Chase

We went out the front door, instead of squeezing out the side door, which, while energy efficient and directly up the stairs from the best edition to our house -- a closet -- is tight. Maybe that was the inspiration. Or maybe it was the stark blue sky and the moon rise, the reward of a clear, wind snapping January day. When we turned the corner towards the library (which turned out to be closed) we broke into a chase -- instigated by me, definitely something I have not done in nearly a year, maybe even more. In fact, I've felt unable to play, even unwilling, to play. A lot of that has to do with carrying a baby, first in my womb, now in a carrier. But the stars aligned and the pager cooperated that I could skidaddle out of the house late this afternoon. And so I chased those bigger boys, those boys who have looked sad with my reasons for not playing, for not picking up the football (but I can hike it w/ baby in the ergo). Down the street, down another street. Dropped off the books. Back up the street. One boy, then the other, then me. I no longer have to fake that I can't catch Dietrich -- I really had to work hard. We stopped to shop a post-Christmas sale, we grocery shopped. But it was the chase, the simple act of being in the game again, that delighted me. Does this mean I am going to start running again? Hardly. Does it mean I feel something like the sparkling crisp night that fell on us as we ran? Yes.

Tea time

There is nothing that takes away the sting of winter than a warm cup of tea, though hot chocolate is a close second, especially when made slowly by scratch on the stove. Yet there is something about the lightness of tea, the barely-there-ness of its taste, that balances the harshness of winter: wind that sneaks through gortex and fleece and down all the same; dry skin that cracks and opens and leaves a nagging pain despite the Norwegian formula-lotions, udder cream, even olive oil treatments; the pile of snowpants, boots, gloves, hats, neck warmers, scarves that collects at the bottom of the stairs (and the ensuing ripe odor that the pile leaves behind if not ushered off to the dryer right away); and the dark afternoons that seem to creep up just after lunch. A cup of tea, timed just right, can ease the elements.

Yesterday I stopped over at a friend's house who, along with her sister, makes cakes and bottles of soap and sends the profits to a local housing advocacy group and to the East Asia Institute, the organization started by Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea. I could have guessed from her website the scents of each variety, but she lives just down the block so I went to take a sniff before buying gifts for all the amazing women in our life. Of course she offered tea, and of course I accepted. Baby Koen snuggled and nursed while I let my to-do list slide to the afternoon and we all drank tea. I walked home with warmth: Koen under my jacket in his carrier, lightly scented soaps in my bag, and a cup of tea inside me.

At school, the boys have tea with their morning snack. They drink it out of earthenware cups and light a candle on the table. Dietrich isn't a hearty eater at school, though he does try everything, but he always drinks the tea. I can picture it calming him from the inside, out and preparing him for his outdoor adventures, his favorite part of the day. When the afternoon begins to drag on, I know that suggesting a cup of tea brings us all to the kitchen, gets us to sit down, and lets us regroup for the evening ahead. Its not that our tea times erase the hectic scramble of dinner-clean up-bath-bed, but as with the elements outside, it eases it somewhat.

And now the wimpers of that warm baby call, but maybe I will make myself some tea.

There are a lot of things having a new baby in the house makes hard to do -- writing this blog is clearly one of them. Yet I have so many fleeting thoughts throughout the day that I'd like to see what happens to on the page. Having a new baby somehow awakens the world around me in a new way too as if I, too, am seeing everything for the first time. I would like to write through the fog of the first weeks of Koen's life and how I had days of seeing through it clearly and days where the fog seemed to lift and fall all day day long. But there are so few moments when I have two hands to do anything.

Today Dietrich was picking at his peel-less apples while licking the peanut butter (into which he was supposed to be dipping) when he asked me to tell him the story of his birth. He watched my every word which made me reach for more details. It stormed that night, there were 28 babies born along with Dietrich and Elliott, we were so confused when who we knew to be baby B became baby A because, during my surgical birth, he was born first. He asked for it again, and again. When Ryan came home, he asked him to tell it so he could hear his version, his details. And then again, tell it again.

And then I heard the news, on facebook, that a professor from St Olaf died yesterday, too young, too much in the prime of his life, too great of a family to leave behind. The news of his death leaves a sting that reminds me the brokenness of this world runs deep. And so we need to tell the birth stories, the stories that give life and try even a little bit to describe that place where life happens -- not just the birth stories, but the times each day when something looks new or when we see something we've glanced before but for the first time really take a look, or give a listen. There are moments all day long ready to be birthed into our imagination and then told, and retold.

Blooming Vinca

We are in the midst of a low pressure system that has hounded us with rain and wind and now just more wind for the past three days. It feels like the beginnings of the hurricaines in North Carolina, only these winds promise to move out and leave behind them the crisp fall days that I have been quietly craving. When there are so many days of cold and damp and snow and ice ahead of us, I haven't voiced how I'd rather be cuddled up in fleece than still considering turning on the air conditioner. But now that fall seems up on us, I think it is safe to say I'm happy to see it, feel it.

Yesterday, however, the wind seemed to wear me down. So incessant, so loud. It was the first day that I really over-did-it since Koen has been born, and by the end of the day, I was spent. After finally reaching home, where I knew I would be for at least the next night and following day, I relaxed and shuttled Koen into the house. As I went back to get the boys, I noticed that our vinca plants were blooming. My dad and I had picked them up on a steep discount on a rainy day in late June. They did nothing all summer. They didn't die, but they didn't grow taller or show any color. They just sat there, plucked into the ground looking just as they had when I popped them out of their flimsy black containers. But yesterday, after a night of pounding rain and howling wind, they bloomed. One is purple, two others a fuchsia, another almost blue. I still hadn't had a great meal, and it would be a few more hours before sleep could overcome me, but these flowers welcomed me home, welcomed me to the end of a long day, and seemed to tell me it was okay to be spent, undone, unable to do it all. I went inside to our sweet baby boy, our tired but freshly showered big boys, and knew Ryan would be coming home in minutes.

