I've Moved- Again!

I've moved to a new blog.  Work, Play, Rest. Repeat.  I was ready to list all the reasons and insights, but really I think it's time.  Please do come by.  Y'all take care now.

In the words of Sly and the Family Stone...

Thank you.

The magazine, Rhythm of the Home, accepted my essay.   The publication went live (great expression I learned from one of the editors) Thursday morning last week and my particular essay is available here.  I would highly recommend checking out the entire magazine.  I've read through slowly, savoring each piece, as this, the editors announced, will be their last magazine.

Receiving an email from RotH that said "yes" gave me such a shot of joy.  But people.  People are the ones who amaze.  Because so many people, hordes to me, keep showing up to support it and encourage it along.  I'm still a little punch-drunk from the number of relatives, friends, and friends of friends who made a point online to respond to this essay.  It was nearly a day's worth of being Tina Fey or Anna Quindlen, in my own small, Tennessee, fifteen-likes-on-Facebook kind of way.  I am so appreciative to people who let me or a person close to me know how their feelings on the subject.  The soft and kind critique buoyed my nervous, fragile spirit.

Now I'm posting this here because I also have a strange, jangly kind of nerves about writing again at all.  This essay might be all I ever say in a publication again, but I'm hopeful that won't the be the case.   In order to make room for that to happen, I have to rip off the band-aid and send something else out in the world.  Even if it's only a bit piece to say "I'm so scared to try another one!  I really like the view of being quietly and softly well-received.  I might never come down again!"and then laugh manically.

Thank you, everyone, who ready my piece.  Whatever your feelings, that you took the time to read it… well, it felt good to be read.

A Little Brave Moment

I had a brave moment this weekend.  This is not an attempt to sing my own praises.  Actually it is, a little.  I've spent a lot of time not choosing the brave moment and I am proud that I made a different decision this time.  So it's a little bit me singing my own praise.  Mostly, though, I'm marveling at how the simple, small choices are the brave ones.  They are, I'm starting to think, the only ones that ever actually lead anywhere.  Anywhere, to my mind, is a destination more like growth and becoming the person you want to be than, say, meeting Meryl Steep at the Oscars, but I think that ties in too.

Here is my brave moment: I submitted an essay to an online magazine.  For a few months now, I've noodled with the idea of essay writing and working with publications, outside of my blog here.  I talk myself off the ledge regularly- I can't keep up with a blog, let alone follow through on that. What do I have to say that's interesting, new, or fresh?  I have no credentials!  I have no history!  This self-talk comes up and it's not just demoralizing, it's debilitating.  It can keep me stuck in one small spot if I allow it.

I have so many plans in my head.  Any day of the week you might find me folding laundry in my bedroom, but in my head I'm giving my acceptance speech at the Oscars for Best Screenplay Adaptation.  It's important to note, I've not written a screenplay.  I've not written a book from which I might adapt a screenplay!  Yet here I am, sorting socks and folding 5T skirts, while accepting my little golden statute from Meryl Streep and receiving appreciative applause from George Clooney and Helen Mirren.

It's easy for me to imagine doing the big, complicated things, and much harder to contemplate the simple, everyday tasks in front of me.  I do not know how to write a screenplay.  I am damned good at my acceptance speech, but I have not typed word one of the script for which I'm awarded.

What I did instead was write an essay.  No, first I wrote a query, to ask if this publication had any interest in such material.  That took an hour in bed, after my family were already asleep, and it took a great deal of deep breathing to do.  Then it was sent and done.  No, wait.  First, I sat down and dashed out five pages of thoughts in my notebook about the essay I wanted to write.  Then I read through it and made notes on what I thought fit and did not.  Then I wrote the essay.  Then I sat with it for about a week.  Then I took a breath and wrote the query.  Then I took another breath and sent the query.  When the magazine responded with interest and asked me to submit, I took my notes and my laptop and wrote a 1,300 word essay about a shift I've witnessed in my family since my daughter was born.  After that I rewrote it a little.  Then I went to bed.  The next morning, I got up and made a gluten-free pancakes recipe for breakfast.  I added chocolate chips.  They were delicious.  When we were all fed and functioning, I took myself off to the bedroom to rewrite some more, while my family kept themselves busy and out of my way.   Then I had to find photographs to accompany the piece, an intimidating task in and of itself.  This publication is arty.  We are not so arty, going more often for that, firing-squad-stance-and-smiling-in-unison-on-the count-of-three style photography.  Eventually, after only a minuscule amount of arguing with my husband, who gallantly offered to assist, I picked out three photos and added them to the essay.  This took a little while longer, as I changed my mind, picked new photos, named them, read the submission guidelines, renamed them properly, arranged and rearranged their placement in the essay.  Around 3:30 on Sunday afternoon I submitted my essay.  A few hours later I heard back, asking for my bio and bio-photo submission.  I felt a brief heady rush of excitement until I checked the submission guidelines again and realized this was required with all essay submissions.

Since submitting my bio and bio-photo, it has been quiet.  I have no idea if my essay has or will make the publication.  What I know is, I did something important for me in these last few weeks.  It might seem small- I wrote a little bit, on notebook paper, in hastily caught moments between parenting and homeschooling and cooking and taking out the trash and folding laundry and composing Oscar speeches in my head and showering and all the other hundred pieces that make up the sum of an ordinary and possibly wonderful life.  The writing itself, the entire process, turned out to be just like ordinary life.  No trumpets heralded my essay's completion and the closest we came to anything celebratory was finally toasting an old bag of hardened marshmallows left over from last winter.

