Groovy, again

This is another of those "groove back" conversations.

The ones where I ask the room at large whether there's a groove to, in fact, recover.

I have never been that groovy a gal. At least in my own estimation. In spite of more than a decade of ballet I can't really dance all that well. I'm not even very graceful, to tell the truth. (A broken hip and a bad knee and a collection of other clumsinesses are testament to this vicious cycle.) And although I was told in my youth that I had perfect pitch I subsequently damaged my hearing and can't currently carry a tune. (Don't mind me though because I still do sing. Show tunes especially. It's good to embarass your children.)

I like routine and I love tradition. I dig a good garden furrow as much as the next farm girl, I do, and I've earned all the lines on my face through laughter and tears and too much time squinting at my handsome husband on a baseball field.

So even though the riff on a groove is cool in concept it's never really worked for me. And it's not that I think a groove is the same as a rut, although sometimes it seems comparable. I consider it more of a fault line, really, this shifting, mobile area of life that flirts around somewhat like a dance but less predictable. I fear the jolt when the comfort zone is inexplicably disturbed by the moving plates of life.

Pretty soon my baby turns 1.

Pretty soon my oldest turns 13.

I don't have time for a groove. I'm too busy looking up at the blue sky, looking down to see where my feet are placed, balancing on a beam of life with my arms wide open.

Momma hens

That poor girl looks like she'd love some privacy in the nest box.

And what momma among us doesn't understand?

Today, though, I'm so very glad to be buried in babies and expecting my mom for dinner and in general nesting.

I hope your Mother's Day is lovely, dear reader.

Gadabout

I put some miles on my husband's car. I filled my tank and my memory cards, literal and figurative.

I'm so grateful for my mom. Not just this weekend but all the time. I am blessed with a loving mother and with children who make me. This is a time to celebrate the women who mother you, the mentoring relationships you have with others, and the concept of maternal nurture.

Most years I accept lovely gifts of flowers and globby clay pots and fingerprint paintings. This year I'll make dinner and I'll soak up all the mommy love I can.

Who doesn't love that?

Inspiration Point, again

When I light a candle these days, it's with more than a wish for its fragrance or its romantic light. It's with more even than the prayerful reminder that a candle can bring. . I light a candle. Maybe because it's necessary light. My duty to provide enough light for my daughters' evening reading. My responsibility to light the way for my children. And bigger than that it's a symbol, an icon if you will, of the luxuries that surround us every day. . Each flickering light a point of inspiration. Inspiration. . To breathe in, to breathe spirit into, to become filled with divine thought or direction. I take a deep breath.

I move through the days, doing what I must and what I will and often what simply makes us smile.

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In this way I listen for the spirit and the Spirit.

I wait. I am still in the manner of one who has things to do and does them, without an eye on the clock, or eyes on the prize, or an eye for profitability, but rather with an eye to duty and meditation and then I find sometimes with no little amount of surprise that I love the things that I'm doing.

Why does it surprise me still that the mundane can be profoundly meditative?

My girls make a tea party and I wait. It's a mother-daughter tea party to which their baby brother is invited as well. We sit at the table and sip hot tea and eat homemade brownies from the Little House cookbook.

Daddy's at work without much luxury of waiting for inspiration. My life, this bookish life of children laughing and seeds sprouting, is a luxury even when there's noticeable lack of what others might consider 'luxury.' These past weeks without hot water, often without electricity and sometimes without even cold running water, have redefined comfort. My chores approached a new definition of planning as I heated water on the stovetop -- propane, what a luxury! -- to wash dishes by hand. I wrung water from clothing and my hands and heart grew stronger with each day.

I think about pioneer women, as I often do. I think about my own grandmother, who paid for the doctor's assistance at the delivery of her first child with a flat of raspberries. I think about her little homestead and her huge life of love and family and frugality. And yes, of duty.

Duty and inspiration go hand in hand. Little luxuries and little hardships co-exist and illuminate one another much as candlelight. Who knew?

Mother's Day Gifts

Last year our Mother's Day was a picnic by the river, chilly springtime gardening, and a new baby. This year I woke up, looked around, and realized that Mother's Day was fast upon us.
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My mom wanted something, not that she asked for it. I was so excited to know what she wanted that it took me right back to childhood. Remember when your mother would insist that your globby clay and fingerpaintings were her favorite items? I was sure then that there were secret unfulfilled desires, unspoken wishes for unchipped china perhaps or a bottle of Guerlain.
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Now that I'm a mom four times over I often line up my children's dandelion offerings. A hand pressed in clay. A stepping stone with shells from our tidepooling adventure. A Chinese brush painting of a dragonfly, signed in ink, cursive, by my eldest at five years old. Photos. Smudgy bits of art.

All this gift cataloguing got me thinking about the gift of motherhood. The state of being a mom, a woman with a family, and what a present that really is.

It's a gift for generations.

It's a gift to see your daughter cradling a baby.

It's a gift beyond compare to see your daughter cuddled by a mother many generations removed.

I can't seem to think of a single item that could make a mother's day more spectacular than the sight of knobbly, girly knees in tights and of course the perpetually sandy toes washed for patent leather shoes and then, then dancing with cousins and grandparents, asking the unanswerable. Whatever does it mean, Papa, to cut a rug?
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I hope my mother loves her store-bought gift. (It's so exciting, but this is also the year Mom got on the internet so we mustn't spoil it.) I hope I don't get a single store-bought gift this year.

