What's Making Me Happy This Week

[Actually, this is what was making me happy last week and I'm just now getting to putting it up]

1.  Shakespeare's Henry V -- We've been reading about the Hundred Years' War in history and finally got to Henry the Fifth and the Battle at Agincourt. This former English teacher could not pass up the opportunity to find a few clips of the Kenneth Branagh movie and give the kids their first real introduction to Shakespeare.  Say what you like about Branagh, about Shakespeare, about Henry the Fifth even, but just try to watch this snippet of the play without feeling your blood start to rise and your heart start to beat a bit faster.  The kids were entranced.  Iain very seriously declared afterwards, "Mom, if you get that whole movie from the library, I am going to watch it with you.  The whole thing.  I am."

2.  Bunk Beds -- Look at the boys' new digs!  Calum calls it the "bonk bed."

 

3.  Doughnut Muffins -- Is it a doughnut?  Is it a muffin?  Who cares? They're marvelous, simply marvelous.

4. Help in the Kitchen -- Ana made dinner last week, Spaghetti Pie and Very Berry Shortcakes from this great kids' cookbook.  What fun! What a treat!! What a mess!!!

5.  Outside Time -- Go outside, kids!!!  I don't care what you do there, just go outside!

You'll Never Shop Alone

I never go grocery shopping alone.

Oh, sometimes I get to enjoy the luxury of getting into the car by myself and driving to the grocery store while listening to NPR on the radio and not having to talk three children out of using "the car cart" and not having to try to steer through crowded aisles of shoppers with one child hanging off the front of the cart, one hanging off the side, and one scrunched underneath, looking up at me while clinging to the underside of the basket.  Sometimes I get to go and be quiet and not find myself saying every few minutes or so, "watch out!" "pay attention!" "excuse me, wide load coming through!" or "Please, please, please, please stop kicking him/pushing the cart into the shelves of coffee/pretending to re-enact commercials for every product in the store/asking for miniwheats or goldfish or ice cream or animal crackers or whatever."  Sometimes I get to walk through the doors by myself, my list in my hand, humming and carefree.

But I'm never alone. 

The moment I walk through the door, I'm immediately surrounded by an entire crowd of people, pressing and jostling against me, tugging at my sleeve, coughing meaningfully in my ear.  It's not like they're strangers.  I know them all.  On the one side are The Blog Ladies.  These women are legion and they are loud, and they are each saying different things. I can hear "Sprouted Wheat Lady" having an argument with "Gluten Free Lady" who is standing on the toes of  both "Paleo Lady" and "Organic Kale Smoothie Lady" at the same time, while "I can Feed My Family of Twelve for $50.00 a Week Lady" is digging through her coupon file and "Makes her Own Goat Cheese Lady" looks slightly disgusted at the whole thought of being in a grocery store in the first place, and "Butter Flour Sugar Lady" just grins, gives a little whoop and pumps the air with her fist.  They all talk with chipper bright sincerity that becomes in turn confidential, gossipy, and slightly superior.  They all look pretty good, and they certainly seem to know what they're talking about, but to whom should I listen?  The one yelling the loudest?  The prettiest?  The one who looks the most like a pioneer?  The one who's done the most research?

Speaking of research, on another side, I can see Wendell Berry and Robert Farrar Capon, followed closely by Barbara Kingsolver and Michael Pollan -- it's The Scholarly Set.  They're not quite as loud as The Blog Ladies but these are Writers who have published Books on actual paper, and they walk with a sense of authority and all-knowingness. They have answers for everything, and not just answers, but compelling, persuasive lines of reasoning that help me to see how, if I can just get it right, good grocery shopping is going to help save the world. And it doesn't matter how often I argue with them, "look, not everyone can inherit a farm in Virginia or Kentucky or wherever! Not everyone can afford to live in Berkeley and shop at Farmer's Markets every weekend!  Not everyone can actually spend 30 minutes chopping an onion," they just look at me and explain a little more, do a few more calculations, tell a few more stories, recite a few more lines of poetry, and I just have to give up.

