six at most.  I was overwhelmed with All. The. Kids. we had so suddenly, so unexpected.  In a fit of frustration one day I told her to stop calling me Mommy and call me Mom instead.  She burst into tears at the thought and I immediately recognized I was a Truly Awful Mother.  Beginning to relent, I asked, “Why is it so important to you?” Leaning in for a hug, with tears in her eyes, she told me, “It just feels more comfortable.”  

Even a Truly Awful Mother couldn’t argue with that.    

Standing outside the bathroom I’m relieved she remembers the incident, relieved for a chance to explain myself.  “Oh Sophia,” I exclaim, “I don’t know.  I think I was just tired of everyone needing me so much all the time.  I just wanted someone to need less of me."  "You have the Worst Mommy,” I add, grateful for a chance to take the blame.

She laughs and I do too.

  

*   *   *   *

I'm super excited to be joining with Andi Cumbo-Floyd and Shawn Smucker to organize a weekend writer's retreat this summer at God's Whisper Farm in the beautiful mountains of Virginia.  Visit Andi's website for more info!

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.  

What if we chose to deliberately look for small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God?  

That's my proposal - that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  You're invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder.  Don't worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right - you're welcome to come as you are.  

While you're here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.   

Cooped Up (#SmallWonder Link-up)

(Painting, "Cooped Up" by Lawrence J. Davis)

They were closed in for almost a week.  The new flock, used to living free-range with their former owner, needed time to recognize their new home.  We didn’t want to risk them wandering off.  

“Keep them cooped for two weeks, at least,” a friend said.  “Three, even,” another added. 

So we shut them into the 10x20 room with the nesting boxes and roosting bars, with straw scattered on the concrete floor and food and water readily accessible.  I visited three, four times a day, checking for eggs, changing water, adding food and offering treats like orange slices, stale cereal and popcorn. 

“Peep, peep,” I said, opening the door, teaching them our “call” and to associate coming to me with reward. 

They seemed happy, secure and settling over the first several days. Then the rain set in and hopes of letting them out to wander the yard under a protective eye, vanished. 

The daily egg count dropped.  They broke out once, then again, when we didn’t latch the door securely. 

By day six, they looked pretty desperate.  The mood in the coop was tense and agitated.  When I approached the door one bird, always the same one, flew at the window.  I imagine she was hoping to escape, but it felt like she was flying at my face.  I was irrationally scared entering the coop, like they were a teaming mob ready to turn on me with a moment’s notice.    

They were “cooped up.” 

I thought of how often I’ve said that phrase with no real experience of its meaning.  I thought of the endless stream of snow days, the rainy days and weeks of summer when the kids and I are trapped together at home.  It often seems good and even refreshing at first.  Then, slowly, the atmosphere changes.  We grow tense, desperate.

Tending the chickens, I hear old words and phrases anew. 

I’ve seen a broody hen, how she looks thin and worn, refusing to leave the nest even if the eggs she sits on are unfertilized.  Now I know the word brooding - the way we sometimes worry ourselves sick over things that may never bear fruit - in a new way.  I watch them hunt and peck for grain and bugs in the grass and I see it is exactly the same pause, lunge, repeat method that new typists employ on an unfamiliar keyboard.  I see the marks left by their feet in the dirt and realize the accuracy of describing my oldest boy’s terrible handwriting as “chicken scratch.”   

Every one of these awakenings brings a ping of delight, “Ah-ha!  That’s what we mean.”    

This is what I love about doing new things - this recognition of the way the material world connects, is wedded to, the immaterial and how language spans that gap between the two.  Words strung like beads on a nearly invisible thread connect experiences into a cluster of meaning.  Finding that thread, fingering the beads that line it, is, for me, a source of endless joy and delight.   

P.S. Saturday we built a good sized outdoor "run" over green grass and the girls are no longer "cooped" except at night.  Since our run isn't terribly secure, I get a good bit of exercise chasing escaped birds morning, noon and night!

*   *   *   *

I'm super excited to be joining with Andi Cumbo-Floyd and Shawn Smucker to organize a weekend writer's retreat this summer at God's Whisper Farm in the beautiful mountains of Virginia.  Visit Andi's website for more info!

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.  

What if we chose to deliberately look for small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God?  

