every blogpost needs a sound track. and we all need a little more tom waits in our lives. if you can't handle tom, feel free to cue up the norah jones cover as you read along. we're just more of a tom waits kind of family around here, whatever that means.
camp is over. the last of the staff is leaving tomorrow. jamin and cora keep asking me when are we going to do arts and crafts and why don't I push them on the swings like their counselor does. they spend most of their time playing camp, "teaching" me songs I couldn't get out of my head all summer because there was always some group somewhere singing them at the tops of their lungs. thankfully the dining hall is still serving meals for retreat groups or jamin might really go into shock.
this isn't home. quinipet, for all its wonders and beachfront property, ain't got nothin' on redbud springs. and people from long island don't even know what bluegrass music really is. and we have a lot of living left to do in brevard. but once we figured out where home really is, we knew we could take the long way to get there.
so I am taking a year's leave of absence from the family place. that's the only real decision that we've made. as far as short term plans, we're leaving here for new hampshire next week to visit some redbud family and celebrate our seventh anniversary as a happily married couple. eric flies home for a wedding in brevard, then makes the trip back up with our very best friend allyson. we're here on shelter island until the end of september. we need this time.
we are walking on the beach every night after supper. we're watching as many sunsets as we can. we are posing for pictures in front of yachts far bigger than our house. we are homeschooling and staying in the flow and listening so hard it hurts sometimes. we need this time, this pace, this rhythm. at least for right now.
I don't really know what we are doing beyond that, and that feels pretty okay right now. I am learning what we are good at, how to balance that between the four of us. how to hold hands and jump, how to appreciate the view from here. and now that we know where it is, it feels good to take the long way home.
there is this blogger lady that I love named patti digh. she is fabulous. I read her book "life is a verb" this spring as we were prepping to come to new york, and it got me all centered and happy and inspired about our trip. so I started following her blog and that makes me pretty happy and inspired, too. I ended up using lots of quotes and themes and thoughts from her work in my devotionals with the staff this summer.
so she leads these projects, kind of like an online class, but really more an experiment in community and inspiration with lots of writing reflections. right up my alley. and it just so happened that this particular project starts today, the last day of camp. the first day of the rest of my life. what a time to be intentional, to be inspired, to be focused, to be surrounded by folks doing the same hard thinking and soul searching that I like best.
here's a link to project 137. and here is my first photo assignment. the assignment was to take a photo of myself that expresses the love I feel for myself. so here I am, plunging right on in.
part of my job this summer is leading staff devotionals once a week. at the beginning of the summer, I wasn't sure exactly how this would go, if people would show up, if I had anything relevant to say. so eric helped me make a brag-worthy snack spread every week, and I would rush through bedtime routine with the kids to make it up to the welcome center on time. the snacks certainly helped, and word of mouth soon had people asking me to lead the same devotional twice on thursdays so counselors could come during their breaks. this week was the last week of overnight camp and what I thought would be my last devotional. it turned out to be a doozy. here's what we talked about, after a meditation from hermann hesse and a couple minutes of silence...
To a Leaf Wilting
Every blossom wants to become fruit.
Every morning turns into evening without regret.
Nothing on earth is eternal except change, except taking leave.
The most splendid summer yearns to fade into fall.
Oh, autumn leaf, be still and yielding when the wind wants to seize you.
Do not resist, be a player in the game.
Surrender to the change in motion.
Let yourself be broken, seized, and blown to the next home.
~Hermann Hesse
five things I hope you learned at camp this summer:
1- you are totally fabulous.
maybe you reached a goal for yourself this summer. maybe you tried something new. maybe you did something you never thought you'd do, and it turned out okay. maybe you met someone who taught you big things about yourself. maybe you realized you're really good at something you'd never bothered to try before. whatever it is, I hope you know how totally fabulous you really are. that you can do big things, small things, important things, and silly things, and you can do all those things even better than you thought.
2- your life is pretty stinkin' great.
I hope this summer taught you more about your life, mostly how great it really is. you are living an incredible story, and this summer is just one part of it. I hope this summer helped you realize something amazing about your future, helped you decide what direction to go next. or maybe this summer helped you put together the pieces of your past so that your future makes more sense. or maybe you just have good stories to tell about the adventures you had or the people you met while you were here. whatever it is, I hope you know how how great your life really is.
3- god is bigger than you thought.
being in a beautiful place like quinipet surrounded by passionate, loving people should give you a pretty big idea of god's nature. I hope you saw god in those around you this summer. I hope you learned how god's love is big enough for all of us, from the devout to the doubtful and everyone in between. I hope you saw how god is always working on the bigger picture, even when we disagree with the means god might use to get there.
4- make this place your home. wherever you are, make it these things:
H-happy. frederick buechner says, "the place where god calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." god wants you to be happy. sometimes that means making the best of where you are, and sometimes it means getting the heck out of where you are into something better. learn to know the difference. learn to find your happy. O-open. be open to being yourself. to whatever is next. to allowing those around you to speak their truth. open your heart, open your mind. create space where others feel safe to open up as well. M-meaningful. use your home-space to find out what matters most to you. tune in. whether it is perfecting your chocolate chip cookie recipe so you can feed the masses a little bit of happiness or taking off to africa to fight for women's right to health care, find the meaning in your life. then do what matters. make sure home is where you can rest up to do good work. E-engergize. be sure you have a place where you can rest, recharge your batteries. space that is sacred enough to fill your metaphorical cup. space to take a break, but also space that gets you pumped up, fired up, revved up to do big things. listen to mozart, then listen to macklemore. then do what you need to do to energize yourself to take on the world.
5-say yes. to whatever it is god calls you to, to whatever adventure is dropped in your lap, to each and every chance you have to love on those around you. say yes.
(i started at 2:42 for time and political correctness's sake, but you should really watch the whole thing.)
wherever you are, what ever summer adventure you have had, I hope this all proves true for you as well.
when I was a camper in middle-of-nowhere georgia growing up, we told ourselves all sorts of stories to convince ourselves that camp was magical. there was a certain hill behind the tabernacle that we were sure we could fly off of if we got a fast enough running start. there was a lake monster, of course, and if the wampajaw didn't get you when you fell out of your canoe the leeches would. I didn't need stories to know that camp was magical, though. the suspension of reality for an entire week was magical enough.
being back at camp at a place where I was never a camper, only a counselor, is haunting in a very different way. I knew that coming back to a place I haven't been in ten years would bring up a lot of ghosts. I was counting on phantasmic encounters of things I'd long tried to erase from my head, visions of people I'd long forgotten, memories of a time in life that was hard to muddle through. I wasn't prepared for those ghosts I keep bumping into to be ghosts of myself.
last weekend friends from my first time here at camp came to visit. these are the sort of friends everyone hopes to have in their lives, the kind of cliche "pick up where you left off" people that know things about you that you have long since forgotten. what amazes me about these sort of friends (and this crew in particular) is that no matter how long it has been or how cloudy my memory of my time with them, they know the essence of me better than I could ever describe it myself. that part of me that hasn't changed as I've moved all over the place and married someone I didn't even know when I knew these friends. they know me in a way that doesn't change after having children or going through life's wringer. they see me through eyes that not only ignore my well-earned gray hairs, but also my broken ideas of who I thought I was or even who I think I am. there is no "think" with these folks, just heart connection. and catch up time is not a timeline of events, but rather a swim out to the dock where we confess the big stuff (the heartbreaks, the disappointments, the silly remembrances), while lying on our backs and letting the sun dry our skin.
seeing my ghost-self and seeing myself through the eyes of those who loved me best ten years ago makes it so very clear to me that my life is a magical beautiful blessed adventure. it shows me that I'm doing more than fine, that I'm better off now than I ever dreamed of all those years ago. that all the brokenness, all the wondering, all the uncertainty and leaps of faith and therapy and wandering, all of that makes being my present self all the sweeter.
so now when I see that ghost-like girl out of the corner of my eye, I remind her that it doesn't last forever. that the not-knowing is sometimes just part of the adventure. that she is doing better than she thinks she is. and I thank her for muddling through, for doing the best she knows how, for reminding me just how far we've come.
if I have to be plagued by ghosts, I can't think of a more beautiful way for it to happen.
when I think about it in months, it doesn't seem that long. I guess because I can remember month one (sort of, through the haze of your newness) and I remember month 25 when you finally started getting some hair. sixty months just seem like little tick marks of victories, a nice tempo for you becoming yourself a little bit at a time. but five whole years? that is where I get a little wobbly-feeling. I remember things about being five. that means we are doing things now that you will tell your family about later. we are living stories you will tell to someone you are falling in love with, to your own children as you try to entertain them on long trips, to your therapist as you reflect on how amazing your childhood really was.
pirate shirt, pirate puzzle, pirate face.
and what a story we are living. watching you this summer has been by far the best part of this adventure for me. I can hardly believe I was so worried about you in the months before we left brevard, so concerned that living far away might be too much for you, that you might find camp overwhelming, that getting you plugged into daycamp would be a daily challenge. you love life here. you love day camp: the silly songs, your enthusiastic counselors, your new friends. you love camp life: you beg to eat every meal in the dining hall, you wish we had campfires every night, you think the skits the kids do every friday are hilarious. you have fully embraced this entire experience with a sense of adventure I didn't know you had. it has been an important lesson for me to learn, and I am working hard not to box you in or shelter you too much, but instead to follow your lead in a lot of ways and assume you'll be just fine. I think it is a lesson I'll be learning your whole life, so I am glad I am getting good practice in now.
five is a pretty great age, I think. you can do a good bit on your own, but you still really like holding hands. you are old enough that we can snuggle and read chapter books (books I've been waiting my whole life to share with you) for an hour at a time, easy. learning is something you find exciting and entertaining, a trait that makes me feel much more settled about home schooling. you love "homework books" and have no trouble completing an entire workbook in a single session. we made some sight word cards together and I find you practicing them on your own sometimes. when we are walking together or riding in the car you'll say "somebody give me some numbers!" which is an open invitation to quiz you on some addition or subtraction. you get them right fairly consistently, even when cora strings four or five numbers together. it is cute to watch you concentrating on however you see numbers in your head. I often wonder what the number line looks like to you inside your noggin.
we celebrated your birthday at your pace, which was pretty fantastic. you woke and let papa and me snuggle you and tell you the story of the day you were born. you love that story and your favorite part is when papa says "if we're having a baby today, I'd better go mow the grass!" we piled all your packages and cards around you, and then we could barely see you under them all. your tribe comes correct, something I hope holds true for your entire life. you are surrounded by people who love and value almost as much as we do, people that are not afraid to show that love when we need it most. after you opened all your loot, we sent papa and cora out to fetch bagels while you and I read and colored and played pirates at home. we had mac and cheese for lunch, then met a new daycamp friend at the tuck shop for ice cream. we headed over to lauren and ralph's for a cookout. you were so excited to have a hotdog. we could tell after about two bites that it was not as wonderful as you had envisioned, so you struggled through a few more bites, then left the rest for papa. we fed you cherry pie to keep you going while we waited for the shelter island fireworks display. it was hazy and almost rainy, but not everyone gets fireworks on his birthday. you made it about ten minutes into the show before saying, "I'm tired. let's go home." you were asleep within six minutes.
cora took this one.
you are loved. you are treasured and enjoyed. you are part of a wonderful story, an adventure story at that, and I hope all of that is what sticks when you look back on being five. keep surprising me, j-mo. you are my best thing.
we haven't posted much because we are too busy living the stories we want to blog about later. does that work as an excuse for a lack of posts? I sure hope so. we are certainly taking lots of pictures (well, lots for us anyway. we don't have iphones, so it takes a little more effort than everyone else, right?)