Trailing behind in their sensible shoes are my Dutch Ancestors.  This is the quietest group of all; they are taciturn and silent, but you can feel their disapproval buzzing like an electric current through the air: "Is she really going to pay that for that? Well, I'd never spend that much money on an "avocado" (what's an avocado?), but to each his own.  I guess."  They raise their eyebrows at outlandish purchases like arugula and raspberries and hormone-free milk and can't quite believe that I bypass the Jello aisle entirely.  It is the dollars and cents that matter, they say in their quiet, forceful way, and they are dumbfounded that a descendant of theirs would stand in front of the pork tenderloins and agonize several minutes over the question, "Organic?  Non-Organic? None at all?" Walking with them is Budget Man in a tall dark suit, wearing glasses and carrying a calculator.  He clears his throat pointedly every time my hand reaches for a bag of King Arthur flour or a package of whole bean coffee.  I catch him rolling his eyes and sighing at my lack of self-control.

Then, too, I am here in the midst of this crowd, and I have my own opinions to deal with.  Sometimes I'm feeling energetic and virtuous and willing to go through with any number of culinary experiments, to make my own tortillas, to eschew breakfast cereal, to buy only free-range eggs.  Sometimes I fancy myself a bit of a foodie and I'm curious about things like rapini and bok choy and spelt flour and rice noodles and I just want to try them and see what I think.  And sometimes, I am tired and pressed and rushed and all I really want to do is buy a package of hot dogs, a matching package of spongy white buns, a bag of potato chips and some ice cream and just be done with it.  

Round about the time I'm nearing the end of my list, walking the half mile that it takes to get from one end of the store to the other because I forgot to pick up lemons on my first trip through the produce department, and the cacophony around me is getting overwhelming and I have a mammoth headache and my jaw is wound tight from being clenched for my entire trip and my stomach is in knots, right about then is when I want to turn on them all and say, "OK, enough.  Thanks for your input and suggestions.  Some of you are obviously really smart and some of you have great ideas, but look: I am just trying to do the best that I can here.  Look at my cart.  LOOK AT IT!  Look at what's not in there.  Look at what is in there.  Yes, I'll probably go over my grocery budget again this month.  Yes, I am going to walk out of here with organic strawberries for $4.29 a pound when the regular ones were on sale for $1.99 a pound.  Yes, I am buying white flour and brown sugar.  Look hard and you'll maybe find grapes that were grown in Chile.  For that matter, virtually everything in my cart came from more than 100 miles away.  I am doing the best that I can under the circumstances, so back off!"

Sometimes, that shuts them up long enough for me to hear the one voice that has been completely overwhelmed the whole time.  The one voice that actually helps me breathe a little easier. The one voice which says, "Hey.  You don't have to worry about what you'll eat or what you'll drink, or even what you'll wear for that matter.  Those robins on your front lawn?  Those cardinals and red-winged blackbirds in your backyard trees?  They don't have to fret about what they're going to eat -- I take care of them, and I'm going to take care of you too.  After all, you're way more important to me than they are.  Just keep doing the best you can and don't worry."

And honestly?  While that still, small, Holy message might not solve all my immediate grocery shopping worries, it does help me breathe more easily, helps the tension ease out of my shoulders, helps me clear away that gaggle of voices out of my head, helps restore my sanity enough so that when the cashier asks me how I'm doing, I can honestly say, "Not bad, actually.  How are you?"

What's Making Me Happy This Week

1.  The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong -- I know that this book was read to me as a child, but, other than the fact that it takes place in Holland, there is eventually a wheel on a school, and there are storks, I couldn't remember much about it.  Iain, Ana, and I have been reading this book together in the afternoons, and it has totally enchanted and engrossed us.  In some ways it is a small story, but DeJong tells it with such quiet, confidant beauty and care that it seems almost epic and there are elements of it that I appreciate now in ways that I'm sure went right over my head as a child.  In a roundabout way, it is a perfect argument for community-inspired interest-based learning and against a national Common Core Curriculum we're hearing so much about these days.  The teacher in the story takes advantage of a teachable moment to allow his students to create a real-life educational project that eventually involves and transforms their entire village, and all because he was willing to set aside "the plan" for the moment and let his students' imaginations run wild: "We can't think much when we don't know much.  But we can wonder!  From now until tomorrow morning when you come to school again, will you do that?  Will you wonder why and wonder why?  Will you wonder why storks don't come to Shora to build their nests on the roofs, the way they do in all the villages around?  For sometimes, when we wonder, we can make things begin to happen.  If you'll do that -- then school is out right now!" [I know this book was published in 1954 and won the 1955 Newbery Award, so it's not like I think I made a new discovery or anything, but it's so fun to re-read these books as an adult and realize the depths of their goodness.]

