Clean.

Wonderful.

My Mother's Day was indeed better than my birthday. (And I was so immersed in my lounging that I didn't take a photo all weekend, except some funny ones below that I'll share in a moment.)

But really. Such bliss.

When I got up I was greeted with handmade cards from my kids and a latte from my man. (Pete made me not one, not two, but three exquisite decaf lattes throughout the morning.) And then they made fruit and yogurt parfaits for breakfast in my beloved cabbage glasses.

And then he left. With the kids. And the puppy. For hours. They drove to the country and took a creekside hike while I stayed home (sipping that last latte) playing with some art supplies I picked up over the weekend. (More on that later in the week.) They came home and Pete harvested lettuce from the garden (squeal!) and made a chicken salad with fresh buttermilk dressing for lunch, which we ate outside in the sunshine.

Does it get any better than that? Well yes, actually, it does.

When they came home from their hike they brought a huge trout, found freshly deceased with a head wound (perhaps from a heron). Lupine was beside herself, running around with this gigantic fish in her hands. (I suspect this girl will get into either fishing or science for a good part of her childhood.)

Pete hosted a spontaneous science class for the neighborhood, Fish Dissection and Anatomy 101, with some of our favorite people from the block - kids and adults. We were a mixed bunch, as we usually are around here - homeschoolers and school-families, ominvores and a vegetarian, squeamish and not. (For the record, the vegetarian was perhaps the least squeamish of all, aside from Lupine.) What a crazy scene we were for passing cars!

Because really, it isn't Mother's day until you cut the head off of a trout.

In the afternoon I took a bath and then a two hour nap and then got up and sewed a few seams on the curtains I am making for our camper. Oh, and they brought me flowers twice, wildflowers from their hike and then a bouquet from the coop. And I took a two-hour nap. And then he cooked dinner. And it was fantastic. How sweet is my family? Love over love with honey on top.

Yes, Pete. You rocked it. I didn't wash a dish or cook a meal or even make my own coffee all day long. And after the last few weeks that was just what I needed. 

So today I am a different person, steeped in the gratitude of so much love. And ready to wash some dishes.

Also in honor of Mother's day, I posted something for my mom yesterday (in case you missed it), and also re-read this post. It brought back that time so fresh and vibrant like it was yesterday. And while I was reading it Sage walked into the room, so tall and almost ten-years-old to show me a project he's been working on. He glanced at the screen and the photo of him in the sling and me reading that post all teary-eyed, and he smiled and walked away.

Oh, my. Ten years is a long time. I love him more every day.

So for all the mamas: (a day late, but nonetheless...) You are changing the world. You are doing it right. And your kids are blessed by your unwavering love.

Sending hugs to you all today.

Love,

Rachel

A Letter to My Mom.

Dear Mom,

While I am grateful for all that you did to raise me when I was small, what is on my mind today is all you've done since I became a mother and you became Nanny.

Thank you for having raw milk in your fridge for my kids to drink. Thank you for driving clear across town to the coop to have organic meat and vegetables for dinner when we visit. Thank you for letting my kids pull beets and carrots from your garden, even when they could use a week or two more to grow. Thank you for giving thoughtful gifts to my kids that fit our values - gifts like wooden farm animals and a snowsuit from Craigslist and a road trip to South Dakota and an afternoon at the ballet.

Thank you for understanding and accepting both of my children for who they are and how they tick. You have never forced either of them to be someone they are not, and from you they both feel a deep respect and understanding. And also so much love.

Thank you for co-sleeping with Sage when he stayed over when he was small. Thank you for helping us make adaptations for his sensory needs (remember when you put him down for a nap under the pillows and rotary phone? Brilliant/hilarious.) Thank you for using natural dish soap for bubbles in the bath instead of the fragranced bubble bath from the grocery store. Thank you for turning off the TV and playing games on the floor with them for so many years. Thank you for seeing their magic and allowing it to grow. Thank you for the museum memberships and visits every year. Thank you for convincing Sage that 1) a banana split was 1/2 of a banana, unsweetened yogurt, and 3 chocolate chips - and 2) it was really sassy and special.

But most of all thank you for seeing me as a mother - despite our differences - as worthy of your respect and for honoring the choices I have made that are different from your own. Thank you for understanding so fully that it's my turn to make parenting choices just as you did a generation ago. And thank you for knowing that simply because my mothering choices are different doesn't mean that I honor or treasure your mothering any less.

Thank you for honoring my choices and my wishes for the past decade. I'm not sure I can adequately express how important that has been for me. Truly. I type this with tears in my eyes. It is perhaps the most important gift you have given me.

