The wings of, and wrinkles in, our friend Time

I spend entirely too much time in the pointless and, don't worry, I've noticed, paradoxical, consideration of the fleeting nature of time. And then today I read a theory about the three phases of life in Barbara Kingsolver's latest novel, Lacuna, and I'm simply slain.

 Her book, which (it goes without saying) is incredible, is the story of a young writer growing up through the Great Depression and the Great War and the Red Scare, not a true citizen of either his father's homeland nor his mother's but a son and inhabitant of literature, of words and their power.

 Anywhat.

 It touched me, his description of his mother's view that in the first phase of our life we are children. In the second phase we have children. And then? The third phase and the final curtain.

It was hardly the point of her beautiful book. But it stuck with me. Here I am, with one child entering her beautiful teens and my youngest just teetering on the edge of babyhood and the rest of them truly giving me a run for my money every day of the week and I think: I don't want to miss this phase nor any of the next.

Do you write every day? Every week? Do you take pictures as though the event will not have happened if you aren't recording it digitally? How do you live in this phase, whatever phase you enjoy now?

If wishes were horses

Writing, like playing, is daily. Change is not as predictable but it is inevitable.The odd drive to clear one's head.

A trip to campus to goof off in the halls of learning.

A lifelong dream - a century barn - within my reach. Written on my calendar no less.

Grace, as my friend Heather put it, can really rock a hat.

"Millions" of crawdads at our new place.

More University photos with our two exchange students... borrowed from down the road for the period of 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. or so, every school day.

Just one funky sign on my fantastic new barn.

While we lived a little bit of a dream here in this 1880s church-turned-farmhouse, it turns out there is a surprise chapter to the book of my life. (What? I don't control everything? And, furthermore, God's plans are better than mine? Whodathunk.)

So November first we will turn the page and move to that three-story barn (well, into the creekside house, which is at this point not so picturesque) and to that creek and to a mature orchard and a little more remote rural existence.

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?

Fancy Tuesday

To milk a moment

So I've been over the shopping trauma for days now. But it did feel nice to bask in the righteous indignation shared by some of my friends.

I used to have a pastor who was famous (to me alone?) for his saying: "A pity party of one is really fun... for about a minute."

But this week I am determined to remain positive. Even though we're pretty sure bambino(a) #5 has cracked or somehow dislocated my lowest right rib. Anyone? I am just so not going to the doctor over this. I have an appointment on Monday anyway, and I may or may not bring it up. Depends. It's been four days and I will shriek if a hen's feather or stronger breeze lands in that general vicinity. And don't get me wrong: it's amply cushioned. There's no way it was injured from the outside.

Imagine the guilt I can heap on this baby.

This brings me to a random but almost related story.

Besides breaking my hip (two years ago?) in a spectacularly noneventful way, I have broken other bones. In my years -- more than a decade -- as a dancer (Graceful? Me? Shaddup if you know me in real life.) I am sure I crumbled more than one abused toe. OF MY OWN, people.

En pointe as it were.

But five or so years ago I broke my, um, tailbone in a snapped stirrup leather accident during a (or directly ending) a trail ride. That was fun. Did you know off-road ambulances are five times as expensive as their two-wheel-drive counterparts? And did you know you have to pay full price for both if you are transferred once you leave the wilderness? Seems there ought to be a discount.

ALSO ... if your backwoods ER doctor is an ex-rodeo man with his own story of breaking his coccyx at the tragic seven second mark and then driving 17 hours straight home in his beat-up pickup and forthwith applying to medical school as a cheaper and easier career alternative ... you might not get as much sympathy (or pain medication) as you would have from city doctor. I'm just sayin'.

Anywhat.

I wasn't even recovered from that injury, not even walking without a geriatric tennis-ball-footed assistance device, before my dear friend KL's eldest son, blog name of Headlong, (maybe 11 at the time) ventured this question:

"How do you break a bone when you have all that... padding?"

I'm not really sure, Headlong. Not really sure. And for some reason a Willy Nelson moment is coming over me.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowgirls.

Don't ask how I know

Vinegar water and a half-hour's elbow grease will remove an entire tube of pink lipstick from the tongue-and-groove wainscoting.

But no amount of eagle-eye care can guarantee that all of the purple glitter is out of the alfredo sauce.

(I think that's why they're called the "terrific" twos.)

Oh, the humanity

We went "roughing it" over the weekend. It started out 76 degrees and sunny and ended up in the 40s with heavy rain and wind. Luckily the pregnant me's version of roughing it includes a rustic yurt. I might have tripped over tree roots on the way to the restroom, but we did enjoy hot running water.

In other good news: We didn't lose any children in the great avalanche of backpacks and sleeping bags.

