underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun
April 26, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
i forget the laundry on the line, the towels, the shoes that were muddied in the last rain storm’s puddles, washed and hanging in the gray sunlight to dry. it rains a mist and jude stands in the doorway blowing bubbles that swirl in colors against the haggard sky, the late blooming pecan trees, the shed with ivy creeping through the cracks, bringing green inside to the dark and musty.
we drive past yards of grass, thousands of blades of the stuff spearing green through the red clay mud and up to stand tall and proud in the sky. the people with these yards take the grass for granted, never walking over it with bare feet, and certainly never lying down in it while finding the giraffe, the motorcycle, the towers in the clouds. they walk in straight lines behind mowers and mark the task off their lists. they go inside and forget all about the grass until the week passes and the time comes to cut it down again.
jude digs for the sake of it, dumping dirt, sand, gravel, unfortunate earthworms (”look mom, the worm is driving!“) into truck and bucket. he likes the dirtlands, the haul of gravel, in the sunny spot of the yard.
you with grass, with clover in lucky bunches, with green that clouds your yard in a spring squinting haze, appreciate it, mark it down on your own tidy lists to stand in it, scatter your worries out over it, pluck it up in long stems and save it in clear jars, bottles.
sculpture, music
April 22, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
“when you’re done here, we’re going inside to take a bath and clean that off,” i say. “yeah, i need to clean my feet, and my pinky!” agrees jude. nevermind the rest of your mud-caked body.
uttered
April 16, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
it’s hard to be small, to have more nos than yeses in the day, to be full of ideas that are too dangerous or socially unacceptable, like using power tools, or spitting wherever and on whatever or whomever you please. but it’s hard to be parents, too. sometimes when i’m teaching and parents are sitting on the floor helplessly while their lone two year old loudly sings, “the twelve days of christmas” while everyone else is singing “hush, little baby,” i feel relief, a universal relief that we all get to do this, that we all have bits and pieces of the crazy we carry around with us, that it’s not just me and my inability to mirror heavenly parenthood as perfectly as i think that i should, that all kids make loud and embarassing proclamations about the darkness of the skin of the woman standing two feet away from our anemic complexions, the magnitude of fatness that is causing “that man right there buying cereal!” to limp down the aisle, the high-volumed awed and adoring of “that cute little man with the goatee” who stands as tall as henry.
here is a gem: henry as photographer being pointed at with a grown up finger while jude looks on. so pink. such pictures taken by henry make us very aware of exactly what it’s like to be small and mischevious, and, more importantly, what it looks like from such an angle to be pointed at accusingly. i’m sure our mutual snapping out with a yell and crabby expressions involving gritted teeth and eyebrows look worse. maybe we should have henry take pictures of that.
wrapped up in clover
April 13, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
at last! no longer does the word coffee itself bring waves of yuck along my way. three cheers for the second trimester.
hazel-rah?
April 10, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
dear easter bunny,
thank you ever-so-much for the eggs hidden throughout the house and the clever clues within that led us to the educational yet entertaining bug jar with magnifying glasses and oversized tweezers, the butterfly net, and the sand digging tools of great sturdiness. thank you also for the colossal amounts of chocolate and the absence of the marshmallow peeps that we all love but do not enjoy the inevitable hardening of due to the inability to eat the box entire in one sitting. we appreciate this thoughtfulness and have already enjoyed your generosity by magnifying everthing in the house that will fit into the bug jar, by catching the cat in the net, and by running rampant through the house with the sand wagon while playing the same two chords on a harmonica that some other benevolent lover of noise and chaos has gifted to our children.
we feel the need, however, to request, nay, to demand, that you never again nest hollow chocolate bunnies and golden wonka eggs in a warren of wood shred easter grass. yes, our superior aesthetic demands something more than cheap and wrinkly plastic grass that multiplies upon being thrown to the floor in excitement. we are certain that you had this in mind when delivering your spring gifts to us this past weekend. and we are also certain that you were unaware of the splintering properties of shredded wooden easter grass, nor were you aware of the fact that it is impossible to vaccum said grass from carpet as upon hitting the floor each individual spear tangles itself into the pile of the carpet (destined to be ripped-from-the-floor and rolled-to-the-curb carpet regardless), and that after attempting to vacuum the mess from the floor the vacuum becomes severely clogged, the unclogging of which takes a considerable amount of time, energy and patience.
thank you again for your generosity. and thank you ahead of time for your complete cooperation in this matter regarding shredded bits of dyed yellow wood never darkening the doors of this humble, yet cozy, home ever again.
fondly,
the parents of the magical greene children
milk and toast and honey, and a bowl of oranges, too
April 5, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
this morning we woke to cold that snuck on a dreaming wave into our room and wiggled down slightly under the covers. i was dreaming in LOST and didn’t want to wake up. barefeet complain and ask for socks. i wish that coffee sounded good to me and remember that it will sound good again soon.
my ten free trees from the arbor day people arrived in a solitary and rather sorry looking package. when planted, they will look like the twigs that henry sticks into the ground when building fences behind which he hides trucks and soldiers. someone will step on, mow over, drive atop them and that will be that. the pink dogwood across the street throws out her branches in a reach for the white dogwood around the corner of the neighboring house. the lazy splay of flowering sticks are careless as i look at my twigs and wonder exactly what to do.
we bake bread every other day in this house this week. teaching is nearly non-existent this week as we’re on a spring break. we bake bread and cookies and yucky granola bars and shining bread that everyone eats with honey for breakfast and snacks. “how virtuous you are!” sharon says and we, for some reason, snicker together. the boys and i read books in the bed and clean the house regularly and stand in the yard waiting for ernie to come home.
the dishwasher, the washing maching, all spray and whirr and churn together. it’s no longer morning. henry paces in the kitchen waiting for cookies that he smushed into globs on the cookie sheet. the cat naps with one eye on the lookout for jude and his eager squeezes. jude sleeps himself in his room, dark and blanketed, the ruins of a morning tent blocking the path to the door.
places to go, people to read
April 4, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
after a long hiatus, we’ve revamped our oft admired got me a college girl blog to encompass christian women’s issues beyond the formal education of women. come, see!
additionally, mother dearest has started a new blog for mothers at home with their children, especially those who are homeschooling. she’s got a podcast, too, but the blog reading is the best part (no offense, mom). go, take a gander!
smiling things
April 2, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
breakfast
open windows
white curtains
morning rain
subsequent mud
bass guitar players
free circus tickets
meaty hula hooping girl who was very brave in her sequined lack of clothing
clown children in red noses
white dogwoods glowing at dark
first plants purchased
boys digging for earthworms
homemade dishwashing detergent that smells like lemon pudding
henry in red shorts and cowboy boots
popsicles
spring break
henry’s drawings
jude and underwear
march issues of martha stewart living
buying garden tools
paint chips
boys using chapstick
first rise of the bread
murphy’s soap
unsweetened tea
library books
jude’s freckles
tolerant cat
giving stuff away
friday night jazz