This Must Be the Place

1.  This is the number one reason I like being a mom.

2.  She'll make you turquoise bracelets because she knows you love turquoise.  (Thank you, Mom.  It's beautiful.  And I didn't technically open it early.  Well, maybe just a little bit.)

3.  The Hammock.  Crabapple blossoms.  Seed corn considering how to become seed corn.

4.  [                                                    ]

5.  At one point, a worm crawled between Nora's toes and she screamed and started kicking and flailing. I'd never actually seen her this scared of a bug.  Tonight while going to sleep, she said, "Mom, my foot is really itchy.  It's because that worm bit me."  "No, Nora, worms don't bite.  They're good.  They're basically like a drinking straw for mud."  "Then why did you tell me they bite?"  "I didn't tell you they bite."  "Yes, you did, and I can't believe you said that about worms.  I'm going to bed."

Tonight I Am

1.  Under the weather but pretending I'm not.

2.  Grateful for this piece of land, which I walked all over tonight looking at...stuff.

3.  Excited for all those who are graduating tomorrow.  And missing them and letting them go as if it were up to me.

4.  Dreaming of Sunday garden tilling and the seeds going in.  Tonight I found the perennials and leftovers from last year growing:  dill, oregano, spinach, carrot, onion.  

5.  I'd estimate about 10 more hours of grading and then I too will join the rest for summer break.

6.  The apricot tree has pea-sized fruit appearing.  We survived the cold weather.  

7.  [                                                            ]

8.  Replaying the words of friends.  Sticking those other words in a shoebox bound for...uh...wherever those kinds of things go.

Observing Nora in Her Natural Habitat

The last two days, Nora has been trying to catch a bird.  Yesterday she had us sitting on the front porch with binoculars, birdseed, a net, some salt and a tube for calling them.  Grandpa Smith always told us that any bird who'd had salt sprinkled on his tail feathers couldn't fly.  He spent hours laughing to himself watching all his grandkids trying to sneak up on the magpies (which he'd shoot for sneaking the dog food if we weren't around).  I told Nora the same thing.  She thought it was worth a try even if it was just a prank.

Today, she dressed as a bird, sprinkled birdseed everywhere (including the inside ledges of all the windows--no, I didn't see this happening, but once a thing is done, why fight about it?) and called to the birds.  I heard her:  "Birds, come here.  I am your friend.  I am nice and I will take care of you.  Come here birds.  I am a nice person."

I've been trying to teach her a few things about how plants and insects and things work here on the farm.  After talking about the moth traps on the apple trees, she asked for a couple of milk jugs.  When I came back into the kitchen, she had them stacked like this with an orange in between.  She also needed a light source because after observing all the dead moths in the living room light fixture (Spring cleaning is happening soon, folks, I swear) she deduced that moths are attracted to light.  So the moths are attracted to the light inside the bottom milk jug.  They go through the door and eventually burrow into the orange to have their baby worms.  Then the baby worms crawl up into the smaller milk jug on top, which Nora refers to as the Moth Hospital.

I live with one wild and beautiful creature.

For Poets Who Might Be Thinking Otherwise

From the first, we knew it would come down to a couple of things:

1) Vulnerability

and

2)  Love.

Are we willing to show each other the cracks in our hearts?  The answer is Yes.  We have no choice.

I've heard it said that it is through these cracks that the light gets in, that the song gets out.  And if this is true, and I believe that it is, then we must locate and describe these fissures and lesions.   The light and the sound of that song must pass between us as we listen with the heart of our ears open and the heart of our mouths speaking what we thought we couldn't say.

It is no coincidence that our voice and our heart reside in the same space, that from inside the ribbed protection of bones and lungs comes the breath -- the giving and receiving movement that was set in motion the first time He breathed us into being.

And what is carried on that breath?  These songs of light:  broken, mended, brave and hoping.  Giving, weeping, saving, moving, speaking.  Those that reach.  Those that open.  Those that praise and pray.

And in this mouth the voice is cradled, and we hear echoes of His love, of His peace held there and released in the exhale that carries meaning away from us and back again, lifting language as one lifts the basket, the light spilling its secrets throughout a once darker world.

When Nora Goes to Work

Kids.  These people love with abandon.  I love going to preschool with Nora and hanging out with the St. Paul's gang--the kiss on the hand from the one to my left, the one in my lap, the one who wants to play "snake lives in the Little People house," the one who corrects me: "That's not a tractor.  That's a combine."  I am so grateful to be living with one of them.  And here's what she's been up to lately:

1)  She became the proud owner of a new hamster named Henrietta.  Henrietta bites and escapes and exercises at 1 and 3 in the morning.  Henrietta has a little hamster ball and wanders around our house.  We like Henrietta because she has flaws, just like we do.  She also stores food.  I do that, too.

2)  Symbolic snacks in the back seat.

3)  We cleaned out the fridge today.  She really gets into her work.  Literally.  I mean, she...yeah.

4)  Then we took her chopper to campus and rode around the naked man statue for awhile.  She has a car seat installed in the back that holds our crocheted versions of Larry, Bob and Jr. Asparagus.

5)  Nora graded some papers for me.  (Many of you may actually have a few of her "comments" on some of your work.  She's pretty tough when it comes to grammar.  That's what that "unsmiley" face means.)

6)  Another symbolic snack.  (Yes, I do feed her actual food.  Sometimes.)

7)  "Mommy, I'm actually nocturnal, but I'm going to take a little nap right now, and then start again later."

Documenting a Good Life

Thirty voices fill the room, and my heart is brought to its feet.

A daughter's spinning dress blooms in the kitchen's angled sunshine, and we pull tooth # 2 bravely.

Crabapple trees on fire in the orchard, pink and explosive, and the grass goes uncut, the long-haired child always mistaken for a girl.

Her words, which I place in this heart-shaped treasure box.  Thank you.

Home.  Sweet.  Home.

Mending

1.  Tomorrow night the poets from Concordia's ENG 326 classes will be reading at the Gallery (somewhere between 5 and 8).  To see each one of them tie their poems together in the same space--I've been thinking about it all day today--a heart swoops and rises in my throat knowing it will happen, that there will be a beginning and a middle and an end, and I pray these mended moments keep their pens warm forever, from here to there.

2.  Nora's hand in mine walking down the aisle to the window mending light, the rainbow at our feet, the bread in my hand, the hand that blesses her for Him and when we return to our place strewn with coloring book/crayons/puzzle, I forget to worry because He remembers.

3.  The hole we dug for the hostas, tucked inside and sewn together with the lose, dark soil.  We identify the weeds as she takes the hoe in hand:  lambsquarter--edible.   African Violet--beautiful.  Both "unwanted."  And it's a problem of terminology.  Because all things made by the Creator are functional.  The hoe is frozen above the dandelion.  Beautiful lion's mane of yellow stained knees and golden chains braided for princesses at recess.

4.  This is not unravelled life or torn fragment lost and useless though it might feel like it comes undone at times.  He enlarges the patchwork moment by moment by moment.  To allow ourselves to be mended in the language, the soil, the golden thread He uses to make our lives something good and whole and useful.