A Tale of a Little Girl

When we found out we were expecting Rita, whom I call Daisy or Maggie or MARGARITE ELISE by turns, I wasn’t sure I could possibly manage another child. I had still not recovered from the neediness of the first six months of a medically fragile child. Another one? I couldn’t face the prospect. Oh, please, please, please, God, I want a baby, just let her be healthy and happy, please, please, please. I did that for the whole pregnancy.

Rita slid into the world tranquilly, pink and round and undemanding. I fed her on schedule, changed her diaper, she fell serenely asleep on her own, asking for nothing until it was time for her next feeding. I could not get over the marvel of it. She was the perfect baby.

About the time she became mobile, we realized that God did not give us just a healthy child; He smiled and gave us the most cheerfully self-reliant little girl He could dream up. When she was two, people actually pitied me. Life got a lot better for me and her both once I settled it in my mind that she was not trying to make things harder for me. She was trying to save me work by doing everything by herself. This included pouring her own milk and spilling the whole gallon. More than once. Then she helped mop the floor and spilled the bucket full of water too. She rarely whined about being hungry. Instead she learned to pry open the refrigerator, get a pack of hotdogs, then slit them open with a knife so she could have a snack. She ate the top tier of a birthday cake in construction and more hidden bars of chocolate than I could keep track of. She walked to the garden and casually picked a pepper for midday gnoshing.

One busy day before she was two, I found her sitting on the big potty. She had decided it was time to be done with diaper nonsense. There was nothing but disdain in her mind for the baby potty, even though she nearly fell into the toilet more than once. She thought she could run her own bath water and wash her own hair with quantities of shampoo. And she most certainly could get dressed by herself! When we told her she was too old for a binky, she sturdily threw it into the trash can and didn’t bother about it anymore.

She visited the neighbors all by herself when she was three, and scared the wits out of me when she put on her life vest and went swimming in the pond. When her hair bothered her, she cut it off, and if the cuffs on her dress were too snug, she cut them off too. She found the Sharpies and drew a bunch of pictures, also decorating my Bible. The child hadn’t heard of limits. Everything I never thought of making rules about, she discovered. More than once I prayed for God to help me keep her alive. It was not malicious, all that busyness, yet I am fairly certain that the majority of my white hairs are courtesy of Rita Who Was Three. The only safe course was to keep her right with me. Out of sight was trouble. But she was unfailingly cheerful and played for hours and hours with sticks and grasses and all the blooms off my rose bush and every single peony bud. To my knowledge, she has never complained of being bored.

When she turned five, she kicked the training wheels on her bike and persistently rode and crashed until she mastered it. She nurtured her own little garden plot and transplanted and watered her flowers to death. Her most favorite creative outlet is fabric scraps and threads. (You should see the unspeakable havoc of my embroidery flosses and my button box.) “Look what I made,” she grinned, and showed me a pocket she had constructed with calico scraps, threading her needle and knotting it on her own. I never showed her how to sew a seam, but there it was, marching unsteadily up and down.

This morning it was time to clothe the pet ostrich. It has handy dandy wing slits, but she is embarrassed at how the hat turned out. I took a picture anyway because I thought it uncommonly clever.

The moral of this story… well, there isn’t really a moral. But if you have a little child who is unceasingly, unbelievable busy, running circles around you -the concerned parent- just give it a few years. They will actually make your life easier sooner than you think. Those same clever little fingers getting into every pie will become cleverly useful. She can now wash windows and fold laundry and sweep floors when the right mood hits her. I expect to retire in a few years and let her run the house.

(She likes “Daisy” best.)

Sprouting

A bit of green in February is such a cheerful sight. I got out the screw-on sprouting strainer and a wide mouth mason jar a few weeks ago. So far we have done three batches of alfalfa sprouts and devoured them just about as fast as they can pop out.

Olivia had a science experiment in this period of time, where she was supposed to check the germination of bean seeds. We found some dried kidney beans, put them in a moist environment, and then nearly gave up on them. It was about a week before there was even a noticeable crack in the beans’ seed coats. We peeled one open and saw the embryo starting to put out a shoot inside. So we kept them moist instead of throwing them out. Today we are eating the second round of sprouts since the kidney beans venture started, and they look just like the photo shows, greeny cotyledon and lots of rootlets coming out of the shoot. Olivia is so tickled that the experiment worked after all.

