Things Keep Happening

I find my writing muscles have sadly atrophied this summer. Every time I went to write something down, my little finger commenced to aching, an excuse that even Mr. Putter and Tabby did not come up with when they tried to write a book. I suppose that would be as good a place to start as any with this update.

Way back in August, three days after my doctor cleared me to do whatever I want now that I had healed up from surgery in the spring, we went camping with my sister’s family. It was good times all around, except for maybe the hour of drenching rain one evening. Rachel has six children, five of whom are younger than my youngest child, so we are still in very different stages of mothering. She had been dispensing snacks and taking small people to the potty and supervising play most of the day. After supper we decided to go on a wild spree on the e-scooters. We felt like shopping, and the only option was the ever-present Dollar General right outside the park entrance.

Off we scooted, about 15 miles an hour, one foot balanced behind the other. I was on the edge of the road and she was riding behind me when suddenly she put on a burst of speed and cheered as she glided past me, “I’m going to buy CHOCOLATE!” That declaration of freedom was all it took to set me off, and I started laughing enough that I ran my scooter off the edge of the road.

Now e-scooters are not designed for hasty changes in terrain, and it stopped very abruptly while I kept on running at 15 miles an hour. I took gigantic steps, pell-mell, and just as I thought I had gotten it under control, I tripped on my flip-flop. My pinky did its best to stop my fall, but it proved inadequate to the task, and crumpled.

The first thing I did was look around to see if anyone had noticed my epic fall. Nobody in sight, and Rachel was ahead of me, so she only saw the part where I was sitting on the asphalt, feeling foolish. The next thing I did was examine a rather pathetic little finger, obviously dislocated. There were no other injuries of note, except my shattered dignity, but I soon recovered that.

We scrubbed the mission for chocolate and other DG delicacies and returned back to the campsite. Gabe got my finger back into the proper position and whittled me a splint. I took a bunch of pain killers and the camping went on.

When we got home, I had the finger x-rayed, and it was indeed broken. The doctor said Gabe did a good job of setting it, and it should heal fine on its own, unless I was concerned about how it looks. “I don’t care about that,” I said, “but I really would like it to work. I have to be able to type and to make pottery with it.” I was given an enormous splint that came almost to my elbow.

A pinky is pretty minor in the world of broken bones, but turns out you use it a lot. I couldn’t believe how often I accidentally bumped it, trying to do ordinary things. One day Addy poured a few M n M’s into my palm, and I dumped them all out because there was no little finger obligingly curling around to catch them. I couldn’t peel potatoes, hold a pen, pull weeds, pick beans, throw pots, etc.

It is now healed, but needs therapy. I can type, stiffly, and I think just using it normally should soon extend my range of motion. I am now good to go, again.

Would you like to hear what I did to my knee when we were camping last weekend? No? Yeah, I don’t feel like talking about that either.

I did have a few complaints for the Lord as I was hobbling around, putting away camping gear. “Do you really want me to just not do anything this whole entire year?” He didn’t answer, so I just kept hobbling. Eventually it will loosen up. It always does.

It’s the time of year when I feel like things are piling up that need to be done, urgently, before winter. It helps me to get dominion of just one thing at a time. Because the girls are pretty much self-directed in their schooling these days, I can putter at projects one at a time. Eventually the household ship that is listing heavily to port starts to right itself.

Right now my mind is constantly with my brothers Nate and Kenny and Gabe’s brother Wayne who all live in the mountains of western North Carolina and are wearing themselves out, day after day, helping their neighbors in any way they can. Thankfully all of them live on high ground and did not have flooding in their homes, but they are living with the reality of no electricity and loss of infrastructure. They are besieged everyday with the griefs of a community staggering under a weight of unimaginable suffering. They are living on little sleep, going on fumes and the grace of God. We hear only snippets of their lives when they manage to get to Starlink internet access.

Aside from supporting organizations that are bringing aid, I don’t know what to do to help. I feel guilty while I steam grapes and can juice and clean up the basement storage room. When I turn on the heat, there is a twinge of guilt too. I don’t know what to do to help.

There are a lot of situations in life where the only thing to do is the next thing. If I sit inactive in my overwhelm at the sorrows of life, something is missing from the world that is supposed to be there. What is right in front of me, that is my work today.

This morning I took dominion of the freezer drawer. It is supposed to be the freezer for bits of things that need to be handy in the kitchen. Why it gets into such a state, I do not know, but I am suspicious it might be the children. I took out 13 partial bags and containers of frozen fruit from the summer smoothie making. There were a lot of bags of half loaves of bread too, and an ice cream bucket with about 3 cups in it. There were containers with a few slices of ham or some sliced bell peppers that I never remember to use when we make pizza. (Not all the children’s fault after all.) I have a bowl of frost-bitten treats for the chickens, which will turn into eggs in the long run, so that is ok, I suppose.

