My parents will be married forty years tomorrow. At first glance, that number reminds me that I'm only a year away from turning forty myself...but that's not what inspires me to write today. I'll save that post for next year, when I'm feeling sorry for my old self.
A couple of years ago, I was looking ahead to their fortieth anniversary and talked with my brother about maybe planning some kind of party for them, but it really isn't their style. My parents are more reserved and prefer attention to be centered squarely on others for big parties. One year I forgot their anniversary and when I asked mom why she didn't remind me, she said "Well, it's not really an occasion for you to remember - it's for your dad and I to celebrate." I've thought about that a lot actually, and I think that I have to disagree.
Forty years of marriage, especially in this day and age, is definitely an accomplishment. And while I know my parents feel like their marriage is their own private occasion to celebrate, the truth is that the life they built these last forty years has had a profound effect on me, and it has been a direct influence in the life I am building for my own family. I have learned so many things from being raised in the environment they made for me, and while I didn't plan some blow-out party, I hope that I can at least celebrate this milestone by doing what I do best - writing about it. I made a list of some of the things I have learned from them.
It Doesn't Matter Where You Live
We moved a lot. A lot. When you are a young teacher, you are the first cut to make when budgets are slashed, and my dad had to deal with that quite a bit in the early years. We went from Salem, SD to Wells, MN to Herreid, SD to Brookings, SD to Blue Earth, MN before I was 10 years old. We lived in every kind of dwelling from mobile home to small house to farm house to apartment and back to house again. I can remember parts and pieces from almost all of them, and the funny thing is, they were all perfectly perfect in my young eyes. I can't remember a single negative thing about ANY of them.
If you ask my mother, she will probably not share that opinion. She absolutely hated the farm house outside of Wells; all I can remember about that house is playing on the tire swing in the yard, wrapping yarn around beautifully colored balls with her in the living room, and that I lost my two front teeth that summer and had to eat sweet corn cut off the cob and I thought that it was pretty special that she would cut it off for me. I only have good memories of that place, and of every other place we lived in - isn't that remarkable? We only lived in that house for a summer before they found us a "better" place, but for the life of me I cannot remember what was wrong with it. Why not? I know why - because when it came to making a HOME for me, my parents took that very seriously.
My dad was working in the Del Monte factory that summer - as an adult I can appreciate that must have been an awful thing, to give up the summer off to make enough money to keep us going. I never felt any kind of financial strain, and to talk with them now I understand there definitely was some financial strain in those years. I just remember that my dad used to sing the opening bars of a particular song to me, and I remember that summer that I asked him to sing the rest of the song so I could hear all of it. What a small memory, perhaps, but the point is that I never felt the hard parts, whatever they were.
As a parent myself, I will occasionally find myself wishing for a bigger/nicer/fancier home - it's important for me to remember that the structure of the home we live in has very little impact on my kids. I would do far more for them to focus on the life I make for them inside.
Give To Others Whenever You Can
Considering now that my parents were by no means wealthy in the monetary sense, it might seem unusual that the idea of giving was so celebrated in our house. Whenever I gave something of myself to someone, whether it be my time, my energy, my hard work, or my talents, my parents quietly praised that action, and slowly over the years I've found that I take real joy in what I can contribute to the people around me. If I were to list all the ways my parents found to better the lives of our friends and neighbors, they would be embarrassed that I called attention to it, so I will refrain from doing so. But my mother loves thinking up ways to do something unexpected for someone, and my dad will shovel out the neighbor before he shovels out his own walk. Those are just small examples, but I lived under that model my whole life and I find that by continuing on that journey, I'm not just enriching the lives of the people around me, I'm giving something to myself as well. I don't believe I'm on this Earth purely to better my own experience here, but also to make it a little bit better for the people around me. (This probably contributes to that Can't Say No condition I suffer from, but at the end of the day I'd rather be accused of doing too much for others than the alternative.)
When You Don't Agree, Do So Respectfully
Everyone fights, everyone argues. There have likely been lots of times in forty years that my parents didn't see eye to eye on things. To their eternal credit, I have never seen my parents have a knock-down drag-out good old-fashioned yelling match ever, in the almost forty years I've been on this Earth. I've seen them disagree; retreat to their respective corners to think it over, then come back together to talk it out. They listen to each other, and while sometimes one or another might "win" the argument, they don't hold grudges and they never let a disagreement affect their bond.
I can't tell you how much this has shaped my own life. I've learned how to fully think through a problem before I try to solve it. I've learned that however valid I think my argument is, the other side is also perfectly valid, and that my own wishes do not out weigh the wishes of others. I have learned that an argument should never cross the line into being personal, and not to let one bad day color any of the others.
If they've ever had it out, they've done it out of my presence, and I'm so grateful for that. I've never seen them be ugly to each other, and it has taught me to have that expectation in my own relationships. I hope I can continue to model that for my kids.
Communicate Your Needs
My parents are very good at letting each other know what they need. From the mundane to the essential, I've listened to them talk to each other and watched them go out of their way for each other for so long, that it's almost like a beautiful dance. There are so many examples to choose from here...my dad is a creature of habit and mom will go to great lengths to keep routines running smoothly for him. My dad makes sure that anytime my mom needs anything, he makes it happen. From stopping at the store on the way home to making sure the car is warmed up and gassed up any time she needs it, there are so many small ways they take care of each other. They can anticipate what the other is needing, without words, and that is no small accomplishment. It isn't always convenient, but they make the effort anyway.
Family First
We have a large extended family, but we live quite a ways away from most of them. With all the moving we did over the years, the four of us became a very tight central unit. Life is full of both highs and lows, and our family has been no stranger to hard times. Through all of it, we had one simple philosophy, and that was to take care of each other. The needs of our family far outweighed any outside influence, and my brother and I often talk about how rare a thing it is to have parents like ours. Every single thing we have ever wanted or tried to do, was met with enthusiastic support from both of our parents. I wonder how many people out there enjoyed that kind of upbringing? We had only to mention a whim or a thought or a wish, and our parents got right behind it. They made so many of our adventures a possibility, not by paying for it, but by helping us figure out how to get it for ourselves.
I wanted to go to Scotland and live for a little while. "Okay, no problem, let's start a savings account this summer." Hey, I changed my major and now I want to be an English teacher, so I need to go to school for another year. "All right, make an appointment with your advisor, I'll call the financial aid office, and let's make it happen." I want to move 14 hours away and risk life and limb to live in the mountains. "Let me help you pack."
Truly, our happiness was ours to make. My parents, if they had an opinion, rarely voiced it unless there was some concern for our health and well-being. (I wish they had warned me about Missouri, but they probably didn't know what a fiasco that would be!) And my brother and I both have led the lives we have truly wanted to live, with no strings or ties to hold us back.
Laugh A Lot
Our family has a dry, dark, and sometimes strange sense of humor. I think it comes from all those years of close togetherness. We don't get a chance to be a foursome all that often anymore, but when we do, we laugh. And laugh. At ourselves, at each other, at our choices and our lives. I can remember so many family game nights, and games in the car on trips, and 2 hour phone conversations filled with inside joke after inside joke. There is something magical that happens when the four of us are sitting around the table playing cards, and it will be the legacy they leave behind that I would miss the most. I only have to mention the Spanish Armadillo, and the entire tone of the conversation changes. Get a few drinks in us, and then it gets really interesting. I love those nights more than anything, and I hope I can build that for my own kids as they grow.
Love Each Other
No matter what we say or do or think or feel, we love each other no matter what. It would be so easy to hold on to hurt feelings, much easier than letting them go, but at the root of every thought and action in our lives is love. I know without question that may parents love me desperately. I have always known it, and never doubted it, even when I was making some poor decisions in my teenage years. I can catalog every time I ever let them down, and even when I knew they weren't always happy with me, I never once doubted how much they loved me.
As a parent, I aspire to this and have a great fear of not being able to do it as well as they did. I want my children to walk around in the world with my love for them at the very center of their beings. You can navigate life with such confidence, knowing that in the hard times and the failures, you have a soft place to fall, and someone who loves you even if you royally screw up. They are just a phone call away, and I call them far too often, probably. They celebrate my successes, share in my frustrations, listen quietly to my failures and guide me tirelessly in my uncertainty.
These things, among others, are the legacy of your forty years together, at least as they apply to me. Thank you for making our houses homes, for teaching me to laugh and how to love. Thank you for the strong sense of self and confidence you instilled in me, and thank you for showing me what compromise and a happy marriage should look like. Happy Anniversary...Love, Sara
December 26, 2013
December 12, 2013
Vintage
Yesterday it was Emma's turn to get the mail; when she brought it into the house she held up a catalog from some mail-order department store of sorts, where Everything Is Affordable (In Only 10 Easy Payments of $19.99!)
The kids were kind of amazed at the idea that we could order by mail an entire household of brand-new items. They had a great time poring over the pages and pointing out all kinds of things we should probably have. I think the shine and polish of brand-new appliances and furniture must seem thrilling to my kids, whose house is filled with furnishings of exactly the opposite nature.
I will freely admit that my obsession with vintage might be bordering on pathological. It would be unusual to find a single significant piece that was purchased in the last 10 years. Heck, I am not sure there are very many pieces that were even purchased by ME.
Most of the things that surround me in my home are hand-me-downs from the people we have loved. And every item has a story attached in some significant way. It gives me great comfort to run my hand across my grandmother's table; to wrap myself in an afghan my mother hand-knitted; to put butter in Grandma Dee's butter dish, to drink water out of colored aluminum tumblers from my great-grandma's farm house.
Part of it is a return to my childhood, I think. I used to sit at my Grandma Bartscher's dressing table, delighted at her matching brush and hand mirror, charmed by the silver turtle pincushion that sat on the corner. I remember the crystal bowl she used to serve red jello with bananas, and the green glass lamp with a big brass key that sat on the end table next to the couch where I slept. When you turned the key, the light in the glass threw a ghostly green glow on the floor. One more turn and the brighter bulb above in the shade clicked to life. Grandma always left the green light on in case I needed to get a drink or go to the bathroom. She would check on me in the middle of the night without fail, and in the glow of that green lamp she would tuck the pink velour blanket down around my feet.
I loved that lamp passionately, because I associated it with my grandmother who I loved passionately and lost far too early. And when it was time to clean out my Grandpa's house, I made sure I brought that lamp home. I think a modern designer would shudder at the look of that lamp, but I could never part with it.
I am lucky that I married a man who not only understands this about me, but shares my passion for staying connected to the past. When we go fishing, he brings Grandpa Ted's fishing tackle on every trip. Ted's fishing bifocals are still in the box, and Emma loves to put them on when she is tying tackle. I know that when Aaron smiles at his daughter outfitted in those goofy glasses, he doesn't just see a goofy 9-year old. He's looking through her, like a window to the past where his grandpa sat in the boat with him, tying tackle and teaching him the ins and outs of catching fish. How could I ever replace them with a pair of plastic store-bought glasses, made from a mold, pressed in some factory somewhere and labeled with a bright yellow $9.99 sticker?
I see so much more value in the depression-era quilt that I picked up at an estate auction for five bucks than I do in the down comforter I purchased online for $59.99. I don't even know who made the quilt in this case, but someone somewhere spent hours upon hours hand stitching a scrap quilt, likely created from pieces of their life: a torn dress, an old work shirt, a sheet or a tablecloth. That quilt is batted with real wool, shorn from a sheep - not pressed and filled in a factory in China. That quilt is hanging on a wooden quilt rack my husband made for me himself during our first year of dating. On top of the shelf are three glass bells that came from his grandmother's house and offer a quiet reminder of that great lady who loved him.
What do my children see when they look around our home? Do they see the worn edges of the buffet in the dining room? Do they see the chip out of the edge of that serving bowl? Do they see a stack of blankets that are certainly used, definitely faded, and unraveling a little at the edges? Maybe so. It shouldn't surprise me when they come home from someone else's house and ooh and ahh over their "really nice house." We probably don't have the same "really nice house" that lots of other people have.
I wish they could see what I see. When I get out that serving bowl, I see the hundreds of meals I ate at my grandparent's table. That buffet has traveled through three different family homes, the most recent being my own parents, and has survived many dramatic adventures. And those blankets - well, if you've never made an afghan or a quilt by hand, then you probably have no idea what those mean. I don't see the faded colors, I see my mother sitting wrapped up on the couch, crochet hook in hand, talking about her day with my dad and trying to finish one last row before she heads to bed.
Even my own wedding ring has a story. (Actually, I have 2 wedding rings, and they BOTH have a story.) When I went to look at rings with Aaron so he could get some idea of what I liked, I just never had that pull toward those gigantic sparkly rings that so many women are fond of. They seemed so out-of-place on my hand; like they weren't real, even though the price tag certainly said otherwise.
