Growing Up

I suppose part of my growing up at the moment consists of realizing there is little or nothing I can do to fix things for people I love most. For my friend who is ill; for my friend who wants a different life; for my friend who lost a baby.

We women in my family are women of action, and my first response to disaster is to act quickly, patch things up, get down on my hands and knees and scrub floors until the spots are gone, spills have stopped, and everyone feels happy and things are as they were before. A sick child: I busy myself cleaning up vomit and bleaching the sinks and the door handles, confident that the child will become better; we'll spend most of our days without illness and the child, my child, will soon be helping themselves to butter and flooding the bathroom floor and leaving toys on the floor again.

But then there are the things that I just can't work through, the things that cannot be scrubbed clean or ironed out or simmered down.

As my ill friend told me, all we can do, when there is nothing else, is to pray. I don't know if there was a time when I thought God would fix things for me, but there is comfort in asking God all the same. I even feel presumptuous or silly asking for what I think is best, so instead I think the names of those I love for whom I cannot fix things, knowing that God, who hears my thoughts, also understands my longings. Deeply I feel that all will be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well--but in the meantime, in the worry, and in the waiting, waiting, waiting--there comes a point when busy work does not heal, and all I can do is open my hands in some sort of lopsided, trembling trust.

Stuff Rules--NOT

Ever since I returned from Seattle and from my parent's giant PARE-DOWN, I've had little patience for what seems like a tottering mountain of stuff falling down around our ears. I constantly get rid of things--there's always a bag filling on the back porch bound for Cherry Door Charity or Hidden Treasures (how hidden are your treasures? I'm trying to learn how to see the treasures and the trash through all the familiarity). I've been through the house, slipping things away into bags and trash cans (before the girls see it and decide they truly want that precious toy they've played with once or twice and not more). I had the feeling that our children had so much that they had no idea what to do with it all. And it's true--the less they have, the better and more happily they play. There's space suddenly.

"I will not be overcome!" I declared to Martin the other day. "I have to free myself from the tyranny of STUFF!" Right on, Martin says, but it's hard to keep up the pace on your own. You have to help me, I finally told him. So he sat himself down and we began in the sunroom.

"What's that?" he'd say, and I would pull something off a shelf, some boxes or maybe that tarnished silver tray I thought was so much fun when I bought it. "What is that?" he'd say, and I'd mumble some excuse for its existence in our house. "Get rid of it," he'd continue, with barely a shrug. "Really? My silver tray?" Suddenly: what's the significance of this silver tray? Zero significance. Bing! Bing! Bing! On goes the light. "Okay," I'd agree happily as I took it to a gathering place on the dining room table.

Out it goes! The more I do this sort of thing, the easier it gets to do. In fact, it's intoxicating to let go of all this excess. There's a funny sort of barrier that I have to get through--it's the barrier of thinking I care about something, about feeling owned partially by that thing--and then declaring my freedom. My dominance over that stupid silver tray. Out it goes.

I had a bout of this sort of freedom in odd circumstances at my parent's house. They went off to church and I stayed home with the masses of pictures and artwork they owned, faced with a tiny condo and artwork from Africa (very graphic), Asia (intricate, whimsical), and endless what-nots from around the world. And this was after two sortings that had squeezed the juice out of their metaphorical suburban orange and into a little distilled town existence--zest--the essence of their life's possessions. It was a quandary, though, how to make what was left over all work together. I was trying but I was somewhat aware it was a losing battle, and sure enough my mother breezed in from church and pooh-poohed my efforts. Well, this made me (slightly sleep-deprived, no shower) RATHER grumpy, and so she laughed and suggested we all stop and have a glass of wine.

And this is where things went a little balmy, for me at least. The wine made my mother jolly and relaxed. The wine made me aggressive and impatient with personal kindness. Just go through the box of pictures, my mother said, and let's get the ones out that we don't want. Nuff said, mama, watch me fly through this box, throwing pictures here and thereI never did like this one, etc, out, out, out! It was liberating and it liberated us all (my mother was not offended--she cheered me on, though she did warn me not to throw quite so heedlessly) from another meaningless (maybe meaningful once but suddenly not so much anymore) box of STUFF.

