Bits and Pieces

**We have a windowsill full of cacti and succulents. Most belong to Goldie – who tends them with great care. At one point, in transferring one particular cactus to a larger pot, she added dirt from outside (I had a Botany professor who would take issue with the term “dirt” being used here, but that’s a discussion for another day . . . or perhaps never). Apparently what she added wasn’t completely free of life because a little something extra began growing next to her cactus. In all Goldie’s goodness, she has let it thrive – rather than casting it out as the intruder it is. Bless her heart – today it became clear to me that she has been tenderly cultivating a puncture weed plant.

**Our little Arianne came to visit a few weeks ago. She’s an adventurous girl. And I should like one of her visits to coincide with a trip to Bear Lake where there might be wave runnering and game playing or something a bit exciting. During  this visit, however, most of the kids were in school. I made her pick up groceries from Wal-Mart with me. And then I made her help me tackle peeling and cutting the giant banana squash that had been waiting patiently on my counter for months. (She was completely naive about banana squash . . . and I greatly regret not having made her eat some . . . even though all signs [not liking Thanksgiving sweet potatoes or yams, etc.] pointed to her not liking it.)

But I suppose that is one of the very reasons one loves an Arianne so well – she leaves one feeling quite convinced that she has found just as much of fascination and enjoyment in an afternoon of cutting banana squash as in a week of touring Italy. And she’s just the sort of person who . . . probably truly has. (But if not, there were the pork tacos and mini Cadbury eggs Mike brought us for lunch . . . so, that’s something.)

**Every now and then we invite Mike’s parents for dinner so the kids can have them all to themselves.

**Mike and I got to go to a breakfast at the school where Abe was honored as one of the students of the month. Each teacher only gets to choose one student a year, so it’s no small thing, particularly in a high school his size, being chosen. It was kind of fun too that the teacher who chose him was a gym coach. Abe does so well academically that one would naturally expect praise from a math or science or history teacher (and he does get plenty of that), but Abe’s work ethic and good nature impress all. (And we got to have an interesting conversation with said coach over the rather awful experience of losing part of his finger a year ago.)

**I have been wishing for Daisy to grow one shoe size – so the two of us might more freely borrow and share. I wished it even more when, after taking her to a doctor’s appointment the other day, Mike up and bought her not one, but TWO rather spectacular pair of boots! Speaking of Daisy, lately, if she is not playing music from the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack, she is playing music from The Greatest Showman (and occasionally Penny sneaks in and tries out Daisy’s music as well). Also, we have been working hard to catch her up on her driving hours so she can get her license in April. It’s almost too dreamy for her (and her younger sisters) to imagine that, this summer, they can just go to all the places I don’t usually have the energy to drive them (mostly Michaels and Target) of their own accord. It will be glorious. Unless, of course, Daisy tires of it. Heaven forbid.

**Mornings are so split into two parts. The part where we are getting everyone ready for school – backpacks and coats, breakfast and signed notes, lunches made and hair done. And then there is this other part with just these three little people.

**This cute shirt was a gift from my sister-in-law. A good reminder to keep my mothering expectations reasonable. :)

**In theory I would be on the ball enough to plan meals and make use of cool things like shopping online and then picking up my order at local grocery stores. And I have done that a few times. But in practice, I am forever needing this or being out of that. And when older kids are home from school and could actually tend, there is usually far too much going on – homework, dinner prep, etc. to be running errands. So . . . most of the time my grocery trips look more like this.

**I adore Calico Critters. They are one of the few toys that I imagine keeping around to pull out special for grandkids, etc. (Of course perhaps my girls will take their respective critters and leave me with none.)

**It really is the strangest thing that now, with March around the corner, the temperatures around here are freezing and snow is in the forecast as far ahead as one can see. January and February were so warm that I laughed at the groundhog’s prediction of more winter. “More winter? What winter?” I scoffed. Well, fools mock . . . . But here were a few pictures from a day at the park. Penny made everyone lunches to take complete with tiny sweet notes in each lunchbox.

**We watched the old long Pride and Prejudice not long ago. Penny adored it and has since plastered her walls with pictures from the movie. She’s most smitten with pleasant Mr. Bingley, but we still all thought it was funny when Mike gave her a Valentine with a taciturn looking Mr. Darcy saying “Hey, Valentine . . . You are tolerable enough . . . I suppose.”

**And now I am so caught up on things that perhaps I can write all sorts of new and delightful posts of whatever I like. But perhaps I can not. After all . . . the very things that inspire me to write (these nine humans I’m raising) also make it . . . mostly impossible to write.

Summer. Bear Lake and Snow. Mike.

