Clean.

Wonderful.

My Mother's Day was indeed better than my birthday. (And I was so immersed in my lounging that I didn't take a photo all weekend, except some funny ones below that I'll share in a moment.)

But really. Such bliss.

When I got up I was greeted with handmade cards from my kids and a latte from my man. (Pete made me not one, not two, but three exquisite decaf lattes throughout the morning.) And then they made fruit and yogurt parfaits for breakfast in my beloved cabbage glasses.

And then he left. With the kids. And the puppy. For hours. They drove to the country and took a creekside hike while I stayed home (sipping that last latte) playing with some art supplies I picked up over the weekend. (More on that later in the week.) They came home and Pete harvested lettuce from the garden (squeal!) and made a chicken salad with fresh buttermilk dressing for lunch, which we ate outside in the sunshine.

Does it get any better than that? Well yes, actually, it does.

When they came home from their hike they brought a huge trout, found freshly deceased with a head wound (perhaps from a heron). Lupine was beside herself, running around with this gigantic fish in her hands. (I suspect this girl will get into either fishing or science for a good part of her childhood.)

Pete hosted a spontaneous science class for the neighborhood, Fish Dissection and Anatomy 101, with some of our favorite people from the block - kids and adults. We were a mixed bunch, as we usually are around here - homeschoolers and school-families, ominvores and a vegetarian, squeamish and not. (For the record, the vegetarian was perhaps the least squeamish of all, aside from Lupine.) What a crazy scene we were for passing cars!

Because really, it isn't Mother's day until you cut the head off of a trout.

In the afternoon I took a bath and then a two hour nap and then got up and sewed a few seams on the curtains I am making for our camper. Oh, and they brought me flowers twice, wildflowers from their hike and then a bouquet from the coop. And I took a two-hour nap. And then he cooked dinner. And it was fantastic. How sweet is my family? Love over love with honey on top.

Yes, Pete. You rocked it. I didn't wash a dish or cook a meal or even make my own coffee all day long. And after the last few weeks that was just what I needed. 

So today I am a different person, steeped in the gratitude of so much love. And ready to wash some dishes.

Also in honor of Mother's day, I posted something for my mom yesterday (in case you missed it), and also re-read this post. It brought back that time so fresh and vibrant like it was yesterday. And while I was reading it Sage walked into the room, so tall and almost ten-years-old to show me a project he's been working on. He glanced at the screen and the photo of him in the sling and me reading that post all teary-eyed, and he smiled and walked away.

Oh, my. Ten years is a long time. I love him more every day.

So for all the mamas: (a day late, but nonetheless...) You are changing the world. You are doing it right. And your kids are blessed by your unwavering love.

Sending hugs to you all today.

Love,

Rachel

A Letter to My Mom.

Dear Mom,

While I am grateful for all that you did to raise me when I was small, what is on my mind today is all you've done since I became a mother and you became Nanny.

Thank you for having raw milk in your fridge for my kids to drink. Thank you for driving clear across town to the coop to have organic meat and vegetables for dinner when we visit. Thank you for letting my kids pull beets and carrots from your garden, even when they could use a week or two more to grow. Thank you for giving thoughtful gifts to my kids that fit our values - gifts like wooden farm animals and a snowsuit from Craigslist and a road trip to South Dakota and an afternoon at the ballet.

Thank you for understanding and accepting both of my children for who they are and how they tick. You have never forced either of them to be someone they are not, and from you they both feel a deep respect and understanding. And also so much love.

Thank you for co-sleeping with Sage when he stayed over when he was small. Thank you for helping us make adaptations for his sensory needs (remember when you put him down for a nap under the pillows and rotary phone? Brilliant/hilarious.) Thank you for using natural dish soap for bubbles in the bath instead of the fragranced bubble bath from the grocery store. Thank you for turning off the TV and playing games on the floor with them for so many years. Thank you for seeing their magic and allowing it to grow. Thank you for the museum memberships and visits every year. Thank you for convincing Sage that 1) a banana split was 1/2 of a banana, unsweetened yogurt, and 3 chocolate chips - and 2) it was really sassy and special.

