A Flower Fairy Party




We finally had Rachel's friend party this past weekend! The theme was Flower Fairies and everyone had so much fun.

 


  The beautiful flower fairy that Rachel is holding was hand-created by my friend, Pat.



 






James is really good at face-painting.

  



Some of his handiwork!





The cake was handmade by our friend, Sarah Waters

 


Rachel and Daddy







First step in the Fairy Garden project was for each child to pick a bowl (James had cut a hole in the bottom of each one) and to fill it with potting soil. Then each child got to pick from several different types of flowers and place them wherever they wanted to. Then they added things like moss, glass half-marbles, seashells, coral, spools, sticks, small circular mirrors to look like little "pools," and even cut fairy clothes out of fabric in case the fairies might need new dresses.

   


Rachel's grandma helping her tie string to some stick to make a fairy clothesline!





One of the finished fairy gardens!

 


Another one!

 



And another...

 

tiny little details!




Even Andrew got into it. He is sure the boy fairies will prefer his garden.

 



Another beautiful fairy garden by one of the girls...

 

We had such a great time. If you would like to create fairy garden like the ones we made, all you need are the following materials:

-Large plastic bowls or pots. Be sure that there is a hole/slit in the bottom for water to drain out.

-A pan or dish for the bowl to sit in. I bought these bowls and matching dishes for $1 each at WalMart.

-Potting soil

-Several diferent types of flowers or other plants. Even cactus would be fun.

-Moss (fake or real), pebbles, sticks, half-marbles, shells and other fun additions can be purchased at the craft store or even found in your yard or park.

Have fun! :)

"My Doll" Heirloom Scrapbook

You can find this sweet little book HERE.

One Decade

I'm standing on a threshhold.

My big girl just turned ten. TEN. omg.

Tomorrow my baby boy starts kindergarten.

Today is not just Emily's birthday, but it's also marks a decade of parenting.

This decade has been both the best and the hardest decade of my entire life.

Emily asked me yesterday if I liked being a kid better, or being an adult. I said, "Being an adult, for SURE."

What a decade. I started being a Mama ten years ago, at 24. Today I can hardly believe I'm 34 and I have a TEN-YEAR-OLD. It's cliche for a reason: "It's HAS gone by so fast."

Today is also a marker of ten years of parenting "itty bitties." I've been mothering my less-than-school-age kids for a decade and tomorrow when I take my baby to kindergarten, I will go home to an empty house.

I'm not sad, though. I am excited. I WILL cry tomorrow when I close the car door and look back at the empty car seats. But I will be just as proud as I am weepy.

I'm proud of my kids. I'm proud of who they are. I love their spirits. I love the people that they are. I love that they are smart, kind, silly, strong, loving, stubborn as hell...and so much more. I'm proud to send these people out into the world. I'm so very proud to be their Mama. I love them so much.

And I'm proud of myself, too.

(For a Friend)

Once Upon a Time,

in a little village by the Great River, a little girl was born. She had the brightest eyes anyone had ever seen, from the moment she first opened them, and a spirit very like the Great River itself. She grew up with the Great River a part of her and she part of it. People talked about the hill above the Great River, where people lived in grand houses and had many more luxuries, and just like all the other girls and boys who grew up along the Great River, the girl was as curious as anyone else about such a life.

When the girl grew up she married a man who lived on the hill and together they built a beautiful house on the hill above the river. The girl, now a woman, soon realized that living so far from the Great River was like being separated from part of her own spirit and that no amount of fine things would make this not so. She tried to be at home in the house up on the hill by bringing water to her house. She put buckets of water all around her, embroidered pictures of the Great River on her dresses and painted the Great River on the walls of her house. She named her children after her favorite spots on her beloved river. She told her children stories of the Great River each night when she tucked them into bed. But it was not enough.

She began making trips down to the Great River, sometimes going alone and sometimes taking her children along. On these trips she visited old friends and made new ones; together they danced in the water and she was filled with a joy she realized she'd been missing all those years in the house on the hill. The more she went down the hill, the more she longed to go again, so the trips to the Great River became more and more frequent. She could not help but go as often as she could manage.

