life in a whirlpool

We went on a bike ride yesterday with 10 kids. Our three youngest were actually away for the weekend, but we effortlessly managed to acquire six more, (no one remembers actually inviting them; they just appeared) and headed off the Wade's Place for ice cream - about 8 miles one way. We had 23 wheels total: 10 of us on our own bikes, a five year old in a trailer and a six year old on the "tag-along" attached to an adult bike. The teenage boys took turns pulling the trailer up the hills, switching off a couple times on the ride, and my husband took the tag-along on the way there, and one of the boys on the way back. It was our first ride of the season and it was GREAT!

Then today our Memorial Day get-together with one other family turned into a cook-out for 37. How did that happen?

I'm still wondering how I ended up with this life. I don't like crowds; I prefer one-on-one. I'm not a party person at all, yet I live in continual party. I need large doses of solitude and quiet to feel sane, but both are rare in the life I lead.

But I love my life. I love my children. I love the chaos they create. I love the enormous variety expressed in their personalities. I love seeing them live out the many-colored grace of God right in front of me - close enough so I can touch it. I love feeling like the hub of a merry-go-round though riding one can make me feel dizzy.

So I do know what people are thinking when they say, "I could never deal with that many kids." I would think exactly the same thing if I were watching my own life. I would be so intimidated and overwhelmed I would feel faint. But being on the inside is SO different than watching from the outside. Doing the thing is so much easier, and so much better than thinking about it.

I don't know how I ended up here, but I'm sure glad I did.

Family t-shirts

One day last week my kids came up with a great family Christmas gift idea: original t-shirts , customized for each family member. They planned what each person's shirt should say and there was very little dissent. Everyone knew immediately what should go on each person's shirt. They were:

Engineer Father:

It'll be great!

You're gonna love it!

(front)

Keep an Open Mind!

(back)


Eldest (sweetest) daughter:

I'm sorry.

First son:

I can't sit here! My legs are too long!

Dancer Daughter:

that's what I always say when I don't know what I'm saying

The Other Person:

(front)

Stop talking about me
I know you're talking about me

(back)
Why doesn't anyone ever tell me these things?

Lola:

(front)
U2 is playing in the Thanksgiving Day parade.
Cousin It doesn't have hair over his face.

(back)

I don't want to go to Georgetown; it's too far!

Cindy Lou Who:
(front)

There's cheeseburger right there!

(back)

I want to watch Air Force One.

The Baby of the Family:

Front - Why does the wind blow your hair in your face?
Back - Because it wants to see first.

We could not leave out our two little "foster" daughters who are with us right now and provide us with endless hours of amusement, so here they are:

J:
where did you get that?
why is she doing that?
what did you say?

S:
For one, because you wear hair gel
For two, because you dress like a girl
For three, because there is no socks.

This post won't make sense to anyone outside our immediate family, so don't look for the hidden meaning. There is none.

dust and mercy

Here is the theme of my life - in an inspired nutshell:

He has not dealt with us according to our sins,

Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.

For He himself knows our frame;

He is mindful that we are but dust.

I am feeling particularly"dusty" today. ("I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying. . . ." John Crow Ransome). I read Psalm 109 this morning out on the front porch in the cool of a new Hampshire May morning.

"For I am afflicted and needy, And my heart is wounded within me.

I am passing like a shadow when it lengthens;

I am shaken off like the locust."

I thought of my dad, visibly approaching the end of his life here on earth and wondered, yet again, how it feels to realize one's earthly sojourn is really almost over. I tried stretching my legs like I always have, but I cannot come close to touching my head to my knees as I always used to do effortlessly. My interior voice says I am out of practice, but a softer, more insistent, more honest voice says no matter how diligently I stretch or run or practice yoga or do Pilates there is a process which cannot be stopped. I am in decline. I don't see it every day, and most days I feel as good as I ever have, but I know I am slowly falling apart. I am passing like a shadow when it lengthens.

Although we live in a culture more attuned to Dylan Thomas than T. S. Eliot - which tells us to rage against the dying of the light, to fight the signs of aging, to believe we are only as old as we feel, I don't want to live my life in denial. I don't want to embrace the illusion of control.

