Beatrix, On Her Way

One, two, three, little wonders (I'm not the third--I mean the one in my uterus).

Merry, Elsepth, Beatrix on her way.

So the girls will have yet one more sister. We're working on a Little Women scenario, it seems.

Poor, poor third child. I keep forgetting I'm pregnant with her until I look in the mirror. Here, I remember, NO PREGNANCY PICTURES! Better take my own.

Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter 1993

Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter 1993
by Jane Kenyon

On the domed ceiling God
is thinking:
I made them my joy,
and everything else I created
I made to bless them.
But see what they do!
I know their hearts
and arguments:

"We're descended from
Cain. Evil is nothing new,
so what does it matter now
if we shell the infirmary,
and the well where the fearful
and rash alike must
come for water?"

God thinks Mary into being.
Suspended at the apogee
of the golden dome,
she curls in a brown pod,
and inside her the mind
of Christ, cloaked in blood,
lodges and begins to grow.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

While not prompted by Kim to "guest host" on her blog, I thought I would nevertheless update her (no doubt)anxious Web audience as to our activities of late.

Last night, Kim went to bed at 7pm and slept for 12 hours.

I'm on the home stretch of the fall semester (less than two weeks remain), and all I can think about is gardening.

It is snowing. On again, off again.

Merry is almost six. She's a big help around the house (a couple mornings ago she took Elspeth downstairs, changed her diaper, and got her breakfast), and outside the house: On Saturday, she helped me move a bunch of bricks around ... uh, more gardening misadventures.

She said at dinner last night, "I've always loved the smell of Daddy's breath."

Elspeth's verbal ability increases daily. She loves to sing, and remembers countless tunes. Now she approximates the words, too ("The Bobble tells so"). Also, she's chewing on things she ought not to chew on. Just today, I found her knawing a AA battery, and Kim discovered her chomping at a DVD (from the library).

~

Moving on. 'Tis the season for your favorite radio station to give up its usual playlist in order to spin endless covers of Christmas carols and songs. I mean, really, what Advent would be complete without hearing "Happy Christmas (War is Over)," "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas," and Amy Grant's loathsome rendition of "Sleigh Ride" ad nauseum until the big day arrives?

And, of course, you won't be able to darken the door of a Target or Gap without a smattering of holiday cheer via the intercom speakers--the better to put you in a mood for buying. (I know whenever I hear "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," I can't help but head on over to Electronics, or pick up a pair of straight-leg khakis.

I stumbled upon this irreverant (read at your own risk) roasting of popular and sacred Christmas music: The Tris McCall Report: Christmas Abstract.

And in honor of all this, I thought I'd publish my top five Christmas carols. In no particular order:

--In the Bleak Midwinter
--I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
--Good King Wenceslas (is this truly a carol?)
--The First Noel
--God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen

The first three are often conspicuously absent from church hymnals. Why? Wenceslas isn't my favorite tune, but the lyrics are powerful and probably guilt-inducing. I can see why we don't sing it much. Who wants to be reminded that, "Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth or rank possessing/Ye who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing"?

You won't find that one on rotation at Wal-Mart.

Honorable mention to Hark, The Herald Angels Sing, The Holly and the Ivy, and O Come, O Come Emmanuel (Tho it is oversung).

My least favorite--I know this will be contentious: Silent Night, Away in a Manger, O Holy Night (would be better if not so bombastically performed), We Three Kings.

I invite you to lay into me for my choices--or better yet, present your own Top 5.

And for further amusement, this link to proofs for Santa's ability/inability to deliver the goods: The Physics of Santa Claus.

Where Have I Been?

This is a good and proper question. I am not sure myself.

Oh, but one small piece of news: Newest Kim and Martin offspring is due end of March. In one week, the mystery of gender will be revealed. . .any guesses? So far the general trend is BOY but since it's 50/50 every time. . .who knows?

And who knows why I preach active verbs to my students and then string along four passive verbs in a row?

Laziness, folks.

