Mischief Managed

Amelia met me at the door with her baby blanket, the one she carries around like the Peanuts' character Linus, except this one is patterned with girlish pastel hearts and was made by her Grand Mama when infant girl refused to sleep if not tightly swaddled.

With both hands, she held the crumpled blob of cloth out to me. "Wyatt put my blanket in the fish tank. Can you wash it?"

The fish tank!?

Eyes struggling to adjust to inside light, I saw the blanket wasn't just a little wet. Tiny rivulets of water streamed onto the tile beneath, a puddle growing between us with my every passing second of indecision.

Beyond her lay a path of similar puddles that dripped straight across the full length of the house to the thirty gallon fish tank in the living room.

Emerson and I had only been outside fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, weeding a rose bed, getting eaten by ants, and chopping dead limbs off a tree that fell in last month's wind storm. It was like I had an 18-month old again with the creative intellect of a 4-year-old, unable to be left alone for a second because of what he might dream up to do.

"Wyatt!!!!!" I screamed, grabbing towels and hurriedly starting the cleanup before the water damaged the floor. "Where are you!?"

Silence. Then, guilty little boy peeked his head out of the sun room, his down-cast face a mixture of pleased-with-himself mischief and penitence over the mess, too much the former for this mother already on soaked towel number three.

"What happened? What in the world were you thinking, son!?"

He squirmed, twisting around the door frame. "I was trying to catch a fish."

!!!!!!!

Speechless. What does a mother say in the face of such a statement? I surely didn't know. So, I sent him to his room.

As I cleaned on hands and knees, sounds of the twins murmuring came from the sun room. Every few mumbled words, I'd catch the word "Wyatt." Then, each came towards me with chubby fingers carrying apples, red delicious still cold from their home in the bottom refrigerator drawer.

One apple, two, three...they grinned at the gift-giving and Wyatt-tattling, bringing me two at a time until there were twelve sitting amidst the crayons scattered on the dining room table. Only one had two bites taken out of its side.

First deep sea fishing and now hoarding apples?

Once upstairs, I sat cross-legged on Emerson's bed and looked across at boy hiding under John Deere blanket, eyes peeking out at me as he waited to see how mommy would react to finding an ocean on her floor.

As the story unfolded, it was obvious he thought his actions quite logical. After all, mommy never said he couldn't catch a fish. I listened, biting my lip at times to keep from grinning at the crazy logic that resulted in such a mess.

Apparently, Wyatt put the apples in the sun room so he would have food to eat during rest time. Amelia caught him in the act and said she was hungry.

So....he did what any good brother would do, said no.

He was pretty earnest in defending the fishing expedition. "But she was hungry. So, I was trying to catch her a fish."

A goldfish. With a baby blanket net.

I'm still shaking my head. And laughing.

Last week, Amelia sneaked into my bathroom to shave her legs like she has seen mommy do. It's obviously not as easy as it looks. Hopefully, she won't have a scar. My daddy suggested writing in her baby book, "Age 2: Started shaving."

Children. They can make us parents feel like we are losing our minds! There's no way I can predict what the children will do next. But the creativity of the mischief astounds me, shows me they're spreading their wings in a kind of exploring, a satisfying of curiosity, an application of critical thinking skills, which is something I've taught them to do.

Perhaps they've taken to heart all too well their favorite Miss Frizzle and her mantra: "Take chances. Make mistakes. Get messy." Perhaps we need to put away the VeggieTales Jonah movie for awhile.

Rudeness, defiance, impatience, disrespect--it can drive me crazy. But this? It just makes me shake my head and laugh.

Tuesday was crazy.

Today was laughter. Such a good way to end a week.

Photo: Late afternoon running to get out some of that pent-up energy.

Insufficient for the Battle

I hear his sobs over my head, that unmistakable sound of grief echoing down the open stairwell to where I sit, intentionally sitting cross-armed far away. He has no idea how my chest seizes with his, measured rising and falling in anguish as held-back tears beg for release in the same pool.

In his red-rimmed eyes, saying sorry, so sorry, should make everything better, stitch together rifts seamlessly so they are mended invisible. Isn't that what this forgiveness I strive to teach all about? Casting our sins into a pool of forgetfulness and remembering them no more?

Were it that simple.

After words pierce and actions destroy, the nature of the human heart exposed, the damage doesn't magically disappear . God's forgiveness, my forgiveness--it doesn't mean no consequences. It never has, not for me anyway.

