Up at the Farm

How to sum up the last few weeks?  The last days of school, a whirlwind Memorial Day weekend, a couple thousand miles on the odometer...

A couple of weeks ago, my sister posted about blogging.  I meant to post a comment about the genuine affection I feel for some of the people I've come to "know" through this online medium.  But at the same time, there is an intimacy that comes with physical friendships that can't be replicated virtually. Although many friendships in the flesh rarely skim the intimate, deeply personal feelings that get written up in a blog, which is a diary of sorts after all, the actual presence of another person creates a sense of connection that cements a friendship as well or better than the soul baring of blogging.

And the physical absence of person usually ends up with the gradual fading of those feelings, unless regular reminders - letters, phone calls, and, ok, facebooking - keep them present.  Not to fear, Husband: regular reminders of you are everywhere, especially in that thick gold band on my finger.  (And in those blue eyes on all our kids.)

And so for the past few weeks, we have been logging a lot of miles in the GMC in order to reconnect physically with various family members and friends: at a wedding in Pennsylvania, siteseeing in Baltimore and northern Virginia, camping in Ohio, and spending lots of quality time on my parents'porches with my siblings and cousins and coffee.

A lot of people thought I was crazy for taking this trip, but the kids are actually pretty good in the car. They seem to needle each other less when confined to tight spaces. And they need to see and hug (or wrestle with) their cousins and grandparents regularly in order to establish that intimacy that withstands distance and years, giving them identity and connection to a community that will never consider them strangers, no matter how long or far away they move.

Needless to say, we were all overjoyed to reach our final destination - not just because it meant an end for the moment to seat belts and gas station bathrooms. We were back in the proverbial arms of those who love us and the place where we belong, where we don't have to feel a sense of indebtedness when we ask someone to watch our children or refill our coffee cup.

Returning to the land of my birth makes me just as happy as I thought it would.  Part of the homecoming ritual is making a tour of the property to see what has changed, to greet the horses and cows and chickens, to reacquaint ourselves with the places we love. (Plug for All the Places to Love, a picture book by Patricia MacLachan that always makes me cry.)  Everything is green, green, green: lush and jungle- like.  The summer wildflowers are in full glory: daylilies, trumpet vine, yarrow, Queen Anne's lace, purple vetch, at least three clovers: purple and white and sweet yellow, daisies and fleabane, cornflowers, giant mullein, thistles, sweet cecily, milkweed, wild roses by the cascade. And the birdlife seems to have proliferated since I last was here: bluebirds by the score, martins, yellow belly flickers, barn swallows, scarlet tanagers, orioles, redwinged blackbirds, wild turkeys and their poults, red-headed woodpeckers working away at the log house.  Reason enough to see why the nouvelle rural feel so smug about their lifestyle choice.  And why I wouldn't mind joining them.

Admittedly, our visit hasn't been a perfect idyll.  The sky isn't always ultramarine blue with polka clouds; we've had days of thunderstorms and mini-tornadoes. Poison ivy and horseflies are everywhere. Sometimes I get tired of talking. The kids still engage in plenty of squabbles and petty irritations and whining. And I've been lonely for an absent husband's companionship on walks down the gravel drive and anxious to sit with him on the back porch swing. 

To be expected, of course. After we leave I'll be looking forward to our next return and daydreaming about settling nearby whenever my husband's Navy career is over.  Sometimes I wonder whether Wendell Berry's emphasis on the importance of place to our identity and sense of well-being isn't overstated: we haven't been miserable anywhere we've been sent by the Navy. But then, how to explain the happiness of being here?   

A belated happy anniversary

<sup>From the first reading at my husband and my wedding, 14 years and 3 days ago:

4</sup> When Tobias and Sarah were alone behind closed doors, Tobias got up from the bed and said to his wife,
         Get up, dear. Let's pray for the Lord to be merciful and to protect us.^{5 (B)}Sarah got up so that they could pray together and ask God for his protection. Then Tobias prayed:

  
         God of our ancestors, you are worthy of praise.
   May your name be honored forever and ever
      by all your creatures in heaven and on earth.
 ^{6 (C)}You created Adam and gave him his wife Eve
      to be his helper and support.
   They became the parents of the whole human race.
   You said,
         It is not good for man to live alone.
      I will make a suitable helper for him.
  