We went to several jewelers, and finally we stumbled on a small private shop in nearby Salida, Colorado. I just had a feeling when we went in there, and I walked over to a case filled with vintage estate jewelry. My eyes were immediately drawn to a small white gold ring with a square-cut diamond surrounded by intricate engraved scroll work. The jeweler explained he got it from a local woman who had passed away and he purchased her jewelry from the sale of her estate. He knew her personally; it was her wedding ring, and she and her husband had been married 60 years. They had no children to inherit her pieces; he had considered her a great personal friend, and was pleased to be able to pass on her jewelry. I will never forget what he said to me: "she lived her life with great integrity. It was an honor for me to know her." And I knew right then that that ring was meant for me. I knew that the simple, vintage piece with a meaningful history was so much more suited to me than the flashier rings that I had previously seen. Aaron seemed incredulous that this was what I picked out at first, and actually tried to dissuade me. (I think there must be some kind of pride factor involved with what kind of a ring a man puts on a girl's finger, but THIS girl ain't buying that line.) I insisted this was the ring for me, and that is the ring he gave me.
What about the other ring? Well. Outside of Buena Vista is a beautiful mountain called Mt. Antero. It is a mountain with many veins of precious metals and gems lining its interior, and most of it has been privately sectioned off into mining claims. Aaron had gotten friendly with a couple of locals who had mining claims, and he spent some time mining up on Antero with them. It just so happens that my favorite gemstone is aquamarine. And it just so happens that Antero is full of uncut aquamarine. As a surprise wedding gift to me, he gave me a matching aqua ring, necklace, and earrings set in white gold.
The aqua ring is the first spontaneous piece of jewelry he's ever given me; it was mined from the mountain I looked at every morning in the backyard of our first home, in the town I still love desperately. I wear the aqua ring daily, as a reminder of his unexpected thoughtfulness and of our connection to that place.
I watched the kids pore over the pages of that catalog with great amusement, but I felt little pensive at the same time. I want them to understand the value of things that stand the test of time; I don't want them to feel the pressure of "keeping up" with the neighbors or trying to out-shop or out-decorate or out-accessorize their friends. I also don't want them to feel like they live in a thrift store. (ha ha) So I think I need to tell the stories and let them know that these older pieces are pieces of lives that were lived in a time long past. They are threads to the people who made us and reminders of our history.
I will say, that the Kitchenaid Stand Mixer my parents gave me as an early-Christmas present definitely kicks butt over the Black and Decker Dinosaur I'd been using for the last 10 years. So not EVERYTHING has to be old. (I did order it in Vintage Blue, circa 1950, because I still have an image to maintain.) And I've been eyeing a beautiful microsuede sofa sectional for the family room, but so far I just don't have it in me to trade out the white leather sofa we bought in Missouri. The stories from Missouri are of a completely different nature, and while we don't mention those 8 months all that often, the couch is maybe one of the better memories from that crazy adventure. I'm saving that story, though, for another day.
The kids were kind of amazed at the idea that we could order by mail an entire household of brand-new items. They had a great time poring over the pages and pointing out all kinds of things we should probably have. I think the shine and polish of brand-new appliances and furniture must seem thrilling to my kids, whose house is filled with furnishings of exactly the opposite nature.
I will freely admit that my obsession with vintage might be bordering on pathological. It would be unusual to find a single significant piece that was purchased in the last 10 years. Heck, I am not sure there are very many pieces that were even purchased by ME.
Most of the things that surround me in my home are hand-me-downs from the people we have loved. And every item has a story attached in some significant way. It gives me great comfort to run my hand across my grandmother's table; to wrap myself in an afghan my mother hand-knitted; to put butter in Grandma Dee's butter dish, to drink water out of colored aluminum tumblers from my great-grandma's farm house.
Part of it is a return to my childhood, I think. I used to sit at my Grandma Bartscher's dressing table, delighted at her matching brush and hand mirror, charmed by the silver turtle pincushion that sat on the corner. I remember the crystal bowl she used to serve red jello with bananas, and the green glass lamp with a big brass key that sat on the end table next to the couch where I slept. When you turned the key, the light in the glass threw a ghostly green glow on the floor. One more turn and the brighter bulb above in the shade clicked to life. Grandma always left the green light on in case I needed to get a drink or go to the bathroom. She would check on me in the middle of the night without fail, and in the glow of that green lamp she would tuck the pink velour blanket down around my feet.
I loved that lamp passionately, because I associated it with my grandmother who I loved passionately and lost far too early. And when it was time to clean out my Grandpa's house, I made sure I brought that lamp home. I think a modern designer would shudder at the look of that lamp, but I could never part with it.
I am lucky that I married a man who not only understands this about me, but shares my passion for staying connected to the past. When we go fishing, he brings Grandpa Ted's fishing tackle on every trip. Ted's fishing bifocals are still in the box, and Emma loves to put them on when she is tying tackle. I know that when Aaron smiles at his daughter outfitted in those goofy glasses, he doesn't just see a goofy 9-year old. He's looking through her, like a window to the past where his grandpa sat in the boat with him, tying tackle and teaching him the ins and outs of catching fish. How could I ever replace them with a pair of plastic store-bought glasses, made from a mold, pressed in some factory somewhere and labeled with a bright yellow $9.99 sticker?
I see so much more value in the depression-era quilt that I picked up at an estate auction for five bucks than I do in the down comforter I purchased online for $59.99. I don't even know who made the quilt in this case, but someone somewhere spent hours upon hours hand stitching a scrap quilt, likely created from pieces of their life: a torn dress, an old work shirt, a sheet or a tablecloth. That quilt is batted with real wool, shorn from a sheep - not pressed and filled in a factory in China. That quilt is hanging on a wooden quilt rack my husband made for me himself during our first year of dating. On top of the shelf are three glass bells that came from his grandmother's house and offer a quiet reminder of that great lady who loved him.
What do my children see when they look around our home? Do they see the worn edges of the buffet in the dining room? Do they see the chip out of the edge of that serving bowl? Do they see a stack of blankets that are certainly used, definitely faded, and unraveling a little at the edges? Maybe so. It shouldn't surprise me when they come home from someone else's house and ooh and ahh over their "really nice house." We probably don't have the same "really nice house" that lots of other people have.
I wish they could see what I see. When I get out that serving bowl, I see the hundreds of meals I ate at my grandparent's table. That buffet has traveled through three different family homes, the most recent being my own parents, and has survived many dramatic adventures. And those blankets - well, if you've never made an afghan or a quilt by hand, then you probably have no idea what those mean. I don't see the faded colors, I see my mother sitting wrapped up on the couch, crochet hook in hand, talking about her day with my dad and trying to finish one last row before she heads to bed.
Even my own wedding ring has a story. (Actually, I have 2 wedding rings, and they BOTH have a story.) When I went to look at rings with Aaron so he could get some idea of what I liked, I just never had that pull toward those gigantic sparkly rings that so many women are fond of. They seemed so out-of-place on my hand; like they weren't real, even though the price tag certainly said otherwise.
We went to several jewelers, and finally we stumbled on a small private shop in nearby Salida, Colorado. I just had a feeling when we went in there, and I walked over to a case filled with vintage estate jewelry. My eyes were immediately drawn to a small white gold ring with a square-cut diamond surrounded by intricate engraved scroll work. The jeweler explained he got it from a local woman who had passed away and he purchased her jewelry from the sale of her estate. He knew her personally; it was her wedding ring, and she and her husband had been married 60 years. They had no children to inherit her pieces; he had considered her a great personal friend, and was pleased to be able to pass on her jewelry. I will never forget what he said to me: "she lived her life with great integrity. It was an honor for me to know her." And I knew right then that that ring was meant for me. I knew that the simple, vintage piece with a meaningful history was so much more suited to me than the flashier rings that I had previously seen. Aaron seemed incredulous that this was what I picked out at first, and actually tried to dissuade me. (I think there must be some kind of pride factor involved with what kind of a ring a man puts on a girl's finger, but THIS girl ain't buying that line.) I insisted this was the ring for me, and that is the ring he gave me.
What about the other ring? Well. Outside of Buena Vista is a beautiful mountain called Mt. Antero. It is a mountain with many veins of precious metals and gems lining its interior, and most of it has been privately sectioned off into mining claims. Aaron had gotten friendly with a couple of locals who had mining claims, and he spent some time mining up on Antero with them. It just so happens that my favorite gemstone is aquamarine. And it just so happens that Antero is full of uncut aquamarine. As a surprise wedding gift to me, he gave me a matching aqua ring, necklace, and earrings set in white gold.
The aqua ring is the first spontaneous piece of jewelry he's ever given me; it was mined from the mountain I looked at every morning in the backyard of our first home, in the town I still love desperately. I wear the aqua ring daily, as a reminder of his unexpected thoughtfulness and of our connection to that place.
I watched the kids pore over the pages of that catalog with great amusement, but I felt little pensive at the same time. I want them to understand the value of things that stand the test of time; I don't want them to feel the pressure of "keeping up" with the neighbors or trying to out-shop or out-decorate or out-accessorize their friends. I also don't want them to feel like they live in a thrift store. (ha ha) So I think I need to tell the stories and let them know that these older pieces are pieces of lives that were lived in a time long past. They are threads to the people who made us and reminders of our history.
I will say, that the Kitchenaid Stand Mixer my parents gave me as an early-Christmas present definitely kicks butt over the Black and Decker Dinosaur I'd been using for the last 10 years. So not EVERYTHING has to be old. (I did order it in Vintage Blue, circa 1950, because I still have an image to maintain.) And I've been eyeing a beautiful microsuede sofa sectional for the family room, but so far I just don't have it in me to trade out the white leather sofa we bought in Missouri. The stories from Missouri are of a completely different nature, and while we don't mention those 8 months all that often, the couch is maybe one of the better memories from that crazy adventure. I'm saving that story, though, for another day.
November 29, 2013
Thanksgiving
I was going to avoid the cliché Thanksgiving post this year, certain that my own thoughts and words were not up to the standards of some of the more eloquent postings I've been reading this week. Then I remembered my purpose; that these words are ultimately for the benefit of my offspring, and decided that I might after all find something to say to them on Thanksgiving 2013. So for you, Emma, Carys, and Cooper, let me tell you all about our Thanksgiving traditions.
Currently, darlings, you are sleeping upstairs at Grandma Bartscher's house. Well, sleeping is probably optimistic, considering I can hear Cooper bouncing on his bed and Emma just came downstairs to tell me that she just finished Harry Potter #4, and can we please please please watch the movie when we go home tomorrow. I'm pretty sure Carys is out cold, as she resembled the walking dead as she stumbled up the stairs a few minutes ago - a combination of sugar crash and food coma.
I don't know where our future Thanksgivings will take us, so I'm going to relate for you what the last 10 have been like, in the years I've been married to your father. For the last 10 years, nearly every Thanksgiving has been exactly the same.
Your dad hasn't missed a Thanksgiving Day pheasant hunt in...I think maybe...forever...and today was no exception. He left the house at 7am (a little later than usual, he is getting older, you know.) He hunted pheasants until 20 minutes AFTER I told him to come home. (Because it wouldn't be Thanksgiving if we weren't late for lunch.)
This year, Gudahl Thanksgiving was held at Missy's. Your Grandma Gail and Aunt Missy cook up some of the best food ever, and it is always an amazing spread. This year you are all old enough to make your own plates and get comfy in your own spot, and it gave me real joy to listen to you chatter on with your cousins about every last little happening in your life. The girls spent the afternoon in make-up and dress-up clothes, creating dance routines in the basement and putting on performances for the grown-ups. The older boys spent the day together playing video games, and Cooper spent the day alternately reading about dinosaurs and learning new wrestling moves from Uncle Shawn.
Your aunts spent the evening plotting their Black Friday strategies (your mother was a rock star in the online deals department this year and therefore will be sleeping tonight.) In the late afternoon Grandma Gail got the sugar cookies ready and the 4th Annual Christmas Cookie Decorating Extravaganza was off and running.
For the evening we headed over to Grandma Bartscher's to spend time with Uncle John before he went back to the cities, and we've been here ever since, warming up leftovers, watching family movies together, doing crafts at Grandma's table and coming up with endless ways to annoy Grandpa into playing/wrestling/giggling/chasing/tickling.
For the last 10 years we have followed this routine with very little variation. It may not be wildly exciting, but there is great comfort to me in the predictable chaos; it makes me feel solid and part of something bigger than me. I am so glad that we don't have far to drive, we don't have to put on airs or keep up appearances. We love each other for all our faults and failings, we love each other for all our gifts and blessings, and being together year after year makes for the kind of sturdy upbringing I want to send you into the world carrying.
Someday you will be out there on your own, and I'll be the first to say that the world isn't always kind or easy. In the midst of life's chaos it is easy to lose your sense of self; it is my goal to create a childhood that builds a solid core of strength and a strong sense of purpose in your life.
These moments, however trivial they may seem, are the building blocks of that strength, and I hope you draw on that whenever you need it.
When we made the decision to move back home, it was the pull of family that brought us here. We were living the good life out there in the mountains, and we were surrounded by good people and great friends. But in the end, there is nothing quite like family, is there? Your dad and I drive around this town together, and there is a memory lurking on every street corner. We often re-tell the same tired stories, even though after knowing your dad for almost 30 years, there aren't too many we haven't already shared.
I'm hoping that these family traditions give you that same sense of belonging. I hope that someday you're sitting around reminding each other of the little moments that seem so insignificant at the time, but end up being hallmarks of our holidays.
