home again, home again

This morning I scraped the frost off the windshield with the most promising tool I could find, which was a package of baby wipes. I don't recommend it; Frances just barely got to school on time because of my futile scratching. Later Gabriel and I hit Ballocity, a multi-tiered padded indoor playground featuring many balls that shoot out of various contraptions accompanied by the startling sound of loud rushing air. One walks the line between fun and nightmare in there, but since it was just us (and we knew when the loud noises were coming), the mood was light and fun. Perfect for shooting purple and yellow balls across the room!

At one point I was gathering little balls on the main floor and inserting them into a shallow hammock I made by pulling up the bottom of my shirt. The idea was to cart them up more efficiently to the top level, where Gabriel and the pretend machine guns were waiting. This technique exposed my soft belly and I felt just a little ridiculous when a suited and tied silver-haired dad walked in with his kids just as I ran past, clutching my lumpy midsection.

How gloriously normal it all was. Jiggety-jig!  

Not that time spent with family and friends in Lancaster wasn't delightful. It was. But there was a moment last week when the sibling rivalry was at an unprecedented fevered pitch, the whining was at ear-bleeding levels, and the acting out was out of control. That's when it occurred to me that perhaps even fun departures from routine are stressful for our kids. Enough with the spontaneous friends and ice cream and videos. All the holiday indulgence and togetherness was freaking them out.

And so yesterday, back in Annapolis, we did regular things. I made pancakes for breakfast. After church I set the kid table up outside in the warm sun while Mike and I raked. Sometimes the kids helped with the leaves, but mostly they became quietly busy with their own imaginative projects - like creating a new boardgame called Winners of Walengie.

 

While Gabriel napped, Frances and I took a long walk around our neighborhood. She skipped and galloped, fueled by her fantasies about what life will be like when she and Gabriel are older and can do things on their own, like go to the neighborhood pool and walk to a friend's house. Later we had dinner with our favorite neighbors. Stories, pajamas, bedtime. How satisfying.

Like so many things, I have been letting my children take responsibility for the fact that this whole routine business turns out to be something I am deeply attached to. I complain about how very confining the kids can be, slaves to their daily rhythms. But I feel so good to be home, doing our regular home things, shifting into a new season together. The leaves have finally fallen, a chill is in the air, and the advent calendar has returned to its place on the kitchen door.

(Last year, I stopped at 7. Over the weekend I embroidered us up to 12!)

Our happy visits in Lancaster are always colored by a twinge of sadness, an apologetic empty-handed stance I instinctually assume when surrounded by people who were close to me when we lived there. The most benign "how are things?" can put me in a funk. Everything in my life is so different now, and it all seems to be worse when I gaze at it from Pennsylvania, with one toe in The Way Things Used To Be.

But upon this return, I am realizing with gratitude that it's actually not worse. Different, yes. But this unexpected sojourn of mostly stay-at-home surburban motherhood has its perks. Like an after-school walk in the eerily beautiful woods that run up to and touch the South River at Quiet Waters Park with friends today. Like a ridiculous kid yoga session featuring such entertaining asanas as mouse pose, digger pose, and baking-in-the-oven pose. Like this blog, a project I never would have begun had I not been in this strange new place, scratching my head, trying not to cry, and wondering how I might enlist my far-flung friends' help in making it all okay.

It worked. Thank you, readers. It is okay. I'm still finding my way, that is certain. But within my days, blessedly bound by routine and ritual, I find small moments of joy that are no less intense for the regularity of their occurence.

When I listened to Frances describe the future on our walk yesterday, it struck me how this environment that still carries a strangeness for me has become completely hers. When she thinks herself into the future, it is happening here. This is her landscape now, and she's helping to make it mine, too.

What a gift it is to discover that it feels good to be home.