In between storms we hiked. Mr. Suite had a plan that included overly ambitious miles of hiking. I valiantly kept up. Sort of. Leftover broken hip gimpiness and the general state of the third trimester were my excuses when I sat out some of the steeper inclines. (Also I had my new copy of Alabama Stitch with me. Go figure.)

I'm pretty sure one doesn't need to be gimpy nor pregnant to experience localized chest pain and generalized anxiety disorder over the sight of one's entire family on the precipice.

... of that inlet, also known as Devil's Churn.

We experienced some unbelievably warm, windless weather for tidepooling and the reading of Patrick McManus stories around the campfire. The girls are all now too familiar with the psuedoscience experiments that can be conducted by preteen children given cases of canning jars, bear grease and a heavy dose of teacher mockery. (Did I mention we homeschool?)

And then there was some more seasonable Oregon weather that alternately drenched and threatened to blow away the lighter leaves of the family tree.

Some of us with aforementioned gimpiness and/or height-related issues didn't measure up for climbing the lighthouse stairs.


Laura stood on tiptoes to no avail. Then she threw a fairly impressive screaming mimi in the lighthouse keeper's oil room while everyone else climbed the stairs. Strangers who were waiting in line were impressed with her tenacity. Also my creativity in distraction. (Okay, I made that part up. But they were impressed.)

Some of us did measure up for the stairs. And weren't afraid to gloat about it.

Some of us found a lot of seashells and agates.



One of us slept on the top bunk for the first and much-anticipated time.

Others of us were carried when we couldn't walk anymore.

I highly recommend yurt "camping" if your family for whatever reason can't take the dirt and bugs route. (Sometimes we take our little canned ham 1950s travel trailer but alas we are outgrowing it.) My husband grew up with truly rustic camping but this way the 2-year-old's toilet training was hardly derailed, the beach was steps away but so was the foot wash station. The only thing I'd change is next time we'll probably use our hitch rack thingamajig so the dog can ride in the "way" back instead of in the middle row with Madeleine and Sarah and so the bedding and backpacks don't teeter overhead that way.

I took a little more than 400 pictures and hope to impose on y'all with a few more of them as days go by.

In the meantime, I have a little unpacking to do.

chocolate angel

This was the scene of the crime.


This was the perp resisting arrest.

Just a few more notes from my files.

Wild turkeys

This is a post about how grateful I am that I didn't marry any of the wild turkeys I dated before Mr. Suite came along.

Just kidding.

This is just a quick picture of the stinky wild turkeys that roam our rural area... and a quicker but most sincere wish that your Thanksgiving Day is blessed with many, many loved ones and even more beautiful moments.

Oh and, try not to burn yourself on the roasting pan. I'm just sayin'.

If you know what's good for you

This past week has seen my novel (sounds so grand, doesn't it?) fall far behind the word count goal. I'll catch up! I must!

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It's not my fault, Ossifer, I have good alibi:

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Three doctor appointments. Three volleyball practices. Two volleyball games. Two music lessons. A repeat of the ever-escaping pony drama.

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Ooh. Let's lean on the pony drama.

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On Saturday we were watching Madeleine serve it over the net and score on a small town near us where the players are all fed Miracle Gro or some such supplement so as to make our team look like miniature players on a full-size court. That was my view from the bleachers, at least in between serial battles to keep Laura from, er, borrowing extra team balls and hucking them into the field of play. I think she was trying to confuse the other team. Or get us some penalties. It's hard to tell; she's not yet 2.

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Anyway between Games A and B I had to miss out on the ever-tempting concession stand lunch to run into town for my H1N1 immunization appointment.

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This is when I abandoned my mother and Mr. Suite in our group efforts to corral Laura and cheer on the mighty Wildcats.

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And while I was gone, my husband's cell phone rang. It was our next-door neighbors of the B&B, now for sale and looking oh-so-French-Country should anyone out there be interested.

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So Mr. Suite answered. He didn't figure it was a social call. Never has been.

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Nope.

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Dolly-the-danger-girl Shetland was out of her paddock, causing my elderly Arab much anxiety.

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Dolly never ventures far, mind you. She just wants to taste the grass on the other side of the fence and it's a bonus if she can drive her pasture pal insane in the process. Just because he's not willing (or able) to commando crawl under the bottom wire. Gee whiz. It never occurs to gentlemanly Two Spot that he could leap the top wire with ease. He's just a law-abiding sort deeply offended by Dolly's disregard of the order of all things barnyard.

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Anyway this escape caused the neighbor (did I mention their house is beautiful and for sale?) much consternation as he is not a "horse person" and his wife is allergic. (To horses, not him.)