Like the way your Grandpa Bruce is always in charge of carving the ham and turkey and how he's always slipping little pieces to little fingers who come sneaking up for a taste. Or the way Grandma Gail is fluttering about the kitchen making sure that we have at least 200 food items to choose from, and every single one of them is perfectly perfect.
Maybe you'll remember the treasure boxes that Grandma & Grandpa Bartscher have waiting for you, and how we always pile up onto the chairs and couches for the evening movie. Emma is usually with Grandpa in his chair, Carys is stretched out on Grandma's lap, and Cooper is with his mama for whatever movie we happen to be watching. (Tonight, by the way, we watched Despicable Me again.)
10 years, 10 Thanksgivings, all of them more or less exactly the same, and that is the beauty of the holiday for me. The routine of the day has tightly woven our family together, and helped create that sense of belonging.
This is important to me, because I get to be your Mama, and that job is not one I take lightly. I'm not sure I would have the proper perspective, if not for the very real responsibility of giving you the best I have to give. Somehow, knowing that I am creating your life experience makes me want differently, and makes me do differently. I'm grateful for that added purpose, and thankful to our families who strengthen our connections through all those little moments together.
So that, my darlings was Thanksgiving 2013. Here's to many more. XOXO
Currently, darlings, you are sleeping upstairs at Grandma Bartscher's house. Well, sleeping is probably optimistic, considering I can hear Cooper bouncing on his bed and Emma just came downstairs to tell me that she just finished Harry Potter #4, and can we please please please watch the movie when we go home tomorrow. I'm pretty sure Carys is out cold, as she resembled the walking dead as she stumbled up the stairs a few minutes ago - a combination of sugar crash and food coma.
I don't know where our future Thanksgivings will take us, so I'm going to relate for you what the last 10 have been like, in the years I've been married to your father. For the last 10 years, nearly every Thanksgiving has been exactly the same.
Your dad hasn't missed a Thanksgiving Day pheasant hunt in...I think maybe...forever...and today was no exception. He left the house at 7am (a little later than usual, he is getting older, you know.) He hunted pheasants until 20 minutes AFTER I told him to come home. (Because it wouldn't be Thanksgiving if we weren't late for lunch.)
This year, Gudahl Thanksgiving was held at Missy's. Your Grandma Gail and Aunt Missy cook up some of the best food ever, and it is always an amazing spread. This year you are all old enough to make your own plates and get comfy in your own spot, and it gave me real joy to listen to you chatter on with your cousins about every last little happening in your life. The girls spent the afternoon in make-up and dress-up clothes, creating dance routines in the basement and putting on performances for the grown-ups. The older boys spent the day together playing video games, and Cooper spent the day alternately reading about dinosaurs and learning new wrestling moves from Uncle Shawn.
Your aunts spent the evening plotting their Black Friday strategies (your mother was a rock star in the online deals department this year and therefore will be sleeping tonight.) In the late afternoon Grandma Gail got the sugar cookies ready and the 4th Annual Christmas Cookie Decorating Extravaganza was off and running.
For the evening we headed over to Grandma Bartscher's to spend time with Uncle John before he went back to the cities, and we've been here ever since, warming up leftovers, watching family movies together, doing crafts at Grandma's table and coming up with endless ways to annoy Grandpa into playing/wrestling/giggling/chasing/tickling.
For the last 10 years we have followed this routine with very little variation. It may not be wildly exciting, but there is great comfort to me in the predictable chaos; it makes me feel solid and part of something bigger than me. I am so glad that we don't have far to drive, we don't have to put on airs or keep up appearances. We love each other for all our faults and failings, we love each other for all our gifts and blessings, and being together year after year makes for the kind of sturdy upbringing I want to send you into the world carrying.
Someday you will be out there on your own, and I'll be the first to say that the world isn't always kind or easy. In the midst of life's chaos it is easy to lose your sense of self; it is my goal to create a childhood that builds a solid core of strength and a strong sense of purpose in your life.
These moments, however trivial they may seem, are the building blocks of that strength, and I hope you draw on that whenever you need it.
When we made the decision to move back home, it was the pull of family that brought us here. We were living the good life out there in the mountains, and we were surrounded by good people and great friends. But in the end, there is nothing quite like family, is there? Your dad and I drive around this town together, and there is a memory lurking on every street corner. We often re-tell the same tired stories, even though after knowing your dad for almost 30 years, there aren't too many we haven't already shared.
I'm hoping that these family traditions give you that same sense of belonging. I hope that someday you're sitting around reminding each other of the little moments that seem so insignificant at the time, but end up being hallmarks of our holidays.
Like the way your Grandpa Bruce is always in charge of carving the ham and turkey and how he's always slipping little pieces to little fingers who come sneaking up for a taste. Or the way Grandma Gail is fluttering about the kitchen making sure that we have at least 200 food items to choose from, and every single one of them is perfectly perfect.
Maybe you'll remember the treasure boxes that Grandma & Grandpa Bartscher have waiting for you, and how we always pile up onto the chairs and couches for the evening movie. Emma is usually with Grandpa in his chair, Carys is stretched out on Grandma's lap, and Cooper is with his mama for whatever movie we happen to be watching. (Tonight, by the way, we watched Despicable Me again.)
10 years, 10 Thanksgivings, all of them more or less exactly the same, and that is the beauty of the holiday for me. The routine of the day has tightly woven our family together, and helped create that sense of belonging.
This is important to me, because I get to be your Mama, and that job is not one I take lightly. I'm not sure I would have the proper perspective, if not for the very real responsibility of giving you the best I have to give. Somehow, knowing that I am creating your life experience makes me want differently, and makes me do differently. I'm grateful for that added purpose, and thankful to our families who strengthen our connections through all those little moments together.
So that, my darlings was Thanksgiving 2013. Here's to many more. XOXO
October 16, 2013
Grief
Grief been a rare visitor to our house these past few years. Since moving back to Minnesota, I lost both my grandfathers and Aaron lost his grandmother. Those losses were felt very personally, but we tried to shield the kids as much as we could from our personal emotions and let them feel their way through it without the added pain of watching their parents grieve.
Then we lost the Lucky cat this summer, to a semi on the highway. Emma took that one especially hard as she rescued him from near starvation and spent 3 years keeping him healthy. The initial discovery caused a torrent of raw emotion, as I expected, but I didn't expect her to feel the aftershocks for as long as she did. For months, she would become emotional unexpectedly, breaking into tears in odd places and strange moments. I ran out of new ways to comfort her, so mostly I would just hug her when she had a bad day. It is so hard to see your child hurting; in some ways a physical ailment is easier to manage than an emotional one.
I think as parents we take on the role of being strong for them; I too felt the loss of our tough little tomcat, but I thought it would make it even harder on Emma to see me crying. So I did the tried and true "circle of life" and "he was happy while he was here" and "he'll be waiting for us in Heaven" and swallowed my emotion and patted her on the back and hoped her heart would heal quickly. I thought if she could see me being strong it would somehow give her strength.
Then on one unexpected Monday evening, Grief came calling, and this time it came for me. We were finishing up dinner and I was sitting at the table decompressing from the day and contemplating the dishes when I decided to scroll through Facebook. I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook; I hate reading posts from people who use it as soapbox for political drivel, but I truly love to be connected personally to people who are far from me geographically but close to my heart.
I am connected to Colorado in the best way through Facebook; I have watched former students get jobs, get married, have babies, and travel the world. I've watched my friends' children grow up, celebrated their triumphs, commiserated on their woes and been able to stay connected to the dozens of the peripheral people from Buena Vista who helped create such a beautiful feeling of belonging in that town.
It was Facebook, then, that told me about the tragedy in Buena Vista that took the lives of my friend Dawna, her husband Dwayne, her daughter Kiowa and her nephews. By now the story of the rock slide is familiar to most, as it made national headlines.
Nearly every day there is a tragedy to read about on the news, and you can't help but feel a kind of detached empathy for the people affected. But there is a definite difference when the tragedy hits a little closer to home. There is a pivotal moment when Those People become Your People, and nothing prepares you for that.
Dawna and I coached together, and honestly I didn't know her nearly as well as I could have, but we still shared bus rides and practices and long talks about kids and coaching during the 3 years we worked together. And through Facebook she remained my friend; I watched her babies grow up; I watched Dawna develop as a relay coach and as a photographer. She was forever filling up my news feeds of sunrises and sunsets on the mountains that I miss so much. She posted so many pictures of her kids I felt like I knew them, even though they were really little when I last watched them tear around the track field and jump on the high jump pits.
Sometimes people say that loss feels like a punch to the stomach - and you know, that is true. It takes the wind right out of you, and disbelief mingles with heartache and the shock of it is paralyzing. Dawna had posted some of Kiowa's senior pictures just few days earlier, and I thought about opening up a chat message to tell her how beautiful Kiowa had grown to be, and how much Dawna had grown as a photographer too. But I was busy and settled for just "liking" some of the photos, putting that conversation off for a day that would never come.
Sitting there in the kitchen, tears came unbidden and I felt emotion wash over me; I can't remember the last time I cried like that. Thick, choking sobs and of course Emma was the first to pass by and see me like that. I was helpless to it; I felt a combination of horror at the circumstances of their passing, of regret that I hadn't worked harder to cultivate our friendship, and guilt at the strength of my sorrow. That last one is hard to put into words...I felt guilty almost like I didn't deserve to feel so terrible. I hadn't seen her in person in 7 years, hadn't spoken on the phone or visited or anything. I watched her life, that's all. I "liked" her posts, but never called to talk about them. Facebook gave me a window to her world but I rarely stepped out of my routine to make the personal connections that I know are important. I think the guilt, more than anything, fueled the raw emotion I was feeling now.
Emma seemed shocked too; I know she's never seen me like that and I really couldn't make it stop. Her big brown eyes were enormous as she came over and leaned on my shoulder. Her arms went around me and she just said, "I'm so sorry, Mom." What a precious moment: being held and comforted by the child I work so hard to protect and hold and comfort. It occurred to me that she doesn't need my strength; she is plenty strong, and maybe what she needs is for me to be real. To let her see that pain is universal to all of us, and that it's okay to be affected and altered by it.
It is also hard to be far away from those I needed to grieve with; that is one more thing that Facebook gave me. It allowed me to share in the process even if I couldn't be there to light the candles and remember my friend the way she deserved to be remembered. A few hours later when my friend Erin called, I was ready to talk and able to breathe a little as she filled me in on what was happening there.
The next few days were blurry; I was planning our school's Homecoming with the Student Council and it was nice to be really really busy and let the sharpest edges soften a little. I did a little digging and found a scrapbook that the Track team made for me at our farewell party. Dawna had taken most of the pictures, and she'd written a little note inside the cover: "I learned so much from you, how to be an inspiration to these girls. And I will continue that when you are gone, I promise." That is a promise she kept - her girls loved her, and that has been so evident in the outpouring of love that came in the following days.
It's only been a couple of weeks, but I still have unexpected moments when it creeps up on me and I find my eyes filling with tears or a lump developing in my throat. I think it really is a lot of things that contribute to my sorrow; the depth of the loss is so great - it wasn't one or two, but five people lost. The devastation of Dawna having to leave two of her children behind to carry on without her. The vibrancy of Kiowa-Rain who was only 18 (10 years old in my mind - always) and had her whole life in front of her. Her husband Dwayne was a pillar of strength and integrity for the football team he helped coach, and being a teacher myself I know how much leadership a man like that can provide for developing young men.
Somewhere mixed in to all of that are my personal connections to the Falls where they perished; Aaron and I hiked the same trail a dozen times. I have a framed photo of us sitting among the boulders next to the falls with our dogs, looking very happy and very very young.
As hard as it may be to see anything positive come from what seems so senseless, I think I will dwell in the gifts they left behind, and spend my time praying for the health and strength of the family that remains. And moving forward, I think I am deciding that it is okay to be real for my kids. It might even be imperative that they watch me experience real sorrow and deal with it in a healthy way. Is there no end to the lessons we learn in this lifetime?
Then we lost the Lucky cat this summer, to a semi on the highway. Emma took that one especially hard as she rescued him from near starvation and spent 3 years keeping him healthy. The initial discovery caused a torrent of raw emotion, as I expected, but I didn't expect her to feel the aftershocks for as long as she did. For months, she would become emotional unexpectedly, breaking into tears in odd places and strange moments. I ran out of new ways to comfort her, so mostly I would just hug her when she had a bad day. It is so hard to see your child hurting; in some ways a physical ailment is easier to manage than an emotional one.
I think as parents we take on the role of being strong for them; I too felt the loss of our tough little tomcat, but I thought it would make it even harder on Emma to see me crying. So I did the tried and true "circle of life" and "he was happy while he was here" and "he'll be waiting for us in Heaven" and swallowed my emotion and patted her on the back and hoped her heart would heal quickly. I thought if she could see me being strong it would somehow give her strength.
Then on one unexpected Monday evening, Grief came calling, and this time it came for me. We were finishing up dinner and I was sitting at the table decompressing from the day and contemplating the dishes when I decided to scroll through Facebook. I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook; I hate reading posts from people who use it as soapbox for political drivel, but I truly love to be connected personally to people who are far from me geographically but close to my heart.
