The Movers And The Stayers

Summer is here, and I have not been. That's the way with these warm weather months....all digging in the yard until way too late to make a proper supper by accident, reading way too many books and going on way too many exciting outings, catching up with all the friends and forgetting entirely those I communicate with online and far away. Please, let's pick up where we left off and carry-on with grace flowing around us to fill in all the gaps and distances and things I forgot to share and mention. We'll all catch up, shall we?

First of all, the elephant in the room we went on a stupendous trip to Italy. Totally amazing.

I have to write a post on several of the things I thought about our trip. So much to process and so much to share....more on that later.

Secondly, so much else is going on with us. One of my very close friends is moving away, the garden in our second year here at Orange Blossom Cottage is finally starting to come into its own, we had a really fun trip home to Michigan to see so much wonderful family, I have been doing some homeschooling public speaking this summer, and we are still ever in pursuit of giving ourselves a rich vibrant life with lots of space and breathing room in it.

Having a close friend move is a new experience for me as an adult. I realized once when talking with my husband that I had never been dumped by a boyfriend...although I'd dumped guys several times. It was a strange self-discovery. Did that mean I was selfish, pompous, picky, or lucky? I felt like I had kind of missed out on a rite of passage and the ability to claim normalcy in some tiny way. Weird how all the things mean things sometimes. Having a girlfriend move away and leave me is like this too. I have left several times, been guilt tripped, sobbed over and begged to stay. I've had people tell me they could never replace me, that they were mad at me because I had to move or resentful because I didn't consider them in my life location plans. But, through all of that I have always kind of played the same role. Tried to thank the stayers for their love, their loyal affection, their sharing of their time and lives and feelings and tried to walk the balance of showing just enough of my own feelings about moving to make sure that my humanity shows but be strong enough to comfort my friends and help them imagine a good future while not letting the negativity and depressing guilt get to me. I've never been the stayer. My gal is leaving and while I don't resent her adventure or the stress of packing up and shifting all her worldly goods to a new state....its surprisingly complicated for me too....even though I have no real clear role in the moving and shaking. I'm all conflicted about how much to show my cards with her. Do I cry in front of her, tell her exactly what she means to me or try to just keep it light and cheer her on while crying on my own time? Or is it some back and forth seesaw of behaviors. I don't want to be clingy and desperate but of course I'd love to make sure she knows that I care and that I will deeply, rawly miss her when she's suddenly not there for random roadside berry picking and hilarious girl's nights.

This relationship stuff gets me in to trouble in my marriage too. I want to be strong and independent and never have my husband be suffocated by trying to "be there for me" but I really want to be real and open and wear my heart dissected open on my sleeve. I think the thing that really gets me is that I so badly want reciprocity. I want to be sure that I share like he shares, that he wants my dirt and my pain as well as my hips and my best jokes. I start to feel gun-shy when its not clear that we want the same depth. Nobody wants to realize retroactively that they were an over-sharer. Ain't nobody got time for that!

I worry about this kind of thing with my friend too. I want to communicate my pain at her loss and my adoration of who she has been in my life at exactly the same level she discloses with me. I'm not sure I want to feel the same...just control what I tell her to visibly be her emotional twin. I'm always the emotional one, the deep feeler, the raw transmitter and sometimes its fatiguing to be judged as the eternal mess or the out of control girl or the person who is never done processing. I don't mean to be that way and when my feelings stay inside of me it mostly doesn't feel that way....its only when I leak them in disproportionate amounts and people get their measuring tools out and point them my way that I look a mess and seem like a problem. I wish there was a neat way to let my friend know that I will miss her exactly as wildly and deeply as she misses me and that I will probably culture some even darker and deeper feelings that she'll never know too and it all means that she's been really very special to me and I wish her the world. I'm lousy at being what people expect or want although I am one of the most people aware and over observant humans I know. Its tough to wish you could be just right and feel blind about making it happen. Moving is hard, even if you're staying.

Good thing there is shiny, crinkly swiss chard in the garden and orange roses by my front door, the sound of children's laughter in my yard and more phone calls than I can answer from people who love me. Summer ain't so very bad, even if its lumpy in places.

Radios and Summer Days

We are slowly filtering our way out of school and text books and our educational season groups and commitments...its kind of down to baseball and outdoor play, church and the Farmer's Market suddenly. I love this time of year. How can you not? The air smells like jasmine and honeysuckle, every afternoon is sunny and every evening falls gently with grills firing up all around the neighborhood. The little boy from two doors down has begun popping by for driveway games of scooter chase and basketball and Ru has learned to run the lawnmower himself and is keeping the air humming with the rattle of the engine and the bright scent of fresh cut grass.

