Poetry Friday: Secret Apple Code

Happy Poetry Friday to you all! Its late at night and the house is quiet....I have had a dreamy day out with some of the best company and have wakened my mind up in a redwood forest. Its a good night for a poem and even though this one came dragged out of me in a tangled fashion, I hope it will be worth sharing with others. I liked listening to my brain stumble through the meanings and the unsnarling of the steps of the story. 

I forget how much writing poetry can feel just like meditation, like painting and like yoga when I sink in properly. Its best done in a dark house after everyone has gone to sleep, I think. You can finally get into the thick and flowing weight of the process if you have no voices left, no other presence and no one but you, even your physical self snoozing in the computer chair really while your brain and your soul work macrame with ideas and thoughts and personal truth. This is why I mean to read poetry and mean to write it. 

This week, a poem about the story of this beautiful little apple and how it came to be mine and how in the world despite its stunning beauty, I managed to have it disappoint me. 

An Apple Lesson

I wanted it to be most sweet, a tangy, juicy pleasure

Instead it punched me bitterly, a plug of sour, drying feathers. 

It was the largest on the tree, its skin all pinkly blushing

The freckles on its spherical cheek all winking at me flushly.

The children playing squirrel games had buried all the others 

A row of mole-hills neatly made, with marble apples under.

I noticed all their digging work, each stick that marked a pile. 

I heard the secret offerings arranged for deer in sylvan style. 

The meaning of each twig and heap, the messages spelled out

When every plan had been described, oblations all laid out

I told them if I was a doe, I'd be most grateful to them each

And have a secret thrill to find their message and the treats. 

Attention is a cheerful gift, a momentary pleasure

A child who is listened to grows dignified and tender

Because I entered in their world, my fingers in the dirt

My head inclined and face awake, my spirit in the work

They paused and then behind a back emerged this largest pome

The rusted ruby biggest fruit, unburied and alone

They gave it to me as a gift, a gesture peer to peer.

Their largest apple never laid in sacred mounds for deer.

I thanked the little architects who'd shared their schemes with me

And made a circuit through the park, a gleeful apple posessee

I cupped it in my hand and tossed and felt its weighty cool

With glittering eyes I breathed and rubbed it to a ruddy yule. 

The tartan flannel of my shirt my regal buffing cloth

My lucky apple, sparking bright, held vampishly aloft. 

Alas, this prize of children and my adultish greedy yen 

Had a jolting oral skirmish when I bit into the skin.

Not every beauty that we find is there to be consumed. 

Some gifts are handheld sermons made of eloquent festoons. 

Our Poetry Friday roundup being hosted this week by The Miss Rhumphius Effect. Please join in or read along any week that the urge strikes you, this friendly group of poets and poetry lovers has no limits or rules about participation and has been so welcoming to me. Please come along if you like!

Dee, At The Moment

Spending some time being conscious, just thinking about my second child today. Noticing all the new little changes and the way he is shifting and what he has let go of since the last time I took a day for just him. May we all be dynamic...and may our children do the same!

Dee Loves....

