Cold March Dreams

There's something about the haziness of this picture that really makes me long for summer. Then, at closer look, I realize this is the garden near sleep--look at the leaves turning on the maple. The farmer's market would have lined their stalls with deep crates of crisp apples and they'd be selling the last of the corn. We would have been sick of picking the straggling wax beans and eating chard.

I would have slipped out quickly and wandered barefoot through the early September evening to be with the insects and the cooling air and the heady scent of the garden going to seed. The cosmos' bright orange petals had begun to sharpen into black seeds, and the whole garden was a mess of weeds and invasive don't-belongs. I would have snapped some pictures, felt discouraged at the state of things, and hurried back inside for dinner.

But now, at the end of this fridgid March day, all I want to do is strip off my shoes and my sweaters, wander outside in the gathering dusk, and lie down on the garden path, hidden from everything and everyone by the rambling, scented flowers.

So sing a song of picnics, of wet feet and warm grass!

Of sweat and strawberries and naps in the shade! It's just around the corner, folks, just around the corner. . .

Two Elspeth Quotes

Elspeth, at dinner: Mommy, when you die, you get a prize.

Me: Really? What?

Elspeth: A pizza!

Thought: I'm not sure this is what St. Paul had in mind, re: strive for the prize before us.

___________
Elspeth, out of the blue: Summer means pink dresses!

The Inside of Music

I told Martin last night, "I bet nobody has ever done Lenten dancing to Better Than Ezra," and he agreed.

"I really don't feel like dancing," Martin said, all bleary-eyed from too much grading. I know how he feels, though I think he is, in general, a more patient and wise person than I, and that's why he's a teacher and I'm not. I absolutely hate grading a stack of papers--there's the writing that makes me hope for the future, but there's also so much bad writing--and then I'm torn between relationship with the student and the righteous indignation I feel when I write F, just stopping myself from adding, "Excruciating to read. After reading your drivel, I feel closer to despair than I did before I started."

Martin shows real patience, though, and he sees real progress with his students. He delights in their progress the way I find joy in the burgeoning of a story I'm writing. When we were in college, our graded papers bore--maybe--two or three comments, or check marks or just a grade. Martin fills his student's papers with comments and scribbles and marks, and he's gained a reputation for being a hard grader. But if they have any sense, his students know that this is the way Martin, as their teacher, pays them respect.

And so Martin emerged from the murky tunnels of essay grading not a little wall-eyed. And some weird dancing followed, people. Occasionally I'd see him behind me, with the purple hat pulled down over his eyes, writhing in inner pain. "Are we done?" I'd say, ready to turn off Ezra and go on to TV. "Another one," he'd answer, and pull down that hat again. "Can you even see?" I asked, and worried for his safety as he wriggled and dove all over the room. At one point he was thudding on the armchair with his fists.

"I'm inside the music," he said.

Let me give a little background here. Martin's and my first days together were marked by his musical snobbery. Minute by minute, he pulled down my castles of feel-good music and happily trampled on my preferences for show tunes and Roger Whittaker--in order to educate my tastes and raise me to his erudite mesa of artistry. In our little, two-door Honda with the bad sound system, he played tapes and CDs of music that literally made me want to jump out of the window. Or pound my head repeatedly on the dashboard. It was so unlistenable, so wretched, so discordant and NOISY. I resisted education at every possible, painful juncture. I had never cared about musician's or songwriter's histories or stories or approaches, and I jolly well was not going to start caring about what I thought was mere trivia.

BUT. . .ten years later, I'm opting for The Decemberists or The Weepies and saying things like, "That song is very Dylan, but he's totally butchering the approach--there's only one Dylan, and this guy is not him" or "That song has a real Beatlesque sound, but it's actually more like. . ." Blah, blah, blah. I can actually listen to a song and say who's singing it. And I enjoy a much wider range of music. But I still have little patience for music I don't like.

So this is why Martin, who's absolutely gaga for music and listens to the most appalling noise, got inside the music and was moving around our library like a bear with a toothache. Me? I was practicing kicking my leg and lifting my arm ballet-like. I was still aware of droopy boobs and how I wanted to take some more off the thickening wintry middle area of Kim Cockroft. But then. . .I shut my eyes.

