hug me, momma

In the quiet, pre-dawn gloom of my bedroom, someone slips into the empty space beside me in my bed. I sleepily wonder for a second who it is, and then I hear a whispered, “Hug me, Momma.” Ah. Samuel. I put my arms around him, heft him over to me, and snuggle in with him, wondering about this little soul.

Samuel is the third of four children, the second boy of three. In the roiling, deafening circus that is our family life, I often receive such parenting coaching from him. There he’ll suddenly be at my knee when I’m busy cleaning, demanding, “Kiss me, Momma,” or “Pick me on your lap.” Or, heartbreakingly, “Say, ‘I love you, Sammy.’” Or, if that’s not enough, there’s always climbing onto the counter, or running to the road, or hanging off the back porch and calling my name to bring me running and paying attention to Sammy.

What is this, this desperate need to be loved? Is it his age, and he’s only just discovered that he’s separate from his parents and alone in his own body? Is it his position in our family, not the oldest, the baby, the only girl? I remember when I was a child, (fifth of nine, third girl of five) and my parents used to say to me, “But you are our only Erin.” I remember that going completely over my head, and me thinking something like, “Well, yeah, but that’s just because you didn’t name me the same thing as Meg.” What can something so metaphysical mean to a concrete thinker?

But now, decades later, I’m seeing the situation from the other side. This seems to happen a lot now that I’m a parent. Here’s poor Samuel, and I ache to reach out to him and make him understand this one thing-that he is my only Samuel. The only one of my children that has my brown eyes. The only one with curls. The one that comes to me at first light to snuggle in while the others still lie in their beds snoring.

How can I tell him that he was the bald baby that I had to remember to bring a hat to the park for, that his cries in the night because he has another earache have always torn me up and brought me running, that his smile and his laugh are, to me, like pure sunshine? How do I convey to him that he, independent of all other things and everyone else, is beautiful? How can I say to him, I know, I thought once that I was lost like you believe you are, but now that I see you struggling, I know that I was never unloved or alone?

But Sammy, at almost four years old, doesn’t understand these things. I’m sure that, until he loves a middle child like he is loved, he won’t completely understand. That’s the funny, frustrating way our world works. There’s not, just now, any way for me to explain all this to him. So I gather him up, when he demands it, and “Hug Sammy.” So that when he does start to understand, far in the distant future, when he does have that “OH!” moment, and turns back to look over his childhood for signs that we really did care, there I’ll be in his memory, saying “I love you, Sammy.”

gifts

“What did you get for your birthday?” It was always what we asked each other as kids, as though the gifts marking the celebration were the only way we could get a feel for an event we hadn’t seen. “Two ‘My Little Ponies’ and a Barbie doll” explained a lot about how a birthday went back then.

If someone had told me on my 20^th birthday what I’d get for my 30^th, I wonder what I would have done. Maybe rolled my eyes and hoped for something more exciting. Maybe not. I don’t know. It didn’t happen.

As I sit here, though, on the morning after my 30^th birthday, I wonder. In that moment before you blow out the candles, when you know you’ve got one birthday wish for the entire year, and it had better be good, and quick, because everybody’s waiting, how often is our only wish “more of the same”?

This is what I got for my birthday: A beautiful sunny day on which to clearly see my life and blessings as they really are. I sat alone in the garden and looked at my beautiful, sometimes slightly ramshackle house and listened to the laughter of a child being tickled by his father that drifted through the open window.

I thought of the years we’ve spent painting, laying floors, mowing the lawn, playing in the yard, growing a garden, raising a family. I thought of the things that we still have to do. A list longer than my arm that includes house projects, things we want to do with our children, things we want to do together, plans, dreams. And I thought of the quiet place where we live, with peaceful, shady woods and sunny pasture, a place where time himself seems to hold his breath and cup his hands around us while we carefully raise our children.

I thought of those children, those four tumbling, happy, surprising, exasperating, blindingly brilliant souls that have come to stay with us for a while, and all that I have learned, and have yet to learn, from them. I thought of my husband, of the quiet and gentle way that almost ten years have taught us to love each other. He gave me a gift card for my birthday, so that I could buy books. He gave me the last almost-ten years, learning that a gift card for books would be the perfect gift for me.

And I thought of the challenges that even this life brings, of those beautiful, unexpected things that force us to grow. Without lemon juice, lemonade would just be sugar water. It’s wonderful to have had enough challenges to know that whatever the current trouble may be, on the other side is a life that is as sunny, and even richer, than the one we’re living today.

My father, wandering across the country as usual, came to see me yesterday evening. My family, assembled a continent away at an Easter celebration, called to sing "Happy Birthday" over the phone. To love and be loved like this is as wonderful an experience as I have known.

Now, the morning after the day that marked the 31^st year of my journey here, it’s gray and raining. Another gift. Rain for my garden and a day I’ll have to spend inside with my family. And although it’s gray now, and yesterday’s birthday sun has gone, I can still see what I saw then. For my birthday I’ve been given a life I might have been jealous of if I had known about it ten years ago, a place, physically and otherwise, full of joy, hope, and peace.

eggs running out our ears

A couple of years ago we bought four chickens. They started laying eggs, and they were lovely eggs, and that was a great deal of fun. But then a dog killed one of them, and we only had three chickens, and three chickens lay about two eggs a day. There are six of us, and sometimes we just didn't have enough eggs.

