Vacation Notes from New Normal

We did it!

We managed our annual three night/four days vacation at Presque Isle.

If anyone had told me back in February (or March, April, or perhaps even May) that I would make it on this year's trip, I would have said there wasn't any way. That I was able to makes me feel grateful beyond imagining.

It was a lovely trip, though very tiring. Since I now dwell in the land of "new normal," there were things about the trip that were harder than I expected, or just plain different.  A sampling:

* We couldn't stay at our usual campgrounds, both because they were booked pretty solid by the time we realized we could attempt the trip, and because we weren't sure I could handle the beds and cramped accommodations of our usual trailer. We missed the rustic camp, especially the starry nights outside and the campfire we usually lit each night to roast marshmallows. I didn't have to don a long-sleeved jacket once while we were there, and nobody came home smelling like smoke.

* We stayed in a very moderate priced hotel not far from our campgrounds. While it wasn't rustic (we had wi-fi and cable, for goodness' sake) the beds turned out to be an adventure for me anyway. They were incredibly high off the ground, high enough that I had a very hard time climbing into them without leg pain. I felt like I should get a pole and vault into bed (an idea borne of the fact that we spent most of our late nights watching the Olympics on the aforementioned cable). I devised a kind of leap-into-bed-drag-your-bad-leg-behind-you style that probably would not win me many points for athletic form, but which amused my husband and daughter (and me) no end.

* Speaking of the bad leg (and I feel badly calling one leg "bad" when it's trying just as hard as the other leg that doesn't have bone cancer) the hotel had only two floors...and no elevator. And non-smoking rooms were on the second floor. Whoops. I had stairs to manage up and down whenever we left or arrived or when we went to breakfast. I got used to standing aside to let other people go ahead of me on stairs so I wouldn't hold them up. The first morning we were there, I was going down a short flight of steps toward the dining area, holding onto the railing and carefully bringing my right leg (that's the "bad" one) down to the step where I'd already placed my left leg. It's a very halting way to walk, but it's the only way for me to tackle steps responsibly right now, especially with my feet so numb from neuropathy. An elderly gentleman coming my way saw me managing the steps and called out cheerfully, "That's the way I have to do stairs! Bad knee, eh?" I just smiled and said, "Well, bad leg, anyway."

* No campfires meant no s'mores. We compensated by heading to Sara's (the beach themed hamburger/hot dog joint we love to frequent while there) for ice cream cones. More than once. Oh, okay. Pretty much every day. It was HOT, and ice cream hit the spot.

* The car wasn't as bad as I'd feared. Once upon a time, riding in a car meant pain for my hip. Now it's mostly just achey and uncomfortable but bearable. It was worse for my feet than my hip. I should have followed a friend's suggestion and taken my weight balls so I could have something to roll my feet against and keep them moving.

* Speaking of moving, movement in the car makes me really drowsy. I am more drowsy than usual because of medications, I think, but I wasn't aware how long stretches of time in the car would affect me. I basically couldn't keep my eyes open. I struggle with that at other times too -- including sometimes while I'm typing (which can make for some comical spelling errors, especially if I'm typing on the Kindle keyboard). I think the combination of medicines and deep down physical tiredness, which seemed deeper than I expected once I "let down" for vacation, kept me really sleepy much of the time we were away. I slept a lot on the beach.

* The beach! So beautiful on the peninsula, as always. So lovely to hear the waves and feel the wind and chuckle over the antics of the gulls and pick up rocks worn smooth by the lake water. I did all of those usual things, but I didn't walk much. The hot, gritty sand hurt my feet, and when I attempted to get near the water, just the waves coming in made me very unsteady. So I kept to my chair and read a lot (a reading round-up of my beach fluff probably coming soon). I slept a good deal in the sun, which made me feel a bit like a cat.

* I did have one wonderful beach walk with my dear daughter, who woke me up for the express purpose of meandering over to "our dune" -- the sand dune we have always explored together since she was very little. I'm so glad it meant enough to her to ask me to do that with her. She patiently took my arm and helped me manage the walk. I even made it up the incline to the top of the dune, where S bent down and unstrapped my sandals so I could feel the softer sand of the dune as well as I was able (not terribly well, but it was such a sweet gesture, I couldn't refuse, and I could tell, even with my neuropathied feet, that it was softer -- or perhaps my brain supplied the softer sand memory).

* I wasn't the only one who "let down" my emotions while we were there. The sweet girl discovered that trying to relax after this long, hard year meant some tears. They came at odd times (perhaps because she fights so hard to keep them in at other times, bless her heart). But they came, and I think it was good. 

* Time with friends was also lovely....it was just so good to see them and to spend time in their presence. Some parts of New Normal, thankfully, look and feel a lot like Old Normal. I'm glad, or otherwise I'm afraid I'd get lost a lot more often!

Reading Notes: James Herriot and Musings About Our Family Reading Life

I mentioned yesterday that I've been reading James Herriot again. His books make me want to share a cuppa with someone while we muse about the beauty of the Yorkshire dales.

I first found Herriot when I was in high school. I read through his semi-autobiographical memoirs (All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Things Wise and Wonderful, The Lord God Made Them All) named for lines from the hymn by Cecil Alexander, and they've been on my list of books to recommend for the sweet girl's high school years as a result. He is a keen observer of human and animal nature. His stories manage to be warm and charming without falling into sentimentality, maybe because he's so good at providing detailed accounts of some rather gritty veterinary work with farm animals. 

I never forgot Herriot in the intervening years. I fell in love with his books for children (slightly adapted tales of the same kind you'd find in the larger books) when I was in college, and the sweet girl and I spent many wonderful hours reading and re-reading his Treasury for Children when she was little. I'm pretty sure I reviewed that for Epinions. If I can dig it up in my archives, I'll give it a quick revising and post it here.

A few years ago I dipped into the book Jim Herriot's Yorkshire, but it was just recently that I really got back to reading his wonderful stories of people and animals. His Dog Stories made me laugh and made me realize how much I'd missed his way with canines...and with words. I'm trying to revive our family read-aloud tradition by reading some of the stories with D and S whenever we can manage to sit down to a meal together during this busy summer.

