Sunday

"Mom, Joey is eating the brown sugar," Lu hollers underneath the bedroom door.

Ugh. I roll to my back. "I'll deal with it when I get up," I call toward her voice.

The patter of little feet chase littler feet back toward the kitchen. I throw back the covers and fumble for the bathroom. Then I stare at the closet, mentally assemble nine outfits before I settle on a church sensible ensemble.

"Mom, Joe's chasing me with the scissors," Myra blusters through the door.

Joe, scissors in hand, cavorts to a stop, catches my eye, and hops from one foot to the other. "No, Momma. No, Momma," he squeals.

The morning carries on like this, one lurching stop to the next. We finally land for lunch somewhere around 1:30, Jane ironing out a furrow between her brows and Jack setting the table.

"Well, next time I could just not tell you what's for lunch in case I have to change my mind," I say. "That's what we do for Joey."

"Nooo," Jane sighs.

Little pails of soup, fresh stale bread, butter. We eat. And sit. And slop a little more bread in the broth.  Something like calm settles in, a slush around our ankles.

"Could you possibly find me a book before naps?" Jane says.

"Yeah, I could probably do that," I say. I stack Craig's empty bowl in mine.

"Being book-less," Jane says, "is sort of like being lifeless."

"Yeah," I grin, "I guess it is. I'll be down stairs. Come down when you're ready."

The afternoon gradually sighs to a full stop. Jack clatters the last of the dishes into the dishwasher. Jane and Lucy hang the wet towels half of the family left in a heap wherever they dressed. A thin glaze of order drizzles in the cracks.

I find Joe obediently settled in to the boy's bottom bunk.

"I love you, Joe," I say. I hunker down cheek to cheek and wait for his eyes to settle on mine. "I love you," I say. His pupils trace my face.

"Need hug," he says. Plaid shirt and checkered blankie, we melt into a hug. He blooms affection.

And then like a treasure hunt, I search out each child, smile into their eyes. We hold still, feel the slow moments of love.

The harsh moments fill out with muscles and flesh. Discipline frames us in. Affection nourishes us.

"Look Momma," Joe calls as I tarry past his room. "I covered myself up." Checkered blankie stretched from toes to shoulders, his voice rings to me. We smile as I pass.

Gratitude:

5608. "I read this much just to see if I could," Lu points to page in Because of Winn Dixie. "And then I was salivating to read more," she says.

5609. "We don't have to do your hair," Myra instructs Joe, "'cause it's all boyish."

5610. Roasted pineapple and habanero sauce.

5611. Salad in a bag. Two of them. The kind guests bring and leave the extra for another day.

5612. More homemade chocolate sauce.

5613. Jane finishes a paper on Christopher Columbus and Jack a fable.

5614. Lucy finishes her first quilt, a dolly one.

5615. We cut the fabric for another one all in blues.

5616. The children practice again the age old principle: free time comes from hard work.

5617. Jane makes a peach pie. We eat it all in one sitting -- the nine of us all on the farm.

5618. Craig scrubs the floor underneath the table until it shines.

5619. He trims the gangly banana plant into something more indoor-ish and less likely to take over a seat at the end of the table.

5620. The children help us harvest the last of the garden. Joe breaks out a lifejacket for the occasion.

5621. Plum picking.

5622. Craig turns an old wrought iron patio table into a fire pit.

5623. Craig's mom bakes a ham for us and sends us home with garden fresh green beans.

5624. Half the kids pile in the four-wheeler with Craig and his dad to bring a pile of corn stalks to the neighbor's horses.

5625. I start cutting the fabric for a new quilt of my own. Coral reds, lime greens, garnishes, and twists, Lucy helps me lay out the fabric.

5626. Jack gets a book on how to draw animals.

5627. All week the children leave me notes with chickens and rhinoceros and giraffes and magpies. I even get a kingfisher. I marvel at how a year of practice has taught them to shade.

