Welcome to My Frontier

If I could swap spots with one person these days, it would be the Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond.  With her sassy mom tops and awesome cowboy boots right down to her basset hounds and cowboy lifestyle, I feel certain I could work my deep Texas roots enough to fit in on her sprawling Oklahoma ranch. 

The moment I would be found out as a decoy would be when dinner was served up.  I just can't cook worth a flip. So I've engaged other parties to try and figger it out for me, namely my daughter.

Yes, as part of more prescribed summer fun, Madeleine is planning to cook her way through (mostly) Pioneer Woman recipes.   And sure enough, in the last five days, she's made blackberry cobbler, French bread pizzas, homemade pasta, banana bread, and the most heavenly au gratin potatoes.

In loyal support of her efforts, I have regretfully and with great difficulty set aside my tedious low carb diet to sample these delicacies.  

The cobbler was so delicious and devoured by everyone from dad to baby that the next day I decided to try my hand at the same recipe.  What I churned out had too few blueberries, too much lumpy dough, and burned a little on top.  Yech. 

Rolling out homemade pasta while sporting the apron she sewed a few years back?
Maybe someone should start her own blog.

This Pioneer-Woman-wanna-be might have come up with her best summer idea ever: a cooking understudy.  Next up: Croissant French Toast Bake.  

So much for low carb.....time to shop for a sassy swimsuit coverup instead?

Why Blog? My (Very) Personal Reason

I spend a lot of time drinking coffee.  Iced, hot, strong, weak, Starbucks, Mr. Coffee or even International Delight (a holdover from my teenage years)--it really doesn't matter to me.  I have also been known to snarl slightly at anyone trying to swipe, sip, or piously criticize my Diet Coke.  But hey, hear me out: I need the pick me up.  We're at that tedious phase where my 21-month-old flies right into traffic, singlehandledly opens the front door when no one is looking, joyfully knocks over careful stacks of laundry, and shoots up the bunk bed ladder and rains down big brother's carefully placed trophies off the nearby shelf.

It's a tiring proposition, raising five kids.

So why would I add a single other thing to my already-busy life?  Why force another cup of caffeine into an already shaky hand?  Why in heaven's name would I be sitting at the computer, as I currently am, at 2:25am?

Simply put: why the blog, lady?

Let me rule out a few reasons. For one, I am not trying to project an image of togetherness (insert laugh, close friends), flaunt my limited writing skills, nor do I claim any superiority in my opinions.  I am fully aware of how mixed-up and poorly thought through numerous aspects of my life are, including but not limited to: my dated wardrobe, my limited ability to accessorize without my stylish sister's help, my general haphazard appearance and beauty products that might assist said appearance, my opinionated parenting technique, and even (gasp!) micro-aspects of my theology.

No, the real reason is this:

back row: Evelyn, JD, Virgil, Cleamon, and Laura Wilmalou (my Lala)
front row: Mimi and Clyde Elmo Pinner, my great-grandparents
(Unrelated: it's an undisputed fact that there were some serious slim pickins in the family name barrel.)

The five children standing in this picture are my relatives.  My grandmother is on the far right, the lovely lady who bravely raised my mother on a remote cotton farm in West Texas. And all five of these beautiful people had Alzheimer's Disease or severe dementia that is currently or eventually led to their demise.

And I suspect, as much as I pray against it, that my future is tied up in these genes and this related inevitability: one day I am going to forget.

And as much as my Lala loves her grands, she is now reduced to only remembering my third child, her namesake, who she no longer calls by her own name, instead loosely and lovingly as "that little girl".

Sadly, sometimes love itself is not enough to help one remember.

And before my day comes, even if it is many decades away, there are a few things that I want to process, review, organize, and articulate.  In writing, I find a way to seal my thoughts to words, words that will remain long after I can no longer remember writing them.  I desperately don't want to miss this chance to share with my children and those I love dearly the personal impressions, sometimes-feeble observations, but most especially the undercurrent of love and tender gratitude I feel for this often-chaotic, frequently amazing, incredibly satisfying life that the good Lord has given me.

So have patience on me when my eyebags look darker and droopier than ever. There's a greater mission on my heart than publishing a blog post.  And I hope in some small way this humble space will leave a legacy in the face of loss, so that if/when that loss comes, a part of the real me remains.

So thanks for reading, y'all.

~ ~ ~

Teach us to number our days, 

so that we may gain 

a heart of wisdom.  

Psalm 90:12

All Tucked in Their Beds

I just made my middle-of-the-night rounds, checking to see that the covers were pulled up and heads were straight on pillows and favorite blankies were within arm's reach, and now I can't pull up my own covers and get back to sleep.

There is a groundswell of excitement in our home this weekend, and I've been trying to put words to what we are all feeling as summer breaks upon us.  I suppose it's the sense that Time itself is rolling out, a deep carpet of limitless ocean.  

