Everyday Life, Parenting

Surface Farming

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I was driving down the road, thinking deeply about at least four different issues at the same time. The kids were listening to Psalty in the backseat. Listening to Psalty usually means I don’t have to talk for a blessed little while. But Ella had something on her mind.

“Mommy?”

“Yeah?” I turned down the volume and dragged my brain back into the car.

“In the Rapunzel movie (Tangled), the bad guys become good guys!”

“Yep, it’s pretty cool.”

“But there are still some bad guys. Who are those guys trying to chase Eugene?”

“The Stabbington Brothers?”

“Yeah, why are they chasing him.”

“Because they want everything Flynn has, the crown and then Rapunzel’s magic hair.”

“Why do they want all that?”

“They’re greedy.”

“Oh.”

I turned the volume back up. But a twitch in my brain got stronger in the next few seconds. Here was my four-year-old daughter, asking me questions about good and evil, probing into a topic that is prevalent in stories and in real life, and I was trying to stay on the surface and wrap our conversation up neatly so I could get back to figuring out all the stuff.

I turned the volume back down. “That happens a lot, doesn’t it? In stories and movies, there are people who are bad guys because they want more money or power, right?”

“Yeah. Could you turn it up please?”

Opportunity lost. And this image came to mind, of me, with an old-fashioned plow. Now, I’m not a farmer. My children aren’t soil. But bear with me in this Little House on the Prairie imagery. I had this image of me with that old-fashioned plow, my hands on the handles and my horse and I walking along at a brisk pace, quickly going over the top layer of soil. “Well, that was easier than I though it would be!” I said to myself as I brushed my hands off and called it a day. But I had gone so fast and wanted it to be so easy, I had barely turned over any soil. That is not a field that will reap a good harvest. That is a field that hasn’t had the rich soil underneath tilled up and broken into fertile ground. Am I that surface farmer every day when  it comes to raising my children? I can skim along, check a day of activities off, and I can be a surface farmer, just going over the fields with the plow in the fastest and straightest manner, getting it done without getting too dirty and exhausted. But what have I actually accomplished? What I need to do is push the plow down, blister up my hands, break a sweat, and get down to the rich matter below the surface.

I thought about this idea for a few moments in that car ride, wondering if my analogy actually made any logical sense, when my breath caught in my throat. Because, hold on, my children actually are soil! In the Bible, Jesus gives a parable about a sower:

3 Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9 Whoever has ears, let them hear.” Matthew 13:3-9, NIV

Okay, so this daily sowing of my children’s minds and hearts just got a lot more serious. As a parent, my ultimate goal is to plant seeds in them: seeds of wisdom, seeds of truth, seeds of love, all kinds of seeds. And how tragic would it be if I didn’t prepare them for those seeds first? What if I just let them stay shallow soil? Then the seeds I plant will sprout soon after sowing, and I’ll think, “Good! My work is done here.” But there will be no root to the sprouts because that soil wasn’t tilled and prepared. That wisdom or love or truth will dry up and vanish. Yeah, I’ve seen that happen. And I’ve seen parents replant. I’m guessing there’s a lot of replanting involved in this whole process, and it lasts a lifetime. What makes my heart thud even now when I think of all of this is that I only have a small window of opportunity to condition the soil of the soul. There is so much more that goes into the shaping of person than a parent or two parents or an entire village pouring into a child. I’m thankful for that, but I’m also mindful that my chance to make deep furrows are at their finest right now.

I always thought I’d like to be a farmer, and I guess I kind of am. The good cultivators in any walk of life get exhausted, get grimy, and get very involved with the work of their hands. I have to remember that when I just feel like combing the soil over, gliding over the surface without changing the make up of the field. I don’t want to be a surface farmer. I want to pull up the thorns and weeds and plow deep into the richness below, where the seeds can flourish into a legacy my children will keep forever.

A note for any already exhausted mamas and daddies out there: you are doing good work. This post is in pursuit of refining and reaching higher, not loading on the guilt. I know there are days when I’ve done the best I can and it still isn’t pretty. I only want to share an idea that is helping me remember what really matters in the time I spend with my young children. I hope it will help you in some way, too. 

Reviews

Review: The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

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The Invention of WingsThough a life long Southerner, I am not a big fan of Southern Literature. But ever since reading The Secret Life of Bees, I knew I would always give any novel by Sue Monk Kidd a try. Mermaid Chair left me pretty disappointed, but I stood by my love of Bees and put myself on the library waiting list for The Invention of Wings as soon as it came out. Here’s what The Invention of Wings is about:

Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.

Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid.We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty-five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love. As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women’s rights movements. -Goodreads.com

I enjoyed the fact that this book was based on real abolitionists, the Grimke sisters. They were remarkable women in a time when women weren’t supposed to be remarked on for anything but their choice of dresses and hair styles. They were Southern Belles gone wrong, in their society’s opinion. I also appreciated how this novel portrayed a reality of slavery in Charleston, South Carolina, without being as graphic as the recent popular novel, The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom. Having been to Charleston countless times, it was a hard reality check to really imagine what some of those historic buildings were housing three hundred years ago. The historical element of the novel was the novel’s best point.