But most of all thank you for seeing me as a mother - despite our differences - as worthy of your respect and for honoring the choices I have made that are different from your own. Thank you for understanding so fully that it's my turn to make parenting choices just as you did a generation ago. And thank you for knowing that simply because my mothering choices are different doesn't mean that I honor or treasure your mothering any less.

Thank you for honoring my choices and my wishes for the past decade. I'm not sure I can adequately express how important that has been for me. Truly. I type this with tears in my eyes. It is perhaps the most important gift you have given me.

We have our similarities as mothers and women. We both strove for natural birth. We both breastfed (both of us longer than most nursing mothers from our generation) and cloth diapered. We both understood the power of healthy food and fresh air and limited television. We both questioned the cultural norms of our time and forged our own paths. (I suspect I should thank you for that gift as well, the gift of questioning and trusting my instincts.)

But you and I also made many different choices in how we approached mothering. And isn't that how it is supposed to be? We shift and change through time. Just as you didn't mother like Grandma Lee, she didn't mother like her Great-Grandma Nellie. As mothers we change. We shift. We grow. We find what fits and embrace it.

But despite our mothering differences you have accepted and respected my mothering since it began. You are not afraid to ask questions about the choices I am making, but your questions ring of a desire for understanding - not a desire to bring me back to the path you chose a generation ago. I've never felt pressured by you to be a different mother than I am.

You once paid me a kind compliment saying you wished you had known me when you were a young mother. And I'm glad to know you now. You have honored my needs and wishes as a mother. You honored my choices. You have honored my mothering. You have showed me that my choices are valid and worthy, even if they run in a different direction than those around me. And I can't thank you enough for that.

I love you. So, so much.

Rachel

I choose yes.

Everything changes when we drop our resistance and choose "yes". Ice cream before lunch? Yes. Dig out the slip-and-slide and get crazy? Yes. Paint our bodies with watercolor crayons? Yes. Stay up late and make a campfire? Most definately yes.

May your weekend be filled with lots of moments when you surprise yourself (and everyone else) by saying "yes". Enjoy where it takes you.

Love,
Rachel

 

 

Yesterday.

All day yesterday I made it my mission to search for reasons to be grateful. Because even when dreams unravel, there is always richness that we still hold. And so much to be thankful for showed up at my door - like it always does - when I opened myself to appreciation. It's always there. It's just a matter of whether or not our eyes are open to see it.

Yesterday I was grateful for...

... hanging out the laundry in the sunshine, my favorite of all chores.

... a big pot of nettle chai simmering on the stove.

... tea and chapter and apples while we cuddled on the couch. (And yes, that was really the name of the chapter we were on. Because, right?! Life is wonderful. Even when it kind of sucks. We're on book two of this series and like the first it is outstanding.)

... the near magical transformation of 2 gallons of milk into a big jar of fresh mozzarella, with the help of my kids. Our first effort. It was imperfect, but such fun.

... carving out a little time with my sewing machine to work on curtains and cushions for our vintage camper. (We've had the camper for over two years and haven't used it because it needs cushions and a mattress. After all those months of stalling I jumped and ordered new cushions yesterday - and had a friend offer up the perfect mattress. Because, hey, if we aren't living out in the country this summer at least we'll be camping out. A lot. And oh my, it's going to be cute.)

... and a way-too-late drive to the country, keeping my kids up way past their bedtime with a spontaneous jammie run for rhubarb and playing in the country. (Gravel Road Therapy. You know. Interestingly, we found ourselves at the other two farms we nearly offered on, playing and feeling almost "at home"...)

... and a glass a couple of glasses of whine er, I mean wine as the sun slipped away.

What are you grateful for today?

Unraveling. (No, not my knitting.)

There are some things that I don't talk much about over here. Some subjects are too private, others are too sensitive, and still others are simply too fragile. I talk a lot about my life, but obviously there is plenty that I don't discuss.

As it turns out, the dominant story in our life for the past four months is one I have chosen to keep mostly to myself. No, it's nothing dramatic and life-or-death-y. But it's something that has been dear to our hearts for these past many weeks. I've hinted at it but I haven't discussed really what we were working on. I was waiting for the right time to share it with you, in all of its magic and wonder.