I am connected to Colorado in the best way through Facebook; I have watched former students get jobs, get married, have babies, and travel the world. I've watched my friends' children grow up, celebrated their triumphs, commiserated on their woes and been able to stay connected to the dozens of the peripheral people from Buena Vista who helped create such a beautiful feeling of belonging in that town.
It was Facebook, then, that told me about the tragedy in Buena Vista that took the lives of my friend Dawna, her husband Dwayne, her daughter Kiowa and her nephews. By now the story of the rock slide is familiar to most, as it made national headlines.
Nearly every day there is a tragedy to read about on the news, and you can't help but feel a kind of detached empathy for the people affected. But there is a definite difference when the tragedy hits a little closer to home. There is a pivotal moment when Those People become Your People, and nothing prepares you for that.
Dawna and I coached together, and honestly I didn't know her nearly as well as I could have, but we still shared bus rides and practices and long talks about kids and coaching during the 3 years we worked together. And through Facebook she remained my friend; I watched her babies grow up; I watched Dawna develop as a relay coach and as a photographer. She was forever filling up my news feeds of sunrises and sunsets on the mountains that I miss so much. She posted so many pictures of her kids I felt like I knew them, even though they were really little when I last watched them tear around the track field and jump on the high jump pits.
Sometimes people say that loss feels like a punch to the stomach - and you know, that is true. It takes the wind right out of you, and disbelief mingles with heartache and the shock of it is paralyzing. Dawna had posted some of Kiowa's senior pictures just few days earlier, and I thought about opening up a chat message to tell her how beautiful Kiowa had grown to be, and how much Dawna had grown as a photographer too. But I was busy and settled for just "liking" some of the photos, putting that conversation off for a day that would never come.
Sitting there in the kitchen, tears came unbidden and I felt emotion wash over me; I can't remember the last time I cried like that. Thick, choking sobs and of course Emma was the first to pass by and see me like that. I was helpless to it; I felt a combination of horror at the circumstances of their passing, of regret that I hadn't worked harder to cultivate our friendship, and guilt at the strength of my sorrow. That last one is hard to put into words...I felt guilty almost like I didn't deserve to feel so terrible. I hadn't seen her in person in 7 years, hadn't spoken on the phone or visited or anything. I watched her life, that's all. I "liked" her posts, but never called to talk about them. Facebook gave me a window to her world but I rarely stepped out of my routine to make the personal connections that I know are important. I think the guilt, more than anything, fueled the raw emotion I was feeling now.
Emma seemed shocked too; I know she's never seen me like that and I really couldn't make it stop. Her big brown eyes were enormous as she came over and leaned on my shoulder. Her arms went around me and she just said, "I'm so sorry, Mom." What a precious moment: being held and comforted by the child I work so hard to protect and hold and comfort. It occurred to me that she doesn't need my strength; she is plenty strong, and maybe what she needs is for me to be real. To let her see that pain is universal to all of us, and that it's okay to be affected and altered by it.
It is also hard to be far away from those I needed to grieve with; that is one more thing that Facebook gave me. It allowed me to share in the process even if I couldn't be there to light the candles and remember my friend the way she deserved to be remembered. A few hours later when my friend Erin called, I was ready to talk and able to breathe a little as she filled me in on what was happening there.
The next few days were blurry; I was planning our school's Homecoming with the Student Council and it was nice to be really really busy and let the sharpest edges soften a little. I did a little digging and found a scrapbook that the Track team made for me at our farewell party. Dawna had taken most of the pictures, and she'd written a little note inside the cover: "I learned so much from you, how to be an inspiration to these girls. And I will continue that when you are gone, I promise." That is a promise she kept - her girls loved her, and that has been so evident in the outpouring of love that came in the following days.
It's only been a couple of weeks, but I still have unexpected moments when it creeps up on me and I find my eyes filling with tears or a lump developing in my throat. I think it really is a lot of things that contribute to my sorrow; the depth of the loss is so great - it wasn't one or two, but five people lost. The devastation of Dawna having to leave two of her children behind to carry on without her. The vibrancy of Kiowa-Rain who was only 18 (10 years old in my mind - always) and had her whole life in front of her. Her husband Dwayne was a pillar of strength and integrity for the football team he helped coach, and being a teacher myself I know how much leadership a man like that can provide for developing young men.
Somewhere mixed in to all of that are my personal connections to the Falls where they perished; Aaron and I hiked the same trail a dozen times. I have a framed photo of us sitting among the boulders next to the falls with our dogs, looking very happy and very very young.
As hard as it may be to see anything positive come from what seems so senseless, I think I will dwell in the gifts they left behind, and spend my time praying for the health and strength of the family that remains. And moving forward, I think I am deciding that it is okay to be real for my kids. It might even be imperative that they watch me experience real sorrow and deal with it in a healthy way. Is there no end to the lessons we learn in this lifetime?
October 7, 2013
Time
I was canning tomatoes one night in my kitchen when one of those rare moments of introspection crept up on me. It was kind of a perfect storm of events; I tend to be sensitive to atmosphere and I suspect the timing of the moment was just right for an almost-mid-life-crisis.
I'm a night owl; I have always preferred the quiet of the late nights to the brightness of early mornings. When I'm canning alone, I prefer the 10:30pm to midnight shift for the sense of solitude it brings. Kids and husband are all in bed by 9 so evenings are the time when I am all me and just mine; I have no requests to answer or responsibilities to fulfill. I do my best thinking at night in the peace of a sleeping house, but I am also extremely susceptible to bouts of emotion. The older I get, the more of my life I have to evaluate; I have a tendency to come to sweeping conclusions about life in general when the nights are deep and dark and still.
I was six quarts of tomatoes in when the playlist on my stereo clicked over to Norah Jones and the first bars of Come Away With Me filled the room. Norah and I are old friends, and her music is a staple on my late night playlists. I was sitting cross-legged on the kitchen chair and scrolling absentmindedly through Pinterest on my tablet while the pressure canner boiled and steamed behind me. I stopped on a photo of a mother and her baby standing near the ocean with a caption that read, "There are only 940 Saturdays between the birth of your child and the day they leave for college."
What? I had to read it again. 940 Saturdays...is that all?
As I continued to drop tomatoes one by one into a boiling water bath, I started to really think about those days. How many have I wasted already? How many Saturdays have I devoted to housecleaning and yard work? How many days did I let my kids be entertained by something on TV while I folded laundry or talked on the phone or - oh man - took a NAP? (I love a good nap, not gonna lie.)
Am I spending enough time with them? The right kind of time? I already know that it isn't enough to be physically present; I need to be connected to them on a deeper level now, before the madness of their middle years begin. If you don't listen to your kids NOW and be part of who they are NOW, there is no way in the world they will want you later, when your presence is the most crucial. I watch them, the lost ones, file in and out of my middle school classroom, and I know instinctively that there is no one at home investing in them - you can tell. How will I know when enough of me is enough of me?
I'm a joiner - ever since grade school and I joined the Girl Scouts, I've been on a mission to be part of everything in the world I could possibly be part of. I'm the one whose hand shoots up when someone asks for volunteers. My parents made me feel like I could do anything - and be really good at it - if I really wanted to, and I test that theory every chance I get by taking on just about any challenge put in front of me. My plate is full, and when it isn't, I begin searching for something to put on it.
Aaron knows this about me, and for some reason he married me anyway. I know I drive him crazy - one time I asked him if he thought I should take on a new coaching opportunity. His response was, "you're going to fill up your time with SOMETHING, so it might as well be something you love." I knew then that he understands who I am.
Tonight, however, those words are haunting me a little bit. I do fill up my life - but am I filling it up the right way? The days are coming (faster than I want to believe) when my kids will be filling up their own plates with friends and sports and activities, and family time is going to take a back seat to their social agenda. Why in the world am I wasting ANY of my Saturdays?
The music in the background plays on...Norah's sweet voice fades and the early bars of Van Morrison's "Days Like This" fill the room. That song always evokes nostalgia in me, and I see now that the universe is speaking to me in this quiet space. How many silly Saturdays are left? How many days of jumping in leaf piles or playing dress-up or bike riding or tree climbing are there? How long before board games (which are already in steep decline in this world) are replaced by hours holed up in bedrooms with a cell phone and a Face Time app? How many days left to go to the zoo, to take a nature walk, to curl up with a family book?
Yesterday Cooper was telling me a story about the kitten we found in the shed outside and I swear it was the story with no ending. He kept on and on and on and I found myself so distracted and hurrying him up a little because I had Things To Do. I have to force myself to just stop. Stop and listen and s-l-o-o-o-w down to enjoy these little moments. They don't last forever - I know that, I do - so then why is it so easy to put everything off until tomorrow?
940 Saturdays. As I pulled the last batch jars from the pressure canner I made myself a promise: no more taking those days for granted. No more looking forward to the weekend as my chance to "catch up" on my life. I need to look forward to Saturday as the day I connect with my children; the day I devote to knowing them, learning who they are, and inserting myself into their world. And I'm asking God (in whatever form He needs to take - Pinterest included) to remind me once in a while of what really matters.
I'm a night owl; I have always preferred the quiet of the late nights to the brightness of early mornings. When I'm canning alone, I prefer the 10:30pm to midnight shift for the sense of solitude it brings. Kids and husband are all in bed by 9 so evenings are the time when I am all me and just mine; I have no requests to answer or responsibilities to fulfill. I do my best thinking at night in the peace of a sleeping house, but I am also extremely susceptible to bouts of emotion. The older I get, the more of my life I have to evaluate; I have a tendency to come to sweeping conclusions about life in general when the nights are deep and dark and still.
I was six quarts of tomatoes in when the playlist on my stereo clicked over to Norah Jones and the first bars of Come Away With Me filled the room. Norah and I are old friends, and her music is a staple on my late night playlists. I was sitting cross-legged on the kitchen chair and scrolling absentmindedly through Pinterest on my tablet while the pressure canner boiled and steamed behind me. I stopped on a photo of a mother and her baby standing near the ocean with a caption that read, "There are only 940 Saturdays between the birth of your child and the day they leave for college."
What? I had to read it again. 940 Saturdays...is that all?
As I continued to drop tomatoes one by one into a boiling water bath, I started to really think about those days. How many have I wasted already? How many Saturdays have I devoted to housecleaning and yard work? How many days did I let my kids be entertained by something on TV while I folded laundry or talked on the phone or - oh man - took a NAP? (I love a good nap, not gonna lie.)
Am I spending enough time with them? The right kind of time? I already know that it isn't enough to be physically present; I need to be connected to them on a deeper level now, before the madness of their middle years begin. If you don't listen to your kids NOW and be part of who they are NOW, there is no way in the world they will want you later, when your presence is the most crucial. I watch them, the lost ones, file in and out of my middle school classroom, and I know instinctively that there is no one at home investing in them - you can tell. How will I know when enough of me is enough of me?
I'm a joiner - ever since grade school and I joined the Girl Scouts, I've been on a mission to be part of everything in the world I could possibly be part of. I'm the one whose hand shoots up when someone asks for volunteers. My parents made me feel like I could do anything - and be really good at it - if I really wanted to, and I test that theory every chance I get by taking on just about any challenge put in front of me. My plate is full, and when it isn't, I begin searching for something to put on it.
Aaron knows this about me, and for some reason he married me anyway. I know I drive him crazy - one time I asked him if he thought I should take on a new coaching opportunity. His response was, "you're going to fill up your time with SOMETHING, so it might as well be something you love." I knew then that he understands who I am.
Tonight, however, those words are haunting me a little bit. I do fill up my life - but am I filling it up the right way? The days are coming (faster than I want to believe) when my kids will be filling up their own plates with friends and sports and activities, and family time is going to take a back seat to their social agenda. Why in the world am I wasting ANY of my Saturdays?
The music in the background plays on...Norah's sweet voice fades and the early bars of Van Morrison's "Days Like This" fill the room. That song always evokes nostalgia in me, and I see now that the universe is speaking to me in this quiet space. How many silly Saturdays are left? How many days of jumping in leaf piles or playing dress-up or bike riding or tree climbing are there? How long before board games (which are already in steep decline in this world) are replaced by hours holed up in bedrooms with a cell phone and a Face Time app? How many days left to go to the zoo, to take a nature walk, to curl up with a family book?
Yesterday Cooper was telling me a story about the kitten we found in the shed outside and I swear it was the story with no ending. He kept on and on and on and I found myself so distracted and hurrying him up a little because I had Things To Do. I have to force myself to just stop. Stop and listen and s-l-o-o-o-w down to enjoy these little moments. They don't last forever - I know that, I do - so then why is it so easy to put everything off until tomorrow?
940 Saturdays. As I pulled the last batch jars from the pressure canner I made myself a promise: no more taking those days for granted. No more looking forward to the weekend as my chance to "catch up" on my life. I need to look forward to Saturday as the day I connect with my children; the day I devote to knowing them, learning who they are, and inserting myself into their world. And I'm asking God (in whatever form He needs to take - Pinterest included) to remind me once in a while of what really matters.
