weekending
November 30, 2010 | Filed Under ordinary, weekending | 1 Comment
most of my weekend was spent searching for stray socks and toys and gloves, packing to come home, eating queso sauce and chips, and in the car for the long drive south. it always feels longer going back home. no series of venti extra shot coffees can make it shorter. the kids are champion travelers, really, only a little bickering and a seemingly long, though not really that long, stretch of crying from lola who is still young enough to think that if she cries, “i want to get out of this carseat” long enough that we will let her out of the carseat. thanks to the free design kids cd she mellowed out and we all survived. more weekending pics here.
this week i’m catching up on orders, pushing lola in the swing ernie’s parents hung for her while we were gone, slowly putting out the christmas things and wondering if i should get rid of at least half of it. we have so many weird ornaments, a conglomeration of things the kids have made, ornaments ernie’s mom made him every year of his very life, thrifted ephemera, things i’ve made, garlands in vast abundance, some animals annie made. i just can’t prune through it, i don’t think. it’s the only time of year i can be as gaudy as possible in one brilliant ball of colored lights, yarn, and one eyed reindeer.
you went up on a tree
November 26, 2010 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
heading home this weekend, home to big daddy and max, to christmas lights and christmas creations and christmas surprises. it didn’t snow here, we didn’t go to skateland (sorry, husband, for insisting we bring the roller skates). we did buy an old wire bird cage, meander around farm king, ate too much for at least one day. we saw my parents, all of my brothers, all of their wives, all of their children. my grandma didn’t get a perm and we told her we liked her smooth, white hair.
there are only a few years like these, our children, yet little children, ourselves, still much the same. this time i got some of that for a souvenir to tack up on my mind’s wall, to pour like sand in a carefully labeled jar.
gratitudes
November 25, 2010 | Filed Under extraordinary, familial, lists | Leave a Comment
walks in the trees, cold winds, mud underfoot, giant mushrooms, hedge apples by the armful, white trees that grow forever, grandpa, my dad, nieces, nephews, hot chocolate, hot coffee, all day cooking, heaps of dinner and heaps more, making kids pilgrim hats and indian head-dresses, pie for now and again for later, loud laughter, kids everywhere until bedtime, kids tucked in bed, late night movies, sleeping in with my love.
there are many things i’m often thankful for, my husband, my children, health and strength. and then we come together with almost everyone i’ve always known and i can see in a glimmer that God has looked on me with way more love than i can imagine and that for some reason i am very blessed.
galloping here, galloping there
November 24, 2010 | Filed Under ordinary | 1 Comment
this man offered to give my son a horse. “i’ll give him to you for free,” he said. jake the horse is thirty years old and needs someone to love him. it was very sweet and if we didn’t live in a city and if we didn’t have to trot old jake all the way from here to there, i might have agreed to the terms, which were love and sweet feed.
he was smoking a cigar in the store, the stub of it between his fingers as he waved them at us with great animation. he was very handsome once, still, though he’d lost most of his teeth. i am good with iphone sneakiness and have joined the hipsters and the instagram craze. i wish i were bolder with strangers and a real camera, but am not.
he told us that he’d had horses all his life. sometimes i feel like my days seem to drag on slow and long and forever and then i meet people like this man and know that it wasn’t very long ago at all that he was young and free and strong. but now he holds more memories than dreams in his hands and i’m sure some days he can’t believe he’s an old and toothless man. i wish i were more thoughtful about this kind of thing. it’s very hard to be a mindful and present person.
doxology
November 23, 2010 | Filed Under extraordinary | Leave a Comment
november, one of my favorite months. a month that pulls in the next season, a month that holds a promise, the june of the winter. i like the last few golds in the trees before the quiet, the cold, the black. i know november best in illinois where the fields unfold like a dark blanket tied in crooked straw brown yarn, spread from my feet and flicking out far and further into air and sky, the trees in a line holding their hands across in perfect spindles, marking boundaries and a wall for the wind.
lonesome windmills, unconcerned cattle in specks on the hillside, wire fences bent and crooked along the highway, the sun a white light spill strewn out across the landscape, a golden world without end until the night falls in cold stars and miles.
