At the home place once more

This past weekend, a super sale on airfare enabled us to fly the family back to Indiana to surprise my dad for his 70th birthday.  He had just had surgery to repair a torn patellar tendon, so our trip was also a wish-you-well visit.  Although the process of traveling -taking a red-eye, sitting in cramped seats, waiting for a rental car - is not always pleasant, the excitement of being on a journey, on a vacation, even if very short, and the joy of arrival, the pleasures of being together, always overwhelm the minor inconveniences.

One of the refreshing parts of this trip was the preview of fall weather.  The leaves hadn't changed to auburn and gold yet, but the light was different, the air was crisp, and a few fall wildflowers bloomed in autumn shades.  It was a brief respite from the eternal summer of southern California. (A friend once assured me that San Diego does change in the fall - the days are shorter because of daylight savings time. And actually, the sun shines more, because the marine layer dissipates.) 

There are two types of walks in the woods: A walk with family or friends, full of cheerful chatter, crunching leaves, comforting companionship, and high spirits. And then there is the walk taken alone, marked by deep breaths of the scent of decaying leaves, that bittersweet quality of recognition that time is passing but joy exists in this moment, a swell of poetic appreciation, heightened senses, gratitude. They both are satisfying. 

A friend who has four boys once said that her family is only happy when burning fuel.  That could be said of our family -- except that we are also very happy to be consuming fuel.  

And much delicious fuel was consumed over the weekend. We picked up donuts after our predawn arrival at the famous Long's Donut shop in Indianapolis where there was a line formed before it opened at 5:30 am. That was the gift we surprised my dad with when we walked into my parents' house while they were still asleep.  Friday night was Oktoberfest at my sister's church, Saturday was a BBQ party with the extended family, and Sunday after church we lunched on leftovers and then for supper feasted on freshly harvested garden produce and beef from one of my parents' butchered Belties.   

A couple of other highlights of the weekend: One, hearing my sister sing in both her bands at a fall festival. She surprised me with her talent. I knew she was good at playing the cello and guitar and that she was teaching herself to play the banjo, but her vocal talents have developed since the days when we competed to sing the loudest along with the cassette tapes we dubbed from our cousins and friends. Her bands, one a female trio that sings folk songs and hymns and one a Grateful Dead cover band but also good at soul music, were really good - looking forward to their next recording.

I also noted how relaxed this fall fest was.  The trend for festivals at our last couple of parishes is to do things up fancy, but then people come, eat, spend tickets on jumpies and carnival games, and then to leave to go the next thing on their schedule. They don't really hang around. I loved that at this midwestern church, it seemed that people came to this festival to spend the evening. They sat around. The kids ran around throwing balls and jumping on hay bales, while they sported painted mustaches and butterflies on their faces. The beer tent sold bottomless cups. The adults listened to the music and talked. No one seemed in a hurry or stressed out. 

A second highlight was how much all the cousins enjoy each other's company. They only see each other a couple times a year, but they fall right into the patterns of companionship they've known for years.  The teen group now hovers in a bunch near the countertop covered with chips and cheese or lounges by the fire pit where they exchange tales or tease. Who knows what they talk about. They are a gangly bunch and seem to find comfort in their mutual dis-ease of adolescence.  

Meanwhile, the preteen group raced in perpetual motion from one activity to the next. They spent hours resecuring the fort they built last summer. They begged to drive the new Polaris ATV or at least to ride with one of the uncles willing to speed through the orchard and careen around the back field. They chased after balls and threw things in the fire and got dirty and sweaty and hungry.  Somehow they devoured half an entire sheet cake, several dozen sugar cookies, an enormous tray of banana pudding, and half a chocolate bundt cake, in addition to the barbecue, macaroni, beans, coleslaw, and other sides that formed the main meal. Then they begged for s'mores after nightfall. Calories burned faster than they could be absorbed. 