And the whole library was gone, and so was Martin, and so was I. I was suddenly inside the Better Than Ezra song, and I was exploring the complexities of the music with my body. Mostly, I was pulling my arm toward my head, over and over again, like somebody caught in a loop, but this repetitive motion worked like a meditative prayer--I mean, it cleaned me out and took me to a place beyond sight or words. Needless to say, if I could have seen myself, I would have laughed myself silly or blushed beet-red. But I couldn't see myself--I just was.

I've always both envied and also kind of looked down on people who lose themselves in something. As a writer, I'm always writing about an incident as I'm living it. There's often the Voice narrating action and reaction and there's little chance of getting so lost in an experience that I haven't already formulated one or two descriptions of it. I'm rather embarrassed and anthropologist-like about ecstasy, of all kinds. My ears light up like ambulance sirens or I break into hives if I become too emotional with anyone I don't know too well. And if anyone had come into the library last night, I would have given a good explanation of our craziness and offered them tea. I mean, no way would Martin and I dance like this around other people.

And yet. . .maybe we should. Or maybe we shouldn't. There's no real cultural home for this kind of expression in our tradition. My stripe of Caucasian American doesn't do any kind of ritual drumming or chanting or dancing. The only venue for publicly losing self-consciousness is a charismatic church or. . .a bar? Or maybe a group therapy session? Though I am duly grateful for all The Enlightenment did for us and our culture, it ruined us in some ways, don't you think? It saved us from superstition, cleared our minds, gave us scientific method, and absolutely ruined our capacity to dance like fools. Or maybe the two have nothing to do with each other. Maybe, if we loosen up some, we who are tied up in self-important knots dance MORE like fools because we HAVE to--we have to give ourselves up to some expression that doesn't rely on the entanglements and pomposity of words.

Dance Party with Thirty-Somethings in Bathrobes and Purple Hats

Martin's cookin chili and the two older girls are quacking like ducks. Regular sort of night at the Cockroft house.

I wonder how a big bowl of chili and a beer will mix with Lenten dancing? Yep, Martin and I are dancing fools. And I mean that. This man, this man with big hands and fabled feet, who trips over rugs and collides with multiple household items on a regular basis, this man can DANCE, folks.

The first night we switched on Jamiroquai, with the lights on and the curtains open (we noticed at least one car slowing down as it passed our house, and we wondered what our new neighbors across the street must think of us). It took us a while to find our groove, and that was the night Martin figured out that if he wore the hat, he could dance.


The second night we turned off the lights and loaded up Ricky Martin. I started off in my huge red flannel robe that makes me look like a stuffed taco (it was cold!) but by the time the World Cup theme came, I had shed the robe and Martin and I were throwing ourselves wildly all over the library.

The third we tried some Kenyan/Tanzanian music (Martin said, this sounds like Paul Simon, and then corrected himself: Paul Simon sounds like this). We left one light on. It turns out that music from different continents stretches a whole new set of muscles you didn't know you had, and so ten minutes of this music knocked us flat.

And here's the funny thing: almost every night, I'm completely exhausted, and I kind of drag myself into the library. Martin often grumps about the music until he's got his dancing hat on, and after that he becomes a different crazy person. But after dancing, we are completely renewed, our appetites have altered to want fruit instead of our night-time junk fest, and we've laughed ourselves into a younger mood. This is the stuff, people. Sheer silliness and shine.

The Chicken Knows

Ah, peace at last.

If you're ready for some nasty stuff, read on. Otherwise, go fold your hands and think nice thoughts.

Tonight Martin managed to come home for dinner. I was ready for a little time by myself, if only to sweep up the waves of rice that flowed from our table during supper. But the bliss was short-lived, since after depositing the children in the bath he selected music, packed up his guitar, and took off to his literary magazine's twice-annual open mic.

By now I'm pretty used to evenings with three children and only one of me, and I thought tonight I had things pretty covered. But have you noticed how things always go wrong in droves? Never only one thing goes amiss--say, baby scattering dirt all over your rug--but there are three more that follow, and they are always totally unrelated to each other. You'd think, for instance, that the three things going wrong at once would make a cohesive, interrelated whole: for instance, the baby gets into dirt, the toddler eats it, and the older child slips on it on the way to the bathroom.

