get in the picture and stay there

I have had a lot of great friends in my life.

throughout all the seasons of my life I have been fortunate enough to meet people willing to do super silly things with me. I have photo albums full of documentation of relationships and road trips, band geeks and camp kids, all sorts of ridiculous outfits (both intentional and unintentional). I love looking back and seeing my face pressed up against the cheek of someone else, both of us grinning as if having our picture taken together was reason enough to smile. high school musicals, marching band bus trips, camp costumes, residence life roll calls, it is all there in full glory. there are halloween parties from my early days with eric, backpacking trips to grand locales, photos of us at concerts and festivals. 

then we had kids. 

all of the sudden my photo-taking habits took a wild turn. there were lots of moments to capture, most of which didn't really require me to be in front of the lens, but behind it. and there is a lot that is okay about that. there's also a lot that needs to be changed about that. mamas and papas need to be in the picture, maybe especially mamas. we are the record keepers, the family photographers, the one there to witness these magical moments and pass them on to the world at large. a year ago there was a fabulous article on why moms should stay in the picture. the responses are as moving as the original article. powerful stuff, all around. 

it is important for parents to be in the picture. it is important for our kids to have a record of our history, important for our families to have a feeling of togetherness, important for parents to feel valuable and worthy of being in the picture.

but here's the thing: I don't want to just chronicle my role in my children's childhood. there is a lot I have given up in being my kids' mom. I changed my last name, I lost a lot of free time, I learned to redefine myself based on my relationships in my family ("oh, you're jamin and cora's mom!"). and while those things are choices I am glad to make to be in this place in my life, there are a lot of other things that fell by the wayside as well that I am not convinced are good or necessary life shifts. I still have incredible friends. really really great ones. and there may not be as many backpacking trips and cool concerts on my calendar these days, but I still do a lot of fun stuff in some pretty amazing locales. my new challenge to myself is to document my life (not just my children's) with vigor and enthusiasm.

so I am going to be taking pictures with my friends. I am going to press my check right up next to yours and grin because you make my life a better place. and I don't want to hear how I can't take your picture because your hair isn't right or you are wearing your "fat jeans." we are out of time on the excuses. I've missed too much already. I realized at the end of last summer that I don't have photos of myself with any of my favorite kids from camp this year. I have photos with them and my children, but none of me standing proudly next to people that changed my life in the eight weeks I knew them. and my best mama friend? the one I have raised my children with, cried on her couch countless times, called in emergency "I need a beer on your back porch right now" situations? we took our first photos together last week. 

so get in the picture. yes, take tons of pictures of you with your kids, but do yourself one better than that. let your kids take pictures of you and don't delete them all. we are going to be so glad to look back on our dark hair and youthful faces one day. hula hoop on your deck and make your husband take photos of you laughing because it is not as easy as it used to be. hold up your dirty hands in the garden and wiggle your fingers at the camera. take a damn selfie or seven; goodness knows everyone else on the internet is doing it. but be here, be all the way here, and pull a friend into the frame, too. our kids deserve to know all the best parts of our lives, including the parts that are not all about them. teach them how to be a friend by taking a photo with one of yours. teach them how to love themselves by saving that goofy shot of you in a bathing suit. and smile, big bigger biggest, every chance you get. you never know when I might be taking your picture, friends.

I am thrilled (THRILLED!) to be partnering up with kaelee beeson of kaelee denise photography to be offering a giveaway to one of you lucky, lucky folks! head on over to kaelee denise's facebook page and give her the big thumbs up ("like" kaelee denise photography), then leave a comment on this here blog letting us know what you plan to do to get in the picture and stay there. one lucky commenter (who is also a fan of kaelee denise photography) will win a mini-session for you and a friend with kaelee AND a gift card to hobnob here in brevard, so you and a friend can have a fancy night out on the town! can you even believe all that awesome-ness could happen? 

we'll choose our winner monday, april 28, 2014 FRIDAY, MAY 2, 2014, so leave your comment below, make sure to go like kaelee's facebook page, and share this post with other folks who deserve a photo shoot and a night out! and then get busy grabbing a friend and getting in the picture together!

laura ingalls goggles

it is the middle of april. I am wearing my long johns. I thought we were done with that.

4 of 5 hens agree: it is too freakin' cold.
5th hen could not be found for comment.

yesterday eric and I scurried to cover all the flowering fruit trees and berry bushes before the cold settled in. he was ready to give up after the first one, but I insisted. jamin and I have been reading the "little house" series for months now. we've worked our way through the original series and have moved into laura's daughter's stories. it makes me look at the whole world with laura ingalls goggles. (I read in some michael pollan book that you should only eat food that your great-great-grandmother would recognize as food. laura ingalls has long been my dietary measure, but re-reading these books with jamin makes me question that decision. there is a lot of salt pork and cornbread in their diet, and not a whole lot else...) we are hardly real farmers. our life does not depend on our pear trees bearing fruit. in fact not much in our world would really change if we didn't get a single blueberry this year. same goes if our hens just quit laying. but my laura ingalls goggles make me remember that pioneer spirit, that homesteader mindset that makes me say "do it anyway, and see what happens. work hard and make it count."