While not quite as active as that middle group, the preschool bunch of cousins still seemed to delight to be together also. This age group is mostly girls, in contrast to the preteens who are mostly boys.  The little girls played with the old playskool people my mom held onto and dolls picked up at garage sales.  They giggled. They touched each other's faces and squeezed in inexpressible delight.  They left cookies with bites taken out of them and plates of barely touched cake around for the preteens to gobble up.  They cried when it was time to go home, because it was so wonderful to have a friend who is just your size and just your speed and who is willing to spend all day playing with you even though you sometimes grab or don't share.

The weekend came to an end all too quickly. It was easier to adjust to the time change going east than returning west, so I've felt hazy all week. The onset of a cold hasn't helped with clarity. But it is clear to me that taking this trip is worthwhile.  Pictures don't capture the beauty or the feel of the place, but here are a few:

A walk in the woods with a dog

A type of Goldenrod? I can't find this flower's name.

Golden rod

Deer tracks in the dry creekbed

Jewelweed and common boneset, maybe

The sky is even more blue

Early fall: the corn is done, but the zinnias bloom on

Monarch

Spreading weeds

Fall festival

Artists

Sister Sinjin sets up

The Busted Mufflers jam

Poison Ivy looks pretty

Trees along the meandering creek - I think they call it a river

The new Polaris

The preteens took a photography walk and captured some pretty flowers

The Belties

Moonrise

Ok, I had fun driving it, too.

Welcoming home.

Alert! Crazy lady driver!

The natal family

Cousins!

More cousins!

Not too much cake after all

More teen artsy photos

Cooperating

One of the volunteer duties I've taken on this year is actually a blessing to me more than anyone else.  A friend and I are collaborating on a preschool co-op for our three-year-olds. She was homeschooling 4 of her 6 kids, the oldest 4, but sent them to school this fall to give more time her two youngest, who are three and 14 months, among other reasons.  We both wanted to have some social/entertaining/educational resources for our threes, but much of what is offered by the recreation department and area museums and preschools is pricey and time-consuming.

So we are making our own social/entertaining/educational resources. We convinced 4 other moms to join us and are plotting our way through the school year.  On Mondays we meet for 2 hours for circle time, sensory learning and crafts, snacks, music and movement and a closing story and prayer time.  Then on Wednesdays we meet for field trips. We've been to the living history farm, the Spanish story time, a new park and next week we tour the post office. Trips to the zoo, a pumpkin patch, the fire station, and a monthly visit to the nursing home are planned, and we have a long list of other places to visit.  The idea is that every month we'll go color and do puzzles or read stories at the nursing home, check out a new park around town, and take advantage of group rates for museums.

In addition to two mornings a week dedicated to playgroup preschool, we are pretty regular about attending Mass one morning a week with the high schoolers on their late start day, and going to the mother's rosary group on Fridays after Mass. Then Tuesdays, we often meet up with friends for library story time and park play. There is something nearly every day, but other than our morning class on Monday, I don't feel bad about skipping one morning's activity if I need to. The structure keeps the three-year-old happy and worn out in the afternoons until the kids come home and perk her up again.

So what is our pre-school curriculum? Here is the fun - and frustrating part: I bought two curriculum books. One Memoria Press's Junior Kindergarten program, which is fine, but I didn't love all the book choices and the themes are random, and it involves too much seat time.  The other is a Circle Time Resource Book, which I found on Amazon. It has good suggestions for sensory learning and games, but also seemed to lack unity.  I debated about buying some of the other Catholic preschool curriculum guides, but none seemed to fit our vision just right.

So we have been designing our own program based on themes we picked to coincide either with the calendar (St Francis and animals this week), or a letter of the week (last week was B for bananas, blueberries, bubbles, and our theme was senses.) My friend and I sat down one day this summer to pick 26 themes, which gets us through the spring and all the letters fo the alphabet. Moms are rotating roles in the classroom (which is at our church) and once every six weeks, a turn for a week off shows up. This month I've been the circle time mom, but next month I am helping with music and movement.