It turns out today is that day, though this isn't the post I was expecting to write.

In the past few years I've often shared our desire to move back to the country. I've expounded on our dream several times, and even given your quiet glimpses into the three places that we seriously considered through my photos and words in several posts. We've looked at countless parcels in the past seven years. Only these three have stolen our hearts.

We never offered on the first two. The third, however, we did. And much to our joy, our offer was accepted. Everything was coming together.

But sometimes things don't shake out the way you imagined. And while I believe that anything that doesn't work out (in the moment) will work out (eventually, in a different way) and you will someday find yourself in an even better place, on days like this I tell that positive-thinking-Abraham-manifesting part of myself to stuff it and let me grieve.

And that's where I'm at today. I am grieving the death of a story we were writing in our hearts. 

You see, we fell in love with this piece of land. There is this list that we've kept for the past seven years of our "dream property". (What can I say. I'm one of those dorky "list" people.) And every item on our list (of more than a dozen "non-negotiables") without exception was met - plus two we had removed because we thought we were asking too much. This place looked like everything we'd always wanted.

We even fell in love with the family who owns it and loves it too. The family who has lived on it for decades. Everything was lining up. So we gathered a small community of like-minded people to share it with us. We found three families who shared our vision and our love of this land and we set to work. Our amazing team worked tirelessly to determine property boundaries, write covenants, and offer on the land as a group.

And to everyone's delight, our offers were accepted. We were creating community! Something that Pete and I have talked about for more than a decade. A new "family" of sorts - good neighbors and friends - each of us owning our own parcel but sharing access and sharing the work and sharing the dream. Four families, four parcels, four houses. One cow, one orchard, one sauna. The support of an intentional community ("Will someone please feed our chickens and stoke the woodstove while we're away?") plus the freedom of owning your own land ("I think I'll cut this tree for firewood."). The best of both worlds.

We put our house up for sale. We bought a kitchen stove and a woodstove for our cabin. We even started packing. (Remember that simplicity kick? Yeah. There was a reason I was in such a hurry this time.) We were moving. In July. Our long wait was over!

But then something happened that we never expected. After the offers were accepted and we were all moving forward on getting things in order to complete this journey, everything fell through. (I don't want to go into details out of respect to everyone involved. Sometimes things fall apart. We'll leave it at that.) And we stood in shock watching our dream turn to liquid and run through our fingers. Our offers voided. Our vision - at least for this land - dissolved. Done. Over. Back to the beginning.

To say we are heartbroken is accurate. (At least for me. Pete has a tendency to take things in with a little less heart-felt drama.) Emotionally I feel drained and defeated. Quite simply, I'm sad.

The sentence I keep saying when I talk to friends that chokes me up every time is: "We were so ready." All of us. We were so ready. When we told the children this morning I held Sage in my lap while he wept for what seemed like an eternity. I cried with him. We all mourn the loss of this dream.

Yes, yes. I know. Everything happens for a reason.

I know beyond doubt that there is something better waiting for us and when we find it we'll smile and say, "Oh! This is why that happened. I'm so glad!" But right now I'm not. Right now I'm just feeling disappointed, heartbroken, and yes, sad.

It was so close. And we were so ready.

Mud kitchen garden party.

A sunny picnic table kitchen, set with an assortment of "mud dishes."

A wee snail guest, who came to join our (pretend) birthday celebration.

Fragrant fresh mint "salad" and chive "candy", harvested just in time for the party.

Dandelion and mud "chocolates" and comfrey flower candy.

Fresh white violets for all.

The stump table is set (and small bare feet are welcome on the table at this celebration). The pretend birthday party begins...

Sometimes we bounce back from a hard couple of days by just being. Not going to the library. Not doing big projects. Not playing with friends. Nothing big or fancy our out-of-the-ordinary. Just being in the quiet space of our world. That was today. A make believe party. A few books read in the sunshine of the backyard. An abundance of quiet time with our hands in the dirt. Good simple food and cold milk.