weekending
November 22, 2010 | Filed Under weekending | 4 Comments
we traveled to illinois this weekend for the upcoming holiday. four of my brothers were here, cousins and grandparents of all kinds, blankets on floors, hundreds of shoes in the hallway. there is a cat that likes us all here, a constant pot of coffee in the kitchen, an early rising grandma for the kids to join while we sleep in. today there is sun, a windy 65 degrees all around. kids in the mud with sticks and sometimes hooded jackets. one brother and his wife have left us already, another brother, wife and brood come tomorrow. it’s a week of family brigades, a ukelele, three stooges marathons, cousin olympics, way too much food, thrifting (midwestern thrifting is the best!), antique stores, noise, mayhem, sleeping babies, literal guffawing, miles upon miles of black soil and so much sky, so very much. (a few more weekending photos here)
i take to sleep again
November 17, 2010 | Filed Under lists, ordinary | Leave a Comment
bits of cheer
driving in the quiet and dark, lola asleep in the backseat
packing the suitcases for grandma’s house
boys drawing portraits of all of us
enthralled max in the car for a ride
giant yellow leaf, a prize jude finds in the yard
shakespeare with sharon
little purple flowers sprawling under the rosebush, yet
kids singing in a microphone in the living room, amp and all for the amplification of it
homemade masks
weekending
November 16, 2010 | Filed Under ordinary, weekending | 2 Comments
this weekend the kids stayed with a wisteria pod bearing annie and ate popcorn and played blindman’s bluff while ernie and i meandered around downtown on a date we’d not had in a very long time. there were various foods involved (sweet potato fries. jalepeno ketchup. cheesecake ice cream.) and street musicians (not very good street musicians) and we were handed many gospel tracts by kids handing them out all over the place. (brief tangent: i am a christian and even so i have to admit that it was really annoying to be interrupted every minute or so to say, “we got one” to the enthusiastically smiling person offering us another. the tracts don’t really tell you about Jesus, who he is and what it means to know him at all. i don’t think that can be said in a couple hundred words with illustrations of hell bordering the page. /end tangent).
on saturday lola and i hit another estate sale at a house with a wonderfully secret garden kind of back yard: overgrown trees, terraces with cracked bricks, walls around the whole place. we came home with a one eyed deer for the kids’ winter wonderland and a wool granny square blanket crocheted by the former owner when she “lived in england and lived through long dark winters.” i like it that the lady in the kitchen with all the cabinet doors flung open told me this. it’s nice to know a story about some of the old things that are all over our house.
there was also some lipstick shopping (success) grocery shopping, working, girls taking a couple of long walks, boys and some basketball playing. we made pizza that kind of flopped (too much whole wheat flour), played wii, and watched leave it to beaver. the dog had a bath, the kids had a couple of baths, we went to church and community group, and after the kids were lost in their beds i tried to make some things but fell asleep for a few hours folded up in a terrible contortion on a chair.
quick, said the bird
November 11, 2010 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
the pup, he naps in the yard, a yellow sun poured out on his back, on the leaves that have fallen, the leaves that twirl in the wind, the leaves that still hold fast to the trees.
boys, one in the tree, one on the playhouse, sticks in their hands, ever a shout in their mouths. shoes and socks cast off for the sun, for better climbing and faster running. it’s november but there’s nothing cold about the lazy afternoon before the early dark.
lola on her tricycle, around and back again. she’s singing a melody i know, to words she’s making up. figure eights and circles, fast and slow, she steers and pedals and she is half grown. the trees across the road fill with birds by thousands, black wings through white yellow paper leaves. lola stops to listen, to watch, the call and shriek of bird a song for her mind to remember.
every which way the wind blows he takes with him a wave of leaves, a wall in the sky of brown and red, snaps and claps in a whoosh! alongside. the pomegranates were taken by the birds this year but the tree itself is a blazing mess of branches at the corner of the garden. in the fall the untidy places in the yard are forgiven, vines and overgrown plants a glorious tangle, no apologies in their mouths like there are in the dark and wet of winter, the perfect green of summer.
they whisper you might
November 9, 2010 | Filed Under lists, ordinary | 2 Comments
there’s still a stash of candy in the house. those kit kats? they’re long gone. as is most of the chocolate. i’m ready to let them have at it and get their tummy aches and be done with it already.
done recently
roller skated
dog napped in the chair
crunched stray kix underfoot
sent the kids out into the leaves
worried about rotten teeth in kid mouths
cleaned the studio
played the piano
ate sweet potatoes
thought about recently
eating sweet potatoes
making christmas gifts
my new glasses
cleaning the boys room. again.
taking that stuff to goodwill
sneaking socks from ernie’s drawer