Writing my essay was hard.  And scary.  The imaginary approval of George and Meryl have nothing on actually producing a piece of work and submitting it for review.  I will say here, I think there is something powerful about imagination and we all need our jaunts with the Academy Awards to keep a feeling of possibility and hope alive. But for me, doing the next, seemingly, small thing was my important step.   Moving out of my head and George's attractive gaze, to the page, that was what I needed to do.  The fictitious friendships of the talented and celebrity cannot keep me fed forever.  So I took time off from my speech (and, really, it's good- not a dry eye in the Kodak Theatre) and wrote a real, short piece about something I know. I had a brave moment. They're available all the time, to all of us, aren't they?  I'm a little late to the party on this one, but I'm so glad I showed up this time.  Brave moments are out there, everywhere, waiting to be seized, to be choked down and spit out, leaving us a little trembly and roughed up and excited about the small, real-life possibility.  I'm so glad I took a breath and took mine.

Georgie

Our dear dog, Georgie, died last Monday. Georgie was with us, Matthew and I, for ten years, half of Dory's life. She was a lovable girl, very gentle, comfortable with strangers only if Matthew or I were there. She came from the streets, this gorgeous Border collie/Spaniel/mutt mix, having spent most of her early life (we think) living on her own.

She was protective of me. Once, when I was home alone and had a handyman in, she hurtled a baby gate, going up steps, to get to me and she stayed put between this stranger and myself the entire time he was there.

She did not settle into indoor living easily. She was inquisitive, destructive, and yet she hated crates. When we buried her, Dory insisted we not put her in a box, saying, "Georgie wouldn't like that." Dory was right; Georgie hated containment.

She hated fireworks, thunderstorms. So many nights Matthew and I took turns staying up with this poor animal coming out of her skin at the crashes and bangs accompanying a later summer storm. Typically she alerted me to a night time storm by sitting on my head. As she got older, it got easier. I liked to think she felt safe. Probably her hearing was starting to go.

She loved us for loving her. She wanted only to be with us, as much as she could. Georgie opted to be in stressful situations, us shouting at the television during a football game, rather than be in a room on her own.

She was always gentle with Dory, always so easy about this crying, crawling, inquisitive baby, this unruly toddler, this little girl who dressed her in princess clothes, namely plastic, gold-painted crowns, and old nightgowns of mine. I once carried Georgie's train.

I hated all the mess of a dog, the hair, the dandruff. She has a hodge-podge bed on the floor of our bedroom, an old, torn, cotton blanket and a cheap and flimsy brown-and-red dogbed. We washed them frequently the older she got as her bladder gave out. I'm not ready to wash them and put them away, this mess from when she was here.

I loved her so much. I didn't know how much, not really, not in everyday life. There were flashes of it, flashes of her head on my lap, my hands buried in the ruff of her neck, when I knew it then. But not in the day-in, day-out experience, especially not after our baby arrived. It was only in the last year I came back to her, came back to loving her, noticing her, really paying attention to her. I don't think her love ever waned, not if the way she stuck to me, stayed under my feet, settled outside the door of the bedroom when I put Dory to bed gives any indication of devotion. A dog is unwavering devotion embodied

Her death itself does not worry me. I do not doubt her spirit survives, fleeing her old body for new pastures. She was old, she was ready. She and we were blessed with a quick, and easy death. It is not the death itself that bothers me; it is the absence of her everyday physical presence. I miss the head in the window when our car pulls up, the attempts to tunnel to China through the floor, the awkward ballet performed around her in the kitchen while cooking dinner. There is the everydayness of an animal that tethers us to home and the house feels so still without her in it.

Georgie was the best dog. She was entirely ordinary, exactly as good as every other good dog that's ever existed. The house is so quiet. I miss my girl.

Photo-Op Lost

We have three raised vegetable beds in our backyard, two long rectangular ones and one small, square Dory-size one. Dory plants in a hither-and-yon fashion, picking up handfuls of seeds and hurling them into the space. This summer, entirely by accident, she grew some Mexican sunflowers, tiny carrots, and many, many weeds. We finally uprooted the lot of it and now she has a bare bed, an empty palette.

Hence mudpies. We went out yesterday morning, a shockingly balmy day for September and we filled her bed with lots of water and made a mix of mudpies, mud balls, which we chucked at the wall behind the garden, and a mud monster.

I have to stop here and add, none of this comes all that naturally for me. Dory's five and I think this is the maybe the second time she's ever done real mud play. I don't naturally think, let's build mudpies! in the same way I don't naturally wear light cotton dresses and get caught in slow-motion with my head thrown back, hair blowing whimsically across my face, laughing. Were I to make an advertisement for Ralph Lauren or Tommy Hilfiger or J. Crew, it would be of me in jeans, in a chair, knees under my chin, looking up from a book to say, "I'm reading. Can I help you?"

However. I'm in the middle of Kim John Payne's book, Simplicity Parenting, and he's caught my attention on an assortment of subjects, particularly the complicated nature of children's play. He advocates for very few toys, very simple toys and lots more play in nature. He advocates for it far more eloquently and with much better expression that I just did. Nonetheless, there it is. Mr. Payne mentions a bit on mudpies and I, reading it, sat up in bed (or sort of pushed Dory over to the side a bit and shifted around) and thought, We could do that! We could make mudpies!

We did and here's the part that caught my attention. First, it was really fun. Second, I did laugh, but never anything Mr. Lauren or Mr. Hilfiger would care to photograph. And third, and somewhat related to the last, I did not have my camera. By camera, I mean phone, and I intentionally left it inside, cutting the two of us off from the world of electronics entirely. Yet, there I was, watching my straight-backed daughter, in her pink tank top and purples shorts, mud up to her knees, face creased in delight and I had no way to record the moment. None.

