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.

These Busy, Boring Years

If a perfect weekend around here includes time with our older kids, lovely weather, good music, and some fun and frolic thrown in for good measure, then no.  
This was not a perfect weekend.
It started strong. On Thursday night, Anna Kate and I went to a Gospel concert. One of my  friends sings in the only all-female Southern Gospel quartet in the nation. Based right here in Minnesota. What a delight to hear their rich voices lifted up in praise. I'm already starting a song list of requests for their next album.
To add to the excitement of going to a concert, a real concert - the first I've gone to since Josh Garrels was here a year ago - my husband watched the baby all by himself. He balked at the idea. He wanted Anna Kate here for back-up, he knew he'd have a long night of it. He got pep-talk texts from my friend Vicki, who is so kind and gentle. "Tell him I know he can on the dad sitting! He's done much harder things in his life I would think! He can do it!"
Me: "He doesn't want to be stuck here."
Vicki: "Tell him it's good character building for him. It will be real handy down the road for something! Good male bonding time with son too!"

Yep. They stayed, they played, they bonded.

But after the concert, things devolved.
Meaning, my comfort was compromised.
Meaning, I was bored and busy at the same time.

On Saturday, I would have liked to tackle the perennial beds, but instead I played basketball with Malachi. This is how we play: he chases down the six basketballs, judiciously going from ball to ball in turn. As he brings them to me, I lift him as high as I can, which is not high enough. Then I hoist the basketball and try to make a basket, while struggling to keep a grip on my 32-pound boy. Then I set him down, he trundles off for the next ball, and we do it again. And again. There is no limit to the fun he has. He could do this all. day. long.

As for me, the fun  has a limit. On the low side. Maybe after about five baskets, I'm ready to move on. 

Here are Caleb and Malachi on Resurrection Sunday. You betcha, I miss my big kids. They are fantastic with the baby, they know how to talk, they can reach the hoop. You would think I'd be over the moon that Caleb is in med school. Sure, it's great, it's an answer to prayer, he's going to be an excellent doctor. But when I see this picture, I am just so grateful that I raised a young man who can play basketball, all by himself.  

Oh this face, this adorable face. These years are as fleeting as those pretty flowers he's smelling. 
And you know, there are days when I want to freeze time. When it's all so wonderful and beautiful that I want this moment, this exact little slice of time, the one that whoops! just passed me by, to last forever.

When we're all together and Malachi hears us laughing, and he does whatever he's doing again and again, thinking we were laughing at him.(and now, we are).

When his sturdy little body is napping next to me, and I can smell his soft clean baby smell.

When he strangles my neck by draping across me as I try to do Pilates. Oh wait. That's the part I don't actually want to freeze. It's painful (though kinda funny). It means that another thing on my list is not going to get done today.

It's almost embarrassing, how much I want to make my life comfortable and easy. Even after five kids, I wrestle with letting go of my schedule, my desires, my avenues of amusement. I feel like this life is a long exercise in loosening my grip. The Lord is continually prying my fingers off the things that I hold so tightly. (Yah, now you're singing "Let it Go" from Frozen. Nope, I'm not gonna give you that song. I'm leaving you with one from my friend's quartet, Sweetwater Revival).

Here's to the week ahead, my friends. To what we get done, and to what gets done in us.

"Our Lord Jesus did the will of His Father with delight. He hated the iniquity which so often tries to dominate us -- selfishness, surrender to the easy, and so on. Therefore He was the gladdest of all the sons of men. The same law applies to His followers. Who among us can be counted on for happiness? It is those who never take self into consideration at all. They are the happy ones of a family." (Amy Carmichael)

And now for some Southern Gospel: here is "Blessed Assurance," sung by  Sweetwater Revival.
 

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.

Hush

We're having a quiet day at home.
Tonight we'll go to the Good Friday service, and it will be somber.
At the end, we will file out slowly,
participating in a kind of death.

Something has to die for life to come.

Any reminder will do.
For me, silence is a reminder of what He did for me.
But it's hard for a mama to be entirely silent for two nights and a day.
We'll see how this goes.

Here is an old song I had never heard until this year. Sit still and comfortable, and take it into your heart.