I have been thinking about this, trying to extract the lesson. You saw it coming, didn’t you?

There are just some things that are kidney beans and some that are alfalfa seeds. Many times I feel like chucking out hope for the hard, unchanging bean situations, saving my energy for the quick returns of the alfalfa sprouts. It takes a lot more faith when there are long waiting periods until harvest. I can put alfalfa on my salad in five days, give or take a few. I will have to plant and hoe and watch and pick carefully before the beans are ready to eat.

The most obvious lesson for me in this is my Five Little Sprouts. I remember the panicky moment when I realized that we would never be able to un-parent. This is a lifelong proposition, with varying amounts of investment, true, but it takes a lot of nurture for the seeds to grow into healthy, fruit bearing plants. A lot of patience. A lot of faith. A lot of moments of feeling like a total flop.

We are immersed in this right now. It seems like all I do every day is water and nourish, watch those little green shoots emerge, and pray the roots go deep. I am invested in this venture for the long haul.

Aside from the children, there are other situations that I sometimes wonder if I should just forget. Chuck them into the trash and let them dry out. Faith says, “Keep watering. Set it in the sunshine. You just watch; God is never late.”

Do you ever have those moments when faith speaks in threadbare phrases, but you know it’s true?

Prayers for Monday

Thank you, Lord, for this day full of new opportunities to learn and to get along with each other, even in confined spaces with mud and drippy fog outside the door.

Thank you that the casters for my desk chair are not permanently lost, but simply disassembled by an ambitious small boy. Thank you that my red pen is not lost either, but found in my son’s desk instead of with my stapler which does seem to be lost for real.

Thank you for paper and this smooth gel pen: that I can grip them in my hands and write orderly lines of assignments for the week. Thank you that the days and days have already added up to 7th grade for my one son and 4th for the other.

Thank you for this pile of quizzes and tests all finished last week and ready to file away in portfolios to prove that we are serious about education. Thank you for this new box of sheet protectors that I ordered last week so that I can actually do this filing.

Thank you for the pages and pages of original artwork that are windows into my children’s thought processes and into the creativity that You have placed in them. Thank you for the paper snibbles and the yarn strings and the puzzles on the kitchen floor that she is clever enough to do on her own now.

Thank you for eggs, scrambled for lunch because the fridge contains only condiments and ingredients.

Thank you for a washer that hums along efficiently so that I only have to toss things into and out of it. Thank you that I get to be domestic and help my 10 year old fold laundry into neat piles. Thank you for the boots and the single glove that are lost no longer.

Thank you for a nap sneaked in while lying on the bed with the smallest tot, and for the audio books that keep my girlies interested for the entire quiet time hour.

Thank you for the puppy that entertains the boys with her antics, and the kitten that the little ones managed to catch and coddle for hours this afternoon. Thank you that the suspicious smell wasn’t what we thought it might be.

Thank you that my first grader can read mostly on her own and enjoy the subtle poetry in “The Little Grey Pony”. Thank you for the astounding motivational power of stickers.

Thank you for a big boy who can mix up granola while I stir the dinner roll dough and the crock pot cooks supper.

Thank you for a long evening with my husband home, reading stories with the girls before tucking them into their nests.

Thank you for bedtime!

Amen.

The Things That Remain

It isn’t that I am not going to write this year. I have had things on my mind, places to go, laundry to do, all jumbled and busy. Then, as so often happens, something came up that put the important things in life into sharp perspective. One of those people who is always there, who is always dependable, who is unfailingly kind and wise, stepped into heaven while he was sleeping.

The Summy family moved to this area the same summer we did, 29 years ago. Their children were close to my age and we went to school together. Now they are walking through the painfully dark valley of the shadow of losing a husband/father/grandfather. I have always believed that the verse in Psalm 23 is especially for those who go on living. I pray, “Hold them, Jesus. Be with them.” It comforts me to know that in our human failing to be able to make things better, He is there for them.

