I got only positive comments on last month’s new format, and I like it too, so for now, I think we’ll keep it. :)
Something Told
5 favorite photos from the past month.
I like this photo because Teddy’s curls and bare chubby legs remind me of a vintage illustration from the Dick and Jane era. He’s helping me mix blonde brownies, which the children have come to call “Daddy bars,” because they’re Ivan’s favorite and I always make them for his lunches.
Dad and Mom came to visit over Fourth of July weekend, and it was special indeed.
We parked at the top of a nearby hill to watch a convoy of semis pass, in honor of a trucker who died. I like this photo for the beautiful sky and the right angle formed by the golf carts.
Their first evening here, I showed Mom my little miracle tree. You see, the seven fig trees I was so proud of last summer died overwinter. All I had left in the buckets were bare brown twigs which never budded…except one which sprang up from the roots about a month later and surprised us. I attribute the miracle at least in part to Mom’s prayers.
What won’t a child try? Including hanging upside down from the handle on the ceiling of a car.
Something New
What I am learning or doing right now.
The other day the washing machine thump-thump-thumped in the basement. It does this sometimes when spinning out, due to an aging drum and large pieces of laundry that persist in piling themselves on one side, no matter how perfectly I balance them initially.
I rushed to the basement–the thumping loud as thunder–and found the washing machine galloping across the concrete floor and nearing the end of its tether (the electric cord and fan-folded plastic pipe sticking out of its backside). While I opened the lid to stop the cycle, Annalise stood at the top of the stairs and scream-cried hysterically.
“It’s fine,” I assured her, reaching into the washing machine to rebalance the load. I closed the lid and reached to start the washing machine.
“Don’t start it!” she screamed. “I don’t want it to do that again.”
And no matter how many times I assured her it wouldn’t thump now that the load was balanced, she wouldn’t believe me. “I’m going out, then,” she cried when she couldn’t convince me not to start the washer again, and ran out the screen door with Teddy–now also upset and crying–behind her.
I brought her back a minute later and stood at the top of the stairs with her, listening to the now reasonably quiet hum of the spinning washing machine.
“Did you think the house was going to blow up?” I asked her, and she said yes, she had been.
She has so many fears, this daughter of mine, fears of physical things her body seems to perceive more potently than mine ever has. Fears also of new people, new places, new things.
Maybe she gets part of it honestly. Because when I think of my childhood, a lot of what I remember is being scared. “I felt everything in four dimensions when I was a child,” I wrote in Anything But Simple, “felt my soul to be wide open and unprotected, with no barriers to keep me from getting hurt. The feeling terrified me and caused me for a long time to remember my childhood as scary and difficult instead of what it actually was: fun and rich and warm with love.”
I still live with fears many days. Fears of people and what they will think. Fears that I won’t be good enough. Fears that someone will be mad at me and break off a relationship. Fears of reaching higher, stretching longer–like with my recent pitches to larger name magazines–and failing. Or worse, looking like a fool.
I once read about the five Chinese elements–wood, fire, earth, metal, water–as ways of categorizing personality types and decided I was water, in part because it is said that water people’s chief adversary is fear. They may fight not be ruled by their fear–even doing riskier things than most in their effort not to be subjugated to it. But for water people, fear is real.
Maybe. Or do all people have hidden fears they seldom talk about?
When I was doing Bible studies with ladies at the local jail before I was married, I remember several of them talking about having to overcome their fear of going into Walmart. That is not something I’ve been scared to do yet. But maybe if I was a resident of a rural community and had my name splashed across the local newspaper for a crime I’d committed, maybe if I thought people at the one store in the community where absolutely everyone goes would have me already pegged as an ex-con–yes, almost certainly then it would take some courage to go into Walmart.
But I’ve said all this about fear just to say this, the mantra I use over and over again to combat my fears: You don’t matter that much.
I mentioned that mantra on this blog once before and got some feedback that amounted to: “Be encouraged; you matter so much!” or “Stop thinking about yourself and talk about Jesus!”
But I don’t mean my mantra in a cynical or self-pitying way. It genuinely helps me to think about the fact that I don’t matter, much.
I want so badly to get things right, and it helps me to remember that any decisions I make, any impressions on others, are a smaller than pin-sized dimple on the surface of time. It helps me to remember that others are not thinking of me one iota of a percent as much as I am thinking of myself. Remembering humbles me, empowers me to try for my own sake and not because of what others think.
I know that I am loved.
But I am one sea blossom only among a thousand others beneath the ocean–beautiful in its place, called to the job of being and making and growing–but only one among a thousand, nothing more.
When its life force is spent, it washes away in the tide, and no one but the one or two blossoms nearest knows the difference.
Something Borrowed
I liked this; maybe you will too.
On that note, here is a poem my special old lady friend Charlene once found at a garage sale and gave to me. The inscription below the poem says it was found in Old Saint Paul’s Church in 1692, but a little research reveals that it was actually written by Max Ehrman in 1927 and titled “Desiderata,” or things desired. If you don’t want to squint at the photo, you can also read it at this link.
Something Blue
A splash of color from the family journal.
July 28 When putting Teddy down for a nap, he wondered if it was dark outside. (The back rooms where the children sleep are dim, with the blinds pulled down.) Teddy said, “Let me look out the window to see if it’s dark.” So I held him up to the window and pulled the blind back for him to see the light. Then he said, “Now let me look out the other window to see if it’s dark.”
Only a two-year-old would think if it was light out one window, it might be dark out the other.
I should try a photo theme sometime again! Btw, did you mean to write “something old” instead of “something told”? The editor in me is not easily turned off, lol!