Each time she went down to the Great River, she fairly ran down the hill, and as soon as the glistening water was in sight, her whole body seemed to come to life and her spirit lifted. At the end of each visit, when it was time to back to her house on the hill, she felt a deep, heavy sadness. It felt as though her heart was being ripped from her chest, but she knew the house on the hill was her home and she must learn to live there and try her best to be happy there.

Then one day the woman realized that she could no longer go back up the hill to the little house; she couldn't bear it anymore. Every time she made that awful trip up the hill, a piece of her died. She suddenly understood that if too many pieces of her died, the person she really was wouldn't survive. She would become a shell of herself. She must save herself, if for no other reason than that her children needed that real, alive version of their mother. She felt her real self drowning and nothing but air would bring her back to life.

One summer evening as she watched the sun begin its slow descent, she made a hard choice that she'd been avoiding for years. Once she made it, she knew it was the right one. She felt sad; she knew her husband and the rest of the people she knew and loved on the hill would not go with her; they'd made it plain that they expected her to change. So she fetched her children and her belongings from the house up the hill and made the trip down the hill to the River for the last time. With each step it was as though a black-and-white version of her was slowly but surely popping into vivid color.

When she arrived at the Great River's edge, tired from her journey, she sat down and looked around her for a moment. She knew what to do next. She filled her lungs with a big gulp of air and then plunged into the water.

When she stepped out of the river, what she saw was HOME. She was finally home. She laid down and rested for the first time in as long as she could remember and when she awoke she set about making a lovely little home by the River's edge.

She sometimes thought about the house on the hill that she'd left...the people and things she'd left behind. But she knew, deep down inside, that the time she spent on the hill was over and that it had served its purpose: it helped her see who she really was and what she really wanted. Now she knew where Home really was and she would live there all her days.

A Boy of Four

Dear Andrew,

Today my "baby" is turning four. I can hardly believe it! It's a little bitter-sweet that you're not a baby anymore but you are turning into such a wonderful little boy and I'm so proud to be your mama.

Thinking about the last four years, there are so many wonderful memories with you in it. You're my sweetheart, the love of my life and my little man. I love your big, brown eyes. I love your mischievous smile. I love the way you tell me you love me constantly and sing "Hey, I'll be gone today, but I'll be back around the way...it seems like everywhere I go, the more I see, the less I know...but I know one thing...that I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you" and dance around like a crazy person. I love your crazy break-dancing we don't know how you learned. I love the way you look when you are asleep. I love to watch you drawing, digging in the dirt and torturing your sisters. I love the way you hold my hand when we walk someplace. I love your sweet kisses. I love your chubby hugs.

I adore you, Drewbie.

Here are just a few memories from the last few years of birthdays....

This one is just hours before you were in my arms for the first time. You were huge!

Brand-New you with my daddy, Pee-Paw, who delivered you...

You turning ONE and trying cake for the first time...

You turning TWO...

Also turning TWO...getting your fire engine. You were just a LITTLE bit excited!

My big THREE-year-old...

And now...you're FOUR.

Mama loves you so much, sweetie. I'm the luckiest Mama in the world. I'm looking forward to spending this next year with my little man.

Happy Birthday, Sweet Boy...

Love,

Mama

"Shaddaim" (A God with Breasts)

Brown. I am falling into a deep chocolate brown.  
Brown, yes, but somehow different than any other brown I have ever seen. It is almost as if it is the first color my eyes have ever beheld. Perhaps it is.
 
It is a deep color, a three-, or possibly three-hundred- dimensional color, something more alive and more real than any of the browns in my life: the bark of the oak tree in the middle of our yard in Clovis, the coat of my grandmother’s dachshund, Shautzie, the brown of my daughter's hair, still damp from birth, or the leathery skin of our housemaid, Mantuya, in Papua New Guinea. Those were brown and this is....somehow different.
 
I am mesmerized. I would be happy to see only one color forever, if it could be this color.


I feel myself being pulled and tugged, as if a rope is tied to my heart and the brown is holding the other side. I give in, letting myself be drawn I know not where by the invisible rope. As my skin, my bones, my mind and even my soul, are moved by this unseen force, I am filled with a feeling that can only be described as pure, ultimate joy. It is the feeling of finally moving in the direction I have always tried to move in but could never quite find the door to. It is the feeling of an aching need that has been as part of me as my own flesh being finally fulfilled more exquisitely than I could ever have imagined. I am not fighting. I am joyfully going where I am being taken, with every fiber of my being. It is a feeling of falling, deliciously, into joy.