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Mr. Suite (otherwise known as my long-suffering non-horse-person husband who loves me despite my horse habit) was 30 minutes away from home and I was 45 minutes to an hour away. The hour existing in case I might have time to pull through Dutch Brothers for a mocha. Full disclosure. And, hey, I'd just had a SHOT. In the arm.

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Recap, without parentheticals:

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I'm in town. My husband's watching four children and a volleyball game three small villages away. One pony is out and one horse is pacing the fence and whinnying like a heart attack. The neighbor is worried about ... well, who can blame him? ... his lavender plants.

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So Mr. Suite does the most expedient thing possible and gives the combination to our barn lock to the neighbor and explains the steps to capture said pony.

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Oh, poor, poor neighbor. For a non-horse-loving person to be subjected to this: Open barn, step over feed sacks and assorted tack items, scoop out can of grain, call for unhaltered naughty pony, open gate in (schlocky deep) muddy paddock entrance, shoo away full-size panicked horse from open gate, maybe even step in the mud in order to lead stinky pony inside, close gate, re-lock barn against tack thieves... it's all too horsey for words.

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Also I think this is why good fences makes good neighbors.

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So I'm driving home like a maniac, sans mocha. Mr. Suite is driving home much more safely because he has Laura and Grace on board, having left Madeleine to finish game B and Sarah to keep Grandma company and further to beg for Taco Time on the way home.

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I beat my husband and the babies home by a few minutes, long enough to watch Dolly look left and right, to simply step over the lower rail and duck under the middle rail to freedom. By this time Two Spot was bored of the drama. As might you be if you lived with Dolly.

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I called to the naughty pony, opened the gate and she marched back in with her head held high.

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Then Mr. Suite went to town and bought some solid field fencing. He and his dad spent a happy (okay, that part's maybe not true: it's a frigid 40 degrees out here in the evenings) afternoon fencing our lower paddock. The openings in the field wire are three and a half inches square. In fact it resembles a volleyball net, just a little, so that's bringing the themes together for you. Such service with the tangents.

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Dolly has not figured out a way around (through, under) this. Yet.

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Just like I haven't yet figured out how to catch up on my word count. 'Cause I've been too busy catching ponies. Yeah, that's it.

We sleep with the light on and/or we'll leave the light on for you

Just checking whether this photo is funny yet or not.

(You know how you take a picture of a tantrum or nose picking or some such thing (not that the nose picking goes on with my children, no, no), on purpose or inadvertently, and are of course embarrassed/worried about your parenting/tempted to delete? But then, months or years later, you treasure it? Or just think it's hilarious. I keep checking with this one from the successful Eugene attempt at the Guinness Book of World Record's Largest Ballet Class. It's been a year.... Nope. Not funny yet.)

Anywhat, my kids are always funny. Sometimes not funny hah-hah, though.

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The other day Laura (not quite 2) woke us up with hysterical (not using that word lightly) screaming at the front door at 4:00 in the morning. The house was pitch black and I stumbled down the stairs and through the laundry, kitchen, dining, front room to find her. So disoriented was I that I didn't turn on any lights on my way. She had apparently either walked in her sleep or wandered in search of us, and since she can't reach any light switches either, I am glad she made it all the way through the house without falling.

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Her door is right next to ours upstairs. We sleep with our door open. Why didn't she just walk into our room? Why was she so panicked, the horror of abandonment radiating from her tiny chubby self? She who has never been so much as alone for 30 seconds was in full-blown terror.

I scooped her up, switched on a lamp. She snuggled in to my shoulder and said, "thanks, light, Mama."

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We sleep with the hall light on now.

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Anyway earlier today I read this fantastic post over at the Women's Colony all about the village it takes to raise a child, the struggle and the juggle of single parents and the responsibility (should we choose to accept it) of seeing that need and helping to fill it in small and big ways. It's about having compassion. Who couldn't use a little more compassion, given and received?

And then it got me thinking about the time that my 2-year-old ran away from home.

Well, specifically, the time my third 2-year-old ran away. (Because there was also the time my first 2-year-old decided to leave me for daddy-at-work-he-loves-me-better. 'Nother story for another day.)

And then again maybe I'm not strong enough to face the fact that at some point, and apparently very early, my children have all declared their independence from me in a very decisive manner.

Shake yourself off, Miri, it's too late at night for melancholy!

So anyway when Grace Hannah (charming 5-year-old in picture featured above) was not quite 2 the pilot light of her independence already glowed bright. It was more than just reading Sesame Street's "I Can Do It Myself" a minimum of ten times a day that clued me in. In small ways she regularly reminded me, as they all do, that it's our job as parents to make them confident to go forth in the world with their own goals and objectives clearly defined and in the scope. Blah, blah, blah, separation anxiety need not apply here. (Actually all the separation anxiety is usually proven to be mine. Don't tell anyone.)