• Rotisserie Chicken: He'll sit and eat it until he can't eat anymore and who can blame him? The stuff falls off the bone into its own juices.... This mama is super glad that one of her secret tricks for saving dinner is such a big favorite.
• His Great-Aunt Sheila: She has a quiet, peaceful house with a basket of small, quiet toys in corner of her walk-out basement looking out onto the salt marsh. She makes lunches with many little details all organized and thought out and she saves a particular napkin holder for his cloth napkin which he loves. 
• Hand Sewing: We've started hand sewing together a bit, working on a project, making a set of bean bags for a friend's first birthday. He loves the stitching and he's begging me to teach him embroidery although he didn't know the name for it, "Teach me how to write with sewing, Mom!" I bought him a small sewing machine and working up to teaching him how to use it soon. 
• Watching Video Games: Its funny to me but, he doesn't jocky for video game time himself like his brothers and if its specifically offered to him he will often refuse anyway...but he does love to watch. Ru's video games end up counting for his screen time most of the time because he genuinely enjoys watching, sometimes advising but often just enjoying the ride second-hand. Love his curious, observer's mind.
• Seashore Science: He took a solo class on seashore biology and microbiology and LOVED it and that combined with his Aunt Lockbox's knowledge of all things marine have lit a serious fire. Its amazing the details about the blood of sea stars and the diet of anemone's that he retained. I see more ocean classes in his future and maybe some field guides.
• Studying Things Consistently: He's such a creature of habit and lover of routine that he bugs me if he misses a reading lesson or if we fall off the wagon with his math time. He inspires me. Love that he knows what's good for him in this way. 
• The Idea Of Playing The Flute: He's only 6 so no instructors will take him yet, they all insist that you wait until 8 before the mouth has enough strength to develop an embouchure. I'm amazed at the persistence of his dreaming...he knows he has to wait and is still holding out for the day when he is old enough. I see a Pied Piper in our future!
• Little Girls: You'd think Ru would be my confident dandy but he's very mum about his personal feelings towards girls. Dee loves girls...and has had several little favorites so far already. He's very quiet but confident about his choices and makes no bones about his feelings towards them and his intention that one day he should end up with one of them.

Dee Abhors.....

• Raw Apples: They used to be fabulously handy for taking along as a playground snack...all my kids would eat them, they are cheap and they travel decently. No more. We are on to a stage where they aren't cool with Dee anymore, he'll take pretty much any other fruit as substitute and apples are accepted if they come with peanut butter.
• Factual Errors: He's a stickler for the details, this one. He hates it when people exaggerate, miss the facts or remember things wrong. Trying to teach him about hyperbole, kindness and tact while appreciating his love of truth.
• Swimming Lessons: He's proud of what he learned but he hated, hated, hated the stress of taking swimming lessons. The deep end makes him tear up, putting his face under water is terror and being forced to self-propel through water is mortifying. Add in his instructor's thick accent and brusque manner and you have a special kind of hell. Poor kid cried at every, single lesson. 
• Shots: I mean, who doesn't, right? But really...he hates, hates, hates them. Its all I can do to keep him in the room and reasonably still. Good thing he's getting to the end of the schedule for childhood immunizations. Whew!
• Having His Hair Cut: He hates all kinds of physical disturbance...washing his hair is another one that still really gets his goat. He complains that every little snip hurts and that the hair itches and that he is nervous I'll cut him and that its taking too long. I am letting his hair grow out a little longer at the moment and I wonder if he'll eventually try long hair just for the sake of avoiding the physical annoyance of getting it cut. 
• Not Being Prepared: He needs lead time, lots of it...I'm  always reminding myself to tell Ru at the last minute and Dee, two weeks in advance because that's what works best for their vastly different selves. Ru loves surprise and thrives on spontaneity and hates waiting for things. Dee loves to think about things and mull over them, needs warning and wants to figure out what he is doing far, far ahead of time.
• Wearing A Swimsuit: I wonder if this is related to his hatred of his swimming lesson experience. I haven't been able to get him to explain so far. He sometimes flatly refuses to wear his swimsuit and will purposely wear other shorts to play at the beach and even swim in. I'm not sure if its a control thing or a sensory hatred of swimsuit material or a rejection of lesson memories...whatever it is, its curious. He just says..."I don't want to." when I try to get him to put his swimsuit on, so mostly...I don't make him.
• Coconut: He'll ask me when I am making a smoothie if I put coconut milk in it, he wants to know if I have fried things in coconut fat and he will skip candy or ice cream if its coconut flavor. I am slightly obsessed with coconut so maybe its his way of asserting independence or maybe its a real personal taste preference. Hard to say...he's not big on explaining. 

Kids Capsule Wardrobe

Minimalism marches on! Today I made up capsule wardrobes for each of my children. I spent the whole day washing their things, pulling things out of storage, examining shirts for stains and pants for knee holes and stacking up things for Goodwill and neatly culling down the pile to keep. They are growing like crazy, a couple of them going up a size this spring plus the season is changing which necessitates a wardrobe swap.