I remember vividly a dream I had during my first pregnancy. I was out on a dock sort of thing in the middle of a large lake. It was not an unpleasant place to be, but I could not stay there, of course. I realized the only way to get back to shore was to swim, and I was not at all sure I could swim that far. But eventually I realized I had no choice.

Labor in childbirth felt like that, too. I would feel as if I were at the top of a huge, snow-covered hill, about to be given a push over the edge, and then there was no stopping. I could not say, "I don't want to do this." I would have no control.

That was probably the most frightening thing about natural childbirth - which I did 7 times. It was inexorable. Once the labor began there could be no hesitation, no stopping for a break, no considering whether I really wanted to go on; and I never wanted to go on! (I remember one wonderful Texan midwife I had. At some point I protested, "I can't do this anymore." She smiled wryly and said, "And just what do you think your options are at this point?") I was, indeed, in the control of an unstoppable force and all I could do was try to give myself up to it, as gracefully, as fully and as trustfully as possible. It was harder and it hurt even more if I fought it.

I always switched mental metaphors once the contractions began in earnest. I would see each as a wave to ride, to go with, to hang onto and to emotionally stay with until it passed. I never knew how intense or how big each wave would be, but I had no choice but to trust it, and I learned it was less frightening, if not easier, if I did not try to fight the force that had me in its grip.

Is death like birth? Not just the actual moment of death but the long dying that leads up to it. Scripture indicates it is for those in Christ. The death I feel at work daily in my body, and sometimes in my spirit, too, can be seen as the birth pangs of a new resurrection. I do find it frightening, but I must trust the life-giving force who carries me along. Not some impersonal energy, but Someone who loves me dearly, and who has never once rewarded me according to my iniquities, but only according to His mercies. I want to learn to trust Him in this phase of my life, too.

Lewis on longing

I am rereading Lewis' "The Weight of Glory" after my recent post about Van Gogh. He, of course, comes much closer to the heart of the matter.

"In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you -- the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth's expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things -- the beauty, the memory of our own past -- are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited."

why I love/hate northern new england

I live in Northern New England - 15 miles from DartmouthCollege, an hour's drive from the White Mountains, 2 hours from the Canadian border, well-above the place on the interstate where traffic thins to nothing. My husband is growing restless in his job and we are wondering whether he should look for another in this area or somewhere else. So I have been thinking about what I love and don't love about where we have lived for the last 10 years. Here's my top ten list.

Ten things I love about where I live:

1.The summer is gorgeous and hardly ever hot. Even when the days are hot (for two weeks or so out of 12 months) the nights cool off for sleeping.

2.Fall is breathtaking.

3.People are not hung up on clothes, make-up and fashion. There are lots of vintage hippies around. But we still have the best thrift store in the world (thanks to all those Dartmouth folks. . . ).

4. The nearest mall is 70 miles away - and it's pretty small as malls go.

5. There are lilacs in every yard.

6. There is water everywhere: our property is bounded on two sides by a brook which rises and falls with the seasons; it crosses the road next to our house and plunges 30 ft down a waterfall. There are icy cold swimming holes at the top and the bottom of the falls. The sound of the water is the constant musical accompaniment to our lives. A mile down the road is the Connceticut River. Two miles away is the pond (really a small lake) where we spend every morning for six weeks of the summer. The younger kids take swimming lessons, the older ones hang out with friends and swim.. If it's not too cold (which it usually is until at least July 4) I swim across the lake every day.

7. I have a perfect place to take my daily walks. I head up the hill past a Revolutionary War Era graveyard onto a dirt road. On weekdays I may not see any cars the whole 50 minutes I am out. From one dirt road I turn onto another, then onto an old logging road through the woods which follows a lovely brook. The last part of the loop takes me through a 120 year old covered bridge, then home. It's shady in the summer and sunny in the winter when the trees are bare. I have seen wild turkeys, foxes, snapping turtles, beavers, great blue herons, deer and woodpeckers on my walks.

8. I live in a 210 year old house. We live a quarter mile from a covered bridge and there are several more in our county. The architecture around here is gorgeous - lots of really old churches, houses, town meeting halls, etc. Our Spanish exchange student said it was, "Just like in films!"