And then I thought- do I need one? Do I need to capture every single beautiful moment on film? Or really, do I need to capture every beautiful moment on digital recorder and perhaps, one day, transfer it to print?

I once called Dory the most well documented child in history and a father standing next to me marveled at it too. We can capture everything. And we do. But do we miss it, somehow, in the very act of seizing it? By needing a physical copy or the means of making a physical copy, do we lose the presence of the moment itself? We are blessed in a time when we will be able to show our children photographs, digital recordings, their childhoods captured and available for almost complete reproduction. Yet I wonder sometimes if we're losing the wonder of the moment simply by needing to hang onto the moment. I once spent a portion of a ballet open house watching the performance through the few inches span of my cell phone. I have every moment of six little girls dashing madly around the room to Skippy the Squirrel, yet my memory of the scene remains hazy. I have another video of miniature princesses performing a simple routine in Market Square, but mostly I remember cursing over the lack of close-up capabilities my camera held. The other day, I watched a commercial, for a cell phone, I think, of a children's play, with every grown-up in the room grappling to get close enough to record the show. The scene turns into a crazed fight, and the camera pans back to show the couple at the back of the room, also watching through a lens, have the best seat in the house. Why? Because their camera's zoom is unbeatable. Is that the message behind that scene? Is that your takeaway?

I did not seize the camera and we have no evidence of Dory, the Mud Monster, with mud up to her elbows, thighs and covering the better part of purple-shorts bottom. I cannot post any shots here of her flinging mudballs madly at the wall, laughing or chasing me with a garden hose. And they were beautiful shots, endearing, surprising, really, really funny. Yet the memories I have are crystal clear and by telling the story here, feel clearer yet.

I have a vague sense there's an even larger message behind this idea, something about us needing to record our lives so we can fill each other in digitally, something about the lack of personal touch and communication in the world these days. But that's out of my range, that's not really what I'm thinking about. Mostly I'm just glad I laid my camera down for today, that I got up to my elbows in mud, too, because I wasn't balancing a phone between thumb and pointer finger and watching her in high definition. I watched in real definition and I was delighted by the quality.

And, it's not lost on me, how I write this and fling it into cyberspace, that faux world where so much of our lives exist. There's a place for all of it, isn't there? There's a balance. I'm trying to find mine.

The Writer Spider

We went to pick strawberries yesterday at King's Hyrdrofarm. The day was sunny, the sky blue, the temperature still mild. The strawberries were fading fast, at the end of their season and we came away with juice-stained fingers from many half-eaten berries. I found the number of insects, especially spiders, to be reassuring. When we first came to their farm, the Kings assured us of their conscience farming practices, yet the presence of insects tends to announce what might not otherwise be seen: we are taking the natural path! I know, in our little backyard patch of a garden, I picked off (and no doubt ate) a huge quantity of tiny little slughsdon't want to think about the number of slugs I expect I ate this year on my own lettuces in our backyard patch of food. This lovely lady

we learned, from Janet King, is Argiope aurantia, also known as the Writer Spider. Janet explained the spider makes designs in the web, like writing. You can see the zig-zag cutting through the bottom of her web. We wondered if this was the inspiration for Charlotte, from Charlotte's Web, and Dory expressed several times how she did not like this spider and also described the general color and shape of her to Ms. King. We left and I kept thinking- if this is homeschooling, sign me up. I felt filled up on the experience, my heart ready to burst at the simple pleasure of this simple day. I've missed my home. I've missed this daytime freedom. I'm feeling excited. Homeschooling appears already to be in progress...

On Home and Yuv

We are in the middle of a new transition, a transition to being home again, during the daytime, and poised on the brink of homeschooling. As a clarification, my job as a nanny is nearly up, hence that awkward description "being home again, during the daytime." I ought to find a more beautiful way to express it considering how totally jazzed up about it I am. Here's my new comprehension, after three years of this full-time weekly work: I missed my house. The next understanding, a lucky truth: I like my home. I like it so much, as my little charge often says to describe something that delights her. I like it so much. At one point in her life, Dory would have said "I yike it so much." That's another shift since last we spoke- her "l's" are now pronounced "L's." Gone are the days of yiking, of yaughing, of seeing her friend Yi-yi (translation: Lily) and of yuving. She stands squarely in the land of L and she sees it too. I've noticed, L's are often slipped into places L's do not usually live. "Anully" for "another" is the first that springs to mind. I missed my home and I'm glad to be back on a full-time basis. My parents named me after Emily Dickinson, a woman almost as renowned for her proclivity for staying home as she was her poetry. I do not question why she was able to create what she did from one small space, small only in the scope of the entire world. Is not our home the place meant to nourish us? I yuv my home. I'm glad to be home again.

What I Am...

I play with dolls all day. I also play with large-piece puzzles, coloring books, I run a mean game of chase, and I can throw together an impressive meal from a pink plastic shopping cart filled with wooden food. This is, mostly, my work.

Of course you know. Of course you understand. I expect many of you live here too. But do you respect this? Do you see this as real work? Is this a job that deserves credence, credibility, and admiration?

I ask 'you' but really I mean ME. Today, playing actively with my daughter in front of a woman about to head to her academic job, I felt- embarrassed. I thought, what is she thinking of me right now? No, that's not true. I assumed what she might be thinking. I assumed there was amusement, a little sympathy, pity, perhaps a touch of contempt. This is how she spends her day? This fulfills her?

Gulp.

Well, yes. Of course. This is my child. Spending my time with her is fulfilling, enriching. Mostly.