We find ourselves on the brink of relentless heat and careless joys and fewer responsibilities, and it feels grand.  It most certainly seems like a never-ending reserve, this time, and surely it might allow for some fiddling around in its great expansive space that stretches to the very horizon, one that makes us feel small and enveloped and like we will never reach the end of it.

This feeling I relish even though I know it is the Great Deceiver, the very reason we turn to television and iPads and pretty magazines and yesterday's paper rather than towards each other.

But for tonight I rest content knowing where the hearts I love are sleeping.  I am certain they had a square meal for dinner and their teeth were brushed and they each were hugged before drifting to sleep with the dim nightlight casting peaceful shadows.

For tonight, their breaths rise and fall within the confines of my home, in a comfortable place where the alarm is armed and the air conditioning hums.

In this quiet dark, their parents lie beside each other on familiar pillows with the fan always on, and I know even though the trough of my bed curves deep that if I sleep right there, just so, they can find me in the dark.

We are safe.

But in a certain number of tomorrows, we will be spread out by obligations and the secure space of this home will be breached by impending adulthood and responsibilities and expectations that will suck them right away out of their cozy beds and into harsh reality, where sheets aren't pulled to their chins in the midnight silence and where favorite foods become an issue of what's in the monthly budget rather than a delicious and familiar something waiting for them on a tray when they expectantly open up the big refrigerator door.

I pondered this swelling sensation of time as we spent several hours at the local retirement community today.  I watched the walkers roll to and fro, filling the elevators and lining the halls with their own slow-wheeled traffic.  I saw many silver-haired strangers with bowed backs that have been so shaped by time that they strained to lift their chins at the thunder of feet as my children curved around their lane and ran ahead in their Sunday best, leaving a flood of memories in their wake.

"All my babies are in their sixties," one spry fellow in a beret confided to me as my children stormed past.  "Well done," I replied back, unsure of what else to say as I stared at his sloping black hat and he watched my kids turn the far corner and move out of sight.  "I'll be saying that before you know it," I told him.

And I will.

"All we have to decide 

is what to do 

with the time that is given us.”

Gandalf, Fellowship of the Rings

Congratulations, Papa-Bear Style {Friday Photo}

Ahhh, this moment, this moment.  Inside I cried from the tenderness and laughed from the surprise all at the same time.  David shook all the kindergarten graduates' hands as they crossed the stage this week, but when his little boy came across, he held out his hand then instead swept Reid into a big bear hug high off the ground.

This father stays up until the very wee hours checking math homework, enthusiastically recites Henry V, Act IV, Scene iii (we few, we happy few, we band of brothers!) alongside his child at the dinner table, voluntarily pours over school budget details at his office desk, conjugates Latin derivatives, adeptly sorting out genitive, nominative, and dative cases, and takes great joy in surprise bear hugs to say congratulations.  Papa Bear hugs are in fact just a small outward sign of the steady stream of his fatherly love.  Thankful.

What to Say About Five Kids at Home 24/7?

~ ~ ~

Prologue

Once upon a time, quite some time ago, there lived a fair maiden by the name of Lydia. She had the potential to be pretty, one might say, with her long, brown curls and blue eyes, but years of hard labor had darkened her skin and destroyed her once beautiful hands.

As far back as she could recall, she had been enslaved to the king and queen of France, her home country, and worked countless hours tending to the horses. She did not mind the work at all: she had learned to love it, even if it had provided her with no money. However, the queen grew jealous of her beauty and sought to destroy her sunny disposition by whatever means possible.

So, Lydia was often given more work than the other servants and was not respected at all, and on this note begins this particular tale.

~ ~ ~

One brisk evening, enveloped in the French winter of 1127, Lydia was walking to the stables to groom the horses. She was deep in thought of the previous night, her seventeenth birthday, when she had received a Bible from her friends. She had always been a Christian, and was elated to read it. 

Suddenly, she stopped, and if anyone had been looking on at the scene, they would have been almost as horrified at her expression as she was at the sight before her. There was a new groomer tending to the horses, and she had no doubt in her head that this was the queen’s doing. She had loved this job: in her eyes, it was a small ray of sunshine, a tiny delight in her miserable world. 

Lydia ran. She dodged other servants and dashed up several flights of stairs until she stood in front of the large, wooden door that gave way to the throne room.  She knew that if she seemed upset, the queen would be even more proud of herself.  She realized she had to seem calm and composed, even if she was about to cry.  Lydia opened the door.

~ ~ ~

Wondering what happens next, hmmm??  Me, too!  This is not my writing, but a little noodling around by my eldest, written in about 20 minutes of spare time.  Needless to say, I am very much looking forward to reading more of her words and encouraging in the upcoming months the pleasure she takes in spinning a yarn.  

To summer, which starts tomorrow in our household, I say welcome.