This, and my experience with my own house, has set me wondering about the pitfalls of capitalism--if we've got this much and we're a young family who has generally moved once every year or two, how much junk must everyone on my block have? In my town? In this country, for heaven's sakes? How many mountains could we fill with endless, endless, endless stuff??? And why do I feel as if I really need it, as if I need two or three sets of dishes and a room full of toys for my children, when they are perfectly content with a piece of paper and a box of crayons?

I remember my mother giving away our curtains from our windows to a guest who expressed admiration. You like em? Well, take em? I remember feeling personally wounded and rather panicked that she gave away her curtains with such alacrity. But why? It's just a thing, after all, my mother would say. Break the china in the fireplace! They're just things after all!

When we moved every year, there was a perfect opportunity for an intense clear-out. But when we're beginning your third year in the same place--oh, beware. Martin and I took out our kitchen table the other day after I counted up our tables and realized we had an embarrasing lot of tables and that we could use our porch table in our kitchen (brain wave comes every so often to this brocolli-head). As we're hauling out this antique table to the curb, we start second-guessing ourselves. Wow, it's really built nicely. Look at the notched work. It resided in my great-aunt's house for a lifetime, and it's still kicking. Why's it so heavy? Because it's well made, Martin hisses at me as we lug it down our porch stairs and on to the side of the road. I think this is a mistake, he says at one point. But then we really look at it and decide objectively, it is ugly. We don't like it; we aren't about to refinish its bizzare greenish stain; and chances are very good that now it's out of our house, we won't miss it in the least.

Why, why, why, am I holding on so tenaciously to mismatched socks?

I'm doing better, but it's a challenge, I tell you. Simple living? I don't even understand, really, how we've amassed so much. It comes in so fecklessly, so innocently, and then it puts down its little insidious roots in our lives. Warning! Invasive!

I will free myself! I will be free of this bizarre dependence on meaningless inanimate objects!

Back from Seattle

Seattle.

It's GORGEOUS (just like my dear friend Kara who drove up from Missoula to join me there for a few days).

My parents live in a perfect little seaside town, Edmonds, three blocks from the Puget Sound and just around the corner from a fabulous Thai restaurant (among many other amazing eating establishments and endless coffee bars).

A five or ten minute stroll out Mom and Dad's front door takes you down to the coast, which is unlike other US coastal lines in that it is free from horrible, towering commercial establishments and instead sports walking paths, a swimming beach (complete with underwater paths that twist around a sunken ship), and beautiful sculptures thrown oh, anyhow, around the place. Here's a favorite:

On a Saturday morning, my parents can rub the sleep from their eyes, pop down to the corner pancake house, whip through the incredible farmer's market, snatching up some plump cherries and a huge bouquet of purple balloon flowers and brilliant orange poppies, and then, hungry for fish and chips, take the rather clean, rather sophisticated ferry

where you can watch dolphin fins rising out of the rolling water or try to make sense out of the unbelievable size of

Mount Rainier in the distance on one hand or the Cascades rising like imperial sisters on the other.
Or you can just enjoy the wind in your hair.


My main porpoise (ha!) in Seattle (besides drooling enviously all over the bugless, diseaseless flowers--unbelievable roses, lavender--on every corner) was to settle my parents' little condominium. It's not the first house I've decorated for them, and I was lucky enough to get this one--a challenging downsize from their large Baltimore suburban house. (Here's a before:)

My parents wanted something a little more sophisticated than their last house and so we opted for a blue/black/white scheme, appropriate to their proximity to the beach (without being "beachy--" ug).

We put together endless flatpacked furniture, installed endless curtain rods, opted for endless smart storage.
We even tucked my father's office into a (now doorless) closet.

And now they are ready to party.

I arrived back east to sweet, fresh-faced girls and a champion Daddy who had taken said girls camping in my absence. The garden exploded in my absence (in a industrious way), and I am happy to be home. Seattle leaves me with a want for more sophistication, a longing for Thai food, my parents, and the ability to walk everywhere, but with a sense that I am in the right place, too, among the warm green hills of Pennsylvania and my own community.

June

I do love summer.


Love is in the air, mon cher. . .

The perennial hibiscus are lookin' spiffy. . .



Everything runs amok, though yarrow is like Bach: always neat and well-organized, even in the midst of sage gone-to-seed.