Of course I have other passions. Doing this- one word after the other, watching a page fill up- in a flow, it thrills me. I love it. I stopped caring if anyone reads it. Currently, I'm not even concerned with content or rhythm, simply the exercise of putting one word after the other, flexing these muscles again after a season of dormancy. This is a passion for me.

I have always said, I could read forever. I could read away most of everyday, probably everyday, and never mind the scenery around me never changing. Look at this book! Look at these words! Look at these thoughts, these ideas. Breathe them in.

What might, in olden days be called domestic work interests me. Not cleaning so much. Ask anyone who's been to my house. Ask my parents. But cooking, knitting, learning about a garden, there are little delights here.

And most of my day is motherhood. And most of my devotion given is playing. Most of my day is on the floor, shifting around, holding some small inanimate object- a doll, a stuffed animal or maybe the flat one-dimensional puzzle piece Dory's given life and personality and breath to by bringing it into her game- and speaking in funny voices. I play 'baby', I play 'mommy,' I play 'Dory,' I play her best friend 'Lily,' I play 'daddy.' She wants them all in there and I mostly oblige.

For reasons I will not go into now, it is important to me that Dory be home, that she's been home with me these last few years. We have worked- oh we have worked- to make that a possibility. I do, actually, work even now, a nanny-for-hire, you might say, taking her with me, as watching another person's child affords me the luxury to spend time with my own.

Yet even as I feel inspired to this, I work to value it. I learn to see this time as worthwhile. I learn to regard our interactions, her play, as important. I write these words as no lecture, no higher ground attained, simply a message of what I hope to one day know. Here is the divine understanding I hope to reach: being with my child is important. Playing with my child is important. So much happens right now, on this subterranean level, bits and pieces of a soul and character and spirit taking shape. I will only know the fruits of this labor, and even then only a fraction of them, after she is grown and gone.

Louise Hay's affirmation today feels fitting: My life is a mirror. The woman, academician from earlier, the one trying to convince herself to head to work, the one openly dreading getting into her office, she is nothing more than a mirror. Her thoughts? Her assumptions? All mine.

I am only reaching, working, trying to remember: my child is important.

Resolute!

Writing some thoughts about the New Year tonight, I realized, unintentionally, I made a Mother's New Year's Resolution list. Without going into details, in my mind I held a conversation about my parenting style with another mother. In fact, I asked her (again entirely in my mind but in preparation for a conversation where we might be working together and would need to be clear and open about how we mother) about her parenting. Reading through a few questions, I turned the spotlight on myself. How do I handle these things? Sharing, hitting, saying 'please' and 'thank you,' ideas like 'time-out.'

Lately, I haven't considered these ideas so much. Do you know what happened? Dory turned three. Almost six months ago, she turned three, and a shift occurred. A maturity blossomed that once was not there (or I had not seen). Interacting, play, coming and going, it all got easier. Her verbal skills soared. Her understanding (to my mind) expanded. Her interest in cooperation, with me, her dad, her friends, exploded. Everything got so much easier, pretty quickly.

Suddenly, I could whisk this girl, who once balked passionately at her car seat, into the car, go see a friend, then back in the car, off to the market, then back in the car and home again with little or no trouble. In, out, in, and out. You know, the way we're supposed to breathe. Easily.

Parenting a three-year-old started to feel more like what I expected all along. In only a few years, I whipped between loving parenting to rueing the day I decided it would be 'fun' to have a baby. I loved babyhood. I loved long nursing sessions, lots of eye contact, using slings and backpacks, cloth diapers. It felt right, I felt right, it felt good.

Then, somewhere around fifteen or sixteen months, this little person became to emerge from the round, sleepy baby I knew. This person with clear feelings, strong confidence and precious few communication skills. The tantrums! The refusal to cooperate or work together. Who was this kid, a protestor from the 60's reincarnated? How did she know to go limp in just that way, that dragging an unmoving toddler was nearly impossible, incredibly tiring, and mostly infuriating? I felt a lot of battle happening between us, I held a great deal of fear about responding poorly. Parenting materials became my only occupation. I read, listened to and watched anything I could get my hands on, anything a friend recommended, a litany of material that I rarely retained the details of but well recalled the feeling and intention to. And to respond to a willful, determined, confident (all characteristics I wanted to see her maintain) baby-toddler, I strove to be more patient, thoughtful, and compassionate.

Continue for about one and a half years. And then three. Three came and It. Got. Easier.

And perhaps, at least a little, I took that for granted. Looking over this random list I jotted down, I realized, I might pick up the ball, get back in the game with a little more gusto.

It's a long and rambling list, but I thought I would share a few ideas here.

1. I want to remember to listen to her. To hear and consider her request. To take her opinions seriously and to remember she is a part of her growing-up too.

2. I want to say 'no' less. When I say 'no', I want to remember, and to say to her, "I am saying 'no' to this request, not to you. I always feel 'yes!' to you.'

4. I would like to be, more often, the mother I want her to remember. The mother who took time to listen to her stories, the mother who did one thing at a time well, the mother who took care of herself, the mother who had time for others and interest in what happened to those around her. I want her to remember a mother who was untidy, had too much clutter and too many un-done 'to-dos' but was present with the people in her life. I want her to remember a mother who made missteps (many, many missteps) but did her best to do better. I want her to remember a mother who laughed far more often than she worried, who found humor more than often stress.

A light list, huh? Should be able to check it off in about a week or maybe a lifetime...

Still, nothing like a list to retrain my focus and remind me of what I have. And it surprised me to realize, even as I wrote this, how appreciative I am of what being a parent means to me. Yes, motherhood can incite the worst in me, the short-temper, impatience, anger, frustration. Yet so often, Dory's very presence seems to pull or to summon, or to demand the best I have to give.