It feels strange to say I'm trying to revive our family read-alouds. For thirteen and a half years, that was a daily habit. We always read aloud together. If you've followed along with my sidebar list of our family read-alouds, you've seen the long list of books we've read over the years. I seriously don't think I had missed a day of reading aloud since S was a baby.

When I got my cancer diagnosis back in February, we were in the midst of re-reading The Chronicles of Prydain. In fact, we were near the end of the series, in the final book. Although sometimes D and S do the reading aloud, I have typically been the main reading person. I had so little energy at night by the time we reached the final third of The High King that the sweet girl took over the reading and brought us home to the beautiful conclusion.

And then our read-alouds stopped. And so did nightly family gatherings and prayers, and my morning Bible reading and prayer time with the sweet girl, and any semblance of bedtime routine for the family, and most of our family meals (though those continued in some form without me, especially when my sisters were here helping during my chemo treatments). So many things we've cherished over the years fell by the wayside during the tsunami of survival season.

During that season, S had six months or so where she continued to grow and change. She had her fourteenth birthday a few weeks ago (so amazing!). She's gotten more into retro video games in the interim -- she is Mario crazy -- and in general has been spending a lot more time with a screen via her iPod as well as gaming. I know those things helped her through the difficult time of my chemo treatments, a period she described to me the other day by telling me she feels like I've come back from the dead or at least a really long trip. "It's like you were there but you weren't," she explains earnestly. And often adds, sometimes with a spontaneous hug that melts my heart, "I missed you! I'm so glad you're back!"

And she's suddenly telling me she is "too old for read-alouds" -- something I never thought I'd hear her say. We never treated read-alouds like a little kid phenomenon that you outgrow. It was just a natural part of what our family loved to do together, and I had assumed we would continue to do it as long as S lived here...and beyond (D and I were read-alouders long before we had a child).

There are hills one dies on in parenting, and hills you decide it's not worth the effort to storm. This one feels worth the effort. I have been trying to decide how to tackle it well. I know that things will never go back to what they were before we hit this difficult terrain in our family journey -- they couldn't really, even if we wanted them to. We've all changed and grown in so many ways. But I am trying to revive our long-established tradition of reading aloud, albeit in new ways and forms. Our morning Bible reading and prayer time has been re-established, although it's changed a bit (in good ways, I think). In terms of our family reading, nighttime doesn't seem to be the right time for us to gather anymore, but we're beginning to have more meals together again, and we're slowly getting back into the reading habit. We started with an article in a magazine, and now we've moved to short stories.

I'm kind of glad the stories are by Herriot. They remind me of S's childhood, even though they're different than the ones we read then. They remind me of my own youth (and yes, I've begun re-reading All Creatures Great and Small on my own time).  They remind me of my mother, who loved animals, especially dogs, and whom I miss with huge aching missing. They feel comfortable and familiar, and I need some comfort and familiarity in this time of so much change in myself and in my family.

The Middle Years

Lately I've been realizing that some of the challenges (joys, tensions, giggles) at our house consist in the fact that we're all in our "middle years."

The sweet girl (aka Jedi Teen) is in the "middle years" between childhood and adulthood -- never an easy road to travel.

Her dad and I are in our middle years, period. Which turns out aren't the easiest road to travel either, bringing with them new aches and pains, different kinds of questions about our lives and what we've done/still want to do with them, and other issues we hadn't thought about very much before they got here, like the challenges of watching and accompanying our parents as they age.

Now don't get me wrong: both sets of middle years have their blessings and compensations. The sweet girl would likely tell you she enjoys newfound freedoms and enthusiasms, and in some ways, that's true for us in our middle years too.

But sometimes the different kinds of middle years collide head on, and then the fireworks can fly! Sometimes it makes me laugh.

I know that part of the challenge for me is that I am slow to keep up with changes of any sort these days, and my daughter is just full of them -- she is a walking, talking, laughing, long-legged dancing, eye-rolling, hollering, crying, giggling ball of change most days. This slow middle-years mama (who feels like it was just yesterday she was teaching this adolescent dynamo-who-is-taller-than-she-is how to tie her shoes) sometimes just stands there in awe while she watches that dynamo practice her slip jig for Irish dance class.

I suspect, though I don't know, that parents of more than one child get to ease into all this change a little more gradually. Because there is some space between children, they get to keep experiencing one stage of life with one child while another leaps ahead into the next. I've seen this with friends who have kids at multi-ages and stages, and sometimes I am a little wistful about it. Maybe I would deal better with the swift progressions of adolescence if I was still cutting crusts off sandwiches and reading Eric Carle to an up-and-coming sibling. But that's not our experience nor our particular blessing (though I am grateful I still get the chance to spend time and work with younger kids in other venues, even if not here at home).

Still, I think I need to remind myself from time to time to relax and laugh a little more about the middle years. These too shall pass. And probably far too swiftly.

Old Poem, Old Photo

S. was cleaning her room this afternoon and needed a magazine holder for her many copies of Nature Friends and Pockets. I didn’t have a new one, but obligingly moved some homeschooling magazines and old Vegetarian Times to give her one of my old holders. In the process, I discovered a tiny notebook where I’d jotted some rough drafts of poems in 2007.

It’s fun to come across snippets of verse you jotted seven plus years ago. I remembered none of these poems and pieces of poems clearly, though the genesis of the ideas or a turn of phrase occasionally came back to me as I glanced through the pages. Most of them are in nowhere near sharing stage, but one of them made me smile (for a reason I think you’ll see in a moment) and I thought I’d share it here. It’s untitled.

I found my grandfather

at twenty-three.

Twenty-three, both him and me.

I that young in bone and skin,

he that young inside, within

a small glass frame, a photo gray.

He still is twenty-three today,

smiling, so serene and fine,

while I’ve moved on to thirty-nine.

                                    EMP (1/9/07)

What makes me smile about this little poem are all the layers. I really did find a small photograph of my grandfather, aged 23, when I was 23 myself. I was at my aunt’s house, looking through boxes of old pictures, and I remember how wonderful that felt, to have that kind of “connection” with a man who was so important in our family, but whom I never had the chance to meet. He died six years before I was born.

