National Poetry-Military Child- Keep American Beautiful - Birthday- Month

April has brought a flurry of celebrations to our household - and snow flurries elsewhere.  We are enjoying spring-like weather, strawberry picking, birthday cakes, and front porch discussions.  April is also the month of the military child, National Poetry Month, Keep America Beautiful, and Garden Show month. Something for everyone!

Here are our military kids wearing purple to recognize the resiliency and gifts that military kids have to offer.

And here is our birthday girl turning four. After much waffling about preschool for next year, I have decided we'll continue with our co-op and not send her to preschool in the fall. The encouragement of our older kids to home school her influenced the decision.  And she likes playing school. The hardest part will be for me to continue to put off things I would like to do with free time.

Her dad also had a big birthday, number 45, but I don't have as many cute pictures of him enjoying his cake. On his birthday we went to a Crisis Pregnancy Center fundraiser with some friends and heard abortion survivor Gianna Jessen speak. She was funny, frank, politically incorrect, and inspirational.  She had all the men stand up and do a Braveheart yell for "Freedom." We didn't expect to enjoy the evening so much. And we celebrated his birthday again a couple days later along with a friend who has a birthday the same weekend.

Our house got a yellow ribbon in the local garden competition - all the houses are judged. They were generous this year. The annual competition does encourage people to tidy up their yards and plant fresh flowers. Last year I redid our big pots with fresh perrenials - African daisies. They are still blooming this year, although they look a little raggedy.  I wasn't motivated to redo the pots until I went to the local garden store. But I think succulents might make more sense than flowers because of the water issues.  

A broken aeonium growing  babies

Roses in bloom at a park

Someone else's pretty Siberian Iris

Someone else's pretty planter with ranunculus. I want to copy this someday.

Someone else's wisteria - something else I would like to plant. 

Can you see the baby betta fish? The fry hatched but the next day they were gone. Dead, devoured? This was attempt number 3 to hatch baby bettas and the first time the eggs hatched. 

Strawberry picking in Carlsbad. Strawberries really do taste better eaten in a sunny field right off the plant. 

The famous flower fields in Carlsbad. You can pay $18 to walk through them, or park at the outlet mall and take a photo for free. 

April is also beach volleyball and track season.  I am coaching middle school track again this year.  I'm always surprised by the number of kids who come out for track but don't want to run. I have to race from track to class on Wednesdays. Wednesdays are also our co-op field trip day and the day the middle schoolers come home from school early and middle school youth group day. It ends up being an exhausting day, so I look forward to Thursdays as a recovery day. Is there a National Laundry Month? Because that's about how long I need to get all the clothes washed and folded and put away.

And finally, from the Poetry Foundation website, a poem for today by abolitionist Lucy Larcom:

"The Nineteenth of April"       BY LUCY LARCOM

This year, till late in April, the snow fell thick and light:
Thy truce-flag, friendly Nature, in clinging drifts of white,
Hung over field and city: now everywhere is seen,
In place of that white quietness, a sudden glow of green.

The verdure climbs the Common, beneath the leafless trees,
To where the glorious Stars and Stripes are floating on the breeze.
There, suddenly as Spring awoke from Winter’s snow-draped gloom,
The Passion-Flower of Seventy-six is bursting into bloom.

Dear is the time of roses, when earth to joy is wed,
And garden-plot and meadow wear one generous flush of red;
But now in dearer beauty, to her ancient colors true,
Blooms the old town of Boston in red and white and blue.

Along the whole awakening North are those bright emblems spread;
A summer noon of patriotism is burning overhead:
No party badges flaunting now, no word of clique or clan;
But “Up for God and Union!” is the shout of every man.

Oh, peace is dear to Northern hearts; our hard-earned homes more dear;
But freedom is beyond the price of any earthly cheer;
And freedom’s flag is sacred; he who would work it harm,
Let him, although a brother, beware our strong right arm!