Where the book disappointed me was in the character development and very inwardly focused narrative. The narrative switches from the first person perspectives of Sarah and Handful. I got very sick of being in Sarah’s head especially. If Kidd wanted me to feel stuck in molasses, she made her point. Handful’s narrative was more humorous and interesting. I would have rather heard more about Sarah’s sisters, Angelina, but it turns out there’s not really a whole lot known about her. She was the one with spunk in the Grimke family. The slow moving span of 35 years that the novel covers and the misguided patience of Sarah throughout her life made me tempted to throw the book down in frustration. But it was on an e-reader, so I didn’t throw it.

Because of the slow pace and tiresome narrative from Sarah, this book is a 2.5-3 out of 5 star book for me. If you’re interested in the Southern history and the Grimke sisters, I would recommend it, but if you are simply looking for a book that is similar in style and feel to The Secret Life of Bees, I’d give Beth Hoffman’s Saving Cee Cee Honeycutt or Sarah Jio’s The Violets of March a try.

The Violets of March       Saving Ceecee Honeycutt

7 Challenge, Everyday Life

Waste Not: Part 5 of the 7 Challenge

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7: An Experimental Mutiny Against ExcessLast month I was supposed to be working on the Waste part of the 7 challenge. When I began thinking about this part of the challenge, I thought I was already doing pretty well on that front. I have a family of four and we fill up our recycling cart at the same rate if not faster than our trash cart. Usually, our trash cart is only half full on the day the trash is picked up. I am guilty of looking at neighbors’ trash cans on trash pick up day and thinking, “Wow. They are Wasters.” Needless to say, there was a high horse to fall off there.

And fall off I did. Because, while I do recycle absolutely everything I possibly can, the point remains that if I have something to recycle, that means I’m buying something that’s prepackaged. Deli meats, canned spaghetti sauce, boxes of noodles, yogurt cups, all that stuff comes in recyclable packages. And some things I consider to be necessary are packaged and aren’t recyclable. I mean, when I think about all the Styrofoam egg cartons…but how do you get around that? Aldi only sells one kind of egg!

I guess it all comes down to how much trouble I’m willing to go to in my attempts to reduce waste. I think I kind of phoned it in on this part of the challenge. And that is unacceptable. So I’m doing a re-do in March. Here are the more specific goals for the month:

-Start (and, please Lord, finish!) potty training Isaac in the second half of the month. He’ll be 3 in June and with another baby due in July, now seems like it’s time. My “method” relies heavily on not wearing a whole lot of clothing for the first few days of potty training, which is why I think this should take place in the warmer part of  the month. I greet this part of the challenge with a great deal of trepidation–potty training my firstborn took about a year, and I am not exaggerating.

-At least try to get Ella out of nighttime Pull-ups. I’ve heard some parents have success with waking young children up and taking them to the bathroom before the parents go to bed. I’m just not sure about this one. One problem is I go to bed about an hour to an hour and a half after my children. Is that enough time? Another problem is I abhor the drama that always follows when my poor little four-year-old is incoherently sleepy. To willingly bring that upon both of us is going to take some girding up of mental toughness. If anyone else has experience with methods for getting rid of Pull-ups at night, please share. I’d really prefer not waking her up because I think she barely gets enough sleep as it is.

-Sew a couple of handkerchiefs for myself. Yes, I just used the word “handkerchief.” And the word “sew.” I hate, hate, hate buying Kleenexes. Which is why my husband is always asking in a very nice but what I hear as accusing tone, “Don’t we have any Kleenex?” I just don’t think to buy them, and when I do remember, I say, “We don’t really need those.” But my husband and my kids really enjoy a soft nose wipe for the winter months. And the allergy ridden spring months. And probably all the months in between. I could care less, I’ll use a brown paper bag, but I do grab a Kleenex if they’re handy. I’d rather use something that’s reusable, though. So, hello, old fashioned-ness. (I have the same goal for nursing liners, but I won’t go into great detail there. Details about Kleenex usage are quite enough for one day).

-Reduce our dependence on boxed cereal. There are lots of reasons this is a good idea, one of them being most cereal doesn’t keep my kids full past 8:00 a.m. Another reason is a lot of those colorful boxes pose major recycling problems. Another reason is it’s mostly gross and we throw out half of the box. Is there a drawback? Oh yeah, cooking and washing dishes before 8:00 in the morning. Dear friends, bring on the easy breakfast ideas.

Those are the goals. I could think of more, but my children are pretending to be firefighters and I probably should go put a stop to their throwing open the front door and yelling “Fire, fire, EMERGENCY!” for the whole neighborhood to hear. Because a false 911 call is even more wasteful than a Styrofoam egg carton.

