I put my children first

I made some hard choices these past weeks. Hard, and yet not so. 

To stand up for oneself, for one's family, is a touchy business but necessary. 
It comes naturally to many of us -- the "mama bear" -- and some of us do it with grace and good manners.

Unless of course one happens to be a people pleaser, backed into a corner 
by too many yeses and half-hearted mmmhmmms heard of course by others as heck yeahs.

Dozens of books, maybe hundreds, written on this topic,
and I will still ramble on the subject
 for my mental health 
and maybe for yours.

 I don't blog often about my daughter Sarah's chronic autoimmune and anemia disorders.

I don't talk about it either.

Many of my close friends aren't aware of what it looks like to live at farmsuite 

outside of the
prettinesses and the victories.

It's as though we live a Christmas letter 

because I don't see anything edifying about sharing the pain
or the difficulty that is sometimes true for us.

And probably for everyone.

We none of us know what others are facing, really.

So maybe it seems as though we play hooky too often.

Maybe we can come off as noncommittal even as we faithfully attend dance, flute, community theater rehearsals,
homeschool co-op.

Sometimes people say they understand
and then they are mean and punitive about an absence.

And I usually shrug it off.

But I quit the co-op last week, with just two weeks to go.

I did it badly, without much grace.

I feel compelled to explain that I had attempted to bow out just after the holidays,
with a handwritten letter expressing how much our family has been facing and how grateful we were for the experience and how we just needed some white space.

But in fact that letter was received with hurt feelings and I was, to put it frankly, 
emotionally manipulated into continuing.

To not disappoint someone else's child I pushed my family, myself, my children, for months.

Here's what I'm grateful for today:

They forgive me, my children do.

And just possibly they will learn that it is alright
 to put themselves and their loved ones first.

Holding it together

 I like to use colloquialisms when I am at a loss for words.

 Also I turn to random happy pictures in times of stress.

 All of these from last weekend, when we celebrated Grace's eighth birthday with trips to
Sweet Life, Wildlife Safari and...

 Tolly's. The only 1880s ice cream shop I know.
And, really, why would I need to know another?

The trilliums are just opening here.

Some are broken by the ice and snowstorms we've been experiencing.

Spring, not so sprung.
Me, a bit undone.

This weekend we hosted dear friends for a multiple-kid birthday party.
Heavenly coconut cupcakes I resisted (wheat-free. gah.).
But lasagne was too good to leave alone.

We went to a radical 1980s party for another sweet birthday girl.
The kids looked better than I ever remember looking in the 1980s.

We saw The Hunger Games and it really was as good as the book.

We (the royal we) trenched out the entire backyard
and replaced the water line from pump-house to house-house.
We remembered what a shower is, as opposed to a trickle.

I read a lot of Emily Dickinson.
But it didn't improve my outlook as much as did looking through some happy pictures.

Not so long ago I saw a report that said we, internetbeings, are at risk.
At risk of a form of depression that supposedly springs from
reading (incessantly) about the (maybe trumped-up)
happinesses and successes of others.

Like a year-round Christmas brag letter.

But I beg to differ.

I like the happy.
Post all you like.
I'm reading.
And some days it is holding me up, holding my undone together.

Spunky and the gang take a walk

My girls and our favorite neighbor boys like to take Laura, the two-year-old also known as "Spunky," for walks in her wagon.

Until little Ryan gets tired and decides the two-seater wagon has room for him too.

And that's when Spunky shows her stuff: Without a fast shutter speed you'd never know he didn't walk the whole way; he was only in the wagon a split second. And if only I'd had a longer lens on the Nikon you'd be treated to a glimpse of the patented FACE that bid him back afoot in a hurry.

Oh, friends, what's a mom of five to do when her fourth is so clearly another firstborn?

It Never Fails

Is there anything like a longtime friend? (You know, I had typed "old friend," but we have potentially reached the age where that is no longer as flattering as I'd like.)

Is there anything like a friend who knew you before your husband was even in the picture? Who knew you when you worried more about your social life than your budget?

I submit, there is nothing like a longtime friend.

Many of our friends at this stage in our life revolve around our lives with children and/or work. This is a wonderful set of friends and acquaintances! We've loved getting to know fellow parents and business associates. It's great to have people whose lives mirror your own in some small way.

But the friends who were there when you learned how to drive? If they're still around when you're driving carpool, count yourself blessed.

Over the weekend I added a leaf to my Thankful Tree. I am ever-so-thankful for my longtime friend Carolyn. We were laughing (together, I think?) on Sunday over how, in high school, she was such a good girl, and I had quite possibly an undeserved reputation as a good girl!

Get this: she stopped by my house to help me. There was some sort of story about her sons (AMAZING teenage boys who give me hope for the future) needing to do some community service for extra credit in a class. Can you imagine? I never felt so inadequate and grateful at the same time. Ever.

She didn't even know about the Great Hip Injury. It's a little embarrassing, folks. Two years ago I broke my, um, tailbone in a bad horseback riding accident. I was laid up, as they say, for a couple of weeks. And it was Carolyn doing my dishes and entertaining me with jokes and stories until more than my funny bone hurt. It's actually cruel to make a person with cracked ribs laugh. Did you know that?

Anyway, as though the longtime friend radar were pinging, Carolyn and her wonderful sons made the drive to the boondocks to help me on Sunday. The boys gave my husband a MUCH-NEEDED break from indoor duties by helping him erect a dog kennel and some neat-o wooden compost bins. Carolyn stayed inside and played Legos with Grace between DOING MY DISHES and FLOORS.