We have our similarities as mothers and women. We both strove for natural birth. We both breastfed (both of us longer than most nursing mothers from our generation) and cloth diapered. We both understood the power of healthy food and fresh air and limited television. We both questioned the cultural norms of our time and forged our own paths. (I suspect I should thank you for that gift as well, the gift of questioning and trusting my instincts.)

But you and I also made many different choices in how we approached mothering. And isn't that how it is supposed to be? We shift and change through time. Just as you didn't mother like Grandma Lee, she didn't mother like her Great-Grandma Nellie. As mothers we change. We shift. We grow. We find what fits and embrace it.

But despite our mothering differences you have accepted and respected my mothering since it began. You are not afraid to ask questions about the choices I am making, but your questions ring of a desire for understanding - not a desire to bring me back to the path you chose a generation ago. I've never felt pressured by you to be a different mother than I am.

You once paid me a kind compliment saying you wished you had known me when you were a young mother. And I'm glad to know you now. You have honored my needs and wishes as a mother. You honored my choices. You have honored my mothering. You have showed me that my choices are valid and worthy, even if they run in a different direction than those around me. And I can't thank you enough for that.

I love you. So, so much.

Rachel

I choose yes.

Everything changes when we drop our resistance and choose "yes". Ice cream before lunch? Yes. Dig out the slip-and-slide and get crazy? Yes. Paint our bodies with watercolor crayons? Yes. Stay up late and make a campfire? Most definately yes.

May your weekend be filled with lots of moments when you surprise yourself (and everyone else) by saying "yes". Enjoy where it takes you.

Love,
Rachel

 

 

Lupine's Choice.

This photo shoot was all Lupine. The very serious, dramatic expressions, the poses, the props -  everything. We were on our way to her performance on Saturday and she just cut loose. (I think she had seen some of the portraits that other girls had taken, posing dramatically in their costumes so she just went with it.)

We've had an interesting couple of days. It's been a ballet rehearsal and performance marathon. And she was my only child performing - and in only one dance. I have a friend with three kids, five dances, two rehearsal times, and two performance times. Plus school. Mercy. I'm don't know how I could sustain that. (Not gracefully I suspect.)

Lupine's new tutu was so picky that she either could not perform or needed to wear something under it (a stained tank top from my underwear-making bin in the sewing room saved the day). Also the feet of the ballet tights were so uncomfortable that we had to cut them off so that the seams didn't make here scream. Her teacher is incredible and didn't bat an eye when I proposed these (less than beautiful) adaptations. So grateful for her on many levels.

And we went to the performance. And we watched. And she danced. But at the end of the performance Lupine was fidgety. I got the feeling that she was done. Last year she was beaming, captivated, and enthusiastic right through the finale. Clapping until her hands ached. This year she was... done. That's the only way I can describe it. The magic had worn off. For the finale when all of the dancers took the stage together she looked at me and said emphatically, "I'm not going up there. That is way too many people."

She was done.

When we got home she had a rough evening. It was late - bedtime late - and we still had to eat dinner. (The same rhythm happened the night before after dress rehearsal so she was already on empty.) Lupine asked for a ride in her old baby carrier that I've saved it just for these moments and a sippy cup of milk. She needed to be the baby again. To feel the comforting warmth of being held against her mama body while dinner was cooking. So I strapped he to my back and we talked softly while I prepared dinner.

Before bed I validated. "Today was very busy."

"Yes," she said, welling with tears. "And I didn't even get to play all day long." She decided that two years of ballet was enough. The busyness of performance day was just too much.

In all honesty I feel a mix of gladness that she found something to love for two years, and also a deep relief that she was done (at least for the time being) by the wee age of 5. Before she began to ask for makeup. Or questions her body. Or all of the other worries that I talked about in yesterday's post. That she was able to distill out the magic and leave it at that.

Yes, there were some challenges. I watched her concern as child in tears was still taken to the stage by her mom to dance despite her objections. I watched her cover her ears because of the too-loud music, and hide her face in my lap from the dances she didn't like. I watched her checking out the flowers that other dancers carried and wonder if she mattered as much as they did if they had so many and she had so few. I watched her physical, visual, and auditory overstim mount over the course of the weekend.

But really there was mostly magic. Ballet was where she met her best friend, a girl from another town she never would have known were it not for dance. Dancing was something she looked forward to all week for two years ("Tuesday is my favorite day because it's ballet day!") There was plenty of magic but now it's time for a break.

Lupine still chose to dance on stage with her friends on Saturday, but she's done now. She's ready to take off the picky tutu and put on some comfortable riding clothes. "Mama, if I quit ballet can we ride horses again?"

Yes baby. We can.

Grandpa's Flowers.

I've spoken before to the power of crafting, but what about the power of gardening? Even flower gardening - which can not feed the body but instead feeds the soul - leaves a legacy.