So we decided to get some more chickens. Problem is, you can only order a minimum number of chickens, and it ain't 4.

Long story short, (hm...too late) now we have a lot of chickens, and therefore a lot of eggs. They are lovely, delicious, brown and green eggs, from chickens that get lots and lots of green plants to eat (thereby increasing the level of Omega-3s in their eggs) and live a happy life scratching around. Which seems to be the happiest thing they can possibly do. (Aren't you sorta glad you're not a chicken? I dunno, might be an easier life...)

At any rate, we can't eat all these. You want some? They're $2.50/dz, $3.50/18, and if you want to get these eggs on a regular basis, you can get a dozen a week for $10/month, or 18 a week for $14/month. Makes sense, doesn't it?

Okay, let me know.

~Erin~

Oh, and by the way. I only mean folks in my area. Sorry, Emily, I'm not mailing you any eggs.

vegetable plants

I got these plants, under lights, in my basement...

Vegetable plants. Honest.

But here's the thing. I have more vegetable plants than my garden needs this year. These will be ready riiight around April 15, which is as early as you (if you're in my area) should consider planting warm-weather vegetables. So. If you need any of the varieties that I have, let me know and I'll arrange to get them to you. They're $1 each, just to keep things simple. Here's what I've got and how many will be available:

All of these varieties can be seen and mused over at Johnny's Seeds.

Tomatoes
Pink Beauty 18
Gold Nugget 25
Sun Cherry 26
San Marzano 8
New Girl 14

Bell Peppers
Orion (green to red) 19
Sunray (green to yellow) 14

Basil
Italian Large Leaf 25

Let me know if any of you need any of these and I'll reserve them for you.

I hope you're having a lovely spring! Best of luck with your gardens.

~Erin~

worse than his bite

I can imagine why man would domesticate dogs. I imagine that, eons ago, man was a cold, hungry, frightened and lonely type of animal. His major concerns were, undoubtedly, staying warm, finding food, and sleeping in safety. I can imagine him watching the other animals to learn any of their tricks that would be useful to him. I bet he even thought, hey, if we could work together, we could get a lot more done than I can do alone, with my lack of fur and fangs and claws.

So, I can clearly see why, upon finding an untended den of helpless wolf cubs, some enterprising Early Man scooped one up and took it home and began the ages-long process of loving and breeding it into a domestic animal. A pet. Now the nights wouldn’t be quite so cold, hunting would be easier, other animals would keep their distance, and man had himself a friend. All this I can imagine and understand. In those days, a dog was truly an asset to the life of man.

But what I cannot imagine, what I spent ALL the wee hours of this morning trying to understand, is why on earth my next-door neighbors needed to obtain a full-grown, apparently full-blooded German Shepherd and chain him to a tree in their backyard. They aren’t using him for his furry body heat. They aren’t using him to hunt, since their hunting is done at the grocery store. Intruders onto their property would soon realize that any intruding they’d like to do is fine as long as they don’t go within the bare dirt circle the dog has worn around his anchoring tree.

All of this, of course, would be none of my business whatsoever, but for two things. First, about once every couple of weeks, the dog breaks loose, wiggles through a little hole in the fence between our properties and comes after my chickens. Not that he’s ever killed or eaten any of them.

This dog’s back is as high as my waist. But he comes bounding into our yard, rips a hole in the chicken coop, and then the poor, stupid, overbred animal stands there with his tongue lolling out because he doesn’t know what to do next. Over the ages, as some kind of cruel joke, we’ve bred out, at least of this dog, the knowledge of what to do with live food. I appreciate the restraint, to be sure, although I do resent having to fix the coop so often, but I shake my head in wonder at the pathos of the entire situation.

And the other point. Last night, for the first time this year, it was hot enough in our bedroom to want to open the window. Which, after kicking the blankets off and tossing for a while first, I did. I stood for a moment near the open window, feeling the cool breeze, listening to the spring frogs and the birds that were (inexplicably) singing at midnight, and went back to my bed.

And then the dog started to bark. Approximately, I would say, every three minutes or so from then until just before dawn, when it apparently got tired and went off to sleep. Of course, you’re wondering now why I didn’t just shut the window. But three minutes is juuust enough for you to slip away into sleep, to think that whatever the dog was barking at is surely gone now, to hear the chirping frogs, then to hear black nothing…and then the dog would bark again. And the bitter, bitter irony of this whole situation is, that they didn’t get a small dog, the kind that I imagine could fill people’s modern-day needs for dogs, whatever they may be, stress relief or companionship, perhaps. A beagle, or a basset hound would fit the bill nicely. No, they went out and got something large. Something LOUD.

And so I sit here this afternoon, watching the hours till bedtime, hazy in the head from lack of decent sleep, and in my mind is an endless loop of wondering, about Early Man, and wolves, and worthless, loud animals chained to backyard trees...

Maybe tonight I’ll turn on the fan.

the real us

No, we are not (yet) just like the flower farm people. Alas. But here's a great picture of the way things are around here...

Do you wonder what he's going to do with the chicken next?

when I grow up...

I want to be just like these people. What with the big blue barn, and endless flower fields, and barefoot children, and the hats, ahh...