We have talked a lot about sadness with the children. About death and new bodies and eternal life. Olivia, who is very tenderhearted, said that she kept thinking maybe just any time there will be a miracle and Freddy and Alannah’s grandpa would come alive again. The little girls declared that Leroy did not die. They saw him sleeping. I was reminded of Jesus’ compassionate words to Jairus when his little daughter had died, “Don’t cry. She is sleeping.” He said the same about Lazarus, his friend who was ill and died before he got to his house, “Our friend has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him.” Even though Jesus knew Lazarus would rise from the dead, he wept for the grief of the family, and this is His heart of tenderness to those who are bowed with sorrow.

I keep thinking about the Things That Matter. Why do we forget so quickly? This moment of spilled grape juice does not matter. What matters is the little face crumpled in remorse. It was just an accident and we will wipe it up.

The rip in the coat from sliding down the hill on the ice has no eternal significance, but the child who was wearing it does. I apologize for a scolding that forgot about the heart, and now we will try to mend it.

My limping washer with its fits and starts is of small consequence, but my husband’s weary efforts to understand the repair manual and outsmart it do matter. He deserves the specially blended cup of coffee and the happy wife serving it.

I ask again, why do I forget so easily and become wrinkled in my spirit when it is just cares of this life anyway? When my spirit returns to the One who made it, I want to have lived for eternal values.

I bought myself this little goodie with some Christmas money. It’s a tiny journal with wise quotes at the top of every page and space for 5 years. It is fun discipline to condense a day into just a few lines.

When the boys were little, Gabe would laugh at my stories at the end of the day and say, “You lead a charmed life.” At the time I didn’t really think that was the right adjective, but now I do. Recently I went back through my Facebook statuses and wrote down all the funny moments that I posted about the children. When the boys read them, they said, “No way! I never asked to google ‘How can I be six again’.” They laugh at the Gregisms: “I bet George Washington was named after Curious George.” They love it, going all the way back to when they were little boys, just a few blinks ago.

(I would not remember any of this stuff if I didn’t write it down. You won’t either. Even if you don’t like to write, just go to Amazon and spend 10 dollars for a pretty little diary and make yourself write a sentence every day.)

Last week Rita took upon herself the job of shining the glass door where the puppy paws to get inside. She did a great job, but only a few hours later I noticed muddy prints again. I was working, distracted, when I heard her gasp dramatically, “Ohhh! Look at the window!”

I commiserated without looking up, “I know. It’s all dirty again.”

“No! It’s snowing!!!” she corrected me. I looked out, and sure enough, it was snowing. God had granted her longings for snow. The mud on the glass couldn’t diminish that joy.

Life. How I live it really matters. Let’s cheer the space we share with others. Today.

Retrospective

I found myself thinking back over the year when I wanted to write a Christmas letter to my grandma and I concluded that it was a year of tender mercies… every morning new, just like my fresh cup of tea. The tea was tangible, but the mercies less obvious until I started to think of what could have been.

Looking back over the year, I feel the wonder of ordinary life going on day by day. We have friends whose lives were irrevocably changed by tragic loss of loved ones, by brain tumors, by the bad choices of other people, etc. Here we are, mostly unscathed; it isn’t fair. There is a liturgy where the responses of the congregation are only four words repeated, “Have mercy upon us.” I have pleaded this for our friends many times.

I find myself with fewer answers than ever as to why tragedies happen, yet I know with more assurance than ever that God is good. This is not to say that I never question His ways, but He remains good. Like breathing, I live in this confidence. There are aspects of faith that remain mysteries, yet are evidence, just as real as actual substantive things.

We grew this year. What is the point of living if we aren’t learning? The children show the most evidence of this. It’s astounding to look at photos just 12 months ago and see what all those green beans and peanut butter sandwiches and cups of milk have done to them physically. We find ourselves on the edge of parenting adolescents and I am scared spitless. The threes and fours and fives are familiar territory, but this teen thing looks like a different ball of wax. Did someone mention relationships? I anticipate a steep learning curve through this phase of parenting. Like the insatiable desire to be treated like an adult while still having the liberty to act like a little kid whenever that desire dictates… What is up with that? I distinctly remember that mixed up feeling when I was 12-13, so I can appreciate the justice in experiencing the parenting end of the stick. I am sorry I ever rolled my eyes at you, Mom.