This birthday bouquet is brought to you (well, me) courtesy of my grandfather and the daughter I named after one of his favorite flowers. Grandpa Les has been gone since Sage was a baby, but his daffodils (curiously planted in rows, the flower bed now overtaken by blackberry canes) shine on. Dozens and dozens of them.

Technically these flowers were stolen. They grow in the gardens next door to our cabin. Once my grandparents house, now an empty "summer cabin" for a family from the city. The garden was full of spent daffodils that no one enjoyed, so we took the initiative to steal a boquet from the masses for ourselves.

I know. I am setting a terrible example for my daughter. Truth be told, Lupine is named after the flowers that my grandfather would steal (with me in tow) from public land alongside the river. (Clearly I come from a long line of garden hooligans.) I'm sure he would have called it transplanting, but let's be honest. It was stealing.

And somehow remembering him in his brown work boots, blue work shirt and pants, and cap, his gnarled hands planting these bulbs in those odd little rows made me want to have a little bit of his spirit at my birthday. And I'd say we did. Even if I did steal to do it.

(Yes, I miss him so.)

The Wolf River. My Story.

Hello, Wolf River. Wild and Scenic River. River of my name. River that winds through each page of my life.

My story with you runs deep. Deeper than the water in the Hole. (It's so deep and tannic there I've never touched bottom and I never will. Thought if I was brave enough I know I could. I've always know I could. But I can't.)

I remember floating handmade boats along your shore. I remember catching crayfish with fishing line and venison sausage, me in pigtails and bib overalls and bare feet. Me. A kid. You, where I came so may weekends. This place is our Cabin. Built by my Grandpa Les and my great-grandpa Emil. Next-door to my grandparents house (back then). Where we had Christmas and Thanksgiving and summer vacation and weekends and deer camp. The River. Family. This place.

I remember spin-fishing from the dock and learning to cast a bamboo rod in the yard at my grandparents house, a mere feet from the Cabin I visit today with my kids. I remember standing on the other side of your noisy rapids, my grandmother on this side in her blue mumu/nightgown, also barefoot, waving at me in the morning light. My folks owned a lot across the river where we'd camp and always our eyes were on the dock, waiting from Grandma to appear.

I remember falling into your icy water as a child, splashing headlong into the biting early-winter current. An innocent, curious leaning forward and SPLASH! Baptism. Hello, Wolf River. I remember my Dad's strong arms reaching down to pull me out, then walking across the snow to the house. I remember that he didn't laugh. He put his arm around my wet shoulder while I cried from the painful cold, so grateful that I was safe.

I remember countless inner-tube rides. From the bridge. Or the woods. Or just up river at the neighbor's dock. Hundreds of trips down these magical waters. Child. Pre-teen. Teen. Adult. I remember. Wolf. River. I will always remember.

I remember swimming in your shallows as a child and skinny dipping in your depths as an adolecent. I remember falling in love with the man I was to marry, and at the same time weeping at the knowledge that my grandmother was dying. Right here. Beside your water.

And then, that she was gone.

I remember Pete on one knee in the tall grasses along your banks. We were both in chest waders, fly fishing. We'd been watching a flock of mergansers navigate your rapids. I was so enthralled with them that I leaned too far forward, hiding behind a rock, and my waters filled with your startlingly cold water. No fear of death like 20 years previously, but the shock of the cold upon my skin once more. Two years later we married beneath the riverside hemlocks and changed our name to yours. There was a hummingbird that came to sip the nectar of our foraged lilacs deep in the woods that day. Maybe it was Grandma Lee, the hummingbird lover, come to watch the magic of our day. I think so.

It took us years to be ready to spread Grandma's ashes. More than a decade until my mom could finish her goodbyes. But when it was time I dug into her urn with my bare hands and brought up great hand-fulls of ash to carry to the water. Those ashes were not her, but yet somehow they were. I remember sprinkling Grandma Lee's ashes here in shallows and wading out into the deeper water. I watched my parents do the same. In the river that so represented her life, her joy, and her dreams we said goodbye. And later that day when Lupine and I played in the river we stepped on the grey silt that lay over the rocks beneath the water knowing that my daughter's feet were on the bones of my grandma. Literally. And figuratively. And being okay with that. Because we live. We love. We inspire. (And in the case of my Grandma and me, we knit and we sew.) And then we die. And it's normal. It's okay to die. And in truth, I liked seeing her ashes there in the Wolf River and feeling that silty water beneath my toes. Because she is part of the ground beneath my feet. And here she was, sifting on through the place she most loved.

This week, spent here at the Cabin, most of my time was spent with knitting in hand. Three projects in the works. Two on needles that came from the house just a few feet up river. My grandma's needles. I can still smell her sewing room when I picture it in my mind. And as I sat with my back to the fire - the stone fireplace that my grandpa built - I wondered - did she sit here, knitting on these same needles? We've perched on this slab of concrete, crafting a life, one stitch at a time.