Everyone (including bugs, groundhogs, and small children) feels well contented with fresh food. . .

dill-biscuit topped potpie with fresh chard

& red leaf lettuce from our friend Nancy Greenthumb

Note: Beatrix LAUGHS

And when I say laugh, I do not mean a mere Ha! I mean, a full, hearty laugh, spurts of it, over and over again, as only babies can manage. I remember that Merry laughed this way the first time she saw Owen, the midnight-black retriever (Owen of godparents Montana Lindsay and Tim). What jollity! What guffaws!

(Dear me, I can't remember when Elspeth first laughed. The middle child phenomenon starts already. Hmmm. I know it well. I think my mother could sooner climb Mt. Everest with a millstone around her ankle rather than conjure up when I first laughed.)

Beatrix's peals of giggles ensued when her little friend,

Ethan, waved a sort of kite attached to a pole in front of her. At first I wasn't sure what I was hearing, but then Sally (E's mother) and I started cheering, "Do it again, Ethan, do it again!" And sure enough: HA HA HA HA HA, in that funny baby way, where the baby goes dead serious in between each episode and then spurts out with another dimpled display of mirth.

Weren't we all pleased with our bonny Beatrix, and wasn't she pleased with Ethan and that funny kite-thing.

Community

This evening we attended a visitation for a very young woman, L, who was killed suddenly and unexpectedly in our community. The line of people waiting to see her parents and sister stretched the entire length of the large room, looped into the hallway, and doubled back. We had all three girls with us; Beatrix fell asleep almost immediately; Merry, who had been affected by the enormity of event and had withdrawn, found her babysitter and brightened; Martin took restless Elspeth into the banks of seats where they could watch a slideshow of L laughing, blowing out birthday candles, and hugging friends.

I stood in that long line, watching people in the sea of black clothes embrace one another, laugh, suddenly weep--and I thought many things. Perhaps the strongest image that came into my mind was my palm, flattened, as I stood in the garden and blew light soil from it; and the soil blew away so easily, dispersed in one breath--Fragile, was what the woman's mother said as we reached her. "We used to work all the time in the garden with our children," L's mother has often told Martin, "And when we drive by your house we remember ourselves at your age, out there with our kids, trying to plant the garden."

On the way down the stairs, Martin and I were flushed with grief for this family, and for the fragility of our own lives. Merry talked loudly about the fun she'd had seeing her babysitter, but when we were sitting in the car, she began asking detailed questions about how L died. Cool breezes filled our car; gardens of our neighbors, bright green, flashed by our windows.

We arrived late for our small community potluck at the park. Children we know well and have come to love ran around in circles around our legs, yelling bits of information about their days.

I'm saying things badly, but what I mean to say is: I am deeply thankful for my community of friends. There is so much unseen that happens between people: a friend's hand on my arm is heavy with much care and love. I am grateful. There is so much--I know as I remembered the picture of the mother and child at the visitation--an infant's sweet, soft head touching the chin of her mother--there is so much that is given to us, that we never ask for, surprises of joy--and so much taken from us as well. These people I love, who are not my family but with whom I share my daily life--they are like the branches of a deeply rooted tree, blowing in summer wind, standing solidly against a winter sky. They are those who have otherwise secret gifts and sorrows, but choose to share them, to celebrate and bear them together. All this is good, and I am thankful.

Father's Day Pumpkin Planting

For Father's Day, after a delightful potluck with the Mennonites, I whipped up some mango smoothies (Here is the happy family; the girls are shouting "Sisu!") and we went out to plant pumpkins and gooseneck squash in what will be the pool garden (named so because this is the site of the abomination of the previous owners: namely, an aboveground pool, which we had hauled off in pieces).

This perfectly circular, level site will someday receive Martin's full attention and become an herb garden, complete with bricked pathways. . .for now, so as not to waste the space, we'll let the vines ramble all over while we build up the beds for a possible winter potager.

The girls, all at their own important tasks.
* * *
A happy, happy Father's Day to all you good dads, especially our dear ones: Ken C & Meredith L. We love you!

Beatrix & Bouquet 2

Beatrix, Roses and Yarrow

Here's another installment in the rather strange series of Beatrix & Bouquet. (Martin observes it's a slippery slope into Anne Geddes, but I'll never go there. No babies in cabbages. No way. Heaven save me.)

