Bits and Pieces of Our Days

Where to begin?

I wrote to a group of friends earlier this morning that life has recently had me running, and careening around corners, skidding to stops, and then looking -- I'm sure -- surprised or stupid at the next thing that awaits me.

It's all good stuff -- writing projects and out-of-town friends visiting, a wedding in the family (Hi, Brian and Molly! You are officially the cutest couple of 2011!), the chance to see out-of-town-family, the chance to find out that, yes, you can find a dress for your fifteen-year-old just an hour before the wedding starts because you found a tarry stain on the one you packed for her, youth groups and magicians and birthday parties and slumber parties and our parish's first-ever Corpus Christi procession ....

All great stuff, so I'll try not to look so surprised. Or stupid.

~~~~~~~~~~

 The Next Food Network Star.  You know we're dorks about this show.  All I have time to say today is  that Penny has got to go. She's so annoying and mean.  I know Alicia had a rather odd voice but did you have to be such a bully?  The judges call it spunk, and a sassy attitude, and "knowing what she wants." I call it "I don't like you, Penny."

Vic Vegas? You are just too cute for words. Never judge a tough guy by his cover.
Jeff the Comedian and Daddy? Rooting for you and we don't think you're a pig monster.
Suzie? You are a doll.

My offspring's favorites:
Ramona's rooting for Jyll, Orchid or Jeff.  Betsy and Anne like Vic, Orchid, Jeff, Justin D. and Jyll.

Are you watching?

~~~~~~~~~~

My second baby, Betsy, turned 15 this month. Ramona will soon be 9. She was THREE when I started this blog. Anne-with-an-e will be a high school senior.

Remember my old post When They're Older?

They're older.

Here's the post, originally from about five years ago, just in case your kids aren't older yet:


I got to thinking about something last night, just after I settled a dispute between Anne-with-an-e and Betsy (or was it between Betsy and Ramona? Or had Ramona been annoying Anne? Ahem. You get the picture.) I was tired, and when one is tired, even the littlest irritations loom large. A few tiny disagreements suddenly feel like near-constant bickering, picking-on, finger-pointing and tattling. Oh, my, the behavior of children. I mean, it's so ... immature.


I felt a little overwhelmed (did I mention I was tired? So much depends on a good night's sleep ....) Yes, I thought, this is the stage of life at which I'm currently parked:


My children are walking, talking, reasoning (mostly), sharp little tacks who constantly delight me but are also capable of draining my mental energy. They're all quite verbose (wonderfully, exquisitely so on the good days and "Do-you-ever-stop-talking?!" on the bad) and that's what can get me. It's not a physical exhaustion, but it can feel so. It's mental fatigue: the dragging of a mind forced to think of 17 different ways to say, "Be kinder," the sluggish tongue that must -- one more time -- wrap itself around the words, "Go tell your sister you're sorry. And please don't ever do that to her again when she's in the shower." It's the ambushed brain that can't take one more joke that involves body parts or functions.


 This is where we are, I thought. But when they're older ....


"Uh-oh, stop right there, missy," I told myself. "Don't start playing, 'When they're older,' because it's a lose-lose proposition."


"When they're older" is the trap that entices you to long for a different stage of life. I've sometimes fallen into it, but it's not a good place to live. Because, you see, if I live my entire life in the "When They're Older" trap, before I know it, they'll be older. And they'll be gone.


It goes something like this, looking back to infancy:


When she's older, she won't wake me up every night.


(But she also won't coo and gurgle in that delicious way. She won't linger at nursing and enclose me in her eyes, telling me I'm her reason for being.)


When she's older, I won't need to carry her everywhere and then my back won't ache all the time.


(She also won't be portable enough to be cuddled, held and snuggled no matter where we are or what we're doing. She won't fit neatly into one arm and I won't be able to scoop her up to celebrate that she just mastered skipping.)


When she's older, I won't have to listen to "Why? Why? Why?" all the time.


(She also won't have that same awed look on her face that she got when she saw her first penguin at the zoo. She won't study caterpillars and ants for extended periods and she won't be delighted by pointing out water towers, having just learned what they are. She won't have that squeaky voice that personifies "ironic" when she says "Awwwww, look at that babeeee! He's so cuuuuute!")


When she's older, I won't have to listen to body function humor.


(Well, I can just keep hoping on this one.)


When she's older, she won't pick on her sister. She'll be too mature for that.