9. We never lock our house or cars. We leave our car keys in the ash trays and my purse is nearly always out in the (unlocked) car. We leave expensive bikes, snowbaords, etc. out leaning against the garage for weeks at a time. we do lock the house oevernight and when we go on vacation.

10. Every other person drives a Saab. While I don't really want to drive one myself, I like looking at them.








Ten things hate about where I live:

1. Spring doesn't come till May and summer starts around the end of June. Summer is over by mid-September, so it's roughly 2.5 months out of 12.

2. There is nowhere to go in the evenings if you want to go out. Borders bookstore, the grocery store and some lousy chain restaurants like Applebees, Chilis and Friendly's are the only places to hang out after 6 PM.

3. I can't get any Christian radio stations here (the one I can occasionally get in my car is not even very good. . .) and I can't even get a decent public radio station. NH Public radio is not bad, but I can't get it at home, and Vermont Public Radio plays nothing but classical music, jazz and the most liberal of NPR's programming. They have the absolute worst fund drives in the history of public radio: pure whine.

4. The selection of cultural opportunities is very limited. If you want to be in a choir or a play, join an orchestra or just listen to one, visit a zoo or a museum, spend time at a really good library or attend a concert . . . . well, Boston is a pretty long drive. People aren't kidding when they talk about cabin fever.

4. There are very few homeschoolers and virtually no organized groups or co-op opportunities.

5. The winter is not only long and cold but it is DARK. My least favorite months are November - very dark and gloomy with no snow to brighten the gray landscape, and April which is still muddy, brown and wintery here when the rest of the world is enjoying warmth, flowers and bursting green. March I can forgive, but April is too much. About half the roads in our town are unusable by normal vehicles for weeks at a time because they are unpaved and the mud is too deep. To add insult to injury, we pay the highest electric rates in the country to illuminate our long, dark nights.

6. The proverbial close-mouthed, mind-your-own-business Yankee personality is not an exaggeration. At first it seemed quaint, but now it just makes me tired. I cried when we came home last summer after three weeks in the South. I had more conversations with total strangers in those three weeks than I have had in the last ten years with people I do business with almost daily. Southerners just naturally seemed to take an interest in you and want to be friendly. Here, if you try to strike up a conversation with a salesperson they wonder what's wrong with you.

7. Bicycling around here is possible only for Olympic-calibre athletes. I loved bicycling in Ohio and Pennsylvania, but around here if you go more than about 1/3 of a mile you have to climb a hill - usually one which is either long or steep. There is the occasional downhill, to be sure, but what comes down must go up.

8. You have to drive (and drive, and drive) everywhere. There is no public transportation and nothing is convenient. To paraphrase a movie line, "Well, ain't this place a geographical oddity. Twenty miles from everywhere."

9. Nothing in the flower catalogs grows here. We are somewhere between Zone 3 and Antartica as far as horticulture is concerned. Nearly everything I like grows in Zones 4-9.

10. With the exception of Dartmouth, there are hardly any opportunities for higher education. That means I can't take a course or pursue an advanced degree and my children will have to move away for college. Just one good quality public institution would be a dream.

starry starry night

I never have really thought Don McLean was an especially gifted poet, but I have always loved this poignant song. I visited the Chicago Art Institute over Easter week and saw two Van Gogh paintings side by side in the gallery - one the familiar bedroom in yellow and blue and one a tortured self-portrait. They literally took my breath away - there were a few times in the gallery when I felt as if I needed to leave the room in order to breathe. I was rushing through the museum - we had about 2 hours for the whole museum. I spent nearly all of it in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century European galleries. I wish I had spent it all in front of the Van Goghs - but I didn't want to miss anything. I almost skipped the whole museum because I knew two hours was a ridiculous amount of time; but then I would have missed it all.

I still find it curious that paintings can affect me so strongly. I have always loved art museums, though I have never had much time to spend in them. One summer I lived in Washington, DC for about 6 weeks and I haunted the National Gallery during that time - any free afternoon I had was spent there instead of at the monuments or historic sights, or the Georgetown shops.

I find that paintings do for me what music does for many people - touch some place inside me that I can't really talk about - that is wonderful and painful at the same time. What C.S. Lewis called "this desire for our own far-off country."