September 6, 2013
Julie
We had a big life change happen for us this year, and I have attempted to write about it many times this summer. I am always stopped short of completion, though, and I decided finally that I needed a little time and space to work through the emotion of it before I commit it to paper.
To be brief, we have decided we no longer need daycare services. When I write that cold and precise sentence, it seems so trivial, so banal, that one might wonder what the big deal really is. In our family, this marks the end of an era, and is something we are still, three months later, coming to terms with.
I often run across articles or blogs about the value of stay-at-home parenting. I don't think anyone anywhere doubts that stay-at-home-parenting is awesome when it can be done. Implied, however, is the idea that anyone who chooses daycare is somehow inferior to those who do not. I have encountered friends who comment that they are so glad they don't "have to have daycare" and have "strangers raising their kids." It is difficult for me to tamp down my fires when I hear that statement, because I utilized daycare services for the last nine years, yet I have never seen it as a business transaction, nor have I ever considered our providers to be "strangers." In fact, I can barely call them "providers"...it seems so impersonal and cold.
When Emma was born, I admit that I had a mini panic attack at the thought of handing her over to someone I didn't know very well, to be surrounded by children I didn't know very well, to have experiences I had no control over. I was saved, quite literally, by a dear friend who was already staying at home, whose children were already in school, and who would really enjoy having another baby in the house. Roxie was Emma's second mommy and her family became our second family. I grew terribly attached to the Green girls - they babysat and spent the night and basically became Emma's three big sisters.
Because Roxie incorporated us into her family, she set the bar very high for future providers. When we came to Fairmont, it was impossible to find someone with three openings, especially one with room for two children under 2 years old. We ended up with all three kids at three different daycares.
That, my friends, was a real eye-opener. With three kids in three different places, we were working with three different routines, three different sets of rules and procedures, and a whole lot of driving. We knew we had to find somewhere central for everybody.
I found Julie through a friend at school. I set up a meeting with her and knew in about 5.7 seconds that I would do almost anything to secure a spot for my kids. I could bore you with details about how clean her house is, or launch into a description of her play schedule, or her meal plan. None of that, while stellar, is what makes her so special to us.
Julie is that rare person who God clearly created to be a mentor/caregiver/second-mommy to children. She has a gentle and kind spirit; in 5 years, I never heard her raise her voice beyond a cautionary tone. She laughs easily and often, and has such a genuine love for the families in her care, that I felt instantly that I had a partner in parenting. She fostered their little bodies with homemade meals, outside play every day, lots of activity and exercise. She fostered their minds with a daily art project, with regular story times, and in fact taught all of my kids their alphabets and numbers before they even started pre-school.
Every day I got a full report of all of the little things that happened that day, good or bad. When my kids made bad choices, she and I discussed how to handle them together. I always felt like she was an extension of my own thinking, she was so eager to collaborate on the rearing of my babies. More than once, when I was at home in the evening a problem arose with my kids, I consulted Julie's wisdom to ask how she was handling that at daycare.
The biggest thing to me, though, is how excited my kids were every single day to see her. I never had one day that they didn't want to go. Sometimes when we would do something fun on a weekend I would hear, "I can't wait to tell Julie about this tomorrow!"
I've read that sometimes parents feel threatened by the influence of a non-family provider in the lives of their children; I can't say that I ever felt that way. To me, the happiness they had with her did not make me less of their mom, it raised my esteem for Julie. If they considered her a second mom, then she was loving them the same way I was loving them. And really, can kids ever have too many people who love them?
This summer, we determined that our schedules no longer required day care. The kids were all starting school in the fall and would be going to and from the building with me each day. We made the heart-wrenching decision to give up our spot.
When we sat down and discussed it with the kids, all three of my little ones cried. I struggled to frame it appropriately, because it felt like the loss of a family member. I finally was able to explain that if we let go of our spot, it would give three new kids the chance to grow up with Julie, and we wouldn't be there enough to need our spot anymore.
They seemed to understand that, but as Emma said, "I get it, Mom, but it still makes my heart hurt."
On our last day at Julie's we brought her a hydrangea bush for her garden (our favorite perennial - may it last forever and bloom often enough for her to think of us) and I paid her our last bill, minus $1. I told her if I didn't pay her that last dollar, I wouldn't be officially off her books and there would still be a reason to come back. We left that day, but I have to be honest with you - we've been back there 3 times this summer just to see her and play in the yard with the rest of the daycare kids, our extended family that we don't get to see every day.
The kids miss her terribly, and it is a sure sign of the stamp she left on our lives when they will slip and say something like, "Is today a Julie day?" One evening we were making late-night cinnamon rolls and Emma said, "Let me make the frosting - Julie taught me how!" And then her eyes filled up with tears and she dripped a few salty drops into the powdered sugar.
From my perspective, I miss Julie's friendship the most. I miss that "partner-in-crime" feeling I had when she and I conspired to parent my children. I miss hearing the stories that she had to tell about their daily adventures, and I miss that quiet, calm, and gentle spirit that became both a grounding and a guiding force in our world.
She is really something special, and I hope that the family that finds their way to her door really understands the value of what they have found.
To be brief, we have decided we no longer need daycare services. When I write that cold and precise sentence, it seems so trivial, so banal, that one might wonder what the big deal really is. In our family, this marks the end of an era, and is something we are still, three months later, coming to terms with.
I often run across articles or blogs about the value of stay-at-home parenting. I don't think anyone anywhere doubts that stay-at-home-parenting is awesome when it can be done. Implied, however, is the idea that anyone who chooses daycare is somehow inferior to those who do not. I have encountered friends who comment that they are so glad they don't "have to have daycare" and have "strangers raising their kids." It is difficult for me to tamp down my fires when I hear that statement, because I utilized daycare services for the last nine years, yet I have never seen it as a business transaction, nor have I ever considered our providers to be "strangers." In fact, I can barely call them "providers"...it seems so impersonal and cold.
When Emma was born, I admit that I had a mini panic attack at the thought of handing her over to someone I didn't know very well, to be surrounded by children I didn't know very well, to have experiences I had no control over. I was saved, quite literally, by a dear friend who was already staying at home, whose children were already in school, and who would really enjoy having another baby in the house. Roxie was Emma's second mommy and her family became our second family. I grew terribly attached to the Green girls - they babysat and spent the night and basically became Emma's three big sisters.
Because Roxie incorporated us into her family, she set the bar very high for future providers. When we came to Fairmont, it was impossible to find someone with three openings, especially one with room for two children under 2 years old. We ended up with all three kids at three different daycares.
That, my friends, was a real eye-opener. With three kids in three different places, we were working with three different routines, three different sets of rules and procedures, and a whole lot of driving. We knew we had to find somewhere central for everybody.
I found Julie through a friend at school. I set up a meeting with her and knew in about 5.7 seconds that I would do almost anything to secure a spot for my kids. I could bore you with details about how clean her house is, or launch into a description of her play schedule, or her meal plan. None of that, while stellar, is what makes her so special to us.
Julie is that rare person who God clearly created to be a mentor/caregiver/second-mommy to children. She has a gentle and kind spirit; in 5 years, I never heard her raise her voice beyond a cautionary tone. She laughs easily and often, and has such a genuine love for the families in her care, that I felt instantly that I had a partner in parenting. She fostered their little bodies with homemade meals, outside play every day, lots of activity and exercise. She fostered their minds with a daily art project, with regular story times, and in fact taught all of my kids their alphabets and numbers before they even started pre-school.
Every day I got a full report of all of the little things that happened that day, good or bad. When my kids made bad choices, she and I discussed how to handle them together. I always felt like she was an extension of my own thinking, she was so eager to collaborate on the rearing of my babies. More than once, when I was at home in the evening a problem arose with my kids, I consulted Julie's wisdom to ask how she was handling that at daycare.
The biggest thing to me, though, is how excited my kids were every single day to see her. I never had one day that they didn't want to go. Sometimes when we would do something fun on a weekend I would hear, "I can't wait to tell Julie about this tomorrow!"
I've read that sometimes parents feel threatened by the influence of a non-family provider in the lives of their children; I can't say that I ever felt that way. To me, the happiness they had with her did not make me less of their mom, it raised my esteem for Julie. If they considered her a second mom, then she was loving them the same way I was loving them. And really, can kids ever have too many people who love them?
This summer, we determined that our schedules no longer required day care. The kids were all starting school in the fall and would be going to and from the building with me each day. We made the heart-wrenching decision to give up our spot.
When we sat down and discussed it with the kids, all three of my little ones cried. I struggled to frame it appropriately, because it felt like the loss of a family member. I finally was able to explain that if we let go of our spot, it would give three new kids the chance to grow up with Julie, and we wouldn't be there enough to need our spot anymore.
They seemed to understand that, but as Emma said, "I get it, Mom, but it still makes my heart hurt."
On our last day at Julie's we brought her a hydrangea bush for her garden (our favorite perennial - may it last forever and bloom often enough for her to think of us) and I paid her our last bill, minus $1. I told her if I didn't pay her that last dollar, I wouldn't be officially off her books and there would still be a reason to come back. We left that day, but I have to be honest with you - we've been back there 3 times this summer just to see her and play in the yard with the rest of the daycare kids, our extended family that we don't get to see every day.
The kids miss her terribly, and it is a sure sign of the stamp she left on our lives when they will slip and say something like, "Is today a Julie day?" One evening we were making late-night cinnamon rolls and Emma said, "Let me make the frosting - Julie taught me how!" And then her eyes filled up with tears and she dripped a few salty drops into the powdered sugar.
From my perspective, I miss Julie's friendship the most. I miss that "partner-in-crime" feeling I had when she and I conspired to parent my children. I miss hearing the stories that she had to tell about their daily adventures, and I miss that quiet, calm, and gentle spirit that became both a grounding and a guiding force in our world.
She is really something special, and I hope that the family that finds their way to her door really understands the value of what they have found.
June 12, 2013
Water
Aaron and I have been looking at buying a boat. Not terribly seriously, yet, as we'd like to get our finances a little more in order before we make a purchase like that. But we have gotten into fishing more and more these past couple of years, and you can't really graduate beyond pan fish from the shores of the nearby lakes. So I think a boat is in our future eventually.
Recently, a friend of Aaron's lent us a small aluminum fishing boat for use in getting off the shore line into deeper water. We had our first opportunity to take it out on Fox Lake on Sunday afternoon.
Aaron went over to the lake ahead of us, to take the boat out on the water and get comfortable using it. We followed behind a couple of hours later. The sun was shining (finally!) and the kids were jumping out of their skin to get out into the middle of that big ol' lake.
The boat fit our our family of 5 rather neatly; not a lot of room to wiggle or walk around, but room enough to cast and sit back comfortably enjoying the sunshine. With a top speed of about 10mph, and a water line high enough for me to trail my fingers in, we moved easily across the water and headed to the west end of the lake to try out a recommended fishing hole. For those not familiar with Fox Lake, it is roughly 1000 acres, with a maximum depth of about 20 feet. It's fairly large, as far as our local lakes go, and gliding along in the center of a small little fishing boat made it seem perhaps larger than it actually is.
About 15 minutes in, and halfway to our intended destination, the motor cut abruptly.
I glanced back at Aaron, a question in my eyes, and I recognized that deer-in-the-headlights look he gets on rare occasions when he feeling panicked. He fumbled with the motor a few times and it wouldn't even sputter.
The kids were chattering ceaselessly, about this that and the other, completely oblivious to the fact that we are a looooong way from shore, with only a single paddle in the boat, and not a single other boat in sight. Aaron was on his feet, playing with this, messing with that, trying this, loosening that, tightening this, and trying not to let his anxiety show.
I was oddly detached.
Detached because as soon as the motor cut, 27 possible outcomes of this problem flashed through my brain in about a millisecond. And before I could settle on any one plan of action, I had one clear thought.
Every time my husband has put me on the water, and I do mean every single time, something BAD has happened. And not little tiny "oops" bad things. I'm talking "Oh My God" bad things. (Pardon the swear word.)
Aaron has always been a boater; on our third date he put me in a kayak and took me down the river in Mankato. (I cried for about 45% of that trip, because I am a great swimmer, a trained lifeguard, and smart enough to know that you don't want to be swimming in any moving water unless you really have to be. And I was unskilled at kayaking; no way could I roll that thing over, and I knew that if I flipped it, I was coming OUT of that boat.) That day was mild, just tears mainly, but no serious injuries.
A year later I was navigating that same kayak down Boulder Creek in Colorado. I cried about 60% of that trip, because I DID come out of the boat on that one, several times, and they don't call it Boulder Creek for nothin'.
A few months after that, I was navigating that same kayak down the Blue River in Summit County, CO. I cried for about 99% of that trip, because I came out of the boat, got rolled in a rapid along the bottom of that rocky terrain, washed up on the wrong side of the river, and realized I would have to GET BACK IN the river to get my sorry butt home.
**Side Note: Aaron is an excellent boater. I know that he harbored dreams of me becoming one as well, and God love him for trying, but there is apparently a steep learning curve in this sport, and I could never quite get the hang of things.**
A short two years after that, we abandoned the kayak and put me in an inflatable sit-on-top hoping that would provide me with the stability I needed to stay in the damn boat. On that trip, I wrapped my inflatable on Raft Ripper, at the bottom of the Brown's Canyon Run in Buena Vista. It took three private boats, two throw ropes and 3 hours to get me out of that one.