This morning, after knocking a box of crayons off the counter and watching them scatter and roll over towards the fridge and under stool legs, three-year-old Summer called, “Mom, can you clean those up? I don’t have much time.”

It’s true. Her plate’s completely full.

Mornings in particular are busy. She needs to do all sorts of things. She needs to . . . eat a little bowl of cereal. Oh, and she likes to gather things in a lunch box to eat later when Anders comes home from Kindergarten. And there are other things too, I’m sure. I can’t think of any of them just now, but she definitely does not have time for trivial activities like picking up crayons.

For all my teasing, Summer is a pleasant little sprite. At the cabin this weekend Abe created, from random pieces and without a bit of instruction, the most impossibly amazing LEGO robot — a huge armored thing, all moving parts and intimidation. We were in awe. Every one of us. But then, for no apparent reason, Mette wandered up the stairs, ignored all the toys strewn, invitingly, in her path, and hurled Abe’s robot from the loft. In our initial state of startled shock over the senseless destruction we all gasped, perhaps, a few too many exclamations of, “Mette! No! Why did you throw Abe’s thing!?” because, whether in remorse or in sorrow that she couldn’t continue her havoc-wreaking, she quickly began sobbing. Summer, however, kept proper perspective all the while. She rushed up the stairs, threw her arms around her two-year-old sister and soothed, “It’s OK Mette! It’s OK! We all still love you! We aren’t mad.”

Last night she fell asleep — small wispy-headed bit of child — on one of our big Love Sacs while we were watching a show. Mike said that she looked just like a small fairy — caught unawares (likely in the earliest morning’s dew) — sleeping on a mushroom. And then Penny helped pull back Summer’s bed covers so Mike could carry her in to where she properly belonged for the night.

I mentioned the cabin. We went there over President’s Day weekend.

Winter hardly ever came at all this year, so when Mike mentioned that it might snow and we should bring sled and ski gear, I imagined the thinnest layer of flakes and felt a bit grumpy that their potential arrival should add so much to my packing list. (Finding and packing correct winter gear is just . . . the worst. Everyone is always growing into and out of sizes, and I’m always hanging onto everything for whoever might need it next which all means that it is nothing so simple as pulling out nine perfect sets of boots, hats, gloves, coats and snow pants. It involves calling for everyone and rifling through boxes of a million things and holding up pants to check lengths and trying on boots and digging for missing glove mates.) But, it turned out to be no small flurry that asked all that work from me after all! It snowed 19 inches between Saturday night and Monday morning. Driving to church Sunday morning felt like risking our lives. I could hardly tell road from . . . not road. Conditions were so bad that I wasn’t certain we’d be able to leave the cabin again . . . ever. :) (Which would have been rather cozy . . . except for the fact that our food supply was growing fairly boring. We’d eaten all the Chips Ahoy and every last Cadbury mini egg. The most exciting thing left was a sleeve of Ritz crackers and the fixings for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Surely those items would never do!)

But, in the end, Mike and the older ones who were up for it did make it to the nearby ski resort. And all of us eventually found the roads clear enough for a fairly uneventful drive home. (Mike, bless his taking-care-of-us heart, actually left the other kids at the ski resort after several hours of skiing to come back to the cabin, check if roads were safe for me driving home, get the van unstuck, load all of our stuff, and help close up the cabin. Once we were safely on our way, he went back to the resort.)

Speaking of Mike. I’m often collecting little thoughts — the beginnings of posts about him. About us. About marriage. But I am never satisfied, and they mostly remain: tiny jotted notes, unconnected half-paragraphs in my mind.

But it’s a tricky thing for me. I have had so many close friends and loved ones endure such unthinkable misery in marriage that I am perhaps unduly hesitant to share too much of my own happiness – fearing it might somehow make their sorrows feel heavier. I don’t know that it does do that, but even in good marriages people are far too apt to compare rather than pay close attention to the unique ways their spouse shows love (which will undoubtedly be in different ways than the ways of their friends’ spouses) and I hate to encourage any unhealthy comparisons. Then too, my marriage is about two people. It’s not wholly my story to share. And I don’t always know what is fair game – particularly as I’m much less private than Mike tends to be. (I struggle with this same general thing in knowing best how to write about my kids as they grow older.)

But I think the main struggle is that . . . in order for me to do Mike justice and our relationship justice, in order to write something that matters to me and conveys something more than just words about what we’ve created here I feel like I start stepping into areas that are too intimate; too much just our own -- Mike’s and mine. I can’t explain that exactly. The chords around us and binding us – they are made of more than feelings and combined pursuits. They are of some actual eternal fabric or energy; perhaps it’s our souls themselves mixing: extended and weaving together in ways that have made them no longer completely separate parts; and we’ve built something there that belongs utterly to both of us and nobody else in all of eternity (though surely our kids are wrapped in and part of all that is so intimately ours . . . and God too – which I suppose is why it feels not only intimate, but sacred).