They're Growing Right Up

This is a shot of our collards earlier this week (with our thriving Rocky Top lettuce mix in the background). Perhaps I was the feeling the rush of accomplishment or perhaps it was sheer inexperience that lead me to announce "we'll be eating collards this weekend!"

They are an inch or so taller now. We are not eating collards this weekend.

Yet. We are closer everyday. Our tomato plants chug away in our windows. I had a eureka! moment the other morning, on noticing they were all starting to bend towards the window. So strange, so strange... they couldn't be... are they... is that reaching for the sun?

I turned the trays around and- voilà!- they righted themselves by the end of the day. Now I remember to turn them each day so our stems are fairly even and straight.

With this kind of expertise and natural ability, I feel a show on HGTV or some gardening-minded network is right around the corner...

Ahhhhhh

Yesterday Matthew (essentially) finished his semester. There is one class left, a review class, but tests, papers, and presentations are done for the summer. He will have nearly three full glorious months to work and be with us before he starts his student-teaching in the fall.

AHHHHHHH...

Apparently I've been, unconsciously, looking forward to this for some time. Because the feeling in our house last night was one of mild and quiet jubilation. Here's what a celebration looks like in our house these days:

chatting in the kitchen, while cooking dinner, Dory running around us
one of us leaving to do something with Dory
Dory nursing for a bit from all the excitement
eating said dinner
spending most of dinner trying to explain to Dory she may sit on the table, during said meal, but may not stand, jump, walk around, or squat on table
cleaning up dishes
not so subtle attempt to coax Dory to bed
Matthew getting in bed, in said attempt
Matthew falling asleep at 8pm
Dory and I playing quietly in living room, with Thistle and Shamrock radio show playing in background
Dory and I in bed, her falling asleep while we read, as she says, The Yor-yax
Dory asleep, Matthew rolls over, around 9:30, says "so tired..." commence more soft snoring
I close out the night by taking Georgie out to use the bathroom, turning out the lights, and reading a bit of Chickens magazine

We are wild and crazy guys.

And speaking of wild and crazy, here's our adventurous girl, doing a little tree-climbing at Baby M's house (where I nanny) this past Friday. She very much likes climbing trees. I imagine being one to two feet off the ground must be invigorating to the three feet and shorter crowd...









Is she beautiful or is she beautiful?

Oh, Mr. Sun

A few quiet minutes here to post and so I thought I would mention this interesting bit of sun and sunscreen information I came across during my perusing of some favorite blogs.

Ashley, over at Small Measure, posted this EPA research on sunscreen. She also provided this link, from the EPA, detailing their best and worst choices for sunscreen. Really helpful information, especially as we're all gearing up for lots of sunshine in the coming days!

And then I'll say here- it always makes me sigh when I see a new list like this one. I pick Burt's Bees sunscreen- it's mostly natural, it's easy to find, and, for our budget (keeping in mind our budget goes to very few things these days), fairly affordable. So it is disappointing to see it fall in the "caution" category of their list, right next to Banana Boat. I've used both, of course, my point is its disappointing to spend more money and time on a particular brand only to discover, eh, its about the same as several others (though, conversely, if you've been a Banana Boat buyer, might as well pump your fist over the couple of bucks you've saved each time you've picked that particular brand.) So I read this and I want to shake my fist and demand of the sky, "what else can we do?!"

Except I know the answer, for me at least. Read! Do your homework. I seem to have been born with a gene that says, if you've thought it, someone else has written about it. Extensively. So I read. A lot.

I'm always so glad to come across information like this, put together succinctly and with sources. I've gone to the EPA site, made notes of their recommendations and now I'll know how to shop differently in the next few weeks. I'm glad to see natural instincts, like "The best sunscreen is a hat and a shirt" at the top of the EPA's advice- at least something is simple!

My active imagination determines I could easily scare myself silly if I read too much. So I stop once I have an idea of the material and think, now on to that new Elizabeth Peters mystery I scored at the library! Or those toe-up socks I've frogged and am ready to cast-on again. Still, a little research goes a looong way. I'm still amazed at how picking up the Sears' The Baby Book completely altered our journey to parenting.

I'm going to stop now, because Dory burst into the room, saying "Peek a boo!"and then our conversation went a little something like this.
Me: Hey little sweetie!
(pause)
Me: What's that on your mouth?
Dory: Its choc'ate chips!
Me: Are you and daddy making cookies?
Dory: No! We just eatin' choc'ate chips!
(pause)
Dory: We need YOU to make cookies! We just eatin' choc'ate chips and watchin' Toy Story! C'mon, mommy!

Who here thinks if Daddy was our stay-at-home parent life would pretty much be a carnival all the time?

Always Looking Up

We have sprouts. Or sprouting. I'm not entirely certain what to call them. Seedlings? Whatever these little shoots and small green leaves are, we have 'em.

The tomatoes took off first and the fastest. Originally the Brandywine and the Goldman's Italian-American were going gangbusters, while the Principe Borghese and Riesentraube lagged behind. They have since caught up and I can safely say, of the dozen each planted, we have at least eight little tiny plants per kind, as many as a full dozen for one. The good news came two mornings ago, however, when Matthew sent me a picture of the newly sprouted broccoli. This was our first sprout beyond tomatoes. Since then two of the peppers are showing life, the wild strawberries container is dotted with green and the thyme from Dory's little garden has several shoots. There is growth!

