January

My elementary school kids have 5 weeks off starting the week before Christmas.


What can I say after that?

Actually, it's historically (the last 5 years anyway) been by turns chaotic and wonderful. Just like you'd think, it depends on your perspective. Which is not fair at all. If I'm suffering of course it has to be chaotic and too long and where is that cavalry (the mounted soldiers riding to my rescue)? My house, oh, my house may never recover. And yet, this year (I know, it's the antidepressants) there have been some bright rays of light. One - the variety in the weather really lifted my spirits. Two - a friend loaned me a book about busy activities for busy Toddlers or something like that. Even though I only have one mostly outgrown Toddler left, the book started out so positively and with such practical ideas (a crazy can for the time when dinner isn't quite on the table yet) that I felt the possibilities start to bubble up like carbonation in my favorite root beer. Surprisingly, reading about Willa Cather left me a little mad and anxious - discontent. I walked around with a scowl a lot. Reading about toddlers put that discontent back on the road to productivity because it's all about creativity. Especially the discontent. Believe it or not, mothers have to be creative all the time to keep up with, and occasionally get ahead of, their Junior Anarchists. Whose needs often supersede their mothers' creative efforts. Back to Willa Cather. As part of that book review, I read some about Minerva Teichert, an LDS contemporary and fellow artist, though in painting. Cather was widely published and well-known and Teichert's paintings grace the interior walls of the Manti Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Two women who worked hard for their art and saw a measure of success in their lifetimes. While Cather never married or had children, Teichert raised 4 children on a ranch in Wyoming while painting, cooking for the ranch hands, and keeping house. So, back to me, I am neither a world-class writer or painter or musician, but I have talents - creative things I like to do. We need to continually create in order to stay alive - to keep the cobwebs at bay. I picked 5 projects to work on before the children went back to school and we had a great time finishing two of them. We painted, perler-beaded, sanded, made plate designs,sang, read, danced, and somehow the house is coming back together and I don't feel anxious and discontent anymore. O, pioneers!

Ode to a Double Stroller

I owe my sanity to my double stroller. We had three kids, 3 and under. The oldest had ADHD and followed his nose unless it led to me. My hero had one seat with a strap, one bench and a kickplate in the back. The baby could sit in the seat, the 2-year-old on the bench with her feet in the basket and the 3-year-old standing on the kickplate with the back strap across his back. Aah. We could stand in line at the DMV with nothing but a bag of licorice and wait in line for 45 minutes. We could wait at the podiatrist's office for an hour with nothing but a bag of jelly beans and Veggie Tales recitations to occupy us. Well-child and sick-child visits at the pediatrician's were a piece of cake. By the time the baby was 3 and I was pregnant with number 4, everybody could remember to stay by me, use quiet voices, and not touch anything in the store. The double stroller limped, the handle wobbled, and the sunshade supports had broken. It was time to retire my faithful companion. I had Allen set it out by the garbage one day when I wasn't looking.

Anniversary Angst

I'm reviewing for our book group this month - Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark. While skimming a biography of Cather, this gem stood out:

"A Midwestern farm couple have ceased to talk to each other with any intimacy because roles and family loyalties have divided them. The husband is concerned with his farm work, the wife with her children; over the years their conversations have been reduced to negotiations 'almost wholly confined to questions of economy and expense.' As Hester haggles in behalf of her sons, Cather delicately and understatedly describes the emergence of buried affection between husband and wife. In trying to persuade her penurious husband to let the boys attend a traveling circus, Hester discovers that--unknown to each other--she and William had attended a circus together back in Virginia, their childhood home. This revelation opens the floodgates of memory, and the two begin to share other stories and recollections:

"They talked on and on; of old neighbors, of old familiar faces in the valley where they had grown up, of long forgotten incidents of their youths--weddings, picnics, sleighing parties and baptisms. For years they had talked of nothing else but butter and eggs and the price of things, and now they had as much to say to each other as people who meet after a long separation."

"Their conversation leads to a reawakened love based in shared experience, understanding, and memory. As a result of this renewed connection, Cather implies, family allegiances will shift. Hester will no longer always place her sons before her husband: she feels a 'throb of allegiance' to William, and her sons sense that they have lost a "powerful ally." (Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice, Sharon O'Brien)

Listening to one dear friend talk about her anniversary, the desolate winds of winter blew through her words, even though her anniversary was in August. I'm probably reading too much into things, but sometimes family responsibilities, church callings, work, and selfishness take precedence over cherishing our spouses. It can happen to anyone and an anniversary is just a day, but it happens on the same day every year and it's for both of you, not just one. It's your spouse's anniversary, too, so you make the plan and carry it out.