This is the pain of motherhood, disciplining to show love and affection. This is hard, sending this child born of miracle and overflowing prayers to a few hours of solitude when all I want to do is hold him tightly to me, read a few books together, and listen to him spin stories laced with heavy questions.

I move to the unlit hall, shadows falling heavier with the setting sun as adrenaline plummets. My head rests against the wall. Where did I go wrong?

I look up, weary, to husband ushering twins out doors. "I've never seem him like this before. He's never seen anyone act like this either. Where did this come from?" Husband's answer is simple and matter of fact, no finger pointing here. This is every man and woman's willful heart unrestrained, no teaching required.

I silently hope he's getting sick, that maybe this evening's uncharacteristic tantrum is the result of his feeling poorly and not a reflection of his heart, the one I've been striving with my everything to mold from birth to seek after the One who can transform that heart to love, patience, kindness, and compassion.

Knees pressed against prayer closet's red leather kneeler helps lift some of the burden. But Wyatt is only four and a half. This isn't going to get any easier.

By now, he's not crying anymore, sounds of tinkling Legos and footsteps drifting downstairs to tell me he's building, constructing another zoo or too-tall tower in his solitude. Calm.

Were these mere battles of words or flesh, it would be so much easier. Yet, all are really of the spirit.

In these moments, I see just how insufficient I am to mother this soul loaned to me for the training. What was God thinking? I can do only one thing well, and sometimes not even this: seek the One who is and pray.

Choosing a Different Role

Husband moved out the first part of last week. Toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, hair gel, PJs, and next day's clothing all relocated to the guest room for nine days, him choosing to be a guest in his own house.

At the tail end of two weeks worth of sleepless, fevered days and nights, husband finally succumbed to the cold all three children and I were conquering. He knew I needed restorative mending, the kind only found in sleep. He also knew sleep was not something his wakes-at-the-slightest-noise wife could have with him beside her, upper respiratory infection making his sleep fitful at best, constant tossing interrupted by congested coughing fits.

And so, he left our marriage bed, choosing the much-less comfortable twin daybed on the floor beneath. The first night, I slipped down the stairs and peeked in at him, continuing my servant's role just as I had been doing the two weeks prior with children, now checking husband's fever and making sure he had taken his medicine.

At over 6 feet tall and of German ancestry, he looked more like a large grizzly bear folded accordion style in a too-small cave. Beneath him lay a stack of four crocheted afghans and a couple fleece blankets, his attempt to make the mattress more comfortable. Instead, the tableau emphasized how uncomfortable he truly was, seeming to depict some post-modern adaptation of "The Princess and the Pea."

I protested, assured husband this act of kindness wasn't necessary, to please just come upstairs. Stubborn in glassy-eyed sickness, he refused and hunkered shoulder down more tightly between the bed's ends to hibernate.

Even in the early years of our marriage when we two struggled to become one, not even then did we sleep in separate beds. There were certainly nights when we slept teetering on our respective edges, but the same quilt still covered us both. No matter how unresolved the issue, how heated the argument had risen. No matter how far apart our day had taken us... at night, we were still we.

This time, though, I returned upstairs alone. Funny thing about ten years of sharing restricted bed space with one's mate--it makes the absence all the more absent. In half-emptiness, I slept, cold pillows from head to foot where warm husband should be. With every night-time waking, I missed his presence, but my tired body did get rest.

We choose these roles, the ones that show greatest love in self-sacrifice--to be the guest in one's own house, to be the servant to one's own family. Being the hands and feet of Christ to one's own family is sometimes more difficult than showing the same love and respect to strangers. But especially between a husband and wife, these daily acts of demoting self knit the two pieces together all the more strongly, perhaps even more so because the actions are chosen versus required.

This past Tuesday, hands full of toiletries, a much better husband stopped me mid-cleaning in the guest room, that mischievous twinkle I know so well making me smile.

"Well, I guess I'm moving back in," he grinned.

Hours later in bed's fullness, I listened to the cadence of his still-congested breathing, moved my pillow a little closer to his side until my knees rested against him, and pulled the queen-sized quilt up over us both.


Photo: Husband's souvenir for me from his recent business trip to California. I had to laugh; he knows me so well.