And then I land. I am in The Brown. The Brown is all around me, enfolding me and caressing me. I have never known this deep, brown joy. I never even dreamed it. I spread my arms, my legs, my mouth, my pores in a joyous acceptance of The Brown. I drink it, eat it, breathe it in, spread it all over my skin and then turn my body around and around in it. I am wanting to be full of this Brown. A warmth fills me as every cell of my body willingly absorbs The Brown.

Now I realize: this has been my only unfulfilled desire. I thought I desired so many things, but now that I am here in this moment, I realize those desires were really only one. And here I am, being utterly satisfied. Every moment in The Brown is more lovely than the last, and as my heart and mind embrace the multi-dimensions of this realization, it is as though my capacity to desire grows. I desire more; it is fulfilled. I desire even more; it is fulfilled. I am fuller and fuller, yet I know I can never be too full. I know now what in some part of myself I have always known: Joy is The Brown; The Brown is Joy.

And then from The Brown, comes a voice. Not like any noise I have ever heard, but like every noise I have ever heart, all at once. My body responds without my mind willing it to. It turns of its own volition, toward the voice and moves toward it. My eyes strain, for in that voice was a call to look, and of course I must do just that. My body is full of eyes, it seems, all of them, looking, looking. I will know when I see what I am looking for. My ears were made to hear this sound and I have been, without knowing, straining to hear this voice all my life. Now, suddenly, it is close. It’s so close I can almost touch it, taste it and hold it.

And then it is here….right here. It was there all along, I realize, but my ears were not ready until this moment. My eyes didn't know how to see until this moment. They dance: here is what they were made to see. A feeling of deep knowing overtakes me, temporarily banishing all other thoughts and I can not help but weep with the emotion of it. Through my tears, I see the source of that voice. I see The Brown. I know what it is, and I remember that this is not the first time my eyes have seen this sight, after all. It was this memory, almost forgotten, that drove me on for a lifetime. And it has all been leading up to this….

Oh! I realize all of life was a wall with little cracks through which, every once in awhile, I could see bits of this. I remember seeing those cracks in the beauty of a sunset on Nissan Island, reflected in the pink, purple and orange waves. I saw a corner of this in the face of my newborn sister as she took her first breath. I saw a speck of it in a friend’s artwork, the colors and shapes mixing and meeting in a way that touched something deep inside of me.

I see Her.

The voice was Her voice. The Brown was her eyes - deep, dark eyes. Each second, more of her comes into focus. Everything makes sense, fits perfectly, and seems so achingly, beautifully familiar, more familiar than my own body.

My eyes drink in this beauty, but they can't keep up. My eyes seem to see in slower motion than the beauty is growing. Every nerve in my body responds to Her, moves toward her Brown, breathes Her in and is breathed in by Her. I realize that I am becoming lost in her at the same time that I am becoming more real, more solid, more alive than I have ever been.

Then I look deeper into the eyes. This is The Brown I saw first. This is what pulled me as surely as a magnet. This is what has always been pulling me. I gaze deeply, unblinking, into a pool of something both strange and familiar. Where have I seen those eyes before? I can not remember, but I know that I have seen these eyes, as surely as I know this is the first time I have seen them. This is not a contradiction. Both are somehow equally true, equally real.

I realize that she is looking at me. I relax, burn and become in her gaze. This is what I have always longed for: to be looked full in the face and to feel that I am understood completely, not loved in spite of that understanding, but because of it.

The Brown is love. Just as this Brown is different but truer than any brown I have known, so this love I see, feel, and know, coming from her eyes is different and true. I feel it settling into me, but it feels like a new feeling. As if I've gained a seventh sense.
I know even as I feel this love that without it I would never be happy or content again, yet I find within myself no fear at all. I have never known a love without fear. Love and fear are two sides of the same coin in my world. To love is to risk losing, to risk being betrayed, hurt, rejected and left behind. But these things are impossible to feel as she gazes at me, love in her eyes. I look for the familiar tell-tale signs of anxiety and suspicion in my heart and mind but they are nowhere inside of me. I am full of love and it is overflowing. I am so full. There is no room for fear.