I keep that photo of my 23 year old grandfather on my bureau. And I do recall the day I picked it up and realized that the smiling face in the photo was still as young as the day I’d put it in the frame, while I’d aged sixteen years in the meantime. Now another seven years have gone by, and the layers continue. I’ve passed on to the age of 46, and my young and smiling grandfather is still peering out at me from the frame. He was born in 1901, so it’s been 90 years since that photograph was taken.

"Teach Us to Number Our Days..."

Home yet again. This past journey was very different than last week's relaxing time, and if we could have ordered the two trips differently, we surely would have. But life has a way of happening unscheduled! And it was very important that we got to Virginia to see D's mom before fall schedules are upon us in full.

I am so thankful for so many things as I look back on those exhausting few days. Most of all, I am thankful that D's mom is currently in the respite section (being moved to rehab soon) of the assisted living area, and that she is being more fully evaluated. She was in need of care and attention, even more than we realized. Her physical, mental, and emotional decline have continued at a frightening pace. I had not seen her since last November, and even with the knowledge of her difficulties and with what D. shared with me after her saw her a few weeks ago, I was shocked at how much she had aged in those relatively few months. On the other hand, there are still a lot of moments when she is perfectly cogent and very much herself, with that mischievous smile peeking through and even a bit of what I think I would term healthy snark over her current situation. She's not terribly happy about being where she is, but she also seems to recognize on some level that she really needs the care.

I spent most of the days there working my way through the piles of paperwork that had accumulated over the past few weeks and months -- junk mail, bills, notices from the retirement community, etc. It was my self-appointed task to find and sort all that I could so that it all made some sense for my dear husband, who is her medical and financial power of attorney. He and his sister were in various meetings with the lawyer, social worker, accountant, etc., and it seemed to be the best way I could help. Since Grandma has sometimes taken to putting papers and cards and keys in places where you least expect to find them, I discovered that the sweet girl's keen eyes were very helpful. She prowled the shelves and some small drawers and discovered some things that were missing or that we otherwise needed to know about, so I was thankful for that. We also had a few moments of just sheer grace in terms of things "showing up" right when they needed to.

I was also thankful for how beautifully the sweet girl handled the trip. It was not easy for any of us to see D's mother struggling so much, and there were lots of times of stressful waiting, missed signals, places we needed to be, sitting around and talking through things ("boring adult talk" as she terms it) and paper shuffling. S. was a trooper. She had a few times where her stress got the better of her, but then we all did. Mostly it was good, growing trip which she handled with much grace. Even under the circumstances, she was so glad for time with her grandmother, aunt, and great aunt, as were we all.

I find myself not just tired and grateful today, as I play catch-up on a host of household chores and try to think my way through organizing for the new school year (that should have started this week but instead will start next week) but realizing anew how precious our lives are. Even if we're given threescore and ten years of relatively good health and sound mind, it's such a short amount of time really. I found myself renewing my heart's commitment to living as healthfully, fully, and passionately as I can in whatever years I'm allotted. So much living, loving, kingdom work, creative work, I still long to do. As Psalm 90:12 reminds us, "teach us to number our days," dear Lord, "that we may gain a heart of wisdom."  Or as it says in the Message: "Oh! Teach us to live well! Teach us to live wisely and well!"

Eighty-Two

My precious father turned 82 today. I am so thankful for him in so many ways, and so thankful for all the ways the Lord has sustained his health in recent years. As he often says, he feels like he is living on gift time!

In honor of the day, I thought I would post a poem I wrote for him two years ago, when he turned 80. It still sings true.

My father turns eighty today.

I know without asking

that he will celebrate

with an angel-food cake

topped with blue icing –

the same cake my mother

has faithfully made

for as many of his birthdays

as I can remember

and beyond.

Blue is my father’s color.

His eyes sparkle with it,

clear and bright, true blue

eyes my mother fell in love

with and still loves.

I picture him in blue,

the pale coarse fabric of

his long-sleeved work shirts,

the lighter, slicker blue of

dress shirts under suit coats.

One of those shirts is always

draped on the ironing board

of my memory, its white

buttons resting hard against

my cheek when we hug.

Blue is my father’s color –

The paint I see spilling

from the tubes next to his palette,

the hue of the musical notes

that flow from Gershwin’s Rhapsody,

the chipped sky blue of seats

at old Parker Field where we

watched minor league games

every endless summer, the slow

spread of July sky where I can

see him now, silhouetted against

the neighbor’s yard, hands cupped

to imitate the coo of mourning doves.

My father turns eighty today.

And I picture my mother

spilling drops of pure color

from a small bottle

into the white cream ocean of frosting,

swirling the spatters with her quick spoon

till they intermingle into a lovely

robin’s egg blue, festive and ready.

And it strikes me anew

that love is never just

the icing on the cake,

but that it decorates our days

in whorls and peaks

of ordinary brilliance.

                        ~EMP 7/19/12

A Half Dollar and a Whole Lot of Love

The sweet girl and I were cleaning through a drawer earlier today and found some coins I’d put away. I’ve always had a penchant for coin collecting, and my daughter now has quite a collection, including most of the odds and ends I’ve laid aside over the years. In among the Canadian coins and wheat pennies today we found a couple of Kennedy half-dollars.

“Didn’t you once tell me a story about a fifty cent piece?” she asked, and I smiled.

Imagine, if you will, a small and shy first grade girl who was sent to school with lunch money. This little girl didn’t often buy her lunch, preferring her mom’s homemade stuff in the lunchbox. But once in a while, on a special occasion, she would take fifty cents to school to buy the meal on the menu.

On this particular day, when it came time to get in line, she looked in her little coin purse for the two quarters her daddy generally gave her…and only saw one coin.

I don’t know if it hit her that the coin was bigger and looked different. She certainly didn’t notice that it had the word fifty on it. All that struck her was that she had only one coin when she thought she needed two, and so…she didn’t buy lunch.

That shy first grader was me, of course. I only vaguely recall the disappointment I felt over missing lunch. What I remember, with gratitude, is my father’s loving response when I confessed that I hadn’t bought lunch because he hadn’t given me enough money.

I don’t know if I can remember the exact words, but here’s what has replayed in my mind and heart for years, which leads me to believe it must be pretty close.

“Oh honey,” he said to me (at least in my memory it’s honey, though it may have been some other term of endearment, like his favorite, Lizzie-Ru) “didn’t you know that I’d always give you enough?” He showed me the fifty cent piece in comparison with the quarter then, and explained.

