One Week in May

I often wake up between four and five o'clock in the morning,
just as the birds are beginning their mad welcome of the day.
Somewhere high in the treetops,
fragile choristers gather in the dark,
and upon mutual agreement,
burst into song.

"Spring's a feast!
Come and see!
You won't believe!"

Up and down the high scale,
from the farthest reaches of the poplar loft,
they give voice to the new day,
as if green glowing leaves
and scudding clouds
finally decided to pour forth praise.   

This week, we had a little birthday party for my dad.
It turned out to be a fantastic day, 
where the family and the weather and the guest of honor
and the tales and the songs and the food 
all cooperated in a lovely harmony.
My dad is famous for his stories and jokes.
Here's one story. 
He had just met his future father-in-law, my Grampa Ericson.
Grampa was Swedish, a gifted engineer and carpenter,
known for taking great care of his possessions.
"See that car?" my dad asked my Grampa.
"That's my fourteenth car."
My Grampa got a sick look on his face.
At the time he had owned maybe three cars in his entire life.      

To get ready for my dad's party,
I needed a lot of help.
Isaac washed the windows, with Malachi assisting.
Malachi absolutely loved the entire window-washing operation.
At one point, while Isaac was painstakingly cleaning our French doors,
his baby brother took the squeegee and, using the same motions,
attempted to clean the dishwasher.
It's what he could reach.  

Caleb changed the dressing on his father's knee,
since I'm a wimp about things like that.

My girls helped with yard work and with Malachi. 

All the kids worked out a skit about my dad's life,
with Anna Kate on piano and Julia narrating.
The girls practiced to time the music with the script,
but didn't account for the howls of laughter from their appreciative audience.
The first "actor" was Malachi, representing Baby Jim.
He even wore the same tiny jacket my dad wore as a toddler.

The next two actors were Caleb and Krista,
portraying Jim and Carole at the University of Minnesota.
(cue music: The Minnesota Rouser)

Finally, as Julia narrated the storyline about my dad and mom serving in the jungles of Peru,
Isaac bounded onto the lawn, wielding a machete.
Since Isaac is the grandson who most resembles my dad, 
he made a convincing and appropriately epic "Jim."   

When I was in college, my roommates used to sometimes find me in a "Peru" frame of mind.
"Uh-oh," they would say. "It's a Peru day."
(The glaring clue: I would be sitting on my llama rug, looking at old pictures).

Well, this entire week has been one long "Peru day."
From hearing about how my parents decided to serve with Wycliffe Bible Translators,
to seeing old pictures of them on the river and with me and my sisters, 
to reading two jungle-themed books back-to-back,
I am awash in gratitude,
replete with memories,
thankful to the brim that I had a mom and dad who willingly left the beaten path.

My dad's life verse:
"Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain." (I Cor. 15:58)

What I just read:
When I Fell From the Sky by Juliane Koepcke, a memoir from the only survivor of the LANSA crash.
What I'm reading now:
Into the Glory by Jamie Buckingham, true stories of jungle aviation.



 

As If Spring Were a Feast

In the last fifteen days, we have had twelve days of rain.
This is getting ridiculous.
We haven't gone anywhere since Sunday, and the baby is the most stir-crazy of us all.
Today is going to be exciting.
We're going to the home-improvement store to look for new kitchen faucets.
I haven't bought anything new for my kitchen in ages. In fact, this week our dishwasher broke. We thought we'd have to buy a new one, but my handyman (for real, he's a handyman) husband found a part to fix the old one, which is not that old, and I am delighted.
"Planned obsolescence" is at the tippy-top of my list of pet peeves.
As far as I'm concerned, things should last for years, roughly forever.         
     

The irises are poking through the cold, leaf-covered garden beds.
Oh irises, how I love you.
One of the best poets around wrote about you, and I will let his poem do the talking here:

Mother

by Ted Kooser

Mid April already, and the wild plums
bloom at the roadside, a lacy white
against the exuberant, jubilant green
of new grass and the dusty, fading black  
of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet,
only the delicate, star-petaled
blossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume.