 

i knew you when

On Saturday afternoon, I found myself at one end of our couch, quietly observing three generations of men squeezed together, absorbed in their various pursuits. Next to me was Gabriel, rapt and motionless, listening to Mike's dad reading a story. At the far end sat Mike, puzzling over conic sections for his math class.

I was taken by the strangest, most vivid notion as I watched them. Maybe it was the ripped cargo pants, maybe it was something about the way he was holding his back and head at attention. Suddenly Gabriel was a big teenager in my mind's eye. I could see his long limbs and strong brown neck, his graceful motions and intent way of listening. And when I looked at Mike pouring over his math homework, oblivious to my presence, jutting out his lower lip and furrowing his brow in concentration? There he was, as a child. I saw him the first time math was hard. He was thin and awkward and beautiful; his look of troubled yet determined concentration spoke volumes. Mike's dad Charlie was the still center connecting them. 

Have you ever had an experience like this? When, unbidden, you are struck with a vivid sense of what someone you love was once like, or what they might be like in the distant future? 

I often feel grateful for the fact that Mike and I have been able to grow up together; we met when I was seventeen years old, and fell in love when I was twenty. We were so young! And yet we weren't children. This might sound nuts, but I have also felt the absence of intimacy with Mike-as-child as a source of grief. I don't even know if I miss having been children together; I just miss having known him then. Who was that little boy who jumped for joy watching the 1980 World Series, who sat with Sister Dennis in the hall outside his second grade class doing advanced-level reading work, who played football in Christopher Ropertus' backyard? (And how could he have gone about daily life as if everything was just fine? He didn't even know me!)

Watching my dear ones quietly, unintentionally suggest who they were and who they will be got me thinking about an under-appreciated dimension of love. We often think of loving the whole person. You could call it spatial - loving all of someone, all of their scattered bits. But could we also think of loving someone temporally, across time? 

Mike once explained to our dear friend Edith how he knew he was ready to marry me: though he didn't know who I would become in the future, he knew he would love that person. We love people at every moment of their unfolding, every moment of growing into themselves. When I see pictures of my mother as a child, my heart flies to her. I love that little girl. And my father, who died so young? I sometimes imagine him as he would be now. It is not so hard to do, conjuring a fifty-nine year old Dad. I don't know the details, but I know I love him. 

In the same way I am getting to know eight year old Mike better all the time. I am getting to know and love the people my children are growing into, too. Sometimes I see flashes of an older person expressed in Gabriel's baby face. I hear a tone of voice that belongs to a much older person accidentally slip out of Frances. Little hints of what is to come. 

Love draws us towards that most essential center of a person, that mysterious and ultimately unknowable core. It is the you-ness of you that I love. Yet that you-ness travels through the most varied landscapes and circumstances. It is expressed in an infinite number of ways, each of them compelling. Sometimes you are infuriating, sometimes you are inspiring, sometimes you elicit the deepest tenderness in me. Sometimes you are a child, and sometimes you are very old. All of these expressions point to that you-ness I love so dearly, and in that way they are precious.

Could it be that true intimacy allows us a partial, shadowed view of the entirety of another person's life? The seed, the shoot, the root, the tree? The person they were, are, and will be? With our children in particular, it is easy to say we love them always. We love them backwards and forwards. Though they came from outer space, though they surprise and baffle and refuse categorization, in loving them, I am yearning to know them. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. 

gratitude garland

Oh yes, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love the season, the food, the absence of gifts and their attendant pressures. I love to be together with nothing to do and nowhere to go. I spend the holiday talking and eating too much with people who don't hold it against me and drinking red wine out of my mother's tall crystal goblets. My cheeks burn deeper and deeper shades of red as the sky darkens. It is blissful.

Anticipating this glorious event, I want my children to feel the joy along with me - to really get to know this holiday of cornucopias, raked leaves, and counted blessings. Since we are small in number this year, I don't want them to confuse this with just any old meal at Gramma's house. I want them to give thanks.