Missing one lunch, even a special lunch, turned out to be no big deal. But my daddy’s tenderhearted response has stayed with me for years. I’m grateful that he helped me, even when I was so little, to trust him, and in so doing, helped prepare me to trust the always faithful Father-heart of God.

 “Didn’t you know that I’d always give you enough?” could be words from God’s heart, because what our heavenly Abba is the very best at doing is giving us himself.

Learning to Live Without a Car (and Within Limitations)

It’s been several years since our family has gone for such an extended period of time without a car. While a car is not an absolute necessity (as we’re learning once again) given our culture and location, having one sure does make life a lot easier. Here are some of the things I’ve been re-learning as we cope with being without a vehicle again.

1)      Realize that public transportation is a blessing – and it also has real limitations. Think of this the next time you see people waiting at a bus stop in broiling 90 degree heat or a freezing cold rain. When you take public transportation, you have the following blessings: someone else gets you where you need to go while you read, think, or people-watch. But you must work your life around the schedule of pick-ups and drop-offs. That means being on time to catch things (hurry! hurry!) or dawdling somewhere while you have an extended wait for the next one, no matter what the weather. Every errand you run will take longer when you factor in stops, waits, and transfers. And some places are nigh onto impossible to get to on public transportation, or will require a good bit of walking even when you take buses. Which leads me to #2….

2)      Be humble enough to ask for rides or to borrow a car. On occasion, something you need to do will be important enough that you can’t drop it from your schedule even if it’s impossible to get there via a bus or buses. The sweet girl’s psychologist appointments fall in these parameters for us right now. She is making great progress with her anxiety issues and those regularly scheduled meetings are important to her (and our) health and well-being. We literally feel we can’t drop them from our schedule. But we can’t easily get there in any way, shape or form without a car. God has blessed us with a neighbor who has allowed us to borrow her’s each week. Which leads me to #3…

3)      Consolidate your errands. If you only have a car for a couple of hours a week, you begin to think long and hard about what you can do with it while you have it. It doesn’t really matter if your schedule is inconvenienced, you may need to use that brief window of time to pick up something at a store you can’t easily get to any other way. Which leads me to #4…

4)      Get creative about meal-planning. Meal-planning is highly affected by what stores you can access.  We had grown used to shopping at a handful of stores each week/month to get the best deals we could for our meager food budget. Sometimes when you don’t have a car, that’s not possible. You make the best choices you can make given what you have in front of you. That may mean buying brands you don’t prefer, either generics that may or may not be the quality you’d like or sometimes buying name-brands for higher-prices because that’s what a store has. You will get creative, I promise you. You will discover that you can meal plan around grocery aisles you hardly used before in the one store that you can get to easily. You will discover new impetus to cook more from scratch – a good thing, but sometimes time consuming. (Again, don’t be afraid to take time. Our culture is so enamored of speed. You’ve got to step outside that mind-set because speed can’t be a priority.) And a side note here: the next time you’re tempted to think critical thoughts about someone who is poor who seems to be making less than optimum choices about how to spend their money or what to eat, remember that sometimes their choices are more limited than your choices. People can only do what they can do given what they can access.

5)      Be aware you’re going to get into good shape. We’re walking more than we’ve walked in months just to get where we need to go. The store, the bank, the post office, our church. Some of those we walk to a lot anyway, but not all the time, which has become necessary. Sometimes you will walk those places carrying heavy bags. Invest in good canvas bags. Be prepared for neck and shoulder aches. D and I have been realizing we’re not even in as good a shape as we thought we were (and we didn’t think we were that great). My legs and ankles feel perpetually tired right now. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just something to get used to in the new normal.

6)      Decide what hills you want to die on. For instance, in our family, we use the public library two towns over a lot…for pleasure, for homeschool, for teaching and writing research, for after school program planning. We get a lot of books, some of them big and heavy. Guess what? Without a car, we tote those books on the bus. I tell myself : decide now if you need seven things on the hold shelf this week or could honestly get by with three.

7)      Give yourselves lots and lots of grace. In our family, that means being willing to be as flexible as possible and to live with other people’s stresses. Given the sweet girl’s issues with OCD (and her weather-related anxieties) this is not always easy. There may be times we really can’t all get where we think we need to go in a given time frame. Guess what? It’s not the end of the world. Learn to do without. Learn to compromise. Learn to be thankful for whatever the day holds (a good lesson no matter what).

8)      Stay expectant. We’re still looking for ways to afford our car repairs. I find myself on tip-toes as I pray for open doors for more work or even an unexpected gift. We know the weather is going to get colder in the coming weeks; we know our situation isn’t the easiest for our family right now and is likely to get more challenging when that happens. We also trust God knows our needs, not just in terms of getting from point A to point B, but how much stress our little family unit can manage. This kind of situation gives you lots of exercise – not just physical exercise for your muscles, but spiritual exercise. Letting ordinary stresses deepen us, make us more grateful, humble, empathetic and hopeful is a good thing. Learning what we can live without is a good thing. Leaning ever deeper on God and trusting him to provide is a very good thing indeed.

On the Eve of Year Seven...

It’s hard to believe we’re entering our seventh official year of homeschooling, and yet here we are! The sweet girl was so excited before she went to bed tonight. The delights she’s most looking forward to? “Brand new Ticonderoga pencils!” and “Getting to do a math lesson!”

As for me, I am in a different place than I think I've ever been at the start of a new school-year. I don't know if it's because I'm tired (quite possibly) or just more relaxed (maybe a bit of both).  I normally spend more time fussing and fretting the small stuff before we start a new year, getting things set "just so" and overthinking all my curricula choices and how we're going to tackle all the new work in the new year. It's not that I haven't done some of that thinking this year -- I have -- but I find myself thinking more of the big picture than the little details. We've had so much to learn and do and figure out this summer, and we've got so many big challenges ahead. As I told someone recently, I feel like this year is less about what we do than how we do it, and I'm peaceful about that.

I learned today that the word curriculum comes from a Latin word that means race, or racecourse. I love that. And I love that learning, and life, is a long-distance run, not a sprint.

