Merry Christmas

The morning of Christmas Eve presented a unique challenge. Our seven year old woke up earlier than usual, and his first words to me were this: "Mom, what about breakfast with Santa?"

I gently reminded him that the snow kept us home from a local event in which families enjoy breakfast and a visit with Santa. My answer was no consolation. "But how will he know what I want?"

His concern was valid. In his world, this was a very important matter. I felt a renewed focus to help him on his quest. I bravely replied: "I think Santa will be at the mall today. Let's get ready now to go and see him."

We arrived early enough to wait in line for a short twenty-five minutes. The entire production was professional, with a clear focus on the photographed memory. Santa himself seemed a bit tired, a little grumpy and ready to be done with the whole thing. I wish I had quietly told the team--the usher, photographer and Santa himself: "We don't care about the picture. My son just wants to talk to you."

Hindsight being twenty/twenty, the kids and I got swept up in the production. Twenty dollars later, we left for home, just as families were being given pagers to be notified for their space in line.

* * *

This Christmas has been quite enjoyable. The kids all got toys that take batteries: a simple digital camera, a voice recorder which also plays MP3s (all the bells and whistles without the screen), a pretend chainsaw with four different sounds. I did most of the shopping last minute, choosing wisely not to get stressed out. I know, Mom's are often in charge of such things. Jugs of maple syrup, good olive oil, freshly roasted coffee...who doesn't enjoy such delights?

The gifts I received were really nice: a case of seltzer water, a lightweight jacket, a small set of ceramic houses my sister and I used to play with , and a copy of The J Peterman Company Owner's Manual No. 72. It's the most clever print advertising I've read in years.

Happy Thanksgiving

I would love to live in a neighborhood like this: clean, surrounded by mature trees, with real sidewalks for pedestrians and cyclists. Every house has a large porch, intended for use as an outdoor room. How soon will we see these kinds of neighborhoods sprout up along the eastern United States?

www.rosschapin.com

Dinotopia

This week I ran across the book Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time, written and illustrated by James Gurney. I was floating around one of my favorite places, the Kennett Area Senior Center Book Store. It's a used book store whose donor base is often both affluent and educated, so the selection is good. I had a spare hour, child free, and wanted to enjoy every minute of it.

I am enamored by this book and plan to enjoy the other two in the series which follow. There's discovery and adventure, inventions and engineering, contemplation and philosophy. Read aloud season is upon us, when the kids and I bundle up in bed and enjoy a chapter book together. I might suprise them with this book soon.

For three weeks now, the paw paw trees have been yielding their sumptuous fruit. Some describe the taste of North America's largest native fruit as that of banana-pineapple, others say it is like a sweet mango, while others say it has an aspect of vanilla-root beer. Some hand sized raspberry plants padded into a small nursery bed in the spring quickly grew to productive canes within months. We've been enjoying the month long backyard harvest. Yesterday my husband brought in three chestnuts, the first ever to fall, from two trees which were planted when our seven year old was just a baby. We promptly set to roasting them, and enjoyed the warm, starchy sweetness.

New Discoveries

Abstract:

Fascinating and elegant shapes may be folded from a single planar sheet of material without stretching, tearing or cutting, if one incorporates curved folds into the design. We present an optimization based computational framework for design and digital reconstruction of surfaces which can be produced by curved folding. Our work not only contributes to applications in architecture and industrial design, but it also provides a new way to study the complex and largely unexplored phenomena arising in curved folding.

I've spent the last month transitioning into the new family schedule. I thrive off of newness and variation, though this new set of responsibilities has sent me back to the drawing board. My husband has been a great anchor, providing a calm focus in contrast to the background chatter of life with three young children.

My birthday passed by without much fanfare. In my haste, I forgot to ask for the day off (from mothering that is!). I was delighted by the special recognition at work. With every year that passes, I still feel ageless. Thirty-four seems a lot like twenty-eight, which seemed a bit like twenty-three. Although now when I listen to my favorite Miles Davis album, Live-Evil, the music has never sounded so good. It still sounds like the first time I heard it, which was decades ago. I bet I'm not the only person who feels this way about their favorite Miles Davis album.

