20 Times

When Claire and I got home from dropping off the kids at school this morning, we were still in our pajamas. We wrapped ourselves in blankets on the couch to read for a while. Claire picked up the first book she wanted to read and said that she love-love-love-love-love-love-loves it. (She said “love” so many times.) 

And then, I guess to summarize, she said:

“I love it 20 times.”

Which brings me to this: October is back again. 

There are leaves on the streets and the smell of autumn is here: crisp and changing, brown and earthy.

The tops of the tomatoes are dead with frost and it’s time to pull everything out. 

The mornings and evenings are crisp, sometimes downright cold. 

I’m looking forward to making a batch of apple butter on the stove, filling my house with the scent of cinnamon and cloves. 

I bought spring bulbs to put in the ground so we can enjoy a bunch of beautiful happiness in six months when tulips carpet my small flower bed in front.

We’ve started burning fires, and there’s a sparkly spider and little witch hat on the mantle to show some October spirit. 

That’s all fine and good, and I love it all. 

But when I’m outside these days, I can’t stop staring. You’d think I have never seen golden trees before. But they are my absolute favorite. 

And every time and every day, I am—figuratively, and often literally—stopped in my tracks. Over and over...and over.

It was cool on Saturday when I woke up, and a bit breezy outside. I put my shoes on and went running. I saw sunlight filtering through a tree close to my house that never can decide, every year, if her leaves should be yellow or red. So she is both, and beautiful. And when the morning sun catches her, she is something to behold. 

Seeing her lit my heart right up. 

Life! Joy! Light!

And I know that this autumn will be over in just a minute.

But here’s the thing:

I love it 20 times.

Here's to Abe & Atticus

This morning, I found Claire in the act of continuing with this smattering of paint that she was working on last night when the other kids were off playing with friends and I was thinking about Abraham Lincoln and the noble ideals of abolitionism and democracy, honor and courage. 

I had just finished an hour working on writing about the 16th President of our United States, and was thinking about something I'd seen on Instagram this morning---a husband and wife who, together, are sharing their journey to healing. The husband struggled with pornography for over 30 years, and they claim their marriage was unsafe for so long. But they've turned to therapy and healing and openness and honesty, and their marriage is stronger today than it ever was. They are sharing their story and journey with the world. I was (and am!) SO inspired by that. For some reason, we associate mistakes with shame---and the bigger it is, or the more it's against what we truly believe, the more we carry that shame, burying it within us. We hide where we fall short because we don't love it, and we're sure no one else can love us in spite of our struggles, either. 

That makes me so sad, because all of us fall short--in one way or another (and in my case, in several)--and what we all need, more than anything, is love and compassion.

In my life, I've ultimately found healing only insofar as I am willing to look at, and deal, with the truth: about myself, about situations, relationships, my conduct, whatever. And I'm constantly trying to ascertain if I'm being honest with myself about my life, and wondering if I'm seeing things clearly, trying to identify places where I need to (figuratively) clean my glasses. (I often find myself introspective: asking who I really am, if I'm good to others, wondering about my interactions and my motives, wondering whether I'm making any progress toward being a better person than I used to be.)

Do any of you do this?

Or is this just me?

(Insert crying/laughter emoji.)

Just last night I was running, late, and thinking about meekness. I was listening to a man whose words always leave me full: full of thoughts, and full of desire to keep working toward something better. 

Reflecting is good, good medicine for me.

And this morning? When I came upstairs to make breakfast, thinking about and feeling inspired by other people and the ideals of conviction, liberty, honesty and freedom, I started frying eggs. I mixed up some orange juice and spread salted butter and sweet honey on homemade bread when it popped up in the toaster.

My peeps gathered around the table and ate and I read two chapters from To Kill A Mockingbird. And I relished some other words about how to live. The father figure in the book, Atticus, is a lawyer who is defending a black man in the South who has been accused of raping a white girl. Because he accepted the case, he's being called a "nigger-lover." 

He tells his daughter that the case "goes to the essence of a man's conscience" and then adds: "Scout, I couldn't go to church and worship God if I didn't try to help that man. ...They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions...but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

I love this idea of living true to your convictions, to what you know. That's powerful, and it takes courage.