Sorry it's been so long. There's not been extra time falling from heaven lately, and no extra time seeping up through the earth--time, much used. Martin continues terribly busy. A fat speckled bird sits outside my window on the bare branch of the walnut tree; a heavy frost shines on our grass; the bird's throat trembles with clicks and whistles. . .Martin's in Philadelphia but the girls and I sit snug in our warm house (I hear Merry: "All the girls are dressed in red calico. . ." and Elspeth wades through her long skirt patting her chest: "Dress, dress;" a peice of yarn knotted in her hair). I must remember to lift the rosemary and tote it indoors. . . .

Rain, Tardy Autumn, Clandestine Chocolate Consumption

This past weekend we bopped down to West Virginia to join my friend Kara and a passel of good people in the midst of tents and campfire smoke and amazing food (our last meal before departure consisted of falafel, two kinds of homemade hummus, olives and cheese, and pita bread.) The girls revelled in their first camping trip. Elspeth, absolutely filthy and stinky, ran around the campfire in a way that put ants in my feet soles; Merry threw herself into fire-making and delighted in her first real tent sleep in her Tinkerbell sleeping bag.

Down in that fairly cool hollow near Maryland, the leaves had actually begun to celebrate autumn. Our spirits sagged as we drove back north, into the heat, and Martin remarked dolefully, "The leaves are just drying up and turning brown. I'm afraid we won't have much of an autumn this year."

I am hoping Martin is dead wrong, though the heat has been oppressive and depressing this far into October. As in August, I have been closing windows and curtains in an attempt to capture the relative cool of the night in our house during the day. GLOOMY. I have dragged myself outside for brief spells in the garden. The overwhelming, sharp smell of cilantro gone-to-seed that I harvested this morning almost put me over the edge.

Brussel sprouts cling unnoticed to their stalks; tomatoes rot on their vine. I bypass those in favor of last yellow roses, a bucketful of feverfew, a few lonely stems of lavender. I will not be sorry to see the zinnias blacken and die, dropping their seeds into the ground for next year's spring. The sunflowers are drooping and picked-over by birds; soon the birds will look instead for handfuls of feed tossed into the shelter of their wee houses.

Our yard shows a small dusting of golden maple leaves, but the show this autumn so far is sad and anticlimactic. "Get used to it," Martin says grumpily, throwing new wood on the crackling blaze of angst, "We live in a warming world."

But wait--I bear great tidings. This afternoon, rain pelted from a dark sky. The girls and I stood in the open doorway, jumping deliciously at claps of thunder, watching the rain sweep down our street in sheets. And tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and so on, are forecasted cool, cooler, and cold. Never have I been so excited about pulling out sweaters at last. It jolly well better not be just here for two days again, either. Go away, gulf stream! Begone!

I celebrate now with a bowl of chocolate cookies, eaten secretly, upstairs in my office. Out of my window the walnut leaves are yellowing; the sky is full of cloud. Come frost, come candle-days, come shake-the-window wind. We're ready this time.

Many Doings

Here is an aging horse, bent with weary time, with his blushing young charges.

Dear, dearie me, I say like Papa Panov. Where has the time gone?

This morning Elspeth and I tottered down our rickety steps and began to save the poor potted plants on the deck, pruning geraniums mercilessly in some effort to save them for overwintering in the house. The weather reins warm for October still, soaring happily into the 80's during the day, but a possible freeze shivers in the near future, perhaps Monday.
____________________________________

As a white candle
In a holy place,
So is the beauty
Of an aged face.
(Joseph Campbell: The Old Woman)

Every time we visit Grandpa and Grandma Irene, I am struck by this feeling: This is the way things were meant to be! With the very old and ill beside the young and slightly wild with energy! Elspeth brings Grandpa to life, a man who sleeps much of the day, medicated for Parkinson's. His life is filled with the gentleness of my Grandma Irene, who cares for him daily with humor and tenderness. Workers from Hospice drop by on a regular basis.