This gorgeous dress Beatrix wears here was made by a childhood friend of mine, Rita (her sister and my brother used to communicate by tincan phone strung betwwen our whitewashed maisonettes in Nairobi, Kenya.) Lovely.

Roses Out the Wazoo

A thorn jammed under the skin of my fingertip this morning as I was pruning back black-spotted canes left me rather grumpy. Aphids make me belligerent and Japanese Beetles leave me in despair. Sometimes I feel that life would be so much simpler if I stuck with sure-fire perennials like Russian Sage and Coneflower and Yarrow.

But then I slip roses into a vase on our supper table, or breathe deeply of an heirloom, and I change my mind.

I didn't get my fussier tea roses photographed for this entry (later?) but here are a few toughies elsewhere in our garden.

Chamomile, Evening Primrose, Roses in Background: Laundry Garden



The "Fairy," Laundry Garden


Back Pool Garden, With Lamb's Ears and Evening Primrose

A rambler on our back deck


Climbing "Blaze," Pump Garden

Blackberry and Assorted Landscape Roses, Thistle Hill

On our table at the moment. . .
David Austen, a favorite. . .what gorgeous, Peter-Rabbit-illustration shape and ruffled petal pattern

Heather Letter Six: In Which I Fudge Hans Christian Andersen

Dear Heather,

In the spirit of roses I thought I'd read "The Elf in the Rose" to Merry tonight. Also, it was one of the shorter tales in the bulky Hans Christian Andersen book. Merry is seduced by the PreRaphalite artwork and the excitement of a new cache of fairytales (she's given Laura I. Wilder a break--we always seem to peter out after the first two chapters of "The First Four Years").

Anyway, I should have known to read ahead and do a little detective work before plunging blindly into a Hans Christian Andersen with a six year old, right before bedtime. Here's a brief synopsis of the story, as told by the elf, who keeps flitting nervously from flower to leaf to counterpane, etc. I'll give you scene sketches:

Two lovers in a garden, passionately embracing.

The lover is murdered by the woman's brother. Evil fiend brother cuts off lover's head and buries man's body (head separately) under a linden tree. [I leave out decapitation part. Yuk.]

["I don't like this one very much," I say. "Go on, go on!" Merry says. "I LIKE it."]

Elf murmurs in sleeping woman's ear where to find her lover. Evil fiend brother enters and exits: very mean, very despicable.

Night falls: woman slips out, unearths body and head of lover. Wants to carry body home, but settles for the head. Plants head in pot and covers with jasmine plant.

[My version: Woman cuts off piece of lover's hair and buries that in the jasmine plant.]

Evil brother unsympathetic. [Big surprise there.]
Woman waters jasmine with her tears, grows ever paler; jasmine grows ever better; woman dies.
All elves and spirits jab evil brother to death with spears.

[My version: The woman cried and cried on the jasmine plant. The evil brother went away and was never heard from again. One day the jasmine plant sprouted the lover. They got married and lived happily ever after. The end." "That was short!" Merry protests. "Can we read another one?"]

I'm not usually a proponent of censorship, but REALLY. Before bedtime? I think not. I told Merry, happy to find a less gory alternative, that we would read "The Princess and the Pea" tomorrow. That and "Thumbelina" are more our speed, I think.

Wish you were here too--but be glad for the option of air-conditioning!

xoxoxoxo
Kimby

A Virtual Strawberry for Aunty Heather

PS. (PreScript, in this case): Please take another look at the letters below--I added pictures!

Dear Heather,

If you were here today you and the kids could have helped me pick the thousands of strawberries that ripened in our short absence. I planted these strawberries in a very grumpy manner last year and then pinched the blossoms to encourage a good crop this year. Seems to have worked. We've been grazing on our strawberries for a couple weeks, but suddenly they're mostly ripe and ready to eat or make into freezer jam.

A close look and you see they are pesticide-free and organic--a few bug holes in some, an ant traveling the red, bumpy surface--but the bad parts we just cut out or throw on the compost pile. I often eyeball the location of holes and try to eat around them, hoping I'm not ingesting ants or other little critters.

The girls ate a wealth of the berries on their yogurt after dinner tonight.
Merry,

Elspeth,

and Sadly-Not-Beatrix. She has to be content with her fist and numnums.