She opens her mouth to speak and my entire body listens. My whole being becomes an ear, taking in this sound. It is a voice I know, that I have always known, I realize with surprise. From deep within me bubbles up a response that I can’t hold back, can’t not say. It erupts form me involuntarily.

“Mother…” I sob.

Another word wells up inside of me and explodes from my moth, from every pore in my body.

“Shaddaim,” I hear myself say.

And then what I have been longing for all along, but didn’t know to ask for or even want….what I have been hungering and thirsting for since my first breath in this world... fills my mouth, my heart and every part of me, utterly and completely.

It is flesh: soft, warm flesh and from it comes a taste that transcends any and all tastes I have tasted before. It is how truth tastes, I realize. How joy tastes. How pleasure tastes. How completeness and fulfillment taste. When I was hungry, I was hungry for this. When I was thirsty, I was thirsty for this. When I felt there was something I desired…something more…but couldn’t pinpoint what, it was this.

This is the milk I was made to drink and I drink deeply.

Sink or Float

My kids play this game. We walk down to the irrigation ditch which is kind of like a small canal if you're aren't familiar with it, and we find objects to throw in the water. We play it in the mountains, too, when we find a body of water. You find an object and before you throw it in, everyone guesses if it's going to sink or float.

We could TELL our kids what was going to sink or float but would they really "get" it the same way? Throwing it in, hedging their bets and even having the nerve to say they think it's going to do something different than my husband and I are guessing it will is teaching them an important skill I hope they apply throughout their lives. Test things. Try them on for size. Observe as much as you need to.

Sure, I want them my kids to trust me, especially about "health and safety issues," and I want them to trust other people who are trustworthy, but the older they get the more I want them to begin to think for themselves, even if it means they disagree with me.

I want them to feel that the world is a place they can decide things about. I don't want them to have any trace of a feeling that they "must" believe something or other for their parents to love them and accept them. I'm hoping that for them, this will translate into only wanting to have close relationships with people who do the same. I want them to know that if someone tells them they must believe something, they can say no. They can decide for themselves.

They can determine for themselves if it "sinks or floats."

A Messy...But Beautiful...Night

She turned 9 a few weeks ago when I wasn't looking. I can't believe I have been her mama for more than 9 years now! Amazing!

Emily is a wonderful person. A delight. Smart as a whip. A natural beauty. And stubborn as the day is long.

Tonight I realized this incredible girl just might be more stubborn than her mama. If you know me personally, you know that's saying something!

Tonight Emily and I had the first of what I know will be dozens, if not more, of battles of our wills. O.k. maybe it's not the first. In a way, the first one was when she was not even three. But something was different about tonight. It wasn't Mama and Kid the whole time. There were moments when it was two women.

This was a significant battle. It was over her bed sheets. Now, bed sheets are something I feel pretty strongly about, don't get me wrong, but this wasn't REALLY about the bed sheets, if you know what I mean. Impeccable bed-making skills is something that I take pride in and hope to pass down (my grandfathers on both sides were in the service and brought home their taste for "army corners"...the sort of bed that is made so tightly you could drop a coin on it and it would bounce and is just heaven to climb into). But tonight wasn't about a perfectionist mama wanting to pass the torch.

Tonight was about being a woman. I know that sounds dramatic. But let me explain.

There was calm explanations, advice, a helping hand, but let's just say our Miss Em did NOT want to learn to make her bed. Granted, it's a top bunk and I KNOW from personal experience that's hard. Even painful. The wood slats, etc. I don't care for it myself. But regardless, there was some....how shall we say...

Helplessness.

That's what this was all about. It started with whining, escalated to hysteria, sobs, digging in of heels and finally, getting it. But not wanting to acknowledge that she got it. Yup. You know what I mean. It's THAT combination most of us women are quite familiar with:

Stubbornness
Loss of Control of Emotions
Helplessness

This was an important discussion. This was an opportunity to begin learning a lesson I will see that she learns. Even if she doesn't like it. Even if she comes along, kicking and screaming. Even if she never acknowledges she learns it. As long as I know she learned it, I will be satisfied. I don't mean that she will learn to do this perfectly. In fact I know she won't. But I want to know that she knows when she chooses helplessness over capability that that IS the choice she is making.