That's my proposal - that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  You're invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder.  Don't worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right - you're welcome to come as you are.  

While you're here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.   

The Birthday Flock (#SmallWonder Link-up)

We stuffed them into boxes marked “Smirnoff Ice” and “Captain Morgan’s,” small boxes, free from the local liquor store.  John cut air holes on the ride across town, slicing with his utility knife in the passenger seat while I drove. 

When we arrived at the farm, the chickens, still cooped from the night before and anxious to range, were furious at being boxed one-by-one.  Four of us worked together - grab a chicken, tuck it in a box.  Press down and close the lid, folding the flaps one under the other.  Repeat.

We emailed over a dozen times with the owner who was selling a flock of sixteen at the beginning of the week.  She asked for pictures of our yard, our coop, she delayed making a decision.  Frustrated, we joked she was going to ask for tax returns and references next.  “They’re pets,” she said in the craigslist ad and on email, “These girls are loved.”  One by one, though, her free-range flock was being eaten by predators.  It dwindled to twelve by the time we got there.  One night they watched a fox take one out in the field and her son, twelve, ran to get his pellet gun, but it was too late.  

The birds thrashed and squawked and the boxes, weakened by the overly large air holes, gave under the pressure.  One then another bird toppled their way to escape, so we cornered and dove and the birds’ owner grabbed two by the tail feathers and we figured maybe we didn’t need to be quite as gentle as we’d thought.  Finally we had five birds in boxes and five in a borrowed dog pen.  Two baby polish hens traveled in their own cage.  The adult birds settled as soon as we started driving, but the babies cried a steady stream of peeps. 

With the back seats out, we had a van packed to the gills with chickens and it smelled like it too.  Back home, we stuffed a quick lunch in our faces and went to ready the coop.  Coco sniffed wildly and whined at the van, her tail wagging, eyes pleading.  Then we unpacked the girls, unloading all of the boxes and crates into the coop, and opening them one by one.  They settled in quickly, happy to find their old nesting boxes and piled in two and three at a time to lay eggs for the day.  Because the new coop is big enough to stand in I heard, for the first time, the low purring noise, almost like a growl, they make just before laying an egg. 

The Polish Girls, still in their cage, we tucked into our old chicken coop so they could explore the place.  They’re gray and black speckled with an outlandish white bouffant of feathers on their head.  Later, three of our kids came home and met their newest pets.  That night when Solomon returned from a playdate, he squatted in the dark and rain to look at the Polish hens.  “That one’s mine,” he exclaimed, “I love it with all my heart!” 

Today I’ve had second thoughts and I’m not sure how long this egg production business will last.  There’s a lot of poop involved – that’s the main thing.  But John and I talked about our pets on the way home yesterday, the cats and dog and hens. 

“I really enjoy animals,” I said. 

“Yeah,” he said, “I noticed.”

I told him about watching our tomcat Blackie and the dog, Coco, this spring.  When the weather turned warm for a few unexpected days in March, I felt a sudden pressure to be Out and Active.  But I didn’t know how to be in the yard, what to do, and the twins too seemed at a loss.  Perplexed and discomforted, I watched the cat, though, and the dog, how they sauntered out sniffing the air and pausing every couple of steps.  They laid in the sun, rolled in the grass.  They stretched their way slowly into spring, leisurely shedding winter and opening, as the whole world does in spring, toward a new season.  Watching them, I found freedom to do the same.  

This morning I got to church just in time to hear the tail end of the sermon.  I can’t vouch for the rest of it, but the final slide, the one I saw, was about birds and joy and the songs they sing, the songs we sing.  Chickens don’t sing, per say, but I now know they growl and purr over their nests.  That’s what I thought about when we sang Joy to the World for our closing song, when we repeated the line about “wonders of his love” over and over again in the fourth and final verse.     

*   *   *   *

I'm super excited to be joining with Andi Cumbo-Floyd and Shawn Smucker to organize a weekend writer's retreat this summer at God's Whisper Farm in the beautiful mountains of Virginia.  Visit Andi's website for more info!

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.  

What if we chose to deliberately look for small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God?  

That's my proposal - that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  You're invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder.  Don't worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right - you're welcome to come as you are.  

While you're here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.   