So, new discoveries for this month include: hydrofoil surfboards, kite-surfing, paper folding, barefoot jump rope games, freestyle dance, roller derby, the writer Malcolm Gladwell and digital video cameras that film 1,400,000 frames per second.

Unison Hand Made Pastels

These beautiful pastels are hand rolled and air-dried by a small company in Northumberland, England. This may be a place where work and play are used as synonyms. Those colorful sticks remind me of the ones my older brother and I used to make when we were little. I recall one of our main games of playing pretend centered around the idea of 'work'---where we worked, what we did at work, that we were either going to or coming back from work. At one time, my 'office' was up in a pine tree. These games of make believe lasted hours, days, months, years.

Yesterday the rain poured on and off and kept my husband away from his usual tasks. He is a landscaper and an arborist, and for the most part he loves his work. He is also a musician, a composer. After tending to the kids and their needs all morning, he set aside some time in the afternoon to sit down at the piano.

He started off with a familiar tune, some classic jazz standard, and then kept going until he got through it without a flaw. As he warmed up, he went into some of his own compositions, playing them in rounds, changing a few notes here and a few notes there. The house filled not only with the chords, but also with the memories and feelings, the times and situations when he first sat down and played the bits and pieces of what would become full songs. Whenever I hear him play something new that sounds bright, distinct and special, I put in a gentle request:

"Oh, I like that one. Can you write it down?"

There's something about the warm weather that makes me feel like building. When I was a kid, about nine years old, I recognized that I wanted to be an architect when I grew up. A couple of years later, my family embarked upon a summertime labor which brought me close to that aspiration. In our back yard, starting in the summer when I was eleven, we built an addition that doubled the size of our house. My dad was a teacher, and had the summers off. He supervised us with incredible patience and care. The older siblings were all given a new pair of sneakers, a hammer and a nail apron. We started off the project with digging, shovel by shovel, the crawl space and foundation. The younger kids had a great time playing in the piles of dirt.

If I remember well, that phase took a month or two. I enjoyed the physical labor, and didn't hold much of a grudge on 'having to' work on the addition. We worked the morning until lunch, took a two hour break, and then worked some more through the afternoon. Any socializing or hanging out was done after dinner.

The addition was like a part of the family. Our cousin played a main role on the work crew, as well as various aunts and uncles. I remember when the trusses were delivered early one morning. We all stood there in our youth, commenting on how in the world we would get the largest ones up to the second floor, let alone nail them in. We were a motley crew, and we knew it. Somehow we knew that this great responsibility was really an honor.

So, as the summer rolls along, I aim to focus my skills and build something with wood, hammer and nails. Of course the kids will be asking, "Mom, can I help?"

Summer vacation is in full swing. The kids were finished school on the 17th of June; it was a very long school year. We've been passing the time with board games, hanging out with friends and visiting with family. The kids caught up with two different sets of cousins, first nearby in Newark, and then at the beach.

I got to try out a new set of fins while swimming in the ocean. The week prior, I'd spent a little time reading up about free diving. While the ocean is not the safest place for me to try this out, our neighbors up the hill have a one acre spring fed pond. With friends nearby, I look forward to exploring the underwater world there.

On most days when I'm not at work, you'll find me at home in the backyard, working in the garden. Pictured above are the snap peas and broccoli. Our youngest child has a wheelbarrow and set of tools which keep him happy. He's got a pile of sand and soil of which he is fully in charge. He helps me water and mulch, and will gladly transport piles of weeds onto the compost. Even in the heat of the day, he stays focused on the task. When he's tired, he stops working and lets me know he's ready to go inside. I try and follow his lead. These are very special times that we share together.

This week there was an incredible thunder and wind storm. The power was out, and dinner had been served hours before. I was ready to be relieved of any domestic chores, so I decided to go out for a run. Our second child was adamant about joining me.

"Not today. I want to go by myself."
"Mom, I want to go with you. Please, please Mom!"
"Sometimes I say yes and sometimes I say no. Right now the answer's no."

He runs away as I lace up my shoes. By the time I am finished putting my hair up in a ponytail, he returns, holding his thickest pair of winter socks. He proceeds to put them on, pulling them up as high as they can go.

"OK, come on, we'll go together."
"Yeah!! Thanks Mom."