Yesterday Rita and I went out into the glorious sunshine that feels like a novelty after two weeks of drear. We trimmed the overgrown raspberries and cleaned dead plants out of the garden. She cleared her patch and hauled the stuff to the compost pile. I caught her looking at me a little oddly, and then she declared, “I am so glad you aren’t anemic anymore!”

Me too, dearie, me too!

It has been a summer, that’s for sure. There has been so much goodness and hardness mixed. My dad is fighting liver cancer with all his might, and we do not know yet whether the treatments are working. My mom is pouring her heart into caring for him. Our hearts are being enlarged even while we recoil from hard things. God alone knows what will be next, but He is there. Amen.

(My finger has tolerated this typing quite well, although p is hard to reach. My writing muscle feels stretched and happy. Thanks for listening. )

I will conclude with a little extra warmth on a chilly morning, thanks to my one child who does not need to be bribed to let me post photos.

Every Spring

There are a few days each spring that are so glittery green that you feel as though the air itself is tinged with color, and you feel that if you blink, it might disappear. It’s the same time that the bleeding hearts and pansies show off their best, all the tiny crinkled leaves are unfolding by the minute like origami in a massive installation, and the birds are totally uninhibited in their courtship songs and rituals. I marvel, hold my breath, try to take in the miracle, and then my eyes can’t stay open anymore. When I wake up, it looks like summer. It is my favorite, favorite thing, what I long for every winter. And it always comes, as promised.

This year was astonishingly early here. No frost for the whole month of May? Yes, please! I know it’s not over yet, but there is no freeze in the forecast and with no full moon for another week, we boldly planted out tomatoes and peppers last week. I have covers and sheets ready for any hint of chill, because I also listen to old-timers, but I cannot quite hold myself back.

Gabriel gave me a wonderful gift in the form of an act of service that took a few days: he edged and placed borders of rocks/logs around my gardens to keep the grass from constantly growing into the planting areas. It all needed to be squared up with the patio and driveway, since my initial method of unrolling old hay bales was pretty much seat-of-the-pants, eye-it-to-look-good. The driveway got changed and fixed last year, so we now have a curb and a solid reference to go by. Every day I look out the windows and rejoice!

Big things have been happening. There is a post and beam pavilion being set up, also designed and built by my husband, who can do pretty much anything he sets his mind to. (Given enough time…let’s be realistic.)

Alex has been here for a few weeks, and he took on the task of edging and mulching all the fruit trees and other landscaping. He also tilled the garden for me, and helped spread horse “by-products” onto it. Half of the garden is planted, and the other half will be quite soon. It has been so wonderful to have him here, available to help when he doesn’t have part-time work.

Normally I revel in these springtime tasks, but this year found me so anemic that I had to sit and rest after digging a hole in the garden. “Looks like the beef liver isn’t cutting it,” said my nurse husband when he saw my labs. He also said,” This is the level where people get transfusions and we should probably just go to the ER and take care of it.” So we did, and it helped a lot, but it will be a while before I get back to normal. I hadn’t realized how much I was compensating for my low hemoglobin until I started feeling better. I hadn’t noticed how much energy was going into staying upright, and how little was actually getting to my brain. Ha. (Very mirthless ha.)

This is too public a forum for details, but I can assure you that I am under good medical care and there is a plan to get to the root of the problem. Should be fun. Sarcasm aside, I am so very grateful for options and help. How often I have thought of the woman who stooped to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe, and that moment when she felt His strength coursing through her! A friend recently told me she thinks that lady touched the bottom of His robe because she was so weak that she was down on the ground. I agree with her. It is a great comfort that He is accessible to those who are completely flattened by life.

I moved all the houseplants onto the back deck this week, so the house feels more open. We don’t need green therapy inside for some months, hallelujah! We have also been clearing out some holes with shamefully large deposits of things that don’t have a home. Springtime is the time to let it go, dig down through the strata in the closets, and assign the stuff a place or a donation box. “The thing is,” Olivia said, “we like stuff,” and she hit the nail on the head with that observation. We like making stuff and having it, thrifting for it and restoring it. I don’t see a problem as long as we share our stuff and don’t let it take over our lives, do you?

We have been to homes where there is no clutter, no rugs to catch dust, nothing slightly imperfect or mismatched or chipped, no real flowers or plants, and the minimalism is impressive indeed. It would be so easy to clean this place, I think. “That’s like an Air B and B,” the kids said, “it’s too sterile.” So in the interest of coziness, we embrace having stuff around and taking care of it. We even embrace dust and strata in closets, up to a point. I have limits, and I am sure you do too. I’d love to hear where you draw the line in your home. Do you keep things that you haven’t used for a year, for example? How do you figure out what to store, in case you need it? What makes something a keepsake?

