Potatoes

"Mom," Jack says, "I put some potatoes in the fruit basket for you," his potatoes, his own, fresh dug from his garden. His head poked in my room, bright freckles and a sky-blue shirt, I smile at him.

"Oh, thanks," I say. Perched on the edge of my bed, I've been staring at the open closet trying to extract something that will fit and look appropriate. The children bustle down the hallway behind Jack. Everyone's prepping for a day at work with Daddy.

"You can use them for whatever you want," he says, "like making chips or fried potatoes or WHATEVER you want." I smile, watch his eyebrows curve around those blue eyes. "'Cause, I like to have a little surprise for you any time I'm gonna be gone," he says. That closet full of clothes and nothing to wear and then this.

"Aw, thanks, Jack."

"Yeah!" he says. With that he clicks the door shut, scampers down the hallway, and soon the house is quiet, just Betsy and me.

All day I think about those potatoes. I fry them up for dinner, split them with Craig. We agree, hands down, the best potatoes. Ever. Could have eaten a whole bushel of them. But the nourishment, that was all Jack.





Gratitude:

6032. We have a garage sale with Pete and Rosie, a huge success.

6033. The kids help Craig move everything back into place in his classroom after the painting is done.

6034. I finish another sweater for baby boy.

6035. And a blanket.

6036. We finish the first week of school. Memories of the self-discipline required for learning begin to re-emerge. It feels good.

6037. We celebrate my mom's birthday.

6038. We celebrate Craig's dad's birthday.

6039. We land on Sunday tired and grateful for rest. It's the long afternoon nap, laundry forgotten on the couch, and bedtime come early.

Sketch Exercises

"Look," Myra says, "it's actually kind of easy." Seated in penmanship form she circles her pencil in whorls that perfectly match the width of wide-ruled lines. "I can't wait to show Grammie," she says.

"It's nice," I say. Askew at her elbow lies a key of all the different sketch exercises Grammie assigned to the big kids. She pauses, finds her place in the key and starts the next shape.

"I bet Zeke is doing this now," she says.

"Oh," I say.

"Now," she says, "I'm gonna have to start doing ACTUAL school work, don't ya think?" She looks up, all eyes and eyebrows.

"Suuuure," I say.

"Yup," she says and continues down the exercise list, determination, more like an accessory than a burden.

"Where are the other kids?" Myra says. Sunday afternoon, slack and leisure, the house tidy, quiet, and full of sun, we settle into quiet corners. Craig and I hold down opposite ends of the leather couch.

"Napping," Craig says, "so they can go with me tonight."

"Oh," Myra says. She darts off, a dead run down the hallway. We hear a thump on her bed. All the kids want to volunteer in Daddy's class. Even Joe begs each Sunday.

I note how as we've limited their exposure to marketing and some of the trends their peer pine after they find different things to desire, different goals to strain for. Trimming out tv seems like a gift more than a burden.

Craig falls asleep on the couch, and I while the afternoon away in quiet.





Gratitude:

5971. Libby gives birth to a perfect baby, sweet niece, Wylie Sparrow.

5972. I make two raspberry pies. Enough of the drips on the bottom of the oven begin to smoke that we have to fill the house with fans and open the windows. The result, though a little burned, is delicious.

5973. Jack and I figure out how to make sourdough pizza crust. Whole wheat too! Everyone agrees, it's a real find.

5974. Heavy whipping cream, bread-n-butter pickles, balsamic glaze, dried mangos, a few kitchen essentials restocked.

5975. Fresh almond ice cream.

5976. We harvest the first garden cucumber. I give it to Jack, but he gives me lots of samples.

5977. I get the curriculum library almost organized while the big kids help Craig at work.

5978. Joe skins his knee climbing trees out back. It forms the thickest scab I've ever seen. By some miracle most of it falls off on it's own. "Now, I'm gonna find my scab," he says. "It would be FUN if I found it."

5979. I finally figure the ins and outs of dying baby items safely. We collect the supplies and begin the process, a stack of muslin blankets ready to transform.

5980. "I cleaned my room," Joe says. "I'm gonna go see," I say. "You gonna look under the beds?" he says. "Yeah," I say, "ya wanna go finish?" He nods.

5981. Myra and Joe run something over to Cerissa. Betsy mopes around, cries, and finally settles on my lap. "Are you looking for Myra and Joe?" I say. YES, she nods emphatically.

5982. Tomorrow Jane turns 12, such a lovely age. We prepare for the unfolding of a young woman over scape of this next season.