A brother! ah, the sorrow, the anguish of that word!
The fratricidal strife begun, when will its end be heard?
Not this the boon that patriot hearts have prayed and waited for;—
We loved them, and we longed for peace: but they would have it war.

Yes; war! on this memorial day, the day of Lexington,
A lightning-thrill along the wires from heart to heart has run.
Brave men we gazed on yesterday, to-day for us have bled:
Again is Massachusetts blood the first for Freedom shed.

To war,—and with our brethren, then,—if only this can be!
Life hangs as nothing in the scale against dear Liberty!
Though hearts be torn asunder, for Freedom we will fight:
Our blood may seal the victory, but God will shield the Right!

Source: “Words for the Hour”: A New Anthology of American Civil War Poetry, edited by Faith Barrett and Cristanne Miller (University of Massachusetts Press, 2005)

Picturing the World: Picture books for grown ups and the toddlers who love them

We have a ritual on Tuesday mornings: wake up early, exercise, get big kids up and ready for school, go to Mass with the high schoolers, who have a late start day, then have breakfast and coffee, start the laundry, finish the dishes, and then head to the library at 10 am for storytime. The next two hours are dedicated to books. We might go to the park before lunch, if we finishing picking out our books for the week, but often we lounge around the library after storytime, looking at books, picking a movie for the weekend, and chatting with neighbors. 

We have read a lot of good picture books the last couple of years. I sometimes fear we are neglecting our own poor picture books, but we have a few favorites that come off the shelves frequently at bedtime. 

I wish I were better at keeping track of the picture books we love. Elephant and Piggie books come home with us often, and sometimes we pick up the knock-offs featuring a pig and a rabbit. I like to pick out books that have pretty pictures or a good story, or showed up on a recommended reading list, or that fit our theme of the week for co-op (this week is t for transportation). LK likes to pick out books with pink princesses (although she loves Richard Scarry, too). I don't know why kids keep coming back to books that are painful for parents to read - Pinkalicious and Dora books being at the top of my list. Add to that any television/franchise tie-in book.  Froggy, Fancy Nancy, and Berenstain Bears books are bearable in small doses. I have been known to hide Pinkalicious and Disney tie-in books, so that she can't find them. Sorry, librarians. 

Lately, I've had a few that I just loved looking at. They were bearable to LK, but I think a five or six year-old would have really enjoyed Leo and Diane Dillon's To Every Thing There is a Season. It has beautiful illustrations of the verse from Ecclesiastes 3, each one rendered in a different style of art from around the globe and through history. This would be a great text for a home schooling family because it incorporates scripture, art, history, geography, science, and sociology. I bet you could pull out some other topics from it, as well. A key in the back of the book provides simple explanations of the style and subject, but you could spend hours studying the pictures. I took a few photos to share and to remind myself to buy it or check it out again in the future. 

Farming in ancient Japan.

Greek civilization building and destroying.

Medieval funeral and wedding celebrations

A walkabout with an Aborigine family

Faith Ringgold's We Came to America is a prose poem, but the rhythm is off just enough to make it a little less enjoyable to read with a youngster than it would be if it had a more regular rhythm, at least in my opinion. Nevertheless, I love the way this book takes on the timely topic of immigrants in America, but does so without preaching. Instead, it emphasizes the migration of families in times of strife and struggle. It also illustrates the culture and traditions, like music and dance and religion, that immigrants bring with them that enrich their new home.

Martha Hickman's Then I Think of God is more sentimental. Each spread shows a child presented with a mystery, a challenge, or a wonder that leads him to ponder the everyday miracles gifted to us by God. The text and illustrations combine to convey a simple but beautiful way to look for God's fingerprints on our lives. I teared up reading the page about the birth of the new baby sister.

