The Birds and the Bees and the Flowers and the Trees

I have done some writing in the last month. Honest. As a matter of fact, I've written more than usual during the past five weeks. But unfortunately, all those words weren't coming together into any proper shape, which is why editing was taking far too long. I felt like I was sculpting jell-o. So rather than publish the formless, strawberry flavored blob I've been chiseling away at, I thought I'd be better off sharing something a bit more concrete to ponder instead.

Here, therefore, are 2,000 "words" from my photos this week:

I Plead the Fifth

Introducing our fifth little boy, Liam Quentin:

He arrived on Friday night, November 26, his great-grandfather's birthday, and was a very healthy eight pounds, fifteen ounces and twenty-two inches long.

Meeting his brothers for the first time:

Jackson Pollock, Eat Your Heart Out

Update: We found something to do on a rainy day!

My parents were cleaning out the garage this afternoon, and they sent me home with a big box of cans of tempera paint. But this was not just any tempera paint. This paint belonged to my father when he was a child. I guess that makes it sort of antique. Now, maybe that means I should have doled it out in minute amounts to keep it around for another 50 years. But, as you can see, I didn't.

I have no idea whether powdered Crayola paint from the 1950s is washable, but here's hoping. My boys discovered very quickly that they didn't need to mix the paint with water if they poured it onto pre-moistened sidewalks (courtesy of a week of rain). Ingenious, wouldn't you say? Surely there must be NEA grant money available for projects such as this. All I have to do now if figure out a way to transport these colorful children from the sidewalk to the bathtub without ruining the floors or my own clothes in the process!

School's out for...

"Summer" has officially begun at our house. We ended the school year well, with a sweet kindergarten graduation ceremony and the celebration of terrific report cards for both my big boys. We had a fantastic 9 months, and now summer lies before us—vast, uncharted, and as inviting as a mile of blank sidewalk to a kid with a bucket of colorful chalk. Or at least it seemed that inviting a couple of days ago. School was dismissed on Wednesday morning, and the boys are now spending their time at home. With me. All. Day. Long.

I really do love having all my kids together again, and their brotherly interaction is something I really miss during the rest of the year. But yesterday, on the first glorious day of our summer vacation, unbroken gray skies drained chilly rain onto our muddy yard. All. Day. Long. That's right. Summer's here! Pull out the sweaters and raincoats! As one of our local store's jingles puts it, "We live in North Idaho...and it shows." School's out for summer. Which, if this weather lasts long, just might make it seem like school's out forever.

So what's a mom to do with four busy-busy, high-energy boys who are stuck indoors with nowhere to go and nothing planned? Well, let me tell you about all my great ideas for how we're going to spend those rainy days during the next three months:


And there you have it. I'm at a loss.

O.K. I may not be quite that helpless, but I confess that I am utterly terrible at coming up with rainy day activities. I've checked out a number of books with imaginative titles like Rainy Day Activities, and they are almost entirely filled with girly crafts. I'm sorry, but my kids do not want to make paper beads to string into colorful necklaces. They're not interested in assembling sweet little clothespin dolls. Tissue paper flowers stuck on green, sparkly pipe cleaner "stems" are not their cup of tea. And speaking of tea, tea parties—and all the lacy whatnots that they entail—are out. What we want around here is warcraft. And loud sound effects. And full contact sports. Sitting quietly around the table with markers and glue sticks does keep everyone occupied for a short while, but it often backfires by simply getting my children to hold in their excess energy for just that much longer. They build up pressure like a pack of agitated soda cans, and then when they are released, they explode.

So, I'm trying to get creative here in order to prevent Cat-In-The-Hat-style disaster. Thankfully, my kids are far more inventive than I am, and in the last three days, they have used up nearly an entire ream of scratch paper in the construction of all sorts of paper airplanes (some more air-worthy than others). They have made super hero masks. They have cut out paper money. They have hosted NBA-inspired bedroom-door-basketball games. I have even, in a moment of weakness, resorted to getting out the play dough for them. They have, of course, colored and colored and colored and colored until our crayons are mere shadows of their former selves.  They've built forts. They've played piano. They've read stories. They've sung songs. And yes, they have already watched more than the FDA's, the FBI's, the CIA's, the NSA's, and the Surgeon General's recommended daily allowance of DVD minutes for children ages 2-8. (I seem to remember that I was never going to allow that day to come.) And today's only the second day of vacation. Oh boy. Times four.

I'd be thrilled if Little Orphan Annie showed up on tonight's forecast, singing cheery reassurances that  "the sun'll come out tomorrow...".  But in case she doesn't, I'd be equally thrilled to collect some rainy-day ideas from all y'all. If you have thoughts on fun and profitable ways for my boys (keeping in mind that they are, in fact, boys) to spend their time indoors—as long as the activities are only mildly destructive to body and belongings—I'd love to hear them!

