Because of Bob and Fred

Meet Bob and Fred.

Now, at first glance, they might look to you like just a couple of plastic figures, trapped in their acrylic box, bobbing up and down on the surface of the mysterious blue liquid of their personal ocean. A souvenir of our visit to the Tennessee Aquarium last summer.

You'd be wrong, friends.

You haven't been here for breakfast, or bedtime snack the last few weeks. I can't remember exactly when it started, when these two became stars in little stories told by John, in fact, when they were christened Bob and Fred. But you would be amazed at their adventures. They've formed a rock band, run for president, and over and over come to terms with their lack of electricity, out there on the ocean. (They can't play Star Wars on a playstation or plug in an amp for their electric guitar.) This morning they suffered an encounter with a couple of outlaws turned horsetheives, with a side discussion on the difficulties of webbed feet, cowboy boots and stirrups.

Every day I hear the requests, "Penguin story please!!!!!" And then the snickers and the chuckles and finally the belly laughs, and the protests when the story is over. As I refill a juice glass I see Joshua and Sam, shining eyes fixed on their dad. It is one of those utterly ordinary, everyday, something from nothing family miracles.

It's February people. You know, still.

This mom has been running low lately on energy and creativity, and I am appreciating again the seamless handoffs that parenting with a shared vision allows. How much it delights me to see him doing something that never would have occurred to me, that delights them.

So today, when you ask me why I love my husband, why I value him as the Daddy of these little people, I might say. . . because of Bob and Fred.

Inspired

Well, um, wow. . . We had one of those afternoons that we'll be chewing on for awhile, tasting every bit of the good from it, over and over. . .We asked a friend from church, an older woman who is in John's Sunday school class and who has been especially kind to the boys, to join us for lunch. We got Mexican at a local restaurant, and sat and talked with each other over quesadillas, and then she invited us to come to her house, a few moments from the restaurant.

She lives in an octagon-shaped home, three rooms, all hardwood and tile and cedar shake and windows. It is a spare and perfect as a piece of art, as the amazing local art that hangs on her walls. There in the space and light, with the profusion of nothing except books, and on her countenance, was everything we have ever read about voluntary simplicity. Every object selected for usefulness or beauty and mostly both, no more than would fit and a tiny home that felt spacious. "Enough as good as a feast."

Everything was touched with her vibrant spirit. We came away with so much to process, a desire to drink in everything we thought. I am not writing about it well even now, but I had to get some of it down, and behind it all-- the real deal-- that so clearly by saying "no" to some things, she has said a full and singing "yes" to others. And so, is there any space in our home, schedules, budget, brains, where we are called to say a small "no" that could pave the way for a deeper, truer "yes?"

Filling the Library Bag

There has been some reading going on in this sick household! In read-alouds we breezed through the last half of Little Town on the Prairie and are now enjoying an encore visit with Farmer Boy. John has alternated military history with a little Grisham to lighten things up, and I lapped up my wonderful What the Land Already Knows all too quickly. But a real treat awaited me in my next choice, Gail Godwin's Evensong. I remember reading the first book she wrote about her character Margaret Bonner, Father Melancholy's Daughter, several years ago, but I don't remember the thorough absorption and enjoyment I've found in Evensong. It helped that it is set in my beloved Western NC, so while penned up indoors, I got to wander the mountains and waterfalls that I love.

Joshua has alternated spending time with Ramona and Calvin and Hobbes.

But the pages we may revisit the most often were found in A Hole is to Dig, suggested by the wonderful Angry Chicken. Not sure how I missed this book-- of course we know Maurice Sendak, whose illustrations are at their most charming, and Ruth Krauss' husband penned Harold and the Purple Crayon, which I never read as a child and discovered delightedly with Joshua just a couple of years ago. (Why did I not copy all those index cards made my my future-teacher college roommates when they took children's literature? Why?) But this book, this book has already given us all so many smiles. I'll be ordering our own copy, and exploring more of Ruth's work.

This is a specific gift the blogging world has given me, a constantly growing list of books for us to explore with our boys. I'm thankful for so many passionate parents and readers who share their reviews and impressions to fill our library bag.

A Helping of Normal

I remember I started feeling bad on Super Tuesday. There we were, ensconced on the sofa in front of CNN, treasuring the last few days of nonstop political punditry before we canceled our satellite service. As the states lit up on John King's interactive map, I realized I was not enjoying Barack Obama's many wins as much as I had planned. In fact, by bedtime I felt distinctly unwell.

Sigh. Over the last two weeks I battled what I started out believing was a nasty cold, through the flu that got us one by one, and finally I am left with John, in the bedroom nursing pneumonia and reading his third book in as many days. My kitchen counter has looked like a wet bar of pharmaceuticals, with cold medicines and fever reducers standing in for mini bottles. The various juices and Gatorades to tempt our nonexistent taste buds and keep us hydrated have multiplied as well. We have made it halfway through a teetering library pile of books and videos.