Children are so easily pleased. We drive to a nearby trail, and the second we close the car door he's off and running. I follow his lead, and let him set the pace. When he's tired, he walks, and I run ahead and then back, so that we're always in sight of each other. Half-way through he asks if he can take off his shirt.

"Sure."
"Yeah, I saw two other people running with their shirts off."
"Well, it's pretty hot."
"Hey Mom, if you're sweaty, you can use my shirt to wipe your forehead."
"Thanks. Can I use it right now?"
"Yeah."

He's a very considerate person. We had a wonderful time, and we've got plans to run together once a week. Next week he says he wants to have a race.

Our daughter has been busy, with end of the school year projects and tests. Last week we finally caught up for some laughter and conversation.

"So, what are you reading now?"
"The Percy Jackson series. Oh Mom, the 5th one came out last week. Can we go to Borders soon?"
"Let's go tomorrow after breakfast."
"Oh, cool, thanks."

She's old enough now to buy these things with her own money. The next day she spends all afternoon reading on the couch. I admire the way she works hard at school, and then sets out to relax on the weekend. She's meeting her own needs. She was one of twelve students (out of 56 who applied) chosen to be an ambassador for her school. Reading that letter of acceptance was a moment for me to step back and realize that her school community recognizes her for the wonderful individual whom she is. I am happy for her, and humbled by her wisdom and grace.

It is really helpful for me to recognize how easy it can be to be a positive, loving presence in my family's life. They are continual reminders of the never ending present moment, otherwise known as 'life'.

Such an interesting article...

Cyber Millenials: High-tech And Highly Educated Young Adults Who Drink Way Too Much

ScienceDaily (May 17, 2009) — "Audience segmentation" refers to categorizing people by their behaviors, attitudes, opinions, or lifestyles. It is widely used in social-marketing efforts. A new study uses this method to find high-risk drinkers in the US, leading researchers to a group dubbed the Cyber Millenials: "the nation's tech-savvy singles and couples living in fashionable neighborhoods on the urban fringe."

---

"Marketing research provides a unique window on individuals as consumers that has rarely been used in alcohol-prevention efforts," explained Howard B. Moss, associate director for Clinical and Translational Research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and corresponding author for the study.

"We already know that a substantial proportion of the morbidity and mortality associated with alcohol use is due to heedless high-risk drinking," said Moss. "In this study, we utilized an established and widely used marketing research database and merged it with data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in order to identify high-risk drinkers, their demographics, and consumer behaviors and media habits."

"This is a new approach, which is exactly why this paper is so interesting," added Vivian B. Faden, acting director of the Office of Science Policy and Communications at NIAAA. "Analyses such as this one may provide an important additional way to identify high-risk drinkers by understanding the 'social' groups in which they are most likely to be found. Understanding these groups better and more broadly in terms of their habits, likes and dislikes, and shopping, entertainment and other preferences can help inform prevention efforts."

Moss and his colleagues used multiple marketing-research data sources merged with the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System database. They performed a segmentation analysis of those individuals who self-reported consuming five or more drinks per drinking episode at least twice in the preceding 30 days.

"We identified the top 10 audience segments in the U.S. that engaged in twice-a-month, high-risk drinking," said Moss. "Five of these audience segments were made up of young adults, and five were middle-aged individuals. The young adult segment we called the 'Cyber Millenials,' with the highest rate of risky levels of alcohol drinking, represented well-educated, ethnically mixed, technologically sophisticated individuals who live in urban fringe areas on the West Coast and Middle Atlantic regions."

One of the surprising things about this group, added Moss, was that it is one of the most health-conscious segments of American society. "They have a lower-than-average smoking rate, they go to the gym, they consume organic produce, yet they binge drink at a level that is clearly detrimental to their well-being."

What was not surprising, observed Faden, was that this group was relatively young. "Drinking and high-risk drinking are most prevalent among young people," she said, "and many Cyber Millennials may be continuing drinking patterns established in their late teens and early twenties. In addition, this is an affluent group whose members have the resources to pay for multiple drinks, in a bar or club for example."

