A Song from the Suds

Queen of my tub, I merrily sing,
While the white foam raises high,
And sturdily wash, and rinse, and wring,
And fasten the clothes to dry;
Then out in the free fresh air they swing,
Under the sunny sky.

 I wish we could wash from our hearts and our souls
The stains of the week away,
And let water and air by their magic make
Ourselves as pure as they;
Then on the earth there would be indeed
A glorious washing day!

Along the path of a useful life
Will heart's-ease ever bloom;
 The busy mind has no time to think
Of sorrow, or care, or gloom;
And anxious thoughts may be swept away
As we busily wield a broom.

 I am glad a task to me is given
To labor at day by day;
For it brings me health, and strength, and hope,
And I cheerfully learn to say- 
'Head, you may think; heart, you may feel;
But hand, you shall work always!'

~Louisa May Alcott, as taken from The Waldorf Book of Poetry

Sugar Snow

Sure enough, we kept close to home this weekend.  No travels over the river and through the woods to the Maple Festival.  I guess I could have felt sad about it, but we were pretty happy here in our own little snow globe. 

I started buckwheat pancakes in the morning and the batter was ready for lunch, for our own maple festival.  We had the sausage (not burned, like they always do, bless their hearts) and apple sauce (blackberry and very local!).  I told the children that if they wasted syrup, always the precious commodity, I would charge them $8.  They wasted syrup.  I cleared no profit. ;-)

The children went sledding while I set the house to rights.  There are times things feel like such a mess, and there are times it all feels so tidy.  While they were out, our dear neighbors served them hot chocolate, just like the Bobbsey Twins.  Those books always seem to include hot chocolate. 

This was around mid-day, these photos.  We probably cleared six to eight inches of snow that packed down as it fell.  It snowed all day and into the night, a heavy and wet kind of snow.  A couple inches piled on while we had supper with my parents, and they saw stranded cars on their way home.  We were so glad to be in our cozy little house. 

The plows passed in the night, the only kind of snow we've had all year that really required plowing.  Today I'll urge the children to go out and enjoy the snow while it lasts.  I can already hear dripping.

Home-Making

I wish I had a window over the bay
And a dreamy eyed cow to fill my milking pail
I wish I had a cockerel to raise me at dawn
And a little bed to sleep in when the curtains are drawn

~Vashti Bunyan

Our home has transformed in the last while, in unspeakable ways and in ways that are very visible.  Willow has, at long last, her own room.  I have mine, too, which seems so new and bright and strange.  I don't think I have to say much more, or that I should, but we are here and moving forward.  We are finding simple pleasures in our new spaces, and we are taking extra time to connect and keep to routines, as we all should.  Prayers have covered us, just as the fresh snow blankets things today, and we are doing well.  I'm not sure I'll ever be able to talk about it in this space (how does that all work?), but changes come and we keep on going.  Here I am, going.

Memories

It is a chilly sixteen degrees here this morning.  I was shocked when I looked at the thermometer.  And, I was pleased, of course, and felt smug that we got our Spring bulbs planted yesterday.  It feels exciting to think of flowers appearing in those first tentative days, though I am very much hoping to be thoroughly frozen in between now and then.

Speaking of first tentative days, here are some photos of the Old Davis Homeplace back when it was the Old Howell Homeplace, a 4.3 acre piece of a larger 80-acre (or so) farm.  The outbuildings were made of American chestnut, built to stay and lean.  How did many a UPS man find our house?  The old leaning barn.  Oh, how I wish I could go back and see all these things again, as they were.

I want to say that my parents purchased it in 1981, complete with a little farmhouse the burned down in quick and mysterious fashion.  No, really, mysterious.  As were the holes in the yard they would wake up to.  Someone was convinced there was a fortune buried on the property.  The wealth was the land itself, as far as I am concerned.

My parents built their home over a period of six years (give or take) and lived in a single wide trailer in the back yard.  It had followed my mother from college to the first four years of my life.  And then one day, it sold and a truck came to haul it away.  I remember that day.

For a cute bonus, because I am dying of cute here, I guess this to be Easter of 1986.  I suppose I could have checked the back of the photo.  Oh, well.  This reminds me of Laurel when she is all dressed up.  That girl is an interesting mix of bear-wrestling strength and sweet flowers.

And here's the homeplace today, the big old trees gone and new ones having grown up.  The old buildings--the tobacco shed, well house, grainery, and barn are long gone.  A couple old apple trees remain from the orchard and my parents have had a few horses graze their way through the field.

Well, happy day to you, ever how you feel about it, whatever you are doing.  

Fog on the Mountain

 Fog is the theme lately, it seems.  The world is covered in icy crystals down here in the valley and I am betting there is rime ice up high, once more.  Rime ice is, of course, frozen fog that drifts by and catches on things.  Yesterday, though, fog and mud.  We'd had plans for Raccoon Branch, but opted to go up high, instead.  The rain overalls and boots were still a help, and the children enjoyed a different kind of romp in the woods.

I think I feel foggy, in general, lately.  We've been in the thick of birthdays and guests and school and leaf piles.  We're also getting a piano tomorrow morning.  Wish us luck on the move--it's only going one block, but it is the trip out of one house and into ours that will be the challenge.  It all feels so messy to me, and I am ready for a little quiet and order.  I've been looking around the house, trying out new furniture arrangements and taking out clutter, hoping everything will fit. 