Lots and lots of ordinary.

(And as the party wore on and I pretended to eat my food, Lupine exclaimed, "Mama, you can actually eat everything but the mud!" I glanced around my plate. Oh! So true.)

A quiet, ordinary, exceptional day...

Lupine's Choice.

This photo shoot was all Lupine. The very serious, dramatic expressions, the poses, the props -  everything. We were on our way to her performance on Saturday and she just cut loose. (I think she had seen some of the portraits that other girls had taken, posing dramatically in their costumes so she just went with it.)

We've had an interesting couple of days. It's been a ballet rehearsal and performance marathon. And she was my only child performing - and in only one dance. I have a friend with three kids, five dances, two rehearsal times, and two performance times. Plus school. Mercy. I'm don't know how I could sustain that. (Not gracefully I suspect.)

Lupine's new tutu was so picky that she either could not perform or needed to wear something under it (a stained tank top from my underwear-making bin in the sewing room saved the day). Also the feet of the ballet tights were so uncomfortable that we had to cut them off so that the seams didn't make here scream. Her teacher is incredible and didn't bat an eye when I proposed these (less than beautiful) adaptations. So grateful for her on many levels.

And we went to the performance. And we watched. And she danced. But at the end of the performance Lupine was fidgety. I got the feeling that she was done. Last year she was beaming, captivated, and enthusiastic right through the finale. Clapping until her hands ached. This year she was... done. That's the only way I can describe it. The magic had worn off. For the finale when all of the dancers took the stage together she looked at me and said emphatically, "I'm not going up there. That is way too many people."

She was done.

When we got home she had a rough evening. It was late - bedtime late - and we still had to eat dinner. (The same rhythm happened the night before after dress rehearsal so she was already on empty.) Lupine asked for a ride in her old baby carrier that I've saved it just for these moments and a sippy cup of milk. She needed to be the baby again. To feel the comforting warmth of being held against her mama body while dinner was cooking. So I strapped he to my back and we talked softly while I prepared dinner.

Before bed I validated. "Today was very busy."

"Yes," she said, welling with tears. "And I didn't even get to play all day long." She decided that two years of ballet was enough. The busyness of performance day was just too much.

In all honesty I feel a mix of gladness that she found something to love for two years, and also a deep relief that she was done (at least for the time being) by the wee age of 5. Before she began to ask for makeup. Or questions her body. Or all of the other worries that I talked about in yesterday's post. That she was able to distill out the magic and leave it at that.

Yes, there were some challenges. I watched her concern as child in tears was still taken to the stage by her mom to dance despite her objections. I watched her cover her ears because of the too-loud music, and hide her face in my lap from the dances she didn't like. I watched her checking out the flowers that other dancers carried and wonder if she mattered as much as they did if they had so many and she had so few. I watched her physical, visual, and auditory overstim mount over the course of the weekend.

But really there was mostly magic. Ballet was where she met her best friend, a girl from another town she never would have known were it not for dance. Dancing was something she looked forward to all week for two years ("Tuesday is my favorite day because it's ballet day!") There was plenty of magic but now it's time for a break.

Lupine still chose to dance on stage with her friends on Saturday, but she's done now. She's ready to take off the picky tutu and put on some comfortable riding clothes. "Mama, if I quit ballet can we ride horses again?"

Yes baby. We can.

On Stage.

It is performance weekend again. Ballet performance.

As those of you who've been here for a while know, I'm not really the sparkly tutu kind of mama. I'm more the... dirty bare feet type of mama. But I've come to accept that there are blessings in my daughter's love of ballet. Blessings that took me a while to warm up to, but that I've come to treasure as an important part of her journey.

Below is a re-post of my thoughts on all that tulle (from last year). Have a great weekend!

Love,
Rachel

Honoring Their Interests: Tutus, Tulle, and All.

One of my greatest challenges as a mother - and as an unschooling mother in particular - is honoring the interests of my children even when the collide with my own. I'm not talking about the army helicopter model kit or the requests to bring home a Bernstein Bears book from the library. I'm talking about bigger things. Like ballet.

