“Mama, did your milk leak like that?”
“Mama, is she hurt it is she just leading them out?”
“Mom, I can do this. I can check and see if there is a problem. Easy girl, I’m here.”
“Mom, there’s so much that can go wrong. Come on, Abby girl. You can do this.”
“You’ve got this, Abigail!” “Can I give her water?”
“How can I help her?”
Four boys gathered round the pen, waiting and watching as the sun drew higher and hotter and the breaths came harder and faster. With every pulse and rush of liquid they lean close and ask questions. I watched my second born gently guide his small hand to check for obstruction, soothing her and speaking softly as he did so. She lay still and quiet, milk drip dropping a steady shower of anticipation from every teat. It’s hard to wait in the wake of the gaping mystery of birth. It’s left us all awed and humbled. Come on, mama. You’ve got this.
“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” -Bilbo Baggins 🌱 I woke up last Thursday feeling just that way, stretched and scraped. Faced with another day of pouring out every last bit of me, I wondered what would happen if I just hid under the covers instead? But Science fairs, homeschool co-op, therapy appointments, teaching, parenting, more teaching, juggling meals, cleaning, driving, and the hundreds other “ings” of motherhood that require much from me, loomed over the day. I felt that shadow of exhaustion that’s been following me around for the last six months. The heaviness of our failed adoption, the weight of all the therapies and doctors appointments, and the recent kitchen flood that now requires the tearing up of floors and removal of cabinets and dry wall. These are part of my story right now and I must daily choose how to bear up under them. When I awoke, feeling the heaviness Of the day, I lay quietly thinking about all the goodness we had been pouring into our well for the last ten years. Stories, songs, poetry, art, truth, beauty, nature. I thought about the painted bunting hard at work rebuilding the toppled nest outside my window. I thought about the squash vine borer’s assault on the zucchini. I thought of that one bit early on in Little Women when Marmee is feeling sorry for herself over the absence of her husband. She meets the older father who has sent four of his sons to fight in the war and his bravery and goodness both convict and encourage her. I thought of the Mozart tune my boy hummed all week and that lovely turn of phrase from my Wendell Berry book. I thought of the faithfulness of millions of hidden lives and my feet hit the floor and I beckoned the shadow to follow me into the light because we had work to do. Sometimes we measure our success by how many “good homeschool days” we have. We think the bad days must signify failure, when really they are just a chance to put into practice the goodness we have beheld and the truth we have stored in our hearts. I carry beauty into the heaviness. Armed with the power of a thousand stories, I walk through my own story 📚
He helped me dig out the garden. He hauled rocks and pulled a splinter out of my palm. He worked hard alongside his father and I for days to prepare this little corner of the yard. We stopped every once in awhile to sit and drink lemonade, then we’d pull out the seed packets of lemon cucumber and french radish and mammoth sunflowers to fortify us for the next round of digging. Just before we finished the third row, he stood and wiped the sweat from his brow, “So... this is what it means for man to try and get back into a garden,” he mused. “Mom, can you imagine how effortlessly enjoyable Eden was? How beautiful? My heart wish is to see it.” (After a morning of fart jokes this little musing bolstered my heart). Today he ran into the house on a wave of joy and wonder, “Mom!!! The corn!! The corn!! You can see little fluffy ears sprouting up! The zucchini flowers turned into zucchini overnight! Look, I got some more tomatoes and radish and the lettuce is growing and the sunflower is almost taller than me!” I smiled. “How do you feel?” He paused, “Excited. Happy. No, that’s not big enough. I feel like that thing you read us the other day from the farmer.” I nodded, “Wendell Berry.” He gathered the brilliant red cherry tomatoes in his hands and marveled at them. “Yes, that’s him. He said it was humility. That’s what i feel when I see a garden making and doing all these things that I cannot make or do.” 🌾 🌽 I watched him weeding with his little scythe just now, idyllic in the golden light but for the angry shouts of his brothers fighting over a frisbee game. I felt an overwhelming conviction to keep in wonder and humility, and to keep growing in character as we grow in our education. Without these things, we have only made education a weapon. What a gift this life of learning is. What a wonder.