Van Gogh "in person" is utterly different than any reproductions of his work. The colors glow, the texture is almost palpable. The sadness and the beauty at the same time are almost too much to look at. They are certainly impossible to describe in words. I find myself needing to look away; wishing for sunglasses or something that would soften the intensity. I wish to be alone in the room.

How can something so painful be so lovely? That is the paradox of life, of course. "Sorrow and love flow mingled down. . . They will look upon Him whom they have pierced. . . We shall see the King in His beauty. . He will wipe away all tears from their eyes. . ."

Starry, starry night

Paint your palette blue and gray

Look out on a summer's day ,

With eyes that know the darkness in my soul,

Shadows on the hills ,

Sketch the trees and daffodils ,

Catch the breeze and the winter chills,

In colors on the snowy linen land,

Now I understand ,

What you tried to say to me ,

And how you suffered for your sanity ,

And how you tried to set them free ,

They would not listen ,

They did not know how ,

Perhaps they'll listen now ,

Starry, starry night ,

Flaming flowers that brightly blaze ,

Swirling clouds and violet haze ,

Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue ,

Colors changing hue ,

Morning fields of amber grain ,

Weathered faces lined in pain ,

Are soothed beneath the artists' loving hand,

Now I understand ,

What you tried to say to me,

And how you suffered for your sanity,

And how you tried to set them free ,

They would not listen ,

They did not know how ,

Perhaps they'll listen now ,

For they could not love you ,

But still your love was true ,

And when no hope was left inside ,

On that starry, starry night ,

You took your life as lovers often do ,

But I could have told you Vincent ,

This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you ,

*Starry starry night,

Portraits hung in empty halls,

Frameless heads on nameless walls,

With eyes that watch the world and can't forget.

*Like the strangers that you've met ,

The ragged men in ragged clothes ,

The silver thorn of bloody rose ,

Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow ,

Now I think I know ,What you tried to say to me ,

And how you suffered for your sanity ,

And how you tried to set them free ,

They would not listen ,They're not listening still ,

Perhaps they never will.

out of the mouths of babes

As a woman of a certain age I have passed through the stage where the models and celebrities on the front of women's magazines were older than me, then about the same age, and now, almost without exception, they are younger than I am. Even the "Fit and Fabulous at Forty" models seem pretty young to me. I did notice Christie Brinkley is on some cover just now, talking about motherhood at 52, but she is REALLY the exception to the rule.

So last week as I was passing the magazine rack with my shopping cart and my 5 year old I looked with a mixture of disdain and fascination at the cover of a new magazine devoted to "cosmetic enhancement". On the one hand, I can scarcely believe that "plastic surgery" has become common and accepted enough to rate a magazine in the health and beauty category. On the other hand, I do confess to scrutinizing my face in the mirror in the cruel morning light wondering which parts "they" could fix. Some days I feel as if my father has somehow taken over my face - I wonder where I have gone.

I glanced at the magazine fleetingly, trying to calculate how old the model on the cover really was, and what parts of her face had been fixed. She looked stunning. But then my five year old innocently asked, "Why do that lady's eyes look so funny? Kind of like this. . . " and she put index fingers and thumbs around her eyes and stretched the skin as wide as she could! I could not believe it!! I had been taken in by an eye fix that a five year old could spot!

So what should I learn from this?? First, my perceptions of my own apperaance (and that of others) are probably not trustworthy. I have been, I am sure, as influenced as anyone by the culture of youth in which I live. Granted, I have been mistaken for my daughter's grandmother, but that doesn't have to be an insult! I am old enough to be her gandmother!

Second, I look just right to the people who love me. I still remember the mornings when my "baby", at two years old, would lay in bed beside me in all my puffy-eyed morning glory and say, "Mommy, you have such beautiful eyes. Mommy, you're so pretty." I remember at the time thinking that a late-life baby is better than Botox any day, and I need to remind myself of that often.

Third, cosmetic surgery is probably not all it's cracked up to be. According to my daughter's perceptions it ends up looking unnatural and bizarre. It's probably better to look like a 49 year old with wrinkles and eye bags than a 49 year old with weirdly stretched skin and eyes that barely close. No wrinkles, but not much charm, either. You can't get it back once it's gone.

But I am still tempted by that tummy-tuck my husband promised me on my 50th. . . . .

most of the time

In honor of Bob Dylan's 65th birthday on Wednesday, May 24, here's one of my favorites.