But no, my life is more like this: the baby scatters dirt WHILE eating it IN a leaky diaper; the toddler runs into a wall two rooms away and bleeds on your friend's book she lent you; the older child's tooth falls out; AND aliens land in your back yard and flatten the petunias. These four things are completely unrelated, and yet, like old Murphy warned, once the chaos gets rolling, that's it. You may as well hang up your sanity on a hook and chuckle dryly to the five-foot chicken on your right. "It's happening again," you tell the chicken, and the chicken nods and clucks and reaches for The Economist. "Let me know when it's over," the chicken tells you, "And we'll have a beer together."

Anyway.

So pleasant scene: children splashing, cleaning themselves, luxuriating in the warm water. Merry lets out a scream. It turns out that Elspeth has leaned over and in a sort of gothic sisterly love, bitten her on the stomach. I haul Elspeth out the bath, wrap her in ducky towel, and march her downstairs, where I strap her into the time-out chair. She pulls the ducky beak off her head and begins to audibly protest her just punishment. This protest lasts all evening until much later.

Upstairs, the scene is once again charming. Merry innocently queries: "Why is Elspeth crying?" And then she says, "What's all this floating in the water?"

I glance over. "It's just fluff," I say, "From socks or something. Don't worry about it."

"Okay," she says, and proceeds to wash her hair. The baby continues splashing. Elspeth screams from below decks. Then Merry holds out her hand. "What's this?" she asks.

You know what it was, right? Let's just cut to the chase: POOP. A nice little baby poop pellet. And that alien substance all over was NOT fluff from socks.

Informed of the truth, Merry stands up from the bath, gouging her back on the faucet: she begins sobbing rather loudly. The baby splashes on and I comfort Merry and begin to drain the water. As the water drains the baby begins to splash her feet more and more vigorously, dislodging yet more excrement from her seat.

Knowing that my journey has just begun, I decide to pee while I can; I sit down and realize there is no toilet paper.

I told you this was not pretty. Add to this that we were completely out of easily accessible diapers.

Merry looks at me and observes, with dawning happiness (she's a writer), "This is a BAD night."

* * *
Well, to make a long story short, I survived, all the while retaining my calm--and soon all the children were freshly showered and bathed and all was right with the world again. I even got some laundry folded. Maybe this doesn't sound all that chaotic to you, but there's some spirit of chaos that presides over chaos that doesn't help matters much; the events become much more than the sum of their parts. You people know of what I'm speaking, right? Everybody has their own muse of chaos. Mine only happens to be a five-foot chicken. He never gets his wings ruffled; he just stands around, totally useless, reading the material I never get to, while I run around like the you-know-what with the head cut off. It's ironic, really. And yet this Chicken of Chaos knows the secret to his success. It's the secret that keeps us friends, keeps us popping cold ones at the end of the day.

Rock on, my chicken.

Totally Losing It For Lent

I've decided to give up moderation for Lent. This has been a running joke in our house for years now--I always have plenty of suggestions for Martin on what he might give up for Lent (of course they always directly benefit me) but all I am willing to give up is housework (especially laundry) or self-control.

But this year, I'm totally serious. Last night we were eating beef (a rare occasion at our house). I had carefully set aside a piece of fat so I wouldn't eat it but Elsepth, as befits her perfectly, grabbed it up and stuffed it into her mouth. "That's disgusting!" I said. "Don't eat that! It's yucky!"

"It's GOOD," she said, and she chewed it up and swallowed it. Seemed appropriate on Fat Tuesday. Elspeth eating beef fat for Mardis Gras. But before you vegetarians (sorry, my sister) faint dead away, I do have a point. I'll get to it eventually, maybe (unluckily for you people, I've given up pithiness for Lent as well).

Those of you who know us well know that Martin and I have moved an ungodly number of times before settling here at Wazoo. One of our years was spent in an incredibly frigid part of Iowa, in a picture-perfect little Dutch town. I do mean, PICTURE PERFECT. It was like a set from a movie. The streets sparkled, the park was immaculate, and the sound of mowers roared up and down the streets all week long, except on Sunday, when a preternatural quiet fell over everything like a blanket of create-in-me-a-clean-heart snow. (A couple people warned us that Sundays were serious business, but I didn't really believe them until, right before we left said perfect town, we ventured out to do a little gardening on a Sunday. And by golly, the nay-sayers weren't lying. We felt as if we were sacrificing goats on our front lawn to some unknown god instead of digging holes for flowers in the soil.)

In the spring, tulips popped up in absolutely perfect rows as if they were in a florist's window. And I wouldn't be joshing you if I told you that people went out with little bitty scissors to manicure their grass. Those of you who have ever driven by Wazoo know enough about us to realize Martin and I were totally and completely out of place there. And it was a funny thing, too--though everyone was very nice, I've never seen such sour, dour expressions on the faces of women.