So here's what I said:

"Emily, this isn't really about learning to make your bed, sweetie. This is about being a woman. It's important that you learn this: We are women. We are strong. We are smart. We can do whatever we want to do. That doesn't mean we don't need help. It doesn't mean we don't ask for help. It doesn't mean we know everything and we don't need to learn things. No! It means that we accept help and when we "get it," we acknowledge we get it. When we can do it, we say, 'Thank you for your help. I can do it myself now.'

"Emily, do I let Daddy take care of me? Do things for me?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"You're right," I said. "I want to let Daddy help him and he wants to let me help him. But do I NEED Daddy to do things because I'm not strong or smart enough? Could I live on my own? Could I take care of myself? Would I die without him?"

She shook her head. "No."

"That's right," I said. I can and do and will keep asking for and letting Daddy help me. I will help him. But I KNOW inside that I am strong enough and smart enough to take care of myself and THAT is what I want you to learn."

"Emily, there are women who don't know they are strong enough to take care of things. They don't know they are smart enough or wise enough. They don't know because they've never tried. And many of those women were once little girls who cried when they didn't understand something right away, or whined that they couldn't do something because it was too hard, too new, too uncomfortable. And someone said, 'Oh, honey, don't worry about it. I'll do that for you.' They knew inside, just like you do, that they could do it. But the older they got, the more they began to believe their own words. 'I can't do it,' they told people, acting more helpless than they were, until one day, after years of this, they really began to BELIEVE they can't. You are not going to be like that, Emily."

You see now why this was such a watershed conversation. Also why this is the first of a conversation we'll have many times. Why?

Emily is stubborn. When she knows what she wants or doesn't want, everyone knows it and getting her to back down, change her mind to suit someone else or (heaven forbid) admit she is wrong is...almost impossible.

And that stubbornness is wonderful. I love it. I am so glad she is that stubborn.

A lot of Christian parenting books I've read urge me to "break" her. She should should bend before her parents out of respect. But here's the deal. I don't want to bend her. And I certainly don't want to break her. I want her to be respectful of authority. I want her to know when to shut her mouth. I want her to learn to apologize when she needs to. But I want her to keep that stubborn spirit. That knowing that guides her now and will continue to, I hope.

I want Emily to learn to humble herself when she realizes she is wrong. But when she is right, I want that little woman to fight til the death.

She learned how to make the bed. She didn't want to admit it. She didn't want to admit that she had not tried her hardest or that she acted helpless beyond the point when she understood what to do. That's o.k. I told her I might have done the same under the circumstances...she is my daughter, after all! But I admitted that I had gotten too angry, too upset. I apologized. And she apologized, without prompting, for "whining." That was more than good enough for me.

Tonight was important.
Tonight was painful.
Tonight was loud and emotional.

But...
Tonight Emily learned something.
Tonight Emily learned she can be strong...that her own strength is something she has my permission to claim.
Tonight a mama reinforced what she already knew about herself.
Tonight a mama and her daughter connected in a real way.

Tonight was messy. But beautiful. The best kind.

Home

Home.

As a child Home was a feeling, more than it was a place. I lived in 15 houses in my first 15 years.

When I was little, Home was where my parents and sisters were. It was where my bed was, where my dolls and stuffed animals were and where I played. It was a bookshelf made out of planks sitting on cinder blocks, filled with Little Golden Books and Dad's huge medical books. A heavy, varnished wood table and six crude Quaker-like chairs where we ate. It was a Raggedy Andy I threw up on and then found in the trash can. The soft light of a lamp burning in the dark early-morning living room and Daddy letting me sit beside him in the chair while he silently prayed, Bible open on his lap. A plastic wading pool that made a large yellow circle on the green backyard grass. Brown couch under which I stuffed a shock of hair I secretly cut off with my little red paper scissors when Mama wasn't looking. It was Mama's fingernails softly tickling my arms and back while Daddy read us before bed. It was horsey-rides and Jesus Loves Me, whispering to my sister in the bed next to mine until she didn't answer any more.

Now Home is people.