Most of the Time

Most of the time
I'm clear focused all around,
Most of the time
I can keep both feet on the ground,
I can follow the path, I can read the signs,
Stay right with it, when the road unwinds,
I can handle whatever I stumble upon,
I don't even notice she's gone,
Most of the time.

Most of the time
It's well understood,
Most of the time
I wouldn't change it if I could,
I can't make it all match up,
I can hold my own,
I can deal with the situation right down to the bone,
I can survive, I can endure
And I don't even think about her
Most of the time.

Most of the time
My head is on straight,
Most of the time
I'm strong enough not to hate.
I don't build up illusion 'till it makes me sick,
I ain't afraid of confusion no matter how thick
I can smile in the face of mankind.
Don't even remember what her lips felt like on mine
Most of the time.

Most of the time
She ain't even in my mind,
I wouldn't know her if I saw her
She's that far behind.
Most of the time
I can't even be sure
If she was ever with me
Or if I was with her.
Most of the timeI'm halfway content,
Most of the time
I know exactly where I went,
I don't cheat on myself,
I don't run and hide,
Hide from the feelings, that are buried inside,
I don't compromise and I don't pretend,
I don't even care if I ever see her again
Most of the time.

Copyright © 1989 Special Rider Music

w b yeats

I love Yeats poetry. I just wanted to post these two - some of my favorites.

When You are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.


He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

who has time to blog?

I have not posted in a few days. . . . sometimes I feel like I have not thought in a few days. Life intrudes on thought, though ideally it would be the other way: thought would intrude on life. But so much of my life is just what Elisabeth Elliot calls "doing the next thing." Sometimes I "do the next thing" because I am anxious and distracted and need a clear, simple direction to follow; other times I "do the next thing" because I am running on autopilot.

And then sometimes, like now, there are so many things waiting that I can't clearly discern what "the next thing" is. They're not standing in a neat queue. Right now it could be a sink full of dishes, any one of four baskets of dirty laundry, a phone call to my elderly father, a letter to a judge who holds my brother's future in her hands, a note of encouragement to a friend whose mother is dying, the walk I have missed for several days because of rain, planning my children's homeschool lessons for the day, responding to my email, writing to my brother in prison, spending a few minutes with my 18 year old daughter who will be leaving home this fall; you get the point. Sometimes I just have to choose a "next thing" and hope it's the right one, because how could anyone know???

I can only pray for wisdom, which God has promised to give (James chapter 1) and ask God to somehow "establish the work of my (feeble) hands." Help me to actually love the people you have given me to love and to choose the things which will matter when it's all said and done. Because one day it will be.

strange but true

We visited several colleges in April with my two eldest children. They got a taste of dorm life at each school where they stayed with student hosts. One of these friendly students offered the following observation about going to college: "You don't really know how weird your family is until you go to college."

Hmmm. My children swear they already know "how weird" their family is, so I challenged them for a few examples of our idiosyncrasies. It took them no time at all to come up with the following list.

1. We are vegetarian.

2. We love to make fun of people. According to my children, the main topic of conversation at our house is other people, particularly how oddly they speak. . . . .

3, We have too many cats. Less than the plagues of Egypt, more than the Trinity, less than the ungrateful lepers, more than the number of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. . . .

4. We have the largest costume wardrobe outside the Metropolitan Opera House. And we dress in costume often.

5. We do not watch TV.

6. We not only do not have cellphones (Dad has one for work), we do not answer our telephone.

7. We never buy anything new. All our clothes, cars, bicycles, snowboards, etc. are purchased second hand. . . unless they are salvaged from the garbage.

8. We are perpetually late.

9. We have a seemingly endless store of private jokes - probably owing to the number of people in our family.

10. Our conversation is liberally sprinkled with quotations from movies, books, songs, plays, and Adventures in Odyssey episodes. Some nights less than half the dialogue at the dinner table is original.

11. We always have other people's children in our home. Anywhere from 11 to 15 people is common at meals, although we only have 9 in our family. Half the time we can't remember who is over.

12. We only have one bathroom.

13. Various members of our family have obsessions with shoes, bicycles and hats (Well, it's really only one member of the family) so we have large collections of those items.