(And she'll be too mature to sit on my lap, play hide-n-seek, wear her hair in ponytails, jump rope, get that incredible shine in her eyes when she kicks a soccer ball and she'll no longer be more delighted by my company than anyone else's in the world. She'll have discovered there are other things and other people who are important to her.)


When she's older, she won't be so moody.


(Oh, wait. That's a woman-thing. That'll continue. That's okay.)


I've always found "When They're Older" to be counter-productive. Oh, sure, it might seem to comfort me at the time (and don't get me wrong, there's a place for the "This too shall pass" philosophy) but most of the time, "When They're Older" is the opposite of comforting -- it's agitating. It forces us to live in and for the future. And when we do that, we miss so much of today. This Moment.


Rather, I must embrace that my children are just that. Children. They're going to be childish. And my sometimes-ambushed brain has to shore up to take one more joke, one more poor choice, one more tattle. I have to remind myself that bad days make it feel as if this happens all the time, but I know that it doesn't. Because on the same day there's been tattling, a poor choice and a joke that only a daddy can appreciate, there have also been cuddles and hugs and beaming looks of love. There have been discussions that run deeper than I thought a ten-year-old could handle and insights so moving that I've gotten a glimpse at the woman my daughter will become. There have been tea parties and read-alouds, girl-talk and cookies in the oven.


There has been the delight of "I'm so glad they're this age. I'm so glad for now. I'm so blessed by today. I'm so in love with this moment."


Today, I won't fall into the "When They're Older" trap. When they're older, they'll certainly be more mature.


But they won't be here.


And I'll miss them. So very, very much.

Poetry Friday: Thomas McGrath

I had a schoolgirl crush on Thomas McGrath when he visited my college back in, well, ahem, a few years back. That pensive, craggy face ... the lush, grave language.

After you read this poem, you might have a schoolgirl crush on him, too. I dare you not to.

Celebration for June 24

by Thomas McGrath

For Marian

Before you, I was living on an island
And all around the seas of that lonely coast
Cast up their imitation jewels, cast
Their fables and enigmas, questioning, sly.
I never solved them, or ever even heard,
Being perfect in innocence: unconscious of self;
Such ignorance of history was all my wealth—
A geographer sleeping in the shadow of virgins.

But though my maps were made of private countries
I was a foreigner in all of them after you had come,
For when you spoke, it was with a human tongue
And never understood by my land-locked gentry.
Then did the sun shake down a million bells
....

(and, from the end of the poem:)

This is the love that now invents my fear
Which nuzzles me like a puppy each violent day.
It is poor comfort that the mind comes, saying:
What is one slim girl to the peoples’ wars?
Still, my dice are loaded: having had such luck,
Having your love, my life would still be whole
Though I should die tomorrow. I have lived it all.
—And love is never love, that cannot give love up

Read the entire thing here, at The Poetry Foundation.

The round up today is at Carol's Corner.

Fun With Misplaced Modifiers

Sometimes, if I'm not blogging much, my absence here could be due to the fact that we are incredibly dull people who are busy with things such as guffawing over misplaced modifiers.

We got to talking about modifiers the other day.

(Seriously? Did I just type that? I did. And I meant it. And the fact that we got to talking about modifiers the other day is one of the things I love about my husband and children.)

So, Atticus pulled out the Warriner's, of course, and soon Anne-with-an-e was helpless with laughter over examples.

The minister announced that next Sunday's sermon would be an explanation on the nature of sin, in which he hoped the congregation would take great interest. 


The community center was built by Mrs. Borden, who later became Mrs. Gruber, at a cost of $800,000. 


She wore a straw hat on the back of her head which was obviously too small. 


Uncle Jim brought a new carriage for the baby that was named Boodle Buggy. 

Have you ever encountered such insane summer fun?

I Can't Stop Listening to This

Mark O'Connor's Butterfly's Day Out, with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer.



I love my husband all the time, but can you blame me if I love him even more when he gives me something like The Essential Yo-Yo Ma? Of course you can't.

On the Radio This Morning

... at 8:40 central time.

I'll be talking with Sean Herriott on Morning Air, at Relevant Radio.  We'll be talking about how (although Father's Day has just passed) the Church emphasizes the importance of the father to the domestic church all year round.

Giveaway: "A Little Way of Homeschooling"

Go visit Kelly at The Careless Catholic to read a review of A Little Way of Homeschooling -- then leave her a comment for a chance to win a copy of the book.

Thanks, Kelly, for such a great review!