 ⁷ Lord, I have chosen Sarah because it is right,
      not because I lusted for her.
   Please be merciful to us
      and grant that we may grow old together.
  
⁸ Then they both said
         Amen⁹ and went to bed for the night.


From Tobit 8:4-8 

Looking homeward

I’ll be home in June, I just wrote to a friend from high school.
I thought about erasing the word home and writing “at Mom and Dad’s,” but I let it stand.

I’ve been married how long? Fourteen years, almost. Not yet half my life. But still I think of going to my parents’ as going home. I didn’t even grow up in the house or the community where they live now.

But they aren’t so far from where I did grow up that it doesn’t feel familiar. The same spring beauties and dutchmen's breeches and May apples hide in their woods as bloomed in the vacant lot next to the house where I grew up. My heart starts to jump a little when we turn down the shortcut road to my parents' current house. It's one of those county roads with hillocks and dips that, if you are going fast enough, lift your stomach.


And fast enough we usually go when we are heading to their farm. For one year we lived two hours away, but for most of my marriage we’ve been about twelve hours away, a drive long enough that you begin to feel a little reckless by the end, and driving fast enough to lift off those little hills brings rest, real food, and escape from the vehicle that much closer.

I think I'm almost as excited to catch the tail end of a Midwestern spring as I am to see the extended family.

But not quite.

Another anniversary

Woke up yesterday morning and was 37. Getting dangerously close to 40. Since the best cake maker ever – well, second to his mother - was not present to make me something good to eat, I celebrated by making a trip with my favorite three year old to the bookstore for some road trip reads and a cup of coffee.  After dinner, I passed out whoopee pies - grazie, Gram. Also went swimming at the neighbors’ house since the thermometer hit 96 yesterday, but didn’t stay long because the kids were so rambunctious I was afraid our open invite would be rescinded.

a favorite birthday book

 My gifts, aside from lots of hugs and bday greetings, were an olive wood decoration from the Holy Land vendor at the exchange from the two older boys and a Precious Moments cross with a garnet and “January” across the top from my middle son, who shopped at the AR store at school today. I was touched they thought of me.

  

At bedtime the kids apologized for fighting on my birthday. My older daughter asked if this were my worst birthday ever and proceeded to fake cry about missing Daddy to add some drama to the day. (Oh, she really misses you, Daddy, but she was not truly tearful.)

They were duly impressed, though, by the story of the time that everybody, including my parents, forgot to wish me a happy 17th birthday. The day happened to coincide with my older brother’s graduation from high school, and Memorial Day weekend with a lot going on, and I think I had received presents the weekend before. (We usually just had dinner with the grandparents and maybe some cousins to celebrate birthdays when I was growing up. After the time I had a temper tantrum at my own 5th or 6th birthday when I lost the party game – was it pin the tail on the donkey or the costume parade? - my mother wasn't in any hurry to have birthday parties. The moment is captured on Super 8 film that should probably be transferred to dvd…)

A list of things I would like to do before I turn 40:

• Organize and get rid of more stuff
• Read outloud to the kids more before they get too big.  We've actually done better at this since my husband has been gone, since I don't have anyone to talk to after the kids go to sleep.  Just about ready to finish off Just So Stories.
• Read more of the Harvard classics that my grandmother gave me a few years ago – they are decorative books bound in blue leather, a few of which were damaged when a bottle of wine they were travelling with exploded from the heat in the car. They have the kind of binding that doesn't exactly encourage reading, but might loosen up if I handled them a little.  
• Teach again - either my kids or someone elses.  Subbing kind of fulfills this.
• Write something worth keeping.
• Sew quilts for the two youngest – I have the material for one; it's just a matter of getting started. I am not a good seamstress, but I admire people who are.
• Do more drawing with the kids or without and improve my camera skills, probably a lost cause.
• Run another marathon – the first and only one I’ve run was in 1996 in Dallas. I ran a 3:13, just a few minutes shy of Lance Armstrong’s time when he ran one a few years ago with the help of trainers like Joan Benoit Samuelson. That time qualified for the granddaddy of marathons, Boston, but by the time that race rolled around the following April I was nursing a new baby. The challenge – finding 2 or 3 hours on weekends to train.  Not really sure that running and recovering is the way I want to spend my weekends.
• Become more disciplined about praying evening prayer.
• Become more disciplined about celebrating the liturgical year with the kids even when I’m not homeschooling.
• Become more disciplined about Bible study – even when I’m not in a group.
• Sometime I’d like to articulate the creed in my own words.
• I thought about adding travel somewhere, but there are so many places I’d like to go, and we usually use our vacation time visiting family and friends. I would like to get the kids out to the Rocky Mountains or the Pacific Northwest, maybe stay with the nuns on Shaw Island where we honeymooned.
• Stop biting my nails

 I'm sure I'll think of more after I hit publish . . .

