End of summer pets

We shake hands with another summer, bid her adieu, say goodbye to her season of bounty and creature comforts, to her supply of the only pets my poor children think they'll ever have.

(This praying mantis provided a fun afternoon of enjoyment, then we let it slip away back into the grass, and it was gone. Kind of like summer.)

Circles

This is my baby brother Jeff gazing into the eyes of his new baby daughter, Greenliee. Have you ever seen a more beautiful, round, alert minutes-old child? All babies are angels, but this one looks the part. I think she'll have great skin tone for life.

My brother Jeff called Tuesday with the wonderful news that he and his wife Madison delivered their first baby. I've been blessed to be a new aunt a dozen times over, with cute kids I love and that I am so glad can be my children's special friends.

This little niece (well, not quite little -- she weighed in at 8 lbs. 11 oz.!) forms a different link. She is born to someone, my brother, that I remember fondly as a baby too. I loved him more than anything. I changed his diapers and made his baby food. I paraded him through the neighborhood in the stroller, just for fun. I read him stories and taught him how to sit on my up-high feet when I lay down like a letter L. Our mom found out just recently that I often soothed Jeffy in the middle of the night, helping him get back to sleep. (We slept on opposite sides of the same wall, he and I, and I'd hear him cry before my mom did.)

When he learned to talk he called me Nennies.

Jeffy was 13 when my oldest child Kyle was born. Now Kyle is 13.

These circles in our lives are amazing, wrapping us in tight, bringing us back to where we began. Jeffy has been the rough-and-tumble playful teddy bear of an uncle, showing my kids that he loves them the higher he throws them in the air. They can't get enough of him. No wonder I recognize that look on Greenliee's face, it's the same one my kids show whenever they see this uncle they adore.

Come on, Jeffy, let's play. Come on, Daddy.

Jeffy, I know you'll be a wonderful father, even if it does make me feel so old that you are. Congratulations to you and Madison.

Welcome to the world, Greenliee! I can't wait to meet you.

Please help

A darling little 4-year-old girl in our family (the daughter of Jeff's cousin) has been diagnosed with leukemia. To complicate the already difficult task of dividing themselves between home and distant hospital while she undergoes chemotherapy, the mother just had a new baby last week (by c-section). If you can find it in your heart to pray for this family, I know it can make a difference.

Check out their story:

www.tayliebug.com

Better left unsaid

Words you don't want to hear while you're working in the kitchen and your husband is re-installing a leaky toilet:

"Can I borrow a ladle?"

Better yet, you can HAVE one.

The Anti-Muse

Jeff and Samuel, May 2009

Muse (myooz), n. 1. Class. Myth. any of the nine goddesses who presided over various arts and sciences. 2. the power regarded as inspiring an artist.


I'm in a tippy canoe here in this, my first published tribute. Sometimes I read about others' loved ones, and I am inspired. Other times, especially where spouses are described, I gag on my suspension of too-good-to-be-true disbelief.

So here's a very human shout-out to my very human, very deserving husband on his birthday, or whatever day he chooses to show interest in this blog. :)

First, the title. I jokingly tell Jeff he is my anti-muse. This latest nickname comes from the way he greets most of my ideas with laughter and skeptical eyebrows (albeit above smiling eyes), or blatant "That will never work"s. (He's often right.) And these are the times when he hears me! Generally, I don't blame him for tuning me out.

This aloofness could bug me, squash me even. Yet -- when I'm in a good frame of mind -- I find it oddly empowering, for when I really want to do something, I'm challenged to find a way to make it work on my own. And fast! Two practical cases in point: the grand dollhouse I was going to make from a military trunk left in our garage when we moved in; and the elaborate grape arbor I planned to make from our replaced wrought iron storm doors -- until all materials mysteriously made it to the dump the very weekends I intended to start these projects. Well, at least that's when I discovered their absence; they'd been gone months before.

Jeff knows me too well, knows that I'm full of ideas, but that my follow-through lags sorely behind. No more of my saying, "Wait! Don't throw that out yet. I might make something from it." No more mere thinking. More doing. Jeff is like a filter that makes me evaluate what's doable, what's not, in an effort to make the flow of my time and energy more effective.

For years whenever Jeff says "I love you," I've asked, "Why?" It's a sincerely desperate plea. I want him to elaborate, to give me some nugget of detail that I can savor for days to come. I want him to wax poetic.

He never has. But I've realized that Jeff is not a waxing and waning kind of guy. His devotion may not be a dramatic wave, but it doesn't ebb in retreat either. He is constant.

"Why, why do you love me?" I say.

"Because I just do," he always answers.

To turn the tables, however, here are reasons why I love my husband:

• He helps me see the importance of laughing at myself.

• His face lights up in turn to see each and every child when he comes home from work.

• He sweeps the floor every day.

• He serves others.

• He plays with his children.

• He takes his spiritual obligation to his family very seriously.

• He thinks he's so clever to let the kids stay up late as long as they're scratching his head/feet/back.

• He is steady. He is the cabinet to my pinball, the string to my kite.