5983. We fall each night into bed completely submissive to the refreshing lull of July. Summer tarries on.

Dinner Prep

"Can I run this over to Logan and Thad's?" Joe says. He holds up a cucumber, pickle sized, thrust up like the bounty it is, snapped fresh from HIS vine.

"Um, sure," I say. The evening sprint to get dinner on the table in full roar, I stop to look at his plaid shorts and shark shirt. Deciding he's passed the visual exam, "Myra, you and Jane can go with him," I say.

"OK," they cheer and peel off formation. Everyone playing a role, I calculate their absence, nod, and they're off.

"Why can't I go?" Lucy says. There, slack at the stove, shoulders sagged, she peers across the room to me.

"I'm going to have you help me set the table," I say.

"What's your reasoning?" she says.

"Well," I say, "I think Myra and Joe can be kind of hard to manage, and I think Jane is a little better at that, because she is older, so I sent her."

"Oh," she says, and with almost no pause, "I guess she is more mature than me." For the sheer guilelessness of her words, I slow in the thrum-drum pulse of dinner prep and look at her, something so still and peaceful.

"You are very mature for your age," I say. I pat her head. She reaches for the dishes. We weave a dinner spread in tandem. Something akin to a gong of love reverberates between us.

Gratitude:

5525. Joe jumps and dances circles around Betsy. She giggle her applause.

5526. "You read to go?" Craig asks. "Yeah," Joe says. Dressed in just a button-up shirt, he pauses, shakes his head. "Oh! I forgot my shoes," he says.

5527. The children begin school chores and a sense of order ensues.

5528. I begin rolling all the yarn in the house into balls. Even the old cheap stuff looks jubilant rolled into a perfect ball.

5529. My mom and Craig's dad celebrate birthdays.

5530. Jack's praying mantis dies. The Lord provides another, beloved creature that it is to Jack.

5531. I make friends with a new neighbor on my morning run.

5532. I buy five boxes of books for $20 at a garage sale, two sets of encyclopedias included. Encyclopedias, we've already used both sets. Bliss.

5533. Craig takes me on a date. Thrift shopping and a movie, it's the good ol' days.

5534. We settle into the anticipation of a new school year. Books begin arriving at the house. The children organize their supplies. The privilege of learning buoys us all.

5535. We thank the Lord for another year together.

Minus

"Are you surprised I can do this while talking?" Lu says.

I look up from a slice of plum toast. Across the table, she writes the answers to addition facts. It's like watching my piano teacher carry on a conversation and play Jesus Loves Me at the same time.

"Yeah," I say. "I am." I swallow, pause to lick plum jam off my lips.

"I think I know why I'm better at minus than plus," she says pencil still scrawling.

"Uh-huh?" I say.

"'Cause I was working harder at minus than plus." Eight plus two, she writes ten.

"Huh," I say.

"I'm so delighted when there's minus," she says.

I watch the pencil trace out neat numbers beneath the equal sign of each problem. I shake my head, spoon more jam onto my toast.

All this after I dragged her unwilling self in from the monkey-bars, I think.

But as I watch each answer form itself in her head and then on the paper, I marvel. I'm so delighted when there's minus. She sees the path. Off road, barely visible, but true: hard work leads to delight.

I steel my mind for the work ahead.





Gratitude:

5591. "Well, that's the end of that fly's life," Jack says after a tha-whack of the flyswatter.

5592. Amish butter, the kind you can taste on toast, even through plum jam.

5593. Turkey wraps. Sausage wraps. Ham wraps. Craig tells me I have to start actually cooking again. Everyone practically cheers when I make wraps -- all week long.

5594. Coconut sour cream fruit salad, the coconut toasted golden brown.

5595. Asian chop salad, the kind that goes perfect in a wrap.

5596. Chocolate sauce -- homemade.

5597. The kids plop Joe in the backyard swing and push, push, push him up to the sky. Under-dogs they call it, and circle like a carnival pushing him, pushing him up to the sky.

5598. "Joe fell out of the swing," Jane calls. "Oh no, what did he hit," I say. "Just the ground," she pipes back. A kiss and he's all better.

5599. "I'm making some sort of whip," Myra says, "but I'm not gonna whip anyone."

5600. Someone gives us a gift: a bunk bed for the girls. Jane beams. She's a top bunk girl.

5601. Mom and I make our weekly coffee date, frame in the world afresh.

5602. I sew together the first steps of a new quilt. Thirty fabrics, three-hundred-twenty squares, the hum of the sewing machine frames the whole of Friday night.

5603. Fresh popcorn, the basement swept clean, Craig plays poker with his buddies.

5604. We make our annual visit to the fair. We leave just as dehydration and exhaustion take over then nap the afternoon away.