I am keeping some things that the boys don't "need" right now and am saving them in storage as back-ups. Ahem....blue jeans anyone? (If you have or know boys and you haven't read it...go check out this hilarious meme.) Otherwise, I have weeded things down to a nice stash of useable but not overkill essentials for  every child. Bear in mind that I do a load of laundry every day and don't wait until "Wash Day" to do everything at once which allows for fewer than a weeks worth of certain things.

Here's what I kept:

• 2 pairs of jeans
• 1-2 pairs of other pants (khakis or cords)
• 4-6 pairs of shorts
• 5 t-shirts
• 1-2 tank tops
• 2-4 collared shirts
• 1 flannel
• 1 sweatshirt
• 3-4 pajama sets
• 1 swimsuit
• 7 pairs of socks
• 7-10 pairs of underwear
• 4 white undershirts
• 2 pairs of shoes

Everything else went into storage in my backroom (labelled by size) or into the Goodwill pile (taking that out tomorrow for donation, yay!!!!) or to the cousin box to send off as hand-me-downs. 

Can I even explain to you lovely people the high I get from trimming down my belongings? Whew! I want to sell everything I own and give to the poor like crazy when I start culling down my stash. I can't believe how much my stuff owns me and how weighed down and oppressed I feel by all of it. I feel positively gleeful about having less, every, single, time. Goodwill loves me. 

Ru, Right Now

I love doing these little posts. They are deceptively hard though. It seems so simple to jot down a fast list but it is actually quite the exercise in slowly down and observing. Its amazing how easy it is to live with people and not really observe them or notice how they are changing and evolving. It takes some real thinking and puzzling and remembering to dig up a nice batch of personal characteristics. I like the sweat involved, its good relational muscle-work.

May we all, notice the ways those we love are growing and changing....and I don't just mean the children. Everyone wants to be seen as alive.

Right now, Ru is like this:

Ru's Favorites

• Daddy's chocolate chip pancakes: His favorite food of all-time at the moment. Its a weekend treat tradition at our house.
• Skateboarding: His current sport of choice. The board and helmet goes everywhere with us in the trunk of the van so that he can whip it out at a moments notice in any store parking lot. He's loving the new skateboard class we found to attend once a week.
• Playing video games: He's really into racing games right now, especially a particular game where you race boats through really vivid terrain. It makes me clutch at my chair arms to watch.
• Competition: He will do almost anything if you can find a way to turn it into either a challenge, a race or a contest. He's a natural athlete psychologically as well physically.
• Pomegranates: If we buy them, he eats them. Suddenly all the pomegranates are gone. Bam!
• Cheeseburgers: Its that pre-teen thing comin' on. I can see it now!
• Comic books: He loves them all, from Archie to Spiderman.
• Snow and ice: He freaks out when all our snow melts and its a party day when it snows again. Its kind of emotional whiplash living in Connecticut in winter for this kid, this however is a good year for him.
• Books on cd: He'll listen by the hour. A and I have both recorded some stories for him and we sometimes get them from the library too. The appetite is bottomless. Reading them himself voraciously is the next hurdle.
• Our chickens: He's the Keeper of the Fowl at our house and he loves to hold the hens and talk to them while he feeds and waters every morning. Love to peek out the kitchen window while I'm getting breakfast and see this gentle piece of him.
• Science: He's my deep outdoors lover. Anything about the world outside will have him hooked.
• Disney's animated Robin Hood: He is quoting little bits of it around the house and its his first pick if a movie is ever suggested.

Ru's Un-Favorites

• Leaving people he loves: He is heartbroken, real tears and genuine misery every time we drive out of his relatives and friend's driveways.
• Soup: I can't kick it. He won't touch the stuff.
• Going to sleep: He'll stay up as late as possible. The boy is a night owl through and through.
• Having Daddy work in California: Ru is a real Daddy's guy and he really hates it that A is working one week a month in another part of the country. Handily, A has planned it so that he is only gone during the five work days and not for any weekend time.
• Zipping his winter coat: I can tell him as many times as I want to but, the boy runs hot and he likes his coat to flap.
• Getting things out of the basement: You know, its a basement. There are things down there.
• Leaving his top shirt button open: He's a straight-laced kind of guy. Every time we go to church I double-check his buttons before we get out because he loves to slyly button up again in the car, chokingly tight, right up to his chin.
• Cooked carrots: I remember not liking them too. Not sure why. They're sweet and crunchy raw and maybe just too perfect from a kid's perspective to be improved upon? I dunno. He hates them.
• Quiet Time: I am iron-fisted about quiet time happening every day and although Ru is too old for napping he still has to spend a quiet hour alone taking a break and he really can't stand it. He's an ultra-extrovert and spending an hour alone in perfect silence is a real exercise when he'd rather be in the middle of a crown laughing loudly and chatting it up.