"Clinicians tend to be more blasé with younger, healthier patients, and might not even ask them about their level of alcohol consumption or screen them for alcohol problems," said Moss. Since half of our top 10 high-risk drinking segments are young adults, clinicians might want to 'ratchet up' their index of suspicion when these individuals present clinically. Asking about drinking behavior, giving advice, or conducting a formal brief intervention might save lives in the short-term, and reduce the risk of later development of alcohol-related organ damage or alcohol dependence."

"The average reader may be interested in figuring out which group they belong to," said Faden. "Knowing what the drinking habits of that group are may encourage them to reflect on their own drinking practices and recognize that they may be engaging in high-risk drinking." These findings could also be very useful in designing health campaigns for different audiences, she said.

"Readers need to recognize that a healthy lifestyle should include moderation in the consumption of alcoholic beverages," said Moss. "Being young, sophisticated, smart, successful, affluent and physically active does not protect against the adverse effects of heedless and excessive alcohol consumption."

Rain, and lots of it...

The cold rain hasn't stopped the boys from playing outside. A break in the clouds or even a steady drizzle has them putting on any available dry footwear. I coax them into hats and jackets, and remind them to be careful.

"It's slippery outside. Be careful on your bike."
"OK Mom, we'll be careful."

I stay inside, warm and dry, looking out the window every five minutes or so. For me, it is cookbook weather. I make a hot cup of tea and sit down at the kitchen table with a nice stack of favorites beside me. There's Nigella, Jerry Traunfeld, Heidi Swanson and the Barefoot Contessa, all set out to join me for the rainy afternoon. After sorting through half the pile, rereading old favorites and studying the pictures and techniques, I set out to make something delicious.

I set some water onto boil, get out the measuring cups and salt, roll up my sleeves and get to work. Really though, it is more like play. I get to mess around in the kitchen and create edible expressions of love and care. First, cornmeal mush with butter and smoked cheese, as the kids will be hungry from playing outside like puppies. Next, I sautee some onions for a while, to allow time to chop and steam vegetables for a spicy peanut stir-fry. There's a pot of rice cooked yesterday to go with that.

Then onto something sweet. There's a favorite recipe for bars, with oats, dried cranberries and ginger. I double the recipe, and soon find out that this is best made one batch at a time. Oh well, it makes for a pleasant granola. I make another cup of tea while I wrestle with the dishes. The boys burst in from outside, smelling like wet dogs. Their pants are soaked up to their knees, but their eyes are shining. They soon get changed into warm, dry clothes and join me at the table to enjoy bowls of cornmeal mush. It is an honor, to care for my family in this way.

Storage Units Make Great Neighborhoods

Photos by Christina Storozkova

I found this interesting article on www.handsonbuildergrower.blogspot.com :

Color Matching by the Color Blind

Color matching is an important aspect of the printing industry and something I got pretty good at after 8 years in the industry. Generally, when a color is not right it needs one of five colors to make it right - red, blue, yellow, black, or white/clear. 15 years later, I still describe colors as having more of one primary color and less of another (I have never been good at naming all the crayon colors).

Sometimes when we were stumped, we would ask our color-blind associate to help us. He could only see color as gray, but he could tell if one gray was darker (denser) than another and that would help us make the adjustments that to color that the rest of us couldn't see.

This was a surprise to me, that a color blind person could help match colors. When I asked around about it, I was told that color blind people were used to look at aerial photos during World War II. They did not see the camoflage. They could pick out hidden artillery or tanks that others wouldn't see.

Think about that the next time you are picking out numbers from the colored dots at the eye doctors office.

With the warmer weather comes the inevitable days spent at the creek. There is a place nearby where two branches meet. The water is clear, and there's ample shade and a sandy beach on which to have a picnic. There is an old rail road trestle whose stone walls are still standing strong. The kids enjoy a safe place to climb and descend. The other day we found some charcoal from a small fire pit, and promptly set out to decorate the larger stones nearby. These afternoons are well spent with friends and their young ones.

I've been sick this week, hiding underneath my sleeping bag, laying on the couch for days. The kids have gotten used to fending for themselves. Sure, I've gotten up to make a few meals, wash the dishes and cook up a strong pot of soup. Because of sheer exhaustion, coupled by a paradoxical case of insomnia, I feel as if I have reached some new threshold of mothering. Yesterday afternoon I had to get out of the house. My husband and the kids lit a small fire outside. I laid down on the grass to watch the clouds roll by and listen to the twilight bird songs. I wish I had a week off from mothering, in full health!