5604. I come across Susanna Wesley's definition of sin: Take this rule: whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off your relish of spiritual things: in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself."

5605. I take note of our pastor's first sermon after his sabbatical. He quotes Dallas Willard: Hurry is the archenemy of the spiritual life.

5606. "Who I am becoming as a person," Pastor Joe says, "in the end, is much more important than what I accomplish."

5607. I let these quotes orbit in my mind and once again set my mind to worship our Lord in all I do.

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my strength and my redeemer. ~Psalm 19:14

Good News

"I'm thinking of getting a sword," Myra chimes as I fold laundry at the old black couch.

Jack waves a giant turkey feather plucked from the blackberry patch. He orates on how to tie a rope around a feather and then tie it around your forehead - like an Indian. I stack towels, fold summer pjs.

"I'm making a sword with wood and putting a feather on top," Myra adds.

Joe screams from somewhere in the sun room.

"Stop trying to micromanage Joe," Jane hollers from the basement.

It's the first week of school. They begged for a month, and now it's finally here. School. I pass out new freedoms and greater burdens of responsibility.

They nod, and next I know, there is Jane sprawled on the floor mapping a week of literature all in sticky notes. Jack and Lu join forces to map colonial America. Myra and Joe try their best to mimic reading and end in a game of tag out back.

School. My favorite.

Then, end of week, the kids assemble a castle all in pillows and footstools, quilts and a blanket. They share a box of Nerds and listen to Narnia. They make rules and an economy. For all the pillowed mess, they speak affection to each other.

"Don't chew the Nerds," Jane says, "suck on them. They last longer." Myra crunches through hers. Jack saves his.

"Yeah," Lucy says, "if you chew up the Nerds, you are being a glutton." Everyone nods some assent, but Myra still crunches hers. Jack saves his.

Craig and I let the mess orbit around us, a castle. Soon, the tiny box of Nerds is gone, we set the ten minute timer, clean up. Another scene begins.

We get the good news this week that we're having a baby girl. A girl. We can picture her there with us, another nucleus of complexity. Each brings out a different side of us and each other. Another dimension. Irreplaceable.

Gratitude:

5562. Joey wails his complaint 5am Monday morning when Jane confiscates my birthday chocolate from his smudgy hands.

5563. We have an old-fashioned chat on the patio with Kyle and Carolyn. Their garden surrounds us with beauty.

5564. The seven of us gather around my doctor's ultrasound monitor. He announces the jubilant news: it's a GIRL. Craig was the only one of us to guess right.

5565. Egg salad with pecans and bacon, Mom makes us a labor of love.

5566. A palette of nail color, the girls and I pour over pretty fall colors.

5567. I start planning fall outfits, skirts and long leggings, boots to the knees. Leggings. Leggings are just the best.

5568. We head to the farm for a blackberry blitz and a birthday party. Craig's dad turns 77.

5569. His mom sends us home with garden produce and the most fragrant rose.

5570. Craig starts renovation on the basement bathroom, the school bathroom. His brother and sis-in-law pour forth help and advice.

5571. A bag of groceries from Trader Joe's.

5571. Hand-me-downs. Bags of them. And a dolly.

5572. I eat a cupcake, thick with almond frosting. Joe, leans belly-up on the counter, nose to nose with my fork. "Share, Momma, share," he cheers.

5573. Mozzarella, parmesan, feta, the cheeses of summer.

5574. The garden begins to pour forth tomatoes and cucumbers.

5575. I read again CS Lewis' essay, Membership.

       How true membership in a body differs from inclusion in a collective may be seen in the structure of a family.

       If you subtract any one member, you have not simply reduced the family in number; you have inflicted an injury on its structure. Its unity is a unity of unlikes, almost incommensurables.

5576. Incommensurables. Nucleuses of complexity. Our family grows by another dimension.

Testing

"Mom, if I were you, I'd let them in." Jane watches from the backseat.

A Honda Civic shimmies past our front bumper. White, a melon shape of rust imprinted on the driver's door, window down, elbow protruding,  I frown. They crowd the front sphere of the suburban.

"Why?" I sigh, the day all wide and sky-blue, that white Honda almost fully ahead now.

"'Cause," she says, "it seems like the thing Jesus would do."

I ease back. They scuttle by, seven over the speed limit. I remind myself we're not in a hurry.

We hasten onto the freeway, then weave through town, conversation the rocking sway of a swing.

"That Sunday school teacher that likes Jude," Jane continues, "I bet they are really old."