I did not take ballet classes as a child (or dance classes of any kind) so the appeal is lost on me. I was a certified tomboy and the thought of wearing a tutu would have sent me screaming off into the woods to hide in the mud under a fallen tree. As an adult I have seen the gaggles of sequin clad children on our town's Main Street during performance night and wondered secretly "What were their parents thinking?" as I worried for the implication of all that glitter and glitz on girls so young. You could say ballet and Barbie occupy the same part of my brain in that: 1) The kids will enjoy it to the extent of their own personalities, but 2) at what future cost? I worry about my daughter being exposed to body image issues at way too young of an age or asking for me to put make-up on her face when I believe that nothing could make her more beautiful than her own natural sparkle. I worry about a four-year old striving for perfection at a time when life should be about the joy and freedom of play.

What can I say. I am a notorious over-thinker. Ask anyone who knows me well and they'll tell you.

So Lupine danced. And wore a flashy tutu. She climbed up on stage in front of more people than I could count under the bright lights and felt no pressure to be perfect. She didn't even ask for make-up. Though I bought her a ticket so she could sit with us, she chose to spend 1/2 of the big show down in front with her friends - not in the protective arms of her family.

And, um, she loved it.

In truth nothing detrimental came to my child because of a season of ballet and an afternoon of bling. Indeed, she thrived. (Thrived in the innocent four-year-old "we get to wear tutus!" sort of way.) She made new friends. She learned about boundaries through getting to know children very different from herself ("Ask her if you can hug her first next time. I think you surprised her.") The big performance was a blast for her, seeing the older children dancing and applauding their performances "so hard that my hands hurt from all that clapping!"

Yes, Lupine learned a great deal through this experience and those lessons went beyond the arabesque. She has a new best friend whom she never would have met without ballet. She stuck with something, week after week with joy. She is obsessed with France and wants to learn to speak french. (This includes requests for "French knots on all my clothes".) And she found joy in playful dance.

And me? I learned a great deal too. Like to sometimes push my worrying brain aside and trust her to know her own truths and to find her own joy, though they will be different from my own.

These are the lessons of motherhood.

Kitchen Day.

For those of you who are new here, I linked a zillion of my older posts below. Most are recipes or tutorials, so click through and bookmark or pin them for later if you are interested!

~ * ~ * ~

We spent most of yesterday bouncing between the sunny backyard, the garden, and the kitchen. I was determined to be at ease and to have fun - alone or with my kids - throughout the day. A lovely contrast to the dark day before. So that meant that I was mostly in the kitchen.

The day started with Sage setting to work on homemade butter. When the butter was done I made ricotta from the cultured buttermilk. (Much to Lupine's delight. This is her favorite cheese ever. She's joyfully eating a bowl of it even as I type this morning.)

The night before I had taken a bit of mama time while Pete put the kids to bed. To clear my head and pull myself together. I went foraging and rhubarb picking out in the country. I came home with plenty of rhubarb, loads of nettles, and a couple of hand-fulls of watercress. I do so love it here. That I can set off grouchy at 7 PM, fill a cooler with free food, and then sit and meditate creek-side to the sound of coyotes in the hills as the sun (and my angst) slips away. So much gratitude.

The foraging led to nettle drying, watercress pondering (I'm thinking dahl with watercress and spinach for lunch today), and the first canning of the season. Lupine and I made ginger-rhubarb syrup (for fizzy drinks in the summer). The solids we strained out of the syrup were sweetened a bit and canned up for rhubarb sauce.

There was something transformational about pulling out jars and lids and my canning pot and beginning once more to put food by. It was only eight half-pints all together, but it was satisfying just the same. The pantry has been steadily emptying all through the winter, and now it is time to begin to fill it again. I can't wait to see what new recipes find their way into our rhythm this season. (Feel free to link your favorites in the comments!)

Truly, lifting out those jars was the highlight of my day.

After canning we decided to make spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. Well, sort of. The meatballs were made of beef from a friend's farm, the red sauce was from another friend's pantry (we did a pantry trade this winter after I ran out of tomatoes. We swapped canned tomatoes, sauces, salsa, and a chicken for pickled beets, jam, some frozen elderberries, cumin bean pickles, and more. How awesome was that?), and the "noodles" were just zucchini, transformed with this snazzy cutter.