I am actually a pretty terrible farmer. I am not even that great at just being a farmer's wife. seriously. eric leaves the kids and I one or two "farm chores" every day, but they have to be really easy things that, one, I will be motivated to do, and, two, I can't really mess up. I have trouble telling plants apart. this is super embarrassing for me to admit, but I cannot be counted on to know the difference in berry bushes and azaleas or cabbage and kale. the kids usually set me straight before I water the wrong thing ("didn't papa say to water the peas? that is just plain dirt, mama." thanks, cora.) and if it is cold outside, forget it. if it is cold I can't be counted on to do the jobs that I actual am capable of like feeding the chickens or messing around in the compost.

but it turns out I am a total boss at covering fruit trees. I hung those bedsheets without breaking a single branch or shaking off any flowers. and the blooms are all still there, even after our dip into the low twenties last night. of course only time will tell what fruit those trees will produce, and even then it may have nothing to do with my expert covering skills. that is the way gardening goes.

it was a lovely meditation, really, covering those trees. offering protection to something forced to deal with unusual circumstances. prayers tumbled out as I unfurled those bedsheets: one jamin claimed from the camp lost and found, one that served as curtains in our foster daughter's bedroom, one eric bought from ikea in calgary when I had shingles in my eyes, one from the set my mom bought in 1973 when she went off to college. it is sobering to have no control over the weather, to acknowledge its power and mystery. and it is grounding to know we will do the best we can and know the rest will happen just the way it should.

my word for the year is "season," an acknowledgement of the rhythm of my life, but as eric farms fulltime this year it has become a study in the rhythm of the world around me as well. I long so much for summer, but there are still lessons to learn from the cold it seems. let's hope I have learned them this time around so we can move on to warmer days.

wabi-sabi memoirs--my messy beautiful

This essay and I are part of the Messy, Beautiful Warrior Project — To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE! And to learn about the New York Times Bestselling Memoir Carry On Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life, just released in paperback, CLICK HERE!


I spend a lot of time thinking about what my children might write in their memoirs. I think far more about their memoirs than I ever think about writing my own. on my bad days (which is actually when I think about this particular topic the most) opening sentences go something like this:

"my mother's anxiety rocked our household the way a storm rocks a ship at sea. squalls sprung up on an otherwise clear horizon anytime we might potentially be late for something or she had to drive us somewhere farther than the end of our driveway..."

"my mother kept us out of school (under the guise of "homeschooling") to feed her own ego. since she had once made some disparaging remarks in public about the public school system, her pride forced us to stay un-enrolled and under-socialized for years. I never could figure out why exactly she felt so strongly about keeping us out of school when she certainly did not feel strongly about doing anything to educate us herself. her pride must have been a very strong pull indeed since it kept us away from the free childcare that would have saved her sanity and creative energy in so many ways..."

"our house was never occupied by only our family. my mother was incapable of letting a spare bedroom stay empty. when I was born we lived in a group home with six teenagers of varying degrees of mental capacity and emotional stability. I can remember my bedroom door being blocked by furniture at night "just in case." after the group home we served as a foster family and respite care for kids who needed a home. there was always someone coming or leaving, and no one was ever really sure who would show up for supper on any given night. my mother called it her ministry, but to me if felt like her own selfish need for company."

"my mother's wanderlust dogged our family's every life decision. her inability to stay still mixed with my father's passion for farming and homesteading pulled our family's root system up out of the soil over and over again. every time I felt settled enough to call a place home, my mother would be possessed by the restlessness that never really left her, and off she would go on a wild tear about how fun it would be to live in a treehouse in austraila for a while. and my father, in his patient love for her, would put a jar on top of the refrigerator and start dropping in loose change to start a savings fund to fulfill her latest dream."

(for the record, these are almost all shameful exaggerations. there is no way jamin was old enough to remember that we moved furniture to block his door. and it was only for one night. and I have no desire to live in austrailia. yet.)

on good days, I can rewrite those very same passages in my head to sound something like this:

"my mother (god bless her patient and kind soul) was a champion at making the best of her own faults. she knew she was the only one in our household that ever cared if we left the house (let alone were on time for anything), so she nudged us into action with dance parties in the kitchen, the basic moves of which involved shedding our pajamas and wiggling into our clothes for the day. she found a way to make the best of situations that I am sure drove her crazy, and the musical education we got in the meantime is absolutely priceless."

our chickens lay green eggs. pirate approved.