 I am starting to hunt around again for something for Dee to be part of on his own. He enjoyed a Rainbow Loom group over the winter and now that Ru's baseball team is blasting their way through the Tournament of Champions, its clearly time for him to have a little more of his own time to shine. I have considered a chess group which he enjoys, golf or tennis which he's said he'd be interested in and I know that in Connecticut he really loved a marine ecology course for kids with lots of hands on sampling and equipment use. Sure would be fun to leverage the ocean again since we're near another one now and summer feels like the time to be at the shore. Tricky stuff trying to give each kid their turn in the sun without being indulgent or pushy!

 I sure have enjoyed being Team Mom for Ru's baseball team this season. Its been less work than I feared a lot more rewarding than I hoped which is a pretty fabulous equation. I continue to really be impressed with the camaraderie, the generosity of the coaches and the quality of the families involved. Baseball might be in our life for a while.

 Nib has asked me to give him cooking lessons over the summer. He told me very earnestly that he'd like to learn to cook and that he's concerned that the only thing he knows how to cook now is microwaved hot chocolate. I tried to reassure him that at 6 he's doing fine with that "recipe" as his starting point but he wouldn't be placated. He asked if he could please have instruction in cooking: (his list)

1. Asparagus
2. Cakes
3. Lemonade
4. S'mores

I think its going to be a delicious summer. I plan to actualize on all of the above. Look out camping....we will have private lessons on s'more cookery before we hit the campsite we registered for in August!

I am journaling in the morning and in the evening right now with the newly discovered The Five Minute Journal which, one week in has made a big boosting lift in my energy and productivity as well as mood. What a great resource! I think I found it through Tim Ferriss. I am having a huge Tim Ferriss fan-girl stage. I read a couple of his books awhile ago and enjoyed them but have recently discovered his podcast which is a great way to start my day in the kitchen alone after breakfast when A is working on math lessons with the big kids and the little kids are playing. As much as I love podcasts (also check out Magic Lessons by Elisabeth Gilbert if looking for great listening material), I also really, really want a radio in the house and in the car. Sometimes you just wanna turn on some background tunes! We have been trying to have a streaming audio system in the house but it isn't the same and also isn't reliable about coming in steadily and our car's audio system had to be ripped out recently because it was installed wrong or was faulty or something and it was draining our battery. No more audio books for my while driving about to appointments. Now there is just a rectangular, empty socket on the dash staring at me as I navigate through kid appointments and traffic and try to deep breath without distraction when kids are having meltdowns. Ah, self-reliance....you are lovely....but so is a radio! I miss it. Must wire my life back up again.

Berries, Schedules and Other Aspects of Summer

The tricky thing about the school year ending and open-ended summer beginning is that kids actually do well with structure. Well, my kids do....or maybe I do...its hard to separate that kind of thing...its a little like spaghetti. The good thing is that there is so much change and freedom, both of which are stimulating and make your brain work.

I spend a week or two after school lets out spacing out a little....and just about now the need for routine and normal and order starts to kick in in a driving sort of way. Just sat down with the boys and worked out a new plan for picking up the toys today. Have also been plotting summery field trip type destinations for the next couple of months. Time to make fun, that has a shape and a structure happen....as well as certain necessities like clean toilets and scrubbed hair.

I am doing very well with hitting my goal daily for water consumption and am feeling so proud about that still. Change does happen. People grow and new habits get formed. Tell that to all the people who love to sag around quoting that line about old dogs! Ha! I am making some serious headway on the goal of 8 hours of sleep a night. I am still not hitting it yet but....I have managed to move from the 6 hour range up into the 7's! Every little bit helps and its so fun to see tangible progress.

Strawberry picking round one went down this past weekend and we have almost finished eating the two lugs we brought home. So much love for fresh berries in our family. I hadn't made a single thing with them yet (just watched them being wolfed down out of hand) until tonight when I slammed out a recipe for strawberry pie and popped it in to chill while we ate dinner. So. Good. Strawberries are one of my most favorite foods. If you're looking for a great recipe for your fresh pickins, here's the link to the delicious one I used. Thanks to Michelle over at Gluten Free Fix for sharing it with the world, my boys are all fans now.