Someone out there just read those words and - upon considering how life might be with five active kids, a large dog, and a perennially tired mom cooped up in the house for the summer - flinched slightly.  I understand how it might be possible to envision tedious misery, squabbling, dirty diapers, and persistently messy rooms.  And to a certain degree, all of those moments will happen, but I do have a plan, and I have learned from hard-fought experience that a plan is key.

What's on tap for summer 2014?  My 12-year old wants to work on writing, so she is starting The One Year Adventure Novel, a curriculum to take her through all the steps of storytelling, with the end product being a self-written novel. She is fired up to begin and has already decided on the setting and era.

We will also be doing Geometry with the oldest two, for which I am detecting a high degree of interest. I picked up the book last week and a certain someone discovered it, whisked it away, assembled a notebook, and completed the first lesson.  The two younger kids will be doing Saxon math with their big brother/sister tutoring team, the cheapest and perhaps best help I could possibly rustle up.

Science also made the list: the whole gang is doing Oceanography 101.  I purchased the text and we have plans for field trips (hey, this is Florida!) as we get deeper in the curriculum.  This topic has particularly captivated my third child, who is a tough nut when it comes to academics but is passionate about shells, water, and anything critter-related.

On the sports front, my fourth child passed his swim team test last week and is officially joining his siblings for swim workouts and meets three to four times a week.  This piece of the plan is a critical way to take the edge off of the abundant energy present in my household.  All four are also slated for triathlon activity, having been inspired by the tri the older kids completed this weekend.  I even found them sneaking a Sharpie and body-marking the baby and themselves, for which they were roundly scolded (although I admit I was extremely amused.)

In between all of this structured brain and body activity, there will be lots of cannonballs in the pool, sleeping in, badminton rounds in the front yard, lego constructions, sidewalk chalk, and pillow forts.  All the while, Kate Middleton will be wondering where in the Sam Hill all her quiet doggie-napping days have gone.

Summer 2014, bring on your happy, hot madness.  This mama is ready!

And the Medal Goes To...{Friday Photo}

We finally did it!  A real live birthday party for the most easygoing, cheerful kid in history, who also happens to be as sports-obsessed as his big brother, hence the theme.  Athletic endeavors, a dozen dodgeballs, water balloons, messy cake, root beer floats, lots of giggly kindergarten friends, and one happy six year old boy.  Life is good.

The Beautiful Mind

When I was growing up, there was a magic number in my brain that quantified who I was, which happened to be my IQ score.  I'm not sure how I came across it, but it stuck with me.  It became a defining factor in how I perceived myself. And in retrospect, I am angered that my mind was ever defined by a number.

Yet, history repeats itself as this week I am getting data back on my kids that seeks to define in a standardized way what is contained in their minds.  For instance, yesterday, Madeleine had to head over to the local public middle school to take a tedious three-hour algebra exam that is offered statewide with the intent of capturing whether the subject was sufficiently mastered to the satisfaction of the government powers that be. I have difficulty believing that this score will reflect the true depth of her conceptual abilities, but will rather be a superficial measurement skimming along a breadth of skills.

We also have started to receive from our school the Stanford Achievement Test scores, which are intended to help us as parents know that our children are progressing according to grade level and are an expected and appropriate endeavor for any academic institution.

So I'm looking at all these scores on the page and the National Grade Percentile Bands and Clusters and Performance Standard Categories and rows upon rows of digits, digits, digits and I want to ask this important question, of myself and the IQ number I can't shake (along with my own SAT), as well as to my children:

What test can quantify the mind, placed within us by God himself?  

Who can truly assign a number and a ranking to this complex masterpiece we have been given?  

Because every single day, I see in my children the Beautiful Mind unfolding in such a myriad of ways that I cannot fathom how anyone dares try to measure it's creativity and depth and adaptability.

When a child sits down and writes a lullaby on the piano for her baby brother, there is no number to capture the complexity of love and ability brought together in that moment.  Deciding one sunny afternoon to self-teach computer coding, how can you attach a figure to the inclination and boldness and receptiveness of a mind like that?

When that same child turns a phrase in an essay that makes me pause from the surprising stirring of emotions within me, or hides away in the sewing room busy recycling a dryer sheet and a deflated mylar balloon to stitch up a regal outfit for her doll, there is no standard of measurement that quantifies how creative, how unusual, how mutually earth-friendly and technically well made that effort really is.

So when I sat down to look over the SAT scores with Madeleine last night, on the heels of this state standardized algebra test, I told her point blank, without mincing words: school, grades, tests, assessments, these are all necessary parts of modern life, but will never be any measure of the Beautiful Mind God has given to her.  I pleaded with her not to rest in these numbers or tie her self-worth to any flat quantitative analysis as an accurate reflection of the three-dimensional kaleidoscope of brilliance within her.

The brilliance within all of us--His favored creation.

For he has made everything beautiful in its time. 
He has set eternity in the hearts of men, yet no one can fathom what
God has done from beginning to end.  Ecclesiastes 3:11