As a first time gardener, I don't yet know what I can't do. While I did read a book and look around for good seeds and I did have a general idea of what was needed (dirt, water, sunshine, right?), I confess to not studying this seed starting business too closely. Now, reading back through old articles on Mother Earth News, I'm realizing all the ways we weren't quite prepared for this. Like starting all your plants in 3 inches or deeper containers. Hmm, pretty sure our sagging and soggy little egg cartons don't quite reach that height requirement. Or the great benefit to having a growing lamp. Our plants look more like dirt on the run, constantly moved around the house to catch the best sunlight and heat throughout the day. I started a faint panic one night, thinking, we're doing it all wrong! We're not prepared! How will we survive the summer?!

I dialed that back pretty quickly and now we have more sprouts. Maybe not all hope is lost, even without fancy growing lights or the common sense to start with real potting plants.

Still, I'm glad of our ignorance at the moment. We're trying veggies we might not have if we had 'known better.' Even if the broccoli goes straight to flower, I'm proud it got going. And I do think we're going to have some winners from these plants. They're just trying so darned hard. They make you want to believe in them.

Dream

Woke up on time, awake and ready to go yesterday morning. But somehow couldn’t bring myself to slip out of bed, to leave the warmth of Dory’s little body, not so little now, her slim, long body curled up against mine, her head tucked so perfectly under my chin. Instead, stayed in bed, arms wrapped around her, and for two hours lost myself in family and farm fantasies, imagining a farm, some land and a house for us, imagining our chickens, imagining our dairy cow and our beef cow, imagining our garden, tilled right into the soil, imagining all kinds of things, giving classes in our home on cheesemaking, canning, Dory, a little older, whirling into the kitchen, with Matthew on her heels, the feeling of us being together as a family throughout the day.

We all want this. She loves Matthew as she loves me, she thrives best when we stay together as a family unit. For so long now, forever, Matthew has said, when we three are together,' this is what matters, this is all I want.' And for some time I’ve rolled my eyes and basically thought, enjoy it until real life sets back in.

I have a new idea of what I want real life to look like. Maybe real life isn’t work, cars, bills, with snippets of family love and magic fit in around it. Maybe life could BE family, could be togetherness, could be relationship, with work, cars, and bills fit in around THAT.

There’s no point agonizing over time lost or not knowing these things before. But now that this realization begins to dawn, I wonder what other possibilities are out there? What would it be like to have that, that bit of land, our chickens, our cows, to leave your place only once a week, to find your food there, where you grow it, to find our joy there, being together...

I think, more than ever, the path opens up in front of me... read this book, find this suggestion, get out in the ground, and do this work. Last night, we came together after being gone all day at work and we stayed outside, watering our garden, playing in the grass, sipping cool beverages, feeling the first suggestion of heat and summer on our arms and faces. Matthew said, even as the clock said 6:30, ‘let’s stay outside all day!’ almost giddy with the joy of being with his daughter and wife again. Maybe these times aren’t meant to be fitted in around ‘everything else.’ Maybe THIS is meant to be the time.

I don’t want to rush this or try to make it happen now. I’m a good one for either forcing something to work that isn’t ready yet and so often breaking it, or for staying sick with longing and desire, letting it eat at me until the dream is simply twisted into something that hurts instead of inspires.

I’m not going to do this here. Right now, this is our life. I work as a nanny, I am so fortunate to provide an income to my family, while being with my daughter all day, while taking care of her mostly as I always intended to. Matthew follows this teaching dream, in school on weekends, and working around that. We live in a house we love, in a great neighborhood, we are close to family, we have many dear friends. There is a smoothing to life’s rough edges these days and Matthew and I often marvel that, on a third of the money that he used to make on his own, we live far better now than before. We better understand living within our means, quality over quantity and what, to us, now truly matters, these ties that don’t bind but envelope and hold us together.

We carve out that other life, that life of possibility, in small ways right now. There are three vegetable beds in our backyard, there are little damp seed trays in our windows, there are pots on the front porch that will hopefully become basil, cilantro, dill, and other herbs. Books are scattered through the house with titles like “Radical Homemakers” and “Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens.” There are bonds we make and strengthen, finding a way to eat locally, to buy quality, humanely tended meat, thoughtfully produced produce, shopping at our local co-op for the needs in between. We drive less and less, the miles on the car Dory and I share racking up maybe a dozen a week. We receive from our family, who offer us a car so we don’t overextend, who slip us $30 here or a pair of shoes for Dory there and we appreciate the generosity, try to return the gift by excepting graciously and with good humor.

All these little steps and yet steps go by fast, they take you where you want to go, so often, more quickly than you expect. That’s what I think. And sometimes its worth giving up all the little to-do’s of the morning, to lay next to a sleeping child, that little body that grows so quickly and seems to stay warm with love, hope, and optimism, just to be close to her and dream for a few minutes of what might someday, a few months or maybe a few short years, come to be. What if...?

Seed Fever

This morning, Dory, her arms wrapped around my neck, whispered in my ear, "Let's go see my seeds growing."



One of Matthew's dear, thoughtful co-workers picked up a set of these herb plants for her son and a set for Dory too. This is one of the sweetest gifts I think Dory's ever received. She even labeled each little plant and the garden itself.



Dory and Matthew planted them last night. We checked their progress this morning and, well, not much yet. She was not discouraged. And standing in our kitchen, on a rainy Tuesday morning, with her little monkey arms and legs around me, I wasn't either.

After that, we had tea. Dory served.






If a day can start off this well with no visible seed growth, what will a day with a little visible green be like? I cannot wait to find out.

Seed Starting

(Dory on her John Deere)

Is it March that comes in like a lion? February left like one and March still growls a little. Yet new growth, life and adventure is on the horizon. We started seeds two Sundays ago.