To inspire a grateful mood, I could think of nothing better than some Thanksgiving-themed crafting. I had dreams of creating something beautiful in both form and sentiment. This lovely project (discovered via The Crafty Crow) fit the bill. The original used pressed autumn leaves, hot glued onto a satin ribbon. That seemed a bit challenging for us, so after school yesterday I cut out leaf shapes and spread them around the table. I explained that we were going to write and draw things we were grateful for on our leaves. As you can see, we did indeed arrive at a gratitude garland. Oh, but the road there was rocky!

 

Frances wrote copious descriptions of things she is grateful for. (The orange leaf above reads: I am tankful for my tree book because it helps me no the trees and flowers.) As she is wont to do, she became attached to her work and refused to display it on the garland. These are mine, she explained. I am going to make them into a book. For me. 

Sigh. Gabriel was interested in drawing diggers and dump trucks on his leaves, but then he wanted me to cut them out so he could carry them around. Which is what he is wont to do - beg me to cut out pictures I draw of various construction site vehicles so they can become (by way of Gabriel magic) real. 

When I refused, Gabriel scissored into one of my carefully cut-out maple leaves himself. That's when I hit my limit. I heard myself sounding utterly ridiculous. I think I stamped my feet.

No, no, no!! You guys, we are making beautiful leaves! We are feeling GRATEFUL! We are displaying our leaves so we can see them and remember how GRATEFUL we feel. We are not cutting up or hoarding our leaves. WE ARE SHARING THEM.

It's silly, I know. But at the time I was so discouraged! I wanted to create a monument to Thanksgiving, and they were not cooperating at all.

Then Frances took me by surprise. She told me not to be so sad about it. She said that if I promised she could have the leaves that she made back after Thanksgiving to make her book, we could hang them on the window. 

Really?

She meant it. My frustration melted away. We made leaves last night, and she made some more this morning before school. Even Gabriel came around in the morning, when I suggested we might make a "sports" leaf together. It depicts the two of us playing our new favorite game, soccer hockey, with kid-sized garden rakes and a soccer ball. He was proud to hang it up.

Then before Gabriel's nap, we spontaneously collected leaves in the backyard. All the trees had released their golden and glowing red treasures in a wind storm yesterday, so it was hard not to notice all the colors underfoot as we played. I asked Gabriel if he wanted to press them with me. He did.

In the end we did press autumn leaves, just not for the purposes of our garland. Who knows what we will do with them. I probably shouldn't set my mind on anything, because that's where my problems begin.

Yet I know my vision matters too. Indicating a direction sets something in motion, even though I can never predict what exactly it will be. Creativity likes some limits. The trick for me is to not get attached to particular results. This is hard, even though I recognize the most delightful moments in our creative endeavors are the surprises. 

With my kids - as in all of life - I have discovered that it is important to have convictions, and equally important to hold those convictions lightly. If my convictions could be as feathers, resting with a gentle weightless tickle in my open hands, I might get into less trouble. Laugh a little more, certainly. The line we walk is about caring deeply without becoming rigid; bending so as not to break. 

In the end I got my garland. The kids did cooperate, in their own way and in their own time. Looking at it now does remind me to be grateful, especially for unexpected moments of quiet growth and love - and the wherewithal to take a deep breath and welcome them when they come. 

the play dough

Okay friends, here is the recipe we used to make Madeleine's gift over the weekend. Many thanks to Milena, who first introduced us to this pliable, satisfying dough. You can find this recipe and many more process-oriented crafting ideas in First Art: Art Experiences for Toddlers and Twos. I highly recommend it.

Combine
5 cups water
2.5 cups salt
3 tbsp cream of tartar
in a large saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon. As the mixture heats, stir in
10 tbsp vegetable oil
then
5 cups flour, slowly.

Keep stirring until the mixture starts to look dry and pulls away from the sides of the pan. Remove from heat. If it isn't sticky, it's done. (If it is, keep cooking and stirring a bit longer).

