Light and Momentary

Peonies

When I called to tell her that Joe was finally going to be born, seven years ago today, my friend Shannon brought me a peony from her garden. It had been tightly furled just that morning, she said, and now it was blooming beautifully. She wanted me to have the visual, so I could think "open open open" through my labor.

Our peonies have been blooming, spilling forth that same luscious pink. I can't look at them without thinking of Joe's birth, which might well have been the finest day of my life so far. It was my first homebirth and I was astonished at how joyful it was. Of course birth is joyful wherever it happens, but I did not know there could be so much joy in the process, joy in the laboring.

It was hard. He was 9#12 and his head was gigantic. But it was my pain and I was not afraid of it. (No matter how much it hurt, when it was over I wasn't going to be pregnant anymore. I was very tired of being pregnant.) I remember using a technique from Birthing from Within in which I tried to ride the pain, like a surfer. I remember seeing kaleidoscopic colors when I closed my eyes; I remember wave after tremendous wave. 

I also remember a confidence that was absent in my two hospital births. I was on my own turf on a glorious day in late spring, there with a doctor I trusted and a dear friend as well as my husband. We laughed all day long -- that's what I wrote about it when it was all over. I said I wanted to live my life, and eventually die my death, the way I had gone through that day -- "with courage and laughter even in the hardest places."

In each of my pregnancies I have asked the Blessed Mother to intercede for my unborn baby and me. Joe came along in late August, on one of the feasts of St. John the Baptist, and so for months I had prayed daily for the intercession of Our Lady of the Visitation. How fitting, then, to wake up in labor on her feast day. I still ask daily for the intercession of Our Lady of the Visitation, in hopes that my children will recognize the hidden presence of Christ whenever they encounter it -- that they might see the truth of their redemption written plainly in unexpected places.

That's what I think of when I see those tightly closed peony buds. You would not guess that they could contain such extravagant beauty, and yet they do. Tonight I am wishing my Joe -- my seven-year-old Joe -- a year full of joy and beauty, hidden in unexpected places.

Yet Another Conversation

Pete was snuggled up next to me. "Mama," he said slowly, "when I grow up and move away from you--"

    "Yes, darling?"

Eyes filling up and overflowing, he finished, "--I will miss you."

7 Quick Takes: Fading Peonies Edition

• This summer I am leading an online discussion of Kimberly Hahn's book Graced and Gifted. It has inspired me to implement some new habits to help our home run more smoothly this summer, but I am tired after this first week of it. I am also tired because Pete is out of preschool and missing his friends. He does not think -- just imagine! -- that coding transcripts is much fun to watch, and so I have been working after all the kids are asleep. Sarah the babysitter is here this morning to play with him and hold the baby and I am grateful for an extra pair of hands. I'm writing these quick takes in between coding tasks.
• Remember the horrible painful syntax analysis that prompted me to ask for help? After the guy said he'd be glad to help me (still can't quite believe he's going to do all that work for me), I figured out the problems that had prevented me from using the better software. It would have seemed like a much, much more manageable task if I'd been using this software from the get-go. I think my frustration was providential, because I would never have asked for help if I hadn't been so overwhelmed. A helpful reminder for me, to remember that God is at work in the midst of my exasperation.
• Barring disaster, I will be done with data collection in two weeks. Done! With data collection! In two weeks!! It has been a long slog, but the end is in sight.
• We've been praying the novena to the Holy Spirit, which I've enjoyed a lot. The boys, not so much. I am looking for some flame-themed fun ideas to celebrate Pentecost -- any thoughts?
• This is the last full day of school -- two of the boys are supposed to go back for an hour next week to collect their report cards. What's up with that, anyway? Does it allow them to fulfill a state requirement for days attended or something?
• Most of my perennials came back up and I have been enjoying them. The weeds, though! The weeds are relentless this year after I let them take over the joint last summer. I need to get out there this weekend and yank them out again. Wonder if the boys would help me if I encouraged them to be Indiana Jones hacking through the jungle?
• Speaking of which, remember how the boys sing the Indiana Jones theme song to comfort the baby if she wails in the car? This morning she was singing to herself in her carseat and I said, "Pete, what song do you think she's singing?" He answered instantly: "Probably the Indiana Jones theme song." I was going to post a picture of Pete in his Indiana Jones hat with his Indiana Jones whip (fabric, plays the theme song) at the ready. But I hit a snag copying the pictures from the card reader, so you will just have to use your imagination.

More quick takes here.