So the first day of school muffins (blueberry) are made and ready for breakfast, and I spent the evening watching a Downton Abbey episode with my dear husband while sipping ginger ale in the fanciest, most celebratory glass I could find.

Year 7 starts tomorrow. Ready as I'll ever be!

Practicing Patience

I am learning to practice patience.

I used to think I was already a pretty patient person, but in the past year or so, the Lord has been stretching and deepening me in so many ways in this one area that I know now it must be an area that needed lots more work than I thought.

Having a daughter who struggles with OCD and high anxiety levels, I’ve had to learn new levels of calm and patience. There are days I fail miserably, but there are other days, with God’s help, that I am discovering new levels of peace.

It’s hard, sometimes, to know what’s best in a given situation. On the one hand, the sweet girl needs to lean to deal with ordinary stress and brokenness in healthy ways – the things that cause her to bolt into worry-land. On the other hand, there are days when my own heart just can’t take any more of the worrying and anxiety and explosiveness (her struggling reactions in some moments). Keeping my own fretting levels to a minimum – and even finding laughter in a situation – helps to defuse the situation and keep the peace.

This is hard on days when I am just plain tired, and when life seems filled with little things that make me want to – well, be frustrated. But my seemingly normal levels of frustration, my “oh shoot, I dropped that!” or “arrrgh! This isn’t working!” can sometimes be enough to push her into more stress. She has a hard time discerning small, normal, ordinary, every-day stress from the bigger kinds. I am learning saying less often leads to more household peace. And discovering, as I learn the self-control of swallowing those exclamations, just how much of my speech could be taken as whining, complaining, or weariness by those around me.

I am a woman who has many blessings, and who likes to count them (in fact, I’m overdue for a blessings-counting post here) but I confess that occasionally I just need a safe place to whine a little bit, and sometimes that complaining makes its way to the blog. So in the interest of helping me say none of this aloud today, could I just say that both my small, falling-apart, duct-taped together fridge and my so-slow-it-may-as-well-be-working-backwards computer are driving me crazy? Thanks so much for listening.

I return now to my regularly scheduled bout of patience.

Reading Round-Up: The "Turning Eleven" Edition

With the sweet girl on the eve of her 11^th birthday, I thought it might be fun to share a little of what she’s reading these days.

Most recently, she’s enjoyed The Magic Half by Annie Barrows. (This is not to be confused with Edgar Eager’s Half-Magic, another book she’s enjoyed in the past year.) The Magic Half is about two girls who share a room, decades apart. The girl in the present time travels back to help the girl in the past.

In the evenings, we’re enjoying Shannon Hale’s sequel to Princess Academy, Palace of Stone. We’re also wending our way slowly through Anne of Avonlea, the second Anne of Green Gables book. We’re not getting much daytime reading because of camp, but it’s still nice to have a fall-back read-aloud book that’s this good.

I’ve also seen her reading Jean Craighead George’s All Upon A Sidewalk; Sharon Creech’s Hate That Cat (novel-in-poetry sequel to Love That Dog) and Annie Barrow’s Ivy and Bean.

She bogged down part-way through her reading of The Hobbit (which she heard read aloud last year) but (shh!) she’s getting her own rather nifty copy for her birthday. And yes, she’s getting her own copy of A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban (because she loves that book so much). I am also secretly tap-dancing for joy (did you know you could do that?) because we’re giving her Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I’ve been planning to introduce the series to her on her eleventh birthday (since the stories start on Harry’s eleventh) since she was about five years old and mispronounced Jo Rowling’s name to rhyme with Growling. She’s been to Narnia and Prydain and been introduced to Middle-earth, so I really think she’s ready for Harry. And I’m always ready to re-read Harry!

In the evenings, we’ve been enjoying the third volume of the Family Read-Aloud series by Augsburg Fortress Press. This one is called Explorers for God and follows up on Early Saints of God (a book we’ve loved for years) and Kings and Queens for God. This is a delightful church history series that is, unfortunately, out of print, but I was blessed to find used copies of the second and third volumes recently.

My Mama Told Me There Would Be Days Like These...

Or did she? I'm so tired, I can't remember....

I won't bore anyone who might still be reading this blog with details of yesterday. I will simply say that I had that little scene from Tangled running in my head...you know the one where Rapunzel is moving from totally high to totally low, and ends up swinging around and around and yelling "BEST DAY EVER!" in her sweet, chirping voice? Yes, that scene, only I was inwardly chirping "worst day ever!" in my best Disney princess fashion.

It probably wasn't the worst day ever, but if I had a leader board with frustrated, tired days ranked, it would be up there.

Praying today will be better. Thankful for the Lord's sustaining through everything.

Finishing Up Fifth Grade (Notes from a Learning Life!)

We’ve had a busy final month or so of the school year, so busy that I’ve not had much time to write anything about schooling!

As she is growing and changing so much physically and emotionally, the sweet girl has been struggling with increased anxiety related issues (in general, not specific to school) which have also been taking up a good bit of our time and energy as a family. We’re in the process of getting some guidance and putting some things into place for ourselves as we pursue some mental health goals for her and for all of us, and I remind myself that is all a huge and important part of life and of learning.

School subjects have not fallen by the wayside though. We’ve had a good strong finish to the year in language arts and math and a sort of limping finish to science and history, though they both had their highlights this year too. When I look back on everything, I am pleased with S’ academic progress in many areas, especially her continued passion for math and art and her growing confidence as a writer. I am pleased with the progress she made in taking more strides as an independent learner. The areas I think she has struggled with most (and I have struggled with most as her teacher) have to do with some of the broader anxiety and perfectionist issues. What gives me hope is to remember the fruit we have seen already, and to know that more fruit will bloom as we continue to plant needs, water and nourish the soil, and trust the Gardener of our souls.

The standardized tests are done (she has to take them certain years in compliance with state requirements) and she passed with absolute flying colors. Her overall marks in Language and Mathematics were given a “highest level” rating, which makes this mama/teacher’s heart very happy. (I don’t actually mind standardized tests, which show me areas in which I can improve instruction, and the sweet girl actually finds them fun!)