Later, he's talking with his children about a crotchety old woman down the street who had just passed away, a woman who had battled morphine addiction and was trying to give it up before she died. And she succeeded. She may have been cranky and cantankerous, but Atticus teaches Jem and Scout that real courage is "when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew."

Fighting the worst that is in us is hard. You have to be brave. But how awesome. And so worth it.

And when they saw their father kill a mad dog with just one shot, Jem and Scout about died. They thought their father hadn't a single notion of what to do with a gun. Only after that shot was taken did they become acquainted with their father's young-man reputation as "One-Shot Finch." And I loved this description their neighbor, Miss Maudie, tells the children about their father:

"If your father's anything, he's civilized in his heart. Marksmanship's a gift of God, a talent--oh, you have to practice to make it perfect, but shootin's different from playing the piano or the like. I think maybe he put his gun down when he realized that God had given him an unfair advantage over most living things. ...People in their right minds never take pride in their talents."

Humility? Not taking advantage of another? Recognizing where our gifts come from, instead of taking credit?

Ummm, YES.

I stood up from the table, the children scattered, and I began to clean it all up as the sun streamed in through the window. The geranium on my table is about to open another gorgeous bloom, and I opened the back door to let fresh air in. Gratitude, like the air I was breathing, was just hanging there in the kitchen.

And you know, Lincoln once said this about equality:

“The author of the Declaration of Independence and the founding fathers who signed it clearly did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not even mean to assert the obvious untruth that all men in 1776 were equal in rights and opportunities. Rather, they meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, everywhere.” 

Despite lots of things that are unsavory in the world, this whole thing called life is mysterious and lovely and I'm so grateful: for inspiring people and their lives, and for beautiful thoughts, those maxims that encourage you to stretch higher, to be better, to love others, to scorn self pity, to live with compassion, forgiveness, and understanding, and to reach for what is deeper within each of us.

Like Lincoln said, even if we never perfectly attain those things, the ideals give us a standard, and striving will make us better people. Happier people. More full of love. More peaceful: with ourselves and with the world, and more able to contribute to the greater good.

So, here's to Abe and Atticus today.

And I'm not gonna lie: 60 degrees and sunshine isn't a bad gig, either.

Books and Gardening

Oh hey, blog.

I've missed you, but I've been out of steam too many nights when I've finally had time to post anything.

I'm coming back, though.

I'm marathon training right now, and when I got home on Friday night from my 17.5 mile run, my neighbor had tilled my garden for me.

Bless him.

When I woke up on Saturday morning, there was a wholelotta work waiting out there in the yard.

I went out and mowed lawns and then spent the remainder of the afternoon planting my garden.

Rain threatened some of the time, dark clouds and thunder in the distance, and I caught the occasional drop on my arm.  I ignored it and put cherry tomatoes and tomatillos in the ground anyway.

I planted Lemon Boys (don't you love the rich yellow of lemon boys?) and a Cherokee Purple (hello, purple tomato!), some Big Beef, Celebrity, and Super Fantastics.

(And let me just say...they better be Super Fantastic.)

I planted every color of bell pepper: red, gold, orange, and green.

Had to plant an Anaheim chile and a couple of hot pepper plants for salsa or burgers or quesadillas or pepper jelly or spicy ranch for salads and tacos.

I separated skinny strands of Walla Walla onions and red onions, folding the dirt over them, propping them up as best I could from both sides with my hands.

Planting a zucchini and straightneck yellow squash is tradition, and I had to add butternut squash cuz it's so yummy, a couple cantaloupes, and some jack o' lantern pumpkins.  I lined the back of the garden with sweet corn.

Somewhere around the middle of the plot, I hoed a couple rows and carefully spaced beets and beans, and let me just say this: there is something about the planting seeds bit that always seems to feel like I'm gambling.  It's as though I'm scattering them with some hope and a prayer.  It's kind of miraculous to me that they come up, every year---cuz every year I wonder if they will.

But in my mind's eye, I look forward to peeling and roasting those beets with some olive oil and sea salt and pepper, and seeing their deep purple red juice ooze beautifully onto my white dinner plate.  

(But who am I kidding...it's the taste I'm crazy about.)

And you know what, this gardening bit reminds me of this passage that the kids and I read a while back.  We recently finished reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy, something I never read as a child.  And this passage moved me enough that I wrote it down to keep for thinking about, because I love it so much.