North along the snaking river, north past the small-town feed store, north up Old Sandy, a right turn, a right turn, somewhere a right turn. I trace the directions again in my mind. "Yeah?" I say.

"'Cause old people are smarter than other people" she says, "and they probably know there aren't that many people with strong personalities left."

"Oh. That's true." A dirt road, a red barn, yes, there it is. I see it just before the mailbox with giant brown numbers: her house, the proctor's house. Testing day, we make a date of it.

Then, it's Thursday.

"Mom, Mom," Jack heralds, "I want to buy you flowers. I have $13 and I am GOING to buy you flowers."

I click send on a note for my friend the one with the new baby all downy soft and fresh and learning to sleep. Jack taps my shoulder. "Mom, when we go to Costco, I just HAVE to buy you flowers. When we go to Costco, we HAVE to look at the flowers?"

I scoop and stack white cereal bowls migrated from table to counter, slop-mop and crooked. A tic-tac leaning tower of diagonals, spoons poking out, I spray them down, leave them to soak.

"When we go to the store, we are going to HAVE to look at flowers," Jack instructs Myra. She nods, her Keen hand-me-downs, like duck feet on backwards.

We wrestle laundry and legos, pencils and paper leaflets, the raisins somebody left out, the dishtowels Joey scattered across the kitchen, and between us all, we pin each in place.

All the while Jack sings in six-year-old falsetto, "I'm going to buy Momma flowers. I'm going to buy Mother flowers." It's like Broadway. And he's never called me Mother.

Windows down, children buckled, the hot wind a scuffle through our hair, I try to sing to the radio. It doesn't really work all lumpy and layered in chit-chat and the tempest gusting through the windows. I stop.

"We are going to HAVE to look for trays of flowers." I slow my rushing day, spot blue eyes and freckles in the far back seat. "I really HOPE we can find flowers," he says. I watch him serious and broad shouldered, all the trays of flowers in the world a slinky of momentum.

I catch his eye, rearview mirror between us. "If I see the perfect tray of flowers," I tell him, eyebrows arched to encircle our moment, "that I am DYING to have, I think I might just let you buy them for me."

And like a bird alighted on my finger, the moment flutters still. He, all man-ish and boyish and freckled, me, captivated, windows down, the blowing air a cyclone around us, he smiles. Adoration. For a moment the criss-cross underpinnings of love show, a whole universe of gossamer threads stronger than steal.

"Yep," he says.

"I feels so special." All I see are those water-blue eyes, his smile a crescent in the sky.

"Well," he says, "I feel special giving them to you."

Giving them to you. Oh, I see it: the open-handed giver. That's how I'm supposed to give. His love encircles me.

Gratitude:

4519. Myra helps chop apples with a butter knife. "Wow, my muscles are getting bigger," she says.

4520. Lucy sips my coffee, black and perfect. "How does it taste?" Jack wants to know. "Sort of like coffee grinds," she says.

4521. The kids and cousins play away a whole afternoon on sun and sprinklers, watermelon and wading pool.

4522. Mom makes us corn slaw with peanuts.

4523. Myra pukes. Lucy howls that her tummy hurts, and everyone wakes up in perfect health.

4524. Pizza, apple crisp, dinner with Dad and Mom.

4525. Six peppers and hand-me-down clothes.

4526. Craig shows up with butternut squash sprouts, my favorite.

4527. Cousins come to play. Eight kids and it feels like two. They mesh with our life except with more fun.

4528. Cerissa and I search out knitting patterns.

4529. Trader Joes: all the fixin's for corn slaw plus mustard.

4530. Navy yarn.

4531. Purple potatoes.

4532. Our family trounces out to the latest gallery opening. Friends and family, art, food, sign language, live music, a zephyr of a night.

4533. Craig finds a bike trailer for Joe and Myra on Craigslist.

4534. Libby comes over, and we alter clothes to custom fit.

4534. Godiva chocolate.

4535. Pete and Rosie move into a house from the early 1900s: fresh paint, newly finished hardwoods, a closet converted into a bathroom, nooks and crannies, and lots and lots of natural light.

4536. Firewood. Friends give us a whole pine tree of free firewood. The children have a lovely romp in the woods.

4537. Friends and family from Craig's side gather on the farm, an impromptu party, fields of green in every direction.

4538. Craig has a leader's meeting after church. The kids and I come.

4539. Sunday evening, pop-it firecrackers, cousins, the backyard, perfect.

4540. Two brand new Bibles, leather bound.

4541. The cooling fan in the refrigerator dies. Craig fixes it.

4542. He brings the week in for another soft landing. All things seem easier with him.