You have been gone a month today
and have missed three rains and one nightlong
watch for tornadoes. I sat in the cellar
from six to eight while fat spring clouds
went somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured,
a storm that walked on legs of lightning,
dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.

The meadowlarks are back, and the finches
are turning from green to gold. Those same
two geese have come to the pond again this year,
honking in over the trees and splashing down.
They never nest, but stay a week or two
then leave. The peonies are up, the red sprouts
burning in circles like birthday candles,

for this is the month of my birth, as you know,
the best month to be born in, thanks to you,
everything ready to burst with living.
There will be no more new flannel nightshirts
sewn on your old black Singer, no birthday card
addressed in a shaky but businesslike hand.
You asked me if I would be sad when it happened

and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house
now hold in the dusty dry fists of their roots
green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner,
as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that.
Were it not for the way you taught me to look
at the world, to see the life at play in everything,
I would have to be lonely forever. 

Well I've gotta fly. Malachi just ran into the bathroom and fell headlong into the edge of the toilet (he's fine, but now we're both crying. He because of the toilet, and me because of that poem).

If you plant pansies, try under planting them with pansy seeds. Just about the time the greenhouse flowers start to get leggy, the new pansies will be coming into their own.
Because that's how gardening, and life, works.
Something is always growing.
Even during this doggone rain.

Welcome spring, indeed.

Hills of England by Ben Kyle, a perfect song for this week.

April Musings

Easter morning. Julia had put a golf ball in his shirt pocket.

We had a beautiful Resurrection Sunday. At church, the light from the big windows fell right across our row, flooding us with light so bright that I had to shield my eyes in order to see anything. I wish they would leave those windows open all the time.

I can't remember what songs we sang, but I do remember the song during the offering. It was "Man of Sorrows," and it was lovely. At home and during the day, I sang "Christ the Lord is Risen Today, Hallelujah," and "Up From the Grave He Arose!" Oh how I love the old hymns of resurrection.

Yesterday we drove three hours for a toothbrush. Honestly. Nate had tracked down a dentist who is specially trained in a method called "air ablation," and we hoped he could fix Malachi's cavities this way. But when he got a gander into our baby's mouth, he said the cavities (especially one of them) were so deep that they would need a pulpotomy and filling and crowns. He did not charge us anything for the consult, which was kind, and his assistant gave Malachi a new toothbrush. Our little guy now has toothbrushes all over the house. He has an appointment for a filling with a pediatric dentist. It will involve what they call a papoose, which sounds to me like a strait-jacket. If that proves too traumatic, we'll schedule his other fillings at the hospital with anesthesia.

I'm thankful that we drove so far yesterday for one reason: the dentist assured me the the cavities are not our fault, but that Malachi's teeth have deep crevices which make them all but impossible to clean thoroughly. Have you brushed a baby's teeth lately? It's so difficult. And it turns out that we eat all the time, we are constantly munching on food around here. So brushing after every  meal means brushing about eight times a day.

Today I needed to get much work done, so for the first time, I set Malachi to watching "VeggieTales" while I paid bills, helped Anna Kate with grammar, did laundry, and caught up on some cleaning.  He lasted for about five minutes. If anyone out there wants to know how we raised an engineer and a doctor (well he's not a doctor yet, but that's the goal), I assure you, that budding engineer and doctor (and later, their little sisters) watched TV. A lot of TV. They remember watching TV for hours and hours. This was how I kept my sanity and Got Things Done. I adore Getting Things Done. But we also spent many hours reading and playing. And our kids say now that their Dad always talked above them, rattling on about things they knew not of. Eventually, when they were about ten, it all started to make sense. So in short, I recommend television, books, Legos, and sophisticated vocabulary as the method for raising achievers.

The reason today was so busy is that I've been lost in a good book. It's one I've read at least twice before, Christy by Catherine Marshall. Anna Kate just finished it, and she also fell into it as though into a chasm. I knew how it ended and still I could not put it down. It's important to read old favorites again and again. As we grow up into Christ (the only way to grow up), words and truths land on us afresh.