But this morning, with husband still on the mend and eldest headed off to school with his sick note, Sam and I made a stand for normal. Medicines were banished to their top of fridge bins, everything wiped down, and mixer pulled forward. Flour and sugar and shortening from the cabinets, water from the tap, yeast and whole wheat flour and wheat germ from the refrigerator. Time to make bread.

It was wonderful how much I felt the regular rhythms of a good, well life returning as Sam and I measured and added and blended. We smiled as the Kitchenaid did its thumping dance as it kneaded, and were delighted after the first rise as the dough brimmed its greased bowl.

How those loaves satisfied me in their ordinary splendor, cooling on the counter. All shall be well and very well.

A Handful of Feathers

So perhaps a bit about the blog hiatus I took. . . I was feeling one of my periodic waves of ambivalence about my blog and about internet communications in general. Partly for privacy reasons, partly as a new blogger seeking my comfort zone, I had set pretty narrow topical boundaries here. And I think I got bored with them, got bored with the few sides of myself and my thoughts and heart that I had shared. And yet, knowing that there are things that I could write about that would be exciting for me, but would perhaps stir up controversy. And knowing that debate is not why I began to blog, and is not what I enjoy or want to engender here. Now, I can have a good debate with the best of them, and it is something I used to enjoy. I just don't have that kind of energy in the online portion of my life, to do it well and respectfully. The distances between us in cyber world, to me, demand an even higher level of civility than needed in our face to face interactions, as online we are without the graces of tone, gesture and expression to soften our words.

So I felt caught between a rock and a hard place, chafing against my own fences here and unsure of the land beyond them, should I climb over them. I told a dear friend, also rethinking her internet life, that I would mull it all over while I embroidered my bathroom valance, that I would not make a decision until the project was done. The center motif is a kind of stylized bluebird, and as he grew beneath my needle, it occurred to me that reading someone's blog, someone you only know through that venue, is a handful of feathers.

They are full of the color of that person, their texture and were a part of them. They are precious. But they do not tell you what it feels like to fly with the wings they came from, or what the landscape looks like from that bird's eye view.

No matter how true our words, no matter how tuned to our lives in perfect pitch, they are a part and not the whole of us. We hold each other's feathers but don't know the whole flight path, the journey that came before, the way the mountain looks from another's nest.

As I share other parts of my mind and heart I hope you will welcome them as just a few more feathers from a woman living and loving and praying, still creating and growing and figuring things out.

Translation

We have been living the hermit existence of a sick family this week. Aside from furtive rushes into pharmacy, grocery store and library for supplies to weather the storm, these four walls have been our space and us four, each other’s company.

With the distractions of work and schoolwork and church gatherings and daily commerce peeled away, I appreciate again the intimacy of family life. We know every inch of these little people in such detail, and can track symptoms and emotion as they play across their features.

Joshua curls next to me on the sofa. The bristly hair against my fingertips is like no other texture I’ve ever felt. He gets a fever hard and fast, this one-- as I hold him and read aloud, I can feel the heat through his Spiderman pajamas and see the glaze over his eyes as he sinks into my side. Thankfully, the fever reducer works equally quickly; he will be jumping around and chattering nineteen to the dozen in a half an hour. Sam always grips my upper arm for comfort, looping both hands around my bicep. When this little morning buddy chooses thumb and blanket over granola bar, he really doesn’t feel good.

This knowledge can come only through the crucible of family life closely lived. I can still remember the surge of competence we felt when we were first able to crack the codes of cries, facial expressions and body postures. The pouched lips and puffed cheeks of the teether, the waxes and wanes of appetite and growing pains, the little skirmishes and irritations that called for more sleep. Bodies and faces and tones to be learned by heart.

The trick seems to be, as they grow, when they are well and we are flown to the routines and relationships of daily life, to stay schooled in them. To be able to read the hurts and happiness they may not tell us, and to respond. The quiet that needs to be drawn out into conversation versus the quiet that needs only its own company. The anger acted out that sprouted from an earlier hurt. The over-eager helpfulness that whispers, “I need to be close to you right now.”

And then to hold, in the tension of paradox where being a parent is best lived out, the humility of the knowledge that we cannot and should not meet every need, the ones we interpret and understand and the ones that remain in all ways unspoken. They have a Maker who is the only one who can fill their deepest longings. We are the caretakers, with Motrin and cookies and cuddles and Little House and “You Are My Sunshine” and new crayons and the grace to translate and speak the language of family.

Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I will be returning soon, looking at life with a bit of a wider lens.