Not long ago I climbed into bed after being up with a restless child. Mike, who usually sleeps soundly, pulled me over close to him and wrapped me tight in his arms. He smoothed my hair back and kissed my forehead before drifting back to sleep – his arms around me and my right arm draped over his middle. As I listened to him breathe, I felt so overwhelmingly in love with him that I felt I might die. I couldn’t sleep. I could only whisper a thousand prayers of thanks and plead, in rather panicked desperation as I considered his arms ever not wrapped around me, that he never be taken early from me.

It’s a thousand moments like that that I feel start to capture something . . . but simultaneously feel fiercely protective of. So, perhaps there will never be the perfect post.

But, there are things I can share. Things I love. Silly things. Things that make me happy.

*I love how he can fix anything. I have such faith in his abilities to see just what the problem is, just how to solve or repair or unstick or set right whatever isn’t working (or even how to straighten out any insurance thing billed wrong, scheduling conflict, or confusing decision) that I perhaps expect too much of him at times. I quite simply don’t really believe he can’t solve anything if he only will. I’ve often thought that I could handle even the most insane type of apocalyptic conditions – so long as Mike is there because somehow he’d manage to figure out how to take care of everything.

*Similarly, I love how he somehow knows a bit about everything. I rely on his judgement a lot – with no real research on my own – simply because I trust its soundness so implicitly. And there is almost nothing the kids can ever ask me – history, science, politics, trivia -- that I can’t simply respond, “I don’t know, we’ll have to ask dad.” I’m not certain how he knows so much, but he feels like my own little version of googling something.

*I like how he is the best gift giver. I leave him to do a fair amount of the birthday and Christmas shopping for our kids because he comes up with wonderful ideas where I draw blanks. He’s even come up with the best ideas for my own parents. He just thinks of such great things. And, I must admit, I like how often I’m the recipient of those things! (Particularly as I’m a rather poor gift giver myself. I can never seem to think of a thing Mike will like. . . . Except for maybe eggnog – which I do buy for him even though the thought of it makes me queasy. So that’s something.)

*I’m also a huge fan of his beard. I’m afraid I can’t truly feel that any beard can compete with a red beard – particularly when his red is in fact copper.

*I like that he doesn’t own a smartphone. Just a beat up little flip phone.

*I love his unfailing honesty. I don’t think anyone more honest has maybe ever existed.

*It makes me chuckle, and I like that although he was the MVP of his senior year homecoming football game, he has no real interest in sports.

*I like that twice he has written me running poems. :)

*I like that he has a difficult time walking up stairs. If a staircase presents itself, he feels compelled to bound up it.

*And of course I love that it doesn’t seem to cause him undue stress having a lot of kids. He’s never put up any resistance to my desires to add to our family. And he doesn’t get alarmed at the idea of carting them all places or worry about how we will manage it all like I do. He trusts it will work out fine.

*Speaking of that . . . and speaking (as I did earlier) of noting the ways a spouse shows their love. I appreciate so much that he often shows his love for me by taking all of the kids with him to run errands, etc. on Saturdays so I can get a few things done at home in quiet.

*I love that he always cooks the turkey if a turkey needs cooked.

*I like that, despite my occasional grumbling, he makes us watch all the old movies – black and whites, musicals, Disneys, boys and their beloved pets (that probably have to go back to the wild).

*I love that he almost never passes me without hugging me tight for a minute.

*I like that he creates lots fun and adventure for the kids. I don’t know that they’d ever have much fun at all if it weren’t for Mike (as I’m far too content not putting the energy required into things like camping, going to Lagoon, skiing, etc.).

*Alternately . . . I love that he teaches our kids to work hard. He isn’t a pansy about them being inconvenienced or feeling grumpy about large tasks being expected of them, and it comforts me to know I’m not on my own in preparing them for life.

*I like his big arms – even his forearms are huge. (Watching him arm wrestle our kids is the best – always so much laughter [especially from Abe – who can’t get over the fruitlessness of it all]. We joke that when Abe can beat Mike, he’ll know it’s finally time to send us off to a care facility.)

*I like his teeth. I’m not even sure why. I just do.

*I like his attitude about trials and inconveniences and difficulties. He doesn’t get unduly cast down or discouraged about them. He seems to matter-of-factly consider them as part of life’s condition and not particularly more unique or severe than most have suffered.

There’s much more of course –- those are just bits and pieces that can’t do justice to the complexity and powerfulness of a marriage.

And with that I shall end for now.