After some months of this absolute perfection, what I wanted (even if I didn't articulate it then) was loud neighbors, big-boobed grandmas wearing skimpy tanktops that showed their armpit hair who called their children with booming voices. I wanted a Mama living next door who knocked people upside the head and boiled huge pots of pasta. I wanted some guy with a hat on backwards to take his shirt off and fix the car on a Sunday. I wanted a Mardis Gras parade in the streets. Instead, there was a Tulip Festival, where all the girls clad themselves in wooden shoes and swept the spotless streets so clean that you could eat Dutch sausage right off the pavement.

Now we live in such ramshackle glory that one sad day I actually yelled after a motorist like a banshee: GET A MUFFLER! But, despite the rather loud cars without mufflers and the coal mine not far away, Martin and I feel much more comfortable here in our completely imperfect corner of Pennsylvania than we ever felt in Dutch Perfection.

So I'm paddling slowly back to Lent here. La, la, la. It seems to me that many of us Puritans or self-deniers have a lot to learn from ramshackle, from the people we squint at who are too loud or too expressive in their grief or their joy. We use the same expression with both people who have lost their heads in tears or lost their heads laughing: Oh man, she's totally LOST it. Thank God, we think, we've got the self control not to slop ourselves all over the place. So we retreat to this great, terse, pithy sarcasm to sum up what's deep and mysterious within us. It's so East-coast of us. So funny. So dry. And so Oscar Wilde, too, and so smart. It makes us feel in control to arrange our thoughts and our faces so neatly and picture-perfectly.

I think I'm going to give that up for Lent. I've never been any good at it, anyway. I will not attempt to be a park full of tulips. I will be the weedy garden I am all the time, and I won't make anyone miserable because I'm not perfect. Hey, everyone, I'm a mess! And so are you! Happy Lent to you!

Becoming more and more loosey-goosey is a job for some of us, especially those of us with Finnish or German blood. Martin has a dose of Italian and Irish or Scottish, so he's okay. I, on the other hand, must continually remind myself that I want to be an eccentric, happy old woman, not a tight-fisted, angry one. And I want to do it largely without chemical stimulants.

Also, for Lent, I am taking up dancing. Or I should say, returning to regular dancing, since everyone dances when they are children. Every night after I deposit the children in bed I will turn up the music and I will dance like a fool. Martin is joining me. He has to wear a purple hat with a tassel in order to really loosen up enough to get his joints swinging. But once he tightens that purple hat around his ears, he's crazy magic.

If anyone would like to join us, I expect we'll start at around nine at night and go for about forty-five minutes. Bring your hats, bring your fats, bring your messy selves.

Song for Ash Wednesday

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, and as I said to my mother yesterday on the phone, the beginning of Lent has caught me off-guard. The whole world feels as though it's been in the Lenten season, I told her, and we're just about to get a few glimmers of hope. Why can't Lent start at the end of January and Easter burst forth joyfully, like a firework, with the first crocus?

I may take the three girls down for a service at the college tomorrow, but I really don't feel like it. Tomorrow's going to be beautiful outside, after a long rash of frigid weather, and besides, it makes me so sad to see my beautiful, healthy children marked with ash and to hear that we are all dust and to the dust we will return. And they, so unsuspecting! Give me Easter, and the water of baptism sprinkled upon us. No ashes.

Here's the bleak reality, though: even if I keep their smooth, unwrinkled foreheads from ashes, the mark is still upon them. They are dust, and to dust they will return. The truth that someday the faces I love will disappear into the earth is not one I care to dwell on too long. Long ago I felt that this Christian hope we profess would seem easier to believe in if, at death, we disappeared completely with a puff of smoke, or perhaps our bodies broke into something wonderful, butterflies, perhaps (or moths or crickets, depending on our dispositions) and flew away into the eternity, an eternity that is unmapped and completely mysterious.

But I love bodies. I love my funky accordion-pregnant-with-three belly. I love Elspeth's bitten fingernails and her tough little toes. I love the sprinkle of freckles under Merry's right eye. I love Beatrix's jagged new teeth and I love Martin's solid, large hands, mapped with lines that have been the same all his life. I love my Dad's wild white hair and my mother's laugh lines. I love. . .