That was my last boating trip with Aaron until Sunday.
So here we are, in the middle of Fox Lake, in a boat that is getting smaller by the second, on an evening that is getting darker by the second, with the three most important possessions of my life on board, and the motor stops. I admit it, I thought I might throw up for a second. My heart skipped about 27 beats and I was close to pulling out my phone and dialing 911 when Aaron realized that he had inadvertently leaned on the fuel line and cut fuel supply to the motor.
Within seconds, the motor was up and running and we were scooting along again.
I didn't say anything, just swiveled in my seat to look at him. My face must have said it all because he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around me and laughed that easy laugh and just said, "It's okay."
When we buy a boat, I swear to God I will mortgage the house if I have to, but we are buying a 20' Glastron that is sturdy enough to SLEEP on if we have to. I don't care if it goes fast, I don't care if it's pretty, I just want, for once in my life, to feel safe on the water.
And maybe pull a tube for the kids.
And maybe catch a few fish.
Recently, a friend of Aaron's lent us a small aluminum fishing boat for use in getting off the shore line into deeper water. We had our first opportunity to take it out on Fox Lake on Sunday afternoon.
Aaron went over to the lake ahead of us, to take the boat out on the water and get comfortable using it. We followed behind a couple of hours later. The sun was shining (finally!) and the kids were jumping out of their skin to get out into the middle of that big ol' lake.
The boat fit our our family of 5 rather neatly; not a lot of room to wiggle or walk around, but room enough to cast and sit back comfortably enjoying the sunshine. With a top speed of about 10mph, and a water line high enough for me to trail my fingers in, we moved easily across the water and headed to the west end of the lake to try out a recommended fishing hole. For those not familiar with Fox Lake, it is roughly 1000 acres, with a maximum depth of about 20 feet. It's fairly large, as far as our local lakes go, and gliding along in the center of a small little fishing boat made it seem perhaps larger than it actually is.
About 15 minutes in, and halfway to our intended destination, the motor cut abruptly.
I glanced back at Aaron, a question in my eyes, and I recognized that deer-in-the-headlights look he gets on rare occasions when he feeling panicked. He fumbled with the motor a few times and it wouldn't even sputter.
The kids were chattering ceaselessly, about this that and the other, completely oblivious to the fact that we are a looooong way from shore, with only a single paddle in the boat, and not a single other boat in sight. Aaron was on his feet, playing with this, messing with that, trying this, loosening that, tightening this, and trying not to let his anxiety show.
I was oddly detached.
Detached because as soon as the motor cut, 27 possible outcomes of this problem flashed through my brain in about a millisecond. And before I could settle on any one plan of action, I had one clear thought.
Every time my husband has put me on the water, and I do mean every single time, something BAD has happened. And not little tiny "oops" bad things. I'm talking "Oh My God" bad things. (Pardon the swear word.)
Aaron has always been a boater; on our third date he put me in a kayak and took me down the river in Mankato. (I cried for about 45% of that trip, because I am a great swimmer, a trained lifeguard, and smart enough to know that you don't want to be swimming in any moving water unless you really have to be. And I was unskilled at kayaking; no way could I roll that thing over, and I knew that if I flipped it, I was coming OUT of that boat.) That day was mild, just tears mainly, but no serious injuries.
A year later I was navigating that same kayak down Boulder Creek in Colorado. I cried about 60% of that trip, because I DID come out of the boat on that one, several times, and they don't call it Boulder Creek for nothin'.
A few months after that, I was navigating that same kayak down the Blue River in Summit County, CO. I cried for about 99% of that trip, because I came out of the boat, got rolled in a rapid along the bottom of that rocky terrain, washed up on the wrong side of the river, and realized I would have to GET BACK IN the river to get my sorry butt home.
**Side Note: Aaron is an excellent boater. I know that he harbored dreams of me becoming one as well, and God love him for trying, but there is apparently a steep learning curve in this sport, and I could never quite get the hang of things.**
A short two years after that, we abandoned the kayak and put me in an inflatable sit-on-top hoping that would provide me with the stability I needed to stay in the damn boat. On that trip, I wrapped my inflatable on Raft Ripper, at the bottom of the Brown's Canyon Run in Buena Vista. It took three private boats, two throw ropes and 3 hours to get me out of that one.
That was my last boating trip with Aaron until Sunday.
So here we are, in the middle of Fox Lake, in a boat that is getting smaller by the second, on an evening that is getting darker by the second, with the three most important possessions of my life on board, and the motor stops. I admit it, I thought I might throw up for a second. My heart skipped about 27 beats and I was close to pulling out my phone and dialing 911 when Aaron realized that he had inadvertently leaned on the fuel line and cut fuel supply to the motor.
Within seconds, the motor was up and running and we were scooting along again.
I didn't say anything, just swiveled in my seat to look at him. My face must have said it all because he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around me and laughed that easy laugh and just said, "It's okay."
When we buy a boat, I swear to God I will mortgage the house if I have to, but we are buying a 20' Glastron that is sturdy enough to SLEEP on if we have to. I don't care if it goes fast, I don't care if it's pretty, I just want, for once in my life, to feel safe on the water.
And maybe pull a tube for the kids.
And maybe catch a few fish.
May 26, 2013
Irony
Last summer we planted cucumbers. Lots and lots of cucumbers. Way too many cucumbers. Aaron loves pickles; he loves them passionately. My friend Melinda loves pickles passionately too, so I knew I would be able to make lots of pickles and have homes for them. So we planted 20 hills of cucumbers.
That's right, 20 hills. (Go ahead, snicker, I know you want to.)
20 hills of cucumbers makes a lot of cucumbers. A lot of cucumbers.
I made pickles. Dill pickles, Garlic Dills, Dills with Peppers and Onions, Sweet, Refrigerator-Style. I pickled and pickled until I couldn't pickle any more. (70 jars, 5 kinds!) But the plants kept making cucumbers. I tried to sell cucumbers, but I felt so guilty about charging for these unwanted veggies that I started giving them away. By the box. Pretty soon all my friends said, "We've had enough!"
And those dang vines kept making cucumbers. We were desperate to get rid of cucumbers, so we started feeding them to our chickens. It turns out that our chickens LOVE cucumbers. We would slice them lengthwise and set them on the floor of the chicken coop, and our chickens would get so excited they would run across the coop, fluff up their feathers and go to town on the cucumbers. I felt much better, knowing that they wouldn't be going to waste. They made the chickens happy, and happy chickens make really exceptional eggs.
But as the garden wound down last fall, I told Aaron that one thing was for sure: in future we would only plant 4 hills of cucumbers. I just could not deal with that many cucumbers again, happy chickens or no.
Fast forward to this spring.
We rotate our garden crops and spend a lot of time meticulously planning what goes where, how much goes in, when it goes in, whether we can get two plantings in per summer, etc. We tilled up our plots, which had been resting quietly under a bed of organic compost (thank you, chickens!) and began planting carefully according to the master plan.
Fast forward 2 weeks.
I went out back one afternoon to do a little garden maintenance last week. The potatoes and peas are already 8 inches off the ground; the carrots, onion, turnips, and beets are up. The tomatoes, green peppers and beans are going strong. Only one thing seemed strange...there was quite a lot of green in between our carefully planted rows.
I'm used to tilling up weeds; we have to till or hand remove weeds all summer because we don't use any herbicide to kill unwanted growth. But there just seemed to be an awful LOT of the same little green 2-leafed weed all over the place.
And that 2-leafed weed looked awfully familiar.
It took me a full 5 minutes to realize what it was. Cucumbers. And I'm not talking a few random volunteer cucumbers. HUNDREDS of cucumbers, and they were EVERYWHERE. It looked like a helicopter had dropped a bucket of cucumber seeds in my garden. They were in between the rows, in between the new plants, choking out my carrots, strangling my onions, and intertwining with my peas. They were in the middle, on the edges...they were everywhere. Every. Where.
I was so flabbergasted, I was at a loss for words for a few minutes. How can this be possible? We hadn't planned to put cucumbers in these beds; the four planned hills are in a different plot in the back. At first I thought maybe Aaron snuck a bunch of cucumbers into the plot hoping for another pickling extravaganza. One summer we had volunteer tomatoes, and I couldn't bring myself to pull out a perfectly healthy plant so we just let them grow. I had way too many tomatoes too, but I vowed that I would remedy that problem this year too. Perhaps he was hoping to sneak the cucumbers by me? Then again, Aaron is quite particular as to how things are planted (our rows are perfectly parallel, exactly 36 inches apart) and he would never have planted these in such a random, haphazard pattern.
I was just about to holler for Aaron and demand an explanation when it hit me.
We compost. From our chickens. And guess what our chickens ate quite a lot of last fall...?
The irony is almost too much for me.
That's right, 20 hills. (Go ahead, snicker, I know you want to.)
20 hills of cucumbers makes a lot of cucumbers. A lot of cucumbers.
I made pickles. Dill pickles, Garlic Dills, Dills with Peppers and Onions, Sweet, Refrigerator-Style. I pickled and pickled until I couldn't pickle any more. (70 jars, 5 kinds!) But the plants kept making cucumbers. I tried to sell cucumbers, but I felt so guilty about charging for these unwanted veggies that I started giving them away. By the box. Pretty soon all my friends said, "We've had enough!"
And those dang vines kept making cucumbers. We were desperate to get rid of cucumbers, so we started feeding them to our chickens. It turns out that our chickens LOVE cucumbers. We would slice them lengthwise and set them on the floor of the chicken coop, and our chickens would get so excited they would run across the coop, fluff up their feathers and go to town on the cucumbers. I felt much better, knowing that they wouldn't be going to waste. They made the chickens happy, and happy chickens make really exceptional eggs.
But as the garden wound down last fall, I told Aaron that one thing was for sure: in future we would only plant 4 hills of cucumbers. I just could not deal with that many cucumbers again, happy chickens or no.
Fast forward to this spring.
We rotate our garden crops and spend a lot of time meticulously planning what goes where, how much goes in, when it goes in, whether we can get two plantings in per summer, etc. We tilled up our plots, which had been resting quietly under a bed of organic compost (thank you, chickens!) and began planting carefully according to the master plan.
Fast forward 2 weeks.
I went out back one afternoon to do a little garden maintenance last week. The potatoes and peas are already 8 inches off the ground; the carrots, onion, turnips, and beets are up. The tomatoes, green peppers and beans are going strong. Only one thing seemed strange...there was quite a lot of green in between our carefully planted rows.
I'm used to tilling up weeds; we have to till or hand remove weeds all summer because we don't use any herbicide to kill unwanted growth. But there just seemed to be an awful LOT of the same little green 2-leafed weed all over the place.
And that 2-leafed weed looked awfully familiar.
It took me a full 5 minutes to realize what it was. Cucumbers. And I'm not talking a few random volunteer cucumbers. HUNDREDS of cucumbers, and they were EVERYWHERE. It looked like a helicopter had dropped a bucket of cucumber seeds in my garden. They were in between the rows, in between the new plants, choking out my carrots, strangling my onions, and intertwining with my peas. They were in the middle, on the edges...they were everywhere. Every. Where.
I was so flabbergasted, I was at a loss for words for a few minutes. How can this be possible? We hadn't planned to put cucumbers in these beds; the four planned hills are in a different plot in the back. At first I thought maybe Aaron snuck a bunch of cucumbers into the plot hoping for another pickling extravaganza. One summer we had volunteer tomatoes, and I couldn't bring myself to pull out a perfectly healthy plant so we just let them grow. I had way too many tomatoes too, but I vowed that I would remedy that problem this year too. Perhaps he was hoping to sneak the cucumbers by me? Then again, Aaron is quite particular as to how things are planted (our rows are perfectly parallel, exactly 36 inches apart) and he would never have planted these in such a random, haphazard pattern.
I was just about to holler for Aaron and demand an explanation when it hit me.
We compost. From our chickens. And guess what our chickens ate quite a lot of last fall...?
The irony is almost too much for me.
April 17, 2013
Special
More than once I've been inspired to write about Carys, our middle child, our special one. I can't seem to finish a post to my satisfaction, though. If my goal is to paint a picture of who she is, to chronicle the moments that are important, I fail at every turn. She is so unlike any child I've encountered so far, that I truly struggle to make her personality come to life on the page. She came into the world in the most unusual way, in a hospital in Joplin, Missouri that would be wiped off the map less than 5 years later. She was born with a hearing loss in her left ear and an intolerance to lactose. She was born quietly and without fanfare, big blue eyes that stared intently at anyone who held her.