I haven't checked to see if the vinca survived the winds from today. But I wouldn't be surprised. After all, they are only about 4 inches off the ground. Maybe they knew something we didn't back in June. Regardless, thank you, blooming vinca.

Meetings

I'm reading a book right now (taking a break from both novels and beautiful birthing stories) about our sense of time called Receiving the Day by Dorothy Bass. She has twins and is a theologian and writer who was first recommended to me when I was in div school. Five years later I am finding why she was recommended! One of the many gleanings I've had from her book is to think about our days as places of meeting -- how we meet the sun, wind, rain; how we meet our family members, our neighbors; how we meet the tasks we have to do and wish we didn't as well as those we would enjoy doing; and how we meet God in the midst of all those other meetings.

Something she another mother ask her kids before going to bed was, "how did you meet God today?" We have always ended nighttime prayers with thanksgivings, "what do you give God thanks for today?" Lately we've had a lot of gibberish and silliness after the question. Maybe it is having a new question, or maybe it is how this question is different. What does it mean to "meet" anyway? But as we've been asking it, I've been surprised to hear the answers. There are still responses of, "I'm too tired," but more often than not we get a glimpse at what it means to them to "meet" God in their day to day.

Tonight Elliott answered right away, "I met God today when I came out of school and saw you and greeted you in the hallway!" That is an answer I will tuck close by and one that will keep me looking for "meetings" tomorrow.

Crowded classroom

Just as the summer was winding down, the boys and I began making trips to the nearby school yard to play baseball and climb on the new, challenging, play-structure made for the 3rd-5th graders who go to school there. Elliott climbs, Dietrich has batting and base-running practice. On our last day there before school started the building was bustling with janitors making repairs, teachers setting up classrooms, and everyone catching up on their summer adventures. We could hear the chatter from the playground and peek into the classrooms. I was trying to focus on my pitching, but between baby resting on my tail bone and keeping half an eye on Elliott going down the slide without edges, I was distracted from the game, and drawn to watching what was going up on the walls in the classroom.

I first noticed this at our visit to our local elementary school last winter. Stacks and stacks of books, paper, materials, flip-boards, and laminated you-name-it line the walls of the classrooms. Does anyone ever sort through these stacks? Over the course of a year are all these materials actually used in some way? Or have they been there so long they have become part of the room, as unnoticed as the colors on the walls or the placement of the light fixtures? In the class I watched from the playground, the walls were covered with posters. One was a set of 12, the months of the year. They hung quietly next to the clock. Brightly colored scenes depicted children frolicking in the snow, digging up a garden, splashing in a pool, raking up leaves. The kids were colored appropriately to reflect the diversity of the kids attending the school, the faces all smiling. I pictured the teacher putting in the work order to have the months laminated, then carefully cutting them out and masking-taping them to the wall.

Maybe the children feel comfort seeing the same posters day after day and maybe the teacher uses them to mark the time as the year goes by, using a long pointer to reach up to each new month. Likely the stacks of materials lining the walls and files of materials stacked on the tables have no ill effect on how children learn. I know that our boys have created elaborate scenes of space travel and fire rescue despite the tall shelves of art supplies, games, and toys that mostly stand idle in their play area. But the effect it had on me was a question: what if all these materials are what make a crowded classroom? What if it isn't as much about class size as it is about class composition? How many materials do we really need to learn as is appropriate to a child's age? What if children created their own materials and took ownership in the contents of their room because it is their work? What if we took a break from the images handed to us from scholastic and instead let children create their own images of the months and seasons changing? What if we took a break from the flood of primary colors and smiling faces and laminated posters? Would a classroom freed of unused materials foster more creativity with the materials that are used?

In yesterday's NYT week-in-review Thomas Friedman suggested that American children lag behind children of other industrialized nations not because their teachers are inadequate or their schools lack funding but because students do not take charge of their education. He sighted large numbers of students who feel unmotivated and teachers frustrated with the lack of student motivation. He took our culture of instant gratification to task along with its fuel -- media, video, and computers. But in a crowded classroom, thick with materials, technology, and manufactured images can we be surprised that there is little energy for students to be innovative, creative, and responsible with their education?

Yet I know how hard it is to weed out what is needed, and what can be let go. Those shelves in our basement were part of an ongoing effort to free up some space to rearrange and make an office. I physically went back and forth on what to throw, what to keep. And I do not expect our load of recycled paper and cardboard that we let go of will make a difference in the next effort at recreating space travel. But it has already helped make space for new art on the walls.

Was that this morning?

I know it has been a long day when, despite my husband's attestation that indeed it was today I was in the dining room sipping tea and reading the NYT magazine at 4 in the morning, I do not believe him. Maybe it was the restorative sleep that mercifully took place between 5:30 and 7 a.m. when, after a brief screech about something-or-other, Elliott and Dietrich bounded into our bed. But somehow I had completely forgotten being awake at such an hour, reading about Deepak Chopra's latest book, the advice column, and starting an article that was way too long for the hour, probably something about education. It is just as well. Here's to not repeating the tea, reading, forgetting, cycle tonight. Though I have a new Christian Century that just arrived, so it wouldn't be the worst thing.