Dust? Everything in me cries, NO! Not dust! And yet, there we all go, filing down to a priest to receive our cross of ashes.

In the affirmation of our temporal bodies and our brief blip on this fragile earth, I affirm life, the precious life breathed into every person and tree and bird on this planet. And I affirm that life is sudden and brief. I bow my head with humility when I repeat that we are all made from the same substance. Despite our disparate journeys, despite those we heal or wound or birth or kill, we will all end up as dust.

I remember the absolute terror I felt once at a fairly young age (perhaps sixteen or so), when I considered suddenly that I had the power to end my own life. It was not that I wanted to die--this realization did not spring from depression--it was just that I saw the vulnerability of my own naked wrist, and the fact that if I chose, I could destroy it. For a moment, I peeked through the veneer of my own speedy, gorgeous youth and realized that not only was I naked to great harm, I was also capable of inflicting great harm.

This sort of horror returns to me when I hear about or see pictures of senseless killing and destruction. Most of the time I feel fairly hopeful about humans and myself, but news like this makes me feel powerless and confused. The realities of our broken world are not "good dinnertime conversation;" they do not make for pleasant reading; they are not helpful in trying to live carefree and carelessly. They force us into grief, a mourning for ourselves and for each other and for the world. Mercy! we cry, and in anger, Why? Why? Most merciful God, why?

Must we be broken? Must those we love be taken into places where we cannot comfort them? The cross of ashes says, Yes. In that cross lies so much acceptance, so much letting go, so much trust. It is not the cross of giddy optimism and false promises that if we trust, everything will be okay. No, this cross, the same cross Jesus bore on his own back, demands that we look, with trembling, at the face of death, of ugliness, of horror and fear. And then, God! What idiots we must seem! We offer up our foreheads and receive that cross. And somehow, as we bear that cross of blood, of body dust, of earth dirt, we find our fear cast out and receive the mysterious mercy.

And so lent begins with wailing. In my own rational, optimistic mind, I am deeply uncomfortable with wailing. And yet we are called, like those before us and those who will follow, to grieve.

Laughing at the Future

One of my favorite things about our life right now is that we are surrounded by a good community of people who share much in common with us and yet are so very different from us. It used to be, as I grew up, that agnostics were fabled people who I never really knew but heard about. So were Catholics, for that matter.

And now, thank God, we've got this fantastic rainbow of friends: agnostics, Catholics, sort-of-pantheists, Orthodox Christians, searching Christians, and searching don't-know-whats. Conversation is rich with our varied backgrounds and our own spiritual journeys. The richness of these interchanges is deepened by the fact that we all genuinely care about each other and care to hear what the other has to say, without anger or judgement.

And like the community in which I grew up, we become each other's family. Our children even call the adults in our community "aunt" and "uncle," a familiarity that speaks safety and belonging to children, especially children whose real family is far way. And especially in this time with young children, when, ironically, we can feel very isolated and lonely, community is life-giving. On a very basic level, it keeps us sane.

No matter what our spiritual beliefs, we all surely believe in the power of gentleness and words spoken with love.
We practice that belief every day in our relationships with our children and with each other.

And in loving each other's families, we help to shape one another.

We shape and create a heritage of love and acceptance for our children, eating together, talking together, laughing and worrying together.

Since I am a Jesus-follower (uncomfortable often with the cultural aspects of Christianity and the Church, but committed to the person of Jesus), I think of Jesus himself, doing what is so often recorded about him: laughing, talking, eating, joking around with his community and doing the work of mercy in that context.

And so do we speak words of the deeper reality of this life to one another, not in syllables always, but though the sharing of our food, our houses, our children. We show our children: What you see here, this diverse community of honest people, this is real, this is worthwhile, this is your heritage.


                                                                    * * * * *

I was reminded of the power of words spoken in the reality of love when I reread this blessing that my father, W. Meredith Long, said over Elspeth at her baptism in 2006:


Elspeth, may your restless curiosity and keen intelligence mature into a deeply inquiring mind. As you uncover knowledge, may you delight in mystery, clapping your hands in celebration of God who creates and sustains all there is.

May you become a strong woman. May your will be captivated by God, your lover, and conformed to His heart and mind. May you become a woman of grace and gentleness. May your heart be always moved by suffering.

May you bring joy to all around you. May your optimism be rooted in hope, and may you laugh at the future. May God to whom you have been consecrated fill your life with his. Amen.