Yum

Potato recipe from Madhur Jaffrey:

Take about 2 pounds of potatoes (I used 4 average-sized specimens) and boil them in their jackets until tender. When they're cool, peel and cube them. Recruit a 4yo to measure out 2 t. cumin seeds, 2 t. black mustard seeds, and 2T. sesame seeds into a little dish. Heat 6 T. oil in a frying pan, and when it's hot chuck in the seeds. When they sizzle and pop, add the potato cubes. Toss them around in the oil for five minutes or so. Next add 2 t. salt, the juice of half a lemon, and cayenne to taste. Cook for another three or four minutes. Garnish with cilantro.

Conversations

"Mom, can you help me figure out how to be paler?"

    "Why do you want to be paler?"

"So I can look like a computer genius who spends all his time inside writing code."

    "What if you just work on learning a lot about computers?"

"No, what I want is to be paler."

***

"Why do I have to pick up Legos while my brothers get to sit down and read?"

    "They'll pick up Legos in a few minutes. You have to take the first shift, because they did their downstairs picking-up tasks cheerfully and you gave me trouble."

"Trouble?! I did not give you trouble. I made a perfectly logical argument which you failed to follow."

    [inwardly]: BOGGLE

Ascension

I was admiring my baby's hair a few days ago. It's too fine for me to take a picture, but she has little waving strands that stand straight up, undulating skyward. I smiled and thought, "Maybe they're reminding me to turn my eyes toward heaven."

Last night I went out impulsively and got six inches chopped off. I have been cranky all day about it, wishing for hair that obeyed the law of gravity. Maybe it's a good look for Ascension Thursday, though. I need a T-shirt that says, "I'm not having a bad hair life. I'm just reminding you to look toward heaven."

Wow

Remember how I had resolved to slow down? Forty transcripts each week, no guilt no pressure? I did that for a bit and it was GREAT. Then the nudges started: finals are coming. You should speed up so you don't get behind while you're grading. If you just did one more transcript each day, you could get 46 done each week. That's more than 40, you know. More more more.

I am never sure how much detail to include about my dissertation, because I don't want to cause any glazed eyes or nodding-off-bashing-head injuries. So I'll try to be succinct. I'd been coding elaborated noun phrases. Kids start off saying "dog," and progress to "big dog," and eventually get to "the gigantic smelly dog that dug up my grandma's prize-winning tomato plants." A dearth of those more complex phrases is one of the things that distinguishes kids with weak language skills, especially when they're telling stories. I had also planned to do a syntax analysis on about half the transcripts. For about a third of them, one of my advisor's collaborators had already done the analysis, and a few dozen of them couldn't be analyzed because the kids didn't have enough to say. I would do the rest.

Oh, my.

Syntax is complicated. Kids can toss off a five-second utterance that takes me 10 minutes to sort out grammatically. (I hadn't used this approach since 1993, which is part of why it was so slow.) Even though I was picking up some speed as I went along, it was very very slow, painfully slow.

Yesterday I started thinking that maybe I should ask my advisor's former collaborator if he would consider helping me with this last analysis. She and I had discussed this possibility earlier in the process, but it just seemed like a crazy request. Hi! Want to do 50 hours' worth of work for me even though we hardly know each other? That's what it would take me: a bare bald minimum of 50 hours. Not just any 50 hours, either -- 50 hours of solid concentration. I find that I hit a wall with this kind of close analysis, too, so that even if I had no distractions whatsoever in my life, I couldn't possibly do it for more than four hours a day.

It seemed like a bold request, perhaps even a presumptuous request, but I felt this funny prompting to go ahead and make it. I asked for my advisor's input on the email I drafted to him, and I asked some friends to pray for me, and then I sent it off.

He said yes. YES!! He said he'd be GLAD to do it for me.

I am going to finish the year 3 syntax analyses, about another 30 of them, because I want to understand this approach. I still have to finish coding noun phrases for about 130 more transcripts. But! He is going to do the year 2 syntax analyses for me! Wow.

I feel like somebody just handed me a thousand dollars.

Real

Last week I was talking to a friend who said, "I read all these blogs where these women are writing about their happy lives and I wonder what's wrong with me." And I said, "Whatever else is bothering you, don't let the bloggers get you down." The thing about blogging, see, is that I choose what to present. And I could tell you that my children brought me breakfast in bed, scrambled eggs and bacon and a sectioned grapefruit and coffee, and that they had made me little secret gifts. I could tell you that my oldest wrote me a poem in which he said I was "as cool as a Star-Bellied Sneetch." ("What else was I going to rhyme with 'speech'?" he said when I asked him why.) I could stop there, and leave you a saccharine picture of life in the Gladly house.

Always remember: saccharin = fake.

Curious

How can there be so much snot? and so much laundry?