We have found our preferred style of vacation to be camping, (4 times this summer) particularly in those nifty cabins at state parks. Perfection for me is a book, a chair beside a campfire, a mug of coffee in hand. The children only want monkey bars, bikes on trails, snacks, frisbees, soccer balls, food cooked on sticks, late night stories, more snacks, early breakfasts, hikes to look-out points. Obviously, not all of us can have our way. Either they have perfection or I do, and since I can’t beat em, I join em. (Why do they never beg their father for food? Hmm?) I can’t believe how often kids from other campsites join ours to play for hours without their parents even once coming to look for them. Probably they are reading beside their campfires…

We are getting better at the packing of stuff when we go away. Each child gets a backpack of their own along with a list of non-negotiable items. What doesn’t fit doesn’t go along. I have to check Rita’s pack for stray fabric scraps and a funny ratio of 5 undies to every play outfit. The boys tend to forget things like towels and toothbrushes, but they never go anywhere without pocket knives and flashlights, paracord bracelets and lighters. Yup, we are learning.

Speaking of paracord, we bought a thousand foot roll of it to use in constructing teepees or clubhouses or in tying down loose stuff. Seems you can never have too much rope or string. It has been a lot of fun for the boys to do youtube tutorials for weaving the cord in compact ways to carry it along outdoors “in case of emergency”. Alex has devised a way to weave 12 feet of cord into one monkey paw keychain. That is the one I want with me in the quite unlikely event that I will need to hang my game high in a tree in the woods after I used the cord to snare it.

If you have ever read The Hatchet, you can only imagine what Brian would have done with a paracord bracelet, especially if he had the kind of clasp that contains a piece of flint. 🙂 I do love my boys.

We got exactly half way through school before our break for Christmas. Both boys prefer reading to all other subjects and they were wallowing around in self pity over their math lessons this morning. Olivia likes math because reading is still pretty hard work for her and Rita is buzzing along in her Kindergarten stuff. She vacillates between speedy efficiency and leisurely putting along, but it is all easy for her. I kind of wish I had put her into the same grade with Olivia to save myself a bit of work, but she is still a dreamy little girl, so I guess we will continue to pace her slowly.

Addy insists on doing “real school” so I looked for some official looking books for her to learn numbers and shapes. She is affronted when I hand her a simple coloring book for school. Part of her growing up this fall included the stowing of the toddler bed. She insisted on the top bunk while the other two girls share the bottom. It actually seems to cut down her night-time ramblings, since it takes a lot of effort to climb out of the bunk in a sleepy state. She just hollers when she has a dream instead of coming to our bedroom to sleep on the floor. Last week one night she was crying in her sleep about stinkbugs, one of the few things in her little world that terrify her.

Since we got our puppy, it has really helped to get the children outdoors. Always Gregory is up first in the morning, so he takes her out of her kennel for a potty break. Sometimes I see him sitting in the backyard, all bundled up, still half-asleep while Lady cavorts around him and licks him excitedly. She has a way of looking soulfully in the door when she is on the deck and we are eating. Gregory says she is being “wismal” which is a combination of dismal and wistful. It describes her expression perfectly. She just cracks up with joy when they take breaks to play with her. I have been pleasantly surprised at how quickly she is being trained. Springer spaniels are very tractable and love to please their masters. We got the right puppy, thank the Lord! I am really glad Gabe researched for weeks, because I would probably have just gotten something free off Craigslist. 🙂

We have learned a few things about washers and the problems that crop up when you fix your own. After Gabe replaced the transmission and I rejoiced that it was humming along again, it worked perfectly for 2 loads. Then it began to drop the spin cycle, after which it refused to rinse. I am currently using three cycles for every load of laundry. One: wash. Two: rinse. Three: spin. It works except for when the lid locks and refuses to open for a whole day, like it did the day after Christmas and I had 7 loads to wash. For your information, it may or may not help to pound on the lid in exasperation. It opened. Who knows why?

Isn’t life just like that? In the impossible circumstances as well as the minute irritations we say, “Have mercy upon us.”

I pray for you a new year full of confidence in that merciful Love!