2.  Watching the Mr. perform his first baptism last week -- While we're still realizing the full impact of what exactly it means to be pastor and pastor's family, it's pretty clear that one of the amazing parts of it is being invited to walk alongside people in the midst of their most joyous, and most difficult, times.  This baptism was full on joy and celebration, and the fact that we ended the service singing "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" complete with piano, guitar, banjo, and harmonica (and congregational clapping -- !!!) was icing on the cake.

3. Three kids, six wheels:

4.  We've had enough sun for lots of shovels and digging, even a little ground clearing and rhubarb planting.  Spring seems to be well and truly here, hallelujah!

5.  "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize" by Sara Groves -- This song has been hidden in my itunes library for a while now and popped up the other day and caught me tearful by surprise.  Just what I needed.

House Hunting

When we first started house shopping, we had a pretty distinct picture in our heads of what we wanted: a little house in the big woods at the end of a winding dirt road, with a few acres for the kids to roam, room for chickens, a garden, a dog or two, and maybe a goat.  Solitude.  Unspoiled nature.  Beauty.  Pretty much this, in fact:

Oh, and if we could have an incredible view from the front porch to sit and look at in the twilight while drinking hot chocolate and listening to the Mr. playing his banjo, so much the better:

Sounds romantic and idealistic and hardly possible in the real world, right?  But kids can dream, and dream we did.  We combed through real estate websites and weighed and pondered, scratched our heads and wondered how we might make it work.  Could we realistically buy a tiny 3-bedroom fixer-upper that needed to be gutted from the inside out and make it work?  Could we live 25 minutes away from church and be sane and happy?  45 minutes?  How deeply into debt were we willing to go?  

  

After a few months of looking and a few days with a realtor, and a few hours of actual deliberation, what we ended up with was this:

It's a little house in a little subdivision, just off a busy main highway.  It has a small yard with maybe room for a dog and a patch of garden.  The view is of the other side of the street and not particularly spectacular, and we didn't exactly get the solitude we were dreaming of; we are bounded by neighbors on every side.  

On the one hand, there's a bit of disappointment that our dream didn't materialize into reality.  Given the real estate market in the area and the location of the church, we might have been able to find something a little closer to our ideal.  Might.  If we had been willing to wait long enough and look hard enough. 

But at some point, you have to stop hovering and just land.  You have to let go of the blissful ideal and take the real as it comes, as it's offered.  You have to release your rose-tinged memories of Jerusalem, and put down roots, even if it feels like you're in Babylon.  In the words of Jeremiah the prophet to the exiled Israelites:  "Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce.   Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare" (Jeremiah 29:5-7).    

I'd be lying if I said we didn't still feel a bit like exiles, strangers in a very strange land, our hearts planted in other far-away soil.  But now, this is home, and as it turns out, there are a lot of wonderful things about this house-home. We didn't have to crack open a single can of paint or lay a square of hardwood flooring in order to make it live-able.  There were crocuses coming up the day we took possession of it, and now there are rows of daffodils and hyacinths and the promise of lilacs and roses. It's five minutes away from church and this amazing playhouse is in our backyard:

and there is even a white picket fence at the side!

And, we have Neighbors!  While my soul still may crave the solitude of the cabin in the woods, I'm beginning to see why this house on this street may have been the very best place for us at this time.  There are kids who play basketball with the hoop that the former owners left in our driveway and neighbors who chat as they rake leaves and walk their dogs.  For these introverts, who would always choose a quiet little cabin all by itself, being plunked down in the middle of a bunch of people may turn out to be a very good thing.

Much to be Thankful For

What's Making Me Happy This Week, (and last week, and possibly next week too. . .)

[It's been a busy few weeks around here, but we're finally sitting down and catching our breath and taking stock of what's happened.  This blog will catch up too, soon, but for now, just a few things to celebrate. . . ]

In our front yard, no less!!!!!

Some things are worth waiting for. . . 

Sap Run

Just when you think it will never come
that the sky will be forever grey
and veined by branches spindly bare
that the earth has drunk the wine
of Henry Hudson's crew and will sleep for twenty years,
that green is only a memory
and a distant one at that,
You hear the song of the sap,
humming and bubbling in the maple's soul
coursing, flowing, running
rising, rising, rising!
Life lurks deep within
waiting to be tapped
and pooled
and boiled
and boiled
and boiled
and sipped,
sweet as spring after the longest winter
sweet as hope made sure
sweet as resurrection.