Epiclesis

I can’t believe that Pentecost is right around the corner - tomorrow by the time I post this... I wish it would receive a little more fanfare – maybe if I went to a charismatic church. Maybe if I could remember on Ascension Thursday to start a novena, I would feel more celebratory myself. But for now I’m thankful to have registered that the feast is approaching. Sally has an excellent clip of Anima Christi set to music. (I’m so glad other people search youtube for good music, so that I don’t have to.)

One thing that I miss about homeschooling is having the time to spend talking about and preparing for upcoming feasts with the kids. A favorite Pentecost project I learned as a CCD teacher was making a little construction paper dove with a three dimensional construction paper apple (or strawberry) hanging from yarn on which was written the fruits of the Holy Spirit, which I’m always confusing with the gifts.


The arrival of Pentecost marks approximately the half way point of my husband’s deployment – another reason to celebrate. Fifty days before Easter he left, and here we are fifty days after. One hundred days have flown by quickly. I’ve barely had time to be lonely. His frequent phone calls have made this deployment a lot easier than the time he deployed on a ship. The irony is that the more difficult deployment was not during wartime. I try not to read about suicide bombers in Kabul killing 18 people or roadside bombs in Kandahar maiming others, but perhaps one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit that I have received is that of faith that he will return home safely.


The weekend after Pentecost we’ll mark our fourteenth anniversary with a telephone call, I hope. If 100 days has flown by, 14 years have expired almost as quickly. It doesn’t seem that long ago that my husband and I were introduced in the college dining hall. I knew shortly thereafter that we would get married, and I believe we’ll continue to celebrate anniversaries until we die, although I’m fully aware of the many trials and threats that exist to derail that faith.

Even without the physical presence of my husband, the ties created by the sacrament are working. If anything, I almost feel more married since he’s been gone. I’m aware of that ring on my figure advertising the fact (as if the six kids in tow didn’t make it obvious) although I'm missing my accompanist, my handiman, my personal chef and chauffeur, and other things all wrapped in one good man.


Marriage is good when you're not sitting around wondering about what your husband can do for you next: when can he fix the toilet, when can he pick up some kids, when can he watch the kids so I can have some quiet time… Instead I’m thinking more about what have I done today to let him know he’s on my mind: have I sent an email, have I written a letter, sent a photo, put together a box…

Since our anniversary is near, I've been remembering our Mass of Matrimony and its numerous invocations of the Holy Spirit to bless the new couple. I learned the word “epiclesis” when we were preparing for marriage, and kept this quote on a handout of quotes about marriage when we were marriage prep facilitators:

“ In the epiclesis of this sacrament [of marriage] the spouses receive the Holy Spirit as the communion of love of Christ and the Church. The Holy Spirit is the seal of their covenant, the ever-available source of their love and the strength to renew their fidelity” (CCC 1624)

There is a couple at our church who attend daily Mass. They stand out because the husband wears a hospital mask over his mouth and looks about 10 or 20 years older than the wife. Each time I’ve seen them lately, he looks more and more frail. He’s lost his hair, his shoulders stoop a little further, he keeps losing weight. The wife guides him by the arm up to receive communion. I wonder how much longer I will see them together at Mass.


In the tenderness of the wife for her husband, it’s obvious that the comforts of marriage are much more than physical. Missing my husband’s smile and touch for six months is a small sacrifice compared to saying goodbye to him for life.



This couple is a great example of the kind of selfless love described in Humanae Vitae: “[Conjugal love] is a very special form of personal friendship, in which husband and wife generously share everything, without undue reservations or selfish calculations. Whoever truly loves his marriage partner, loves not only for what he receives, but for the partner’s self, rejoicing that he can enrich his partner with the gift of himself.”


