These Happy Golden Years

Annie's been working her way through the entire Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and right now she's in the middle of These Happy Golden Years. Some nights I read a few pages of it to her and then set her free for half an hour before lights-out (she's become a read-herself-to-sleep girl, like her mama), so I don't know or remember everything that's going on in the book, but I do love the title.

We've started watching the series sometimes, too: a special treat on a Sunday night after dinner is pudding, a fire, and an episode of Little House. It's become a bit of a tradition, though the episodes are not exactly they way I remember them. Some are a little, er, dicey - Jason and I will scroll through the DVR queue, reading the little descriptions, and wince: one titled "Injun Boy"; an episode about gambling and fighting over land in gold rush country; Mary defending the children from an attack of wolves or Pa coming to blows trying to get the country doctor to come to his illness-ravaged town. Compared to the silly, kid-sized "problems" that appear in most of the books and movies our kids are used to, these problems are not joking around. People die, families run out of food, kids get in real trouble for disobeying their parents, everyone has much less of everything.

It's tempting to read or watch the series, then, and think about the good old days and how different everything was. But, looking closer, I can see that some things are still the same as they ever were: golden-ringletted Nellie Olson is the town mean girl, some families have less than others, siblings bicker on their way to school and over doing their chores, and moms and dads have serious talks at the kitchen table after kids are tucked into bed for the night. Annie and Jemma, I can tell, are silently fascinated by the glimpse into "the olden days," with its outhouses and horses, wide-open fields and dusty towns, but their favorite parts are the parts they can relate to: Laura getting in trouble for reading a mystery at school, Carrie falling down adorably in the opening credits as she runs down a hill of tall grass.

A good friend gave me a card for my birthday, and I keep it on my desk. It says, "Those were the good old days - but so are these." Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and I've been trying to up my gratefulness quotient this year in particular ever since I stumbled on Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts this spring. I've kept a gratitude journal (poorly, with limited success), and our family begins lots of meals together by each saying one thing we're grateful for at that moment. Annie's teacher this year has somehow done a bang-up job of teaching the kids that saying "it's not fair" is unacceptable, and Jemma brought home a plethora of Thanksgiving-related items in her folder yesterday. (Things she is thankful for: "My Hose (house), My FaMiLy, Grese (grass), THe CLooSe (clouds), GOD, and FEDS (friends).")

I'm often struck by a sense of nostalgia in the moment, by knowing in advance that I'm going to look back on these years and miss their innocence and goodness, and I feel like that when a folder full of construction-paper turkeys comes home and when our foursome is curled up on a Sunday night together watching Little House and eating homemade pudding. This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for all the usual things - home, family, friendships, great teachers, good food, freedom, books, health - but mostly I'm thankful for the good old days: the ones when Laura and her family made their way on the prairie, the one when baby Annie fell asleep on the floor after Thanksgiving dinner and we left her there, covered with a blanket and walking around her until she woke up while I was eating pie; today, when my family eats oatmeal and pets kitties first thing in the morning, and the ones that will surely come in the future despite the changes that will inevitably come too.

"And that, to me, is the meaning of Thanksgiving . . . Nothing lasts; everything changes. People die, and marriages dissolve, and friendships fade, and families fall apart, whether or not we appreciate them; whether or not we give thanks every waking moment or one night a year. For the act of returning to the same table, to the same people and the same dishes - to the same traditions - can blind you to life's transience. It can lull you into believing that some things, at least, stay the same. And if that's what you believe, then what have you got to be grateful for? None of our Thanksgivings are ever coming back; we've lost them. They're gone. And so this year, let's go somewhere with strange customs and unfamiliar recipes and the latest collection of ill-assorted chairs, and give thanks - not for everything we have, but for everything, instead, that we have lost." - Michael Chabon, in November's Bon Appetit.

Right Now

I'm:

:: still feeling a bit teary after yesterdays Veterans' Day assembly at the girls' school. There was Annie, waving a red streamer in the air; there was Jemma, singing her heart out: "When I am older, I will be stronger, You'll call me freedom, Just like the waving flag"; there was a ninety-year-old veteran speaker with profound wisdom and his sense of humor still intact; and there was my dad, smiling and winking at his grandchildren even as he was honored for his years-ago service.

:: grateful to be back on my (hot) yoga mat these last couple of weeks after a summer off.

:: finding myself with a bit of writing or editing to do almost every day, which is just the right balance for me.

