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!