Last week the boys had a glorious beach day with their friends. They ran wild for hours in the mangroves and caught crabs and jellyfish and a moray eel. They came home with empty bellies and hearts full of stories. When the last of their friends left, we gathered around the table and they filled their bellies and unleashed their stories. I loved being able to listen without knowing the ending- what joy! They asked “did you take any pictures today?” I confessed that I was busy enjoying my friends and had only managed to snap a few. “That’s ok,” one boy assured me, “I kinda like not having any. I think the picture in my heart is the real picture when it comes to adventure places and special worlds. If I grow up and see a picture of our place in the mangroves I don’t think I’d recognize it in the same way anyway.” I told him not to worry, his mangrove kingdom was safe. I opened my phone and pulled up a photo of the youngest perched on a fallen tree and showed it to him, “this is one of the only ones I took.” My youngest leaned in and narrowed his eyes, “That’s not right!” he said. “I was much higher and much taller and much braver.” His older brother looked at me, “see what I mean?” I thought about this conversation all week long and about my boys growing up with phones and tweets and messages covering nearly every inch of society. They’re largely separated from it and it’s given them the gift of knowing that just because we can take the picture or share words, doesn’t mean we should. A few days later we were discussing the chemical effects of technology on the brain and on human development and relationship. My eldest asked, “How many years before this crazy hunger for exposure and addiction to attention and information, develops a need for privacy, silence, contentment in humans? Has that ever happened in history? Or do we have to fight for it until the earth is restored? Do we have to go out and seek it?” he asked. “Like a secret mangrove hideout,” his brother said, “up to each person to reach out and grow together.” Oh, how good it is to grow together asking hard questions and seeking prudence together, to grow up hungry for community and kingdoms .
Today I watched my boys romp around the farm in a frenzied symphony of boy energy. Hopping fences, chasing cats away from cabbages, acquiring more dirt and sweat and memory with each lap around the back hollow. Their play weaving the boyhood stories they’ll be swapping as men over dinner some far off night while I listen, old and grey, to their retellings of the tale we lived together. It was an afternoon dipped in gold. Their long eyelashes, the broken gate, the weeds, even the sound of their laughter, all veiled in splendor. I prayed the prayer that’s been coming to my heart for weeks now. “Lord, let them grow up remembering faithfulness and love.” A few weeks ago I sat next to my Abuelo on Christmas Eve and answered the same question again and again. Each time he peered at me through the fog in his mind and asked, “who are you again? I’m sorry, I can’t remember,” I answered “It’s me. It’s Elsita.” Finally, I said “Don’t say sorry. The strength of your love helps me remember and it helps me remind you again and again of the truth. I love you and am loved by you. Don’t fret over names when you see our faces, just remember love.” He squeezed my hand and turned his face to watch my boys shaking star fruit from the tree nearby. The sound of ripe stars and memories fell onto the grass all around them, echoed back to us. Have they yet grown into the awareness of what it means to grow up loved? Abuelo sat watching them, forgetting more and more, grasping at memory, while they gathered more stories into their hands and hearts. He is a man who did not experience much love in childhood but who loved ferociously anyway. They brought the star fruit to him. He held it in his hands. Young and old marveled together over the gold miracle of a star you can eat. They soon slipped away, back to the tree, back to building their stories. The one who grew up without but choose to give abundantly, keeping watch over the ones that now grow in the abundance of that love, quietly gazing at what his love built. I watched him and found the end of my prayer, “Lord, help me choose faithfulness and love. Help me remember so they can remember.”
It was only recently that I decided to start looking for books to go with our holidays that go beyond the watered-down children’s books of today. I have always found it important to read quality children’s stories to our children, but for some reason just accepted the holiday twaddle that came into our home. I am so excited to enrich our understanding of these different times of celebration through reading good books. Thank you for giving me a place to start with Easter.
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