Oh, and since this is my blog, I reserve the right to end this post with a couple of proud mama photos:

Jonah receiving a medal for getting all A's all year

Jude with his Kindergarten diploma. Yea!

The greatest show on earth

On Sunday afternoon, we celebrated the birthdays of my two youngest sons, Paul and Asaph. Paul is four today, and Asaph turned two on Friday. I know that every mother says this each time her child has a birthday, but I really, truly can't believe how fast the time has gone. My "baby" is two? How did that happen? All I did was put Cheerios and strained carrots into his mouth, and poof! I now have a walking, talking, sword-wielding boy in front of me. My little Paul is now learning to play piano and sound out words. Is that possible? Is there some astonishing sleight of hand at work here?

I can tell you what happened. But I absolutely cannot tell you how. This wasn't my doing. I had nothing up my sleeve. No trick cards. No false doors. This is the real deal. This kind of magic has the makings of a sell-out Vegas attraction—only better.

David Copperfield, you can't impress me. I know someone who can turn water into wine. He can do it with a (magic) word in a moment, or he can do it with rain and vines over months, but he does it all the time. What can you do, Mr. Copperfield?

I know someone who can turn coal into diamonds. Do they do that in Vegas?

I know someone who can transform tomato soup and grilled cheese into flesh and bone. No smoke or mirrors involved. And I don't have to buy tickets to watch it happen. Can you do that, Mr. Copperfield?

Unlike in Vegas, this is the kind of show that attracts biologists with clipboards. They sit, unmoved, in the audience and observe the magic. They describe it in minute detail—right down to the molecular level. They write articles in scientific journals and make Discovery Channel documentaries about it. But they can't tell us anything—not anything—about how all this is happening. Or why. They might use the word "because", but they don't really mean it. All those impressive charts of the digestive process and the breakdown of chemical elements for use by various cells amount to nothing more than journalistic observation.

The biologist might say, "The kidneys convert vitamin D into calcitriol to help the body absorb dietary calcium and phosphorus into the blood and bones." But in spite of his impressive, Latinate words, he is doing nothing more than telling us, in essence, that the kidney has just pulled a rabbit out of its hat. The scientist is simply another spectator (albeit with a good pair of opera glasses) recording his experience at the greatest show on earth. He has no backstage pass.

We think that, because we've seen something a hundred times, we can understand it. Because we can describe what we saw, we believe we can explain why it happened. But that is the only illusion taking place in this venue. What's happening in front of our eyes is no illusion; it's magic in its most genuine sense. The medieval alchemists believed that lead could be turned into gold. But I believe in the far more improbable notion that a single cell can turn into an oak tree, or a sea cucumber, or Barak Obama. Ladies, and gentlemen, children of all ages, it happens in real life! Why isn't anyone selling tickets?

Four years and several gallons of milk can turn my helpless infant into a talkative preschooler. Throw in a few more years and a mountain of sandwiches, and that preschooler will be big enough to drive a car. And his voice will have changed. What a brilliant performance! And I've been invited to watch from the front row. Could there be a greater privilege?

Sometimes, I admit, raising small children seems to be something less than magical. Sometimes a day at home with a group of busy little ones can feel like an eternity—an endless cycle of diapers and drool and discipline. But then, I blink and realize that the baby has (abracadabra!) grown into a toddler. Right here, under my nose, a jaw-dropping transformation is taking place. Suspend your disbelief. (Suspend your unbelief.) Enjoy the show. The Bellaggio has nothing on the nursery.

Cabbages and kings

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
—Lewis Carroll

My kids were playing quietly after their naps yesterday, I'd finished folding another load of laundry, and I'd gotten some small projects done. It had been a reasonably good day, but in the middle of another grimy-gray January afternoon, I was feeling a bit gray myself, and the second latté of the day wasn't infusing much energy into my veins. I always appreciate a good cuppa, especially now that I can smell again, but on this particular Monday, the java wasn't quite potent enough to cure the winter blahs. Caffeine can only do so much. I meandered into the kitchen in search of ideas for dinner and, after rummaging through the refrigerator for a while, resolved to whip up some coleslaw. Not much excitement there, but I had the ingredients on hand.

Then I sliced into this, and found the little splash of color I was looking for:

Ta-da! I bet you didn't know that cabbage is a natural mood enhancer.

Okay. Strictly speaking, it's not. At least not in the way you might think. But slicing into a red cabbage and looking at all that spiraling graphic artistry gave me reason enough to pause, kitchen knife in hand, and marvel—reason enough to call three-year-old Paul into the kitchen to share the marvel with me. "It looks like beautiful paint," he said.