We are learning to drum to the beat of a different marcher in our family. A few examples: she refused to sleep anywhere but in my arms for the first year and a half of her life. When other children were busy playing with toys, Carys was trying to take them apart to figure out how they worked. At pre-school screening, the evaluators had to take us aside for a special consultation because Carys wouldn't do the tests the way they asked her to do them. When they asked her to catch a bean bag with her hands to test her motor skills, she caught the bag between her knees. On purpose. She said she didn't want to catch it with her hands. When they asked her to list as many colors as she could (looking for the basic 8) she listed 14 colors and called them names like "lemon-yellow, and grass green, and indigo." Seriously. When they asked her how high she could count, she announced that she could count to 100. Then she said, "one, two, skip-a-few, 99, 100." I have no earthly idea where she came up with that, it was the first time I had ever heard it. The bottom line was that the evaluators were unsure how to score her development because it was on such a different plane than what they were looking for.
She says the most unexpected things at the most unexpected times, and Aaron will sometimes shoot me a look that says "who the heck IS this child?" And I don't have the slightest clue. Take last weekend, for instance. The weather has been crazy around here lately, and we had a little bit of thunder the other night. Carys and Cooper were brushing their teeth for bed when Cooper told me he was a little bit scared of thunder. I launched into a flowery description of angels bowling in heaven (we had just been bowling that weekend, and I was having a private little personal high-five at how nicely those circumstances appeared to work together) and the entire time Carys was just listening intently with narrowed eyes. In the middle of patting myself on the back for the smile that now appeared on Cooper's face, I was suddenly stopped short by Carys who panned, "Mom. That is not true. Thunder is caused by cold air and warm air colliding in the atmosphere."
Oh. Well thank you, Miss Meteorologist.
I anticipate that raising this one is going to be interesting. Of all her quirks and notions, however, the one trait that has devloped the most prominently is a soft heart. This child has empathy for others and for animals to such a degree that it is more than likely that living on the farm is going to make a vegetarian out of her some day. One day we passed a semi-truck on the gravel down from our house. Carys said, "Mom, why is that semi full of pigs?"
Before I could answer, Emma says, "Well, where do you think bacon comes from?"
There was a shocked silence in the back seat and I was wondering how in the world I was going to get out of this one. (Thank you very much, Emma-Smarty-Pants.)
Carys gasped, "Mom! You mean, people EAT them?"
I still had no good answer, I just kind of coughed a couple of times, floundering.
Then, she saved me. With a choke and a sob, she said, "Well people don't eat them until they're dead, though, right?"
Whew. "No, Carys, we definitely don't eat them until they are dead. We wouldn't want them to go to waste, right?" And that seemed to satisfy her. She does still eat meat, and she doesn't seem to mind watching 60 live chickens get loaded into a truck and then 60 frozen chickens coming back in coolers, but maybe that's because she hasn't thought too much about the in-between yet.
Every time we watch a movie and the impending death of a character approaches, I need to be holding her on my lap and talking her through it. She grieved over the Lion King's Mufasa for days. She even cried when the scorpion killed the ant in Honey I Shrunk the Kids. It hurts me to see her hurting, but I don't really want it to change. There is so little compassion in this big bad world sometimes, that a sensitive soul might be just what it needs.
I worry sometimes about the "middle-child" dynamic that I always read about. Being the oldest child in my own family, I don't really relate. But I am definitely sensitive to it; I'm on the look-out for times when she is separate from the other two. She is very unlike her siblings, which is a dividing characteristic already. I just make sure she gets a lot of mommy-time. I want her to know that I celebrate her differences, and love her all the more for them.
My greatest wish for her is that she is able to hold on to that sensitive heart; that the world outside will be unable to harden it when she encounters its obstacles. I'm sure somewhere along the line she will be hurt, maybe have her heart broken a few times. And that's not necessarily a bad thing; it builds character and makes us unique in our life experiences. But I just want the core of who she is to remain that free-spirited, forward-thinking, sassy, gentle, soft-hearted person that I was blessed with.
We are learning to drum to the beat of a different marcher in our family. A few examples: she refused to sleep anywhere but in my arms for the first year and a half of her life. When other children were busy playing with toys, Carys was trying to take them apart to figure out how they worked. At pre-school screening, the evaluators had to take us aside for a special consultation because Carys wouldn't do the tests the way they asked her to do them. When they asked her to catch a bean bag with her hands to test her motor skills, she caught the bag between her knees. On purpose. She said she didn't want to catch it with her hands. When they asked her to list as many colors as she could (looking for the basic 8) she listed 14 colors and called them names like "lemon-yellow, and grass green, and indigo." Seriously. When they asked her how high she could count, she announced that she could count to 100. Then she said, "one, two, skip-a-few, 99, 100." I have no earthly idea where she came up with that, it was the first time I had ever heard it. The bottom line was that the evaluators were unsure how to score her development because it was on such a different plane than what they were looking for.
She says the most unexpected things at the most unexpected times, and Aaron will sometimes shoot me a look that says "who the heck IS this child?" And I don't have the slightest clue. Take last weekend, for instance. The weather has been crazy around here lately, and we had a little bit of thunder the other night. Carys and Cooper were brushing their teeth for bed when Cooper told me he was a little bit scared of thunder. I launched into a flowery description of angels bowling in heaven (we had just been bowling that weekend, and I was having a private little personal high-five at how nicely those circumstances appeared to work together) and the entire time Carys was just listening intently with narrowed eyes. In the middle of patting myself on the back for the smile that now appeared on Cooper's face, I was suddenly stopped short by Carys who panned, "Mom. That is not true. Thunder is caused by cold air and warm air colliding in the atmosphere."
Oh. Well thank you, Miss Meteorologist.
I anticipate that raising this one is going to be interesting. Of all her quirks and notions, however, the one trait that has devloped the most prominently is a soft heart. This child has empathy for others and for animals to such a degree that it is more than likely that living on the farm is going to make a vegetarian out of her some day. One day we passed a semi-truck on the gravel down from our house. Carys said, "Mom, why is that semi full of pigs?"
Before I could answer, Emma says, "Well, where do you think bacon comes from?"
There was a shocked silence in the back seat and I was wondering how in the world I was going to get out of this one. (Thank you very much, Emma-Smarty-Pants.)
Carys gasped, "Mom! You mean, people EAT them?"
I still had no good answer, I just kind of coughed a couple of times, floundering.
Then, she saved me. With a choke and a sob, she said, "Well people don't eat them until they're dead, though, right?"
Whew. "No, Carys, we definitely don't eat them until they are dead. We wouldn't want them to go to waste, right?" And that seemed to satisfy her. She does still eat meat, and she doesn't seem to mind watching 60 live chickens get loaded into a truck and then 60 frozen chickens coming back in coolers, but maybe that's because she hasn't thought too much about the in-between yet.
Every time we watch a movie and the impending death of a character approaches, I need to be holding her on my lap and talking her through it. She grieved over the Lion King's Mufasa for days. She even cried when the scorpion killed the ant in Honey I Shrunk the Kids. It hurts me to see her hurting, but I don't really want it to change. There is so little compassion in this big bad world sometimes, that a sensitive soul might be just what it needs.
I worry sometimes about the "middle-child" dynamic that I always read about. Being the oldest child in my own family, I don't really relate. But I am definitely sensitive to it; I'm on the look-out for times when she is separate from the other two. She is very unlike her siblings, which is a dividing characteristic already. I just make sure she gets a lot of mommy-time. I want her to know that I celebrate her differences, and love her all the more for them.
My greatest wish for her is that she is able to hold on to that sensitive heart; that the world outside will be unable to harden it when she encounters its obstacles. I'm sure somewhere along the line she will be hurt, maybe have her heart broken a few times. And that's not necessarily a bad thing; it builds character and makes us unique in our life experiences. But I just want the core of who she is to remain that free-spirited, forward-thinking, sassy, gentle, soft-hearted person that I was blessed with.
March 1, 2013
Nostalgia
I got a phone call from my friend Erin last night. These days we are long-distance friends; yet strangely, the distance has made us even closer than we were before. We mostly talk about where our lives are at and where they are headed, but last night she reminded me of where we used to be. And it got me feeling all nostalgic.
It is really true that our past shapes our present; we are who we are because of what we have been through. The hard times make us wiser, and the good times give us a reason to keep going. Erin and I were new teachers together; I only had a couple of years head start when she joined our District. I had the pleasure of being her mentor as she got her start, but it wasn’t long before she and I were working side by side on everything from classes to coaching.
I believe that for 3 short years, we were living in a bubble of the best of the best of the best of times. Nothing will ever replicate it, and I don’t believe I would even like to try.
Our Language Arts department had 6 members, and it might be hard to believe, but we were 6 women who liked each other. Actually liked each other, genuinely and truly. In any other universe, 6 women together for any length of time would be trouble just waiting to happen. But like I said, we were living in a bubble…it was perfectly perfect, however brief. I write today in tribute to my colleagues, my friends, who built me and serve as the fondest of my recent memories.
We were led by Linda, the Queen, who knew what it meant to make every single day count. She came to school in costume, she had unconventional lessons, she used tough love, and when school was over she turned her ministrations to her coworkers and friends. She cooked for us, she hosted parties for us, and she taught me how to laugh. Linda interviewed me; she told me straight out in the interview that I had the job (despite the Principal’s attempt to downplay and remind her that there were other applicants left to interview) and then she promptly invited me to her house for lunch. Her wit was unmatched; she could pull an innuendo out of almost any innocent line, and knew instinctively when I needed to laugh, and when I needed her to put her arms around me and let me cry it out. I learned from her that teaching is only 10% curriculum and 90% love.
I taught alongside Linda and Mel and Kathy and Erin and Leslie for those 3 wonderful years, and the way that we collaborated with each other and spent time together inside and outside the walls of the school was the key to what made it special. We never did anything half way; when it was Dr. Seuss’ birthday, we sewed Cat in the Hat hats for every teacher in the school, we performed Reader’s Theater versions of his books, had green eggs and ham for lunch, and made a red and white paper chains that stretched down every school hallway. When we taught medieval civilization, we created a “renaissance festival” of our own in the school gym replete with shops and performances and costumes and music and props.
We hosted our own dress-up days, we surprised the students with projects and field trips. We planned dances and pot-lucks and family nights. We searched for ways to teach literature outside the room, to blur the lines between school and real experience. We took them to high-ropes courses in the mountains, we took them camping, skiing, swimming. We wrote nature poetry on the banks of the Arkansas River , we performed plays and sketches in the courtyard.
Outside of school we spent time together because we genuinely liked to be with each other. We made gingerbread houses at Kathy’s, went horseback riding at Leslie’s, had parties at Mel’s, had drinks at Erin’s. There were countless lunches and campfires and river trips and bike rides and walks between each other’s houses.
I don’t mean that we didn’t each have our troubles; of course we had our problems, our personal challenges. I, for one, certainly didn’t recognize at the time just how extraordinary this experience actually was. Marcel Proust said, “Remembrance of things past is not necessarily remembrance of things as they were.” Maybe I’ve got it wrong, or maybe others will remember it differently. But since it is my memory, it remains this way: perfect.
It isn’t until now, looking back, that I can see with such clarity how amazing those three years really were. Those remarkable women made my first teaching experience as positive and welcoming and wonderful as one could ever have hoped for. Each one of them made life more livable, and work never felt like work. I left the house each morning and went to see my other family. Mel was the spunk, Kathy was the southern lady, Erin kept us young, Leslie brought the crazy, and the Queen ruled over us all.
Like all good things do, our time together came slowly to an end. It wasn’t a recognizable end at the time, of course, but as life evolves and moves and changes, the magic of those perfect three years faded and dissolved. I was the first one to leave; my husband took a job in Missouri Kansas , Kathy went home to Kentucky Erin remained, and nothing since has ever been quite the same. This was the heart of our conversation last night, because she too, is moving on. She said, “Do you remember how good it used to be?” And yes, I do.
I miss you all, my dear friends, despite the time and distance between us. I keep a few photos from those days on the bulletin board next to my computer at school. One of my favorites is a series of photos we took on one of our many dress-up days, I have no idea which one. Linda is wrapped in multiple feather boas and is sporting a tiara and scepter. Mel and Kathy are arm in arm wearing cowboy hats, vests and boots. Leslie is wearing a red wig and enormous false eyelashes and she laughing out loud. Erin and I are in matching go-go boots and have serious 80’s hair. We are so young; we are so happy. I love to look at that picture when I need a little boost.
I’m not sad, though. To quote that tired old cliché, time cannot stand still, after all. Even if we tried we could never return to our former selves, never replicate who we were and where we were and what we were.
So I’m not sad, I’m simply grateful.
I think we had something kind of special, and it is sweeter because it was short, and rare, and ours.
February 8, 2013
Call Me
I did something I swore I would never do. Emma turns 9 in a couple of weeks, and I bought her a cell phone for her birthday. I know, I know. I can’t believe it either.
If you had asked me that question a year or two ago, I would have told you that she wasn’t getting one until she was in 7th grade and that is that. And I was thinking that 7th grade would be a generous concession. But the truth is I caved. I waffled, I conceded, I gave in to the paranoia only a mother feels when she is out of the immediate control of her child, and am buying her a phone at age NINE, an absolutely unheard of age for a girl to be getting her own phone.