 

 

Everyday Life, Parenting

A Good Day to Play

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There’s a photo I keep propped up on my dresser. I’m not sure why I haven’t put it in a frame in the last eight months it’s been there, but something about the spontaneous, unplanned, unframed nature of the moment this photo contains is one of the biggest reasons it has a place in my every day life.

photo It’s a picture of me playing with my oldest, Ella, when she’s around 20 months old.  This is an ordinary moment, a thing I did and still do a lot on a daily basis. Yet it’s one of my most cherished pictures ever. (Please note the original artwork taped to my wall. I used to worry about hanging art on my walls, but God knew that wasn’t my forte; hence, he gave me Ella. I have countless pictures of princesses and fairies and unrecognizable doodles taped up like an endless border in my house, right at a kid’s eye level. Maybe it looks weird, but it’s not going anywhere. Okay, I’ll probably take it down by the time she’s ten, because “let them grow up” and all that conventional wisdom will demand it.)

 

I guess you could classify me as a “playing mom.” I like to play with my kids. Or at least, I like it once I get it down to it. You know paintwithISaachow it goes: you have a million to-dos and and you’re exhausted with a headache and you just want to finish your coffee before it’s ice cold, but your three-year-old finishes up her breakfast, looks at you, and says, “Is it a good play day?” What that means in my house is “Are you too busy for me today?” Because let’s face it, our children have no concept that almost every single thing we do is for them. They don’t know that all that laundry and cooking, hours at a job, hours at a desk, all of that is pretty much for them. Also, they don’t understand that mommy is happier when she has a sense of accomplishment in her days. What they understand is tiny princesses with annoying rubber dresses that come to life if you play along with them. They comprehend monster trucks that drive over bumps in the carpet like they’re Himalayan mountain ranges. They think forts in the living room are the pinnacle of life. It’s not hard, but then again, it is, this speaking their love language. It takes putting my mind in a different state, suspending the idea that getting something done is important, and pretending our dolls and teddy bears are feasting on gooseberry pie and cherry cider for no reason I can understand (what the…what do gooseberries even look like? Are they edible?). The trick is to let them take the reins and tell me what they think would be fun, and truly believe that nothing is ridiculous. Unless they start laughing, then it’s allowed to be ridiculous…

coloringAnd the thing is, I love it. At the end of a play day, I am absolutely more satisfied than I can explain. My small children know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I love them. I have dirty dish piles, dust that hasn’t moved in weeks, piles of clutter in the corners that I keep meaning to tackle, and I have joy despite all of that. I know it will be there tomorrow, but by tomorrow, my kids will not feel like they have to whine their way into my to-do list. Tomorrow, when I say, “I’ll come be a dragon after I finish these dishes,” they’ll believe me, because I proved it today. I proved I love them in their language, and it’s not so much of an uphill battle to maintain that faith if I am consistent in the time I spend with them.

A couple of years ago, a mom I deeply respect and love told me that she doesn’t remember ever playing with her children. That admission saddened me so much. This is a stay-at-home mom who spent countless hours homeschooling her children and “plays” with her teenage kids all the time now. But she doesn’t remember playing with them when they were small. Her kids remember it, though. They tell me how she played with them. I want my kids to remember that I played with them, and I want to spend so many hours playing with them that I cannot help but remember it, too. Because those are some of the happiest hours of my life.

So my photo of a good day to play stays propped up in my bedroom, and I look at it every morning as I get dressed. I look at it and remember that every day is a good day to play.

tea

 

Reading, Reviews

Antelopes. Antelopes Are Good.

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Here’s a recommendation for you married ladies who need a fun read this weekend. I actually kind of wish I had saved this book for a beach read, because it would have been perfect.

antelope-book-coverThere’s still not a whole lot going on on the reading front here, but I did pick up and finish in two days The Antelope in the Living Room by Melanie Shankle this week. Shankle writes the Big Mama blog and has been cracking me up for four years. I’ll admit, I sometimes feel uneasy with the consumerism aspects of Shankle’s blog and book writing, the amount of fast food she talks about and the cute clothes she features each week on her blog. But I’m convinced that I’m just not being honest with myself about (a) the amount of fast food I eat (Moe’s and Chickfila count as fast food, don’t they?); (b) the fact that I am not a fashion lover or food lover and, therefore, simply do not get revelries on food, especially ones involving Oreos or cheez-whiz;  or (c) the outreach and generosity Shankle and her family involve themselves in that I don’t. There’s way more to Melanie Shankle’s story than meets the eye and there is not an iota of self-righteousness in her work. Basically, Shankle’s writing won’t put you into a mood of deep contemplation, but it will make you laugh and appreciate the beauty in life. And the joy that is nacho cheese.

Shankle’s first book, Sparkly Green Earrings, is also stellar and is featured on the blog here.