Prior to sleeping, the girls and Martin are, at this very moment, singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," followed by "O Christmas Tree." Very odd.

Wish you were here and could help us eat the bounty,

xoxoxoxo
Kimby

Heather Letter: Five and 1/2

Dear Heather,

As the wise woman once said, Tempted to travel? Travel with children. This will cure all temptation.

Nuff said about that.

Honestly not so bad at all--we even went for a hike on the way back: Nelson-Kennedy Ledges State Park, where glaciers once thrust up huge wedges of rock, forming natural trenches now covered in maples, beeches, deep green ferns, and graffiti.

The house was stifling at arrival, but the fans are running and things are cooling off. We piled out of the car and inspected our garden first. The roses are absolutely stunning. Something is eating my basil and my leaf vegetables to shreds. The grass has sprouted everywhere. Honeysuckle breeze filters in the windows; the broad, handsome wood trim smells full and hot, shut away from the night breeze for too many days.

The climbing roses especially are brilliant, ravishing, embarrassing.

Surely your two-year old is not as wild as ours'.

Wish you were here and we could eat big congratulatory bowls of ice-cream together,

xoxoxoxo
Kimby

Heather Letter Five: In Which it Continues Hot, and We Are Not Amish

Dear Heather,

It is so hot here today that I am having trouble forming thoughts coherent enough to report on paper. Here are a few, though:

1. After watching the laundry flap on long, neat lines, and seeing approximately ten horse and buggies and a Grandma plowing a garden by hand tiller with a little boy in suspenders, Merry wants to be a little Amish girl. Barring that, she wants to become an Amish Mommy when she grows up. We were sorry to tell her that she may be out of luck since she was born to us and our Blue Subaru, but there are many principles we can adopt from the Amish. Neatness of yard and farm eludes us, I'm afraid, but simplicity, laundry on a pulley system, and slow-cooked food may be three we can hope for.

Later in Grandpa's back yard, Merry and Elspeth put their faces close to the hose, sipping in water and spitting it out at each other with many giggles and nose-scrunches. I think we must have been sisters like that, running around soggy and laughing together. They remind me so much of us.

2. One of my favorite memories of being with you (just us) is driving around Lancaster, following long roads past white and green farms and high crops that rippled like water. We'd get to another road and you'd pause, hands on the steering wheel, and ask, "Which way now?" We stopped briefly in the gravel driveway of a church; there wasn't a soul about except us, and farmland rolled in every direction.

2. Today I sat with Beatrix on my lap, reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (I too want to make my own cheese!), and kept an eye on Grandpa. Beatrix fell asleep with her mouth on my breast, and Grandpa twitched and scratched in his sleep. It was quiet. I thought: here I am with two completely dependent beings. Beatrix is not important merely because she is a seed, bursting with potential to become a contributing member of society. Grandpa is not a worthwhile part of the world merely because he once produced, worked, and spoke with a strong voice. Both baby and old man, at opposite ends of their lives and both vulnerable, are vitally important simply because they are people, and the spirit of God lives and moves and breathes in them. It is a good lesson for me to remember, I who often measures my worth (and other's worth) by what I do and how much I accomplish.

I do think the heat will break tomorrow. I love you.

Wish you were here with us even in the sweat,

xoxoxoxo
Kimby

Heather Letter Four: In Which a Storm Brews

Dear Heather,

Jesus could have had a whole lot on this earth. He could have gathered his posse around him. . .This from the sermon given by the sweet, earnest youth pastor at the Southern Baptist church we attended this morning. Another memorable bit of wisdom: "Happy wife, Happy Life." Pass that on to Luke for me.

Heather, as I write this, the maple outside the window (the one with the clothesline attached) bent double in a furious wind. Everyone but Grandpa and I had just gone out for a walk but returned almost right away--Martin checked the radar and observed that though nothing threatening shows there, it looks tornadic outside.

Merry's screaming in anticipation on the porch. She's a lot like you--thrilled and terrified witless at the same time by bad weather and natural disasters.

Well, we will just eat our chocolate cream and banana cream (yum, you'd love it) pies and hope the windows don't get blown out.

If you never hear from us again, we've been lifted by the wind to Oz.

Wish you were here,
xoxoxoxoxo
Kimby