Exactly halfway through the 1990's a young woman found herself transplanted to Texas from the midwestern state that had been home to her young and growing family for seven of nine years of married life. She had a new baby. Her husband had a new degree and a new job. Together they also had three rambunctious little boys who had been born within 47mo of each other. And an aging cat. And a new puppy – because just what you need in such a situation is another incontinent, unpredictable creature or two added to the mix. She was working very hard to keep all her plates spinning but you could say there was some china breakage going on.
Down the street there was another family of four, a few years older, who had befriended them. Their simply furnished, spacious home was positive, upbeat. It was the sort of place you could sit back and take a deep breath. Unpretentious. Welcoming. Non-judgemental.
Those little boys kept that momma on her toes….and on her knees. Their dad worked long hours and there was a baby to care for, a puppy to housebreak, boxes to unpack. So many boxes. Things occasionally got the best of her.
There was one particular day when one errant little man was scolded and sent inside much to this momma's embarassment. The neighbor mom down the street knew all her frustration without having to be told. She had been there too. Without elaborating or getting preachy she offered a few words that stuck:
"You know, what helps most is trying to remember we are a team."
This was the 90's. We had just begun seeing some offices hanging posters of sweeping landscapes with inspirational sayings like, "Together Each Achieves More" and "There is No I in Team" There was no Pinterest yet and pithy slogans still made you stop and think.
Those little boys and the children who came along after them played basketball and football and later soccer every year, often with their dad coaching. Sports analogies were relatable. Long after the sayings got overused and tired, one or another – often the momma and later the others – would exhort the rest by saying, "same team." That became a code to remind everyone that we were not just a chaotic mass of competing goals and desires. We were supposed to be playing on the same side, even when it didn't feel that way. Let's be honest. It doesn't always feel that way. A mother can look at a naughty child, a husband can look at a wife, a brother can look at his siblings and any of them can begin to feel locked in battle of wills against instead of with those humans.
It's been a lot of years since I was that young woman. My plates spin a little better today, but I keep a broom and dustpan handy just in case. I look at those boys all grown up with so much gratitude. I see the younger sisters and brothers who followed. I see a marriage that has been up and down and all over the map. Somewhere along the line those cheesy sayings stuck. No matter how frustrated we get at times there is a sense deep down that we are a team. We have deeply held opinions and incredibly unique and different temperaments but we have a shared goal – to thrive and grow together. No matter how we have sometimes upset or disappointed each other, so far that goal has trumped the rest.
It is clear when I see older brothers pacing the sidelines. You hear it when one mentions something another one said about a topic in question. We read books and watch programs because one of us has insisted the others simply MUST. Then we compare notes and debate endlessly. There is shared applause when someone goes big – a wedding, a graduation, a relocation, a promotion. There is hushed solidarity and earnest prayers over infertility, relationship woes, miscarriage, job or finance trouble. And we have had all those things. The victories are better together, however, and the valleys a little less lonely when you have someone willing to come up alongside and navigate them with you.
Do we always perform ideally? Are we perpetually good sports? Not by a long shot. It is at those times we have to dig deep though and remind ourselves we are not a collection of random individuals, fiercely protecting our own agendas. We are a team, the best sort of team, and we need to act that way. Sooner or later we tend to come around. We back down from unsustainable positions, we soothe over misunderstandings, we forgive. It is hard, hard work. To me though, this is winning.
Our first "official" field trip of the new school year was to the television and radio stations in Salt Lake City. This ended up being a very cool day. Even if it involved driving to the city. And parking there.
Still…..there was the peacock!
the lifestyle program sets….
They were on the radio briefly….
and the noon news broadcast…
Can I just say that was a LOT of trust to place in a group of school aged children but they didn't make a peep.
Saw newsie stuff…
And in general had a grand time. We followed up by getting lunch for our bunch in town. Here's to getting out there!
People talk about it hypothetically – the things you'd grab in a fire. For most of us that remains an intellectual exercise, the kind of thing you muse over when you are feeling particularly introspective. It became a very real and concrete discernment for our family this week.
We often sleep with our upstairs bedroom windows open when we can catch a breeze on summer nights. We opened them wide and fell into bed Monday night. We had been on the go all weekend, staying up late and busy each day. A good night's sleep seemed promising as the wind picked up some. Before long however the canyon gusts began to howl, forcing my husband to go down and secure the patio furniture. The ruckus outside kept us sleeping with one eye open.
