Susan has inspired me again.  She put words to what I have long felt but couldn't articulate well:

We headed to Denver for the marathon this past weekend. Rousing success all around. The weather was actually balmy warm – at least for those two days. Kieran got to stay over at Colin's apartment which had him beside himself with glee.  Where else can you have Dr Pepper on your cold cereal than at your big brother's apartment? ; )  

"When are you due?"   I heard something down the aisle as we hurriedly emptied the contents of our carts onto the conveyor belt.

"Excuse me?"  I ask.

"When is your baby due?  I saw you and said to myself that lady is gonna have a baby soon!"

"Oh, yes, a couple more weeks."

In a matter of moments this young clerk has given me her entire reproductive past (two girl children), present (pregnant) and future (no more children, ever, EVER).  I have slipped into smile and nod mode. I am very pregnant myself, tired, scanning the restroom down the hall hoping the cleaner has finished by the time my bill is paid, and anxious to get back on the road and meet my husband and children.  

Finally, after she has complained at great length about pregnancy, children, expenses, and the like, she asks, "So, is this number two or three?" (I have one child along with me)   I take a breath and brace myself. I was so hoping to slip out with my receipt before we got this far.  

"Ten."  I say, fixing my smile as best I can, knowing what is coming next.  

"Ten?!?  WHAT??" 

"Yes, this will be our tenth." I reply.

She stands, without words for a time, processing what I have just told her.  Not for long however. She soon begins to speak, though it isn't clear whether she is addressing her stream of consciousness to me or not. 

"My gosh. I mean I can't imagine. I can't cope with my two. I think you'd just lose your mind by four."

My mental health?  Well…. naw, let's not go there. ; ) 

"So how much does the tax break cap out at for you?" she continues.

"Excuse me?" I reply again. 

"I mean, they can't pay out THAT much can they?" she insists.

"I really don't know," I tell her honestly. 

"You don't know?"  She looks incredulously.

"No, I really don't."  It was never a major consideration. God provides. Somehow, always. Thank you, God. 

"I mean, well, you must a LOT stronger than me. You'd have to be."

Strong?  I think back on two and a half decades of joy and blessing.  Two and a half decades of fear and frustration.  Of sickness and health.  Of stumbling and pulling ourselves up to try again.  I am all too aware of how many times I have been at the end of myself, just hanging on as life carried us along on this merry ride. No, I don't feel strong, paticularly as my back strains from the weight of this little one and my belly convulses with ongoing contractions. No, I don't feel strong. Still, I never felt this venture was dependent upon my own miserable capacity for strength.  "My grace is sufficent,"  That is what I have held onto.

She is sputtering now. Clearly agitated.  I am rooted to my spot in front of the register hoping she reaches the last of the food soon, when she backs up and presents what she seems to believe is her most compelling question:

"Well, I just can't imagine how you could afford to eat out with that many kids??"  Then she begins to mutter about the cost of Happy Meals.  I can not find words now. My mind is flooded with images of eleven pairs of hands clasped in prayer around the big farm table in gratitude for the steaming bowls of vegetables and homemade bread that would soon be shared with the people I love. Floral napkins, imperfectly hemmed, resting on eleven laps waiting to catch the inevitable spills. 

I think of blowing out countless candles on lopsided birthday cakes. 

I think of tiny backpacks filled with military MRE's to be opened after we scale the path up to the reservoir.  

I think of how many 'first' bowls of cereal I have spooned into surprised little mouths. 

With an eager six-year-old helper, I finish packing up bags of apples, cheese, and bread that we are taking for our picnic dinner with Daddy. Admittedly, I am bewildered.  Instead of this….

I could have a….. Big Mac?  

No thanks. 

She is still looking at me, searching my face for some sort of response. All I can say is, "We'd rather stay home."  By her raised eyebrow it is obvious it came out as lamely as I feared. Yet, it was the most sincere answer I could summons.  I would rather be home.  Be it ever so humble…  With our children. 

'There are some who therefore look upon the coming of children as misfortune. They talk about them lightly as 'responsibilities'.  They regard them as in the way of their pleasure. They see no blessing in them. But it is cold selfishness that looks upon children in this way.  Instead of being hindrances to true and noble living, they are helps. They bring benedictions from heaven when they come, while they stay they are perpetual benedictions." – Homemaking, Rev RJ Miller 1882

How you spend your time is more important than how you spend your money.
Money mistakes can be corrected, but time is gone forever. —David Norris

I have thought a good deal about Lady Lydia’s wardrobe comment in recent days. It isn’t about specific prints or whatnot, but rather what kinds of images we are planting in others’ minds, particularly those of our children and grandchildren.

Dressing up in pretty dresses was important to me, because I didn’t want my family to have memories of me in the same old thing day after day, looking oppressed and tired. Today I have Miss Lillian and the boys around me a lot, and I want them to remember their grandmother wearing the enchanting little cotton prints and clear colors, with the trims and buttons and laces, my hair done up, and even pretty shoes.

