Small Scribbles

I cracked the book open to the halfway mark at the breakfast table and picked up where we left off yesterday afternoon. I intended to read a chapter or two before moving on to our school work. I read one chapter and then two. I read for an hour and then two. I read until my neck was sore, my throat was swollen and scratchy. Francis Hodgson Burnett spins a story in a way that spurs a reader on. We became Sara’s soulmates, and Becky’s, and Ermengarde’s. We were heartbroken in the sad places and as the words began to wind their way to a triumphant ending, the children burst into delighted cheers. They rolled around on the floor with glee. They squealed and chortled. They jumped up and down on the sofa. “Don’t stop reading, Mama! Read more! Read more!” The oldest two are already old friends of this tale and they were as swept along in the current of the story as the younger ones. Oh, we love a good book! If your children are sixish or beyond, run to the library, check out A Little Princess...

Over the past few weeks, our family has been watching hours of behind the scenes in The Lord of the Rings: Extended Edition . It's been interesting to get a bird's eye view into the minds of the movie makers and actors in the movies. In the spirit of The Lord of the Rings, I've decided to give you a behind the scenes look at my last post. Coping with aging has been an ongoing battle for me for the last few years and I’m sure I am not alone in this. As a Christian, I live against the backdrop of a known and secure ending. It is a comfort. But arriving at the end is something like the voyage taken in Pilgrim’s Progress . For all Christian knows where he is headed, he finds himself enticed away from the path leading to the Celestial City again and again into places where he does not belong. The Bible is my favorite book for many reasons. The one that is pertinent to this post is that all of the characters, apart from Christ, are shown as frail creatures. They are not polished...

Lauren came in from the outdoors with a handful of wildflowers. Strands of dark hair escaped her braid and curled around her rosy cheeks. Exquisite. She and the wildflowers. She found a slender vase and arranged the blossoms. They bring springtime beauty to the kitchen. I’ve arrived at the place where torch is passed from mother to daughter. Lauren grows more beautiful each day. Tall, straight and willowy. Her peaches and cream complexion and long dark lashes unspoiled by time or cosmetics. I watch her become what I have been, with wonder, and regret. The flowers on the kitchen table are lovely, but not like yesterday. They droop a bit and their colors are muted and I see myself in their fading. I look in the mirror and note the handiwork of Time, an unhurried, deliberate, cruel artist. I fight back with colors and creams and while they ease his harsh etching, they do not erase. Time is relentless and he will remain industrious until he claims the whole of me. For this I mourn. I know ...

I wanted to write a post for Stuart in September, in honor of our fifteenth anniversary, that would record how much I love him. But, he forgot about our anniversary until we had been married for fifteen years and one day and this forgetting smudged his outstanding qualities and left me without any romantic writing material. When February rolled around, I was too busy buying wine, lighting candles, cooking dinner and hanging a pink gauzy canopy over the bed to take the time to record my appreciation for my husband. Stuart is not a romantic and it’s taken me these fifteen years to figure out that it’s my job to sweep us off our feet. Once, on Valentine’s Day, when Stuart was in charge of the plans, we watched The Perfect Storm . For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, I’ll spoil the plot for you...everyone dies. One of the sorriest Valentine dates a girl has ever had. So this past Valentine’s Day was an improvement. Except for the canopy. Stuart complained that he was trapped in a pa...

After story hour, we sat with our knees above the little table in the children’s section, one young mother and I, surrounded by our broods. The children pounded salt dough flat and squashed cookie cutters into it to produce lumpy vehicles. They dangled their creations inches from our faces so we could admire their work. Charlie squashed and tasted. “Yuck! Charlie! Don’t do that!” He peeled off another tiny piece of dough and tasted again. “How many children do you have?” the young mother asked. “Five.” I said it the way I always do. Nonchalantly. She answered with a typical response. “Five! How do you do it?! You seem so calm. You look too thin, too young to have five children. Five?! I puffed up, just a little, though she couldn’t see, and responded truthfully, “We are having the time of our lives. The children are at the best age. I am treasuring every moment.” We said goodbye a few minutes later at the library desk. Her children checked out a handful of books and I stood behind her...

Stuart came home from work on this cold, dry evening complaining of sore lips. "It feels like my WHOLE bottom lip is a cold sore. What do you think I should do?" After a big glass of water and glob of lip balm he was back to normal but somehow that minor event led to this discussion around the dinner table. "Doctor, there's something horribly wrong with my lip. What do you suggest?" "I'll write you a prescription for Avegrasil. It was just approved by the FDA. Give it a try. If it doesn't work, come back in three weeks and I'll give you some more." Directions for taking Avegrasil: Do not take with food or on an empty stomach. Do not lick lips. Side effects may include but are not limited to: blisters, leprosy and spontaneous human combustion. The discussion ended when Faith toodled. She did not offer the customary, "Excuse me" but explained herself with, "I've been taking Avegrasil. Chapped lips anyone? Try Avegrasil. It ...

Charlie wants to be big. Big people doing big things tower over him and he wants to join in. He sees the girls climb on the swing and pump themselves skyward. The swing is too high for him to reach and he doesn’t know how to pump. “Lift me! Push me! Swing me!” he cries. Sometimes we do and sometimes we’re busy. When we push, he cries if we stop and when we don’t push he cries out of sheer frustration. He knows too much about how the world works because the big kids show him. But often he can’t join in just because he’s three. It’s not easy to be three when everyone else is six and seven and higher numbers than he has fingers to count. We’ve bent a lot of rules to accommodate this youngest child. All of the other kids had to be as tall as Stuart’s waist before they could chew gum but how do you pass out six sticks of gum and say, “No, Charlie not until you’re as tall as Papa’s belt.”? He gets to stay up late, too, because the sounds of game playing and story reading would make him c...