When Merry visits, she plays nurse, bringing Grandpa his medicine and bolting out hymns at his bedside in her powerful child's voice. Elspeth touches his face, waves coyly, and eats beside him at the table. When we drive out the short three hours to Ohio, everyone seems to think that we are doing my Grandpa a favor--but they are mistaken. We receive far more from that house than we could ever give--we come away touched by grace that reaches beyond understanding, grace that is patient and truly kind, and at its very center throbs with love. I feel sorry that this is not part of our dailiness, this sharing, and I chalk it up to the imperfect sort of world we dwell in, where those we love are scattered like autumn leaves across a wide expanse, where those we long to touch daily are out of reach.

_______________
So last weekend we visited with Grandpa, Grandma Irene, and my mother, ate inordinate amounts of cake and pie, and arrived home in time for my class to troop over to our house on Monday evening. While I have certainly enjoyed the students in my class, the responsibility of a mere weekly class weighs on my schedule in a rather heavy way, limiting me from staying over the weekend at my Grandpa's, for instance. How I chafe against responsibility of the scheduled, inflexible sort!

In other news, I am considering knocking holes in the kitchen to let in more sunlight. We have no money to hire adequate help and I am slightly terrified of knocking out 100-year-old plaster walls and masonry, a fear that Martin believes is warranted and present for a purpose. (I will not knock holes in the walls, I will not knock holes in the walls.) But I am very, very tempted, especially as I spend almost all day in the kitchen, and it is practically the darkest room in the whole house. I cannot say whether the midwinter doldrums might not press me to insane measures and the swinging of a sledgehammer. . .

Is it the mellowing weather? The leaves on the ficus tree fading to yellow? The walnut tree dropping its bulbous fruit? The blood-red cardinal craning its neck over a fading sunflower? I'm missing old but lovely friends: Tim and Lindsay, I dreamt about you last night; Kurt Cole, wish we could see your brave face. Why are you all, all of you, so very far away?

Embracing the Present

Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present, which very few of us do. --La Bruyere: Les Caracteres

Be a Good Little Monkey and TRY TO STAY OUT OF MISCHIEF

Things I thought I would never type into my Googler:

Brussel Sprout Recipes
White frothy bugs on strawberries
Remove Crayon from Computer Screen

Look, we don't have much of value in our house. When guilt presses about 'having too much stuff' we play the house-burning game: "So the house burns down while we're gone. So what? What do we really lose?" I think of our family heirloom quilts, our photos maybe, and perhaps all the dried herbs, spices, and freezer full of apple treats I've slaved over for the winter. Maybe our good pots and my Wustoff knife. Our TV is super dinky; our books can be replaced; our furniture has mostly been collected at the side of the road or from thrift stores (ditto for our clothes--not from the roadside, but from Goodwill!).

The only things we have doled out a good amount of money for (as far as our standards go) is our blue Subaru and my computer, and maybe our used piano. You may remember that Merry covered our blue Subaru's hood with scratches fairly recently, pretending it was a team of Laura Ingall's horses. That left the used piano and the computer.

This morning Martin jumped out of bed at 4:30 in the morning in order to accompany his group of freshmen to DC's Holocaust museum. It's a long day, and he won't return until near midnight tonight. This left me in a bit of a bind since the girls have been ill lately and my night class falls tonight. My first plans for childcare fell through and so I finagled things so one of my students will take the first hour and I'll arrive late, after putting the little one to bed and receiving good friend Sally to sit with the girls.

There is one problem about the little ones. Merry is a dream child despite small bouts with eye-rolling. Elspeth is a real joy, but she is half monkey. Truly; I kid you not. I assume this monkey gene comes from my side of the family.

Yesterday we were spending a relatively quiet sick day at home when we heard great crashes from the piano. Martin said, "We've got a little Stravinsky on our hands!"

"I prefer a little Chopin," I countered, and then I went in to enjoy the sweet spectacle of my smallest child flexing her little fingers on our upright Yamaha. What I found was Elspeth, grasping the top of the piano and trouncing with her little feet up and down the old black and whites.

