the honey home

glen dean and the eternal perspective

If I hadn’t slowed down intentionally I would have missed it for sure–even though the sign was large, it was hidden behind overgrown trees that blocked it from view until it was almost too late. The road sloped down to the right in a westerly direction; great green-grassed ditches were on either side of the pavement. In the distance the road disappeared around the bend and into the trees.

“I have to set the stage for you,” said my Aunt, and I slowed to a stop there in the road. There is very little traffic in this part of rural Kentucky, and the road we’ve turned on is even more rarely frequented. I didn’t even think to turn on my flashers as we sat there. “In this town there is a hotel. There is a train depot and railroad track. There are restaurants; there are little streets and houses.”

“Right now?” I was excited at the thought of seeing a little, well-preserved town.

But she shook her head. “No. Well…you’ll see.”

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sticks and stones

rest-5

It was just after 8:30 a.m. when the questions started. Coincidentally, this was also when the globe light in the boys’ room turned off, signaling that it was alright for them to get up and out of bed. Clive was the first out the door, as usual, and his questions started as soon as he met me in the hallway; Ephraim was languishing in bed–also as usual–and his questions started as soon as I walked through the door of their room.

On this particular morning he was flipping through a book–Sam and the Firefly. They love this book, and we read it frequently. He must have gotten the book while he was waiting for the light to go off. I greeted Ephraim, then lifted Anselm out of his crib and laid him on Clive’s bed to change his diaper.

Ephraim was gazing at one of the last pages of the story when he asked, “Mom, why are they happy that the train has stopped?”

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the long way home

It was Friday evening, the end of our visit to Florida; Jeremy and I were trying to decide what departure date and time would be best for avoiding the nightmare of post-spring break traffic. Would we wake everyone early, before the sun? Would we take our time leaving, knowing the highways would be jammed no matter when we left? Which day would be worse, Saturday or Sunday?

It’s the worst part of vacations, having to pack up and go home and drive for a day on a mindless, boring stretch of highway. I dread it, in a way, and I always try to get through it as quickly as possible. In fact, not one week before, someone had asked for tips on traveling with small children and I had said (among other things) to try and stop as little as possible. More stops make for longer trips and longer trips–well, they make my blood pressure go up.

So secretly I hoped we would opt for Sunday, since it would delay the grief of a day spent in the car as well as give me an extra day to dawdle about packing. In the end, however, we decided we would just take our chances and leave Saturday morning, though not in a rush.

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The King of Pickles

“Mama…” Ephraim says quietly as he bends towards me.

We’re eating lunch: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, goldfish crackers, cherry tomatoes picked from our hanging baskets, and sweet pickles.

Ephraim’s just brought three or four of the latter from their bowl to his plate when he leans in the direction of my chair and whispers solemnly, seriously. “Mama,” he begins again. “Would you call me…The King of Pickles?”

It’s the strangest thing I’ve been asked all day.

clive cover-31

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the lure of slow living, part three: on routine

When I first read about slow living–or began seriously overthinking it, truthfully–there was one aspect of the lifestyle that I couldn’t reconcile with my life as a full-time homemaker and mother-of-four. It was the question of where routines and schedules fit in with the concept. In eschewing “busyness”, was slow living attempting to throw off living by a clock? How so? And how much? And was that really possible?

If you have small children at home, you know how quickly things can devolve into disorder if there is not something–or someone–uniting all things in a common purpose and steering everyone’s attention toward that end. Without that anchor, my children (or, really, the three that can move independently) are like ships tossed on the waves of whatever their whims are at the moment, and I am reduced to herding and chasing and nagging and then yelling to get everyone back together. And it always takes longer in the gathering than the scattering.

It has to be said that there really are times that they should be able to pursue their own interests and let their feet run off to wherever their minds will–that’s what our copious amount of time for outdoor play is for, really. But times when it’s time to eat, or sleep, or brush teeth, or whatever things have to be done because they must be done? What then?

clive cover-35 [Read more…]

over and over

lensbaby swing-21

In the quiet of the afternoon
after the morning of playing and swinging and chores and errands
after the washing of hands and the sit-down lunch
after the rounds of may-I-be excused‘s
and the carrying of cups and plates from table to kitchen,
after the three-year-old says I’m ready to snoozy
and the two-year-old begs for “Night-Night Pooh”*
and tries to climb into his crib himself
after the baby is fed and put to bed
and the five-year-old hauls his basket of trains into the guest room for his quiet time
after the groceries are put away
after the coffee is re-heated
and the coffee cake is cut
and the only sound is the clock ticking
and the five-year-old sneezing
and the audio-book reading
I sit down to write.

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the lure of slow living, part two: on busyness.

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I wrote this about a week ago, in the midst of our packing:

I have just gotten Elvie to stop crying and go to sleep and am sitting for a couple of minutes in the silence. It is late for the boys–usually they are up by this time–but they must be especially tired to be sleeping late. And as if on cue, that thought is followed by the appearance of Ephraim, bleary-eyed and bed-headed, dragging his blanket over to where I sit. We exchange our good mornings, huge and kisses; he goes back out, and Clive comes in for the same morning treatment. After he wanders towards the bathroom, I get up to get Anselm out of his crib, where I can already hear him protesting his brothers’ absence.

When everyone is changed, dressed, hugged and with teeth brushed, we head downstairs for breakfast, a chatty row of ducklings still clutching their favorite blankets and talking about oatmeal. We eat–I’m last because I’m waiting for my coffee to finish–and one by one they ask to be excused and trot off upstairs. Once they are all squared away with toys and a show so I can focus on another day of packing, I hear Elvie begin crying from the other room.

Some days are just like this. Not every day–yesterday wasn’t–but some days I seem to bounce from child to child to child to child, kindergartener to preschooler to toddler to infant, in a sweet and essential cycle of hugs and kisses and meals and ouchies and nursings and what’s this? and where’s that? and sorries and forgivings and several other words I could also make up right this moment. There’s no exasperation in days like this (well, except for when Elvie is inconsolable for no apparent reason) but it certainly feels very busy.

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the lure of slow living

On Christmas morning, we broke my parents’ microwave.

It was a Christmas brunch, and there was a whole lot of bacon to cook. So we did it in the microwave–batch after batch after batch, cycle after cycle, until suddenly there was a horrible smell of burning plastic and a swirl of smoke and the machine was quickly ejected from the festivities to sit forlornly on the carport, where we watched warily to see if it would burst into flames or not. (It didn’t.)

It was an old microwave–I can say this because appliances age much more quickly these days than they used to–and no one was really surprised or deterred by its sudden demise. And we had done without a microwave for years when I was growing up, so no one was in a hurry to replace it, either. So we left it outside and moved our bacon-making to the stovetop.

motley crew [Read more…]

janderhil (the Big News)

kentucky

a cloudy sunrise in july

Two weeks after Ephraim was born, my grandfather passed away.

So we packed up our newborn and headed to Kentucky to the funeral. I was a brand-new parent, and I was suddenly and painfully aware of the shifting climate of the family. My dad’s family had always been close, making sure to spend holidays together and hold reunions and reunite frequently, the families of the five Jarboe siblings convening at my grandparents’ house like so many streams returning to the spring. For a child, this was an incredibly comforting and secure ritual, and one that was taken for granted for a long time.
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