"...it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.  What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."

I love that, maybe because it resonates so much with the idea of living in the present of your simple life and doing what you can: for you, for those you love, and for those you're blessed to know.  The idea of focusing on tilling your own little plot of earth---and life.  

And then, as a final note, I planted some cucumbers, too.

And since we're talking about books, I have to quote another section from a new book I'm reading.  I honestly don't remember the last time I read something that made me laugh out loud as frequently as this book is.  

I'm that woman that's in a quiet house at night once the kids are asleep, tucked into the warmth of my bed, delightfully chewing pebble ice, and interrupting the silence by bursting-out-loud laughing.

It's this lovely memoir about a guy restoring his 1951 International Harvester, and he likes to garden.  Apparently there's also a love story coming, too, but I haven't gotten to that bit yet.

Anyway.

The other night I was reading about where he was ordering seeds from a seed catalog and has this dilemma about cucumbers.  

(Note: I always debate about cucumbers.)

And he started the whole cucumber commentary by saying this:

"Ain't no such thing as a cucumber.  You've got your Sweet Slice Hybrid.  Your Fanfare.  The Ashley.  The Marketmore, the Cool Breeze, the County Fair Hybrid, the Orient Express, and the Sweet Success.  The Diva. ...Over sixteen variations on a cucumber in the space of a single page."

Oh my gosh.  I totally get this.  I really do.  

(#totallyresonatedwithme)

But then, he had to throw in this humorous bit, and it cracked me right up.

"The seed catalogs promote several varieties of 'burpless' cucumbers.  I have yet to find one promoted as 'burp-ish.'  This is flatly a missed marketing opportunity.  Among my rural and roughneck acquaintances are no small number of folks who not only savor the art of eructation, they cultivate it.  There are guys on the fire department capable of melisma.  I have seen a woman throw her head back beneath the Jamboree Days beer tent and let loose a burp so resonant polka dancers were moved to applause.  I know men longing to belch a full-length version of 'Free Bird.'  Beer works, but it impairs your ability to play air guitar.  There are people out here who would go out of their way to plant row on row of Burp-Mor Hybrids, County Fair Honkers, and Belching Divas."

Wow.

What does one really say about that?

(the garden, and Claire's hair #forthewin)

Nothing.

You laugh, people, and that's all.

In any case, once I got those cucumbers in (Straight Eights, if you were wondering), I planted sweet basil and cilantro and rosemary in my herb planter on the deck.  Watered my lemon thyme that came back from last year.

And I'd be lying if told you that I haven't been admiring the hands-in-the-dirt work from the past week: 

the food that's started in the garden, along with zinnias in the flower bed, and several pots full of geraniums, spilling over with fuschia.

Ahhh summer, I can feel you coming on.

Citrus Morning

This week some friends helped put up my Christmas lights outside on the house, garage and garden shed.

We talked and laughed and replaced bulbs and got everything all lit up.

It's pretty magical.

And even though the lights are up, my front lawn and backyard are covered with leaves, but I'm resisting cleaning them up until everything is down.

It's a veritable patchwork of browns and yellows and maroon rust out there.

It absolutely looks like Autumn, and absolutely just like Thanksgiving is around the corner.

But, earlier this week, it looked like this from the kitchen table.

One morning at breakfast, we sat there with hot cocoa and bagels with cream cheese, and clementines.

(The smell of citrus takes me right to Christmas, by the way.  I kept noticing it that morning and it was deliciously perfect.)

We were reading about Jesus' teaching about knowing people by their fruits, about judging something by what comes from it.

Sometimes I wonder about the fruit I offer, the big deals I make out of stuff that should be small deals -- you know, the stuff that doesn't really matter but drives you crazy, and so you scratch it, even when you know you shouldn't.  

(That's called stupidity.)

I wonder about my motives. 

About my interactions with others. 

About if I care enough or too little.

About all the things I wish I wasn't.

And I find myself really grateful for the way that life, over the last couple of years, has made me seriously evaluate a lot of things.

There's a lot of stuff I see in NEON YELLOW.

I worry a lot about whether I am learning the lessons, because it's really important to me that I do.

I'm reading Leif Enger's Peace Like A River right now, and I have loved it.  