That Jeff loves me is more a reflection of his good qualities than it is of mine. To not need a reason to love? Why, I suppose that's the greatest love of all.

Happy Birthday, Jeff! I love you too.

Squirrel season

Here are Friday's and Monday's harvests from our small garden, minus all we ate and gave away over the weekend. Zucchini, tomatoes, beans, red/yellow/green peppers, broccoli, spaghetti squash and a handful each of raspberries and strawberries await transformation. (No, the goldfish will not be processed.)

I have a love/hate relationship with canning. Love, love, love to grown my own food. Love this small exercise of self-reliance, and the gratitude I feel during it. Love to have a taste of summer follow every "swoop" sound of an opened bottle in the winter.

Hate trying to fit canning in with everything else. It makes me a wee bit crazy. Every year I ask: why am I doing this?? Harvests are great until they take the upper hand in a do-something-or watch-them-die standoff, with no regard to your schedule. Counter of produce or counter-productive?

The hardest part, for me, is finding the big chunk of uninterrupted time that canning requires. I've already peeled and chopped the tomatoes from the picture, but have to wait until tonight because none of my pockets of free time today is deep enough to finish any processing I start. They're seamed by carpools, school pick-ups, appointments, piano lessons and waiting for a worker who needs access to my neighbor's house. Oh, and the family's meals. Almost forgot that one.

Still, if the squirrels can do it, I guess I can too. Hmm. Do you think they have squirrel carpools?

****

On a related note, I've been so impressed with friends who have menus planned ahead. That's been a real struggle of mine. I'm more of a "pull something out of nowhere" kind of cook, which has yielded some fun triumphs, but is generally not worth the daily stress of answering my son's constant "What's for dinner?" when I myself don't even know yet. So, as a nod to Katrina, I've started a menu list of my own. Imititation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Baby steps

Rank and file: There's a definite hiearachy at elmentary school -- especially the first day -- and doesn't sixth-grader Emma know it! These three could not have been so evenly spaced apart if they'd tried.

This picture of Kyle isn't actually from the first morning of school; that would have been a blurry dash

of errant shoes, backpack and pencils. Yet this afternoon shot is strangely appropriate:
Look, he still doesn't know where his shoes are!

When the friendly crossing guard lady (that's our term, is there an official one?) greeted our stroller and backpack caravan on the first day of school, she couldn't possibly have known how much her words stung.

"Wow! Your baby is getting so big!"

Yes, he is. Samuel was born the day before school started two years ago, when Elise started kindergarten. Aside from diapers and gibberish there's not much baby about caboose Samuel anymore. It makes a mother sad.

It's James' turn to start kindergarten. He's so excited, and I'm excited for him. Yet this milestone is tempered for me because it breaks a long-running pattern in our family. Not only was Elise's first year of elementary school marked by the birth of a baby, the others were as well.

Yep, I was three for three. I learned I was pregnant with Elise at the precise time we had to register Kyle and choose a track preference at his year-round school. We chose one with a break we hoped would correspond with Elise's debut. I also wanted morning kindergarten because we were without a second vehicle then, and the school journey was just shy of a mile -- the narrow distance between being acceptable for walkers, but not far enough to have to require buses. Accounting for summer and early fall heat, I figured it would be easier for me to be a pregnant wagon train in the morning.

One of the funniest things about that first baby/kindergarten combo was when Kyle's teacher approached me about being in charge of the Halloween class party. Hello! Can't you see I'm 8 1/2 months pregnant here? Sure, I said, if I'm around. Well, I was. Elise was overdue, which was a bit of welcome torture after Emma had been six weeks early. Elise arrived on Nov. 6, conveniently during Kyle's three-week school break.

James also came during a school break. Having a baby with a kindergartener wasn't so bad, but having one with a kindergartener and a full school day student? That was crazy. I felt like I was in an eternal school transport loop, frantically trying to fit feedings into non-existent blocks of time. It's no wonder that most of James' naps were in the stroller or car seat, poor kid.

And Samuel, too, whose birth was the craziest timing of all. (You'd think I would have learned my lesson!) I remember holding that beautiful day-old newborn alone in my quiet hospital room, looking into his intent eyes, but with my own mind elsewhere. It was hard for me to miss Elise's big day, and the others' new starts. What a treat for Jeff, though, to be the launching parent that year.

The start of the school year is always a mixed bag for me. I think school is the greatest. I'm thrilled for the opportunities ahead for my children, but sad that the balance of time with them each day shifts abruptly. This year I'm also especially sad that I let my own problems keep me from enjoying the summer -- and that open malleable time with my children -- more before it was gone. (Hmm, maybe escaping from harried mom is why they're so excited this year . . . )

It's hard to see my children grow up, to wonder if I've done enough to help them in the world. It pains me to know that Kyle has only this year of school and four more before graduating from high school (gasp!).

It's almost as if my time to get things right with Kyle is measured, finite. That's a heady realization.

But then when I realize that my days as a mother of young ones are also measured, that my number of first days of kindergarten is down just to Samuel's one, why, that makes me want to cry.

Right in the middle of the crosswalk.