We are Here!

We made it peacefully to Boppy and Grandma's last night, with a stop for dinner at Chick-fil-A (Aaahhhh....). Already we have settled in to a new rhythm and a slower pace (I'll leave you to imagine the comparative chaos of four jetlagged children with a large house to explore. While those stresses are present, it's not the flavor of the time).

For tonight, I'll share pictures of our day. I will note that although J's parents didn't raise him here, they did spend time here in his younger days--enough time for him to have great stories about harvesting oysters!--and Boppy and Grandma brought toys with them across the country, so Nutmeg was walking around today shaking a maraca that J played with as a child. (Aaahhhhh...)

 

 Nutmeg discovering the joy of air conditioning through a floor vent

 

 I got to read and pray under that tree this afternoon. Plans to repeat!

 Nutmeg screeched for joy every time Ginger-the-Cat was near.

Bud caught his first frog (or toad). It was hard for him to say goodbye. Maybe we'll see him again tomorrow? Preferably OUTSIDE.

 We took an afternoon walk down the pier to retrieve the crab trap:

"We who are about to be your dinner salute you."

 See that handsome man smiling? We met fifteen years ago today. I am so grateful.

 Room to Roam. So beautiful. So peaceful. So glorious.

The three big kids staked claims to beds in a perfect-for-them room

 

Pixie's clothes are in the wardrobe, and her desk is neatly arranged...

With Nite-nite on her pillow!!!

 

That's right, we have Nite-nite again! After their longest separation ever, Pixie recovered Nite-nite at school the afternoon before we left. My friend S. prayed we would find it and within an hour, a student overheard Pixie asking an adult about him; the student led Pixie to her classroom, where NN had been camping out since he had been retrieved from the gazebo the week before. We are all thrilled to have him home...or wherever we are. :) After the past couple of months I am already feeling the change of pace and delighting in it. And not even worrying about how long it may last.

Heading East...

We are headed back to the East Coast for a while. I have been excited and trepidatious (yes: a word) about our trip. Not so much the logistically, although yesterday was surely a Psalm 103 Monday. No, I have big hopes for this trip. Its length alone presents a tempting canvas for all sorts of possibilities. Being me, however, the hopes come wrapped in a twin-pack with fear that it will disappoint.

So it was fun to talk on Sunday with a Southerner about the colors of the South. How when I first see the green of the trees it is as though my eyes physiologically don't know quite what to do; the green is not the green of my adopted home. It is a simple and profound indicator of how varied "normal" can be. Green should be green--but it isn't. There are certain cones in my eyes that only activate in places where kudzu grows. Anyway, this fellow Southerner knew exactly what I meant.

 Even as we enjoyed the discovery of shared experience, I wondered whether I would be sharing it with anyone else in my family as we headed East this week. The palette of my heart is a jumble of tints and hues unfamiliar to my children. The shapes of the leaves, the smell of the dust, the calls of the birds and even the buzz of swarming mosquitoes which formed the landscape of my childhood are markedly different from the building blocks of theirs. Will they even know what to do when they see a lightning bug?

The day before my green interaction with the South Carolinian, J and I went to a wedding. At dinner afterward we were seated with one another and otherwise mostly strangers. Small talk is not my strong suit and as I floundered, I recalled having read an author who asserted that he could find at least one shared interest with anyone if he tried. With that in mind, I asked our table whether anyone was a native Southern Californian (true story: I once asked someone with an English accent the same question). This time, though, there was a native in our midst: and with roots three generations deep. As soon as I exclaimed over the roots, though, someone else at our table pooh-poohed the idea of roots and declared them meaningless. Although I disagreed, I let that one pass: the speaker was using a foreign tongue (English) with a thick accent, and had clearly been dug up and replanted more drastically than I have been.

But I am not ready to say that roots don't matter. And as we head back toward cicadas, red dirt and the frosty, dark interiors of my childhood summers (air conditioning blasting, eyes not yet adjusted from the brilliance outside) I am elated and anxious.  I want this trip to make deep impressions on the hearts and bodies of these children of ours. The idea of those four finding my homeland foreign is almost unspeakably sad. So we go, and I am determined to immerse them: in the hot humidity whose best salve is sweet tea; in the waiting...waiting... for a fish to bite on a hot afternoon; in the voices and faces of their cousins and grandmothers, and of my cousins and grandmothers; in the running over hill and behind tree with the thrill and wonder of knowing that four generations' worth of shared blood have gone before, doing the same over the same turf.

