the years march on

The other day a friend who is also a mother, sympathizing, reminded me that I'm not so young as I was when I was caring for my first toddler.

I must confess that it caught me off-guard.  She's right, of course.  Nearly ten years have passed since then, and so, mathematically speaking, I must have aged ten years.  I am ten years older.  That can't be argued with.  Can it?

My Farmer cautioned me against letting this conversation persuade me to view my situation differently.  What if, I asked him, she's right about something I have neglected to notice?  He looked at me askance, but offered no rebuttal.

And so the case stands.  Am I older, or am I not?  Is age just in the mind?  Does aging ten years mean I should (or may) be having a different and more difficult experience raising my full-throttle (but adorable) Lil' Snip than I did while raising my equally adorable, but far more predictable, firstborn Sugar?

(And is it possible, do you think, to use parenthetical phrases too frequently?)

Obviously Sugar and Lil' Snip have different temperaments, so raising them feels different.  But I, too, am changed, I hope, in ten years' time.

Physically I don't feel that different (although I confess to not paying so much attention to that sort of thing as perhaps I ought).  The few white hairs I found after Sugar's birth have not multiplied so much that the novelty of finding one has ceased to amuse me.  I feel tired more often, but mostly since Lil' Snip, the fireball, started walking.  The four pregnancies, births, and recoveries I've had in the last ten years have been similar.

Am I wiser?  Have I gained perspective?  Perhaps my Maker (or my Farmer) can tell.  I am blind to my progress or regress.  (A poor memory is sometimes a friend, sometimes a foe.)

In the end, it doesn't matter.  My Farmer, as usual, is right.

If I have a particularly weary day and it is consoling to remember my advanced age, I shall.  If I have a particularly smooth day and it is encouraging to reflect on the lessons I've learned in my ten years as a mother, I shall.  The rest of the time, however, I'll just be me, as oblivious to my age as Lil' Snip is, and get on with the living before me.

borrowed words, Part Two

Part Two of my quotes collection:

I just love how some of these quotes contradict others (check out especially the first and last quotes here).  Isn't that just like life?  Two sides of the same coin.  So often two truths can occupy the same space.  Life is simultaneously more complicated and simpler than we readily imagine.  Enjoy these tidbits of wisdom from yesteryear....:

Our life is what our thoughts make it. ~Marcus Aurelius, 2^nd century B.C.

Nowhere is the deep wisdom and justice of the Creator more apparent than in His so arranging the universe that a man can do his own sinning. ~Dr. Frank Crane

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


The little ones leaped

and shouted and laugh'd,

and all the hills echoed.

~William Blake

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

My country is the world;

My countrymen are mankind.

~William Lloyd Garrison, 1803

Kindness is the most exasperating vengeance. ~Dr. Frank Crane

There wouldn't be much work done in this world, mister, if only horses and folks that are plum fit had to do it. ~Dr. Frank Crane

Incompetence is no excuse for despair. ~Dr. Frank Crane

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars – on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places.

~Robert Frost

The quality of life is determined by its activities. ~Aristotle, 4^th century B.C.

lost art

Someone dropped in tonight.  Pulled into our driveway, unannounced, got out and knocked on our door.

Our "free kittens" sign has been down for a couple of days, so it couldn't be someone looking for a pet.  I don't have anything out for freecycling at the moment.  Who could it be?!  Oh, the excitement of the unlooked-for vehicle!  (and the disappointment if it's just someone using the driveway to turn around).

It was my husband's aunt, stopping to wish him a happy birthday!  We chatted a bit, talked about the weather and the family, church and crops.  Ten minutes, tops.  It was the highlight of our evening.

"Dropping in" is a lost art, one worth cultivating again.  I know, I know, life gets busy.  We had friends who, b.c. (before children), used to drop in all the time.  We loved it!  It's like the bell ringing just as it's your turn to give your report - whatever you were doing, you're off the hook till later!  You get a break!

Having someone drop in is a practical and most pleasant reminder that it is people, after all, that are really important.  Things, tasks, can wait.  Relationships are the essential thing.