Taking what feels like a lifelong collection of cardboard egg cartons, we got out our seed starter dirt and got going on the dining room table. For anyone who doubts these are the actions of novices, we laid down no towels or newspapers and Dory's first action was to take out a scoopful of dirt, with her little Garfield spade, and pour it all over herself. She announced, this was her shower. I wanted to lecture, on 'where dirt belongs,' I wanted to start sweeping and cleaning up around her. I would have done, too, had not some little instinct, some little voice, called out to me, reminded me of something I already almost forgot- this is supposed to be fun! Dirt is not meant to be tidy, clean, and I expect keeping it to 'where it belongs' is almost impossible. Shower on, little one, shower on.






This was a two step process, playing with dirt with Dory and then actually starting the seeds on the floor of our living room, on a picnic blanket, long after she had fallen asleep, while (talk about getting back to the land!) the Oscars played in the background. We are your modern, homesteading family. In progress.

For the first days my confidence was high, but lately its flagged a little as we see no evidence of growth. Surely its coming. They're in the windows, they're working, surely its coming.

Do we need one of those heat lamps, people? This is my concern.

Sunday Morning

Ahhhhh.

Would the deliciousness of Sunday morning be lost if all mornings were Sunday morning? Of course it would, at least a little. So I tell myself Monday morning. Today, though, nice to dream, what if this was everyday?

Right now, my Sunday morning looks and sounds a little like... dog sleeping at the bottom of the bed. Husband and daughter thumping through the house, accompanied by sweet, high pitched child's voice bossing daddy about. Birds chirping outside. Some knitting in front of me, Cascade Superwash on the needles, slowly becoming Child's Placket Neck Sweater. Just finished listening to Keeping Chickens on Mother Earth News radio. Rumbling tummy requests hot tea, with some yogurt and granola. Granola was a treat from our local Co-op this week; Dory carried the bag through the store with gritty, three-foot tall determination, and finally I gave in, because, honestly, it looked delicious. Turns out it is. Too pricey for an every week buy. (Add to to-do list: find good granola recipe.)

A little later today, Husband and I have plans for a rare and exciting trip to the movies, maybe even getting lunch beforehand, while Grandpa and Grante (pronounced Gran-T) Mojo look after our little girl. Movies were once an every weekend excursion for us and now I average perhaps three or four a year. Something I thoroughly enjoy regardless of film; the experience is a thrill simply for its uncommon occurence. My Sunday morning lesson; the rarity makes it more precious.

Happy Sunday to you all!


(No worries, Dory is not suddenly regressing, suffering from some kind of Merlin backwards-aging. No new pictures to show, so found one from this time last year. Can you believe the change?)

It's Started...

We ordered seeds Tuesday night. In Friday's mail we found...




Included was a free seed packet for wildflowers and also a note apologizing for any delays as they were swamped with orders. Tuesday night order, Friday morning delivery. Concern about delay in delivery? That is good service.

On Saturday, we went to our local nursery and what an experience. Being afflicted with Budgetus tightus and so shopping very little, I've discovered walking into a store can be sensory overload. This is true especially for little ones. Dory has been to Target a handful of times in her life and the last two times, she looked around in wide-eyes wonder, and said, "Mommy, yook at all dis stuff!" I either want to flee, overwhelmed, or I want to start buying everything (its so cheap!) and so must flee, to protect our hard-earned and carefully rationed budget.

Walking into Stanley's however, was, well, lovely. It was well lit (naturally, from a durable glass ceiling), the air felt clean and clear (from the tables and tables and tables of plants), the sounds were soothing (from the many outdoor fountains, yes something ornamental, to buy, I realize). And their employees weren't just helpful, they were eager. Passionate. Excited to help.

And for someone, such as myself, who knows nothing on this matter of gardening, except what I've recently read or gleaned from conversation, this was of tremendous value. For instance, when you're filling your own beds with dirt, you need lots of dirt. LOTS. My expectation of four or five bags- I was a little off. A cheerful, knowledgeable employee, a woman, in fact, I'd seen at our downtown library's storytime with her two boys, informed me, we need a 'scoop'. She directed us away from purchasing at their store and pointed us towards two different mulch companies where we might get our scoop. The Wow-factor is high with Stanley's folks. We bought a few bags of organic compost, to complement the scoop, a bag of seed starter dirt and (here was my impulse buy) a small impatiens to tend in our window until its warm enough to transplant. That is one draw back to starting with seeds; there's no immediate green something in the house.

Grandpa Mojo kindly and generously donated time and energy into preparing wood for the boxes during the week. He came over Sunday and he and Matthew set to work. Magic happened. Our vegetable beds started to take shape.



The building of the boxes...

Just a few steps closer to our first, real garden, and my dream of a self-sufficient life.


(Somehow I failed to get a picture of the other two finished beds, in daylight, so this will suffice for now.)

There you go. Start some seeds this week indoors (luckily we are an egg eating family, so we'll get some mileage out of all these cardboard egg cartons I've saved). Get our scoop this weekend, mix dirt and let's see what happens.

I must stop here to marvel- this is, I hope, much of our vegetable and fruit consumption for the year. And it fits in a yellow manila envelope and costs less than $3 to ship. Even if half of our garden was a major flop, the money saved (not to mention other factors, fuel, cost to the environment, etc) is immense. We will come out so far ahead. This does not include the great amount of family time, sunshine and enjoyment I expect us to reap as we work this garden together. My only question: why haven't we done this sooner?

Actually, why isn't everyone doing this?

What Will They Say About Us?

Since Dory started enjoying books (really enjoying them, not just wanting to mouth them or rip the pages) we've been reading stories at bedtime. This has been months now, maybe even a year? Hard to recall in fuzzy mama memory.