It has made me crack right up in several parts (the humor! the vocabulary! the characters!), and also made me pause.  Several times.

Like last night, when I read this little passage:

"...all Waltzer's constellations told such turned legends.  There was the Bowsprit, about another rotten boy who slew his father while he slept and later became a fire-breathing pirate who devoured his victims' limbs and decorated the rail of his ship with their heads.  This fellow tramped up and down the high seas challenging men and gods until a brave captain met him in battle, the two of them going sword and sword across decks for days without rest.  At last the captain by superior craft cleft the other in two, at an angle, so that the pirate's head with one arm and shoulder thumped on the deck with a terminal snarl.  Job done, the captain returned to his ship to wash for dinner and looked in his polished brass mirror.  You see what's coming: The poor captain saw not his own face but the pirate's, and the nastiest grin all over it.  Following this all his noble impulses fell away like a mail shirt, and he developed a wild controlling lust for jeweled plunder and an appetite for boiled legs and arms.  'So you can win the battle, Reuben'---Walter shrugged---'but the war is lost long ago.'" 

Mmm hmm.  

That last line stirs me: "You can win...but the war is lost long ago."

I read it and stopped, and then started thinking.

How many times am I hell-bent for leather on something that ultimately doesn't matter?

How often do I sit and really listen?

Am I focused on the things that matter most?

What fruit am I offering my children?

My friends?

My family?

Strangers?

And then there's that whole bit about fruit, too.

The thing I love about Jesus' questions is that they always invite pondering.

They leave me looking inward, finding so very much that is lacking, 

even though I find myself encouraged by the beckoning.

Because it is love.

I love His questions and I love His insights.

And I love them even more, I suppose, because they were meant for my imperfections.

They were crafted to urge me forward.

They shed light on my darkness.

And so all I really have today is that I'm thinking about this:

Come. Back. In.

Listen with my heart.

Forgive.

Try harder.

Say "I'm sorry" more.

Focus on love.

Appreciate.

Put my phone down.

Be present.

Listen.

Listen.

And listen some more.

Feel the joy.

Like citrus mornings where you break bread with those you love.

You read good stuff.

You talk about things.

You sing together, doing actions around the kitchen table.

Your fingers looked cracked with yellow from peeling clementines and your nose is ripe with it.

All that extra noise goes away and it suddenly becomes hushed inside.

And you know that 

this is real.

This is true.

This is simple.

This is the very. best. thing.

Brown

Yesterday, when I walked into the house after church, I thought of a favorite book from childhood called Hailstones and Halibut Bones: Adventures in Color, poetically going through every color and what one might associate with it.

I thought about brown.

"Brown is the color of a country road

Back of a turtle

Back of a toad.

Brown is cinnamon

And morning toast

And the good smell of

the Sunday roast.

Brown is the color of work

And the sound of a river,

Brown is bronze and a bow

And a quiver.

Brown is the house 

On the edge of town

Where wind is tearing

The shingles down.

Brown is a freckle

Brown is a mole

Brown is the earth

When you dig a hole.

Brown is the hair 

On many a head

Brown is chocolate

And gingerbread.

Brown is a feeling

You get inside

When wondering makes 

Your mind grow wide.

Brown is a leather shoe

And a good glove---

Brown is as comfortable

As love."

As I came in the back door, the air was rich with the smell of roast and onions that I'd thrown in the crockpot earlier that morning.

We read on the couch in the afternoon, the boys put together a gingerbread house and Christmas tree, sets they'd gotten as gifts last December (yes, I know), while the girls watched and I peeled potatoes and we had an old conference talk by President Monson going in the background about gratitude (something I mentally took note of to come back to with the children in November when we make our gratitude tree).  

I've always loved light streaming in through windows.  

It's something I frequently notice, a free gift of love I feel every single day.

Later on, we ate that roast for dinner, with mashed potatoes and scratch gravy and a salad and carrots and beets and onions.

We took a walk in the neighborhood, 

came home and read together in my room, and then I was up late visiting with friends, cleaning up my kitchen, making pumpkin spice muffins for the kiddos for breakfast.

Brown is something else at my house, too.  

She's taken residence on my mantle, with her sister colors of 

copper, rust, gold and amber. 