This post was read shortly after overhearing another conversation while shopping for fabric for more dresses for Tess. While I worked my way through the bolts of material there were two women talking to each other over the pattern books. One was considerably further down the room so their voices were heard by all. There were many comments such as, “Well THIS would be s@xy, don’t you think?” or “Do you think this is s@xy?” In fact that seemed to be the one adjective to make or break their purchase. I could almost expect this from silly girls but I was taken aback to turn the corner and discover women who must have been 30 seriously embroiled in this discussion.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t think our goal is to be asexual or frumpy. If we are married our first goal is to be attractive to our spouse. Still, there is a difference between sexuality and beauty. Beauty can also be alluring, but sexuality alone does not guarantee beauty. In fact it can be downright repulsive on its own without the anchor of loveliness.

Friends and I have discussed the bigger issue of how we will be remembered by our children and their children and yes, by our spouses. Debi Pearl recalls picking berries with her grandfather when she was little. All the way down the row he was telling her how beautiful her grandmother was. All these thoughts came together as I stood in the aisle and realized this isn’t a ‘today’ decision, it is a long reaching choice which will ripple in time.

As Helen says, we are inundated with messages about what it means to be a woman today. If we don’t critically examine them it is easy to get swept away along the current. Beauty is rarely part of the equation as evidenced by the overheard conversation. It is all about the ‘other’ which is the only yardstick many women have. We have been so soaked in these messages we may not be able to properly discern true beauty.

Jen and I have pondered Lady Lydia’s challenge to think about the adjectives used to decribe women of old and women today. It was once a common practice to compare women to flowers. As she points out, yesterday’s softness is replaced by ‘cutting edge’ and ‘sharp’. Are these the images that inspired that old man to adore his wife? Is perpetual adolescence the best response to growing older? Is ‘hardness’ our goal?

My own grandmother has been a good example to me. Never frumpy, she always was pulled together whether for housework or a trip to town, nothing extravagant but her appearance was always cared for, her signature scent (Estee) wafting behind her. Her demeanor called for respect and admiration. I wonder how grandmothers of today and the grandmothers WE are going to be compare?

We are more than our appearance and yet, our appearances will live on in our family’s minds when we are gone. When they are left with memories and photographs what will they have? Will they see confident, beautiful women, lovelier with each decade, at peace with the season in which they find themselves? We can be that. While we can’t be 17 forever we can forever wear our very best asset – a smile. We can nurture our finest attributes – gentleness, understanding, care for others. We can be stewards of our outsides as well, caring for our skin, our hair, our wardrobes; making choices that reflect our vision. Any basic communications course will explain that our appearance sends a message about what is important to us. What message are we sending?

“It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at 29 than ten years before.” – Jane Austen

“Character contributes to beauty. It fortifies a woman as her youth fades. A mode of conduct, a standard of courage, discipline, fortitude, and integrity can do a great deal to make a woman beautiful.”

“The difference between pretty and beautiful is-
pretty is temporal-whereas beautiful is eternal.”

“For the rest, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame, if there be any virtue, if any praise of discipline, think on these things.” Phil 4:8 (Douay Rheims)

The children have been all over with their dad in the past month. Most recently they saw a hockey game and visited the fire station:

“It is a high and important office, that of mother, and requires al the best and choicest qualities which belong to womanhood, trained and perfected. Much love, much patience, wisdom, knowledge, judgement, self-control, with body and soul attuned to, and kept in harmony with, the laws of God and nature, compose the divinity which should hedge about a mother but alas! too often does not.

It is no light thing, no easy task to be a mother and fulfill a mother’s duties. Incessant care, incessant watchfulness, all all without fussiness, or too conscious restraint, is the price of success. The making of a happy home is the first duty of a wife and mother.

Even under the present imperfect conditions, home is hte central attraction of every human heart, the inspiration of nearly all effort, the haven of all our hopes and desires. What would it be were women true to the themselves, to their high destiny, their great work? What would it be were the influences of home charged, as they might be, with the electric current of active love, faith, knowledge, strength, and devotion to the interests they are bound to protect?” – Jenny June, Demerest’s Family Magazine, August 1867

That is my motto. That is my life.

I picked up the current issue of Mother Earth News last night and it is wonderful. One article featured Scott and Helen Nearing’s Good Life foundation. When exploring the site I found this quote:

The good life is never stable, never secure, never easy and never ended. It is a series of steps or stages, one leading into the other and all, in their outcome, adding, not subtracting; augmenting, not diminishing; building, not destroying; creating, not annihilating.’–Scott Nearing, 1965

Tess and Brendan and are enthralled with the wooden fruit and veggie set. I overheard them this past week and followed them silently, watching them play. So sweet.

Brendan: Tessie, you wanna cut the fwoooot?

Tess: Yeah…. fwoooot.

Brendan: Tessie, isn’t this fun?

Tess: Yeah…. fun.

Though she gets very upset with him when he mismatches the halves on purpose, Montessori child that she is!

Some views from the road trip this week: