why we live here: our local public library

for a county of 30,000 people, we have a really awesome library.

when I first started at the group home in 2003, the library was a tiny dark building that smelled like you would think a small town library should smell. it was so tiny, in fact, that when kids needed a specific book for research we would have to ask at the circulation desk and the librarian had to go into the back or the basement to get the book for us. when we moved back to brevard in 2007, this beautiful building had magically appeared (through lots of hard work and an extremely dedicated friends of the library organization) and I just couldn't be happier about it.

the transylvania county public library has an amazing collection of books for both children and adults. I have happily feasted on homesteading memoirs and how-to guides, books about living of the grid and peak oil and putting up pickles. there is a whole "special collection" just on home education, chock full of information on curriculum and activities and why to homeschool in the first place. we've read all the boxcar children books and all the magic treehouse collection, too. we never go on a road trip without stocking up on books on CD. cora has taken home everything on turtles she can find. the children's librarians are eager to help my kids find what they want ("I can't remember what it's called, but there is a baby on the front…" true request made by my daughter, fulfilled by a librarian genius.)

the children's programming is especially fantastic. we've done flat stanley and the summer reading program. the kids both earned a library book dedicated in their honor for reading so much last summer, not to mention various take home prizes as well. jamin and I dressed as super heroes for mother's day one year (that was exciting). there is story time, complete with singing and a craft every other week. we've seen incredible puppet shows, billy jonas jam sessions, and even won a dance contest when secret agent 23 skidoo came through.



there is an outdoor concert series in the summer. local bands come to play, but also some bigger regional groups that we love to see. kids can run around and no one cares. the steps of the amphitheater are a great place to burn off some energy when we have time to kill running errands in town. and of course, it being brevard, you can't go to the library (or anywhere else) without seeing someone you know.

upstairs there is a special collection of local history and artifacts, scrapbooks full of treasures from the communities across the county. the transylvania times runs photos from this collection every so often as a reminder of who we are as a county and how far we've come.

the library has a CD collection that eric is particularly good at navigating. he brings home all kinds of things that I would never pick out, full of gems like this song that my children can't stop singing. we check out movies and television series (rabbit is especially fond on anything from the BBC).

maybe most towns are this lucky and have libraries this extraordinary. maybe I am gushing about something everyone else just takes for granted. but one thing I know for sure about the transylvania county public library: best public restrooms in town. big, clean, easy access. I've even seen people brushing their teeth at the sinks. we've stopped in plenty of times just because someone had to pee (or something even most urgent, ahem.) the library made potty training just a little bit easier for this family, that's for sure.

so whether you love books or bathroom breaks, there is something to be found for everyone, I promise. I hold the library responsible for some of my best brevard friendships as well (when you are new to town, it is a great place to find parents and kids just waiting to be friends with you.)

what has your library done for you lately?

house warming

I am really bad at being cold. every year I think I have gotten over it, this will be the year I will suck it up and be an adult about winter, embrace the change of seasons with a willing mind and peaceful heart. I have such wonderful visions of myself making it through a new england winter with enjoyment and triumph, but every year I barely survive north carolina through february without planning my tropical escape. I make plans that this year I will be better: I will take winter hikes to enjoy the view, I will not complain about wearing longjohns and socks at all times, I will be happy to be indoors and I will make the most of these short days and long nights. so far, that has never happened.

I start to whine about the middle of october. that's when I start to get cold. I can't help it. and it doesn't seem to matter that it is still sunny and warm by mid afternoon. my body has some sort of internal clock that senses the impending doom of winter. so I dutifully start layering: tights under my jeans, long sleeves under my fleece under my coat. my feet and my hands are the worst. it doesn't matter how many pairs of socks I wear, how much I invest in slippers and boots, my feet are always always cold. and on top of that, I am one of the lucky ones prone to chilblains (see that? "a predisposed individual"? that's me!) (my family made fun of me for coming up with such a silly name for my sore toes until we stumbled across the phrase in the long winter. and if laura says it, it is true. at least that is the rule in our household.)

but being cold for me is much more than just physical discomfort. winter is about stillness and quiet, a slower pace and a shift to the internal. gone are the long evenings in the hammock and the sunny afternoons of harvesting beans. winter means business, but business with the intent of less. the busy-ness of summer isn't there to distract me anymore. winter calls me to prove to myself that my summer days were well spent, that I stored up enough sunshine in my bones to make it through these darker days. and while I know that this shift of seasons is part of how we keep in balance, how we make the most of every quadrant of life, most of me just longs for the ease of warmth, the time of year I feel most like myself. the cold just reminds me of how much work it is to be still and wait it out, even if that time of stillness is what my body and mind and heart need most.

eric, whose bare skin I am not allowed to touch again until april because my hands are always so cold, has finally said enough is enough. this will be the year of the warm wife. he (with lots of help from our amazing landlords and other homesteading friends) did all the research, legwork, and purchasing necessary to install a wood stove in our happy home. he talked to the chimney guy and the stove guy, he laid tile and tore out drywall. he found a load of firewood to be delivered, and he has been happily splitting for months now. (being the frugal guy he is, he found a deal on wood that wasn't split: three cords for the price of one! he heard "logs" and thought two foot sections were in our future. imagine our surprise when this load of telephone poles arrived for delivery.)

this morning when I got up it was 72 degrees in my kitchen. last year we kept the heat pump set at 60 degrees. this is a wonderful change of pace. eric says he can see my body shift when I start to get cold and he heads downstairs to throw another long or two on the fire. he walks around shirtless most of the time. poor rabbit has had to rearrange her living space to accommodate the wood stove and all the equipment that goes with it, but even that has been okay. and when her mom arrives from hawaii next month, that wood heat will make her feel right at home, I'm sure.

so maybe this really is the year I can embrace winter. this will be the year of coziness and contentedness with the idea of being at home. I will crotchet and read while wearing only one pair of socks. and maybe, if I'm lucky, the temperatures will stay high enough that I can touch my husband's arm without him recoiling in horror. I'm pushing for a chilblain-free winter, one full of quiet reflection and balanced looks ahead. if you need me, I'll be curled up near the wood stove.

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.” 

― Edith Sitwell

why we live here

not too long ago the mountain xpress did a series on small towns in western north carolina and what made them special. brevard was the first to be featured, and I was beyond excited when I picked up my copy. the first time I flipped through that week's issue (because mostly I love the xpress for the horoscopes and the movie reviews and the rest is hit or miss), I missed the brevard coverage entirely. and when I did finally find it, I was terribly disappointed. barely two pages, and those two pages were mostly restaurant reviews and information anyone could find on a quick wikipedia search. I didn't see my sweet little town in those two pages at all.

so I am going to do what the xpress didn't: a whole series on why my family (and lots of other really great people, too) keep on choosing to live here. sure it's small, and the restaurant options are limited, but the choices for food we do have include some really great ones. and their may not be much industry here and it is tough to find a job, but that breeds some of the most creative small business owners I've ever met. and you can't shop at target in transylvania county, but some people actually view that as a good thing. you have to drive an hour to get to a movie theater with more than one choice,  but it's only fifteen minutes to the hiking of your dreams. pretty good trade offs in my book.

but natural beauty and small town living are just a part of why we stay. there is something about this place that lends itself to a pace of life that can't be found just anywhere. and because brevard is small, we need each other, which is pretty unique, too. and sure, it is a great place to raise kids, but I think it is a pretty wonderful place to be raising myself, too: raising my awareness of positive environmental practices because we are so connected to our natural world here, raising my consciousness of how my choices effect others because it is more obvious in this little town, and raising my standard of living to include real intimate relationships, serious volunteer involvement, and honest intention to enjoy it all because my community needs these parts of me.

I have lots of ideas for this series, tons of reasons to back up our decision to make this place home. but part of community is idea swapping, and I want to hear what make brevard worth sticking around for you. why do you live here? why do you stay? when you visit other places, what makes you want to come home? and for those of you who live somewhere else but love brevard anyway, what makes you smile about your time here?

I didn't always love living here. we've left and come back three times now. there are days I feel stuck and trapped and cold. there are days when I feel like I have done all I can in this place, offered all I have to offer, seen all there is to see. but here is home base, if nothing else, the place I need as a touchstone in my life to remember who I am, where I'm going, and why it matters. and I can't wait to share all those pieces of living here with you.

the right tool for the job

my dad can fix anything. and if it can't be fixed, he can build something beautiful in its place.

my earliest memory involves things my dad built. I was standing in a sandbox he made in our yard calling to the neighbor lady across the bushes. she wasn't even in sight, but there I was yelling her name for the whole neighborhood to hear.I remember being fascinated that her name, myrtle, was the same word for the flowering trees that separated her yard from ours. my dad came out and scooped me out of the sandbox and told me that little girls don't call grown up ladies by their first names, especially at the top of their lungs. even then he was building: building my manners, building our relationship together, building our relationship with that neighbor lady, building me up even as he was correcting me.

my dad built another sandbox that year for my kindergarten classroom. we moved to a different state shortly after that, and he quickly built a clubhouse in our new backyard. we moved again and he built a two story deck on the back of our new house. I drew up dream plans for a window seat/bookshelf combination that I'd always wanted, and he built that, too. we moved again. he built more bookshelves for his book-loving daughter. when the high school marching band needed new uniform racks, I volunteered my dad. he welded racks that I feel certain are still in use. he built custom shelves for my college dorm room. then he built a matching set for my roommate.

if my dad couldn't fix it, he knew who to call. he started a home repair and tree removal business and told all his customers, "the only thing you need to remember is this: call trent first." and they did. when trees fell, when pipes burst, when cross country moves needed to happen, people knew to call my dad. when my car would break down (and since I spent most of college driving my grandmother's 1983 oldsmobile it happened a lot), I always called my dad before I called AAA because wherever I was in the state, he had a friend nearby. if nothing else he could help me decide what to do next. his advice in distressful situations usually involved taking a milkshake break first and foremost.

my dad could help fix people, too. when kids were getting kicked out of the local high school for disruptive behavior, he started an alternative school just for them, one of the first in the country. and it worked. he would race those boys across the parking lot after lunch, them in their saggy jeans and him in his suit and tie. investment was the way to fix what was broken there. he believed it and I saw it in action every time I would sit and watch him play "one more point, just one more point," on the basketball hoop behind the boys' group home where he worked. I remember the day one of those boys fell to the ground in the middle of a seizure and banged his head on the pole of the goal. my dad knew what to do, and everything turned out okay.

then came the season of my life when I just didn't think my dad could fix things for a while. it was an intense combination of crummy life circumstances that felt out of control and a prideful stance that I should be able to handle things on my own. I knew I was making decisions my dad didn't understand, and I didn't know how to explain the hard stuff to him or anyone else. I know it was hard for him to know there were things in my life he couldn't fix, and even harder to know I didn't even want him to try. he had to wait for me to figure it out, and waiting can be such hard task for a man known for his plans of action.

but in this case waiting was the fix. patience was the tool he needed most and he used it most expertly. love looks like a million different things: a sandbox in the back yard, a ride to school in a dump truck, pulling out splinters and sliding kneecaps back into place with gentleness only the "daddy doctor" can have. love looks like requiring boys to come to the front door rather than honking from the driveway. love is knowing when to make the phone call and when to give it space. love is patient and kind, even when fixing it would be so much easier.

I'm back to believing my dad can fix anything worth fixing. he's proven it to be true too many times for me to think anything different. and if it can't be fixed, I know he'll already be working hard to build something else beautiful instead.

“do, or do not. there is no try.”

saturday afternoon I was sweeping the deck off in preparation for a potluck at our house, and I found yoda's head. this is a very big deal.

jamin does not know much about star wars at all, but first grade boys (especially those of a certain nerdy disposition, which includes all first grade boys we happen to know) are supposed to love star wars. until about a week ago jamin insisted I was wrong in correcting him when he talked about "dark vader." he has checked out every book our library has about star wars (he hasn't even bothered to as about watching the actual movies. in fact I am not sure he even knows that movies are the starting point on this one.) rabbit gave him a bunch of little lego guys earlier in this summer, before school started and before he knew that star wars knowledge was a necessary part of his new social life.) they were sort of background accessories until someone happened to mention (I don't know who to blame for that one) that he had several star wars guys in the group. these newfound talismans were rotated into regular play, but even they had taken a back seat in the past few weeks as some new recess game emerged at school that involved neither light sabers or death stars.


until it was time for jamin's share day. then the lego yoda was mandatory. except no one could find him.

that morning at breakfast when jamin realized it might be his share day and that he real REALLY need to take yoda, he and cora tried to remember yoga's last appearance. they had already found yoga's little lego body. it was only his super teeny lego head that was missing now. "cora had him on the deck," they decided and bundled up as a team to check outside. they looked on the deck, on the railings, then ran down into the yard to check the grass underneath. no yoda. lots of tears.

not having what he need for share (this cool thing! this thing that other kids would know and recognize and like!) quickly morphed into not wanting to go to school at all, a puddle of a boy on the kitchen floor while cora and I looked at each other sort of helplessly. after much reassuring and lots of attempts at problem-solving, we managed to get into the car with the promise of a fact-finding mission at o.p. taylor's after school. and it didn't feel like bribing, this promise of a toy store run. this might be the first time it felt like jamin and I really were working together to figure something out, a big something, something I was trying to value as much as he did while still keeping it in perspective. and it worked.

we went to o.p. taylor's, both of us shocked by price tags and the realm of lego possibilities. (you cannot buy just a lego yoda guy, in case you were wondering. he only comes as part of sets that start at $20. and I don't think I mentioned our particular yoda was wearing a santa outfit? I cannot explain this at all.) he didn't have the money, I wasn't willing to splurge, but even that turned out okay. he got it. we talked about saving up, but that wouldn't happen in time for his share (which had now been postponed an extra day). it was disappointing and hard, but he settled on building something lego-based of his own and saving up for yoda for his next share day. and that was that.

yoga's head became huge in my head. this was make-or-break parenting right here, and we got it right. somehow jamin and I figured this one out together, and it just…worked. major victory for us both in lots of ways. now that jamin is in school I remember it all so much clearer, how hard it is to be a kid. I remember being panicky at night before bed simply because I had to get up and do it all over again tomorrow. I remember the tears when new projects were assigned, a combination of excitement at the newness and overwhelmedness at the daunting task ahead. I remember never feeling like I was doing things right, be it academically or socially, always being slightly confused about what the "right" thing really was. I have to keep reminding myself that jamin is not me, even if he is very much like me sometimes, and that he is living his own reality, no matter how much of myself I can see in his face. it is hard to watch him do it, to remember it and want to fix it and still just have to watch it unfold on its own. but something about it all is working. and I like it.


so saturday I was sweeping and there it was, right there where jamin and cora said it should be. I might have already had a beer and a half by then, and I might have fist pumped and announced to the neighborhood in a rather loud voice that I was the best mom ever. even though it was pure chance that I was the one that found sweet little yoga's head, the victory felt well-earned. and jamin, hearing my proclamation, came running and quickly agreed with my assessment. and that was the biggest victory of all.

maybe there is something to that yoda wisdom after all. I guess when we all sit down to watch the movies together in five more years, I'll know for sure.