Place dough on the counter and knead until smooth. This is a fantastic job for children; just make sure it is cool enough.

To make Madeleine's rainbow-colored balls, I added SO MUCH food coloring. Tons. And I made half the recipe; I find that yeilds more than enough for two or even three children to share happily.

We have an uncolored batch in use that I made many months ago. A favorite quiet activity for both children involves a big hunk of dough and the contents of our nature basket (which is filled with things we have found like pine cones and rocks and shells). They tell stories and illustrate them by manipulating items from the basket - sticking shells up on their ends to make buildings, embedding acorns to serve as people. Very sweet and simple entertainment!

on walking the walk (and trying not to bump into other people)

You know how I romanticize all things homemade? How I delight in the baking of bread and hot glue gunning of Halloween costumes? How I dream of a nature-loving, consumption-rejecting, pure and sweet as maple syrup, hand knit, saving the Bay sort of childhood for my kids?

Part of that homemade agenda is encouraging my children to make their own cards and notes, to color the wrapping paper for gifts, to be a partner in whatever sort of giving we are engaged in.

But in my quest to infuse generosity into my kids' developing characters, I realize I have made the act of giving All About Us. I give people things the kids can help make or decorate or wrap. I use their drawings on thank you notes. Good gracious, what about the recipient? I tell my kids we are thinking of the other person, but truth be told I am thinking more about us. Oh, it's your birthday? What a fine opportunity to teach my delightful and precocious children the importance of being thoughtful! ...and oh yeah, happy birthday!

Now at first, making play dough for a friend's casual fourth birthday party seemed totally appropriate. Who doesn't like play dough? But on Friday, as I colored our little balls and covered them awkwardly in plastic wrap, I began to have second thoughts. My doubts were growing when Mike came home from work and gave me a look that said: really??

He didn't say anything, not until he saw me nestling the balls into an old plastic salad box fished from the recycling bin.

"You're going to give her the play dough in that?"

I took one look at it and decided it was indeed way too hard core, even for me. I knew I couldn't present this, even if Frances covered up the "Wild Organics Baby Spinach" label with one of her own devising (a task she was admittedly uninterested in). So I herded my fussy children into the car to go to the craft store first thing Saturday morning, where we found a more attractive and durable metal box in which to house our gift.

In the end it was fine. Madeleine does not distinguish between homemade and store bought. She liked the colors. I was more concerned about the judgments of the other adults present, but that was misplaced anxiety on my part.

What this whole episode made me consider was what it means to give a gift. It just so happens that my homemade fantasies are in keeping generally with Madeleine's family's values, and that Madeleine was not disappointed in the slightest that the play dough didn't come in yellow canisters with different-colored tops. But another kid would have been, and I hope I will buy the shiny plastic stuff when we are invited to that kid's birthday party.

Right? Isn't there something weirdly aggressive going on when we impose our values on others in the gifts we give? Like the copy of Anna Karenina I gave my mom many Christmases ago. Read this thousand-page five-pound book, you'll love it! No pressure!

What a fine and difficult line we walk. I don't want to throw out my values every time I encounter someone who lives differently just to avoid social discomfort. Nor do I want to impose my love of kale and fine children's literature on everyone I meet. Children's gifts bring out this tension for me. As parents, our private decisions seem to become public so readily, igniting all kinds of low level defensive feelings with people we barely know. I met a mom at the playground last week who schooled me on proper sleep habits and potty training within five minutes of making my acquaintance. Without flinching, I jumped right in with funny personal kid stories, subtly defending my diapered two and a half year old (and his parents). Ha ha, some kids just take long than others, ha ha!

If we get invited to her son's birthday party, we're bringing paper airplanes crafted from whatever outdated lime green school flyers the kids find in the recycled paper stack.

Just kidding.

Maybe.

to everything there is a season

On a day like today, when the autumn colors are vivid and the pace peaceful enough to allow for a sense of awe before them, I long to mark the moment with a gesture.

Living with my little ones has made me more sensitive to the fragile, startling beauty of the natural world. It has also helped me to recognize my own longing for rituals to connect and affirm our place in all this superfluous wonder. Sitting today on a neighbor's lawn, watching Gabriel and his friend Megan run down the sidewalk after an empty stroller in the sunshine, I felt like an honored guest. Not just of our gracious neighbors, but of the whole world. And what a lavish spread is set before us!

So what kind of hostess gift does one give the world? A poem, a song, a story. A ritual!

Children get this. They understand intuitively that in living life fully, formal gestures to mark the days and nights, the seasons, the love that binds us, and all those other most essential things just makes sense. But as adults, we can get squeamish, self-consicous. This is why monastic life has always fascinated me. I imagine a day organized by rituals enacted communally, balancing work, study, prayer, song, silence. Plentiful, diverse opportunities to formally express the gratitude that bubbles up in quiet moments.

But as I will not be joining cloistered life any time soon, I am very grateful to my children. They have given Mike and me the opportunity to collaboratively create many daily rituals, and the small gestures we exuberantly perform together have only whetted my appetite for more.

Routine is one thing. And believe me, I like routines. Sticking to them gives my kids a way to feel some competence and mastery in their world. There is a time for everything: naptime, bathtime, lunchtime. It's all very orderly and satisfying. Dinner's over? Why, it must be time for two stories snuggled on the couch together, selected from the library book basket! I feel certain that there's a lot less resistance in our small daily transitions because of the pleasure the children feel in correctly anticipating exactly what's going to happen next. 

But ritual is different. It's the same way every time, but it points to something greater than itself. Rituals make meaning and connections between us and all that extends beyond. A shuttle going back and forth, back and forth on a loom, slowly weaving a beautiful fabric as it endlessly repeats itself.

One of my favorite family rituals is A Gabriel Story in the Chair. After Gabriel says goodnight to Papa and Frances, I walk with him up to his bedroom. We turn on the light, prepare his little bed, and then I wait by the door until he has settled himself on one side of the big chair. When he is ready, he looks up at me very solemnly and says: Come. As I approach, he grins and tells me, See, I made some space for you! Always the same words and gestures, every night. It is the signal that our ritual has formally begun.

We snuggle side by side. I begin to tell a Gabriel Story. It changes every time, but it always begins Once upon a time, there was a little boy... Then it goes on to describe the little boy, including such details as: this little boy could jump very high, he loved his family and they loved him, he had big brown eyes, he liked to climb on the twisty ladder at the playground and he liked to read stories with his Mama. When the protagonist has been properly sketched, we come to the most exciting moment. Every night Gabriel squishes down into his side of the chair, clasping his hands together in happy anticipation, waiting with bated breath.

...and he had light up shoes, and he liked the library....and his name. was. GABRIEL!

We say his name in unison. When we say GABRIEL, he is downright joyful. He looks up at me triumphantly with an expression that says: this story really is about me, Mama!!! I'm the boy!!

Then I talk about how much the little boy named Gabriel loved diggers and excavators and rocketships. This also sends him. He squirms and smiles in such a way that suggests his little body simply can't contain the enormous happiness he's feeling inside.

Finally I do a quick recap of our day, sticking to the third person perspective. He corrects me when I get something wrong or forget an important detail. The story ends with the present moment, and not long after that, Gabriel is under the covers clutching whatever small vehicle is his Sleeping Toy for the evening, ready for sleep.

This thing we do together every night is beautiful. It marks the closing of another day, honoring each moment that mattered. It gives Gabriel to himself, connecting his day to the person he is becoming. It makes his life into a fantastic story that he is utterly thrilled to star in. His identity and sense of his own path stretching out before him are just beginning to take shape.