And yet I know that I cannot make this language and music their own. That takes time as this culture tells time, in the sitting and telling stories and the sipping and the dealing of another hand. So I know as we run from one treat to another that they will not learn on this trip what it means to be so bored-and-yet-not-bored lazing on the hot clover that they make not only necklaces, but bracelets and rings and crowns from the blossoms as well.

The roots that make one a native here will not be their own. As I grieve that, I have hope that each taste they receive of the flavors, scents and palette will increase their enjoyment of them: that this will feel strangely like home, even as they are planted in southern Californian soil. And I hope that they will grow up with a sense of place and a longing for home that will better educate their hearts in the business of longing for their true and eventual Home, the aroma and radiance of which simultaneously makes all roots here seem shallow and yet beautifies them by parallel.

And so as the plane now begins its descent, my eyes strain for the green they've not seen for twelve months and thirteen days. And my heart longs for home. I have a feeling that I'll still be longing well after the trip is over. And that is not a bad thing, nor meaningless: a heritage worth passing on.

If we're not friends...

...on Facebook, then you might have missed these shots earlier this month.

We have a kickin' homeschool.

Here's Bud, on the day I told him we were doing science experiments with electricity:



He immediately went to dress more safely: two layers, plus all of the accoutrements you see here.

(That's a gas mask).

And the same week, Nutmeg started her own cooking curriculum by pulling an egg carton down on to the floor!

It wasn't totally full. And two didn't break.


Nutmeg's a lot like Bud, but I'd like to say that about the same age HE took a full dozen off of a friend's counter without breaking ANY eggs. So Nutmeg has some work to do.

KICKIN.'

Really. No "-g," and I mean the kids really do sometimes kick each other. Some days a lot. But we now have a new-to-us dining/school table that's BIGGER so we have more ROOM and it is MUCH harder to kick someone while practicing handwriting or donning a gas mask.

Which is a worthy (if not quite primary) goal that i think we can all agree on, no?

Temporizing in Eastertide

Christ is Risen!

We've passed the midway point of the thickest three weeks of the year. I am hoping to come up for air sometime soon, and signs point to yes...the dryer's fixed, I've led the wedding shower devotional that terrified me, and Pixie's through her first laser treatment down at UCLA. However, we have yet to replace the coffee maker, Mayterm is in full swing, and even though I've washed them twice the towels I used to clean up all of those eggs Nutmeg broke on the floor still smell awful. (Rotten eggs--who knew? I bagged them all up until after our laundry system was fully functional again. "Big mistake. HUGE.") 

In the midst of the overstuffed days I have been deeply aware of God's goodness to me. I am so grateful to be in the church--and our church in particular. It's one of the many ways I've seen Jesus going ahead of me these past couple of weeks. I am thankful. And I will be a little sad to see Eastertide come to an end.

In honor of the things done and those yet to do, and God's blessings in the midst of hardships and delights, and our being Easter people in a Good Friday world: 

 Our Crew on Easter Sunday

He is Risen, Indeed.

Monday Morning and Psalm 103

Mornings like this one roll around every once in a while. It isn't yet 8:00am, and the audio overflow from the boys' squabbling already has me threadbare. I find the work of a referee exhausting.

I've asked them to make their beds, and Bud chooses instead to parse words: "I don't need to...it's not a need." And although the sane, logical side of me can talk about physical v. spiritual needs and God's word and the only command with a promise, somewhere deep inside I suspect that I'm the one who "needs" for their beds to be made: needs order imposed on chaos and a schedule that matches reality for once and no Frosted Mini-Wheats crushed under the table again (while I'm at it).

So I take a time-out, and switch rooms and recovery modes. Nutmeg's been exploring. I refill the diaper bag she's emptied and retrieve the lid to the lipstick and think about trying to clean Clinique's "Think Bronze" out of the carpet-formerly-known-as-white.

The background music of piano warm-ups goes silent, and I help Pixie find a missing book.