Shortcut to Misery, Part 2

There is another shortcut to misery that I know very well because I have employed it pretty often. The thought process goes something like this: My assignments/responsibilities are too big for me. I am doomed to failure because I don’t know what I am doing. I don’t like this adult world and the carrying of all these burdens.

This is a tricky one because there is a genuine condition of over-work, of one person taking on much more than their share. In Dutch we say they are “shafich”, which implies a person who stays very busy because they really enjoy it. It is possible also, to be too busy out of a sense of misplaced obligation. I am sure we all know people who consistently pick up more than their share of the work, like my friend who put herself on the school hot lunch list three times because she couldn’t think of anyone else who should do it more than once to fill in the empty blanks.

For clarity, I am not talking about “shafich” people who should be given a break. I am talking about my attitudes concerning things that are clearly my responsibility.

Since I know about momming, let’s go there. Recently Gabe and I were discussing what was probably the worst year of our lives. During that time I found my assignments so overwhelming that I just wanted to run away from them. It was a time of two boys in school, two needy tots, a nursling, a chronically ill husband who was in school and working part time whenever he could to support us. This was not a time to knuckle under, but I surely wanted to.

Just two years earlier, as we looked at what it would mean for our family with Gabe going back to school, I had said calmly, “I am not afraid.” Now I found myself every morning praying for the strength to get out of bed. Jesus said, “Just one leg at a time.” I am not kidding, and if you think Jesus can’t dumb down His instructions for our most childlike moments, you haven’t been listening. Anyway, that is what I did, and that was how I made it through the days, from the spilled milk at breakfast to the solo tucking in of tired children at bedtime, all the while bouncing a hungry baby who had to wait to eat until the drama settled down. It wasn’t a lot of profound thinking and pretty praying. This was survival, a lifeline. I prayed one sentence at a time. Sometimes I wailed and complained. Mostly I begged.”Your wisdom, Jesus. The children are fighting again… Your kindness, please!” and a few minutes later, “Your strength, Jesus. My husband is too sick to do this, so just give me Your courage.”

During this time I had a friend who was battling post-partem depression and when she told me that she implored God for the stamina just to wash the dishes, I felt oddly encouraged. It is always a relief to know that my condition is the human condition, and not just due to my own faltering inadequacies. I say these things because everybody hits an overwhelmed day/season, even if the causes look very different from what others experience. I say these things to assure you that by the grace of Jesus, you can make it!

Admittedly, there were days I felt like faking being sick, just for a change. Oh dear. I fantasized about sleeping for entire days, with room service to provide meals; about idyllic summertime walks alone for hours, just carrying a backpack with books and water; of hitting a jackpot and going shopping for hours, buying whatever I wanted. Those were the miserable times, the snifflings of a soul scorning the assigned trail, wishing for a path with a grander view, fewer boulders to scale. Yet this was clearly my assignment, this training and feeding of children, this running of a household on an extremely limited income, this supporting role to a man who was also being stretched beyond reason.

Depending entirely on a Strength not our own, Gabe and I found that impossible things were possible. It became a time of asking many times a day, and receiving more than we even expected. I remember daily singing with the children, “God will make a way when there seems to be no way,” swallowing down the tears and choosing to believe like they did, sight unseen. We look back at that time now with fondness. Gabe says we were kind of like Benjamin Bunny, “cheerful and improvident” and we feel like Somebody must have paid the bills because it doesn’t seem possible that we did it.

When we feel like God has unfairly given us too big a job, it is usually because we can’t be independent in it. That is a miserable place, feeling like we cannot possibly do well, because we know this is bigger than our abilities. Sadly, we often don’t learn to roll our burdens on Jesus until we buckle under them. People say, “You know God won’t give you more than you can handle,” but I think He does it all the time because He wants us to learn to depend on His strength instead of our own. He isn’t going to let us off the hook without doing our share of the work, but He will give us the abilities to fulfill our responsibilities. It is possible to live with a rested soul in the worst of times, and that actually makes it the best of times. In retrospect, of course. 🙂

(We were so blessed to have support all around us in our difficulties. Next post: How to help your friend in crisis.)

Processing Sad

Last Sunday we brought home new friends from church to share our lunch. We had a lovely afternoon, getting acquainted, watching our little girls play with their little girl and laughing about Addy and their three-year-old son who sturdily climbed up to the top of our ridge with the older boys… after we got over our fright at not being able to find them, of course.