I am so grateful to know her still after more than 20 years of cracking up. Literally and figuratively.

I think I'll add a little glitter to that Thankful Leaf.

***

Hip update on Friday after the Chief of Staff (dun-dun-dunnnn) looks at me. Specifically, at my hip. Man, I wish I'd been doing a better job with Mrs. G's Derfwad Manor A$$ Challenge.

Start Hoarding Now

Maybe you have a head start.



Maybe your cupboards are alphabetized and then further arranged by expiration date, oldest in front. Maybe your kids' shoes are purchased for the next five sizes (to last approximately five months?). And maybe, just maybe, you saw this financial crisis coming and didn't go on vacation over the summer, choosing wisely to put the money allocated for that spree instead into a margarine tub in the deep freeze.

One time my grandma had a jar full of Susan B. Anthony dollars buried in the garden. When her handyman tilled it up, he unknowingly shattered the jar and spread her money all throughout the garden's 18-inch-deep furrows. My grandma, the consummate Frugal Frederique, dug until well after dark seeking her coins. Later, many summers later, we started pulling carrots and beets with dollars in them.

And then another time I had purchased a 1930s overstuffed club chair for $10 and hauled it home to my college digs. My roommate Margaret and I decided that the fabric was scratchy and she knew a little about upholstery. There was a funny patch on the back of the chair so she also weighed in to say that it was common for people to hide money in their upholstery. (Why did I believe her? She was a history major.) Anyway we tore the offending fabric off and stapled on 10 yards of awful peach-and-green polished cotton from the dollar bin at the upholstery store. There was no money hidden in there. Then, when we were throwing the original fabric away, our antique dealer neighbor commented to say that it was mohair and reportedly was worth close to $100 a yard.

When my grandfather died, it fell to my mother to clean out his closets. Like many of his generation, the "Great Generation," he had a compulsion to save everything. Not only did he never throw anything out, but it was all squirreled away in tidy compartments. And he had multiples of most everything. The shoes he wore everyday were as worn as you can imagine, very "down at the heel." There were four pairs exactly like them in his closet, new in their boxes, just as they had been for maybe seven years. He washed sheets every Saturday, waiting until they line dried to make the bed again. There were 10 sets of sheets in their packages in the linen cupboard. I think this is the definition of hoarding, and I understand it is common among people who have lived with very little and are afraid to be without.

Maybe you're saving your dollars and maybe your menus are planned for three months of pantry meals. Maybe you're appreciating the value of your old things and resisting the pull of the Pottery Barn. Or, maybe, like the media say most Americans are, you're living paycheck to paycheck.

Maybe you're somewhere in between.

I have a stocked pantry. I shop about once a month for "big" groceries, stopping otherwise only for milk and bread and produce that the garden doesn't provide. I don't literally advocate hoarding, since that has a connotation of having more than one needs (and keeping it at the expense of others who aren't able to then procure it). But I am thinking a lot about the Great Generation and what they went through, how they managed. How it shaped them and their friendships. They must have relied quite a bit on one another. That part sounds good.

Joy Rush Number Three Thousand Eleven

So I've been walking every day in an effort to lose the baby/pregnancy/baby/blogging chub.

Losing weight is a lot harder than it was in my early 30s. A lot. One of the great things about the tiny village where we live is the community post office and "general store," both of which are in easy walking distance from our mini farm. And they're downhill from us, so getting there is the easy part and walking home is where the real cussing, I mean aerobic exercise, begins. I usually push my double jogger but today I was a big meanie and I made Gracie walk. She is 4 years old and weighs just a bit more than 6-month-old Laura, so the unbalanced stroller thing is hard to manage on the big hills.

Anyway today I am OH SO THRILLED that we stopped at the post office, because:

See that box of Priority Mail on the handle of the stroller? Now, I used to work with a creative director who had some interesting quirks and tics, one of which was that he believed in carrying a FedEx envelope everywhere to make himself appear important and urgent-like. You cannot make this stuff up. We all thought he was a tad on the adorable but ridiculous side. Picture William Shatner in that recent lawyer show.

(Digressing again.)

Today we walked to the post office and there was a PACKAGE for ME. In a PRIORITY MAIL box. For me. And it gets way, way better because as soon as we hit my lavender hedge, I ripped that box open to find:

The most beautiful purse I have ever seen. Knit with a great deal of talent by Barb, my friend from So, The Thing Is, whom I have somehow been blessed enough to meet in this enormous blogosphere.

I want to say it must have taken love to make that beautiful felted bag. Maybe it was love for the fiber, or maybe it was love for the ability to knit so well, or love that just overflows from Barb's natural state of being a lovely person, but this is my new favorite thing. And it absolutely made me feel loved.

So, the thing is... I would grab this in a fire.

***

And because I can't help myself, I want to say something about friendship.

Whether you live here:

Or here:

Or somewhere in between, friendship is rare as a ladyslipper.

I wish I had a picture of a ladyslipper. I'm not even sure about their botanical name. Here in Oregon, ladyslippers grow wild on the forest floor. I believe they are of the orchid family, and their roots are so incredibly fragile, gossamer thin and barely threading through a bed of loose fir needles. People get big fat tickets (I guess, if they are caught) for trying to transplant these four-inch-tall wild beauties. It's a completely wasteful exercise, you see, because ladyslippers won't transplant. The poachers won't ever enjoy a tiny ladyslipper shade garden at home because the merest shift of the loose fir needles separates the coveted flower from its roots.

It's best to marvel at the ladyslipper exactly where you found it, in an unexpected moment when you were just walking through the forest.

(Huffing and puffing from pushing a double jogger.)