Annie Dillard describes beauty as "a grace wholly gratuitous." "Gratuitous grace" may be redundant, but in that cross-section of cabbage, I could see again what she meant—the surprising discovery of beauty in the most unaccountable places—on my cutting board, next to a Wüsthof knife streaked with purple. Gratuitous grace it certainly was.

Beauty didn't need to be there. Truly, it didn't. I think we would eat cabbage even if it did not look like "beautiful paint." Some scientists hypothesize that we perceive beauty merely out of biological necessity; it's all about preservation of the species, they say. That kind of straight-faced silliness makes me want to laugh and taunt them with a cut cabbage. Clearly these scientists never made cole slaw. Clearly, they know nothing of grace. Grace was right there, lying in wet halves before my eyes on the kitchen counter. And if I can find this gratuitous grace there, I can, it seems, find it almost anywhere, provided I open my eyes widely enough to see it.

One of the delights of having small children is their high-pitched excitement at what, to the rest of us, seems like nothing much. I remember taking our oldest son, Jonah, to the Fort Worth Zoo when he was not yet two years old. We held him on our shoulders to give him a better view and pointed, telling him—with exaggerated zeal—to "look at the colorful birds!" At the "great-big elephants!" At the "tall giraffes!"  I was disheartened to see that, even after our enthusiastic drumroll, my little boy took a brief look at the wildlife and then gave his attention wholly to the industrial fans blowing above our heads.

After seeing countless National Geographic specials, it was all too easy for me to miss the fun in watching a herd of awkwardly galloping giraffes. But what excuse did my wide-eyed toddler have for failing to squeal with glee? I think the answer is simply that he could not have recognized that a giraffe was any less common in Texas than a cockroach. And, let's face it, cockroaches can move a lot quicker. For a person so new to the world, everything is fresh, and everything is astonishing, so the common things hold as much fascination as the exceptional, and a fan can be as captivating as the Grand Canyon. But at the time it bothered me that our son was missing the point of the zoo "experience." To be distracted by the bright tropical plants or the contrived animal "habitats" I could maybe understand. But c'mon, kid. A fan? We can see those at home. For free.

But that's exactly what I did not understand. My emphasis was all wrong. Why would I want my children to be bored with what they can see everyday? I can see a fan at home! For free! Why should I not be thrilled at the very idea? All four of my babies have been held transfixed by the sight of a slowly rotating ceiling fan. And why did that always strike me as funny? We sophisticated people know how to have contempt for the unexceptional. To be bored has almost become a mark of refinement, and  any American high schooler knows that it's not cool to be easily impressed. But why? That day at the zoo, Jonah was experiencing what we all could use a little more of: wonder in the ordinary.

I know that this idea is nothing new. This has all been said before by folks more eloquent than me. But if the idea is right, and I think it is, we must not despise it simply because we've "heard that before."  I could use a reminder almost daily to look—really look—at the jaw-dropping spectacle that surrounds me every waking moment.

Look at the way the sunlight refracts rainbows across the shiny side of a CD. Give your attention to the iridescent shimmer on the multiplied eyes and the microscopic veins tracing through the wings of an ordinary housefly. Watch the way the steam swirls and churns the air as it rises from your morning shower and turns to dew on the bathroom mirror. Make coleslaw, and call the whole family in to watch as you reveal the "beautiful paint" inside a cabbage. Open your eyes wide enough to see the gratuitous grace in everyday life. Because life, as someone once said, is beautiful.

What have these kids been reading?

Usually I find the phrase, "He's all boy!" mildly irritating, mostly because I don't want any boys hearing that and thinking that there must be some boys out there who are "partially girl". But in this case it was the phrase that came to mind as this conversation took place while my all-boys were busy with Tinker Toys:

Me: Hi there. What have you been making?

Jude: I made the ANGEL OF DEATH!

Jonah: Yeah. He made the Angel of Death. But I made the star of goodness.

Me: Oh wow. The Angel of Death? And the Star of Goodness. Hm. Wow. And what did you make, Paul?

Paul: Um....Pakah. [sp?]

Me: Pakah?

Paul: Uh-huh. Pakah.

Me: What's Pakah?

Paul: Um... Just some wicked guys.

* * * * * * *

This little exchange should give you a pretty clear glimpse into the personalities of my three eldest. Jonah is the color-in-the-lines rule follower. (Typical first child personality, apparently.) Jude is the intense and dramatic one with the imaginative bent. And Paul is my nonchalant goofball. More or less.

This also goes to show that you never know what parts of the Children's Book of Bible Stories is going to make the deepest impression. Anybody else out there ever heard of "The Angel of Death" done in Tinker Toys? Sheesh.