14. Most of the minor children in our home do not get dressed until after lunch. They have friends who adopt the local custom when they are staying at our house.


That's the short list, I'm told. I can't wait to hear what the kids discover when they actually get to college.

children in churchyards

It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart.

Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

Ecclesiastes 4

I just got home from a walk with my two youngest daughters. At first only my 9 year old was going with me, but when the little one heard where we were heading she cried, "Oh, can I come to the cemetery, too?"

My children have always liked graveyards, as we call them. We used to live downtown in Lancaster, PA where we went for walks every day the weather was good enough to be out with several small children and a stroller. One of our favorite destinations was the huge farmers' market where we would frequent our favorite stalls, buy coffee (for me), cheese danish, croissants, and whoopee pies. We would then take our goodies to one of two places: Steinman Park where a lovely fountain made it the coolest place on a hot day and provided wonderful opportunitites for balancing on the top of a short brick wall, or "the churchyard" surrounding St. James Episcopal church, one of the oldest cemeteries in a very old town.

I would sit on one of the wrought iron benches while the kids played around the old graves, many of them raised slabs commemorating the lives and deaths of Revolutionary War veterans. We read the names on the stones, finding our own and our friends' Christian names; we noted who was related to whom and wondered about possible causes of death in children and young mothers; we noted the passing of the seasons by which flowers were in bloom in the churchyard. We always saw the first snowdrops of the spring in the graveyard in late February; the rhodendrun came later. We sat on the sunny benches in early spring and enjoyed the deep shade in July. It was a lovely, friendly, peaceful place which we seldom passed by without stopping.

Ten years ago we moved to a post and beam colonial in northern New England. We happened to buy our house in its two hundredth year. We were sad to leave our old "haunts" in Lancaster, but were delighted to find another ancient graveyard a short walk from our home. We have found the graves of many of the former owners of our house there, as well as Revolutionary and Civil War veterans' names. My children love the two little lambs carved from stone which commemorate the brief lives of two little sisters long gone and have laughed often over the stone which bears the full name of a playmate. Although we don't spend nearly as much time there as we did at St. James, the best sliding hill in the neighborhood is in the cemetery and the children never hesitate to use it after a good snowfall. At such times the house of mourning becomes a house of mirth.

Scripture tells us that death is the last enemy, but that it is also a blessed event for those who are in Christ. It tells us that we should always remember the day of our death with soberness, but that we can look forward to the day we leave this world for our true home. We need not fear death, or its reminders, but should allow it to inspire us to number our days wisely.

first cut is the deepest

My eldest is 18 and about to graduate from high school. As I contemplate her "commencement" of a new stage of life I find myself wishing I had taught her more. I remember books, many Victorian, which I read as a child wherein the parents seemed always to be intoning wise platitudes about life to their appreciative offspring. Sort of like living Aesops. I have tried at times to think of something pithy, some jewel of wisdom which I have learned from my (long!) life to impart to my children, but nothing ever comes to mind.

I think, "Surely I have learned something in my life that I should tell my daughter before she leaves the familial nest," but I always draw a blank. I have thought that a lovely and fitting graduation gift would be a book of letters of motherly wisdom, things to always remember as you go through life, but, once again, I come up empty.

Why is this? Is it something about my generation that we just don't express ourselves that way? Is it because deep down inside I still don't feel like a grown-up? Is it that I forget everything I learn? Is this a serious weakness in a parent?

Actually, I feel that my daughter has taught me far more than I have taught her. Everything I know about being a parent I learned first from her. She was a kind, gentle, forgiving teacher, and she never berated me for being a novice. She taught me what it is like to be the recipient of unconditional love and admiration, and overlooked my failings. If she compared me to other mothers, she was careful never to say so, and she praised me often, sometimes when I knew I didn't deserve it. She never noticed when I was afraid and her trust in me gave me courage.

I don't know when she first realized she was a separate being from me. I remember clearly the awe and dismay I felt when I first realized she had an interior world I knew nothing of. That she, not I, was the center of her interior universe. That she felt and thought and dreamed and d feared things I was unaware of, and unable to apprehend. She was five or six years old and struggling to explain to me her fear of ceasing to be. To tell me that she lay in bed at night and felt terror at the size of the universe and her smallness in comparison. That she had understood her own finiteness in the course of time and eternity and that she felt how alone each of us ultimately is, even when surrounded by friends and loved ones. That no other human being can really know what it is to be "me."

