no substitutes

Six years ago, I attended church on a bright sunny Sunday morning leaving my mother asleep with a capable aide. When I arrived home, an immediate path from the back door to the bedroom was my focus. Her breathing had changed, and I just knew. Shortly thereafter she departed, an eternal inheritance awaited ...

This bright sunny Sunday morning , six years later, I am not in church. On my bed amidst a fence of pillows lies a precious four month old. I have been his substitute mother since yesterday morning, and after a night spent at Witt and Claire's house,(DSS rules), I am tired and weary, yet my heart is full of the joy of keeping little wee man. I recall the blessings and griefs of a previous day too and I do believe it is all very relevant. The paths of motherhood through all generations and seasons are linked intrinsically, we never leave them far behind.

But I am thinking those helpful hormones and/or strong desires for a baby do give something extra of which I find myself in tremendous shortfall of at the present.

"I can hardly believe it after that horrible day last summer. I have had a heart ache ever since then. But it is gone now."
"This baby will take Joy's place," said Marilla.
"Oh no no no Marilla. He can't, nothing can ever do that. He has his own place my dear wee man child. But little Joy has hers, and always will have it."
~L.M. Montgomery

moving lugubriously...

Noteworthy that the day is wet and grey. Not just a misty rain, but a gentle rainfall. We all pulled ourselves out of our beds this morning, thirty minutes before we must head off in the dark to the airport. Alan was going back to his life in Bangkok, and I, for one, was not ready to say good bye. It was so much harder this time...I've known what two years feels like and each year that passes creates deep grooves in me physically as well as emotionally. I had time to ponder this anew during this visit,  remembering how far away he truly was going, and how long it would take to get to where he was.

A mother's heart must out of necessity snip the strings that tie her children to her, but they never forget what those tight binding strings of the past felt like. They are as real today as they were thirty years ago when he was placed in my arms for the first time. Those unique strings have been tangling around for quite some time now, and in my perspicacious vision they are free and blowing at times while dangling and tattered at others. Because life is like that.

We came home after we had made a stop at Waffle House (another story altogether...!) where we watched low flying planes in the sky. I stepped into the room he had inhabited for the past twenty-seven days and immersed myself in the mundane busyness of collecting towels, pulling off the sheets, looking at bits and pieces he had left behind...and the warmer clothes he will not need in Thailand. And while Charlotte takes a nap, and a fresh pot of coffee is brewing, I sit here and ponder things so deeply edged into my heart truly I can not even put adequate words to its expression.

let's talk Shakespeare

And Shakespeare? He, indeed, is not to be classed, and timed, and treated as one amongst others,—he, who might well be the daily bread of the intellectual life; Shakespeare is not to be studied in a year; he is to be read continuously throughout life, from ten years old and onwards. But a child of ten cannot understand Shakespeare. No; but can a man of fifty? Is not our great poet rather an ample feast of which every one takes according to his needs, and leaves what he has no stomach for? A little girl of nine said to me the other day that she had only read one play of Shakespeare’s through, and that was A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She did not understand the play, of course, but she must have found enough to amuse and interest her. How would it be to have a monthly reading of Shakespeare—a play, to be read in character, and continued for two or three evenings until it is finished? The Shakespeare evening would come to be looked on as a family festa; and the plays, read again and again, year after year, would yield more at each reading, and would leave behind in the end rich deposits of wisdom. (Mason, 1989e, p. 226)

We are at the end of this semester studying Shakespeare's "As you Like It'". I am using Memoria Press materials to aid me in this instruction. I have never been disappointed in the materials Memoria Press provides, they have aided me tremendously in instructing Charlotte by providing excellent literature choices. And we are getting in a Shakespearean mode by attending "Twelfth Night" at the local university tonight. 

outside my kitchen window, she dances

The sun had forged its way into the late afternoon, and as  I was preparing supper I glanced through my kitchen window and this is what caught my eye and my delight. 

Charlotte was practicing her dance for her dance company's Garden Performance which is to be held in May.

Her natural grace and her love of dance bedazzled me.

spring cleaning and home things

While at a Passover Seder last weekend, I saw a fine contrast  between the Jewish homekeeper performing an all and out cleaning of her home during Passover because absolutely no leaven could be kept in the home at this time, and the modern act of what is known as spring cleaning.

This inspired me a bit, and the small fact that I had several visitors over the weekend and with all the extra cleaning and pulling out and putting back that having guests entails, I began an immediate campaign of my own form of spring cleaning. I make the rules...one room at a time. And most days  only one room gets done in a day.

But this morning, while I observed the redbuds being blown in the spring winds outside my window,  I made a batch a Wednesday Granola...and I then showed Charlotte how to cut out the back of a whole chicken, cut through the breasts, and then create a simple marinade for the later grilling of the chicken. All the while I was mind- planning my dinner of sauteed spinach and roasted sweet potato fries.

Wise silent note was made: furniture that does not have curlicues, curves, and bent places gather less dust.

The sunroom was today's room to spring clean. All those windows too, successfully cleaned...it just makes a body feel good!

“A household has to be tended if it is to flourish and grow. Housework is never 'done' in the same sense that gardening is never done or that God's providential involvement in the world is never done. Housework and gardening and God's providence itself are exercises not in futility but in faithfulness - faithfulness to the work itself, to the people whose needs that work serves, and to the God whose own faithfulness invites our faithful response.” 
― Margaret Kim Peterson, Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life

I love this quote. What are your thoughts or ideas about spring cleaning?

on turning thirty

It seemed like a rather auspicious occasion, Alan coming home for a visit and all. All the way from Bangkok, nonetheless. 

But you only turn thirty once, and some things should only be  celebrated with your family. Don't you agree?

Charlotte and I made a three-layered coconut covered cake with a thick layer of lemon curd interspersed between the layers. What a time we had with it slipping and sliding as we were putting on the frosting. But it minded itself with the most perfect manners after it spent the night in the refrigerator.

He Is Risen... Indeed!

He that spared not His own son, but delivered Him up for us all,

how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?

 It is Christ that died, yes, rather, that is risen again

who is even at the right hand of God, who makes intercession for us.

For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels , nor principalities, nor powers, 

                                            
                                     nor things present, nor things to come,

Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature

shall be able to separate us from the love of God,

Which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
 Romans 10:32, 34, 38-39

His story... and a story of us, in photos, of our glorious day...