I've always appreciated Jean Fritz's short histories of famous people from history, but I had never stumbled across her collaboration with Trina Schart Hyman, who illustrated other favorites like A Child's Calendar and St. George and the Dragon, on The Man Who Loved Books. Maybe I skipped over some recommendation of this book, but it's another one I wish I had had when I was home schooling, and I'm tempted to buy it just for my own enjoyment. This is Fritz's 1981 biography of St. Columba, the Irish monk who spread Christianity and literacy around Ireland and beyond. The story focuses on his love of books rather than his love of God, but his faith can be seen in his love of the Word and love of his Fatherland. His love for books caused him to illicitly copy a friend's new manuscript, which led to a war, and self-imposed exile. His faithfulness to his vow never to set eyes on his beloved Ireland again led him to blindfold himself years later when he was urged to return to settle a dispute. That kind of heroic virtue is illustrated here in an inspiring rather than insipid way, making the great saint of Ireland both very human and very holy.

And a bonus shot: The Winter issue of Image magazine featured photos of Flannery O'Connor's school journal. "I attribute everything I have done to prayer."

Keeping Easter

Christ is risen! Alleluia! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Happy Easter, friends! I hope the glory of the Resurrection is still shining in your hearts on Saturday, the end of the first week of Easter.

"Jesus Appears to the Holy Women" by James Tissot

In the desert

Last night at Stations of the Cross, I mourned the end of Lent. I need more time! I am not done with the work yet. Forty days have not been enough to break habits developed over years of palliating the hunger of dissatisfaction. Candy, wine, meat, good coffee - all of these physical crutches have been relatively easy to set aside.  Tonight is the great Vigil, but I am not yet tempted by the bags of candy in my closet or the champagne for tomorrow's brunch. My real struggle has been detaching. I have been unable during this Lent to disconnect from all the distractions.

On the positive side, this is one of the few years we have made it to almost every Friday stations. Our parish serves a soup supper afterwards, so the social event draws the kids, who crave the warm-and-ready macaroni and cheese and lipstaining red fruit punch. We lingered over brothy concoctions and slices of cheap French bread while talking with friends from church or getting to know some of the old folks, who also come for the free dinner.  One night a man who might have been homeless but had stories of his family from the area, joined us and complained about how the Protestant church where he was baptized locked him out.  He asked about the meaning of Lent, praised the soup, a Thai flavored broth that night, and headed out into the night without asking for five bucks for the bus.

The fellowship kept the kids from complaining about spending Friday nights at church. Each week, the Church set out a different pamphlet of prayers for the devotion. This variety provided fodder for reflection on these reflections. Sometimes they were written in first person, as if Jesus were narrating his journey. Others were written as a letter to Jesus. I prefer the ones that ask questions, a type of examen, that goad me into a recognition of the ways I am like Simon, having to be asked, or forced, to help someone in need.  It is easy enough to sign up to bring meals to the sick or new mothers, but I find plenty of excuses to avoid the dirty work of serving drug addicts on the street or even the real denial of pleasures and pastimes or the ability to give until it hurts. Writing a check, dropping cash in the basket, picking and choosing who gets what I have to give are all too easy. I think about the command to help the widow and the orphan, and think, if we have space why don't we open our house to someone? I admire a friend who does foster care, but I have never even called for information from our local organization. I haven't even walked the few blocks to check on my old lady friend lately.

If I have the willpower to deny myself sugar and drinks, why don't I have the strength to deny myself the mind-numbing activity of reading the internet, be it social media or "news?" How many hours have I wasted reading online or researching options for whatever it may be? I failed miserably in my resolution to turn off the computer at 10 in order to read and pray before bed. And while I limited social media connection, I certainly didn't succeed in fasting from it, only in coming to see how little miss when I don’t read it. It is just a handy crutch to fill an empty moment. But I turned to its noise and distraction plenty. And how much energy have I wasted on worrying? This week's worries were news of our oldest son's knee injury, indecision about pre-school for next year, a house option that fell through, and plans for spring break, then Easter, then Confirmation, then graduation. All good things to think about, but I toil over decisions.

What do these weaknesses reveal? A lack of trust? An inability to turn away from entertainment and vanity? An inability to detach from the world and surrender my will? I want to live a life of faith, but am not willing, capable, to do so radically.