So yes, I think the Gabriel Story is a befitting hostess gift for us to humbly offer. So are Gabriel's irrespresible bouts of jumping, dancing, singing, and zooming rocketship stickers all over the house. There are spontaneous acts of joy and gratitude, yes! But daily rituals provide a foundation.

When Gabriel is engaged body, heart, and mind during the Story, I imagine him as a little seedling, sending his roots down and his shoots up and out. And with every rollicking rendition of the Johnny Appleseed grace that we sing before dinner, all our roots entwine as they plunge down a tiny bit deeper. What a strange and sometimes bittersweet pleasure, to watch our seedlings grow from this tangled rootedness.

restoration

Do you think Frances read my last post?

This is the book she presented to me with great pride and happiness over the weekend. Here is the author's bio, on the final page (school pictures arrived just in time):

Within this slim volume readers will find suggestions for consequences to employ should one's child behave badly, as well as positive rewards to bestow upon good children. Like stickers.

I have her to thank for Gabriel's triumphant and joyful First Pee on the Potty. How did I lure a child who has up until this morning been adamantine in his opposition to finally take off his pants and sit down? Stickers! And Frances tells me she will sleep in her room all night (rather than sneak into ours and snuggle into a sleeping bag on the floor) if she can have a sticker in the morning.

Frances' book has already cheered and aided this Mama Rabbit considerably, but the circumstance that facilitated its creation was a beautiful weekend-long visit with our friends Heather and Tom. How restorative it is to spend a long stretch of time together with dear friends!

The fall weather was gorgeous, and it provided a perfect backdrop for our cooking, walking, couch snuggling, talking and drinking wine for hours after the children were in bed.

Over dinner on Friday night I told Heather, Tom, and Mike about an interview I listened to on Being (formerly Speaking of Faith) with Joanna Macy, an 81 year old Buddhist/deep ecologist/Rilke translator. Macy recited her translations of Rilke poems* with intimate ease, as if she were speaking the words spontaneously, for the first time, and the effect was incredibly moving. 

Macy also spoke of our aversion to considering our feelings in regard to environmentalism with particular eloquence and insight. She said that our fear of pain is at the root of most of our problems, including the way we think about healing the earth. We love the natural world, and the harm we have done to it is painful to consider. Thus we flee to facts, information and argument. Our public discourse affords no space for sharing our grief. What might enable us to proceed with more compassion would be a turning towards the pain we feel, taking a look at it, acknowledging it. 

I told my friends about this idea because I found it compelling. How might we imagine a way of talking publicly that incorporates our genuine feelings? And where do we find the courage to open ourselves to the grief that must inevitably flow in when we confront the violence and hurt in the world?

Fast forward to folding laundry and chatting with Heather and Mike on Sunday afternoon. Gabriel and Tom were napping, Frances was busy in the kitchen. The fact of my persistent discontent and uncertainty about my place here in Annapolis came up. Heather sat with her typical openness and generosity between my husband and me on the couch, gently mediating and guiding the conversation. My stuckness in this regard is a subject that inspires defensiveness for both me and Mike, but in Heather's loving presence, something shifted.

At one point Mike suggested that it is destructive for me to continue to imagine the better life I might have elsewhere. Instead of saying 'if only we could...' it might be more helpful to admit to feeling sad and lonely.

Oh! How I resist such advice! But on Sunday with our friends I felt strong enough to listen to Mike instead of pushing him away. I realized that yes, I'd been driven by fear of pain, and it was not helping me at all. I have been running away from some fundamental emotional reality, and so my discontent clings to me like a tired toddler. I am always heaving it back onto my hip.

So here it is. Feeling my feelings. Yes, indeedy. Ready?

Sometimes I feel sad and lonely.

The miracle of Heather's gift? Not only did I feel able to acknowledge my pain, Mike was able to feel it with me. We three didn't talk about it much, but I was aware of a coming together, a healing, as our defensive edges softened and fell away in that quiet moment.