I knew from that point on, really knew, that she was not an extension of me; that although she was my child, she was also in a very real way my equal, my sister, my fellow traveler through this world - another wayfaring stranger, another pilgrim, another sojourner, another eternal soul standing alone before God. I knew then, really knew, that she would grow up and leave one day. I realized I was the instrument God had chosen to start her on her way, but that she would eventually leave me behind. She not only was not me, she was not mine. That understanding has made our time together bittersweet - all the dearer because I knew it was not forever; that I must seize the day or it would be gone.

I remember when my children were small, meeting older women in the market or the park who would look wistfully at my babies, sometimes with teary eyes, and say, "Enjoy it while it lasts, dear." And I would desperately enjoy it - as hard as I could, because I knew "it" was only for a season.

I have been blessed with six other children; four of them daughters, so I have many more sweet hours with little girls and middle-sized girls and teenaged girls. (In fact right now I have a gorgeous little 5 year old "queen" in dress-up clothes and a paper crown waiting to tell me her story.) She and her sisters will teach me many things, I know. But there is something indelible about the quality of the relationship with the first child - maybe not unlike one's first love. There is only one first.

So, Happy graduation, honey. Thanks for all you've taught me.

Mothers Day blues

I hate Mothers Day. That may sound funny coming from a mother of seven- the woman who is nearly always the last left standing on Mothers Day Sunday when they do the countdown for the largest number of children. A woman who has often said that being a mother is the only really fulfulling job she has ever had. But the day always makes me very uncomfortable. It seems like a contrived "Hallmark" kind of holiday; a day to make people feel guilty about how they have spent the rest of the year if they have not been "good" to their mothers (I fall in this category), or to cause others to vainly try to capture in a gift or a card a fitting tribute to someone whose worth is unspeakable.

Some people must like Mothers Day - other than retailers and restaurant owners, I mean, but I have never really talked about it with anyone other than my husband, and that only to say, "Please don't make a pancake breakfast on Mothers Day. It makes us all grouchy and late to church, and it forces me to eat breakfast which I hate to do." He mercifully quit a couple years ago.

I'm sure most of my antipathy to Mothers Day stems from my own fractured relationship with my mother. I struggle daily with how to relate to this woman who bore me, who raised me, who sacrificed years (though not exactly willingly) of her life to rear four children, often (literally)screaming and kicking in the process. This woman who pushed me away when I reached adolescence, who threatened on many occasions to "disown" me and bar me forever from her home, who was too busy to come to my wedding. This woman who was a loving grandmother for 10 years and then cut all ties with her grandchildren in order to pursue "youthful" pursuits. This woman who regularly plays my siblings against me, who reads her Bible faithfully at my sister's house and tells off-color jokes to my children when she visits me - usually staying for less than 24 hours once a year. I don't know what to do with her, or what to do with the fact that I am her flesh and blood, that I have lived my life trying to be anyone but her. I don't know what to do with Mothers Day.

I am nearly as uncomfortable with Mothers Day as a mother myself. I have never enjoyed being the center of attention and I am uneasy with the thought that my children may be acting out of some culturally imposed obligation - I fear that Mothers Day will feel like a burden to them, as it does to me. I have wonderful, obedient, loving children who show me untold kindnesses every day. Those acts are far more meaningful than flowers or a card on a prescribed Day of Obligation. I am considering putting an end to it once and for all today; announcing that I do not wish to celebrate Mothers Day in our family but that I would welcome any tokens of gratitude or love any other day of the year. I suspect everyone would sigh a sigh of relief - though mine would certainly be the loudest.

Teenage fields and buildings

I have been musing about what it means to be a parent as my eldest approaches high school graduation and my second child and first son begins to push the limits of childhood restraints, to question whether his parents are always wise and good.

I, of course, know his parents are not always wise or good. I have not tried to keep that secret from him, but I have certainly enjoyed the natural trust that well-loved children place in their parents. I have been living in some trepidation for years, awaiting the moment when my children begin to see me not as the all-knowing, all-powerful parent, but as another fallible human being who muddles through as best she can. I know how often my motives are mixed and my wisdom is suspect. They are beginning to find me out!