Late on Holy Thursday, we left the Altar of Repose in silence. Our eleven year old wanted to stay. As we left, she started to cry. "Why did they have to do that to him?" she cried. Early I had been frustrated because it seemed like none of the kids were really paying attention at church. But she had heard and entered into the narrative in a deep way. I wanted to run back into the church and sit longer with her in adoration. But we had to go forth.

Last weekend we went to the desert to camp for spring break. This destination was no one's first choice. I wanted to make the drive to the canyons of Utah, but no one wanted to be in the car for 8 or 10 hours, and I hadn't found anyplace with space available at the last minute. The kids wanted to see the cousins (which we did for the weekend, but they had school.) My husband suggested Big Bear Lake, where people go to ski, but cottages in our price range were booked, and it was going to be 19 degrees - too cold for camping. The desert was the only place with space available for last minute campers. At this location,  you can camp basically anywhere, but we found a spot at a developed campground because reluctant campers at least want toilets.

This time of year the desert comes to life with blooms. But limited rainfall this winter meant that the show that sometimes takes place was minimal. From the road the terrain looks sandy, brown and rocky, spotted with cactus and agave. Dry, dry, dry. How anything green survives is a mystery.

But once you exit the car and get out and walk on a trail, the little details spring into focus.  Succulents sprout from dirt caught between rocks. The ocotillo were waving red flags. The barrel cacti sprouted yellow flowers. Hummingbird bush provided a weak showing of red trumpet shaped flowers.  Lizards darted over and under the boulders. At the visitor center, where water was provided, the brittle bush had bright yellow daisy shaped flowers and a deep purple bloom covered another shrub. A hike to a slot canyon revealed a secret passage carved by water. The passage was completely hidden from the road. Did some desperado discover it?  The desert is home to people who exist off the grid in RVs and shacks. People who sculpt with scrap metal and scruffy jeep aficionados, most with stickers about being a veteran, like the guys who told us we were heading off in the wrong direction, off into the nowhere, on a hike. We turned back and eventually found the trail to an ancient settlement, perhaps just a camp for a group of Native Americans traveling to more hospitable land.

The kids climbed boulders and set up housekeeping at the camp. They cradled hot cocoa around the fire. Again, I was reminded that sometimes forced fun can turn into real peace, once the distractions and better options elsewhere are eliminated, and here is the only space left to inhabit.

But it is a lonely space. The night sky is wide, populated by thousands of stars, some dimmed by a bright moon.  Many people come to the desert just to look at the night sky.  But my mind has never grasped a map of the stars. Periodic attention to astronomy hasn't established more than a rudimentary recognition of familiar constellations. Even the plants I can only name by finding a helpful trail guide.  How much there is we don't know.  How many places remain hidden.  

No wonder Jesus went to the desert to pray. It's a vast space, seemingly empty but filled with unlimited details, a place most people avoid. But God left his fingerprints everywhere here in the design of these tenacious survivors. But even without crowds, without the world pressing in wanting more, Christ experienced temptations. There is no place to hide from the reality of the restless human soul.

I long for Lent to be a time of spiritual growth, a time to flower in grace and self-control, a springtime of the soul, when I can focus on and show forth the desire for God, instead of losing my attention to a thousand demands. Instead, my soul remains a dry place, a rocky soil. But here and there, like the moment during the Stations, when I let my eyes wander around the sanctuary and I see these people I am growing to know, people who are all seeking water in the desert, who are all following the way of the cross, their voices united in the Stabat Mater, a bit off key, a bit out of syncopation, a spring of love for all these imperfect souls bursts forth, washing away the discouragement. We all gather with our weaknesses to grasp at His cloak in hopes of being healed.

And tomorrow we will celebrate that healing. Although I wish for more time to uproot these sinful tendencies, I look forward to the Gloria, to ringing bells with my neighbors, knowing that my family far away will be celebrating also, united in the joy of the season. And that joy surpasses the regret, pulls us out of the desert into the extravagant beauty of spring, new life, and redemption. 

Hoppy Easter, Everybody