Although we’ve sometimes marked the end of a school year with a special lunch or something like this, this is the first year we’re doing a little bit of a “graduation” ritual. Thinking over the fact that she is moving into the middle grades, S. asked if it might be possible if we mark the occasion of her finishing up elementary studies in some way. I tend to break our learning into four year cycles (because of the classical influence on our schooling approach) but I know what she means – this does somehow feel like a turning point year. And I don’t see any reason to not give her the kind of affirmation and encouragement she needs about what a good job she’s done! So I just finished taking brownies from the oven and creating a diploma (which will be signed by me, her teacher, and her dad, whom we like to call the principal) and we’ll celebrate after dinner. A little bird told me that someone has prepared a speech about her first six years of homeschooling…

Six years! Midway through next year, we will be exactly half-way through this home learning journey we officially set out on. There are days when I’ve wondered if we’ll ever make it, a few days when I’ve been ready to quit, and many, many more days when I’ve just felt so incredibly blessed that we’re doing this and so affirmed in our call. We really are doing this…through the hard parts and the amazing parts…building a learning life.

Why Do We Learn?

This list is from a brainstorming session at our house today. I thought it was worth sharing!

Why do we learn?

We learn in order to….

Try new skills

Appreciate the past

Look at the future

Gain wisdom

So we can teach others

Practice paying attention

Gain patience

Have our questions answered

Ask new questions

Have new questions answered

Ask more questions!

Try new skills

Help us later in life with jobs

Practice listening

Try hard things

Smile

So we won’t be bored

Exercise our brains

Exercise our hearts

Exercise our bodies

Enjoy new ideas

Enjoy beauty and order

Learn from failing

Learn from succeeding

Practice following directions

So we don’t keep making the same mistakes

Have something to do

Appreciate how people different from us do things

What I Am Doing With All The Time I'm Not Blogging

I realized this evening that I am on track to complete my leanest blogging year ever in the (almost) seven years I've been blogging. Which made me wonder...what precisely am I doing these days with all the time I'm not blogging? Just in case you were curious, here are a few things on that list.

1) Grading papers. Tidal wave two hit Friday. As a mere teaching assistant this year, rather than a full-fledged adjunct, I somehow had the mistaken impression that grading would take up less of my time. But when paper deadlines hit for two seminary classes at roughly the same time, the avalanche is still an avalanche, even if I am only grading for mechanics and reading accountability rather than deeper content. Reading a paper and assessing it thoughtfully still takes time...maybe not as much time as it used to, but still plenty of it. So does answering student questions and managing record keeping. All of this, of course, on the everlastingly wonky computer (that I am nonetheless grateful for).

2) Moon watching. The sweet girl has always loved the moon, and lately her love for it seems to have grown. We're doing a lot of moon watching -- and star watching -- in the evenings. And reading/thinking about/talking about moon phases and constellations.

3) Battling a falling apart clothes dryer, whom I have now named Barky. Which, as my husband points out, is better than Sparky.

4) Cooking, cleaning, lesson planning. The usual suspects.

5) Teaching preschoolers about Isaiah the prophet.

6) Planning an out of town trip without credit.

7) Ghost-writing articles (mostly travel ones). Lots and lots and lots of ghostwriting this month.

8) Refining my ghostwriting travel voice by watching Rick Steves travel videos from the library.

9) Reading a lot of Madeleine L'Engle out loud. Because the sweet girl has fallen -- and fallen hard -- for this favorite author of my heart.

10) Watching Mary Tyler Moore season 1 episodes with my dear husband. Not that we have any time, but we're sneaking them in really, really late at night when we're both giggly with exhaustion. And I am discovering that MTM is great television comfort food. I can't tell you how nostalgic and warm it makes me feel. And oh, yeah...a little bit old too (the first season aired when I was 2).

11) Feeling utterly grateful for Christian community. We have been literally held up and sustained in this incredibly lean season by provision we could not possibly have imagined. God's people responding to our needs and to God's promptings and putting feet and hands and hearts to work to help us. My exhaustion level may still be there, but you know, my heart is so much lighter than it was a few weeks ago. Knowing this level of care from so many people makes all sorts of things feel possible in an impossible season.

12) Working on writing chapter 5 of The Four Princesses. Yes!! So excited to get back to this beloved project.

13) Mentally writing book (and movie and music) reviews, and missing Epinions like crazy.

14) Finishing up our afterschool arts program for the fall.

15) Listening to lots of Elgar. And Handel. And Bach.

16) Sneaking in the writing of an occasional poem. (See previous post.)

17) Praying my way through helping the sweet girl with some new levels of intensity and anxiety.

18) Praying WITH the sweet girl, a lot. And reading Isaiah with her. It's been an Isaiah kind of month.

19) Drawing. A little. Mostly in the tired cracks and crevices when I am most worn out but needing a creative boost that involves physically holding a pen/pencil and not sitting at the keyboard.

20) Contemplating where this year has gone. Do you realize Advent starts December 2?

Start of a New School Year

I enjoy live-blogging. I sometimes follow live blogs for sporting events, especially since we don't really have t.v. (beyond what might or might not come in on regular reception minus cable). I like being able to follow along inning by inning in a big baseball game, reading the highlights of what happened.

Most of the time I don't think of my life as something that would be worth live-blogging (can you imagine the boredom of the description? Did the dishes. Folded laundry. Read chapter. Cleaned up spill. Checked email...) but the first day of school is always a day which makes me wish I could do a live-blog feed. Not so much to chronicle all the little things we do, step by step (though that would, at least, make for slightly more interesting reading than the above) but to remind myself of all the little things that bring joy and encouragement in our homeschool life. Not to mention to provide notes to myself about what we can always "tweak" to make something in our learning life work better.

The beginning of the year always feels shiny and new, but this year, thankfully, it's felt more that way than usual, and I'm extra thankful. The summer whipped by and was filled with so much work that it almost felt (almost) as though we'd not gotten a break at all. In fact, physically and emotionally, I'm still pretty tired as I move into this new fall...and I'll admit that had me a bit worried last week as I lesson planned and thought through all the "shape of our days" sorts of things I need to think through when we move back into this season. 

But the sweet girl was rarin' to go yesterday morning, and that makes such a difference. When you have a student who loves learning and is excited about getting the adventure going, it means the world to a teacher!

I was truly amazed at the kinds of leaps she has made learning-wise. It's not just that she's reading and writing and thinking with more confidence. She's taking ownership of her learning in new ways, and that's exciting to see.