Let me first qualify my decision a little bit. I’m not buying her iPhone 27 for heaven’s sake. She’s getting a Tracfone, prepaid with no contract. I’m going to monitor her usage with the same ferocious attention that I do what she wears, eats, watches and reads. (Good Lord, I sound like a Tiger Mother…)
Here’s the situation, friends. We live on a farm (you know this already) in the middle of nowhere (you know this as well) and drive in to Fairmont
We do our level best to keep everything on track, but life happens, you know? Sometimes something comes up at school and I can’t leave right away. Sometimes someone gets sick and Aaron and I have to shuffle who gets who and when. Sometimes somebody just forgets what day it is and where all the kids are. (This is when you are REALLY glad you got a spot in Julie’s daycare. She is on top of things and will call me immediately if some kid somewhere does or doesn’t do something out of the ordinary.)Have I told you yet how much I love her?
Anyway, in the last month, 2 different situations came up that caused a panic. First, Emma was invited to be a skills tutor in an after-school group for math. We then had to coordinate her pick-up time with my basketball practice schedule and Aaron’s work schedule. We were doing just fine until I went to an after-school meeting that ran long. All of a sudden I looked at the clock and realized I was already 15 minutes late to pick her up.
I can’t describe my panic to you; I ran to the phone and tried to get the teacher who was supervising on the phone – no answer. I then called one of my friends in the elementary building who happened to still be there who went wandering around the school looking for Emma while I drove like a bat out of you know where to get there myself. Turns out Emma was pretty cool headed; she went down to the CER office and asked them if she could wait for me in their office. (I teach a lot of Community Ed classes through them, and Emma is used to being there with me.) My friend in the office, Kris, promptly took her down to one of their after-school programs where she was busy doing arts and crafts and eating a sandwich when I finally dashed in, heart racing and breathless.
This is a great example of what kind of an environment I teach in. These people will do anything at all for anyone, any time, anywhere. It made me feel so good to know that my child wasn’t standing outside on a sidewalk wondering if her mother was ever going to show up. I still felt horribly, terribly guilty, and it took me a full hour to calm my heart rate the heck down.
We used to live in a world where kids could find a phone on a street corner; where kids could play on random playgrounds for hours waiting for a ride home. Remember when you could just let your kids walk home or to a friend’s house or to the neighbor’s? Maybe the town kids still do that; I suppose living on a farm gives me a distinct disadvantage in this arena. My kids don’t know their way around town because they’ve never walked anywhere or biked anywhere; I just drop them off and pick them up.
And I know we are in what would probably be considered a small town, and it is nice to believe that Fairmont
(Yes, I’m being dramatic. I know. I can’t help it.)
To make a long story shorter, a similar event happened just a few days later when Emma thought she had Choir practice after school. She didn’t get on the bus, and by the time she realized she didn’t have practice that day, the bus had already left. She went down to the gym where she knew I sometimes have basketball practice and waited (hoped!) for me to show up. By the time I got there she had herself pretty worked up worrying about whether I was really coming and whether I would be mad that she had not gone to daycare on the bus.
So I bought her a phone.
It really does give me peace of mind to know that wherever she is, I’m just a phone call or a text message away. And honestly, if you had looked into those golden-brown eyes bright with unshed tears and seen the waver of her lower lip when she came running over to me, you would have caved in too.
Here’s the fun part of the story.
Her birthday is still 2 weeks away, but once I got the phone loaded with contacts and minutes we decided sooner was better than later. So we took the family out to eat at the Chinese restaurant in the mall last night. (I feel very lucky that my kids love Chinese food…yum.) We finished eating and the kids went over to feed the fish in the koi pond. I slipped the new phone into Emma’s coat pocket and then announced we were going to walk around the mall for a little while and do some shopping.
As we wandered through the mall, Aaron sent a text message to her phone that read “Happy Birthday!” She didn’t hear the beep of the text alert. So as we walked, Aaron repeatedly called the phone. Finally, she notices the music and says, “Mom, what is that sound?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “It sounds like it’s coming from you.”
She held the coat up to her ear and went digging through the pockets. When she pulled it out, she exclaimed, “Mom! I think I got someone else’s coat accidentally! There’s a phone in my pocket!”
She was looking back and forth at us, and we were both kind of grinning and waiting.
“It says there’s a message! Should I open it? It says, ‘Happy Birthday!’ Whose phone is this?”
When she got no response from either of us except stupid grins she finally says, “Is it MINE?”
And then the floodgates opened. She was so happy she was fighting off tears and Aaron was laughing and Carys and Cooper were actually speechless for once.
That made for a pretty awesome Wednesday night.
Of course we followed up the evening with explaining what a Tracfone is, how it works, and what the rules were going to be for having one. Maybe I’m just trying to justify this to myself, but can you really put a dollar amount on peace of mind? Or your child’s safety? (And hey, maybe I can swap some chore time for phone minutes – that might be a good idea…)
Despite all my resolve and earlier reservations, I think I can call this a win.
January 21, 2013
Job Security
We are reading The Hunger Games in my 8th grade classes this year. I love to teach this book because kids are genuinely interested in it and cannot put it down. The action-adventure theme hooks even the most reluctant readers, and most kids don’t realize how much they are learning while we’re reading it. Before they know it, we are discussing really adult themes like Government Control and Social Classification and the moral value of Reality Television.
I have many Language Arts components that I am required to teach, but this quarter we are spending a great deal of time concentrating on providing textual evidence to support a theme. I have modeled several times the skill of responding to a question and then locating a passage in the story to support their answer. This is pretty much English 101; every class they take from now until the end of time will ask them to find text support. But these kids are brand-new to the idea, and it has been a struggle to get them to do it.
In case you are not familiar with the story, I will tell you that two particular characters (Peeta and Katniss) find themselves having to work together in the story. It is pretty clear from very early in the story that Peeta has strong feelings for Katniss. The question on my daily quiz today read like this: “How does Peeta feel about Katniss? Provide a page number and a quote from the book to support your answer.”
This one was kind of an easy one, I thought. I wasn’t trying to trick them on this first test; I actually want them to experience success so they feel confident moving forward into more difficult processes. There are easily 20 or 30 sentences in this section of the book that give insight into Peeta’s feelings. In fact, one line actually reads: “Peeta sighs. ‘Well, there is this one girl. I’ve had a crush on her ever since I can remember.’”
So there I am, correcting tests, and feeling increasing alarm over the answers that have been given. Some of them answer only in their own words. Some of them include a page number but not a quote. Some of them are even blank! (Blank? Really?)
But this one…this one’s my favorite. Here’s the unedited answer on the test paper:
“Peeta wants Katniss to die. Because in the chairiot (sp) when they are wearing flames on their costume he says they ‘suit her.’ So that means he wants to set her on fire. Page 72.”
After I finished laughing and wiping my eyes, I gave this student half credit. They were able to locate a page number…(yay!)….they were able to articulate a personal answer…(yay!)…and while there is no direct quote from the story, there is at least a reference to actual text.
The follow-up lesson is going to have to address the fact that while the concept of citing textual evidence is indeed emerging, we must take care not to miss gigantic chunks of comprehension in the process.
Good grief.
It’s nice to feel necessary.
January 16, 2013
2012 Recap
My primary purpose in writing this blog is to provide a record of my thoughts for my children to read someday. I found a great website that actually prints your blog, pictures and all, into a hardcover book. I plan to have that done periodically. I’m not much of a journal writer, and too often anymore, I will forget the details and nuances of a family story. I thought this might be a nice way for my kids to remember some of our moments (good and bad) and to hear them told through their mother’s voice, for someday when I’m not here to tell it in person.
With this in mind, I’m going to shoot for a 2012 Recap that will provide the best picture overall of who we are, and what we were all about this year. This might have been one of my favorite Decembers we’ve ever had. The kids are really in that “sweet spot” as far as their ages are concerned. They are old enough to understand what’s going on, and young enough to believe in things they cannot explain.
One of my favorite moments came from Carys
We also took the kids to see Life of Pi in the theater. I loved the movie, as much for the allegory and its literary elements as for its amazing cinematography. The challenge posed at the beginning of the movie is to tell a story that proves that God exists. I got pretty swept up in the imagery all the while analyzing and evaluating the plot twists and turns, and looking for the connective threads that resolved the question. By the end of the movie, I was moved and inspired and emotional…all the things that really good story will do to me. I am pretty sure that the metaphor of the movie went right on over the heads of my little munchkins, but I tried to explain it to them anyway. Exposure to good works at any age is a good thing, says Mom, the English teacher.
Two years ago, we got an “Elf on the Shelf.” We named our elf “Sam” and he has been the most wonderful addition to our winter routine. The kids come flying downstairs every morning trying to be the first one to find his new location. Occasionally, Sam will bring a small treat or leave a message for the kids and they are beside themselves with excitement. Some of my favorites from this year included Sam dressing up in Emma’s Barbie clothes, riding one of Cooper’s tractors, and hiding inside Carys
Besides being adorable and sweet by nature, (“Bye, Sam, we love you and will miss you!”) reading those notes reminded me of how rarely we as adults allow ourselves to believe in magic anymore. Age and experience makes us hard and cynical; I find myself looking at life with such a critical eye sometimes. I don’t know how much longer they will believe in magic, but I will celebrate it for as long as I can. Life can get really REAL…no need to go there any sooner than we have to.
In 2012, Emma slipped gently over the edge of childhood and is tentatively testing some new boundaries as a “pre-teen.” I had hoped her innocence would last a little longer but I admit it is a little thrilling to chronicle this journey from the perspective of an adult who has “been there and done that.” She has stopped asking me for every little thing and has begun initiating all sorts of things that were previously off-limits.
As a small example, one night I was working in the kitchen and she casually opened the fridge, took out a soda and walked over and sat down next to me, preparing to open it. I noticed her watching me very carefully, and she seemed very reluctant to pop the top. I looked up at her, down at the soda, and back up at her. She didn’t say anything. The look in her eyes was almost daring me to challenge her. We don’t allow soda for the kids except on special occasions, so I was very surprised. When I reminded her of our rule, she sighed dramatically and returned it to the fridge. She poured herself a glass of milk and kind of stomped out of the room.
I had to think about that for a little while. She pushed the edges a little, but didn’t argue when I held the line. I guess I should be thankful for that; I suspect it will only get more dramatic from here. Emma is one of those people who feels things passionately, but tries to hold her emotion in check in front of other people. When it finally spills over, it REALLY spills over.
The next morning I could hear her yelling at her sister upstairs. I couldn’t understand all of the words through the ceiling, but she was definitely YELLING. When I was able to calm her down and get her alone to talk, I said, “Emma, it is not like you at all to scream at people when you are upset. What is wrong?”
Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes and she wailed, “I don’t know! I think I have anger issues!” I laughed out loud and hugged her hard and told her that feeling irrational was a completely normal feeling. I told her that I hope to teach her better ways to manage it than just blowing a gasket. (However, if you had been there when I found a bottle of pink nail polish soaking into the carpet you would see that’s a skill I’m still learning too.)
At 8 years old, Emma is a reader, an artist, a crafter, and the best mom-helper around. She takes care of everyone smaller than her, and delights in small pleasures. She has wonderful attention to detail, and asks me really introspective questions. She keeps me on my toes, and it is such a delight to watch each new milestone unfold.
We honestly aren’t into American Girl all that much at our house; my daughters each have a doll, but that’s about it. And I certainly wasn’t thrilled about spending $80 on a plastic horse, but if you had seen the look on her face, you would know why I went home and ordered one. And it was completely worth it on Christmas morning.
My little man Cooper is all boy. I marvel at how he can be surrounded by feminine influence in the form of a doting mamma and two sisters who want him to play dress up and still turn into a rough and tumble superhero flying, race car driving, dinosaur loving little man.
He has a competitive spirit that I’m not trying to squash, necessarily, but I am trying to channel into something constructive. He hates to lose anything, especially a board game or a video game. He gets frustrated when he can’t do something, and will practice over and over to get it right. I’m not sure where that comes from, since I’m generally content when things just sort of go my way. But his father is a little more of a perfectionist, so maybe that’s where he gets it.
He is extremely observant, and always surprises me with his strong vocabulary and his desire to have things just “so.” One of my favorite Cooper Moments of the year came at Christmas.
First, a little back story: I teach and coach at Fairmont High School
At Gudahl Family Christmas, Cooper’s Grandma Gail bought all of her grandsons the same outfit. Cooper opened his gift and pulled out a beautiful Minnesota Gopher sweatshirt and pants (maroon and gold, by the way.) He sat there, staring down at the outfit with a scowl on his face. At first I thought maybe he was disappointed to open clothes and was hoping for toys. But before long he picked that sweatshirt up by his thumb and forefinger and declared, “I don’t even GO to this school! I’m a CARDINAL!”
The whole room erupted in laughter and it took me a good 10 minutes to explain that it was okay to wear maroon and gold if it was a Gopher sweatshirt. I still chuckle every time I think of it.
I love that he can be wrestling on the floor with his dad one minute, and climbing up in my lap the next. He can be charming and exasperating and serious and silly, and a more expressive set of brown eyes never existed anywhere else.
Aaron and I continue our journey toward sustainability on our farm. He’s adding to our menagerie outside, and I’m expanding my prowess in the kitchen when it comes to canning and preserving. In 2012 we are happy and we are healthy. What more could a girl ask for?
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