With this incredible amount of 'free time' to get better, I've been rereading piles of favorite books: anything written or illustrated by Barbara Cooney, David Wiesner's visual journey's and
Charlotte and David Yue's series on various Native American tribes. I set up a short playlist of favorite Ray Charles songs: "Busted", "It's Not Easy Being Green", and "Ring of Fire". This too shall pass, and soon I will be back in good health.

To Renew or Not to Renew

We have an abundance of magazine subscriptions. One of my favorites is The Smithsonian. My grandmother always had a copy on her coffee table. The photographs are fantastic, and the articles offer a variety of interesting topics.

We've held onto Permaculture Magazine for years. It is published out of England. The articles are didactic and project oriented, like this month's "Wild Brewing", "Transition Allotments", and "How to Build Reciprocal Framed Roofs". Runner's World was the best choice offered from a fundraiser for the kids' school. ReadyMade was a gift from a friend.

I.D. is a design magazine, with reviews on projects and designers from around the world. I obtained enough free copies of Inventors Digest from a local library to commit to a one year trial. It's a thin publication, though the information is focused and precise.

I chose to let go of Dwell--two years was enough, and the focus on eco-modern is too narrow for my appetite for learning about new things. CMYK, a quarterly, proved enjoyable, though costly. It may be up to fifteen dollars an issue now. From the library I enjoy Entrepreneur, Writer's Digest, Bicycling and Saveur. I am on the lookout for something dance oriented, as well as something focused on positive parenting.

My newest subscription is to Metropolis. The focus is on innovation and trends in the world of architecture and design. From within its pages I recently learned about the A2B tricycle (pictured above), as well as this engaging article about instructing and learning:


In recent years, IDEO has spent a lot of time and effort thinking about education. The firm’s work with Ormondale Elementary School, in Portola Valley, California, helped pioneer a special “investigative-learning” curriculum that inspires students to be seekers of knowledge. We spoke to Sandy Speicher, who heads the Design for Learning efforts at IDEO. Her insights provide powerful lessons for architects and designers creating the schools of tomorrow:

1. Pull, don’t push.
Create an environment that raises a lot of questions from each of your students, and help them translate that into insight and understanding. Educa­tion is too often seen as the transmission of knowledge. Real learning happens when the student feels the need to reconcile a question he or she is facing—and can’t help but seek out an answer.

2. Create from relevance.
Engage kids in ways that have relevance to them, and you’ll capture their attention and imagination. Allow them to experience the concepts you’re teaching firsthand, and then discuss them (or, better yet, work to address them!) instead of relying on explanation alone.

3. Stop calling them “soft” skills.
Talents such as creativity, collaboration, communication, empathy, and adaptability are not just nice to have; they’re the core capabilities of a 21st-century global economy facing complex challenges.

4. Allow for variation.
Evolve past a one- size-fits-all mentality and permit mass customization, both in the system and the classroom. Too often, equality in education is treated as sameness. The truth is that everyone is starting from a different place and going to a different place.

5. No more sage onstage.
Engaged learning can’t always happen in neat rows. People need to get their hands dirty. They need to feel, experience, and build. In this interactive environment, the role of the teacher is transformed from the expert telling people the answer to an enabler of learning. Step away from the front of the room and find a place to engage with your learners as the “guide on the side.”

6. Teachers are designers.
Let them create. Build an environment where your teachers are actively engaged in learning by doing. Shift the conversation from prescriptive rules to permissive guidance. Even though the resulting environment may be more complicated to manage, the teachers will produce amazing results.

7. Build a learning community.
Learning doesn’t happen in the child’s mind alone. It happens through the social interactions with other kids and teachers, parents, the community, and the world at large. It really does take a village. Schools should find new ways to engage parents and build local and national partnerships. This doesn’t just benefit the child—it brings new resources and knowledge to your institution.

8. Be an anthropologist, not an archaeologist.
An archaeologist seeks to understand the past by investigating its relics and digging for the truth of what was. An anthropologist studies people to understand their values, needs, and desires. If you want to design new solutions for the future, you have to understand what people care about and design for that. Don’t dig for the answer—connect.