Seeing Better (#SmallWonder Link-Up)

"I could die tomorrow,” I told her.  “Without ever having pink glasses.”

The sales associate looked at me with her head cocked, eyebrows raised and conceded the point. 

I’ve had the same small, brown glasses frames since 2011. I chose them not long before the twins were born in that end-of-pregnancy flurry of getting everything done before life changes irrevocably.  Dentist? Check.  Glasses? Check. 

In the exam room the optometrist looked up, surprised, from his chart.  “This says I haven’t seen you since 2013?” he asks. 

“Yep.” I reply.

“And you bought contacts then?  How often do you change them?  Do you have any left?”  He voice conveys incredulity.

“Well, yeah.  I don’t wear my contacts much.”  I fumble through my memory bank, drawing a blank.  “I don’t know,” I finally reply, “I had twins, so the last couple of years are a little blurry.” 

The answer seems to satisfy. 

In the sales room, a young woman follows me around among the frames.  I ask her what’s “in” these days and she tells me bigger plastic frames. 

“What are you looking for?” she asks, calm and detached behind her half-framed lenses of dark blue metal.  Her dark hair is long and perfectly straight. 

“I want something fun,” I said, “some color.”

What I really wanted, before I even walked in the door, was pink glasses.  I wanted happy glasses, but I wasn’t sure I dared get them.  What if I made a mistake?    

I feel like a failure when the optometrist pulls up letters I can’t read.  Blinking, I watch letters flip and wiggle like so many small black ants waving their legs.  I make random guesses, occasionally upping my odds by offering two answers at once.  “Um, I think it’s an E . . . or a P?”  One line I cannot read at all.  The exam room is so strangely intimate, dimly lit, with the optometrist scooting around on his rolling stool, peering into my eyes with a little light that he moves in circles like a magic wand.   

My left eye, weak as ever, has worsened again, but, good news, I’m not yet in need of bifocals. 

Back in the sale’s room, the associate hands me purple glasses and offers red.  But I don’t want purple glasses, purple glasses don’t make me happy and red glasses bring to mind Sally Jesse Raphael (please tell me I’m not the only one who remembers THAT).  Then she motions toward an almost translucent light pink pair, but before she can pick them up, I say, “I think I had those glasses in fourth grade and I don’t really want to go back to that.”

In the end, I whittle it down to two pairs, identical in shape, one navy blue and the other a cheery magenta.  Both frames have funky squiggly patterns in complementary colors along the temples.  Both pairs are cute, but the blue look better on me.

Still, I hem and haw.  A second associate is called over.  She put the glasses on her own face for me.  “See,” she says, “these blue ones kinda blend in but with the pink ones, the frames are all you see.”  I see what sees and know she's right.  Then she adds a third pair into the mix, shaped like the others, but in a deeper shade of purple.  "These make a nice compromise," she says.  But her well-intended suggestion only further confuses things for me.    

I circle the room, I sit again and slip frames off and on. 

“I’m turning forty in a year,” I tell the original associate, “maybe these will be my mid-life crisis glasses.”  I'm only half-joking.  Do I like the pink glasses or do I only like the ‘idea’ of pink glasses? 

“You’ll want to think about the clothes you wear too, not just what you have one today,” the second woman adds. 

“But pink goes with everything, right?” I ask, “Except for red?”

The younger woman agrees. “Pink goes with everything in my book,” she says.  I find her patience endearing.

I apologize for taking so long.  Then, finally, “I want the pink ones,” I say, scrunching my face up as if to offer an apology.

“I knew you did,” she says.  

(I knew I did too.)  

(Friends - it's my birthday this week!  Hop over to my facebook page to see a picture of me in my new glasses and, if you haven't done so already, LIKE MY PAGE.  I've been hovering near 600 page likes for a long time now and there's nothing I'd like more for my birthday than to finally cross that 600 mark.  Thanks!)
   

*   *   *   *

I'm super excited to be joining with Andi Cumbo-Floyd and Shawn Smucker to organize a weekend writer's retreat this summer at God's Whisper Farm in the beautiful mountains of Virginia.  Visit Andi's website for more info!

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.  

What if we chose to deliberately look for small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God?  

That's my proposal - that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  You're invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder.  Don't worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right - you're welcome to come as you are.  

While you're here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.