It's an amateur program and the kids are still pretty young for two hours of concentration, although we have snack and free play in the schedule.  I'm discovering some new picture books at the library - a simple creation book by Cynthia Rylant and a version of the Canticle of the Sun by Reeve Lindbergh called Circle of Days.  I Hear a Pickle was cute, but didn't hold everyone's attention; our age group preferred a simple story about senses at the beach.  I'm learning that for read-a-louds in a group, simple words, preferably rhyming, and big pictures go over best. Also popular is the letter bag, with small toys and objects that begin with the letter of the week. Stamping, sorting, skipping, and gluing are all a part of sensory learning/craft, and songs and parades and little hand motions are the extent of music and movement.

The kids love it. It is the highlight of the week for them.  And I like being motivated to find little activities and learning games online or at the library.  There is so much available, and this compels me to spend a little time playing with learning and making connections. A win all around.

And here is a pretty little poem from The Writer's Almanac: https://writersalmanac.org/episodes/20170906/, where you have to read the whole thing,  via Karen Edmisten:

Nature Walk

by Gillian Wegener

The fern fronds glow with a clean, green light,
and I lift one and point out the spores, curled
like sleep on the back, the rows so straight,
so even, that I might be convinced of Providence
at this moment. My daughter is seven.
She looks at the spores, at the leaf, at the plant,
at this wise, wide forest we are in, and sighs
at my pointing out yet another Nature Fact.
But look, I say, each one is a baby ready
to grow. 

...
But she is already moving down the path
toward the bridge and whatever’s beyond.

“Nature Walk” by Gillian Wegener from This Sweet Haphazard. © Sixteen Rivers Press, 2017. 

Stuffed

Our garage is looking a little overstuffed.  Boxes line the walls, full of unshelved, unread books, old certificates and artwork, mementos packed in tissues, binders from past jobs, and clothes that don't fit anyone. Bikes hang from the ceiling and lie across the floor, entangled with scooters, roller blades, and ripsticks. Wetsuits drip-dry from a line suspended from hooks hanging down from the ceiling. Suitcases are stacked haphazardly on top of placeless dining chairs. Three old coffee makers await the ewaste pickup day, missed three times.  A "rescued" road sign one of the college kids picked up one night gives me grief because it has no place, and I don't know how to get rid of it and the teen who picked it up is off at college and can't toss it in a dumpster himself.

Six tennis rackets, a box of model trains, dive gear, bike repair tools, a shelf full of offsize cleats, a bin of balls and wooden swords, three sets of golf clubs, 8 folding camp chairs, 2 bins of camping supplies, an overflowing box of sleeping bags. Old blankets, a pack n play, a stroller, a car seat. An old desk, an unused rocking chair, a cupboard full of VHS tapes and CDs. And then a workbench cluttered with tools and hardware and paint and oil and broken things to be fixed. Bags of t-shirts to make into a t-shirt quilt for a graduation present for the kid who graduated three years ago, or throw away.  Three coolers and a water jug. Unnecessary lamps. Bins full of decor for Easter, Halloween and Christmas times four.

The catalog could continue, but you get the idea.  We have a lot of stuff that is used rarely, if ever.  Every so often, once every couple of years usually, we go through things and shred some papers, cull some belongings for the giveaway truck in an attempt to half our belongings, so we don't go over the weight limit when we move. Since we already have more beds, mattresses, chairs, and dressers than the average family because we have a larger than average family, I always feel somewhat concerned about our worldly possessions adding up to more poundage than the average family is allowed.

Since we didn't move this summer (my husband just started a new job for the Navy in an office across the bay and a few miles down the road), I feel out of sorts.  The St. Vincent de Paul truck came to church last weekend, so we loaded up the Suburban with some unused shelves, several bags of cargo shorts and other unstylish clothes, the old crib, extra tennis rackets, and a kid-sized rolling suitcase (because we still have three others), and I meant to throw in an extra scooter no one rides. I even gave away some books.