Windowsill Frog

A frog lives in my kitchen. Things you never saw coming, right?

He belongs to Dee. One of his first purchases with his own money from the new allowance we instituted this year. His name is Albert. He comes from Africa. He'll never grow larger than he is...just a tiny inch or so in size.

He loves to "burble" which is the fabulous name for floating zen-like, with his arms and legs extended, just being in the water.

He also hates eating that stupid pellet food they tried to sell us from the pet store. Teeny tiny worms are the way.

The window sill is getting pretty chilly, especially at night so I am off to get him a tiny little heater this afternoon. (Mama spoils house-frogs) and while I am at it, a pretty little plant for him and tiny cave to hide in might make into the purchase as well.

So fun to have living things in the house, and to watch which creatures each of the boys think are most  fascinating. Ru is more of a mammalian kind of guy at the moment. Loves to hold animals and listen to them communicate and try to teach them tricks. Dee loves the detail of this tiny amphibian, loves water animals (fish, tiny shrimps, jellyfish) and is also really taken with the insect world. Love being a household of science lovers! Go biology hobby!

Wednesday Goes Like This

When A goes away suddenly I get all night owl-ish and want to stay up late every night, usually blinking wide-eyed at the computer screen while I dream and write and sketch and research. I am on a travel bender right now and keep digging up new obscure facts about Morocco and places to stay for a pittance in Finland. I usually stay awake until the first kid has a nightmare or has to go to the bathroom and stumbles down the hallway to the office squinting.

Once that kid is tucked in again I put myself to bed, resisting the urge to read a nip or two from a bedside novel in the midnight stillness. I just pat the book stack and tip A's alarm clock over on its face so the neon green numbers can't stare at me all night and drift off. The only catch with this habit is that I find it harder and harder as the week goes on to get up at my scheduled time and have my early riser solo hour in the quiet dawn.

This morning I was a positive stone, sleeping leadenly the recycling truck collection and the school bus arriving for the neighbor kids. When I pulled the curtains I saw that it was a dove grey morning with mist rolling up the hill. What light there was was muted and cloudy. The boys and I had tea at breakfast (green and mint!) and ate slowly, passing the bowl of blueberries around several times. It is a luxury to just eat. To breathe and realize that we can go as slowly as we like since there is no train to run after, trying to make sure Daddy makes his connection for his commute.

A luxury until the smalls start taking their time, eating one blueberry every 10 minutes, putting their feet on the table and giggling uncontrollably about it and asking for fourths and fifths of tea. So then breakfast was over and we were off on errands and read-alouds and Picasso lessons. The good news is, the car has nothing wrong, the brakes are great + the oil is changed, the girls in our book started a new adventure and it does look like Michael will marry their favorite auntie after all and the pressing has been all dropped off at the cleaners. Now on to kid's club, registering for chess, signing up for a mommy yoga class, and a quick early dinner before a friend drops by! Whew.

I'd say we're a go...time for a Thursday. 

Lego Distraction-ating

Started working on my second major Lego build in my life tonight.The boys and I are putting together this one, Dee's big Christmas present this year.

Its good to have a project after dinner when it is California Week (the one week a month that A is spending in Cali). We just got a little bit of it done, the first four or five pages in the instruction manual....a layer of bricks on the base piece. The baby was so exciting he kept stirring the box full of pieces and sending them flying and then climbing up onto the table in his excitement. Super silly!

