July 2007

Tonight’s dinner came from within 50 miles of our home. We had BBQ Ribs from a cow from the next county over. The rest of the cow (well a quarter of him) is in my garage freezer. We had mint new potatoes; the potatoes were from a farm a little north of here, and the mint is from my back yard. And corn on the cob from another farm near by, we also had kettle corn from the same seller at the farmers’ market.

Fresh, delicious, and local. YUM!

I saw it. I LOVED it. I want to see it again.

There is a thunder storm that just hasn’t settled in. My pumpkins really need the water, and it’s way too humid. So, open up you great clouds, you!

Actually, it’s to the beat of an African drum. Who knew Elise had so much groove. Our girls are dancing fools!

I picked up John Doe’s record, A Year in the Wilderness, on a whim last month. After a few listens, I’ve resolved to be more whimsical. Doe, former member of 70s LA punk outfit X, belts out some pretty gritty songs, perfectly penned. I really like Golden State, available for listening below. Share your take in the comments.

because the Queen has nominated our blog for the Thinking Blogger Award!

Which isn’t fair, because she is one of my 5 nominations, so I’ll have to find a replacement now…

These blogs have consistently kept me reading, thinking, and encouraged:

1. Manila Drive- And not just cause they’re my best friends.

2. Nine Tons of Marble- On all things beautiful, and beautifully simple.

3. This Classical Life- Her books read this year will put you to shame!

4. TulipGirl- Gentle, thoughtful, and Graceful

5. Moot Thoughts & Musings- Crafty, motherly, and a little bit funky. I think she’s one of “My kind of people.”

I think every nursing mom has learned how to blend in with her surroundings. Lean back, space out, and don’t dare make eye contact with anyone. You don’t want to notice when they avert their eyes. Just accept the fact that your adorable child who usually has enough charm to start a conversation with anyone in a thirty foot radius has now transformed the two of you into the social equivalent of a leper.

I have grown so used to being ignored when my kids are hungry. I have wanted so badly for any kind of acknowledgment, even negative, so at least I could stand up for myself. But I didn’t realize how thoroughly I have been effected until the aftermath of my experiences at the mall today.

Olivia was playing on the toy car rides in the mall after we had eaten lunch. We were in transit from my chiropractor appointment at 11 and Olivia’s cast removal at 1 so we were just wasting time when Elise started to get hungry. I moved over to the bench where I could keep an eye on Liv and started nursing Elise. I don’t carry a blanket, but I don’t make a big show either, it’s just business as usual.

While I watched Liv ride the train a group of about ten teenage girls comes over and they start taking each other’s pictures on the car rides and laughing. That’s when I noticed that one of the girls was staring at me. That’s not uncommon so I just glance up, grin, and look away. Business as usual.

Then the Staring Girl walks over, very flagrantly, and whispers to her friend and her friend swings her head around to gawk at me. My heart began to race, and I started to think of all the things I’ve prepared myself to say in case I ever needed to defend my right to breastfeed.

This is where things get really interesting. One of the girls notices her friends’ attempt to make me a spectacle, and she turns to me and waves. So I waved back and she said loudly and deliberately, “Your baby is precious.” I was moved. She stuck up for me. I thanked her from across the room.

Right about then Elise was done eating and it was time to be heading to Olivia’s appointment so I packed up my stuff. On my way out I made a split decision to thank that girl for being so kind to me. She helped me feel normal when I had been beginning to feel like a sideshow for doing what I have to do to mother my Baby. As I tapped her arm and said thank you I surprised myself. I totally started crying.

“Thank you,” I sobbed. “No one is ever nice to me. They either ignore me, or are rude to me, but no one is ever nice.” She hugged me, and highfived me.

After I escaped my emotional outburst and made it to the car I reflected on my surprise reaction. Why was I so worked up? I hadn’t even known how much hurt I’d been carrying around. That’s when I put a name to the way people have treated me, I’ve been discriminated against for being a breastfeeding mom. It’s a quiet discrimination, but that’s what it is and it hurts. It belittles, and labels and judges.

I felt an extra solidarity with my Mall Advocate– she was African American and she was probably noticing a feeling in me that she had felt herself before: a sadness and anger at not being acceptable they way you are. Thank God for my own little Martin Luther King Jr. in the mall today…  my hero.

Crunchy Canadians call their generation to come home:

Wallace would agree:

Now, it is just here that true poetic civilization differs from that paltry and mechanical civilization that holds us all in bondage. Bad customs are universal and rigid, like modern militarism. Good customs are universal and varied, like native chivalry and self-defence. Both the good and the bad civilization cover us as with a canopy, and protect us from all that is outside. But a good civilization spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A bad civilization stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella - artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform. So it is with the contrast between the substances that vary and the substances that are the same wherever they penetrate. By a wise doom of heaven men were commanded to eat cheese, but not the same cheese.

Make certain to read the entire thing.

I’ve been through a kind of inspirational winter. Where I once saw greenery and new life and felt light breaking open inside of me, there was for a long while an expanse of ice and snow. Things die in the winter. They curl up and decay and molder and traces of themselves and traces of other things all coalesce until there is only dark earth.

That happens with the imagination, too. Passion, hope, fierceness of belief grow brown-edged, curl inward and crumble.

But “there lives the dearest fresness deep down things.” * The dying and dead things are a humus of memory. And somewhere there is life. Breathing silent, pushing slowly upward.

One more reason to loof forward to the resurrection of the dead, the life of the world to come: The complete renewal and redefinition of work. Man’s curse becomes pure pleasure, great glory to God.

Olivia is on the cusp between the age where she cannot control her impulses, and the age where she can. She has known right from wrong in some sense for a long time. I know this because she is very verbal and enjoys telling her aunts and uncles, “We don’t go outside by ourselves!” or, “Stop fighting!” Knowing right and wrong does not equal being able to master her own desires and comply and so we have a lot of correcting, reminding, redirecting etc.

Well, where she once took the correction, reminding, and redirecting as an annoying interruption to her active play, she now reacts very humbly. When I have said, “Olivia, we don’t use our hands for hitting. Use gentle hands with our sister,” these past few weeks a new response has come from my little girl. She covers her eyes with her hands and sometimes she even apologizes spontaneously. It’s simultaneously adorable and encouraging.

I try to meet every, “I’m sorry, Elise!” with a: “She forgives you. Now we all feel better.” And after something has made Olivia feel particularly guilty I remind her of how Christ has died on the cross for her sins and she doesn’t need to feel bad anymore.

I think this is probably the perfect time to introduce the Ten Commandments. And hopefully I can start helping her to understand how pushing her sister is breaking the fourth and fifth commandments. That’s probably a little ambitious. But it pays to aim high.

They’re gone. I harvested a huge bag of greenbeans from the garden the past few days. I was looking forward to steaming them for dinner on Wednesday night.

Today, after nap-time, Olivia ate the whole bag. Raw. By herself. In one sitting.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. But, at least our garden is going towards a healthful lifestyle for our family.

With 6 tomatos, beans, squash, and peppers,

and two pumpkin plants that GO!

If you’re sitting around feeling un-patriotic you should read this book:

The Killer Angels

It is soooooo good.

I have a button on the side bar that links to my Etsy store.

Thanks, Rob! How awesome!

Tomorrow, if the kids nap I’ll add my first pair of shoes!