I would like to keep shedding, to go through boxes of documents and mementos, to get rid of stuff and move on to a new place, despite the glorious weather, pristine gardens, and friendly neighbors at our current location. I would like to move someplace where the rent is less, the yard is more, and the local Catholic school is Catholic and affordable, where the church has an active youth group for teenagers, where we meet with some people who are less concerned about temporal things and more concerned with eternity. I would like to someday be able to paint the walls the color I like and plant a tree that I will see fruit.  I would also like to quit some volunteer duties gracefully - by moving.

But the Navy still has the upper hand for a few more years, and here we stay for at least two of those.

In my mind and heart, I know that we are lucky to get to stay. A lot of people would be thrilled to stay put for a few more years, especially with a senior in high school.

But I feel the weight of the stuff. It accumulates with time, and fear keeps it around - a fear of needing it the next time around, of getting rid of it and then wishing we had it. Or maybe it is a fear of forgetting, of not having a history without it.  The longer something stays around, even if it is something silly like an old paper, the harder it is to part with it.

All the natural disasters the past few weeks are a reminder of how quickly stuff can be lost. And of how unnecessary it is to survival.  Carrying the weight of having to stay in a place long enough to get tired of the responsibilities, the duties, the frustrations with schools, the disappointment with the okay youth program, the potential for what could be good, but just doesn't quite measure up,  the burdens of friendship and not-friendships, of fees and uniforms, and teams is tiring. This is my lament for the week.  Tomorrow I'll feel grateful again, and I'll move on to the next thing, and try not to think about everything in the garage basement for a few more months.

Instead of quitting it all, finding a dumpster, and moving away, I will stay put and keep at it, or say I'm sorry, I can't, or find someone else.  I will be grateful for the chance to stay with something for a change. At least I know a few someones now.

Hypotheticals

Sometimes you find out something you weren't supposed to know.  Then what do you do with that information? Do you keep the secret? Especially if it is a harmless one, or one that only wounds the original keeper?

Or do you reveal that you know? Perhaps drop little hints, so that the secret keeper feels comfortable to share? Especially if the secret keeper might be liberated or healed by sharing?

How often are the little secrets that we think we keep, in fact, already known to others?  How often do we keep secrets that aren't necessary to hide? That by keeping, we prevent mercy and compassion from overflowing? That we prevent the cascade of grace that comes from asking and receiving forgiveness?

More than once, our teenagers, each of them, have violated parental trust.  What seems so obvious to us as adults - that with trust comes freedom - doesn't always seems intuitive to teens. And every time trust is lost or broken, rebuilding trust takes a little longer. Why don't teenagers realize that although honesty and openness may be slightly uncomfortable, that discomfort is better than the alternative that occurs with a lie or an omission?

Why don't adults, also?

Houselander on emptiness and seeking

 This past Monday, my Catholic ladies book club discussed Caryll Houselander's Reed of God.  I have always loved this little book, and even this third time reading it revealed small epiphanies I didn't receive before.  Houselander creates a pattern in her design of the chapters, moving from a description of emptiness in the beginning to an exploration of body and soul, and then to a meditation on how we seek Christ to fill that emptiness, reminding us that a sense of completion or fullness is only found in Heaven at the end of the book.  I needed the reminder that emptiness can be a gift, that seeking can be a way of living a life of faith.

One of my friends didn't love the book because she thought it was going to be more narrative. I was always drawn to it because of Houselander's imagery and lack of sentimentalism, and because she presents Mary to be emulated, rather than venerated. Even sixty years after it was published, it seems contemporary to me.  Although the book is a series of meditations on Mary as an example of living the Christian life, it still opened up conversations for a book club. For instance, in the first chapter on emptiness, she asks readers to consider whether they fill themselves with trifles or causes or busyness, instead of being empty to receive Christ.  Her encouragement to look for union with God through ordinary things, or the presence of God in ordinary moments, is not a revolutionary idea, but one that needs frequent reminders.