We took precautions, such as closing the key cover, but Elspeth is not to be so easily deterred. This morning I turned my head from writing comments on an essay to find that she had climbed the piano like a flight of stairs and was practically perched on the tippy top, where she knocked off the African drum and what-not on top.

Please note I include only her wildest escapades. There are many, many others not listed here that keeps me on my hands and knees not in prayer but in tidy-up.

I scrapped my comments for that moment and proceeded to a much-needed shower. Now, I do not often indulge myself in showers, a fact that my friends probably mourn. Many days finding me gritting my teeth, swiping my hair into a braid, and continuing as before. But today was a shower day, and I really needed one.

It was a lovely bathe, and Elspeth was curiously quiet and content the entire duration. Which leads me to this:

"When children stand quiet, they have done some ill" (George Herbert: Jacula Prudentum).

Hair wrapped in towel, I found my little monkey-child kneeling on my desk, crayon and pen clamped in tight fists, employing my LCD computer screen as an easel.

I need go no further except to advise that if you have a good little monkey who is alas, often very curious, the best remedy for a scribbled computer screen is to buff it, very slowly and patiently, and doubtlessly with a great deal of fear and trembling, with a soft cloth.

If you do not have any little monkeys, think, then, of all you miss, poor soul. How DO you employ time when there are no small daily disasters? I pity you, truly. Borrow my little Elspeth at some point and see the light of a truly exciting existence.

Wazoo's Flowers

Perhaps Wazoo Farm's flowers are at their best in late September. . .

A Good Spray of Worry Be-Gone

Last night, Nancy's three kids came over to watch Pinocchio with my girls. I popped popcorn and passed out organic lollipops and they had a wonderful time. Nancy and I quartered ourselves in the warm kitchen. The scents of simmering apples and Thai chicken lingered in the air. We sipped vanilla lattes while she stitched up napkins, I put away applesauce and folded laundry.

Pinocchio finally ended and Elspeth, hopped up on cane sugar, hopped straight into the sharp edge of my flip top desk, which I had just popped down to write Nancy a check for the squash she brought me from Farmer's Market. Elspeth bounced off the desk into a heap on the floor and after a second began wailing.

Well, let me tell you: I am a no-worry, hands-off kind of parent, and a good thing, too, because Elspeth is a Class A bruiser. I can't count the times she has bashed into things, and she survives all the hair-raising encounters, including the time she fell down my parent's stairwell with an open pair of adult scissors in hand. But last night, Elspeth's crash worried me, because of the sharpness of the desk edge and the fact that I believed it had poked the soft part of her temple by her eye. She evidenced no dizziness or disorientation and I told myself, after she fell soundly and quickly to sleep, and after I read Dr. Sears online, that I probably had nothing to worry over.

But the stillness of the house entered my own chest, and I was a bit afraid. Every parent knows this echoing sort of stillness inside, when you are suddenly and unexpectedly worried over a child. When Merry was born, anxieties were new and constant enough, but with Elspeth I have barely pursued the tense, holding-my-breath and "listening-for-breathing" periods at night.

I believe my own fatigue and Martin's absence (berating his rhyming poetry students) contributed to my anxiety. A startling sense of all that normally seems permanent, to be taken for granted, assumed, suddenly was shaken by a simple but rough bump on the head. My sense of calm, of dailiness, felt shaken.

But of course there was nothing to worry over. After checking on the girls, I fell into a deep sleep and this morning Elspeth was cheerful and engaged in just as much mischief as ever, tipping over vases and what-not. If anything, small encounters with worry--small, and hopefully not unreasonable or wallowing--do make me treasure my children all the more. My Nana was a terrible worrier and her shadow often lingers in my mind as a warning NOT to worry, to trust, to relax and let go. But how hard is that? For every day there is a letting go, a release of what I sense I must hold onto more tightly every minute. But the grasping and the squeezing is a mistake, and makes me smaller inside. I hope for safety and a simple life full of beauty and goodness, but whatever comes to me is a gift, and whatever is taken from me was not mine to begin with.

