Panhandling

 

"Mama says it's okay to sit on the corner and beg for money but you shouldn't direct traffic."

How do you tell this lovely group of people that what your 5 year old daughter just said is not some hilarious childish misinterpretation, but actually, exactly what you said? How is it that I haven't learned that anything I say can, and will, be repeated at the most awkward moment and without any hint of context?

As I always do in these situations, I resort to blushing and babbling. I am sure the logical explanation I am trying to express is included in the words spilling from my mouth but the polite smiles I am getting tell me that it isn't transmitting clearly. To avoid this, I have tried playing it off like I have no idea what this kid is talking about. Unfortunately she will insist upon refreshing my obviously failing memory which just increases the social discomfort and drags it out at the same time.

Why do my kids always want to chat with adults anyway? Why can't they just run off and play and save me from embarrassing explanations? Well, as long as it isn't that panhandling game. You know the one.  All the kids are playing it. They ride around the track on bikes and the youngest steps out, every time they go by, thrusting out a bucket and screeching, "Mooooney Pleeeeeeeease! Money for the hoooooomeless people!"

Really? That's just my kids?

Am I blushing? Umm...

 

Let's Make Olive Oil Lamps!

Can you really make an oil lamp with materials you have around the house? Absolutely! We tried a bunch of different materials and ended up with two favorites.  Is it a coincidence that our favorites are ridiculously easy? Maybe not.

 

Our first is made with a jelly jar, olive oil and a paper bag handle.

We coiled the paper bag handle with a bit sticking up in the middle.

 

We added olive oil until the paper bit began to float.

 



 

Using a lit piece of spaghetti, we lit the "wick".

 

 And here it is! It burned hot and bright until we got tired of watching it and smothered it by placing a large glass over it.

 

The second one is so easy a 5 year old can do it. With supervision of course!

It requires a shallow bowl, olive oil and a piece of scrap paper.

 



 Crumple a piece of paper and place it in the shallow bowl.

 



 

Add olive oil and fire.

 

This one also burned for a long time although not as brightly. We smothered it with a lid to extinguish it.

This Moment

"A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember." 

 

 

inspired by SouleMama

Creativity and Video Games

It is a breathtakingly lovely spring day and there is no way any child of mine is going to be sitting inside playing video games! We don't even sit around the house playing video games in the rain or snow. In fact, if my kids get more than an hour of screen time in a week they consider it astonishing.

 

So we head out to the yard and this little guy grabs a box from the garage. It is my husband's old Nintendo system. He plunks down on the ground and begins sorting, stacking and setting up. He is a video game designer you see. He is testing out his competitor's products.

 

 

 

I guess this lovely spring day was just the right kind of day to spend playing video games.  

Surprises

This home is a gardener's home. This yard was planted and tended for fifty years before we settled in. The first gardener raised her sons and her flowers in the soil I wash off of my hands and my children every evening. The neighbors tell me about her. "She was always out working in the yard," they say as I trim hedges or rake leaves. Not that I need to be told. The magic of this yard drew us to this house and the magic of the first gardener's plantings continue to surprise us.

 

We discovered these sweet little flowers suffocating behind some tremendously overgrown shrubs.

This is the first year these tulips have bloomed! Every year they sprout, form buds and are decapitated by some hungry animal before we even glimpse a hint of color. The garden fencing seems to be helping!

 

 

 Pink hyacinth hidden beneath the forsythia!

 

 

One year we had a yellow daffodil. One daffodil. This year I saw the sprouts coming up and was looking forward to seeing my yellow friend again but was surprised with one white daffodil. What is hiding beneath this soil?

 

 

Maybe wishes do come true because I wished pretty hard for violets last spring and here they are. How?

 

 

This is a surprise of a different kind. I planted this rhubarb. We bought it from a local plant sale a few years ago as a tiny little thing. I settled it into the ground and worried over it. This year it burst from the earth and spread it's enormous leaves three feet high and four feet wide before the buds even opened on the trees. And now this. Hidden beneath those leaves are these ridiculously large flower stalks that could be mistaken for funny colored cauliflowers. I had no idea my rhubarb could do this! I have now read that I shouldn't let it bolt but I am loving the surprise and wonder of it all.

 

For fifty years this magic was crafted by someone else. After six years I realize that I have become the gardener. I tend and trim and plant. I delight in the surprises that have been left for me and in the surprises I have created. The neighbors could say that I am always out working in the yard. Maybe gardeners sprout from this wee patch of earth like rhubarb in the rain. Or maybe the gardener was always inside me and knew home when she saw it.

 

This Moment

 

{This Moment}

 

A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

 

 

inspired by SouleMama

An Inconvenient Epiphany

 

 



When my son was new to the world, and I was new to motherhood, I had an inconvenient epiphany. Maybe it was the predawn solitude or the oxytocin. It could have been the sleep deprivation or the dizzying mix of joy and anxiety that had become my constant emotion. Maybe, when I breathed in that sweet milky baby breath, I inhaled knowledge. This person cradled against my neck, as tender as an apple blossom and as stubborn as a stain, was infinite and complete. Every particle of his being was already perfect and perfectly capable of being and becoming anything. He was kinetic and potential. If this was true of one baby person and every baby person then this was true of me as well. How had this simple truth escaped me before? How wonderful! How thrilling! How utterly inconvenient. There I was, barely capable of feeding and showering myself, confronted with the knowledge of my own infinite possibilities. I sat on my little red couch, my son drifting off to sleep and the sky just beginning to lighten outside the window, and wondered who I wanted to be when I grew up.