:: missing the unseasonably warm weekend we had, which included hiking in the dunes, dipping toes in the lake one last time until spring, raking, hot-tubbing, walking to the grocery store, grilling, running, and gulping in fresh air through open windows.

:: noticing that the kittens have almost entirely taken over my Instagram feed. I don't know what to say about that. Apparently I've become the crazy cat lady. I'm sorry. (I'm not really sorry.)

:: Looking forward to listening to Christmas music (even though I haven't yet purchased a single Christmas gift).

:: Drinking a green smoothie and waiting for the girls to get home from school.

Good Things, October 2012

A ring pop at the last home football game of the season.

Scoring a goal!

Tradition: Sunday night supper by candlelight.

One gray kitten in a window.

Building towers with the still-favorite household toy.

A gorgeous, near-80-degree day to walk in the ginkgo leaves.

Getting ice cream after school to celebrate the warmth.

Snacks and friends at an apple orchard.

Sisters on a tractor-slide.

The opening of my brother-in-law's new brewery!

Last soccer game of the season, and being twin numbers.

A giant leaf pile for jumping and lounging.

Having a store upstairs.

Decorating pumpkins.

This black cat . . .

 . . . and this baby.

Trick-or-treating (and not caring a bit about the cold rain).

Being cozy in costume.

The State of Things: A List

Recent conversations with Jemma:

Looking at a photo on the wall at Annie's piano lesson with Miss Jody:

J: "Who is that man?"
Me: "You know him. Who do you think it is?"
J: "Oh, I know! Mr. Jody!"


Eating breakfast this morning:

J: "I'm not in a hurry for college to get here!"
Me: "What? No, no hurry for you to go to college. Someday."
J: "I want to live here with you forever."
Me: "Oh, when you're eighteen and nineteen, you'll want to live with your friends."
J: "How many rooms are there?"
Me: "Where? At college?"
J: "Yes. For sleeping."
Me: "Oh, hundreds or thousands. It depends on how big the college is."
J: "Are there pink ones? I hope there are some pink ones."

*****

Things the kittens have eaten or tried to eat:

-cream cheese
-butter
-chicken noodle soup
-homemade dulce de leche
-brownies
-oatmeal
-Boursin cheese
-peanut butter
-carrots

*****

Times that Annie has had her seat moved in the classroom since the beginning of the school year: Three.

I assume we'll be hearing about that at conferences . . .

*****

What I spend my time doing, now that the girls are in school all day:

-getting groceries
-cleaning the litter box
-working out
-making food

*****

 Things I thought I would do while the girls were in school all day that I basically never do:

-luxuriate with a book and a coffee in my house
-keep a cleaner house
-write
-nap

*****

I have purchased a single thing ever from Restoration Hardware, and that was an end table on clearance about two or three years ago. But now they send me their ENORMOUS, RIDICULOUS catalogs on a regular basis. I need to make it stop. THREE of the behemoths came yesterday, and it is enough to make me join the Sierra Club. Restoration Hardware: Think of the trees! We have this new thing called The Internet where you can show your overpriced items without killing all the trees in North America!

*****

What I want for Christmas:

a DSLR camera
cute boots
every candle in Anthropologie

fin.

Sixteen Years On

At about this moment in 1996, Jason and I were on our first date. Actually, by this time, he was probably dropping me off in front of my dorm then pulling away in his gray Honda Civic that was missing a passenger-side rearview mirror. He made a mix tape for the date (though he didn't tell me at the time) so that he could impress me with his great taste in music while we drove to Grand Rapids and back. I can't remember a single song on the tape, but I bet he could.

Today (many many years later), it's been packing lunches and making dinner, piano lessons and math test review, kindergarten sight words and paying bills, grocery shopping and working out, haircuts and watering window boxes. No mix tape, just the sound of the dishwasher humming away, the crickets out the open window, the kitties romping around the house to fight over a milk jug ring, the television on in the living room.

(We got kitties on Saturday - two tabby brothers who have already stolen our hearts. What can we say? Our children finally broke us.)

Sixteen years later, it's less glamorous and heart-fluttery, that's for sure, but it's more solid and comforting, too. I love these ordinary days. I wouldn't trade them, not even the kitty litter.

Day In the Life, September 2012

Little snapshots of our day today, minus the two meetings I went to at school (because Instagramming photos of myself at the PTA meeting and the 3rd grade Parent Information Night would have certainly seemed creepy and odd):