We parted with comments about wanting to get together again. Yesterday I heard that the little girl, Jackie, went to Jesus after a frighteningly short battle with pneumonia. My mind refuses to accept that this could happen. I can think of so many reasons why she should have lived. But she is gone and we are left shocked and stricken.

My first impulse is to clutch obsessively at my dear ones, something I have battled with a lot in the past. Once more I have to come to the place of knowing that our children are safest when we leave them in the hands of Jesus.

The second impulse is to wail out the questioning WHY?

One side of me thinks of wispy-haired little girls sitting around the table and drawing crayon pictures of rainbows and butterflies and flowers after Sunday lunch. I watch them put their shaky five-year-old signatures on their perceptions of innocent happiness. While I rejoice to think that sweet Jackie can never be touched with the brokenness of this world again, yet I am desperately sad that she didn’t get to grow up. It feels so unfair that her devoted parents have to walk through this dark valley.

Last week Gabriel read us the story of David who fasted and pled with God for seven days for the life of his infant son. I marveled with the servants who watched David get up after his son died. They saw him wash and change his clothes and go to worship, and they asked, “What is going on?” David replied with those words of faith, “Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.” 2 Samuel 12

I have no way to process tragedy except through the eyes of faith, and even that grows pretty dim at times. When Hebrews 11 says that faith is the “conviction of a reality that we do not see, perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses,” (amplified Bible) I think, “No kidding!”

Yet I believe that there is something going on that is adding to a weight of glory somewhere, “as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2Corinthians 4:18) We are not asked to understand. We are asked to believe.

Oh, Jesus, in the sorrows of this world, give me eyes of faith!

Life is Like That

I feel like the train derailed on this blogging thing, and now I don’t know how to hitch it back up. Oh well, maybe I will just start with this past week, in which we had our thirteenth anniversary. We believe that the best thing we can do for our children is to have a vibrantly happy marriage. So we went trotting off without any children. Do you want to know how it felt?

It felt really, really strange. And it was so much fun. You could even say relaxing. Five children seems a bit much to drop on one person, so we left the girls with my parents and took the boys up north to be with Gabriel’s parents, which was close to our destination at Watkin’s Glen. We have never camped without the children, so this time we decided to go all minimalist. One kettle to boil water for hot drinks, some cheese sticks and power bars. Apples. Ramen noodles, just in case we got too hungry before we hit a restaurant. I am not kidding. And high quality chocolate, of course. A duffle bag for each of us and bedding to sleep in the conversion van we borrowed from my folks. That was it.

We hiked the Glen and biked all the trails at the campground, then needing a little something, we shared a grape pie sundae. A few hours later we went out for Chinese. This is something you don’t know before your tots come along… Very quickly they will take up your hands wherever you go, or else you will be clutching at them to hang onto them in parking lots and stores. Taking your children to a buffet style restaurant is so… involved. The luxury of just having each other for a few days is just that, a luxury, only one hand to hold, and it isn’t trying to run away!

We slept as long as we wanted, which means that when Gabe asked me if I was ever going to wake up and it was 10:30, I actually wanted to get up. Did I mention that we relaxed? I missed the children like everything. It was so odd to read and read by the campfire and nobody complained about being hungry. Campfire cooking is really fun, but it is also kind of exhausting, keeping ice in a cooler and washing greasy pans in lukewarm water, so this was a nice contrast. On the second day we traveled north along the Seneca Lake to the vineyards, stopping enroute for dessert and coffee at a funny little cafe, just because.

We picked 10 boxes of grapes to bring along home in just under 2 hours, then found the home of our friends, Nelson and Amy, who graciously served us a lovely supper and gave us a gorgeous guest room for the night.

The next morning it was time to collect the children in a 6 hour process that involved picking up the boys, stopping at an orchard and picking 3 bushels of apples, then coming on home for the girls. Life felt so do-able again, crazy schedules, complex responsibilities, needy people and all. It was good to get away, but it was even better to come back.

Remember the bit about the grapes and apples? There was no option but to don the apron and get to work. Half the grapes were for friends, but even so we steamed 58 quarts of juice. That should last a while. 🙂 While the steaming process was going on, I peeled a half bushel of apples for pie filling and to dry. It was a fun project, not one that I really had to do. By the end of the day, I was a little tired.