Every spring there is my birthday and Mother’s Day, which are only a week apart (unfortunately, because I love celebrations and I wish my family weren’t still tired from figuring out one before another one shows up, to be honest). Gabriel surprised me by inviting friends for a cookout on my birthday, and it cheered me right out of a funk of surprising ickiness where I was feeling like my birthday was lame and not fun. I told you that my brain has not been getting enough blood flow, right? Sometimes I remind myself of what my older friend Ellen says, “When you feel down and depressed, you have to know you aren’t thinking right. You have to get your head straight about how good God is, and start thanking Him, and that takes care of it.” It’s very good advice, and she lives it. Maybe by the time I am seventy-five, I will have learned this lesson.

Anyway, Mother’s Day was special in a different way. Gabriel was at work three hours away, and the rest of us woke not feeling great. Addy and I both had swollen eyes and I think I sneezed a hundred times that morning. Olivia and Greg had no voices. Only Rita was fit to go to church, so Greg dropped her off. I was going to listen to the sermon online, but the website was down, so that didn’t work. I sat like a bump in my chair and napped when I wasn’t busy sneezing. Olivia had assembled a lasagna for lunch and was fixing some side dishes to go with it when Greg left to pick Rita up again after church. He told Rita that there isn’t any lunch at home (because obviously, Mom was sitting in her chair and nothing happens that way) and they were hungry, so they went to KFC for chicken nuggets. Meanwhile the girls at home finished the meal and set the table pretty and we waited and waited. At last we called, and they were finishing up their nuggets, oblivious to the awful faux pas of having missed lunch with their mom on Mother’s Day. They felt really bad about it, but I bet it will make the family archives of funny stories.

I have been thinking a lot about parenting, about the long-term proposition it is, about the way we are asked to give up ourselves and give lavishly and never give up, either. So much giving. This spring I found myself fresh out of oomph, feeling like a hoarder. I need to save my strength. I don’t want to be inconvenienced. I don’t feel like sharing. Could you all just leave me alone and not need anything for awhile? What do I think I am saving my strength for in those moments? What is a hoarded power bank going to do for me in ten years if now is the time that my child needs my love and attention? What good will it do me in a lonely world of the future if I have kept myself well-preserved but inaccessible? I know, there are boundaries, but many times “boundaries” are just a way to make me feel good about being selfish. It’s a buzzword in the current therapy speak, and I don’t see it in Jesus’ life anywhere at all. I think of the Kingdom principle in Matthew 10:8, “Freely you have received, freely give.”

That’s plenty for me to chew on today, for sure. I truly believe God does not waste anything we give to Him, but I no longer expect to see short term rewards. Not to say that that wouldn’t be gratifying sometimes, but it seems as if it is more like planting trees. You shovel and fertilize and stake and prune and water and hope. It’s a very long-term situation. And here’s the thing: the end result is all grace. It is all out of our hands anyway. It is His business, what He does with what we give Him.

I remind myself of this again and again, because being human means feeling like I deserve things or don’t deserve things. Sometimes I just need to shut up my feelings and get my head straight about how good God is.

Every spring the miracle happens, just as He promised. I have seen forty-seven of them now, so I know. He is good.

February Recap

In contrast to January, which is a long month that can’t quite quit, February has been a very speedy month. We hunkered down and survived, if you can call smearing cream cheese on a toasted bagel a “survival challenge”. We feel the sap rising at the end of February, as we lift dry, trembly limbs to the stronger rays of sunshine. Our children think it was the Lamest Winter Ever, Worse Than Last Year. (Interpreted to mean not enough snow and ice.) We had a few gloriously pristine snows, but not many, so it was a slate grey world, full of mud. It was about as bleak as it can get. For a person who struggles every winter to stay grounded and out of the pits, I am wondering why I am feeling so cheerful this year?

There was a matter of a conversation with God last fall, “Honestly, why do I live somewhere so bleak for so much of the year? Is there something You are trying to teach me?” (I know, duh.)

I love Pennsylvania. I just don’t love November through April in Pennsylvania. That’s half the year, and when I thought about it, it seemed like kind of a lot. I am a cheerful person, in general, but I realized that I am giving myself a pass on complaining about the weather.