I like having sentinel owls in the living room, nuts and ginko leaves and gourds, symbolic of harvest and color, and the little glass pumpkin my dad brought me from Cape Cod several years ago.

Wishing you all a lovely Labor Day, folks.

xoxo

Some Days Are Like That

Remember that line at the very end of Alexander and The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day?

Alexander finishes the book by saying: "My mom says some days are like that.  Even in Australia."

Ringing a bell?

Well.

Let me tell you about last night.

It was late. I had an energy crash after supper and laid down on the couch for about 30.

It was while laying there that I decided I was going to clean up my kitchen and then mow the lawn and get that out of the way before projected rainstorms for today.

While I was mowing, I was watching the girls riding their bikes up and down the driveway.  The boys were in and out, goofing around.  It was really breezy out.  The sky was littered with clouds, occasional blue peeking in and mixing with yellows and reds as dusk came on.  I watched the way that feathery light kissed the mountains on the east side of the valley.

On one particular pass with the mower, I found myself thinking about how lucky I am, how lucky I feel inside.

Filled me right up, to the very tip top, with gratitude.

But it got better.

I came in and showered, changed the Little Miss and got her ready for bed, and nursed her to sleep.

It was after 10:00 when I told the older kids to grab their pillows and blankets.

We went outside, spread big blankets on the deck, and lay down under blankets and on pillows.  I scooped them up chocolate and vanilla ice cream and stuck an Oreo in the top.  They ate ice cream while I read, with light coming out from the kitchen windows.  It was super windy, and the huge trees in the backyard were delightful to listen to, the loud rustling a continuous backdrop.  Gorgeous, really.

After reading, we burrowed under the blankets, pushed our heads together, and proceeded to take family selfie after family selfie, completely cracking ourselves up.  I started to sing them silly camp songs and more laughter ensued.  After that, we just laid there in the dark for a few minutes, talking and looking at the sky, trying to find stars behind that blanket of clouds.

It was perfect.

And I felt like pinching myself.  Even now, I still do.

Some days are like that, but in such a good way.

Read-A-Thon

A few weeks back I decided we needed a tradition, 

something to look forward to for the weekend.

When I was married, I always knew my husband and I would be together -- even if it was just getting Costa Vida salads and watching a movie or talking.  Knowing he would be around on the weekend broke up the week and made a definitive split between week and weekend.  I always looked forward to it.  I've noticed that it seems less concrete for me since we separated and divorced.  One day can kind of run into each other that way.  I guess Saturday and Sunday still feel like the weekend, but...it's still different.

So, I felt that we needed an end-of-the-week ritual -- on nights when we were all together, anyway.

I'm not a huge fan (and that's an understatement) of lots of screen time for the kids (or for me, for that matter).

I wanted to do something that wasn't watching a movie.

And then it came to me, inspired by elementary school and those rare days where we got to read all day at school.

And it totally worked.

They love it, and are seriously anxious for Friday.

We alternate either making tacos or homemade pizza that night.

(This was yum: homemade artisan dough crust, rubbed with butter and garlic, sauce, layered thick with pepperoni and sharp cheddar and pepperjack cheese)

I buy them a Friday treat, which heralds back to my childhood (something I hadn't thought about until I started doing this).

We eat and clean up.

They grab their blankets and pillows, get their candy, and we gather for a "read-a-thon."

We always read at night, but Friday night now means extended reading, all hanging together, and treats.  

(Ummm....hello! No brainer!!)

Last Friday night we built a fire, and read for almost two hours to finish the book we were on.

When we closed the book, Isaiah asked me to reread something at the very end that he found funny.

Benji piped up and said, "This is a great tradition."

Yeah...I think so, too.

I Guess I'm An Amazon

"Mom, it'd be funny if you were an amazon." 

(This is what Isaiah said to me last night.) 

 And then he added, 

"Well, you're powerful and strong, but you're not tall."

(I'd like to know why he thinks I'm powerful and strong, but it amuses me, nonetheless.)

That whole comment must have come from this:

we're currently reading Swallows and Amazons, and we're all pretty hooked.

Here's a snapshot of this morning:

Honey table.

Sunshine.

All gathered round.

Food.

And reading.

And the question lingering in our minds 
after reading this morning is this:

Are the Swallows gonna be able to capture 
the Amazons' boat in the night?

We can't wait to find out.