To pray for this couple, so obviously loving each other for the other’s sake, is no chore. I also pray for the preservation of my husband’s life, and for the preservation of the life of our marriage, that “partnership of the whole of life” (CCC 1601).
What more eloquent way of expressing love than this:

“St John Chrysostom suggests that young husbands should say to their wives: I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself. For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us. . . . I place your love above all things, and nothing would be more bitter or painful to me than to be of a different mind than you” (CCC 2365).

And what more elevated way of describing love than this:

“From the desire for the ‘unlimited’ good of another ‘I’ springs the whole creative drive of true love -- the drive to endow beloved persons with the good, to make them happy. This is, so to speak, the divine aspect of love. In point of fact, to desire ‘unlimited’ good for another person is really to desire God for that person: He alone is the objective fullness of the good, and only His goodness can fill every man to overflowing. . . . The great moral force of true love lies precisely in this desire for the happiness, for the true good, of another person. This is what makes it possible for a man to be reborn because of love, makes him aware of the riches within him, his spiritual fertility and creativity: I am capable of desiring the good for another person, therefore I am in general capable of desiring the good. . . . Even when I am ‘bad’, if true love awakens in me it bids me seek the true good where the object of my love is concerned. In this way, affirmation of the worth of another person is echoed in affirmation of the worth of one’s own person -- for it is awareness of the value of the person, not of sexual values, that makes a man desire the happiness of another ‘I’. When love attains its full dimensions, it introduces into a relationship not only a ‘climate’ of honesty between persons but a certain awareness of the ‘absolute’, a sense of contact with the unconditional and ultimate. Love is indeed the highest of moral values.” (Love and Responsibility)

Praying for the Holy Spirit to teach me to love.

Not like the lilies

Ran across an ebook called Woman as Decoration by Emily Burbank from 1890 that tickled me. Love the photos of Mrs. Conde Nast in dress up clothes. Found it while searching for something else, along with too many distractions on Project Gutenberg’s site. Hours later …

Admittedly, I didn’t read the entire book, but skimmed a few paragraphs and looked at the photos and captions. The text is delightfully refined and formal – a tone not in fashion any more than these costumes are. I wonder at what we have lost in exchange for a more personal, conversational tone in our books. And what we have lost in a less formal style of dress?

Then again, what have we gained with our more casual styles? One of the epigrams at the beginning of the book is this

"When was that 'simple time of our fathers' when people were too sensible to care for fashions? It certainly was before the Pharaohs, and perhaps before the Glacial Epoch." W. G. SUMNER, in Folkways 

This book is primarily about how to dress in a costume, but it also says much about the psychology of clothing:

Has the reader ever observed the effect of clothes upon manners? It is amazing, and only proves how pathetically childlike human nature is.


Put any woman into a Marie Antoinette costume and see how, during an evening she will gradually take on the mannerisms of that time. This very point was brought up recently in conversation with an artist, who in referring to one of the most successful costume balls ever given in New York—the crinoline ball at the old Astor House—spoke of how our unromantic Wall Street men fell to the spell of stocks, ruffled shirts and knickerbockers, and as the evening advanced, were quite themselves in the minuette and polka, bowing low in solemn rigidity, leading their lady with high arched arm, grasping her pinched-in waist, and swinging her beruffled, crinolined form in quite the 1860 manner.

Some women, even girls of tender years, have a natural instinct for costuming themselves, so that they contribute in a decorative way to any setting which chance makes theirs. Watch children "dressing up" and see how among a large number, perhaps not more than one of them will have this gift for effects. It will be she who knows at a glance which of the available odds and ends she wants for herself, and with a sure, swift hand will wrap a bright shawl about her, tie a flaming bit of silk about her dark head, and with an assumed manner, born of her garb, cast a magic spell over the small band which she leads on, to that which, without her intense conviction and their susceptibility to her mental attitude toward the masquerade, could never be done.

If I got to pick which costume I’d go back in time for, I think it would be this one:

Mrs. Conde Nast in Garden Costume

Not only are the pictures entertaining, but the ideas are also thought provoking – I’m not one to give a great deal of thought to my clothes, but I try to be at least within a decade of the current styles. I’ve given up most of my mom jeans – except my favorite Gap classics that I’ll keep until they come back in style someday.