"we were homeschooled for most of my childhood. my parents evaluated and re-evaluated that life choice over and over I know, carefully taking our preferences into account before making a decision that was best for our family. my mother especially worked tirelessly to set up co-operative groups where we met with other families on a regular basis and connected with people whose lives were both similar and different from our own. the education we received working with my parents on our homestead has proven invaluable to me time and time again. and the books--my house was filled with books of all kinds and someone was always willing to talk about what they were reading with us. I never saw my mother without a book on her bedside table which made me in turn value the notion of reading both for pleasure and for information. I am thankful for the lifestyle that "schooling" at home provided my family in my early years. I am thankful for my parents willingness to know my temperament and learning style well enough to know that homeschool was the best choice for me."

not sure what eric is doing.
in this photo and most other times as well.

"our house was a hive of activity in a way that was comforting and exciting to me. there was always someone dropping by or staying over, everyone from foster placements to long-term roommates to kids from camp visiting for a few weeks. there was always someone new around to tell stories or work in the garden or cook something different for supper. my parents were careful to value our private space in our home and to guard our family time, creating plenty of space in our schedules and lives for simple every day adventures for the four of us. but I am thankful for the open door policy that the house I grew up in had. it broadened my ideas of "community" and "neighbor" into the whole world."

"my mother had a case of wanderlust bad enough to make her pace in the kitchen sometimes. I often think about the balance my parents challenged themselves to maintain: my father was a farmer who wanted to stay still long enough to see fruit trees bear, and my mother never felt there was time enough to do all the things she wanted to do in all the places she wanted to go. they both made sacrifices to keep our family balanced somewhere in the middle. and the adventures we had when we did hit the road--that's what this book is REALLY all about. roots and wings, the balanced life my parents offered me."

now IF either of my children should live to tell the tales of their childhood, I feel certain neither of these extremes will ever make it into print. and the odds are fairly good that the things that feel so very huge to me right now are not even memories my children will hold on to. lord knows I am liable to change my mind before I even finish typing this sentence about what a good day or a bad day even looks like around here. the messy and the beautiful can run awfully close together it seems.

but the part I am learning a little more every day is how much of that decision (which parts are messy, which parts are beautiful) is really all in our heads. sometimes the living it feels horribly messy, but the looking back on it feels breath-takingly beautiful. finding the balance of it all is part of the wabi-sabi, I suppose.

and that is the lesson I hope I am teaching my children: it really doesn't matter what happens or even what we choose. all of life, every bit of it has the potential to be messy and beautiful all at the same time. the way we tell our memoirs is way more important than what actually happens in the story.

even though I hear austrailia can be really nice this time of year...

http://momastery.com/carry-on-warrior

spring done sprung

it is that time of year, my friends. we've changed our clocks, totally disrupting what little bedtime routine my children actually subscribed to. daffodils have bravely pushed aside the soil to reveal their yellow tea-cup faces. my kitchen is full of earthboxes sporting rows of tiny kale seedlings. birds are making their presence known a little earlier every morning. my front door entry is a tangle of muddy boots, jackets discarded halfway through the day, and that one mitten we never did find the match to. this combination of events can only mean one thing...spring is finally (FINALLY) here.

spring trickles in slowly here at mudlfower. it starts in january when seed catalogs first start arriving in the mail. these are more valuable to eric than any smutty magazine would ever be. and he admires them with them same focus and awe, I assure you. these catalogs quickly become dog-earred and worn with items circled and starred as it if was the JCPenney's toy catalog at christmastime (remember those days?). the next sign is the restlessness. this restlessness is different from the every day variety that often seizes us. this particular pacing involves eric staring out the window and sighing a lot. it is hard to keep a good gardener down through the dead of winter. and really, there is just no point in trying. every year eric says there is no use in starting seeds any earlier than march 15 or so. and every year he pulls out his seed trays and brings in buckets of compost about the middle of february to start seeds anyway. by that time we are all checking the calendar (and the thermometer) the way folks might check their watches impatiently while waiting for an overdue train. and more sighing. lots and lots of sighing.

as it warms up, there is so very much to do. the compost has to be switched over so the newly seasoned soil can be used to prepare beds. there are new beds to create and old beds to amend. the hens end their season of free ranging and are once more confined in their fence. we dig up the last of the potatoes, rake up the last of the leaves. we spread grass where the chickens scratched it all away. but mostly, even with all these chores and tasks to distract us, we wait. we wait for the warm, we wait for the green. we point out little glimpses to each other every day: short sleeves on our afternoon walk, a crocus we'd forgotten we'd planted, the thermostat creeping up near 70 degrees inside, buds on the berry bushes and fruit trees. eric writes it all down, taking careful notes on the appearance of bird and buds, the temperatures and the rainfall, the tasks he completes and the tasks he has left to do....

you can continue reading this fabulous post at susan gabriel's blog where I am guest posting today. be sure to join the conversation on the comments board! thanks for being such dedicated readers that you are willing to follow me all around the internet. seriously, I heart you hard. now go read!