The book is about a young woman who decides, on impulse, to teach school in Appalachia. The descriptions of poverty and filth are disturbing. I got to thinking about my soft clean bed, covered every week with freshly washed sheets (always white). I was reading late into the night, and the squalor of the mountain cabins seemed close. I could almost smell the pigs and sweat and unwashed hair, as I climbed into my perfect bed. My husband just bought a memory-foam topper, although I protested that we didn't need it and we should at the least wait for it to go on sale. But this memory foam, it is a wonder. My tired body, which aches all the time, falls into the mattress as if into a deep dream. It's so comfortable that I almost can't roll over. The aches and pains are going away.

I couldn't read Christy without thinking of the native people of Peru, living in jungle shacks, with pigs scraping under their floors. They sleep on pona, which is a springy bark, cut off the tree and unrolled. It splits easily. It's not comfortable, but it's the best they can do. They place it on platforms, and they sleep in family beds. Which is just how we're sleeping. I do often think of the Chayahuita people that I lived with as a child, and I pray for them to continue to grow in the Lord.  I would like to visit those villages again. I would like to bring my children there, to the remote Amazon jungle of Peru, so they could see the best piece of my childhood.
     

It's a strange world we live in, with countries that are chock-full of dentists and excellent mattresses, and other countries where people can't imagine a dentist, or a soft clean bed, or running water. For all my days, I will feel bonded to that other world. It's not so far away. It's close enough to pray for, and close enough to carry in my heart. This planet is a cozy place, my friends.

January Days

Hello again! Two of our big kids have been home since Christmas, and Nate hasn't had much work, so I've had to share the computer with many people. Yesterday Julia went back to college, and Isaac back to his apartment near the University, and now it's just the four of us again. I had high hopes of getting everyone together for a jaunt to the Como Conservatory. But as the afternoon wore away, it became apparent that I was the only person who wanted to go. I am still a bit out-of-sorts about that.

We found this yellow primula at Trader Joe's. It will have to do for now. 

We survived the deep freeze (it had a name: The Polar Vortex), and during those frigid days I was simply grateful for a warm house and the pleasant set of humans that make up my family.

I was also grateful for caramels.
I made these as the absolute last batch of the season.
They are nestled in salt that came from Norway.

As you can see, the box says "Havsaltflak."
But when I opened it, I didn't see the words, and I thought it was fake snow.
I sent a text to my friend thanking her for the lovely snow.   
She quickly texted back, "It's not snow! It's salt! You're supposed to eat it!"
Whew. It is so delicious on these caramels. And beautiful, too. Actually, reminiscent of snow.
We ate all these, bit by bit, and so yesterday I had to make another last batch of caramels,
since they are the Christmas gift for this friend who gave the Norwegian salt.
Here is the recipe if you want to make these for Valentine's Day.   

Having my big kids home changed the rhythm of our days. I still got up early and made my coffee, unloading the dishwasher and scrubbing my sinks before the household woke up. I still tried to read at night, after the baby was asleep. We went to see "Frozen" together, and found out that the baby can make it through a movie as long as it's his naptime.  My daughters watched the entire Season 4 of Downton Abbey, during which time they became quite grumpy if Malachi and I tried to join them.

These are quiet winter days, not to be wasted or wished away, but to be spent carefully, just like any day in any season. I am currently reading Phantastes by George MacDonald, a book about wonder and the sacramental  found in ordinary living. Isaac is reading Pensees by Blaise Pascal. At night, on the few evenings when Malachi stayed asleep and I was able to read and chat with Isaac, we discussed our books. It's a delight to talk books with my son. He explained that Pascal's central theme is that man is bent towards either  pride or wretchedness, but the right attitude is to keep the mind on God.

 I keep circling back to this truth. It sounds like the secret of life. It reminds me of the verse from Hebrews 12, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."

Fix our eyes on Jesus. Sometimes this is so hard to do. And yet if I don't do it, I find myself wrestling with the dual miseries of pride and wretchedness. Pascal lived (only for 39 years) and wrote during the middle part of the seventeenth century. He was one of those who saw things clearly, despite the fog.  

I'll end with a quote by Pascal, not the one I was looking for, but good words to remember when we don't want to accept the gift of a deep, dark winter.

