Our New Family Member

"Well, you know what they say, Nora.  A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."  I'm driving, and she's sitting behind me, and I can see what her face is saying without even looking.

"Yeah, I don't know what that means either.  Anyway, what do you think of Feathers?"

It's  been almost one year since she dressed as a bird, spread birdseed across every windowsill in the living room and called to them from the front stoop.  Almost one year since she set up the incubating contraption.  And now we're driving home from Earl May's with a frightened parakeet in a little box.

Grandma has a cold, but she agreed to drive with us anyway.  I have to admit that "going into town" by myself these days feels so vulnerable.  All that traffic.  All those people.  "You'll have to thank Lynn for letting you keep a bird in the house."
"Okay, Grandma.  MOM!  Quit driving so crazy!  You're going to scare him!"

I'm not really driving crazy (though I did miss the turn and somehow ended up in the Starbuck's drive-thru as my "U-Turn").  We're on 34 taking the back roads back to York, and like most back roads, they have a "few" potholes.

And we're up way past our bedtime, but it's Spring Break, and we set up the cage in the middle of the living room floor and now we're singing to him.  We try a few verses of "Senior Don Gato" and decide it might not be the right time to sing cat songs to a frightened bird.  So I sing the Dumbo song replacing "Baby, mine" with the words "Birdie, mine."  His chest stops heaving, round and wide eyes black as holes begin to blink.  His lids lower slowly, and by golly, we've managed to sing our new bird to sleep.  I love him already.  I feel something good about him.

Last night Nora and I ended the day with a prayer for help finding the right bird.  And when the bearded bird handler at the store blocked the entrance with his wide shoulders, slowly bringing his big hand into the cage, five parakeets flew wild, but the little one, the one Nora had pointed to flew right into his hand.

"That's a good sign," he said.

You're telling me.  A bird in the hand, indeed.

Piles of Joy

"Life is just a matter of moving a lot of things from one place to another."  --  Anonymous Eavesdropping Session

Sure, these were construction workers talking, men used to the process of moving building materials until those random piles of bricks and lumber and nails and paint had coalesced into a place people could move all their things into, box by box.  And from there these people could also begin the process of moving things:  food to mouth, dishes to dishwasher, laundry to drawers, cars to work, small bodies to bed, and eventually, their old bodies from this earth to Heaven.

We all know there are almost countless books on the subject--organizing books (moving stuff), self-help books (moving self), cookbooks, money management guides, travel guides.  Shoot.  Even that book about bird watching is about catching one of them in your binoculars before they head South or up or wherever they go.

If you've ever picked apples or green beans or crocheted or taken a walk, you know the comfort found in the rhythm of movement.  Fingers over guitar strings.  Batter mixed by hand.  Bread kneading.  Writing the alphabet in different order, so you make meaning.  If you've ever loved someone, this is the greatest movement of all.

There's a reason why we say something moved us.  To be called from the shore into the deep water.

Under the weight of all the things in our lives that need moving, it's easy for us to feel overwhelmed.  I mean, take a look at my current "this needs to be moved" list:

Pretty soon, I'll need to move these into the garden.

I need to move a lot of the words in these books into my brain.  I should send that movie to Grandma and move a TV downstairs and hook that converter box to it.  I'll have to move that downstairs, too.

These clothes need to be folded and moved to drawers.  From there they will move to adventures unknown on the day they are worn.

I need to move all this canning stuff that Grandma and Aunt Dottie passed on to me.  First I need all those plants you saw above to grow some vegetables that I can move from the garden to my kitchen.

Here are some of those vegetables from last year.  They still need to be moved into my stomach.

These shoes need to be moved so it doesn't take 15 minutes to find matching footwear.  And just like the clothes, on the days we decide to wear them, they'll move all over tarnation and back.

This is just a random pile.  I don't even know where to move everything in it.

Someone needs to move my coat into the closet.  And that quilt contains another quilt inside of it made of my Great Grandma Smith's old dresses.  Grandma sewed this fabric over the top of it to protect it.  Someday I'll need to move the secret of this fabric into another pair of hands.

All these sticks need to go somewhere else, preferably not in my yard.