Dinner was early because of a 5 PM appointment, so when we came home just before bedtime we had a snack and then cranked homemade rhubarb ice cream for "dinner". The kids were over the moon that they got to have ice cream for dinner (that 3:45 meal felt like lunch to them) and everyone worked hard to turn our fresh raw cream and rhubarb into a sweet and dreamy treat. (The only modification I made to the recipe in the link is that we reduced the honey by 1/3 and added some stevia. While I prefer the taste of the straight honey, my kids and their teeth are better served by less sweets.)

Today we'll spend with some unschooling friends doing chemistry experiments, scavenger hunts, and costume play (if history is any indicator of how today will go). And we're all looking forward to it. We'll also be making cheese today. More cottage and perhaps mozzarella. My fridge is bursting with milk!

Oh, yes. Messy kitchen season is back.

~ * ~ * ~

In reflection to yesterday's post, thank you. I love you. For real. In so many ways I write here for you, but in truth I guess I write here for me too. Maybe mostly for me. And revealing that shadow side and being met with love and acceptance was freeing. Thanks for sharing your own shadows in the comments. Big hugs to you all. What an amazing community.

xxoo Rachel

 

 

Some Days...

"Bad days" in our house are rare. An anomaly in a long string of happiness. Most days around here are built on some combination of harmony, magic, laughter, and light.

Others days, however, are not.

Yesterday was the latter. It started out hard and went rapidly down hill. Like an elephant on rollerskates. I guess that's how the big lessons come. Fast and loud and something you simply can't ignore.

The day began with lots of (emotional, child-sized) interruptions while I was trying to work (and Pete was trying in earnest to parent) and kept unraveling from there. By 4 PM I was hiding in the basement with a coffee cup packed with ice cream and chocolate chips, pretending to do laundry. (When you consider that my five year old frequently follows me through the house, pulling this off was no small feat.)

No, yesterday was not my shining moment of motherhood. I yelled. I actually yelled - something I almost never do, and then I did it again, and then again, and again. I totally lost it. And for whatever reason, all of my non-violent parenting tricks flew rapidly out the window at the crucial moments when I could have (and indeed knew how to) turned it all around.

In hindsight the whole mess was rather ridiculous and was over some house cleaning nonsense that at the time seemed vital to my survival. (Clearly it was vital to my sanity, but not because it was actually important. I was just being stubborn.) I just made it into something bigger than it was because I was feeling stressed and overwhelmed by other things. And that took a lot of reflection to realize.

Yes, there is a lot on our plate right now. We're working on selling our house and buying some land and building a cabin to live in and... well, making some major life changes. And while this is all good stress, it is stress just the same. And somehow the momentum of all of the simplification I did this weekend left me expecting more from my five year old than she could possibly deliver. And I lost it. And that wasn't nice.

I could have gone to the place of being silly and playful to get her to join in the work, but I didn't. I could have made a game or a race out of it so that work became play, but I didn't. I could have talked to her about how frustrated I was feeling (I did) and then worked together with my girl to find a solution that worked for us both (but I didn't). 

I'm sharing this because I want you to know that things here are not always perfect. Days like this I never forget because they are ugly and unusual, but yes, I still have them on occasion.

Sometimes as parents we come unhinged - each in our own way, but it happens. And then what? And then we apologize. We pull it together. We hug and kiss and acknowledge that grown ups are human too. That mama just had a little tantrum of her own. And we look for a better way to do it next time. We connect and do our best to heal what we hurt. And we forgive ourselves for being human and get on with doing better tomorrow.

That is the mission that I'm on today. To find my higher self and parent from a place of love, not stress. Because yesterday's option felt good to no one. Not even me. Especially not me.

As for a better way to convince my five year old to clean her room - even with lots of help - next time? I'm not sure what that is. But yesterday will serve as a great example of what didn't work for anyone.

Today I'll remember to lead with love.

Love,
Rachel