"We never keep to the present. We recall the past, we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is the present usually hurts."
(B.P. 1623-1662)

Springs of Life (a Reading List)

 Our oldest and youngest, reading their new books.

Happy New Year to all my friends. 2013 was a good year for our family. We didn't have the health struggles that robbed us of joy in previous years. We had regular employment (for Nate) and busy, productive days. Some days were difficult, but they were of an ordinary difficulty. They didn't feel impossible. Even the loss of Nate's dad was a reminder of the Lord's faithfulness. We wish we had more good years with him, but we are thankful for the time we were given.

But I know that gratitude for the last year is not true for everyone. I know that some people struggled mightily, with illness and sadness and loneliness and loss. We have been there (and knowing the nature of life, we'll cycle through some valleys again). I've been thinking about the sorrow of this time of year. About darkness. About what helped me most when the future seemed bleak and scary. 

What worked for me won't work for everyone. But for what it's worth, here's what I did (or on some days, vaguely attempted to do. You who are in it, understand):

Start the day with a song

For me this means singing out loud, usually an old praise song. Some of my favorites are "Praise the Savior," which no one seems to know anymore, and "You Can Have This Whole World, Give Me Jesus." I often sing hymns. Find what works for you, what you love to sing, and start to sing the minute your feet hit the floor. Praise banishes darkness.  

Find friends who know how to listen

Or, find a good counselor who is paid to listen.

Exercise
When my mind swirled with confusion, and it didn't feel like God was answering any of our prayers, I kept going to the gym at the beginning of the day (about four days a week). God made our bodies to move. You can't buy endorphins, you have to earn them. And they're worth every bit of pain and any inconvenience. Now I don't go to the gym, because I'm home with two kids. I try to do bit of the Tracy Anderson workout and some Pilates. But they aren't the same. What works best is a good old-fashioned work-out.  

Guard your heart.

Proverbs 4:23 (ESV) says, "Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life."

And yet we do so little to guard our heart, to keep it with all vigilance. We feast on bread that does not satisfy, and we wonder why we are left hungry and desperate. These last nineteen month with a nursing baby, I've spent countless hours in front of the television. It's a waste of time. But some stations are more of a waste than others. I keep that remote handy, I try to practice vigilance, and if I can't find anything worth watching, I turn off the tv and lean my head back and rest. And pray.

So on the topic of guarding your heart, I'm including our family's current reading list. It's so cold this week. Yesterday never even reached zero degrees. But with the fireplace burning, and the cream puffs baking golden in the oven, and the baby running around, and all of my big kids burrowing into their books, it felt warm. It felt nurturing and peaceful. I only wish I could join them. My reading is done in fits and starts, usually very late at night and in the wee hours of the morning. 

Malachi is reading Barnyard Dance, Jorge el Curioso, Mr. Brown Can Moo!, and Brown Bear, Brown Bear. He especially loves the Brown Bear book because each corner "swipes" to reveal the next animal.

Anna Kate just read Katherine Patterson's Jacob Have I Loved. Next up: either a Narnia book, or a Betsy-Tacy. I will choose, and she probably won't be happy about it. 

Julia just finished How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn. I think it's one of my top five faves, but my sister, an English teacher, doesn't love it as much as I do.

Caleb does not have time to read. However, the books he got for Christmas include Manalive, Heretics, and Orthodoxy by Chesterton, The Checklist Manifesto by Gawande, and The Beloved Works of C.S. Lewis.

Isaac just finished Phantases by George MacDonald, a book he's read twice before and enjoys so much that we gave it as a gift this year. Now he's reading Pensees by Blaise Pascal, which Caleb gave him. 

I am reading The Wind in the Willows for the first time. It was a gift from Isaac. I like it very much, and it's high time we owned it.

Nate is reading a book from Isaac called Beyond Band of Brothers. I think he's liking it.

What are you reading this year? I'd love to know.

(lyrics to Praise the Savior)

Praise the Savior, ye who know him,
Who can tell how much we owe him?
Gladly let us render to him
All we are and have.

Jesus is the Name that charms us
He for conflict fits and arms us
Nothing moves and nothing harms us
While we trust in him.