Happy Father's Day -- It's the Dad Life!

Thanks to my terrific sister for sending this link to Atticus.

Happy Father's Day, Atticus!

Poetry Friday Potpourri -- William Carlos Williams, Ramona, and Nat King Cole

You know how you always think summer will be that time of lazy, hazy days? I don't know about you, but the "crazy" part always seems to come into play in our summers.  We've got a busy weekend -- it will be part crazy, part hazy, hopefully a little bit of lazy in there somewhere.




~~~~~~~~~~

Ramona composed this one this morning:


Fun in the Sun
by Ramona

Flowers, swimming pools,
So much fun!
Let's have fun all day in the sun.
Now that school is over and done,
Let's have fun all day in the sun.

~~~~~~~~~~

And finally, Nat King Cole:



~~~~~~~~~~

Check out the Poetry Friday roundup at Check It Out.

Thirteen Things I've Learned in Seventeen Years of Motherhood

1. When something is really irritating you, ask yourself this: "When they are grown up and gone, am I going to care that they _____________? Or will I look back and wonder why I made such a big deal out of that?"  Then decide if it's really a big deal or not. Answers will vary.

2. Seventeen years pass astonishingly quickly.

3.  The cliche about how different your children are from one another is a cliche because it's true. They are not all little yous or little your-husbands. They are unique combinations of DNA and eternal souls. Pray every day that you can treat them as such.

4.  It was worth it to get a dog.

5.  The hermit crabs? Not so much.

6.  Beverly Cleary understood children. So did E.B. White. So do the people at Pixar. And Jeanne Birdsall does, too. C.S. Lewis did. L.M. Montgomery did, too. And Maud Hart Lovelace. Melissa Wiley gets it.

7.  If you think stay-at-home moms don't need planners, your vision of stay-at-homeness is sadly askew.

8.  I have mixed feelings about having my own swingset.

9.  The best weapon a mother can have in her arsenal is other moms who knows what it all feels like. Find them. Talk to them. Cry to them. Laugh with them. Buy them ice cream.

10. Although your children are not mini-yous, they will have some of your and your husband's strengths, some of your weaknesses, some of your moods, some of your talents, some of your good days and some of your bad. They, like you, will be imperfect. Life will keep coming at all of you at breakneck speed, but you'll make it through if you keep leaning on God and each other.

11. I'd rather be underscheduled than overscheduled. We are all happier when we have "found time" and aren't shrieking at each other to get somewhere on schedule, especially if it's someplace we aren't genuinely excited about being in the first place.

12.  Motherhood is full of so many ways different ways of looking at things.

13.  We should all skip more often.

Quote for a Tuesday

“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”

~~ Oscar Wilde

Bits and Pieces of Our Days

~ Ted Kooser on Wednesday night. At first we thought Ramona was going to be the only young child there. Eventually two or three others showed up, and a handful of other young people, which cheered me, because how often do you get the chance, when you live in Nebraska, to listen to a former U.S. Poet Laureate? Who's a Nebraskan? Anyway, a little girl in the back row asked, "How many books have you wrote?" Kooser repeated the question with a slight tweak: "How many books have I written?" He taught English for only one year before he took a job in insurance, but there are some things up with which no former English teacher will put.

He was humble, amusing, charming and gracious. A lovely evening.

Did you know he wrote a children's book?

~~~~~

All three of my girls helped with Vacation Bible School last week. Anne-with-an-e and Betsy were the skit leaders and Betsy, aka Patty the Panda, was much loved and much hugged by numerous preschoolers and kindergarteners. She was rewarded with a virus which knocked her down for three days.  She suffers for her art.

~~~~~

Because they know I love him.
Because they know that I know what it is to have been dead and to be Alive Again.
Because they ripped a piece of paper off scratch pad that was in Anne-with-an-e's purse and got in line for autographs after the Matt Maher concert:

Why do I love my kids?

Because.

~~~~~

Fish (Guest post by Ramona)

Ah, Fish. Red, orange, blue, possibly white or green. The point is, the point is, well, I don't know what the point is. I guess I just like fish.  <'{{><

:)

ANYWAY, I wish I could have a fish. Then I could look at it when ever I wish! Ha! Rhyme!

(xx)  <--  (That's a kaleidoscope!)


RAMONA


p.s. Thanks to Deacon Skip for the fish emoticon idea!




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(This is Karen now)

Happy Poetry Friday! I had a meeting to attend this morning and didn't get a poetry post done. So, I'm officially counting Ramona's rhyme.The round up is at Picture Book of the Day.