Now that the strawberries are almost gone I am starting to think about going back for another round. The boys and I are planning fortifying ideas for the next Daddy Business Trip Week and strawberry picking again together might make it into the calendar. I love going as a family but I love the leisure of going mid-week with just the boys and I....fewer crowds, slower pace, less scheduling to work around. Just have to get those lug boxes cleaned out again!

The Summer Isn't Over List

This is the one final push. There's about a month left of summer, that epic, open ended time full of carefree adventuring and outdoors fun. Because I am a lists girl and because I believe in seizing that day, I thought I'd listify the stuff I haven't ticked off yet this summer.

Lists help me let go of things I mean to remember, otherwise they keep popping up randomly in my mind and then I forget them and then two more pop up and are forgotten and I accomplish my goals haphazardly with a lot of niggling background stress about stuff I mean to do and things I forgot. So, here's what's rattling around in my brain at odd hours at the moment:

The....Summer Isn't Over List

1. Have a proper picnic. 
2. Go swimming at our local beach 5 more times. 
3.  Go peach picking.
4. Can tomato sauce.
5. Go horseback riding with Ru and maybe Dee. 
6.  Take a daytrip to Concord, MA.
7. Go fishing with the boys.
8.  Make popsicles.
9. Go hunting for chanterelles.
10.  Have a lawn breakfast party.
11. Finish the brick edging on our front walk.
12.  Drink more juices!
13. Catch a local baseball game with the boys. Bridgeport Bluefish, here we come! 
14. Bake a lemon meringue pie.
15. Take a surfing lesson.
16. Watch the sunset over the water. 
17. Paint my bedroom.
18.  Raise a monarch butterfly.
19. Go see the lighthouse in Manhattan.
20.  Visit the aquarium.

 What's still left on your list? Don't give up! Strategize!

Siesta in Connecticut

We are finally getting to the warm, genuinely summery days, all signs point to lots of swimming, grilling and slow evening promenades around the block after dinner in the late light. The boys and I just finished reading The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate together and since its set in the boiling heat of Texas, in the day of skirts and overskirts, and the heat was so oppressive that everything stopped in the middle of the day. Even the men came in from the fields and took a break indoors with the curtains drawn.

Sometimes the wheel has to be re-invented. My mama used to always say there were some people who had to touch the stove to see if it was hot. Same kind of an idea, I guess. I just discovered siesta living.



After we finished the book, spring trailed off, then suddenly summer showed up, we had a week away, we made our first batches of ice cream and we've packed away most of the long pants and our squash patch has exploded. And suddenly, I was thinking about life in Victorian Texas and I began to have a Siesta Time during the day when outdoor work and play gave way to indoor activities.

I think it took me a while because I'm not really a napping person and siesta sounds so much like a group nap hour to me. What I discovered is that if I get up early (6 hopefully, 5:30 if I'm really on track) I can get housework begun and maybe blogging, then after breakfast we can go outside and do animal care, lawn work and garden tending while it is sunny but not hot. Right about the time that I find I am sweating heavily, and the kids are wiping out, its time for 10 o'clock snack and indoor time.

----(Siesta Begins)---- 

Then inside we have lunch, the big boys find quiet time occupations and the littles go down for a rest. I do quiet, office-type work (phone calls, paperwork, emails, card writing, maybe blogging ). Then after we get done with quiet hour, I prep dinner, clean house, and maybe work on home improvement projects (in between breaking up arguments, fixing Lego creations, hanging with my sister, and downing glasses of ice water). After that we are heading into dinner land so the boys often watch a Netflix special while I do prep and wait for Aaron...sometimes there is free-play in the yard, sometimes watercolors.

Once dinner is over the indoor time is finished and hopefully it has cooled off enough to breath outside and we all head out into the yard to play a game before bed or take a walk around the block together. Then all the boys tumble upstairs to the bath and the day is over.



The key is making sure I go to bed early enough to get a jump start on my personal work so that I can just head outdoors during the morning and get all the garden hustle out of the way.

Boys In The River

We are into the solid, golden days season. Every morning begins chilly and the boys shiver in their t-shirts at the breakfast table because A has opened all the windows the night before to get his fill of fresh air. By noon everyone is barefoot and many bare-chested, all in the sunshine on the lawn and every hand filthy and filled with sticks and rocks and whatever else they're digging up and tying together with pilfered yarn.

Today we went to the park downtown so the boys could suck the nectar out of clover blossoms, skateboard around on the sidewalks and end with a good splash in the river. I sat on the river rocks next to a Guatemalan daddy whose two little boys were in the river too, splashing and grinning. He told me about working in a local kitchen and showed me pictures of himself grinning with his chef knife, hotel pans and kitchen whites.