Trust in him ye saints forever
He is faithful, changing never
Neither force nor guile can sever
Those he loves from him.

Keep us Lord, oh keep us cleaving
To thyself and still believing
Till the hour of our receiving
Our eternal home.

Then we shall be what we would be
Then we shall be what we should be
Things that are not now but could be
Soon shall be our own.

(hope that's right - it's from a faulty memory)

And here's a promise for 2014: Neither force nor guile can sever those he loves from him.

My Bookshelf

About a week before Christmas, my two older sons came home from college for their very long break.

We had a fantastic month together.

But whew!

It was a little crazy around here.

Our house is not big, and we were all seven together for the first time.

They love this little brother of theirs.

He got used to having them around.

He wanted to attack the guitar every time they played

(and they played off and on all day long).

Malachi hasn't figured out where the sound comes from.

His little fingers scrabble at the strings, then he dives in with his face.

While I was doing who-knows-what, and keeping very busy at it

(I can't remember now why I felt so busy, it had something to do with taking care of a baby

and messes and food prep),

my big sons mostly spent their days reading.

They come home with lists of books they've been starving to read.

And it has been so long since I was told what I had to study,

what I had to read,

that I  forgot what a privilege it is to read whatever you wish.

   This is the sad truth:

since having kids, I have mostly read magazines.

Some of them have pretty good essays,

but those cannot compare

with a perfectly written book.

These are five of my favorites.
I took this picture because these are hard-covers, but they are also keepers.

Moby Dick is slow going, but worth the time.

Jim the Boy is like a long poem.  Tony Earley sometimes spent a day crafting a single sentence.

The Great Gatsby is one I revisit every now and then.  How did a partying non-believer so perfectly depict

a person lost to his false self?

The Ladies of Missalonghi is lovely, an easy read by the author of The Thorn Birds.

And although I had read To Kill a Mockingbird at least twice before,

when I read it again last week,

all the words seemed new.

 I found myself in tears at unlikely places.

"Atticus, are we going to win it?

"No, honey."

"Then why --"

"Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason 

for us not to try to win," Atticus said."

A person's bookshelf reveals so much.

Maybe I'm the only one who does this, but when I'm perusing decorating magazines,

I focus on the bookshelves.

What does this person read?

 I've decided that in many cases, these wealthy mansion-dwellers are reading garbage.

Okay, maybe not garbage.

But they could do better.
I could do better, too.

Here is "better."

I think my sons have read all of these,

and I have only read one, Surprised by Joy.

I've read bits and snatches of the others, but this year I'll try to read the stack.

From The Weight of Glory, by C.S. Lewis:

"I do not think any efforts of my own will end once and for all this craving for limited liabilities, this fatal reservation. Only God can. I have good faith and hope He will. Of course, I don't mean I can therefore, as they say, "sit back." What God does for us, He does in us. The process of doing it will appear to me (and not falsely) to be the daily or hourly repeated exercies of my own will in renouncing this attitude, especially each morning, for it grows all over me like a new shell each night.

Failures will be forgiven; it is acquiescence that is fatal, the permitted, regularized presence of an area in ourselves which we still claim for our own. We may never, this side of death, drive the invader out of our territory, but we must be in the Resistance, not in the Vichy government. And this, so far as I can yet see, must be begun again every day. Our morning prayer should be that in the Da hodie perfecte incipere -- grant me to make an unflawed beginning today, for I have done nothing yet."

Strange how good writing is cohesive,

as though there is only one Story after all.

Atticus Finch and C.S. Lewis are saying the same thing.

What about you? What are you reading this year?

We carry a light burden, to read books of our own choosing.

Some of my other favorites:

The Friendly Persuasion by Jessamyn West

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (Pulitzer)

The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (Pulitzer)

The 20-book sea saga by Patrick O'Brian

How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill

Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie

John Adams by David McCullough

Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (children's lit)

The Betsy-Tacy books (children's lit)

All-of-a-Kind Family by Sidney Taylor (children's lit)

(I've spent years procuring most of these books. I recommend having a houseful of real books, in order for your children to always have a good read at hand.  But for the rest of you, Kindle makes hard-to-find books accessible).