9. Incubate the future.
What if our K–12 schools took on the big challenges that we’re facing today? Allow children to see their role in creating this world by studying and creating for topics like global warming, transportation, waste management, health care, poverty, and even education. It’s not about finding the right answer. It’s about being in a place where we learn ambition, involvement, responsibility, not to mention science, math, and literature.

10. Change the discourse.
If you want to drive new behavior, you have to measure new things. Skills such as creativity and collaboration can’t be measured on a bubble chart. We need to create new assessments that help us understand and talk about the developmental progress of 21st-century skills. This is not just about measuring outcomes, but also measuring process. We need formative assessments that are just as important as numeric ones. And here’s the trick: we can’t just have the measures. We actually have to value them.

Gardening in the Rain

After breakfast and clean up and board games and puzzles, the kids chimed in the inevitable:

"Mom, I want to go outside."
"OK, go put your shoes on."

It was chilly and gray. I wore an extra layer, and was glad I did when the rain really started falling.

"Kids, come on, it's raining. Time to go inside," I said that more to myself than to them. The boys were having so much fun, just doing what they do outside, only a bit more slowly in the rain. It didn't seem to bother them, so I ran inside to grab the camera. I took some pictures underneath my extra jacket, and then set out to enjoy the day as any other.

Of course the sun and warmth are wonderful; so too is the quiet stillness of the gray and cold of early spring. Both are immanent, and enjoyable in their own regards. I aim to appreciate life as it presents itself. I can lean into most challenges, questions or conflicts, and just be present. I can listen deeply, and be patient with myself to respond.

Warm weather one day, then cooler with a bit of fog, then windy and cold...how is it that March gets away with this every year? I can appreciate the novelty. Everyday there is something new.

Sour news from last week: A good friend's student died, at home, from a sudden accident. He was eleven, the same age as our daughter. The unpublished cause of death was self-asphyxiation. What realms these young people are exploring through oxygen deprivation, I am certain can be taught to them with much safer methods. The mind and imagination are limitless, though our culture does not have a tradition of tapping into its infinite potential. For our American youth, it has not yet been offered as a brand, lifestyle choice or identity.

It shakes a parent in a certain way, this idea that life is so close to death. Death itself is not wrong, or right. It seems like a matter of appropriateness. Explore other realms in a safe and loving way, in a way that does no harm. As a parent, it reminds me to help my kids access new and exciting ways of experiencing the world.

Along a lighter note, the Meyer lemon tree is nearing bloom. There is one final lemon (still green) from last year's growing cycle hanging on the tree. The south-western winter sunlight keeps it happy. The garden beds which were prepared during the last warm days of the autumn are ready to plant. Today I set in some sweet pea seeds along the fence. Snow peas are germinating on top of the fridge. Next week: radish and spinach.

The subway in Warsaw

The Black Maria Film and Video Festival will be making it's annual stop in my hometown of Newark, Delaware, next Tuesday afternoon. I am making sure I'll be there this year.

Feeling slightly bogged down by an ever growing list of 'things to do', I started compiling a different sort of list. It skims the surface of the things I'd like to do in life. I can add as many things as I'd like, and there is no pressure whatsoever to accomplish any of them. Just imagining the possibilities makes them real.


To Do:

learn two new tricks with my jump rope this winter
learn how to double dutch this summer
hover alongside of a mesa in a wing suit
set up a bungee cord in the backyard to practice aerial dancing
test out the latest gravity-defying boots
enjoy ski biking and snow kiting in Iceland
weave a series of 4 walls out of wool
carve a set of chess pieces
build structures out of stone
live in an outdoor shelter for a season
hunt for food with a bow and arrow
map out an audio atlas of indigenous drum rhythms
sleep deeply on a regular basis

I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so,
In whining poetry.
-John Donne

A friend and I were talking at work the other day. It was gray and bleary outside, and we were trying to uplift the mood of the afternoon. Our musings went something like this:

"I would be the first warm day in May---no, the first warm night in May---no, even better, the first warm twilight in May...""