He said:

         "I cook 300 lobsters every Saturday night. I bake them in the oven for 15 minutes and then pull them out, slice them in half for serving." 

Today was his day off.

We watched our boys collect sticks and stalk minnows, fall in and take turns helping each other to the opposite bank.

I collected clam shells for the baby and lined them up on a rock, one of my boys fell in and we all laughed and the man cocked his head at me and added,
"I grew up on a river like this....in my country. We were always swimming."
"I have a ticket to go back this month."
I asked, "For how long?"
He grinned, "Two weeks."

We team-worked together, counting down the five minutes warning to our collective children and then he hunted wet shirts and unrolled leg cuffs while I hefted the baby on my hip and encouraged boy goodbyes and we wandered slowly back up the sidewalk to the car.

"Mucho gusto." I told him, when we reached our cars in neighboring parking spots.
"Nice to talk." He said and our boys waved muddy sticks to each other out of the car windows.

I should have asked for a picture of him and his sons. It didn't cross my mind.

Poetry Friday: A Watermelon Poem

 Happy Poetry Friday, everyone!

Today it is cold and rainy, again. We've been having quite a lot of those spells this summer. The handy thing is that I am spending very little time watering the plants and everything is growing like gangbusters. I am looking forward to a few more of those painfully sunny days now that it is officially summer.

It's important to have squint-your-eyes sunshiny days for watermelon eating. A's favorite fruit, and one of his very favorite foods is watermelon, a quintessential summer pleasure. He always asserts that it is "the thinker's fruit" which never fails to make me smile. Who doesn't have rosy memories from their childhood involving watermelon? Today's poem is a little intro to summers past in my brain, in celebration of the solstice this past week. Shout-out to my cousins, scattered all over the world but still as fond as ever!

Ode to Watermelon

I remember standing on my grandma's veranda
The grey wood, slippery with dry beach sand,
Ptoo!-ing black seeds into the curling sawgrass.
All the cousins, reunited for an elastic week,
Here together flicking the stubborn ones from
Crisp, rosy flesh with springy index fingers.
Proper technique also meant leaning far forward
All of us slanted togetherlike books on a shelf,
The whole deck tilting,like a summer canoe as
We dripped rivulets of juice down our arms
And let it plink in pink drops overboard.
I heard the aunt-sisters laugh from the kitchen,
An adult world of loud talk and ice in tinkly glass.
Behind us Grandma opened the grill and squinted
Briskly balancing the deck again by leaning backwards,
Dodging the smoke cloud from the shish-kabobs,
Carefully threaded on their funny blackened sticks.
Bellies full, we heaped up a mound of rinds,
Gnawed to pale crescents with a moat of juice.
And then clenched and unclenched our fists
Giggling at the tacky feeling of all that sugar
Dried to rubber cement between our fingers.


We still buy a lot of watermelon, we're a melon a week family at our house, but I miss the seeds. A thinks I'm crazy, but there's a little bit of evidence out there that perhaps the modern hybrid breeding programs that have culled the little black teardrops from our fruit have done some taste dulling in the bargain. I hope, eventually to accomplish growing my own old fashioned seeded melons. Next year I will actually be able to get plants in the ground at the right time and maybe that will be the clinching key. In the meantime, thank goodness for the farmer's market!

Check out more Poetry Friday poems at Carol's Corner, the host blog for this week.

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• Breast of Watermelon (ideasinfood.com)

This Was The Summer of.....

Just thinking a little tonight about the cool fall weather we've been having and how official the end of summer feels suddenly. It was a good summer and it seems healthy to process it out now that its about to become a file in the memory bank. How would I label the last few months if I had to define what made this summer unique, what would that look like.

How about this:

It was the summer of.......

• our big house purchase
• the epic cousin visit
• nightly ice cream in little ramekins
• much painting
• the family carpool
• the iPhone
• learning to sumersault
• the big hail storm
• Frog and Toad
• Mason Jennings and Michael Franti
• my last year in the twenties
• our third son
• long swims
• the perfect bruschetta
• my favorite flip flops
• truck-stop pancakes
• Daddy's ciabatta
• iced coffee
• long stories
• silly words
• my new bloghost
• the great, hot July
• old suits
• the fair's return
• neighbors
• Grandpa's riding mower

Lots of wonderful memories in all those little labels and a heck of a lot of poetry too, without meaning it at all. They actually would all make great poem titles. I keep meaning to write more and always struggle with titles. Huh. Kind of inspiring. Good old lists.