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So. Picture if you will, a bright spring day in a tiny village in the Oregon countryside. Picture further a mom of (at that time) three visiting on the church lawn across the road from her home with two neighbors while dad-of-three is puttering in the man cave (shop) and their three children are playing in line of sight and earshot and within five steps of Dad.

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Toddler Grace needs a diaper. Mom is unaware. Dad is unaware (line of sight and earshot, not odor range). Older siblings are not about to go near a diaper.

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So Grace crosses the English-daisy-covered lawn on short legs and grabs a box of baby wipes that reside on the porch for hand cleanups after playing outside. She likely looks at Mommy visiting across the road. She possibly calls out to Dad. This part is unclear. What is clear is that she shortly says good-bye to her siblings and starts off across the property line to the south, behind Dad's shop.

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Out of range of sight. Out of earshot. As my radar pinged slightly (panic comes easily to me), I realized that she was no longer in the white picket fence of our front yard. I called out for my husband, who immediately marshaled the troops. It took less than a minute, maybe 30 seconds, to find her in the dry swale of our roadside, marching with her wipes box on her shoulder, headed straight for "Gamma Nita's" for a "di-prr."

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The relief! The flood of relief! And after less than a minute of freak-out. Unfortunately I have since lost (and found) a child for a much longer length of time. And I know at least two things: one, the entire village including myself was as committed to his return as was his own mother and as were the sheriffs; and, two, the panic of 30 seconds is much, much easier to recover from than the panic of hours.

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My family is blessed to live in an intentionally chosen community (I did not mean commune, people) of caring neighbors. It's the family you choose, really. Even if they're in no way related to you other than shared property boundaries and nods from behind the windshield, these people are in it with you. I have very little doubt that had my baby made it more than half an acre away, the first person to see her would have known her and hollered for us to collect her. It's part of what makes me glad to live here, the never-alone aspect of life. (It's also part of what makes me crazy, but, again, 'nother story.)

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I would not have made the choice the woman in the Women's Colony story made -- I would not have driven my older child to school while the baby was asleep, home alone to waken in an empty house. But I would have sat with that neighbor baby on the porch until his mommy got home and I would have offered to carpool to help the harried mother.

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I hope we can all be that neighbor. Because it's a big scary dark world and we all need to create a village around ourselves and our neighbors so there's always someone to turn on the light switch in the dark.

Spoiled rotten... is it such a bad thing?

Last month I was pulling out of the grocery store parking lot when I had that moment. You know the one. The momentary midlife crisis that you're too young for but still recognize with every crows' foot. Maybe it's foreshadowing. But whatever it is at its evil root, it presented on that particular day in the form of a Honda Civic, gold package, cutting me off as I turned right into my lane.

She drove over the curb, people. She flashed me the special finger known in my house as "Tall Man" from the Thumbkin family. Also gracing that hand was a visible CZ from 35 miles per hour.

Her other hand was busy holding a bejeweled cell phone to her ear. I'm not sure but maybe she was steering with her knee? My shocked self took in her license plate frame as she zoomed away: "Spoiled Rotten Princess."

I drive a Suburban: Red, nine-passenger, flex-fuel-but-still-not-sexy, tows the horse trailer and hauls the feed and keeps my kids safe. My wedding ring took my husband saving an entire summer job's earnings between his sophomore and junior years at a public university. (That worked out okay for him, though, since I worked as a reporter to help pay tuition for the next three years.)

So spoiled rotten princesses may cut me off in traffic. They may assume my loaded Suburban defines me. (And in my neck of the granola, owning an SUV is enough to have you run out of greentown.)

Stereotyping goes both ways, I guess. She may have been a very late-for-court spoiled rotten princess. She may have been hurrying to deliver Costco goods to a relief plane for all I know. I shouldn't judge her by the self-spinning chrome hubcaps on her wheels any more than she should have judged me too slow to follow and too old to fight back in an alley.

I shouldn't judge.

But I'm at the Sylvia Beach Hotel for a four-day, three-night getaway because my family truly does spoil me... rotten.

I've spent the past couple of days writing, reading and drinking tea while the fog alternates with driving rain. Just perfect weather for a bookworm in the West Coast's best Luddite hotel: no phones, no television, no internet, no problem.

Yesterday I read Fortune's Rocks by Anita Shreve. Beautiful but a little disturbing; just the way I like Shreve. The day before, Northanger Abbey by of course Jane Austen. There's nothing like a little Jane on a rainy day. Today I'm sitting by the fire in the Newport Public Library, where they don't mind if you steal their wifi. Really. I asked. Because I'm not so spoiled as to fail to ask permission.