It's my sweet Emily with her chocolate brown eyes like my mother's, her perfectly-shaped nose, constantly-moving pretty mouth, refreshing lack of self-awareness, and long legs. It's my Raychie with her huge sweetheart eyes, curly wisps of hair around her face, propensity for cuddling, the way she gasps between phrases and her darling little bob haircut she says looks like mine. It's my Andrew Man with his chubby arms that wrap around my neck and my heart, his baby lisp when he tells me he loves me, the way he knows all the Thomas the Train engines' names and his funny little sense of humor. That's Home.

It's the friends and family that I know love me no matter what is going on in my life, who hold me together when I'm falling apart and who believe in me, even when I don't believe in myself. It's the open doors and open hearts. It's the loving arms, kind eyes and gentle advice. It's the eyes and ears that really SEE me and really HEAR me and the hearts that love me unconditionally, even in my worst moments. That's Home.

It's me, too. Strange to say that, perhaps, but let me explain. I remember in college, after I'd moved out of my parents' house and was living with various roommates, that I felt "homeless." I remember telling my then-boyfriend who I ended up marrying that I felt like I didn't have a home. I slept and ate and cleaned my apartment. But it wasn't Home. I longed for the day when I would get married and have a real Home. I was always looking forward, longing, wanting and wishing, which is what people in their early twenties DO.

But today there is a curious way that I feel at Home....in my own skin. I am 33, separated from my husband, unsure of what the future holds and yet, at Home. I live in an apartment and have my children every other week, but even when they aren't here, I am Home. For the first time in my life Home is not JUST people.

There's a central, base, core....thing....that is Home. I didn't have this at 20. I am not even sure if I had it a year ago. But I do now. It's not that I'm perfectly content with everything in my life or what I see when I look in the mirror. It's not that I don't look forward to things in the future or dream about "better days." There is just an inner calm deep down when I rest in the "knowing place" inside of me. There's a warmth and a rest there. It is so difficult to describe in words but perhaps easier in a picture:

Sometimes I sit down on my bench in the middle of this garden inside of me....a kind of retreat that I can go to if I quiet myself, close my eyes and sit back into myself. I sit down on the bench, I look around and take in everything around me. I feel the breeze on my cheeks and the way it lifts my hair just a bit and pushes it around my neck. I smell the flowers around me and I can hear the sound of a nearby creek, not far away. There are birds chirping happily and a squirrel scampers by my feet, busily on his way somewhere. I look down at my hands on my lap and cross my ankles. I lift my face up and feel the sun on it, eyes closed.

And it's then, when I'm oriented inside of myself there on the bench that I can "pull back" and see myself there on the bench, from behind. I immediately see what I call "the wounded self" sitting there on the bench and I feel a deep love for her. It's as though I'm the mother and she is my child and I almost always touch her hair the way I would my daughter's and pat her head gently and fondly. Usually I sit down beside her on the bench and usually end up gathering her up in my arms. I murmur to her how beautiful, wonderful and loved she is.

It's as this other self, this "Real Self," as I call it, that I can see what is going on with my wounded self. I am able to see clearly the ways she is thinking about things in a way that is causing her pain. Sometimes I just hold her while she cries. The Real Self has wisdom that the wounded self can't see but needs. The Real Self often says exactly what the wounded self most needs to hear and there is often a healing of wounds that occurs when this happens.

That Real Self is Home. It is the place where I see things as they really are, where I know clearly what is important and what is not. It's where love, compassion and empathy, for myself and for others, comes from. It's the place my art comes from. It's the place where my writing comes from.

Like the wardrobe that connects the "real world" to Narnia, it is the passageway into a place that is connected to everyone else in the world. That garden where the bench sits isn't just inside of me; it's inside of everyone. I have my own bench there, but if I get up and walk around I find that everyone else is there, too. Sometimes I encounter their wounded selves and sometimes I encounter their real selves. I don't have a preference; I love their wounded selves just as I do my own wounded self: like a beloved child that, even in her worst moments, is still precious to me. I can see the woundedness for what it is and not confuse it with the real person they are. I know instinctively that we are one family...that we want the same things.

It is there, in that garden that is inside of me, that I feel the things that make someplace...Home. Rest. Comfort. Love. Acceptance. Peace. Connectedness. Happiness.

That's Home.