Thanks for Enough Time

The house is filled with sounds of the dryer whirring, washer churning a few late-night loads of laundry that I haven't yet done. In truth, I haven't really tried, intentionally choosing during the daylight hours to ignore the thick mantle of dust quilting table tops, the tiny blue-chalked crime scene footprints leading in from the door. In the office down the hall, there are paper-grading deadlines penciled in all seven squares of this week, these less-ignorable tasks to be done.

The second hand moves round all too quickly, half a week gone with the turning. This Martha-type personality must decide to sit, choose the better part. Then, there will be time enough.

I pull cleaned yet unfolded clothes from the basket to dress little ones, giving thanks for the cleanness while choosing to brush away guilt and shift eyes away from the wrinkles. Oldest son and I cook a couple hours together on Monday, homemade casserole and dessert to last for a whole week's suppers. And it is good.

For now, my recuperating children need a mother not splintered by a dozen or more tasks, one focused enough to prod them kicking and screaming back into the comfortable routines of kindness, respect, and patience necessary for peace to exist in family living. It's always hard, sanity-grinding, this pursuit to restore those pleasantries that are lost and need relearning after an it's-all-about-me lengthy illness.

Amidst the whines, tears, and moments of contemplation on the naughty bench, we've squealed giggles over pulling the equivalent to an old maid card in "Win By a Whisker," put together that extra puzzle, read the new princess book for the thousandth time, gathered round the dining room table to color yet another picture for the fridge.

Poet Theodore Roethke said, "I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow." After two weeks of sickness, the children and I have done just that this week, all of us too easily tired from the simple acts of living, from mere waking.

But even in this sheltered quasi-paradise of slowness, busyness still lurks, impatiently waiting its turn as soon as the lights click off, white noise makers filling the air. Still sick husband sleeps fitfully on the sunroom day bed while I work deep into the night grading papers.

As I work, our two kittens leap at windows lit by outdoor flood lights shining through lace-curtained windows, an ever-present reminder to rotate sprinklers from back to front yard. In silky flowered PJ's and clean bare feet, I walk into the evening's cool amidst mosquito-seeking frogs plastered to window glass and crickets that skitter before me down the porch.

Outside, the moon and I whisper friendship, our faces nodding silently each night, co-conspirators in living while others slumber.

Though dust bunnies presently outnumber people in my house, toy/book-cluttered floor spaces more the norm than clean-walking ones, this chaos is a choice. My weekly Bible study goals were met, and I finished two prayer shawls, twenty hours of the better part to send Christ's love cross-country to hurting sister and nephew of my friend.

I give thanks. There has been time enough for what's important.

When it Seems God Has Removed the Hedge From Around You

"Can we go dig it up?" he asked, literally bouncing at the thought as only a four year old can.

Cheerios still lay uneaten in three breakfast bowls, and my thoughts were already racing far ahead to washing bedclothes, watering drought-stressed plants, and cleaning out the spoiled food in the fridge from this family's two week fast due to illness. Last night's excitement? Not even on my radar.

But for oldest son, this was worth remembering first. Mommy had promised to dig it up tomorrow, and promises meant "yes" even if she had to be reminded.

"Sure," I replied. "You have to find me a shovel first."

Late yesterday afternoon with just a trace of misty rain falling like heavy dew, I sent my children outdoors. I'm sure my grandmother would not have approved. She probably would have told me another story of one of my aunts playing in the rain and then getting quite ill, the kind of story where you just smile and say "yes ma'am" because it's no use arguing by repeating discoveries of modern science she won't remember tomorrow and doesn't need to know anyway.

Besides, all three children had already been running fevers for well over a week anyway. So, I sent them out...actually, I forced them out of this house holding in a week of sweaty sickness, no choice for little girl who constantly complained she was getting wet.

Five minutes of drizzle, maybe ten, enough to leave that post-storm scent in the air, to make my shirt damp enough to send back through the clothes dryer another five minutes. While boys spent their time crying over who should have the shovel and throwing dirt in each other's hair, Amelia "helped" me weed the front flower bed, both of us casually pulling three foot long runners of trespassing grass from around still-blooming roses and clumps of dead-headed verbena.

"Is this a weed?" Amelia asked as she gripped another trailing verbena stem. I crossed back and forth across the long bed that stretches the length of our home, just passing time, needing to be out versus in. When I reached the bed's end, I walked around versus cutting across between the roses as I had been doing. No real reason.