I took great comfort from II Corinthians this morning - chapters 3 and 4. Writing to his spiritual children, Paul explains that,

I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.

So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything,

but only God, who makes things grow.

For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building

I am not ultimately the one responsible for my children's growth. They are God's fields, God's buildings. I planted many seeds, which have been and will be watered by others - friends, teachers, pastors, youth leaders, relatives. What God requires of me is not a small thing, but it is, at least, within my control.

Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must

prove faithful.

I care very little if I am judged by you

or by any human court;

Indeed, I do not even judge mysylf.

My true judge is God, not my culture, not my children, not myself. I ask that He will purify my motives, enable me to be faithful, and help me to leave to him the crops that will grow from the seeds I have planted, the buildings that will rise upon the foundation I have laid.

To Him be all the glory.

real homeschoolers sleep late

It is relatively quiet this morning. My 17 year old has been at work since 7 am at the not-so-local Panera Bread. Husband has reuluctantly headed off to work in the salt mines. One little foster child was picked up for kindergarten a half hour ago, the other is on my lap trying valiantly to distract me as I write. The other six are still in bed after a late night watching Our Mutual Friend for the umpteenth time.

Staying up late and getting up late is one of the pleasures of homeschooling. I sometimes feel I should pay more homage to the clock in the mornings, but then I remember an essay I read 25 years ago, "On Lying In Bed" by G. K. Chesterton.

"Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling."

later he muses that,
The tone now commonly taken toward the practice of lying in bed is hypocritical and unhealthy. Of all the marks of modernity that seem to mean a kind of decadence, there is none more menacing and dangerous that the exaltation of very small and secondary matters of conduct at the expense of very great and primary ones, at the expense of eternal ties and tragic human morality. If there is one thing worse that the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor morals. Thus it is considered more withering to accuse a man of bad taste than of bad ethics. Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays, for cleanliness is made essential and godliness is regarded as an offence. A playwright can attack the institution of marriage so long as he does not misrepresent the manners of society, and I have met Ibsenite pessimist who thought it wrong to take beer but right to take prussic acid. Especially this is so in matters of hygiene; notably such matters as lying in bed. Instead of being regarded, as it ought to be, as a matter of personal convenience and adjustment, it has come to be regarded by many as if it were a part of essential morals to get up early in the morning. It is upon the whole part of practical wisdom; but there is nothing good about it or bad about its opposite.
Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before. It is the great peril of our society that all its mechanisms may grow more fixed while its spirit grows more fickle. A man's minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should be unchangeable are his principles, his ideals. But with us the reverse is true; our views change constantly; but our lunch does not change. Now, I should like men to have strong and rooted conceptions, but as for their lunch, let them have it sometimes in the garden, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes in the top of a tree. Let them argue from the same first principles, but let them do it in a bed, or a boat, or a balloon. This alarming growth of good habits really means a too great emphasis on those virtues which mere custom can ensure, it means too little emphasis on those virtues which custom can never quite ensure, sudden and splendid virtues of inspired pity or of inspired candor. If ever that abrupt appeal is made to us we may fail. A man can get use to getting up at five o'clock in the morning. A man cannot very well get used to being burnt for his opinions; the first experiment is commonly fatal. Let us pay a little more attention to these possibilities of the heroic and unexpected. I dare say that when I get out of this bed I shall do some deed of an almost terrible virtue.
For those who study the great art of lying in bed there is one emphatic caution to be added. Even for those who can do their work in bed (like journalists), still more for those whose work cannot be done in bed (as, for example, the professional harpooners of whales), it is obvious that the indulgence must be very occasional. But that is not the caution I mean. The caution is this: if you do lie in bed, be sure you do it without any reason or justification at all. I do not speak, of course, of the seriously sick. But if a healthy man lies in bed, let him do it without a rag of excuse; then he will get up a healthy man. If he does it for some secondary hygienic reason, if he has some scientific explanation, he may get up a hypochondriac. "

So, we happily lie in bed in the mornings. Besides, after doing a week of college visits last month my two eldest decided that they already live on a "college schedule," and would have no trouble adjusting to dorm life at all! Isn't homeschooling wonderful?!