Dee loves to build these scenes and really enjoys hunting for the next required bricks in the "Big Pile" of materials but he gets worried by the complexities of the big picture and feels all nervous and stressed that he'll "do it wrong." He actually is a pretty good team player with Ru who has bravado for miles and loves to read out directions but doesn't have the patience for hunting for the exact bricks specified. If I'm around to pluck a baby off the table and lend encouragement and the occasional long fingernail for prying bricks apart....we make a great construction crew. Nib is so far not really old enough to join in and follow directions. So he usually does his own thing next to us, building some imaginary design and we bargain with him for bricks we need off of his structure. It works. He's peripherally involved and free to do what he likes and generally occupied on the same topic.

Love these Legos but wondering what my organizing future holds for storing, constructing and displaying them. Right now the boys aren't anywhere near organized or motivated enough to possess a lot of them or to have one of those incredibly pleasing sorted-by-color file drawer storage cabinets that are always floating around on Pinterest. It would be a mess. So right now they all live mixed in a big glossy rainbow in a small tub with a lid. My in-laws have an astounding amount of Legos leftover from raising their 7 children and my eyes widen every time we are there to visit and they bring in the GIGANTIC Rubbermaid tub with 5,000,000 bricks in it. Is this in my future? 

I am not equipped. 

Flooding Wisdom

And today, while sweeping the massive flood of water from a busted pipe into our basement floor drain.....

I overheard Ru, holding Pom (to keep him out of the lake), and explaining to him comfortingly:

   "But don't you worry about the water, Baby....the good thing is, most things can be fixed."

How right he is. Its a good thing. And a true thing. Not all things can be fixed, but truly, most things. Maybe not by us, maybe not quickly but eventually, we'll get a plumber here and this will be hilarious. In the meantime, I have a pint-sized sage to keep me company.

Shoes and Autumn Mornings

I got up this morning...actually when my alarm went off...and spent a half an hour alone in the living room, curled up under a blanket, reading my next bookclub assignment. It was so chilly, and I was grouchy/groggy when I first got up which was nothing that a private mug of chai tea couldn't cure. When off-track like I have been the past few days, (missed schedules, dropped self-care, over-tired....etc.)  the best thing ever is just to get back on track....and minimize the emotional self-flagellation and instead tell yourself that falling off the wagon is useful because it teaches you how sweet it really is to ride. Meaning is contexual.

 

This is the best time of year ever in some ways. I love the freshness of the Autumn. The way a day carries all the seasons in rotation inside itself. Wake up to the frosty chill of winter thinking of slippers and baked sweet potatoes but also spend a moment in the middle of the day weeding in the garden with a hot vernal sun baking down on your back. Have your cake and eat it too. Welcome to Fall.

 Ru has been growing a lot over the summer and Baby Pom is finally doing a little growing of his own (record breaking midget that he is!) and today I am off to Target looking for new footwear for them both. Pom will just get a new pair of leather crib shoes, no real soles yet but Ru needs yet another pair of long-suffering casual shoes. His current pair lolls open at the toes when he trips up the sidewalk like some kind of bizarre puppet. Must keep the children in shoes. These sorts of things look bad. Neighbors begin to ask questions.

Laundry Salvation

So excited about my new laundry system.  Small, home-making victories that matter!!!!

I have discussed my laundry battles before. Some woes are perpetual. I think, however, that this time I have the upper hand with my clever new scheme. On the weird side....it involves five million laundry baskets....on the plus side, its a LOT more organized, somewhat perpetually caught up, and it makes me feel like a mommy-rock star!!!

 

 

I have baskets for sorting the laundry and all the dirties get put immediately into one of these bins as soon as they enter the basement laundry zone.  Ru has just started learning to load the washer or dryer and having sorted bins of dirties makes it a much saner process. He just stuffs the washer full with his chosen color (I sort whites, lights, darks and reds) and then I add soap or bleach and start the machine when I get a chance. 

 

After washing and drying, all laundry gets folded and sorted into the next bank of baskets, labelled with names. Each person has a basket, neatly labelled and they stack on top of each other for space saving convenience. Love this part. So soothing to go down in the basement in early morning before the house is awake or late at night when the littles are running around crazily with toothbrushes on the 2nd floor....and just have a little sorting binge.