The Thing About Ted Kooser Is ...

... that on top of being an exceptional poet, he's simply a very nice man.

He spoke briefly at our local library last night, and he mentioned the way he hopes to not offend anyone with his writing -- not the kind, bargain-conscious Mennonite ladies he wrote about in Local Wonders, and not the eccentric and odd brothers he knows in a small town in Nebraska. He talked about the way these two men are just doing the best they can ... working, surviving, putting food on their table, chatting with their neighbors ... and the last thing in the world these men need, he said, is to have someone write about them in a book.

And that's just one of the many reasons I love Ted Kooser.

More later.

Things I've Learned In Times of Doubt

"Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted."

~~ C.S. Lewis

The most valuable things I've learned in times of doubt are these:

1. Doubt comes and goes. It is not a permanent state of being. Don't treat it as such.

2. Don't make lasting decisions about anything important -- a friendship, a career, a marriage, the Catholic Church, God -- in times of doubt. (You may make decisions about dinner, or what book to read next, or which top to wear with those shorts. You may make decisions about what to move up in your Netflix queue, or about gift purchases, though you may regret them later. You may make decisions about whether you like Firefox or Chrome the best. But not much else.)

3. Doubt leads us to believe that nothing will ever be the same again. Nothing will be blissful, or shiny or lasting or meaningful. This is a lie. Go rearrange the furniture. Reconsider your position from a new angle.

4. Doubt might be coming only from one of these things: hunger, thirst, a rotten mood, a bad week, a bad month, a bad year, an illness, a disappointment, a misunderstanding, boredom, fatigue, burnout, allergy season, a dark night of the soul, or, as C.S. Lewis and Charles Dickens pointed out, indigestion.

5. Sleep is an objective good. So is Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine: "I wouldn't change one bit of it ... And besides, I like to cry. After I cry hard it's like it's morning again and I'm starting the day over .... A good night's sleep, or a ten-minute bawl, or a pint of chocolate ice cream, or all three together, is good medicine."

from TheFreeDictionary.com:

faith  (fth)n.1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.  2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. See Synonyms at belief, trust.  3. Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance: keeping faith with one's supporters. 4. often Faith Christianity The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will. 5. The body of dogma of a religion: the Muslim faith. 6. A set of principles or beliefs.

Idiom: in faith   Indeed; truly.

---

Times of doubt are inevitable. For all of us, in so many things. The best response I've found is to hang on tight. I think God designed seasons for a reasons -- they're the best metaphor for life that I've run into.

Indeed. Truly.

Love this

Why Daydreamers May Become Visionaries

In this nifty research from Harvard, researchers found that college volunteers imagining future scenarios and solving problems there activated both the default network (also know as the "daydreaming network") and executive function brain regions. So it's daydreaming with a purpose.

(Read the whole thing here, at the Eide Neurolearning Blog.)

Poetry Friday: Ted Kooser

I have a special nook in my heart for spiral notebooks, and for Ted Kooser (past posts on Kooser are here. And he'll soon be appearing at our local library -- huzzah!) For years, my journals were written in humble spiral notebooks and I still think nothing beats their levelheaded simplicity. How can one not feel affection -- for the spiral notebook, life as we know it, and Ted Kooser -- after reading this poem?

A Spiral Notebook
by Ted Kooser

The bright wire rolls like a porpoise
in and out of the calm blue sea
of the cover, or perhaps like a sleeper
twisting in and out of his dreams,
for it could hold a record of dreams
if you wanted to buy it for that
though it seems to be meant for
more serious work, with its
college-ruled lines and its cover
that states in emphatic white letters,
5 SUBJECT NOTEBOOK. It seems
....

(Find the rest of the poem here, at The Writer's Almanac.)

The Writer's Armchair has the round up today.

As Betsy said, "This is cute and pitiful at the same time."

"Baby ducks," she added, "are surprisingly durable."

I love the way the mama recovers her dignity, rounds up the gang and exudes, "Hey, we can do this."

Bubbles, Ramona, and Wicked, Oh, My!

Recent goings-on:

While Anne-with-an-e, Betsy and I went to see Wicked:

Atticus took Ramona to the Children's Museum:

And I see from my archives that the last time we saw Wicked the kids were also looking forward to the new season of The Next Food Network Star.  We're predictably going to watch that again this year, too -- cooking and judging and drama, oh, my!