When morning finally came we hit the lights and noticed they were dim. We were groggy from the restless night and started to explore other rooms to see what was happening. Every fixture was at half strength. We were beginning to gather in the kitchen sorting things out when the power cut entirely. This has happened before during windstorms, annoying, but temporary. My husband opened the laptop to check our power company website to get an idea of the scope. I was kicking myself for not having powered down my computer the night before.
We started to make adjustments to our morning routine to get ready without electricity. I was lighting the stove manually and trying to get some coffee figured out when my husband called me outside. "Doesn't that look like smoke moving in?" Well, it did. But in the West there are often hazy skies when the wind picks up. It carries in smoke from distant fires. During dry seasons it sometimes kicks up a lot of loose surface dirt into the air. When you live with a military man you learn to consider all the logical explanations and most importantly you don't panic. So I didn't.
A few minutes later he had checked the front of the house. "It's definitely smoke over in the canyon," was his first thought. "It's probably not as close as it looks," was the next. I walked to a higher window while he went down the culdesac. It was in fact as close as it looked. But I was still not supposed to panic. We heard sirens. They probably had it under control. Might be a house fire which the wind was aggravating.
While we reassured ourselves with that thought there was a knock at the door. At that point my stomach gave a lurch. A runner was out early morning and said there was a fire spreading up the mountain and while there was no official emergency response in the neighborhood yet he was waking everyone up and spreading word.
"Should I start to pack things?" No, my husband said. He would go investigate. I got up the rest of the children however and had everyone dress and find shoes while he went to talk to the neighbors again. He came back shaken up. The fire was spreading rapidly given the high winds. We should stay calm, but begin to start moving essential items "just in case." I grabbed the important paperwork from the safe. Then started to unplug hard drives and put photo albums into boxes. He didn't return but the children were watching over the ridge out back and bringing back all sorts of bad news. A house had caught fire and had burnt before their eyes. The church was filling with cars.
I brought the little girls up to the house. Our incredible view was turning into a horror show and it was too much for them. The dogs were also getting frantic with the smoke. We kenneled the little dogs and stuck the kennel in the truck. Husband came in and said fire crews were working their way up the hill and we should seriously gather anything else we needed. Abbie Rose clutched her bear and held tight to Archie's leash while her eyes began to well up. Tess was working very admirably to be "big" and not freaked out. The others were silently packing their bags.
I made another round through the house. The problem with filling a home with only things that have personal value to you is that everything then feels important. I looked at the walls, the drawers, the counters, filled with items which were used by my grandparents, my mother, my inlaws. Things my children grew up with. Things my husband and I grew up with. Things we bought at different duty stations. It all meant something but it could not all go. I made some quick decisions about what precious items could fit in the cars.
The next thing we knew there were bull horns outside and another knock. Evacuate. We had a little bit of time but we should start heading out. We stopped for a moment and reached for a holy card a priest had given us earlier this year. Pestilence and…fire? We repeated the words of the prayer and put the children in the cars. Four cars, six kids, three dogs, a cuckoo clock, our crucifixes, several hardrives, and countless albums. Then my husband and I walked back in. We each took a jar of holy water and went to opposite ends of the house sprinkling each room. I set the holy card down, crossed myself, and we looked around one last time, making peace with whatever we might return to.
We all drove off together and traveled to a grocery store parking lot where we stood stunned as the cloud grew behind us. What should we do? Where should we go? That question was answered when old friends called and said to go to their house to wait. With lunch in tow we detoured around the road closures over to their place, got the children settled in the basement away from windows to play pool, and the older set of us watched our mountain burn from their deck. We would see smoke die down only to reappear in another spot or a huge burst of black billow up as a building was struck. The ebb and flow was wrenching.
We started calling around for hotel rooms when finally the fire crews began to get the blaze out of the residential areas. In time a few streets were permitted to return. Ours was one of those. We were lucky. Many did not go back for days. Six families have no homes to return to. And of course we know how truly fortunate we are to be in the midst of an isolated tragedy of relatively limited scope in comparison to the devastation happening around the country. Should the worst have hit we have insurance which wouldn't replace the memories but would have prevented homelessness for us. Many worldwide are not so lucky.
In the end we were spared the worst case scenario. We left our things near the door in the event the fire once again expanded with the expected coming wind. It did not come however. The air and ground crews have worked every day since. We watch them with gratitude and awe. We also look at our neighbors with similar respect and thankfulness. They were clearheaded and pulled together. Before we all left people were opening their swimming pools. Helicopters used them to refill water buckets to battle the blaze. It was incredible to see everyone pull together.