As as I turned the corner, a yellow jacket flew past and disappeared less than a foot from where I stood. Then came another. As Amelia and I cautiously took a few steps back and stooped down, we watched twenty or more yellow jackets return home for the night, one after another almost evenly spaced in time like they were on some invisible conveyor belt.

It was another nest, tucked invisibly under a mound of grass clippings, a slight indentation in the mulch's straight edge the only evidence of a hole going straight down to a five-story high rise complex for housing and raising more yellow jackets.

After dark when the nest was full again of its inhabitants, husband poured it full of gasoline.

And this morning? I dug it up. With an excited audience of three and a small trowel, I tried to not make the same mistake I did last fall after finding another nest, slicing straight through it and destroying most of the evidence.It might have been an inch beneath the red clay's surface, a work of serious labor in a 12" x 10" hole. While most of its swirled outer paper shell fell apart as I cupped the nest with gloved hands, all five tiers remained together as one unit. At the bottom of the now empty hole lay at least a full measuring cup's worth of dead yellow jackets.

When I turned the nest over, it was an instant pushing/shoving match to see what we had just read about a few weeks ago in a book about bees--cells with tiny white pin-head-sized eggs laid by the queen, cells with fully-exposed larva that would have been fed regularly by the "nurse bees,"and then those white-capped cells where others were undergoing the final metamorphosis into black and yellow striped flight.Our Magic School Bus book turned real before my children's very eyes...and it was all I could do to keep them from touching. It was one of those light bulb amazing moments where pictures on paper become real, an indescribable light sparking in their eyes.

My daddy is the one who taught me how to dig and discover. But even he says he's never seen one this big.

Two weekends ago, I re-mulched this very bed, arranging grass clippings right on top. Several times a week throughout the summer, I've mindlessly pulled weeds there as I watered. These yellow jackets have been there all along, silently building, so close to the surface, I would have crushed the nest had I simply put my weight on it with one foot, unleashing its fury.

Only God knows how many times He's protected me from an angry swarm.

As I held it, excited myself at the find, I also was and am chastened, humbled. In all my whining and moaning about the sickness that has descended on my house this year, so much so that we've met our yearly insurance deductible and half a year isn't even over...I sometimes get so caught up in the struggles God allows to come into my life that I'm blind to the ones He keeps away.

I forget there is a hedge He has around me.

I don't see what lies beneath the surface that is ready to consume me, yet He keeps away. I don't see the possible car accident avoided because of a five minute frustrated delay with children not being able to find their shoes. I don't see the possible illness avoided because I'm stuck at home with another, less serious illness.

My vision is so limited. This, He knows well. Why else would He stick a five-tier nest in my front yard, His creation to live and die without incident?

For an instant, I catch a flash of that hedge...and I feel His protection.

When You Feel Like the Trial is Too Much

I don't do this well...

this hustling back and forth an hour away to town so I can lift one child after another atop the blue exam table for a doctor to shine lights in little ears and throats, put stethoscope to rising and falling chests. All the while, I rattle off every blurry textbook detail of the past five days since we last saw him.

He is a solemn one, this doctor...good poker face as he looks, listens, and nods about wet coughs, fevers above 105, and oldest son talking dazed gibberish when heat makes brain synapses misfire. When all three have had their turn, he writes another script for medicine, but not because he knows much more than I do about this mystery illness that has survived round one of antibiotics. Words "drug resistant" resonate as we set out for home, me fighting traffic while two in the back slump in exhaustion from their battles.

I don't do this well...

these nights spent with alarm clock set every four hours, a reminder for this also sick mother who would otherwise sleep soundly until well past the early lights of dawn, even while her children sweated feverishly a few feet away in their rooms, making wide puddles on bedsheets.

I sleep on hall couch, a sentinel with two kittens curled atop my toes, night guard against fever-wandering children who have lost their way.

At best, I wake with the four-hour siren for a soft shaking of little shoulders to wake just long enough to suck down a dose of Ibuprofen, my pen recording temperatures that this mommy's fogged brain will soon forget, just like I once did with feeding schedules for newborn twins.

At worst, fevers spike early, oldest gags on the medicine so that last night's supper coats PJ's and bedclothes. Midnight sees me giving a second cooling bath and the washer whirring rhythmically.

I don't do this well.