“You know, it isn’t My will that you fuss about the overcast sky and the brown and the ugliness.” Oof. It wasn’t a long conversation, but it was pointed. I am not saying I had a transformation just then, and embraced mud season, but I made a commitment to stop letting my mouth complain. Sometimes the words just slipped right out without me even thinking, and then I would have to reframe. “Isn’t is interesting how we live under a mushroom cloud? Look, you can see the edges of it on the horizon when we drive south. I wonder what wind currents are causing that?” Sounds a little whiny still, I know. When the you have an agreement with the Lord, He is very kind in reminding you when you forget it.

Anyway, that’s point 1 for my flourishing in less than ideal situations. Don’t be a fuss pot. C.S. Lewis learned to love rough and stormy weather so much, he considered people who complained and stayed holed up to be missing an elemental gusto. (Get it?) Note to self: Be like Clive Staples.

Point 2 is Take Your Supplements. I did not skip the vitamin D and B. This year I bought a seven-day pill organizer for A.M and P.M. and now I am officially weirdly old.

Point 3 is a luxury that I have not always had: Sleep. I did not set my alarm unless we had an appointment somewhere in the morning. Homeschooling requires a lot of effort and investment, but we have hit the sweet spot where I realize that not everything is lost if we don’t start at the ~~crack of dawn~~ same time every morning.

Point 4 is related to calming down. Avoid Caffeine. It occurred to me that there is something wrong with a lifestyle where I cannot survive without caffeine. So I kicked the habit. I drink decaf coffee, and now I sleep better and now I am weirdly old. Oh, maybe I mentioned that before. In the interest of transparency, there were a few diet Coke days. What a gross way to get a boot in the rear, but it does work.

Those are the four things that come to mind for what has changed in my life that may have helped me cope with the seasonal depression that normally afflicts me. I have a bonus for you, a word that is new to me. Fika, which in Sweden is the term for sitting down with family or friends to have a hot drink, often with something sweet on the side. You can use it as a verb or a noun. We fika a lot at our house! Come, join us!

We’ve been finishing a bedroom in the basement. The guys installed large windows, rewired it, drywalled the ceiling, put in can lights, and trimmed it. I painted it, and Greg and I went to Gabes to look for a rug, bedding, etc. He moved his stuff down there last week, so I filled about 20 nail holes and re-caulked the cracks in the paneling and trim in his old room. I love repainting and furnishing a room when there isn’t a time crunch. (The haste around our remodel/move still gives me the post-move willies, just remembering how we put our furniture in the centers of the rooms so that I could finish the painting.) For this room, I chose a color called lullaby. My family thought it would look like a nursery, but it doesn’t. It looks restful in a blue-grey sort of way. With the white chalk-painted furniture I am working on, it will be even better. I don’t overthink the colors I choose for my walls. I just pick what I like, and then it makes me happy. There you have it, home interiors by Dorcas. It’s a very uncomplicated recipe, but I stand by it.

I made a dress -coral colored with little white flowers- for Addy a few weeks ago. The first time around I made it with her outgrown pattern, size 10/12. It was pretty unbelievable for a while, but there was nothing to do except cut and sew another bodice, size 14. For once I had bought extra fabric, a great mercy. Addy has gotten so many hand-me-downs in her life that she is excessively grateful for new dresses, and it is a pleasure to provide them. She prefers brighter colors than the other girls. Her recipe is uncomplicated too.

We went to Hobby Lobby this week, our favorite store in the world. We needed cotton yarn, felt, and some paint. We came home with fabric for hoodies and throw pillows, cute containers for beads, gold calligraphy ink, and some picture frames. I teased Rita about having a hard time with self-control, and she said, “You have no idea how hard I was holding back!” Me too, girl, me too.

The girls slept in their camper last night, despite the chill. I bribed Rita so that I could share a paragraph she wrote about it.

“If you go down the trail on the left-hand side of our shop you will come to a cute little camper with a wooden porch and flower boxes. The outside is white and green. If you decide to peep in you will be confronted by a door that sticks like glue. Pull like a mule and it might open. Reluctantly. If you get the door open, step in quickly. (So as not to let any heat escape from the lazy little heater.) Don’t forget to wipe your feet! To the left is our reddish-purple couch\bed. On each side small windows look out to the woods beyond. On the wall straight in front of the door are my spice shelves. Woven carpets cover the ancient linoleum floor. To the right are shelves. One has the cooking appliances; hot plate, electric water boiler, waffle maker, and popcorn popper. The others hold anything from plates and cups to pans and mouse poo. Everything is artfully arranged to take up as little of the limited space as possible. If you ask politely I might make you a cup of tea.”

This is the view off the back deck this morning. It was a little crisp out there, but they danced in through the snow in high spirits.

That was the view off the deck yesterday. I stood out there in bare feet, not even shivering, and listening to the roaring of the creek after our night’s thunderstorms. Isn’t weather interesting?