Cora donning her red white and blue attire
jamin and cora started day camp last week, and they totally love it. they come home singing the silliest songs; the current favorite is about how their father does not wear socks. they have had amazing, passionate, enthusiastic counselors, and I am so very grateful for that. some days they are exhausted by lunch time, so we bring them home for a nap and they are ready to go again by supper. these kids, jamin especially, LOVE to eat in the dining hall. it's a huge motivator. lucky for us, there are plenty of vegetarians (and even a vegan!!!) on staff, so the chef whips up some veggie goodness on the regular. last night was portobello mushroom caps stuffed with lentils and peppers. um, yum.
there has been some soul-searching going on this summer as we enjoy our adventure and learn what feeds our family best. one night we hopped on the ferry to go to greenport for supper. we tried to meet up with some friends, but plans just weren't quite coming together. we didn't have reservations anywhere and apparently when you live in a town with classy people, reservations are a must. overly hungry and tired, we stumbled into a little burrito shop. we had sat outside this shop for a bit earlier in the evening and every family that came out was snappy and short with each other. once we were seated inside, we could see why. it was HOT. too hot. and there was only one waitress for the whole restaurant. but we were too hungry to try for anything else, so we sat and sweated and waited and tried not to be snappy with each other. we had been talking earlier in the day about the delicate balance (specifically when one is soul-searching) between taking the plunge and having patience. I'm a plunger. eric does much better with the patience. but this night, sweaty and annoyed, eric plunged. he pulled a sprig of lavender from behind his ear (because farmers always have a sprig to spare) and presented it kindly to our waitress. "you look like you could use this," he told her. "you can wear it in your hair." she stopped and smiled and asked him where he'd found the lavender. he told her about his work on the farm, she told him about her summer job on another farm on long island. they swapped gardening tales, and eric took notes on the farm she mentioned so he could plan a visit. "what's your name?" he asked before she went away to the next table. "patience," she answered.
we raised our eyebrows at each other. maybe it isn't an either/or sort of thing. maybe we can plunge and be patient all at the same time. I'll let you know how it goes.
so the farm has definitely captured eric's heart, but jamin and cora love it almost as much. the only downside is that they have their farm adventures without me. after everyone is freshly rested from quiet time, eric takes the squids over to the farm to explore and play while he harvests his day's pay. we are eating lots of kale salad these days, much to my enjoyment. strawberries have slowed down, but jamin and cora got to try some gooseberries (cora loved 'em). eric's proud moment of the week was teaching his co-pickers how to hackysack. jamin is learning, too, so as not to disappoint when he goes off to WWOOF somewhere at 17.
the horse trailer is a chicken coop! might need to talk to the redbud ladies about those empty ones in the meadow... :)
"BOOB JUICE!" cora yells out as soon as she sees this guy in action.
pigs just arrived at the farm this week. they are currently clearing brush. kids named a couple : snorter and porter were my favorite ones. it's a great chance to see what we might like to have on our own little farmstead someday. although I doubt we will ever have 70 chickens at a time. or that nancy will ever agree to eight pigs. I think 2 pigs is more than plenty.
took the kids canoeing, their first boat ride besides the ferry. jamin's lifevest came from the "goody pile" at the shelter island dump. it's like goodwill except it is free and it all comes from rich people. life jacket is in almost perfect condition. it must have been last season's color scheme or something, who knows.
in the background you can see the bike eric swears he is going to start riding to the farm soon. if I call him out publicly, it might happen even sooner :)
water balloons from nonna!
we're having a wonderful time, in case you couldn't tell. camp life starting to pick up with staff trickling in from all over the globe. I'm leading some staff training activities and some devotions, stuff I love love love doing. this week is family camp and more staff training and our kids start day camp. they can go all day, but my guess is that eric will pull them out most afternoons just so he can have them all to himself. and show them off at the farm. he's a pretty proud papa that way.
thanks to those that have sent mail. it is a big highlight for sure, and we have tried to be good about sending replies, so be watching your mailboxes as well!
ask jamin and cora to sing you the "pizza man song" next time you see them. it's their newest campfire fav.
camp is over. the last of the staff is leaving tomorrow. jamin and cora keep asking me when are we going to do arts and crafts and why don't I push them on the swings like their counselor does. they spend most of their time playing camp, "teaching" me songs I couldn't get out of my head all summer because there was always some group somewhere singing them at the tops of their lungs. thankfully the dining hall is still serving meals for retreat groups or jamin might really go into shock.
I don't really know what we are doing beyond that, and that feels pretty okay right now. I am learning what we are good at, how to balance that between the four of us. how to hold hands and jump, how to appreciate the view from here. and now that we know where it is, it feels good to take the long way home.