But when the house is empty and my child has been hurt, this wisdom becomes hard to find through clouds of fear. Peace to you, my child, peace that your mother often struggles to receive. Can parents give gifts they often need most themselves? I do hope so; otherwise, I will have very little to give my girls.

Defeated Again by a Simple Machine

A week or so later, and three bushels of apples still remain on my back porch. Between Martin's classes, my class, the children, doctor's appointments, etc., there just hasn't been the time.

Today, however, still wearing my robe and sans shower, I decided to tackle the apple peeler contraption my good friend Tonya lent me. Tonya's history rivals Laura Pioneer's. She raised and slaughtered her own chickens, cracked the black walnuts her parents had already pulverized with the car wheels, worked long hours in huge gardens, and today still manages a garden, a neat-as-a-pin house, and her job, children, and preserves. She had the compassion to lend me her super-duper simple apple/potato peeler, and today, after a doing silent battle with my shadow-self that doubts my ability to work simple machines, I unpacked what should have been a great time-saver.

I fiddled with the thing for a while. I even read the directions and studied the diagram. I unscrewed bolts and rescrewed them. I stuck a poor MacIntosh onto the three-tipped coring blade. I futilely turned the handle to no avail. The peeler merely massaged the skin of my apple. Finally, in exasperation, I set it aside. Yes, I admit: I have been defeated by yet another simple machine.

I do have something to show for my morning. I peeled three apples by hand, and I finally shucked the sweating bag of corn that has been slumping in a bag on my back porch, soaking up the day's sun. I braved the cheesy smell that the molding corn leaves omitted, removed the fat worms and rot, and parboiled the rest, ready for freezing. I read Elspeth a few books and Merry and I finally changed the sheets on the bed. And two days ago, instead of preparing for my night class, I finally hacked down sheaves of basil, mountained it on my table, and hung it with twine. Our sun room is beginning to near Monk Cadfael's work room in appearance, and the smell is lovely.

Oh, and Sally, another friend and friendly arborist, pointed to our Locust tree and said, "That's a black walnut."

"No!" I reassured her. "That's a locust."

"Are you SURE?" she asked. "Look at the green pods."

"Those are conkers," I reassured her again. I know this from watching Kipper the Dog.

A period followed where we waded through the high grass to study the green pods, while Sally mildly mocked my use of the word "conker" and generally insisted on the black walnut idea.

Well, I'll be jiggered, as they say.

Martin looked up the black walnut that night, and a perfect pictorial description popped up on our screen. The tree at the bottom of the hill, and my inspiration tree that grows outside my office window--they are indeed black walnut trees. I'll be a hen's niece. I feel like a cad, as if I have been calling a good friend by the wrong name for a good year without knowing it.

Which, by the way, I seem to do at regular intervals at my night class, to the blank, somewhat injured responses of my students. I think I lost most of their confidence when I called emphatically called a chap "Joe," when there has never, and will never be, anyone named Joe in my classroom.

Defeated by machines and names. Well, it could be worse, after all.

And now I need a shower and then on to apple peeling, the old fashioned way.

Pots of Applesauce

For girl's night tonight (Martin's night class evening), Merry chose to watch part of Little Women. I sat next to her, tired out from my apple-baking marathon. Today at the Farmer's Market, I purchased four bushels of MacIntosh apples. My regular apple lady, who usually has truck loads of multiple varieties all autumn, had to dig to find a couple bags of Gala, a variety I prefer for eating. First my favorite local apple growers were hit with an untimely freeze, then with a frost and finally with hail. While I worried briefly about my own apple-baking/saucing supply for winter, they must worry about how they will pay bills. A life of a farmer, as a friend pointed out, is not any easy one. But the friendly woman across the table smiled as usual. Her face is beautiful and I can only surmise its textures reflect the orchard she loves and tends, etched as it is with laugh lines, warmed and tanned by the sun.

Elspeth begged loudly for an apple. I loaded heaving bags of blushing red and green apples into her stroller and she and Merry bit happily into Galas, with the crisp crunch! that only marks fresh autumn apples.