Spring Cleaning

I am thinking of so many things lately.  Last week was so long, just exhaustively so.  The world seemed so heavy; life at home seemed so heavy.  It  seemed like every task involved walking uphill in a snowstorm of molasses while barefoot in roller skates.  Weeks like that make a person want to give up and run for the hills.  And hey, I have plenty of options here.

It felt like the fitting thing to completely drop the routine and the old familiars things and shift the whole house around.  I've been doing that ever since Thursday.  There were books to move and dust bunnies to clear out.  There was fabric to sort and fold, and little bits of styrofoam to sweep up.  The more I tried to make things better, the messier it became.  And then it started to get better.  I think I am in the inching-my-way-to-better phase now.

Environment (the space around me) is extremely important to my emotional health, I've learned over the years.  Coming from a terribly messy childhood room to a tidier home has been a continuous task of both looking closely and standing back to see the bigger picture.  There are times that I wish I had the same discipline over other areas.  Having lived here eleven years now, the house has started to become full, lived in, too much.  I have been brooding over these spaces for some time, even as I have continuously cleared things out.

Our position has been such that we've been given many, many wonderful things that were just what we needed or wanted.  People wanted to clear out and we were open to helping in any way we could.  In busier times, it's been a lot to sift through, but it had to be done.  It gets dragged through the house or the yard, and then I must collect it all again for trash day or a trip to the thrift store.  I think they are pleased to seem me coming with my bags. 

I can feel myself on the edge of a time of just focusing here for a bit, of spending less time helping others.  That sounds terribly selfish to say, but I don't mean it that way.  The people who live here, who are not me, need me to focus here so that I don't feel overwhelmed all the time.  We're coming up on garden season, after all, and that will be a big job at the scale we are aiming for this year.  See?  It doesn't sound so bad now. ;-)

Regime Change

Things come and go in seasons and waves and phases.  Lately, it seems that all the waves have been crashing together.  I want to say, "Take me back to September!"  I say September because that was the start of the school year when everything seemed so clear and the routines were so fresh and new and easy.  Following set rhythms isn't always easy.  There are always distractions that pop up along the way.

The distractions, as of late, seem to be far too many.  The days have felt like there are too many errands, too much stuff, and too much dirt.  Is that just Spring?  So much to do and so little time?  We don't do much, in terms of things away from home, but there's enough here to keep a person busy in perpetuity.  That's just life, right?  I've felt like all I do is move the things in this house around and that they are seldom in the proper place, or where I last left them.  Time to change.

The children's room has been a place of weariness for me for awhile.  Bunkbeds were a choice I didn't really like making, honestly.  I don't guess anyone does, but they save space and that is something we need to save around here.  Choosing to move isn't in the cards for us.  We've planted fruit trees, after all. ;-)  The idea of a trundle bunk seemed perfect--stash it all away in the footprint of a single twin bed.  Over time, however, the idea became grinding, literally.

After watching the scratches on my floors get worse with each passing day (from the trundle bed), and after things just seemed too much, I made whimsical/long-considered decision to jump in the car and drive to Ikea for a different solution.  I'd purchased a toddler bed from Voldemart for the playhouse and this was the push I needed to really shake things up.

I recall from my Joyful Toddlers! class that Faith's mother, the famed Rahima Baldwin Dancy, would make occasional shifts when things got too much.  She called it a "regime change," and I've kept that in mind ever since.  I certainly needed one.  This place and that monstrosity of a bed were suffocating me.  So, a Kura bed and a toddler bed and now, ahhhhh.  I can breathe and there is light.

It was a long day, driving six hours total to Charlotte and back, which seems like worlds away.  This place where I live, it is a place out of time, so trips to cities seem so foreign.  They may as well be the Jetsons while we are the Beverly Hillbillies.  Nonetheless, my children got to experience elderflower punch and Swedish meatballs not made by me and we got a bed.  And some tiny lights.

It was a big job, disassembling The Monstrosity.  And it was a big job putting together the Ikea bed, in all its utilitarian glory.  The directions were well-written, and the children were a wonderful help.  They helped brace and carry and track down missing screws.  We suffered only minor injuries and very little discord.  Perhaps we'd had enough of that already?

Of course, while I was still getting it all sorted out yesterday, family had to come over and look at my mess.  I'm sure they thought the whole thing was crazy and I told them I had plenty of rational reasons, though I am allowed to not make sense now and then.  It all makes sense to me, anyhow.  The children can make their own beds now.  The whole thing is not looming so high in the air (it comes chest high on 5'3" me).  There are no more wheels grinding across my floor.

I was alone yesterday afternoon while I did some tidying to the house.  It really was out of sorts in a big way.  I put some final touches on the room and put up the canopy for Roan.  He really loves it and I think this is a good use for it.  I really hope that the improved space will inspire more reverence in our sleep routines and self care.  I'm also hoping that our routines will be renewed, in general.  I'm in charge of that, of course, and I think we'll all be nourished if I can pull it off.
The porch is covered with the remains of the old beds, but I'll deal with those today.  There's still the tiny hutch to put on the back porch.  I put away a lot of things while they were gone and I think I got rid of some of my negative energy.  I told myself that its okay to move out perfectly nice furniture in place of something that works better.  First world problems, I guess.  I slept better last night and my back didn't hurt (perhaps I wore it out!)  I went to sleep in my own bed for the first time in years!