I’ve decided that not only is being stylish too expensive and too much work, but it also makes you unapproachable. The lady who looks immaculately put together intimidates me. I assume she is a woman who shops or who has money to burn, and then I assume that we don’t have much in common. Or I feel that she looks at me and wonders why I don’t take care of myself.

On the other hand, the frumpy lady doesn’t seem any more approachable. I’ve been known to avoid the woman in the long denim jumper because I assume that the woman who wears it is making a statement about her rejection of the world, a little like a nun’s habit, or an Amish woman's dress and cap. Perhaps there’s a part of me who thinks I’m just not holy enough to be this person’s friend.

Wrong to judge by appearances, I know. My first impressions are often wrong, thankfully: I have friends who are dowdy jumper wearers and friends who highlight their hair, don’t step out without make-up and always are dressed like a million dollars. But as the book says

"The world has the habit of deriding that which it does not understand. It is the most primitive way of bolstering one's limitations. How often the woman or man with a God-given sense of the beautiful, the fitting, harmony between costume and setting, is described as poseur or poseuse by those who lack the same instinct. In a sense, of course, everything man does, beyond obeying the rudimentary instincts of the savage, is an affectation, and it is not possible to claim that even our contemporary costuming of man or woman always has raison d'être."

So I try to find a balance in my closet. Without spending much time, money or thought on clothes, I at least try to put a little effort into wearing clothes that look pretty. Dare I say “attractive”? Vanity revealed. I like to think the persona I project is one who is not absorbed by appearance but who tries to look presentable. I’ve never considered myself the pretty girl, but I have wanted people to look at me and think, "That’s someone I’d like to be my friend." I want to attract not their attention, per se, but their kind regard.

"It is the woman who knows what she should wear, what she can wear and how to wear it, who is most efficient in whatever she gives her mind to. She it is who will expend the least time, strength and money on her appearance, and be the first to report for duty in connection with the next obligation in the business of life."

Not that I can't sympathize with the clothes' lover: some clothes are just plain beautiful. Most of the time, their cost makes something to admire from afar, not to own, like a museum exhibit or a book of photos, but the other day, I found a black chiffon dress adorned with a few jet bugle beads in a kind of a flapper girl drape (just right for my body type which is not in sync with today’s styles for Rubenesque ladies) in my size at the thrift store. Irresistable, especially since I gave away all but one black velvet formal when we moved from Virginia, and it’s likely we’ll go to the Seabee Ball next year. My new costume.

I wish I could find the “modeling” pictures my cousins and sister and I used to take when we were sending each other our homemade fashion magazine, Puella, an exercise in vanity, although it didn’t seem to harm my cousin who’s a habit wearing nun. There’s a pose just like this one of Mrs. Vernon Castle dressed as Spring:

Only not so lovely.

Melanie has a quote posted on her blog about dressing for the journey of life. And of course the Bible is the real authority on fashion:

Matthew 6:25-34 ESV :“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ... "


1 Corinthians 6:19-20 ESV: "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. "


1 Peter 3:3-4 ESV: "Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious"

Proverbs 31:30 ESV: "Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. "

May showers bring lots of flowers

Since everything in my house is brown, I've decided to change my blog background to plain white. Plus I hear the text was hard to read on a blackberry.


So since I've been messing around with layout long enough to realize my incompetence, I'm just going to post a few photos.


Yesterday I was on my way to pick up my son, and a friend called to warn me about quarter sized hail falling around the school.  I waited about ten minutes before leaving, and was able to witness these fabulous clouds.

                         
My son capturing the clouds and his reflection:

The dog hides under the desk during storms:


The tropical downpour this weekend ruined what little hope I had left for doomed project. I tried planting herbs to donate to the church festival plant sale. Here’s how they looked a month ago:

And now, after all the rain and heat, sadness:

The seeds I planted in the raised bed look more pathetic. I spent about $15 to feed the snails and to prove that seedlings don't do well with too much moisture.  Even the nasturtiums decline to grow. I think there may be more mulch in this bed than dirt.

On the other hand, the hydrangeas are amazing. I had nothing to do with them, or the sweet gardenias that were finished off by the thunderstorms, but I’m happy to enjoy them. Thanks, landlords.

I didn't see the tulips and daffodils I'm used to this spring, but in late April amaryllis started opening up everywhere. They're almost finished now, but here's a photo of a chain link fence with some:

Perhaps if I had gotten out of my car, I'd have a better photo.