My friend replied, "I would be a sunlit day in autumn when the leaves are in full color, and the trees are just holding onto them---and the local school burns down---an electrical fire in the middle of the night, of course no one is harmed---and everyone gets to stay home from school..."

"If I could be any memory, I would be the summer I lived in France when I was sixteen---riding my bike, wearing my favorite wool sweater, living off of chocolate and bread..."

We stood there marveling within the world of thoughts and words. Language can be such a subtle form of time travel. What a gift it is, being human.

For now, I am content to live life in a way that will yield many wonderful thoughts and adventures to access for future reverie. Pictured above is one such example. Our lovely family went to the home of another lovely family, to share food and conversation on a cold winter night. The hours passed by all too quickly; one by one the children either fell asleep on the couch, or broke out into fits of laughter or tears. Good times abound and await.

This winter has been absolutely wonderful. The gentle snowfalls have supplied a beauty to the surroundings. For a couple of days, there was a slick surface of icy snow on which to sled. There's nothing like playing out of doors in the brisk cold on a sunny day.

The middle of the winter has passed. And still, who doesn't feel like sleeping in? Sleep is a gift, along the likes of true friendship, classic jazz and clean water. Imagine a society that placed high importance around the enjoyment of a daily nap.

Arriving home from work in the evenings is always an adventure. I work every other day, so the routine is predictable. Though, of course, with most things in life, there is also constant change. I want to relax, have a seat on the couch and enjoy a hot cup of tea. The kids welcome me home in their own loving ways: our daughter peers out from behind her book, our second child breaks his focus from the piano long enough to ask what I brought him, as our youngest happily announces that he wants to nurse, "Now, Mom, now!".

I aim to ignore the aspects of family life which are not as conducive to relaxation: dishes, small piles of paperwork, crackers on the carpet. Sometimes I forget that people without children still have to wash dishes, clean their homes and do the laundry.

The other evening I received a most welcome surprise. As usual, I was home at dinnertime and I wanted to be fed. If I don't prep something ahead of time or get creative with the slow cooker, my work is cut out for me in the kitchen. My husband was setting bowls out onto the table, and soon thereafter came the soup spoons on top of cloth napkins.

"I made some lentils."
"Oh, thank you so much."

It was that easy. I didn't even have to ask. The salt, the pepper, the olive oil and glass of water were all there waiting for me. I sat down in my usual seat, and I didn't get up until I was done.

Why do I love the cold of winter?

There is a certain isolation that the winter's chill brings on. There is a silence and a stillness outside this time of year. I think of the cold weather as something to embrace. I am refreshed by its sharpness, and I am up for the challenge of maintaining a comfortable warmth. It brings a lightness to my insides, and a smile upon my face.



Good Hours

I had for my winter evening walk--
No one at all with whom to talk,
But I had the cottages in a row
Up to their shining eyes in snow.

And I thought I had the folk within:
I had the sound of a violin;
I had a glimpse through curtain laces
Of youthful forms and youthful faces.

I had such company outward bound.
I went till there were no cottages found.
I turned and repented, but coming back
I saw no window but that was black.

Over the snow my creaking feet
Disturbed the slumbering village street
Like profanation, by your leave,
At ten o'clock of a winter eve.

---Robert Frost

After twelve years of living with a wood stove, I am now skilled in the art of making a fire. The bed of coals pictured above is the result of tending the fire all day. Every half hour or so I check in with it, open up the door and see what the situation calls for. Maybe the coals need to be raked in closer to the front, or perhaps another piece of wood is needed to burn with the one already inside. It is interesting to watch how the flames travel upwards, almost the exact opposite of water, which falls, and always finds the lowest places in any given situation (that I am aware of...I'll keep my mind open for a correction on that).

Gathering, chopping, stacking and carrying the wood is no easy task. The wood stove cannot be compared to having constant needs, like that of a child. It is more like a trusted friend, a devoted companion. It asks for a mutual exchange: seasoned wood, fresh air, and a bit of maintenance. Though in return, it gives a warmth like nothing else.

The persimmons were incredibly delicious this year. With the frost, the fruit softened inside, and became slightly more sweet. When most trees are bare of their leaves, this tree and its fruit welcome the sturdy cold of late autumn and winter.