My mother in law tells me she used to almost enjoy when my husband was sick, because that was the one time she was sure to get in all the close in-her-arms lovings he was usually too busy to give. I shake my head in agreement, all the while feeling like a lousy mother because the busyness of three children sick at once just doesn't allow for getting a love-bank full of long cuddles I'd love to receive.

What's worse, I remember earlier in the day, Emerson asking me to rock him (again) but I didn't get around to it this last time, what with the checking fevers; shoving tissues under pouring, snotty, sneezy noses and saying "blow;" putting cleaned sheets on the beds; praying sentence prayers aloud; administering unwanted medicine; and encouraging each to drink more or eat something!

And then I slow to read about storms and symbols of hope, of mercy in a trial. Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary says, "The rainbow appears when the clouds are most disposed to wet, and returns after the rain; when we have most reason to fear the rain prevailing, then God shows this seal of the promise that it shall not prevail. Thus God obviates our fears with such encouragements as are both suitable and seasonable. The thicker the cloud the brighter the bow in the cloud. Thus, as threatening afflictions abound, encouraging consolations much more abound."

The thicker the cloud, the brighter the bow. No matter how well I'm not walking through this thick cloud, He is here with me. His encouragement abounds in rainbows of consolation...if I can only remember to look up.


Photo: One sick boy perches atop couch while another temporarily fever-free boy looks in surprise that mommy has brought out the camera again.

Working in The Harvest

This week has brought summer's bountiful harvest indoors.

"What's that smell," my daughter asked. This child who picks her fruit straight from the garden vine, who prefers her tomatoes be eaten like apples and who turns up her nose at them when sliced for civilized folk...even she was overwhelmed by the sweet, pungent aroma of a kitchen filled with four five-gallon buckets brimming tomatoes so ripe, they burst like water balloons when dropped.

My knife pierced the paper-thin skins, finding little resistance as I sliced through juicy pulp, quartering them for the hand-turned press. Then came several labor-intensive hours, arm muscles aching, sweat dripping, even inside air conditioned house.With so much ripe fruit at once, my daddy and I took turns cranking. Our left arms repetitively pressed wooden plunger against the fruit while the other cranked the handle round and round, pulling the quarters through, straining out peelings and seeds while squeezing lycopene-rich pulp and juice down the chute.Once poured into jars, lidded, and ringed, we took them outside to arrange double-decker inside the big pot that sees more boiled crawfish than tomatoes. Daddy fired up the propane burner, and we sunk in the shade forty-five minutes until the first batch was done. With his elbow-length "fire" gloves, he used specially-shaped tongs to gently remove them from their hot bath, careful not to tilt them lest they not seal.

The late-afternoon sun shone golden through the clear Ball Mason jars, red pulp separating from the liquid and hiding out at the top. We started boiling the second batch of 21 quarts while listening for the "pop" from those already finished, an indicator that the jars had sealed in the fruit, sealed out everything else.

Monday evening, I could look back on the fruits of my labors--42 quarts of tomato juice, all after my morning of baking and freezing four and a half dozen bran breakfast muffins.

Tonight, I went out and harvested first crop of basil. My feverish (yes...again) children and I stripped the leaves from their stems, the breaking releasing a spicy aroma that still lingers hours later. Husband washed and spread the leaves out to dry so tomorrow, I can make a dozen or more small jars of pesto to freeze for the upcoming year. When all was finished, we had twelve tightly-packed cups worth--with the severe drought we've had this summer, I was amazed, overjoyed at the abundance.
Canning tomatoes with local fruit found right on our farm, making my own pesto--this more "organic" closeness with our food is all the rage right now. I read just last week of some city couple converting their front lawn into a raised-garden, square boards surrounding their three beds of vegetables.

But around here? This is just ordinary life.

It's the way I remember all the summers of my youth--my daddy in his wide-brimmed straw hat as he worked in the garden full of row after row of snap beans, sweet corn, field peas, dinner plate tomatoes, yellow squash--all constantly needing to be picked, washed, eaten, or brought to my mother to be blanched, frozen, or canned.

Nobody ever wrote a newspaper article about him, computer salesman by day, vegetable gardener on evenings and weekends. Now, as his daughter, nobody will write a newspaper article about me either, college professor by night, farm woman by day.

And that's ok.

Eating what we grow, what we harvest, what we store for those months when the land is barren--it's not a trend. It is life, working with the land, seeing God give the increase, and thanking Him for the harvest, however plentiful it might be.