These flowers need to grow, so they can move my heart to all things joyful and abundant and beautiful and temporary and precious.

I need to move some comments onto these essays.

And then I need to move the words in these books into Nora's brain.


In conclusion, none of this exhausts me.  In fact, I feel rather like I've been given the gift of good work to fill the days and the time and the prayers.

"The Lord your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete."  --Deuteronomy 16:15

Keep on keeping on, folks.  There is joy in that movement.  And don't you ever think you'll get it all done because you won't.  Thank God.

Counting Them

Laughter in a classroom and how easy it is for us to talk to each other.
Garden designs materializing.
Chickens?  Maybe.
Star Belle shows on the way.
How Nora's hair smells after being outside in the wind.
Pizza and shooting the breeze at the end of the day.
Pottery class with excited students.
A trip to Colorado over the weekend.
Spring break and Spring cleaning and pruning and raking and...

All Things Must Break Open to Grow

In three days, life breaks from the seeds we buried.  Weightless jewels more precious than diamonds carried on the wind, in packets across oceans, prairies, generations, one after another--a chain of triumph over the darkness below.  This is a miracle to me.

And this is the business of allowing our hearts to glow, break free, be carried willingly to the next heartbreak and the next dance and the next song and the next glowing beyond the small shell of this self  breaking open into God's light and way.  And when I looked into my heart, the light I saw there remade me completely into a glowing thing I could learn to love.  This unfurling above the surface is always so surprising to those who are used to so much stillness and quiet peace below.   I wonder that I don't break into more spontaneous song-making.  Do you, too?

Call An Actual Plumber

Gravity doesn't work like you would expect it to here on the farm.  None of the water goes down, and I can only blame it on the calcium deposits in the pipes and the fact no one had even thought of a garbage disposal back when this house was built.  So the kitchen sink has been giving me trouble for a good week now, and I finally decided to give it all I've got today.

And when I did, the pipes under the sink popped out of joint and water flooded everywhere.  Nora came running because, I'm sorry to say, she probably heard one word come out of my mouth that she has never heard before.  Luckily she didn't ask questions.  I grabbed the cat scrap bucket and the compost bucket and yelled for Nora to run grab another bucket.

She was running around the house screaming, "Are we gonna die?!  Are we gonna die?!  Where do you keep the buckets around here?"  I don't know if it was the word I said or the fact that I've scared her so thoroughly about the dangers of mixing water and electricity, but either way she was certain this was the end.

See, the electrical box for the soft water system sits under the sink, and I was trying to avoid mixing the two.  I grabbed some towels and put them down on the floor and attempted to plug the sinks from the top down.  It sort of worked.  

"Mommy, are we going to be okay?  I stepped on the water.  Am I going to be okay?"

"Yes, hun, everything is fine."

"I said a prayer that you wouldn't die because I really need someone I can look up to and then I'd have to go and live with Grandma."

"I think we're going to make it through this one just fine, Nora."

I was able to put everything back together.  Luckily the electrical box was fine, too.  The sink is still clogged, but I'll tackle that problem tomorrow.  For now, I'm just going to enjoy being alive.  That was a close one.

Oh, and remind me to show Nora where I keep all the buckets around here.

What We Played Today

Saturday is, to Nora's despair, housekeeping day.  While I wash floors, she plays Dinosaur Train with the chairs lined up in the living room, placing a passenger on each chair.  We make tickets for the carnivores and the herbivores (so they get the right snacks), and she delivers plastic drumsticks and pickles using her handy-dandy grocery cart.  

"You know some kids wear their hats backwards, Mom.  Like this."

Later we transformed the living room into a dinosaur hospital complete with kitchen.  I found the pretend muffins and plastic chocolate cake thrown on the floor.  "Did you need these, Nora?"  "Um, Mom.  Those aren't healthy snacks."  I guess she has been listening...not to me, but, you know, public service announcements.

God Bless Our Garden

With the last frost date set around late April, it was time to put some seeds in the dirt.

Nora recording the temperature under the grow lights.

The seeds. 

"Mommy, if I rest under here, will I grow too?"

"Are you sure this is going to work?"

I'm sure.