In the midst of all this, Frances ran in to show us each chapter of How To Tame Your Child. At first she told me - the one with the tear-streaked face - that the book was going to be my Christmas present. She was so pleased with her work! She loved that it was going to really help me, and so in the end, she couldn't wait for Christmas. 

Did she tap into the reconciliation that I felt subtly unfolding that afternoon? I think so. Because she too seemed restored by our weekend together. More herself, more whole.

Village life is my favorite kind, and being together with friends this weekend illuminated why that is in a deep, intuitive way. In loving and being loved, one can find the courage to hold both life's suffering and joy at the very same time. How I wish to give this gift to my children! I see how a village - friends, grandparents, siblings, neighbors sharing the rhythm and cares of daily life - provides the support children (and parents) need to grow, and to eventually grow wise.

I can bear the brilliant impermanence of autumn's beauty on a walk with Heather. I can even open my arms to embrace it. Today was a good day. Thank you, friends.  









*for example, Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower:

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

rabbit stew

In Mike's parents' beautiful home, there is displayed a small collection of framed cross-stitch scenes that Barbara created years ago, when she first became ill. My favorite depicts a cheerful mama rabbit (who is perhaps smiling through gritted teeth) proclaiming: If Mama Ain't Happy, Ain't Nobody Happy!

Actually, I think it might say ain't no bunny happy.

I did play Mama Rabbit in my second grade Easter-time production of The Magic Egg. And I do happen to be a mama now. Nonetheless the expression baffles me, which is why I find myself gazing at that image in muddled fascination every time we visit.

What can it mean? If Mama wakes up in a bad mood, watch out everyone, because she is seriously vindictive and you're going to get it? Or is it that Mama sets the emotional tone for the whole family? As in, if she is happy and energetic and displays a can-do attitude, her little ones will follow suit? And likewise, if she is grumpy, everyone else will take the cue and grump along beside her? (Such responsibility! I feel faint of heart considering that option). Could it be that when Mama ain't happy, and takes to her bed, family members' needs are no longer magically met, which leads to a lot of unhappy people wondering who else knows how to cut their sandwiches in just the right way?

The expression strikes me on a personal level as wishful thinking. Being the sensitive emotional sponge that I am, it makes more sense in the opposite direction. If the bunnies ain't happy, this mama ain't happy neither.

Today I felt unshakably gloomy, and I knew it was about deep levels of bunny unrest in our little burrow. This evening Mike and I talked about how depressed we'd both been feeling today, and it didn't take long to trace it back to our daughter. He told me about the miserable ride to school with Frances in the morning, and I told him about our miserable ride home. The last few days have been rough. We cycle through it: she is disrespectful and relentlessly contradictory, we feel angry and fed up, we give her talking-tos and time outs, the behavior continues on and on, and it is misery. Anything (homework, getting dressed, taking medicine) seems to be an occasion for conflict, and in those moments I can feel gripped by rage. But when she is gone and things quiet down, the sadness flows right in. We are out of sync, and it hurts.

Discipline is by far the most onerous and taxing part of parenthood for me. Frances seems to be disturbed or upset by something deep down, and she is often difficult to be around as a result. I see her doubt and discomfort, and see how it informs her behavior. But even when someone is sad, she still isn't allowed to do and say mean things to her family. It is wearying to think of how many times I've said "go to your room" in the last week.

I'm sure all the anger and twisted up feelings can be traced back to school. What exactly about school? Who knows. Maybe it's just too long; she's tired. Maybe it's something more.

As my children get older, the details change, but the essential challenge remains the same. I'm not in control. I can't make this one better. I can only try to facilitate conditions that will help loosen and untie the mysterious knots inside Frances. It is hard to see her struggle, and hard to feel angry at her. I miss my bunny.

baking monday

My family was not in need of more sugar on November 1st. But I simply cannot resist when Gabriel looks up at me, his big eyes happy with anticipation, and says: let's bake, Mama!