5628. We all come down with sore throats and colds, and still, we weave a life together, just keep right on going.

Journal

"Here, let me see," I hold my hand out to Jane. She nabs her journal, jaunts around the coffee table. I shimmy out of the deep black couch, see-saw Joe's drowsy head in the crook of my arm. She flops the notebook open, thrusts it toward me.

"Joseph loved his father," I read.

She points to the looping gray. "If you love, you have a good result," she says and pokes the sentence next to O for Observation.

"That's true." I nod, sway Joe at the corner of my elbow. He nuzzles close.

Jane lowers the tatter cornered journal. Myra cockles from the bedroom, but that notebook between us, that bass note of a notebook humming, reverberating, we let the moment elongate and stretch. I nod again, the perpetual motion a sway of newborn comfort.

"Almost anything," Jane finally says, "if you love, you have a good result." She dips her head, "If you love and you don't keep any secrets, you have a good result." She nods in that grown-up way. I furrow my brow, and we bob our heads.

"Huh," I say. "That's true."

Love, and have no secrets. The moment skitters back to motion and we carry on, the secret inside: Love, no secrets.

Gratitude:

3609. "We all have different ways we hug you," Lucy says as I make the rounds to hug each child.

3610. "I want to hug Momma more," Jane announces.

3611. And, "Jack," she says, "stop fighting against Mother. You'll never win."

3612. I stumble upon another quote, "The impatient Christian is a weapon in Satan's hand."   ~C. Missler.

3613. "Orangoutangs are the most intelligent animal," I say, "I didn't know that." The children look at each other. "Even more than chickens?!" Jane says.

3614. Myra spits at the dinner table. When we frown and gasp. She panics and licks it up.

3615. Creamy soup with rice and lemon, we share it at Mom's.

3616. We carry on in Revelation. Even the children want to know about it.

3617. Jack crunches an apple and reads to Joey. Joe studies his face, watches Jack's mouth.

3618. "You guys don't get elephant skin, I don't think," Lu remarks. "I got elephant skin. Like Uncle Dan."

3619. Baby melons on the counter, love from the farm, we eat them, juice dripped down our chins and on the floor.

3620. The phone rings during dinner. "I'm not going to answer that," I say. "Mom, toll free," Myra shouts.

3621. The kids and I have Writer's Workshop.

3622. Pesto chicken, crockpot special, invented from what we had.

3623. Jane reads her Bible, a dolly slung up on her shoulder.

3624. Lucy tries to rehydrate a black marker on the way to Grandad and Grammie's. I bust up laughing at her jet black lips.

3625. We make celebration of the August and September birthdays with a party, swirling bliss of children and adults, a carnival of family.

3626. Virtue. We name our favorite things about the birthday girls and boy this past year and replay before our eyes, virtue.  Whatever is good, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable -- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy think about such things. And so we do.

3627. New clothes for fall, a birthday gift, the felicity of feeling pretty.

3627. "I stepped in some bear poop in the orchard," Janie announces, "and it had plum pits in it."


3628. We pick 12 gallons of plums in the snarled old orchard.

3629. We can plums late into the night, the first five gallons a grid of purply red quart jars.

3630. Craig and I pause to crunch rice krispy bars and stare at the old hand-me-down bin still half full of plums. "Ya know," Craig blurts between bites, "that is a lot of plums." He sets me to giggles. We shake our heads, smiles wide, laughs full.

3631. Myra blisses out over piles of plums. One here, a handful there, it's hard to say how many she ate. And so contrite when everything turned terribly stinky and messy, she hopped in the bath and covered herself head to toe in conditioner.

3632. Jack confesses to growing his fingernails long to try to grow claws.


3633. The children awake from Sunday naps. "Change into dirty clothes and you can dig worms," I say, "as long as you fill in the holes." They whoop and holler and, rapturous, tumble out the back door.

3634. Myra bites off little bits of plum and stuffs them in her dolly's mouth.

3635. "Are you trying to make it look like actually you?" Jack asks as I process a photo.

3636. Actually me. Another good week.