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I hope I get more of what made last year's triumphs and tragedies magical. I hope and pray I get that mystical gift of family over and over again for so many years that I can't pick one from the other. I hope I get to line them up as dandelion vases and paper mache' ornaments, no one more precious than the last.
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Each priceless.

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I hope you get to do the same.

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Happy Mother's Day.

Look! Look!

After much begging (blogging) I got my perfect Mommy's Day. Except the girls changed clothes. That was a good thing, because we all went out to the woods:

... to eat ants on a log. ...

Of course, the mommy readers will know that ants, while nutritious, were not my Mother's Day luncheon. We had celery sticks with peanut butter and raisins, otherwise known as ants on a log. We also had yummy roast beef sandwiches and carrot sticks and chips. Then the local cool kids showed up to the waterfall we were visiting. They were on a late Earth Day thing, cleaning up trash. But there was no trash, yay Oregon! So we just visited with the cleanup crew, otherwise known as our nearest organic farmer, our across-the-road dairy goat neighbors, and the fun family who sold us our current house. They live in eight miles or so from us, in a monstrously huge barn-turned-home, and they homeschool, so we don't see them very often. It was a nice divine appointment.

After that, we all hiked, even Laura:

That's the dog you see in the foreground. And, no, Laura is not bearing any weight on her little stubby chubbies. But I'm telling you, that baby wants to GO! She would not stop grunting until I put her Robeez on the ground like the other girls. How funny.

After the hike, the most important part! The long-awaited handmade gifts!!!!! (multiple exclamation points, I know, but this is mommyhood heaven right here):

Try to ignore my multiple chin problem, and I will love you forever. That's a wreath made out of baling twine and silk flowers. Gotta love it.

And that is a paperweight hand-painted with a portrait of Sarah and me, no less, on the chopped off end of a fencepost. My girls did this 100% by themselves. No help from Daddy. I am so in love with my gifts. They also bestowed upon me handmade paper that is embedded with flower seeds (what a good teacher to do this with their classes!), a pen with a silk flower top like the kind I'm always tempted to swipe at the bank (they made it at Sunday School!), and a dogwood tree. We arrived home in time for dinner and dessert with my mommy, who received much fussing and more handpainted globbies than I did. Finally we wrapped up the day with THE PLANTING OF THE TREE.

[Imagine photo here of a dogwood tree in a new shade garden created by my husband.
Very nice.]

So you know, I am a dingbat. I locked my camera (and car keys) in my Suburban late last night and can't get it out until the EGE gets home from work. Otherwise this would be a multi-photoed post. Last night the EGE and the girls cut back some of our native rhodies and planted a dogwood, a mountain laurel, a hosta and a viney maple for me. The big plan is to add a slate "floor area" to the shade garden and put a thinking bench there... very very sweet.

Today it is back to the grind. I am adding tops to a bunch of my vintage aprons. Oh, I wish that I could take photos to share with you all! But again, we must remember and make allowances for my forgetful key and camera episode and my ditsiness in general.

I Do So LOVE Mother's Day

Here is how it works at our house:

There's no such thing as stressing out over what to get me. The jewelers with the commercials ("Mom Rocks" does not mean I want a diamond to prove it) and the department stores with the displays (if I needed a mixer, I'd make it a household budget item, not a measure of my kids' love for me). Now I know I may not speak for all mothers, or even for all the mothers I know, but I don't want anything that costs a dime (except for the Nikon DSLR 80 with the lens kit options... and that's for another day; honey, if you're reading this: I still want it, just not from the kids!).

For Mom's Day, I want handpainted, handmade and globby unidentifiable clay things. I want breakfast in bed even if it's on the raw or burnt side. I want my kids to wear what I lay out for them and then I want them to not change clothes for the whole day, thus allowing me to not only see them looking cute but the pleasure of knowing the laundry pile won't grow more than I decreased it in my double-time laundry the day before.

Most importantly, I want them to smile for a bunch of photos, and that is my Mother's Day Miracle every year: the pictures in which no one is picking their nose or being a pill about joining the portrait. For Mother's Day, if things go my way, none of the pictures will have the barely visible hand of Grandpa holding one or the other of them forcibly in the frame.

So, on this subject of kid pictures: Have you ever noticed how your favorite pictures (maybe it's just me) as time goes by are not the ones where everything looks perfect? Personally, I love the screaming mimis... in retrospect. And I wonder whether this is a "hindsight is 20-20" thing... or not. It could be that I am merely romanticizing my memories, as I am aware I have a tendency to do.

To test this theory, let us consider this photo, taken just three scant weeks ago:





Yeah, maybe that one is not far enough behind me to be cute yet. I can still clearly recall the piercing sound she made instead of "using her words," of course, and the utter horror of being in public with many well-mannered cousins and her sisters and about 600 strangers. My memory is crystal on this: First I held the camera up as a shield. Then I tried to pretend she might be someone else's daughter whom I just happened to be putting in time-out. Then I moved on to rationalizing my pretense. It does take a village to raise a child, right? Those perfect parents over there with the adorable, not-screaming preschoolers might mistake my calm cool exterior for the Mother Theresa effect. No, she's not mine, I'm just big enough to step in and help whichever mommy here is incapable of prepping her 4-year-old to go out in public.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you... and may your Mother's Day Miracles be recorded on film.