This blessing made me thankful for the gentleness and wisdom of my father, of whom I have the greatest respect and devotion. And how many children can say this freely of their parents? The women in my family give my Dad a hard time sometimes, but he, who spoke recently at a feminist gathering and who lives a life devoted to justice for women and children, takes our ribbing with good humor.

Rereading this blessing also made me laugh, because, since words are filled with power (and I as a writer believe this fervently), you have to be careful what you say--see especially, "Deeply Inquiring Mind"/ "Strong Woman"/"Laugh at the Future" above.

And then consider what happened last night as we talked with dear friends: Cries of "Oh, no!" reached us, and we found that our middle child (with the deeply inquiring mind) had acted as strong woman and, despite the sure knowledge of consequences and punishment, had, "laugh[ed] at the future" and, among other things, done this:

I thought I was going to write about the flax seed she sprinkled all over the sun room, or perhaps I could have told you about the letter "H" that she inscribed all over the walls of our house, but no, this takes the cake. The pink marker was not just on this chair, but on various other surfaces, including the curtain.

God bless us. I may ask for a slightly modified blessing for Beatrix--Dad, think words like "calm" and "gentle" and while certainly strong is good, consider including "bring your parents relief" as a possible phrase.

But in all seriousness, we like any other loving parents ask ourselves, how can we help make this blessing become real for Elspeth? And the answer is in real community, which I believe is the very fabric of spiritual reality. How do we encounter God but through the hands of those around us? How, in our daily lives, do we hear the voice of God but through the voices of those who love us?

Merry, always our deep wonderer, asked me when she was about three: Mommy, how can I hear God? And I explained that we hear God in many different ways: in nature, in books, in music, in the words of those we love. That explanation was not good enough, and so I said, "All right, Merry, tonight ask God to talk to you, and tomorrow tell me what God said." I had the hopeful faith that God would see a child listening and do SOMETHING. In the morning, Merry said, "Mommy, I listened and listened, but God never said a THING."

Well, who of us has heard God utter words directly to her? But in the voices of my community, of my family, of the natural world, I do encounter the voice of God. And it sustains me deeply. Perhaps Elsepth hit the nail on the head when, after asking where the heck Jesus was since we talked to him, and I said, "All around you, inside of you, in other people and in the world," she looked at me with an incredulous grin and said "Jesus is in my MOUTH?!" and after swallowing I realized, yes indeed, my child, Jesus is indeed in your mouth when you say a kind word to another.

And when we live in community, Jesus is mainly in our mouths. We speak him to others when we inquire how they've been, and we swallow him when we eat food prepared by another's hands with love. In living in community, normal and paltry things become sacred, and we find deep magic residing in our world.

Flowers Indoors

Right about now I start painting on the walls, and this February is no exception. The gloom and the freeze finally gets under my skin, and up pops a vine or a flower. (The purple bird, which is less visible, looked like a mosquito according to Merry, so I shortened the beak a bit.) Chances are the flowers will get painted over in the summer time when I declutter the house for gardening season, but for now it brings us a little early garden cheer.

In fact, most of the color choices in our house have been made during the winter months (which constitutes most of the year here anyway), so we end up with warm punches like this (taken from the front hallway)

and this

and plenty of plants, including three fairly happy ficus trees, one of whom (yes, WHOM--my trees are WHOMs) towers over my desk.

And I bought the Wazoo women three bouquets of roses from Aldi. I usually can't bring myself to buy flowers any more since I grow real roses in the summer and after you smell a real rose, the floristy, plastic-smelling ones just don't do it anymore (like tomatoes--I just can't buy tomatoes out of season after growing my own). However, the roses were bought and actually smell like something if you sniff hard enough, and now they are in my favorite, pre-death stage--that is, when I snip the heads off and put them in a bowl. Luscious!

Then there's my favorite mystery plant, whom (yes, it counts as person too) somebody (I honestly can't remember who) gave me last summer. I put the little lady in my kitchen window, which is particularly gloomy since it faces another house, and she has just been flourishing all winter long. I think she might be some kind of sunflower, though why she lives and grows baffles me and delights me to no end.

Growing alongside my little Norfolk pine (who I received right before Elspeth was born), she reminds me that winter, while necessary and occasionally delightful, will not last forever and that growing happy things,

like this little garden bug I found curled up in the corner of her crib, sound asleep, flourish in the cold months with a little warmth.