Tonight we're back home. My kids are asleep. Each of them holds in their arms a blanket knit by my grandma as they sleep. And who knows? Maybe she knit some of it perched right there on that hearth. If not she knit it next door, looking out on the river, stitch after stich after stitch.

And tomorrow when we venture out into the cold they'll wear scarves and cowls knit by me, and mittens and hats knitted my my grandma. Because even now, after decades, she still keeps us warm.

And so we come here. Season after season, generation after generation. To the cabin build by my grandpa and my great-grandfather, alongside the river who's name we've taken as our own. We don't live here, but this is Home. In a grander way than any place we've ever lived. This. Is. Home.

A Half-Week in the Woods.

I bet you didn't miss us at all.

We slipped away for the better part of a week up at the cabin. It was just what we needed. Time like this makes me appreciate my people (and yes, this place) ever so much. What a delicious week it was.

And now we're home - unpacking, restocking the fridge, and catching up on laundry as usual post-vacation. I'll be back here with some stories from the river and more yummy photos of our week away. But first that laundry needs my attention. We'll chat soon.

Love,
Rachel

Farm.

The relaxing song of a stream winding through the winter woods. A hike up the creek bed to its source, springing from the hillside. The thick silence of a snow-filled valley. The crunch of snow beneath our boots. A flash and departing laugh as a pileated disappears into the forest. Trees. Tracks. Waterfalls. Icicles. Magic.

Hello, beautiful place.

I know. I've said this before. (Was that really a year and a half ago?) But I am ready to live in the country again. We're all ready. And I can feel the blockades we've inadvertently put in our path melting away without effort. It's coming. We're manifesting.

We were visiting friends last night on their farm. I took Lupine outside and she saw the stars like you can only see them in the country on a cold night. "They have more stars in the country, don't they baby?" I asked. "Yes. And we'll have more stars too," she replied. In the country. On our farm. "And chickens. We'll have chickens and I'll bring in the eggs by myself."

Yes indeed. We're all ready.

And then this morning I read my Abraham-Hicks quote of the day: "There's something so satisfying about asking and deliberately aligning your Energy and deliberately finding the familiar feeling of that, and then seeing it manifest."

I'm seeing it manifest. In my mind and in my heart.

I'm ready.

Snow!

Oh, what a difference a day makes. Yesterday. 50F and sunny.

Today. 18F and snow!

I took yesterday's computer rules to heart and have tried my best to stay off-line except for intentional and brief  blocks of time. And it's working, sort of. But there was something for homeschooling that I wanted to look up and I found myself quickly checking email while I searched. What the?! How does that happen? But mostly I've done it. It's my first day and I'm 80% successful. Not too shabby.

By choosing to be more mindful of how I spend my free time I've cast off my new winter hat (this pattern), done some math with my kids, we've learned to convert F temperatures to C (F - 32/1.8 = C in case you were wondering). We've also played outside until our cheeks glowed and our ears ached, made hot cocoa with fresh whipped cream (dyed pink with beet juice), and now we're off to the sledding hill.

Not bad for being only partially successful at turning off the computer and turning on life. Thanks for your fabulous comments yesterday. I'll respond to the rest the next time I'm on-line. I've granted myself 1/2 hour to blog and check email in the afternoon. And my time is up. Oh yeah, and my kids - and the snow - are calling again.

Time With my Boy.

We were invited to children's performance of Alice in Wonderland a couple of hours from home, in the town we lived in before Viroqua. Some of our young friends were performing and we spontaneously decide to go. Upon hearing about the angry queen, however, Lupine announced that it sounded too scary. She was staying home with Papa. So Sage and I decided to go alone.

And I'm so glad that we did.

Sage is nine. And he is such a treat to be around. He is kind. And funny. Observant and sensitive. Thoughtful and silly. And wise. Holy cow is that kid smart.

(photo above by Sage)

Even the drive was fun. Really, really fun. There is something about getting out of the house and having time solo with this kid that elevates my entire weekend.

And so, we enjoyed a whole day, just the two of us. A road trip (with lots of stops to take photographs - for both of us), a play, visiting with old friends in the town Sage was born, two lightning-fast thrift store stops, and then weaving our way home long after bedtime.

Having two kids I sometimes forget the sweetness of one-on-one time (whether with Pete, Sage, or Lupine). But after Saturday We're making time for this again. And soon.

As for making time, I didn't make any time for simplification beyond my room-by-room list this weekend. (It was worth it.) But I am starting today. I can't decide where to start, but I'll begin before lunch.

I'm wondering how much I can plow through in a week without burning out...