Early the next morning I lay in bed trying to decide if I had the stamina to make applesauce that day. It was a toss-up between wrapping up the canning all in one fell swoop or leaving it for another day when I wouldn’t feel like doing it either. I decided on the fell swoop, whatever that is. Alex got a day off school and we applesauced away. When the last batch was simmering on a cooker on the deck, I asked him to check on them while I ladled the sauce into jars. He thought they looked “almost ready”. By the time I checked on them, they were scorched into a brown mass on the bottom of the kettle.

It was the last rite of canning season… a hopelessly scorched kettle to scrub and soak and scrub and soak. I started in on it and quickly realized that this was the worst, horriblest scorched kettle ever. Google brought up a solution that turned on light bulbs in my head. I share this with you because I surely am not the only person who wants to throw kettles into the trash and slink away.

Just in case you ever have apples permanently stuck to your sauce pan, here is what you do: Pour peroxide into the kettle to about ½ inch depth. Sprinkle in a few teaspoons of baking soda and simmer it on low with the lid on for about 20 minutes. Touch the scorched spot with a wooden scraper and watch in delight as it lifts off the stainless steel bottom and floats gently upward.

Then you thank Jesus and pass the word along. Because nobody should spend hours scouring pans when they are dog tired from canning. Amen?

It is cold outside and the hot drinks are waiting. They are calling me to come play Settler’s. Cheerio!

The Goldenrod Is Yellow

Some of you were wondering where in the world I have been. I will give you multiple choice options and we shall see how good you are at guessing.

Researching John and Abigail Adams
Going to the zoo
Feeding hundreds of people
Canning my tail feathers off
Refraining from saying things that are not kind
Hauling things up and down my attic steps
Bike shopping
Taking time to savor my coffee
Cutting holes in my daughter’s dress
All of the above

Let’s just assume you are smart about this sort of list and I will tell you that 10 is indeed the right answer. Regarding number 1, I am not certain that reading a page out of David McCullough’s 646 page biography every day at nap time can be considered research, especially as it is a library book and I doubt whether they will allow me to renew it often enough to finish it. I cannot believe the prodigious quantity of letters, sometimes 2 or 3 in a single day, that he and Abigail wrote during their frequent separations while America was learning how to be a country on her own. It is noteworthy, also, how very important it was in the early days for a politician to be scrupulously honest and virtuous. There is also an interesting biographical film of John Adams on Amazon that fascinated me. So yes, research of the Wikipedia and one page a day variety.

In all my childhood memory bank, I cannot recall anyone ever puking on the way to the zoo. Nor can I remember anyone desperately insisting that they Have to Go Potty when we were stuck in traffic so that my mom had to climb over seats to help them relieve themselves in a small goldfish crackers container. But I wasn’t the mom back then, so I may have forgotten. The zoo was fun though, especially with my sister and her family joining us from Ohio. That is my cute niece Jackie in the middle.

As for feeding hundreds of people, I should explain that I am counting my children 3 times a day, along with occasional friends and relations. When you figure it out, it’s 21 people a day just for our family (I pack Gabe’s lunch). No wonder the groceries fly off the shelves as fast as I haul them home. Or can them. I know the amount of food I preserve is laughably small compared to some. Gabe’s mom does hundreds of quarts of tomato juice every year. On the day I was hauling home 2 bushels of tomatoes to make into pasta sauce, I passed a middle aged guy in a red convertible, top down, hair ruffled in the wind, blissful expression on his face and all. I thought, “I don’t envy your life at all, buddy. But could we just trade for the next 24 hours?” Cause I think it would do him good to see a child’s delight at learning to mix primary colors in icing… after the tomato canning was done, of course. School marches on. I think we have 24 days done, even with all the days we took off. I love having the freedom to dismiss lessons for busy days because we started early. It took the pressure off majorly. And I have little runners to fetch and carry and husk and peel. They are such good helpers that some days I had time to write posts, but I found myself rereading them and hearing my mom in my head, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” So I didn’t. And no, you may not see my drafts folder.