It is hazy in the evenings and, although the ground is charred in places, it is still a wonderful place. We are grateful to be at home with our familiar things in place. They are held loosely though. At some point all of us will be required to let them go – maybe sooner, maybe later. We aren't taking any of it with us either way. So we are catching our breath and hopefully taking a quiet weekend to put it all in its place again, gratefully, and focusing once more on what really matters – those people who traveled out of this neighborhood with us. Together we pray for those who are or soon will be facing their own worst fears as storms rage this weekend and earthquakes shake the ground. It's all so fragile. And its probably important we never forget that.
Tess took her first sewing class away from home this month. She made a notebook cover with pockets and ribbon tie. Her overall impression was that there was a lot of pinning, cutting, and ironing involved and it was worth it.
Following this success she and her little sister are enrolling in the full semester course starting soon. It is so very exciting for me to see which directions each child goes creatively and to be able to accompany them on their way.
In a few stolen moments this week I sat and read a bit from JRR Miller. He spoke of friends of St Paul and how the apostle described them as "men that have been a comfort unto me." He went on to say:
"The friends that Paul names were a comfort to him, because they sympathized with him with a sympathy that was not obtrusive, not officious, not always reminding him of his chain and prison—but that manifested itself in quiet, unostentatious, inspiring ways. The word comfort is from a root-word which means to strengthen. It is like our noun cordial, in its old sense, something that invigorates, exhilarates; something that stimulates the circulation, making the pulses quicker, the life fuller. Paul's friends were a cordial to him, not lessening his sufferings nor lightening his burdens—but making him braver and stronger for endurance. They were a comfort to him."
We can't solve all the problems. We don't have all the answers. Can we be of any help even when we aren't able to fix a thing? These are questions I continually return to. The older I get the more I am coming to appreciate the gifts of comfort and strength, both in gratefully receiving them and offering whatever we can back out to others. JRR Miller reminds us also that we need not look too far abroad in this vocation:
"There really is no higher attainment in life—than that of being a blessing to others in one's own place. Those who live thus gently, thoughtfully, beautifully—will always be a comfort to others with whom they live"
After what began to feel like an interminable pause in the remodeling process we began to make incredible progress in the house this summer. The biggest job was finishing the reflooring in the family room/schoolroom so we could move everything back in for the school year. That we did and I will share that transformation soon. Momentum being what it is I decided we could knock out some of the updates needed in the adjoining bathroom while we were at it. Most of it was painting I could do. Once begun though it ended up being a joint project and between us we refinished the trim, cabinets, doors, and walls.
This bathroom was probably an 80's/90's era vintage. The stain on the cabinets was in rough shape due to moisture and handling over the years. We were not in a position to do a full remodel and pull things out just yet. Our goal here was a facelift. We started with the trim and the room opened up right before our eyes. I should have gotten a true "before" picture but I started that window so enthusiastically I totally spaced.
Allen took off all the doors and I spent a few days sanding and painting. He came along after and we tackled the rest of the doors in the basement. If I had to do it again I probably would purchase a power sander and would use a separate primer and paint versus the all-in-one. There are no major problems but the cabinetry soaked up a lot more paint than the larger doors which were done with separate primer.
We debated considerably over wall color. Eventually we would like to pull out the old tile and replace the countertop. Eventually is not right now, however. Right now, we have cool taupe toned floor and shower tiles with matching counter. There was a sunny yellow wall color which I normally would have found cheerful but which was jarring up against the tile. We have a vision for a black and white end project but since this room is pretty far down the triage list around the house, and since we discovered that the wall color for the family room - which we had sitting nearby – was also a perfect match for the tile and counter, taupe it is for the walls for now.
So there you have it. It is probably more of a 2000 era bathroom now versus a completely Pinterest-level space. And yes, I see those icky between the panes window blinds. the faucet needs to go. It is nevertheless clean and bright and in the appropriate millenium. We did not go into debt over it. Additional work will happen as it usually does around here – in bits and pieces and by cash only.
This has been a stargazing sort of summer. We have studied constellations before and I will tell you straight up I am NOT very good at finding them in the sky. That may change this year given some of the books we have found and the projects we have done. My first favorite is the Stikky Night Skies book (link below) which is every bit as awesome as the Stikky Trees book was. It leads you along step by step into trickier configurations. Somehow it breaks down this wild spattering of white dots into something you can begin to sort out. Or maybe most normal people can sort this out? I definitely needed extra help.