Not that we haven't hit a wall already. At least this year it took us until day two to realize, once again, that this adventure we're on is all about learning as real human beings with lots of flaws. Not that we really forget, but sometimes in the shiny newness, we discover temporary amnesia! We are trying Latin (again) after our rather dismal Latin failure two years ago. A shiny new curriculum I am excited about, but the sweet girl still has the taste of the old one in her mouth, and balked about seventeen minutes in. Sigh. But this too shall provide good food for learning, both for student and teacher. Or so I declare.

So what are we studying this year? Besides our usual morning prayer and scripture meditation, we kick off each day (Monday-Thursday) with language arts. That includes spelling, grammar, and writing.  After that we take a little break before diving into math. Right now, while we're still in shiny new school year mode (getting up early!) and the weather is nice, we're getting in a nature/exercise walk after math, sometimes followed by journaling or reading time. Then after lunch we do either history (M-W) or science (T-Th) with supplemental subjects on different days (geography, Latin, health). Fridays are devoted to art and music (with math again afterwards) and with homeschool group later in the day.

Day two done...and tired as I am, so utterly thankful we're rolling again, and especially thankful we've managed to step, with courage, into another year on this journey.

A Different Kind of Week

I'm feeling wonderfully thankful today in the midst of a very tired week. Not at all the sort of week I was expecting...but sometimes God stops us in our tracks, gently moves aside our well-laid plans, and says, "here, have THIS kind of week instead."

I thought I would be at VBS every evening this week, but thus far I've not made it once. (And they have made it just fine without me. It's going well.) That's because over the weekend I came down with terrible congestion and a croupy cough, a couple of weeks behind the sweet girl (who is finally getting over it). My summer cold immediately seemed to take a dive into sinus infection territory. Awful pain and pressure behind my eyes and in my right ear. My whole face has been aching, especially on the right side, and it's seemed to move into all sorts of muscles so that my neck and shoulder hurt too. And I just keep coughing...

But wait! you cry. This was supposed to be a thankful post! Why yes, it is.

I'm thankful that I've actually had to slow down in the midst of a summer that's had so little time to slow down. The sweet girl and I spent Monday cutting out dozens of small pieces of craft foam for a VBS project (while I coughed and coughed and coughed...) and we've watched tons of the Olympics on our t.v. without cable that hardly *ever* gets decent reception but for some reason this time around is. Most of the time. Except when we have to stand in one spot to the left of the set when it decides to get the hiccups. And sometimes stand on one leg like storks or wiggle our bodies in a strange kind of olympic dance. But even that's been sort of fun.

It's been fun letting my ten year old girl stay up extra late a couple of nights so we can watch gymnastics. We've turned off all the lights except for the television and cuddled on the couch in our pajamas (while coughing, coughing, coughing...) and she has been enthralled by the women's gymnastics team. An unabashed Gabby Douglas fan (a picture of Gabby went up in her room today, and she spent part of the afternoon practicing tumbling on makeshift mats) and yet I've been happy to see that her love of the sport is not limited by her love of country. She has been highly impressed with the Russian gymnasts (that's my post-Cold War era kid!) and she worries about the morale of anyone who falls off beam or takes a big hop on a landing. I've loved hearing her chatter knowledgeably about routines and apparatuses, using the jargon she's picked up from commentators.

Then there's been the fact that, try as I might to get writing, cleaning, and lesson-planning work done this week, all the stuff I'm a month behind on, sometimes when you're feeling this miserable, you've just gotta read. Not that I need an excuse to read, but it's nice to be able to cushion your aching head and give in. I've been winging my way through Deborah Crombie's Kincaid/James series since spring, and I do mean winging. I finished the 9th book in the series this past week (Now May You Weep, another great one) and can't wait to pick up the 10th. Gemma is my favorite character, but I'm a little in love with Duncan (which makes sense, since Gemma is too). I've also been enjoying more P.D. James, both by book and video. I just finished the third Adam Dalgliesh book Unnatural Causes, and D. and I have been very slowly wending our way, mostly on weekends, through the mid 1980s mini-series adaptation of Cover Her Face based on the first Dalgliesh book.

And finally, are you ready for this? We're getting a vacation this month! Two nights/three days!  Courtesy of several members of my extended family who know we are tired (and broke) and who want to bless us. I  am so utterly grateful. Time to breathe, to enjoy some fresh air and green, to see some dear friends. I am very much looking forward to it.

There are other things that have blessed this week...Ted Kooser poetry, Simone Dinnerstein playing Bach on piano (on my CD player), a note from a dear friend who sent two lovely little keepsakes to the sweet girl from a recent trip to Italy. A sister visiting Martha's Vineyard, the island where D. and I honeymooned 20+ years ago in what feels like a fairy-tale from another age (and the chance to look at the pictures from that magical week...were we really ever that young?)! An early reader's copy of an Eerdman's picture book for me to review. Not having to cook much all week because everyone else is eating at VBS and I don't much care what I eat when I'm sick. Even some of the harder things -- a challenging and unexpected email conversation with a friend, a time or two when I've been tired enough to lose my patience with the sweet girl's worry struggles -- well, even in the harder things, I am feeling blessed to know I am growing and learning and God is still shaping me.

So...not the kind of week I was expecting at all. But the kind of week God wanted to give me. The kind I've been glad to receive.

"You Know, Kind of Like Serenity..."

In the midst of this long, ongoing season of deep stress and exhaustion, I keep being amazed by the wonderfulness of God. What I love is when he provides those lovely, unexpected moments that make me laugh outright, or tear up with sudden beauty and gratitude, or just plain feel like hugging the world.

So often he sends those moments through my family.

One of the hardest pieces of the past very hard month has been lack of almost any time to write. This after the first couple months of the year when I felt like I'd dived back into some creative work with more zest and vitality than I'd felt in years. The novel I was writing -- yes, I just used the word novel -- was almost compelling me to the computer every late night and early morning, begging to be written even in tiny snatches. I loved every scrap of the time I got, even as I began to realize the writing time tunnel was narrowing to an almost close again. For the past few weeks, any writing time I can squeeze has been of the writing anything quickly for pay variety since I'm busy trying to fight wolfish creditors (where are Taran and the sword Dyrnwyn when you need them?) and to help keep food on the table.