The foreground music--volleys of "poo-poo face!" and "moron!"--resumes, and instead of running to turn down the volume I scoop up little Nutmeg. Now what I "need" isn't a made bed but someone to snuggle and hug, someone who can extract and salvage the last splinters of tenderness from my shipwrecked heart. Perhaps from them something new could be built.

But she wriggles and pushes and reminds me that none of this is easy. As I let her go, she changes her mind and settles into my lap instead...and that's when I remember that the sweet hand grasping my shirt still has lipstick all over it.

I am a failure this morning. I am failing.  

Failing.

This idea is like a lint roller, attracting and sticking all facts that confirm it. The lost temper. The slammed door, dirty dishes three rows deep, toothpaste flaking off the wall in the hallway. Resentful words. Lipstick in the carpet.


A failure everywhere I look, inside and out, gaining momentum in a downhill scramble.

But I have been here before, and once the mental lint roller of judgement starts rolling I know I must identify the lie and scramble for the truth needed to stop it. This morning, the braking wedge is the sermon I heard yesterday and the Lord's table to which I was welcomed.

And the call to worship and remember.

Psalm 103 tells me "As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him."

And, "As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us."

And again, "He knows how we are formed; he remembers that we are dust."

So it is a lie that I am alone in this. Someone has compassion on me, someone who is not angry or bearing a grudge.

The Someone.

And if the Lord of Lords can answer me when I call, then surely by his Spirit I can stop hiding under the covers, come out and attend to the call he's given me; and all of the other calls of my morning.

Even before eight o'clock.


----

Psalm 103

Praise the Lord, O my soul;

all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

2Praise the Lord, O my soul,

and forget not all his benefits—

3who forgives all your sins

and heals all your diseases,

4who redeems your life from the pit

and crowns you with love and compassion,

5who satisfies your desires with good things

so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

6The Lord works righteousness

and justice for all the oppressed.

7He made known his ways to Moses,

his deeds to the people of Israel:

8The Lord is compassionate and gracious,

slow to anger, abounding in love.

9He will not always accuse,

nor will he harbor his anger forever;

10he does not treat us as our sins deserve

or repay us according to our iniquities.

11For as high as the heavens are above the earth,

so great is his love for those who fear him;

12as far as the east is from the west,

so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

13As a father has compassion on his children,

so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;

14for he knows how we are formed,

he remembers that we are dust.

15As for man, his days are like grass,

he flourishes like a flower of the field;

16the wind blows over it and it is gone,

and its place remembers it no more.

17But from everlasting to everlasting

the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,

and his righteousness with their children’s children—

18with those who keep his covenant

and remember to obey his precepts.

19The Lord has established his throne in heaven,

and his kingdom rules over all.

20Praise the Lord, you his angels,

you mighty ones who do his bidding,

who obey his word.

21Praise the Lord, all his heavenly hosts,

you his servants who do his will.

22Praise the Lord, all his works

everywhere in his dominion.

Praise the Lord, O my soul.

Five Teeth

Nutmeg has only five teeth. I'm not sure what else to say about that. Anyone else have any idea when that other top tooth is going to come in? For months, she's been a "dangerously imbalanced [miniature] woman." (name the movie)

Not that we mind that imbalanced smile.

Since an early age, Nutmeg has been aware of the camera. Her mesaversary onesie shots were a dream. She sat. She smiled. She held a pose (or held still, anyway).

Over the past couple of weeks, though, she's started to strike a pose of her own creation.


I have no idea where she picked up this "Look-how-angelic-I-am" pose, but she's been striking it pretty regularly.


And smiling widely ("the better to get your attention, my dear.")



While she definitely is still giving the evil twin, her really happy smile has morphed into a regular smile + evil twin + nose crunch. We're fond. And we smile back.



And it's a good thing, too!

PSA: The guys have fun.

Whether it's balloon-ey-ball (indoor volleyball played with a balloon),

Roughhousing to a "Millennium Hip-hop" soundtrack,

Or just silly piggyback rides to bed,

The man and boys know how to have fun together. It makes me smile. It makes me laugh.

It makes me grateful for the chance to snuggle into the couch with a good book... while thumps and bangs against floor and furniture come from the next room.

Happy Monday!