As always, Pinterest is my BFF, my bestie, my personal assistant, my teacher's aide. "Hey Pinterest, what have you got for constellations?" Pinterest shot back with marshmallow and toothpick constructions and some flash cards. I was also beside myself to find this chart by Alice Cantrell. I have loved her work forever and am so pleased she has something that works for this unit.
Child's Introduction to the Night Sky This was another fave. Chock full of trivia and history to include the stories of the constellations. These work well for narrations and notebooks. A keeper.
We were not in the totality of the eclipse yesterday but we did make the most of the 93% experience in our neck of the woods. It was last minute chaos-as-usual, not for lack of preparation. My party food ingredients, purchased on Friday, were consumed in bits and pieces throughout the weekend. After shopping I had spent the weekend looking up serial numbers on the backs of our glasses and determining how many seconds of direct exposure were required for irreversible retina damage, how permanent retina damage presents itself, and devising various ways for affixing said glasses onto my kids' heads. I am nothing if not spontaneously fun lol.
Monday morning I sent the boys to replace the party food they had eaten that was missing. The three youngest worked on their pinhole viewers. That whole thing was pretty darned fascinating. If you still have yours lying around, or you are into photography, you might want to check out this link for more information about the camera obscura.
teaser from the article…
Here is Dad explaining how to embed the paper glasses onto your face so your mother doesn't freak out.
….as much
Here is what 93% shadows look like….
That part was amazing to me. The next image shows about what it looked like around us at its peak. Mostly the sky dimmed considerably and the shadows deepened. Our temperature dropped and the crickets began to sing. Birds started to fuss about the trees.
When it began to pass we celebrated with our eclipse lunch. Corny I know. But hey, learning should be a blast right? I am a sucker for a great theme.
That right there is my baby girl whose computer and phone and icloud all crashed or deleted just before the eclipse (unrelated, just bad timing) and who lost a great deal of data and personal memories. This is her who, having wiped her tears, said, "Mom I'm really, really upset but let's not ruin the party. We will go look at it after." These are the moon pie esclipses she made for the littles. THAT is more self control and goodwill than I am usually capable of in the midst of heartache.
(follow up is today after many tears and prayers she was able to recover most though not all of her data. Heading to the Genius Bar tomorrow. Say a prayer, y'all.)
In usual form, we reserved these books which look promising and will be read retrospectively:
We have been discussing this whole self-perpetuating phenomenon lately. We are more eager to do what comes easily. The more we do a thing, the easier it becomes. This whole year has been a personal challenge to push myself into new or more faithful habits and practices:
Read hard books
Tackle unpleasant home projects, little chunks at a time
Say my prayers
Exercise
Write letters
Tend the yard
Make creative cooking a bigger priority
They are simple things, most of them. More a matter of consistency and intention than rocket science. Am I a new woman? Not completely. I am however seeing measurable progress in those areas. Just like the saying goes, all of it is coming easier to me. Project beginnings are less of a hurdle because I have reason to expect success. I have been down these same roads and it's gone reasonably well. Not every day and not all those categories in a single day. Over time though, I can see my home changing and with it my heart.
The flipside of this truth is that constant repetition of our vices engrains them every bit as effectively. It's humbling really. Sleep in day after day and see what heroic effort it takes to rise early. Check mail first thing? See how quickly your time for reading or reflection evaporate. Make a snide comment? See how quickly other annoyances come to your attention.
A day, a life, a whole way of seeing is built choice by choice, by a series of very small decisions.
This essay spoke to me today. In it she articulates the conscious steps her family takes to create a home that sustains and builds up those in it. That list includes the practical – cleaning, decluttering. Heaven knows we have all heard about that in recent years. She goes on to mention intangibles that are even more instrumental:
What are we consuming – figuratively as well as literally? Garbage in, garbage out y'all.
Does our speech reveal respect for our home and those in it? Gratitude?
Do we extend to the others the grace to be their own unique creation or do we balk when they are not mirror images of ourselves? I am not talking about quirky style choices here. What if those people in your home approach finances or diet or problem solving or stress reduction in entirely different ways? How do we meet them? Move forward together?
Thinking in these directions goes a long ways towards softening our hearts and appreciating the overwhelming good all around us. We may have little control over the size of our home, its market value, or the neighborhood.
Starry Sky Journal 