The bike shopping turned out to be a bit of a fiasco. Olivia has been riding a small boy’s bike all year, and all year we have looked for a pink bike at yard sales. We don’t really see the point of buying brand new ones when they are still in the learning stages and crash all the time, but by her birthday she still didn’t have a bike her size. So I took her and Rita with me on an excursion to Altoona, first to a consignment sale where the only bikes were boys’ bikes, then to Walmart where I opened my eyes to the prices as well as the ugliness of the decals. I could just imagine how the Disney princesses would look after scraping against backyard trees and riding through the mud in the garden. Meanwhile Rita saw a teensy bike with a dolly carseat attached to it and began to sob quietly in her hopeless desire to own it. We decided to check Target, where they did not have a single 16 or 18 inch bike on stock. As we were walking out, the girls saw the Lego friends sets and Olivia said she would rather have one of those anyway, so I got her one for her birthday. That is not all, though. Our neighbors had a yard sale this weekend, and there was a lavender girl bike for 5 dollars, so the boys bought it for the birthday girl. Whew. *dusts off hands*

The birthday girl brings us to another subject: that of letting her pick out fabric at Walmart for a dress. If you know their fabric selection, you know that it is varied and unreliable as to quality, but right now they have a lot of cheap stuff, likely for costumes. We found some we liked and I planned the charcoal dress with a filmy purple overskirt. I was feeling a bit smug as I entered the home stretch of doing the overlock seam on the skirt in just under 3 hours. Suddenly I realized that the slippery fabric had doubled under and I was overlocking too many layers. Oh, please, please. But yes, the blade on the serger had cut a large gash right into the middle of the front bodice. The longer I studied it, the more I wanted to chuck the whole thing into the trash can. But I picked it apart and kept on working at it until it was all done. I love my little girl dearly but I have to admit that I kept thinking, “Ain’t nobody got time for this.” Here is the damage. Tomorrow I will try to post a picture of the girly in the dress. I have convinced her that she is now old enough to put her beloved blanket into the attic in her keepsakes box and the dress is a sort of swap or reward for bravery. The first time I broached the subject of the blanket, she burst into tears. You have to understand that with a dysfunctional adrenal gland, this blanket has gone with her for every lab draw and every scary doctor’s visit and swaddled her in every stressful situation since she was just wee. It has supplied comfort and calmed her for her entire childhood. She has staunchly defended it from her brothers’ merciless teasing. (Are you going to share your blanket with your husband?) And she has agreed to give it up. After all, it is flannel and it says Baby on the front. I am so proud of her! To the attic it went.

The Goldenrod Is Yellow…It really is, but the reason I used it for my title is because it is the first line of a poem I learned in second grade and this time of year I can hear our class chanting it vigorously as Teacher Sarah beamed at us with approval. Any of you others remember it? I can’t recall the whole thing but I would love to teach it to my children just for fun.

Anyway, that’s where I have been, plus a lot more besides. Where have you been?

Stage Whispers

Parents with small children cringe at the blurting statements of those who have not figured out the skill of whispering without making any noise, but if they step back and look at the situation outside of the embarrassment, the hilarity needs to be shared with those who are fortunate enough to sit somewhere less ~~entertaining~~ distracting. I give you some quotes verbatim from my small fry in church.

What do you stink like? (This is accompanied by loud sniffing.)

Why is he talking so loudly?

Can you look into my nose and see if there are any big boogies?

Is church about done?

The Smartie Man is here!

I am starving!

Are we going to have dessert? May I have dessert today? (Dessert is the reward for good behavior in public assemblies.)

Is church about done?

There is Doddy! May I go sit with him?

Am I being good?

I have to go potty! ( Shh… Just wait a few minutes then church will be over.)

But I have to go now! I will pee myself!

“Amen,” says the preacher.

Amen. That means we are done!

Was I good? Do I get dessert?

I remind myself that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, particularly weak when it takes more than 2 hours of sitting still to earn a piece of cake. I myself am afflicted with a terrific urge to giggle at solemn times such as at my aunt’s funeral or during ponderous prayers where God is being informed of events He already knows quite well. It isn’t exactly irreverence, but more the incongruity of a matter that sets me off. I suppose there are times when I shouldn’t have dessert after church either.