My Man with Facial Hair Writes an Essay

Check out my favorite professor and poet, Martin Cockroft, looking rather debonair with chops, at the Writers in the Schools blog.

And read "My Story of Life" by Erika, third grade, under Feb. 16. If we could write like children again!

Losing the Zen

12:00 p.m. I am up here in my office, hiding from my children. What is UP with that middle child? What possesses her? She's yelling from time-out: I'm ready to make GOOD CHOICES!

I'm yelling from inside: I'm ready to make sweet love to a hot cuppa Kahlua!

Is twelve o'clock too early? But seriously folks. Where is the zen today?

This is her second time-out today. During her first time-out I disappeared to the back porch to clean up the disaster back there. When I rejoined the family, Merry had moved Elspeth in her time-out chair out to the kitchen, where Merry had prepared a fine feast for the disgracee. Elspeth was happily munching on dry frosted miniwheats and orange slices and a banana, which she apparently didn't want, since she hurled it contemptuously to the floor. I reminded Merry who was in charge and slid Elspeth in her time-out chair back into time-out.

She is back there now after toting dirt from a potted plant all over the house. I have cleared up the trail of dirt and now I am hiding. Regaining my zen in peace. No master of zen am I. Show me a parent of three under seven and you've shown me no zen master.

It's snowing. Happy February duckies!

Day for Ducks, Ducks Dancing, Ducks Doing the Polka

Out of my window, the rain is coming down steadily at a slant; there's the red-sided beauty salon/house kiddy-corner across the street, and the lopsided evergreen beside that; in the foreground the garden looks sloggy and a sick sort of green-yellow, and in the background there's the warm purplish-brown of a hill (once mountain), feathered with bare tree branches.

I'm enjoying this rainy day, though my sinuses increasingly feel they are about to explode. When I was young (I know this is ironic) but when I was young all ten years ago, I felt as though I MUST be perfectly happy all the time. I finally have gotten over that, and I'm trying to let go of more and more so I can, in a non-drug-induced manner, float out the rainy days and enjoy the process.

I tried to remind myself of this newly found zen as I mopped up the milk that Elspeth had spilled all over the floor and up the walls, and I was doing pretty well (floating along, "no use crying over. . .") when Elspeth pushed her milk-soggy foot and pants against my shoulder and into my face. Well, it is hard to retain zen when the culprit behind your work tramples you when you're already down. To her credit, she didn't mean to be frustrating, just meant to let me know that she was milk-logged. I told her, "It's okay for you to feel uncomfortable for a while." I am preaching to myself, folks.

If anything, anything in the world, will threaten your zen, it's being home with your kids. Look, people, if you think this is a piece of cake you are out to lunch in a handbasket (or something). I have heard people say they don't stay at home with their kids because they're not cut out for it, and I hear myself thinking, "Is ANYONE cut out for this?" It's the hardest work I've ever chosen for myself, but it's also probably the greatest privilege I will ever have. Knowing these two things, and knowing that I have chosen them for myself, instead of having to "buck up" like women historically have had to do under a no-choice proposition, I find my job at this moment entirely precious.

That said, my zen is sometimes threatened, especially at times of being kicked, pissed, pooped, and thrown up upon, and when my will for their lives is utterly ignored and flaunted.

But lately I am in a good space, and I am thoroughly enjoying it. This may be because I have tried to adopt a spirit of gratitude rather than of discontent; it may be because my hormones are fairly stable; it may be because I just got that grant; it may be that Beatrix is a snaggle-toothed beauty; it may be because I smell chocolate cake baking; it may be because my life seems so happy at the moment. It is in style to rant and rave about your circumstances, even if you are secretly happy. Today I will not engage in such subterfuge, even though it is raining and it is February.

Today on the way home from Giant Beagle (not the grocery store's actual name), I listened to something rather atonal on NPR, and instead of flipping it off as I am wont to do when it's Not-Bach-or-Mozart-or-Chopin, I actually gave myself a little lesson in feeling comfortable with modern, clashing music. This seemed to match my efforts toward contentment and peace in the midst of chaos, and the ride home was good for me, the music a reminder of my own journey, of being comfortable with discomfort. This doesn't mean that I wasn't happy to turn it off when I reached home.