Before I've assented or thought of what we might try this time, he is urgently dragging a heavy dining room chair across the kitchen floor in order to assume his post at the counter. My able toddler crows out helpful suggestions (We need butter! Get me a spoon! I want to dump the flour!) while I search for a recipe. I have had a hankering for gingerbread lately, so we tried this and it was fantastic. (I am assuming you might also find it in the King Arthur whole grain baking cookbook, one that I have borrowed from both friends and the public library many times.)

We had already punched down the bread dough for its second rise when we started on the gingerbread. Even though they always feels irresistibly spontaneous, Gabriel's baking inspirations hit pretty regularly on Mondays. We have bid adieu to the weekend with all its socializing and freedom from routine. We are ready to settle down in Gabriel-and-Mama Land, a place whose spiritual center is the big yellow mixing bowl. We feel such pleasure and mutual affection standing before it. And it just seems right to begin the week by creating something sweet to proudly present after dinner.

Today, I put Gabriel down for his nap while the spicy gingerbread baked. I came back downstairs and shaped the bread dough into two loaves, then covered them with dish towels for their final rise. Finally I sat down to do a bit of work at the computer.

On Friday I had written something for work that I felt confident and happy submitting. I thought I had finally "gotten it" and hit the right tone. Suffice it to say, in reading my email I discovered that I had not, in fact, gotten much of anything. I felt so discouraged. Then dark clouds began to gather over my head, then I felt that awful fear that I would never figure out what to do with myself professionally, and then it began to pour.

Despite the distracting thunderstorm of emotion, I eventually made myself settle in and address the revisions to my writing, which helped put things in perspective. But I couldn't shake the more general disorientation. Every part my life outside the home seems precarious, uncertain. None of them (ie school, church, work, neighborhood, friends) are integrated with each other. So what am I doing here anyway? When will I figure out how to become a part of this place? How can I find a way to better live out my vocation - something that remains inchoate but certainly has to do with finding points of connection and support in struggling communities - when I seem incapable of finding points of connection and support myself? 

How will I find a way to integrate the parts of my life such that I am rooting into something real and true? I don't see the way forward, yet I know I must find one eventually if this is to be our home.

And in this mood, I ran out to the mailbox to see what Frances had left in it for Miss Bernadette, our mail carrier, before it was time to pick her up from school. This is what I found:

Frances has a Hello Kitty calendar hanging in her room. In the November 1st box, a line in small text announces that today is Hello Kitty's birthday. So Frances addressed a birthday card and put it in the mailbox this morning! I wanted to laugh and cry. I know a tiny part of Frances understands that you can't send letters to Hello Kitty in Magic Land via the US Postal Service, but most of her believes that you absolutely can. Just make up a zip code.

I opened the front door with her letter in my hand and the house smelled heavenly. Like a home. The bread was now baking and the gingerbread was cooling next to an enormous bag of apples picked over the weekend. What a distance I had traveled in a few moments, between the angst over my languishing public self and the peaceful sense of domestic satisfaction I felt upon entering our house!

The daily work of creating our home and caring for my family surely brings me joy. (And frustration, yes, but what job doesn't?) There are moments when I feel downright flush with the happiness that comes from doing a good job (like yesterday, watching the kids chat with neighbors and celebrate candy in their fabulous homemade costumes). I wish I could recalibrate my insides somehow, so that those moments would be enough. So I could shake this restlessness.

But it follows me around. Thank goodness for Baking Monday, for imaginative children and a kindly mail carrier, for a husband who works very hard and supports me in both my domestic endeavors and my dreams for someday creating something out in the wide world. These gifts do not go unnoticed; they help me regain my balance when the world seems strange and daunting. Despite that voice that speaks when I am feeling small and lost, I do have a community. My family, my friends, all of you. We may be small in number, but in our own ways, we are vast with ambition and love.