Just me and the laundry...each thing in its bin, every one folded and ready for putting away.

Dee loves the new system and it is bringing out his inner organizer. He goes energetically down the basement to empty his basket every morning and tells me several times a week how much he loves the new plan. Cute little kindred spirit. I am a mess on the outside and full of spontaneous creativity but I have a strong inner craving for order and aesthetic smoothness. Dee and child-me are a lot alike. 

 

Too Many Kids

Today was a long day but a good one. I watched my friend, Nutmeg's kids while she had all her wisdom teeth extracted and then spent a little recovery time coming out of anesthesia and icing her jaw. There were six children here all day and just one me. They were actually well behaved and there were no major fights or object breakages or rule violations...and I was still pooped.

I feel so dumb about it. I grew up with six kids. My mom did it without any breaks, no personal painting time, no date nights, no blogging to fire her mind. Just her, and six kids and a giant flock of chickens and no indoor plumbing.

People area CONSTANTLY saying astoundingly admiring things to me in public about my supposed patience and grit and organization (etc. etc.) because I have and astonishing four kids. I always feel kind of silly about that. I'm not that organized (although I'm improving and I do aspire in that direction), I'm not astoundingly patient (although having four kids has been very helpful for developing patience) and I have grit but not enough to make me feel any kind of invincible. I still meltdown and feel like a terrible parent and get overwhelmed and get to my last straw. And honestly, maybe its growing up with six kids but I feel like its not that big of a deal to have four children. I realize its increasingly unusual culturally but its not a superhuman activity. There's nothing beyond the scope about it. Its just four.

And yet, there I was today with six in the house....thinking...."How. How in the how did my mom do this?????" Six kids feels like a lot!!! And I know its only two more and I know that it actually worked logistically today and I know that people do it....but I just felt beyond my edge. For one day it doesn't matter, you can do almost anything for one day. But in regular life? I just kept thinking just the same things people always say to me in line at the thrift store or the grocery store check-out. "Oh my. You six kid people are busy!! How do you do it all?"

How can I feel so self-assured and yet so knocked over a few steps away? Am both humbled and embarrassed. The thing that worries me is, there's no shame in knowing your limits and making careful calls for your own life but there is danger in selling yourself short, and not living up to the challenges thrown in your path. We grow when we climb over the walls we never thought we'd scale not by doing all the things we knew we could all along.

This Whole Motherhood Thing

There are times when being a Mommy is super, crazy fun. They are, I won't lie...pretty select times. Mostly its just a thing...like being a homeowner or being a wife or being a student. Not bad, not amazing...but decent. And sometimes it makes you want to gouge your eyes out with a spoon but that's for another time. Sometimes...there are real, genuine moments of idyllic happiness.

From time to time I wish I felt like motherhood was almost always moving and wonderful but it isn't, at least for me. Sometimes, I wade through Mommy-guilt about that fact. I think maybe "good moms" are the ones who always rave about adoring their children. Maybe even good moms are the ones who pretend they're perma-thrilled with their role. But then, I have a real penchant for honesty. I'd rather even my children know the truth. Being a mommy is really hard, its scary, its exhausting and its heartbreaking. Its not my most favorite thing in life. Its also very personal, and delicious and peppered with some of my most exhilarating feelings of success. I had no idea teaching someone to read would feel like climbing Mount Everest or that I would actually weep over the strenuousness of potty training. I am genuinely ridiculously proud of myself and the child when I cross the finish line on some Mommy-goal like that!!!!

Although mothering has been really feeding and exciting it also feels like a business I am a little loathe to make "my life" even though I am home full-time and admittedly not really a classic career person. Its a sticky business to make the care, feeding and emergence of a tiny handful of fully sentient and self-aware humans your life-work. I want to support them and encourage them and teach them but on some level I kind of want them to wear that label themselves, not me. I try not to encourage myself to "own" them and their development and instead to do all I can to enable them and to make myself my own life-work. I think there's a lovely, deeply personal, delicate piece to being a mother, there's also a lot of room for mismanagement, obsession, and forgetting who you are as a person and your responsibility to continue growing. And that's my soapbox for the morning. Happy Thursday!