Which reminds me to leave a note here, that I don't think every experience has to be an illustration of something else, like the woman who lived down the road from us in Kenya thought. My mother asked her to borrow some cream of tartar and when she delivered it she said, "You know, it struck me on the way over that Jesus is the cream of tartar in our lives." We have heard Jesus compared to a whole menagerie of different things, including the head of lettuce in a salad (this image almost made my father disgrace himself in church once as he imagined our King, a head of Iceburg, sitting on the great throne, presiding, I would think, over all of us carrot slices and cucumber sticks and crouton-heads). Though my mind quickly jumps to symbols and metaphor, some things just ARE.

Like children. Like Elspeth, who painted with my brand new foundation and mascara on her furniture, unloaded the clothes hamper, and spilled my coffee across the counter (all before Martin or I got out of bed!). That child just IS who she IS, and it's not all chaos and discord with her, either. She said the other day that she was sending a rainbow in an envelope to her cousin Josiah and she observed, when I turned off the water in her bath last night, that the faucet had run out of batteries. She also noted, as I bent over sopping up milk from the floor, that she could see "my naked" (I assume a version of Plumber's Butt?) Fantastic.

Keep the faith, people, keep the peace, and for heaven's sake, don't plug along just because it's in style. Do a little boogy-woogy here and there. Especially in February.

Early Early Early Spring

I choose to call this early spring instead of late winter, though you and I both know I'm just joshin'. Our good friend Arne took these pictures of our hike two weekends ago (that other good daddy is Julio and that other little bear is Lucas). It felt like early spring--gusts of wind blew through the bare trees, and the wind was warm. Near the end of the hike I peeled off my hat and it felt as if spring exploded inside my head.

This week? Snow flurries. Frost. Children with colds and cough. More laundry. Typical February gooky stuff.

But I saw the tips of our crocus coming through the soil. It's coming, folks, though all I have now is a MEMORY OF GREEN. The memory is of something real. I know because I have seen the pictures of our garden recently in mid summer. Y'all remember that? Weeds and flowers and vegetables and what-not? Sleeping under a sheet and nothing else? Ceiling fans? Fresh basil? The overwhelming scent of dill going to seed? Roses and japanese beetles? Raspberries on prolific canes?

It will all return, the good and the ugly. Mostly the good and the succulent.

February, beware. Your days are numbered.

The Unseen Crocodile at Every Meal

Elspeth took a wonderful nap today, and afterwards she awakened bright and happy, a welcome sight on a rainy, cool day. We had a splendid tea time, just the two of us, since Merry was at a friend's house and the baby was still sleeping. We spread a rosey placemat on the table, and lit a candle, and took down the real tea cups. I poured her a milky cup of tea, and we began talking.

George McDonald and Madeline L'Engle, two of my favorite children's authors, would have been pleased to sit at tea with us--well not with me, especially--I expect I would have proved a real BORE--but Elspeth (who charmed a lady at a cafe last weekend by hooking her fingers in the corners of her mouth and sticking out her tongue--after which she nestled up to the lady and carried on a frank conversation about love, life, and age) would have delighted them.

George MacDonald, beloved author of "The Princess and Curdie," believed that in a true-Myth way, imagination helps us see what is truly real, not what is "make-believe." And in her reflections about writing and faith, Madeline L'Engle writes that she actually floated down her grandmother's stairs as a child--her belief is that children so unite with and are empowered by their imaginations that they can indeed accomplish the unbelievable.

Well, in this case I am fairly relieved that Elspeth's reflections on reality did not materialize in front of my eyes. I asked her, did she have sweet dreams?

And she replied, "There was a crocodile in my room. But he didn't eat me or swallow me."

"Was he a NICE crocodile?" I asked.

Elspeth looked down at the sweets on her plate. "Well, he shared his breakfast with me. And his milk with me."

"What do crocodiles eat for breakfast?"

"Oatmeal."

Of course. I should have known that. Everybody knows crocodiles--at least the nice ones--have oatmeal for breakfast.

And then, as it turns out, the crocodile was in our kitchen, at our table for tea. I poured him ceylon (he didn't want a cup--he just opened his mouth--and I can tell you, my hand was shaking so hard the teapot lid rattled), and Elspeth shared her sweet with him. He gobbled it with alacrity, and it didn't bother Elspeth in the least that the treat he had just consumed was still sitting on the table. She said, with satisfaction, "He ate it all up!"

Well, there you have it, folks. My children are far better story-tellers than I will ever be, and they don't even have to print a word.