Occasionally its a quick night; on nights where she's exhausted, she's out in the middle of the first book. Most nights, its anywhere from three to eight stories and lately I've felt impatient. Impatient to finish, for her to fall asleep.

(Dory at eighteen months)

Last night, on the sofa, I performed my typical feats of nursing and reading simultaneously. Just as thoughts, that mental chatter, started to pop up ("surely it will be soon; she must be tired") and words to follow ("one last story, OK, sweetie? Last one."), an entirely new image popped into my brain. I imagined her, as an adult, relating to me how our ritual of reading at bedtime was a cherished childhood memory. I heard her, really, almost heard the words, saying she treasured that time, she felt special, loved, safe and valued. That she, as an adult, appreciated that we would read "one more story" and then "one more story" after that, that we read them gladly and with pleasure.

(Dory at two and a half)

And the words "last one, last time" disappeared. We read until she fell asleep, somewhere near the end of "The Sword and the Stone" from Walt Disney's Classic Storybook, a book she loves though I don't think she's actually seen one movie from the entire collection. And then for another half hour after that, we stayed cuddled there on the sofa, she, this long, slender toddler, sprawled across my arms and I imagined myself, saying back to her, in those later years, "Dory, our bedtime stories are some of my best memories too. Some of my very best."

(Last week, napping the day after I declared 'She's all done with naps, I think!' Ah, we wise and all-knowing parents...)

Off the Grid-iness

What's going on around here? Something is different..

This morning, one of our first to-do's was to take our homemade chicken stock, simmering through the night, off the stove and drain it. We left a a stewing hen's carcass, carrots, onions, celery and a bunch of parsley behind as we poured out a silky, golden stock, smelling, though I say it myself, heavenly. Bone broth, as I learned from Nourishing Traditions, a cookbook I find myself pouring over the way spiritual scholars seek out the great religious texts of the world, is "extremely nutritious, containing the minerals of bone, cartilage, marrow and vegetables as electrolytes, a form that is easy to assimilate." Mary Fallon, co-author of NT, attributes "the decline in the use of meat, chicken, and fish stocks" as a "lamentable outcome of our hurry-up, throwaway lifestyle." Few of us buy meat still in tact, "on the bone" as Fallon calls it, unlike our "thrifty ancestors [who] made use of every part of the animal." Homemade chicken stock...

At the library yesterday, after making a large selection from the children's side, we stopped off in the gardening section, only to meander a few rows over, past animal care (where Dory selected a book on hamsters), before cookbooks, there! that book! Made from Scratch: The pleasures of discovering a homemade life. An unexpected find that went straight into the bag, with great delight.

A slew of books, actually, littered around the house (Handmade Home and Coop); on hold at the library (Radical Homemakers); online magazines checked on a daily basis (Mother Earth News and Mary Jane's Farm)...

Yesterday morning, awake before the rest of the family, I sat in our living room, pouring through our seed catalogue, checking and double-checking that we had all we wanted and no more. We picked Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds for delving into the world of growing our own food. Our virtual shopping cart is now full to the point of tipping over and yet I thought, I bet this is a drop in the bucket to real homesteaders...

Homesteading? Is that what we're moving towards?

Surely not. Off to a farm forty miles from anything? Hmm... I love where we live, to me centrally located to what's most important (parents within a fifteen minutes drive, our local park and library a quarter mile walk, many friends anywhere from three to fifteen minutes away, a farmer's market a three mile drive on three different days, Matthew's work and mine easily accessible). Creating our own energy... Matthew's first question: is wind-powered satellite-television possible?

Yet books about keeping a family cow and how to raise your own chickens appeal to me.

Maybe this isn't a surprise. Moving out of the mainstream appeals to me lately, not different for different's sake, but a genuine questioning of what I value and what I hope to model to our next generation. We're already parenting in mostly unheard of way (still trying to follow Dory's lead, in co-sleeping, breastfeeding, cloth diapering until potty trained, the list goes on), so its not surprising these other worlds would start to pull me in.

I would have thought this a tiny community, difficult to find and impossible to incorporate into an everyday lifestyle, available mostly through beautiful blogs and websites. Not so. In fact if I start to look around, I can see where it's been happening around me this entire time. Mental flashbacks to my parent's garden when I was three and four and my dad's stories about me picking tiny green tomatoes far too soon. Some of our first friends when we moved home, who live on a tiny farm, with goats and sheep, she spinning her own wool, both of them commuting half an hour into work everyday. Another friend who makes her own yogurt, juice, broth, dried fruit, the list goes one, while, during winter, a supermarket and interstate sit in view behind the woods and creek at the back of her house. A neighbor one street away who used to keep chickens...

I'm curious how many of us have these longings as of late? Perhaps disillusionment with work, the government, the media, stemming from a realization the promise given won't be fulfilled by that particular establishment, that their brand of happiness just doesn't do for me. Maybe a sudden longing, as generations before us pass on, a call from the past, tugging at the fingers and heart to find the same dirt that slipped through our great-grandparents hands. Or a modern concern, an understanding we don't want to be labeled the "throwaway" society, this isn't the legacy we want to leave behind...

Check "all of the above" for me.

So something is afoot, something definitely moves through the house. I have no idea what I'm doing and, because I came of age during the dot.com boom, I mostly look to books and websites for understanding. Another something on the list, sandwiched between "find raw milk source" and "learn to sew"- talk to people. Find people! Other living, breathing humans, preferably in the same room people from who to learn.

And if any of this sounds like I am disparaging technology or haranguing how life has fallen apart since the development of the internet, let me relate this snippet from moments ago. Dory, at two and a half, just plopped up on my lap to nurse, and with the laptop open in front of her announced: "Mommy, yook! I'm having bobos and pushing buttons on da internet!"