So, too, is her reminder that all of the things that seem like stumbling blocks can be used for God's glory. He can use our losses and missed opportunities and brokenness and unhappiness, but only if we empty out our own will to make room for His grace. That's the hard part.  To live like Mary means surrender and trust and discipline our will. My own will seems to be my biggest stumbling block most of the time. She writes,  "In the world in which we live today, the great understanding given by the Spirit of Wisdom must involve us in a lot of suffering. We shall be obliged to see the wound that sin has inflicted on the people of the world . . . we shall see the Christ in others, and that vision will impose an obligation on us for as long as we live the obligation of love; when we fail in it, we shall not be able to escape in excuses and distractions as we have done in the past; the failure will afflict us bitterly and always." 

Despite the acknowledgement that failure and suffering and rejection are a part of the Christian life, Houselander always comes back to the consolation of God in the word and in the ordinary things of the world, voices, laughter, folk songs, bird songs, " The Word of God uttered in Christ's human life is a folk song. In it is all the primal love and joy and sorrow of all the world. It explains and simplifies all human lives all times." 

Houselander also meditates on the miracle of incarnation and the intertwining of flesh and spirit, another source of God's presence and grace: "Although human beings smear everything they touch, they leave touches of beauty wherever they go, too; evidence that the sense receive their unique gifts of grace, wonder, joy, and gratitude because of the beauty that is their environment. St. Thomas says that the Being of God is the cause of the beauty of all that is."

If, as Houselander suggests, "seeking" can be another expression for "spiritual life," then seeking beauty is a way of seeking Christ. Loving the ordinary things, ordinary responsibilities, little things, little people, not making idols, but looking face to face at one man:

"Face to face with one man, we cannot forget, we cannot fail to know, what he wants and what he needs. For he has a life like our own, woven of joys and sorrows, anxieties and fears, work and loves. He has a wife and children, or else the problem of living without them. He needs to think, to learn, to have poetry in his life; to see an inward meaning in the things of every day. He needs faith and sacraments; he needs some explanation of suffering; he needs wise guidance and education to help him to grasp the truth of justice; he needs sympathy, stimulus for courage; he needs work which will not only bring in the food for his body but will content his soul and will be the means by which his likeness to the Trinity can be restored to him. He needs a reasonable measure of solitude, and he has the right to the secrets of his own soul, the right to set his own standard, to suffer his own sorrows; and above all, he has the right, the necessity, and the obligation to adore. 

"All of this can be forgotten and left out when one thinks in terms of 'humanity,' but face to face with one man it cannot be forgotten.

"Before God there is one Man, Christ."

The final third of the book explores the idea of seeking Christ.  Do we recognize that "the survival of all that is worth the cost of a man's blood depends on how we foster the Christ life in the souls of the children and not only in the children but in  all the reborn of any age?"  

Not always. I need frequent reminders to desire Christ, not idols, not what I think I want, not what I think is lost, and to seek Him in small ones, in small things, in all that bears his Hand, in love and in forgiveness;

"... Those who seek the lost Lord will find traces of His being and beauty in all that men have made, from music and poetry and sculpture to the gingerbread men in the Patisseries, from the final calculation of the pure mathematician to the first delighted chalk drawing of a small child. 

"Only complacency can take away the sharp edge of love; boredom cannot do it and neither can aridity, for love is known as desire, which is stronger than we are and drives us as the wind drives a sail. 

 It is expedient that Christ should go, because we shall then seek, and seeking, touch the edge of the truths we cannot yet bear; because in the search we become aware of the wonder and mystery that contentment blinds us to."

What tastes better than a crisp, tart apple from the tree?
Memory relived.

Seeking fruits of the Spirit

Fall color

We don't get the traditional fall show of oranges, yellows, and reds as the deciduous foliage loses its chlorophyll. Instead, my garden is still full of pinks. My eleven year old got a hold of the camera the other day and snapped some artistic flower portraits, as well as a portrait of her 15 year old sister ready to go to her friend's quinceanera.

Oleander

Plumeria

Two types of hibiscus

St Fiacre

Suffering bougainvillea

Flying the colors

Three types of geranium

 

oleander

Fragile pink climbing rose

Blooming

Ready to go