This afternoon, encouraged along by NPR (until I got sick of NPR voices) and a long conversation with my sister, I peeled, cored, and chopped the first bushel, and then I baked a quadruple recipe of my favorite Dutch apple bread, which tastes far more like cake than any boring old bread. I use a recipe from More With Less, but I doctor it with half oil, half whole wheat pastry flour, extra cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, exta apples, and a healthy coating of cinnamon sugar. It makes a creamy, buttery batter that you feel like eating even before it lands in the oven.

Martin took the girls to the park, dropped them hastily in the door, and took off. By this time apple bread covered the stove top, and Elspeth managed to crumble a piece all over the downstairs rooms. Just in time to save Elspeth from bedtime (she was overjoyed and proceeded to wreak mischief, turning on my coffee maker, dumping water out of a pail and over her feet, and demanding a lollipop), a good friend arrived at the door. Her little girl clambered up our front stairs with a gallon of homemade apple cider. Evidently her grandfather had recently found a few old apple trees on their property; they had chopped the apples and cranked out frothy, dark cider.

My pot of browning apple pieces sat ready on the stove. Just before Little Women, I added some cider and cinnamon and left the apples to simmer. Soon the house filled with a deep, earthy scent. Due to my comatose state in front of the TV, I actually let the apples overboil just a tad, but the only harm that did was to create a smoother applesauce than I usually turn out. I mixed in some brown sugar and a little more cinnamon, and Merry and I shared a warm bowl of apple sauce--tangy and perfect as pie filling--just before bedtime.

Only three more bushels to go. Before I hit the other orchard, that is. I heard Little Green Apples actually mixes different varieties in the same bushel. Hoorah for autumn, for Pennsylvania and its apple orchards! Hoorah for Johnny Appleseed! Hoorah for big freezers!

Where Faith and Learning Intersect, by Merry

[I am dictating for Merry here, just before bedtime. For those of you who wonder about the intersection of faith and learning, a good example follows, complete with preface and conclusion. All by Merry:]

The story is so people can know they're going to heaven someday, but the story isn't really true. The story was kind of made up by a very good author that wrote it, and if you would like to write it down on your computer, you can do it if you want to. And you can teach this to your children. Even if your children don't know the song, you can teach them the story. PS. If you want to ever listen to this song, you can just come over for a show to my house so you can learn about the song more easily. . .and because the author told it in a very imaginative way.

[SONG FOLLOWS:]

Six and Seven went to heaven, all upon a summer's day!
When they got there, did they pray!
And they were overjoyed to see God in heaven,
And when they saw him they were so happy to pray.
And find the way
to go to heaven.
But no one knew where Six and Seven had gone to heaven,
But Two did know,
And Two did show,
When Two got there she said, Who are you?. . .
And Savior said, You three, what are you doing here for me?
And then Two said, We want to see the Savior.
And so Six and Two and Seven went back to their normal place
where they did live forever.
And they did die and went to heaven one day.

[pause]

Oh, I have another thing for the author's note. This is so you can learn your numbers by counting by sevens. You can look at it in your book and count along if you want to. You can even look at it on blog. But make sure to remember this song!

Woman Glimpses Autumn, More in Love Than Ever

The windows are open to the breezes, and the breezes are cool and light, and full of the promise of fall. I feel like a bird who has been released from under a stone. While some dread the weather turning as a bleak foreshadowing to winter, I have never been so grateful for the tint of yellow in the trees outside my window, for the rain that crushed the humidity and sent heavy heat away to some other corner of America. Good riddance!

I decided to let all that would go to seed in the garden, hoping that the birds will gather their own harvest. The sunflowers are heavy and bent with seeds. I've the let the kale go, hoping that just in time the weather will turn and its bitter leaves will sweeten.

I feel the promise of clean air, blankets on beds, big pots of cinnamoned applesauce simmering. Already I turned out gallons of grape juice and freezer jelly from the concord miracles our friends shared with us. The hot grape juice tasted for all the world like mulling cider, and suddenly we are all alight with the excitement of autumn.