It does expose your vulnerabilities, if you don't happen to be perfect (although perfection itself is perhaps the most assailable vulnerability).  Without notice from your drop-in guest, you can't tidy up your life at all.  You're just all you, doing whatever you do when you're at home, dressed in whatever you wear for your family, listening to whatever music gets you through your day.

No chance to pretend you're anyone but who you are.

Some people worry about being dropped in on ("oh no!  they'll see me!").  Others find it a relief ("there!  now they know who I really am!").

Having given up on acting in real life, I am solidly in the second camp, and will convert who I can from the first.  It's worth the exposure to find out that you are loved, the real you - with sometimes messy floors and unwashed dishes, makeup-less and in old clothes, weary of your everyday burdens and frustrated with daily challenges.

So drop on in.  I'm as ready as I'll ever be.

(and yes, K, I wrote this for you.  Brace yourself - I will be dropping in!)

heat

Wow, is it hot. So hot, the clean bedding I hung out in the sunshine to dry came in smelling faintly of sweat. Even the air must perspire!

In this old farmhouse, we have two window units, upstairs, to make sleeping bearable. We try to draw the cool downstairs using fans. Even so, it's 85 degrees. The slightest movement makes this mama sweat. I grow cranky, quickly.

Going outside, though, makes inside feel refrigerated. It's a temporary consolation; the feeling fades in minutes.

To make myself more grateful, I put our thermometer outside. The temperature rose five degrees in five minutes; the humidity increased five percent.

It's hot. And my Farmer works away tonight, filling in for someone's holiday. I pity him. (I pity me, alone).  How can he breathe? The air's so thick.

And yet, he goes on, cheerful. I must pretend, at least, to follow his example.

borrowed words, Part One

I have a small, grimy blue notebook about a third full of quotes I collected over a period of a few years.  None of them are dated, but judging from the changes in the handwriting, I'd say it looks like I started in in high school (roundish printing, short capitals, the typewriter "a"), went through college (smaller, less round mix of cursive and printing with the occasional experiment interjecting capitals where they do not belong), possibly into post-college Japan years (judging from the Alexander Pope and Kahlil Gibran quotes).

These quotes probably won't interest anyone but me - they're my history, after all.  I'm not really posting them here for you (although they may have some entertainment value, who knows?).  I don't want to keep the inconvenient little binder they're in, but I can't quite bear to lose all the quotes, either, despite the fact that it's been years since I looked at them.  It would feel a bit like throwing away my baby book.

So, what better place to preserve my collection of quotes than .... my blog!!!

Since it's too much for even me to handle in one sitting, I'll break it into parts.  I present to you, Part One, ordered as they were recorded:

We carry with us the wonders we seek without us.  ~ Sir Thomas Browne

What web is this,
Of what will be, is, 
       and was?
                              ~ Jorge Luis Borges

There was a star danced, and under that I was born.  ~ William Shakespeare

A baby is the most complicated object made by unskilled labor.  ~ anonymous

The youth of art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period.  ~ Samuel Butler

As for me, let my bones and flesh be burned, and the ashes dropped in the moving waters, and if my name shall live at all, let it be found among Books, the only garden of forget-me-nots, the only human device for perpetuating this personality.  ~ Dr. Frank Crane

Glory be to stubbornness!  ~ Dr. Frank Crane

Come, be agreeable, for you will have little competition, and are pretty sure to succeed.  ~ Dr. Frank Crane

In youth, we clothe ourselves with rainbows, and go as brave as the zodiac.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Each of you, individually, walkest with the tread of a fox, but collectively ye are geese.  ~ Solon

I think, therefore I am.  ~ Rene Descartes

Man is by nature a social animal.  ~ Aristotle

Truth is arrived at by the painstaking process of eliminating the untrue.  ~ Arthur Conon Doyle

Physical activity has a peculiar luminous effect upon the judgement.  ~ Dr. Frank Crane

All the religion that is of any account is what we thresh out with our own hands, suffer out with our own hearts, and find out with our own visions.  ~ Dr. Frank Crane