Frankly, I miss my characters. I miss them so much it almost aches. But there's nothing I can do about it at the moment beyond keep missing them, and keep mulling their story in the late night snatches when I can't sleep.

This morning, the sweet girl was talking to me about one of her own stories. Yes, she's a story-teller and writer too, which I love. She was explaining something to me about one of her characters, who is eighteen, but not quite an adult, she explained earnestly, because in this world, you didn't really come of age until you were twenty. My tired brain thought that sounded familiar. And then she said, wonderfully casually, "You know, kind of like Serenity..."

Serenity is one of my characters. She is a princess, set to inherit a throne she is not quite ready for. Her wise mother is the acting regent; her beloved father has been missing for years. She's 19, on the cusp of 20, the age at which she will be considered old enough to become queen. She's trying to become ready for her royal responsibilities in the face of an imminent war. Circumstances have forced her to have to choose a suitor from the very people they most fear.

And she's real. Not just real to me. Real enough for my lovely nine year old, who has heard more of the actual written story than anyone else in the world, to mention her name so casually that it took me a few seconds to realize what she'd done. Real enough for my daughter to use her story as a frame of reference for her own creative story. Real enough that my daughter keeps encouraging me to write again because she wants to find out what happens to Serenity and to Winifred and Garron and to all of the peoples of Radmost and Charis.

I'm not sure there's a better gift someone can give a writer than to care about the story they're trying to tell, and to love their characters. What a great gift that was to me today.

Summertime...and the Livin' is...Busy?

I know, I know, it's supposed to be easy!

Our summertime schedules rolled into town with a vengeance this week. Beginning of AYI Arts Camp (D. directing, S. attending), seminary homecoming (time with friends old and new), and the Ancient Wisdom Anglican Futures conference (check it out here). Our brains, hearts, and bodies are all on overload, but in a good way.

I'm far too scattered this morning to do a cohesive post (heck, it took me three tries to spell cohesive) so I'll just jot a couple of random links and thoughts.

I found myself quite thoughtful this morning over this piece by Timothy Keller. I'm really coming to love his writing. This article seems to get at something I've been thinking toward for years, but have never quite found a way to articulate: how the way of Jesus offers us a "third way" of being in the world and understanding family, one which isn't fully defined or understood through either a conservative/traditional or liberal/secular lens. Good food for thought.

Having an opportunity to hear William Harmless, SJ yesterday on Augustine of Hippo and the ancient catechumenate -- what a delight! Since D. and I are tag teaming the conference this week, he heard part 1 of the lecture and I heard part 2. We agreed we didn't have time to exchange notes last night, but ended up talking about it for twenty minutes anyway, as tired as we were.

Listen to this wonderful quote from Augustine's De doctrina christiana, on the "three aims of preaching":

"A certain man of eloquence has said -- and said rightly -- that an eloquent person should speak in such a way that he 'teaches, delights, and persuades,' adding: 'To teach is a necessity, to delight makes it enjoyable, and to persuade is a triumph' (Cicero, Orator 69). Of these three aims, the one mentioned first, that is, the necessity of teaching, shapes what we say; the other two shape how we say it. So the one who speaks with the aim of teaching should not think he has spoken to the person he wishes to teach so long as he has not been understood. Although he has verbalized what he himself understands, he should not consider that he has really spoken -- really communicated -- if the one listening to him has not really understood."

And on the "Evangelist as Tour Guide" (love this thought) Augustine writes:

"Now if we feel disgusted because we are so often repeating things geared to the little ones, familiar things, let us equip ourselves with a brother's or a father's or a mother's love, and by linking our hearts to theirs, those things will again seem new to us. For so great is this feeling of compassion that when people are touched by us as we speak and we by them as they learn, we each dwell in the other, and so it is as if they speak in us what they hear while we, in some way, learn in them what it is we teach. Isn't it quite common that when we show certain beautiful, spacious locales, whether in town or out in the countryside, to those who have never seen them before, we who have been in the habit of passing them by without any enjoyment find our own delight renewed by their delight at the novelty of it all? And how much more enjoyable the closer our friendship, because as we come together more and more through this bond of love, what had gotten old becomes new to us all over again. But if we have some progress in contemplative matters, we do not wish those who are learning from us simply to enjoy and be amazed when they gaze upon human handiwork, but we want them to enjoy and be amazed by the deeper design and underlying purpose of the Artist himself and, from there, soar up in admiration and in praise of the All-creating God, where the richest fruitfulness of his love finds its endpoint. How much more ought we to rejoice when people now approach to learn of God Himself, for whatever things we learn, we learn to learn of God; and how much more ought we to be renewed in their newness, so that if our preaching, now a routine, has cooled off, it may again catch fire because of our hearers."

Amazingly good stuff (all from Fr. Harmless translation Augustine in His Own Words published last year by Catholic University of America Press). My teacher heart needs this, on all sorts of levels...I hope to have time to ruminate and write more about it later. For now, just passing on a little bit of ancient treasure.

The Valentine Mailbox

In a little while, my dear husband will be home for lunch, and our family will commence to open the valentine mailbox.

Yes: THE Valentine Mailbox. Your family may have one -- and I'm sure it's a lovely one -- but our family has THE mailbox.

It's the one my dad made for my family when I was a little girl. His printing company was doing some sort of advertisement for the post office so the front looks like the front of an actual mailbox from my childhood (complete with "zippy" the little zip code guy...remember him?). The box itself is an old flat kodak film box, reinforced with tape. It opens for easy mail distribution, but Dad also put a slit in the front so you can slide the cards in.

When the sweet girl was tiny, my folks passed the mailbox on to us. We have loved it and every year fill it with homemade Valentines (and sometimes a few store-bought, but those aren't the main attraction) to give to each other. This year the sweet girl begged to get it out a couple of weeks early, so she's been stuffing it for a while. It's going to be fun to see all the homemade love that spills out.

I've been so swamped that I didn't have a chance to make my beloved's card until a little while ago. While the sweet girl moaned through some math ("products again!? why do I have to do products?") I gathered scissors, glue stick, colorful scraps of paper, a magazine, a computer graphic I liked, and a velveteen bag of crayon rocks. It's amazing what simple things you can use to say I love you.