It’s Lent, and We’re No Longer Green

March 1, 2006 @ 5:35 am | Filed under: Family Adventures

By that I mean, of course, that we have passed out of Ordinary Time for a while. I am also relieved to say that those of us who spent the last two days feeling miserably ill are now feeling much better. Jane is eating breakfast as I type. I am thinking I might make so bold as to attempt a small meal myself. Ash Wednesday is a fast day, but I spent the past two days involuntarily fasting, and methinks this is a time when duty (to my own health and that of the baby I am carrying) must trump sacrifice. (Children and pregnant women are exempt from full-fledged fasting anyway.)

Fat Tuesday was not terribly fat around here, unless you count the obese pile of laundry in my bathroom…Did I mention our washing machine broke on Sunday, the day before I got sick? The Sears guy comes tomorrow. In the meantime, good pal Lisa has offered to do a load or two if necessary.

While I was under quarantine, Wonderboy learned to say “elbow” and “foot.” Jane memorized the various types of identifiable fingerprint markings such as loops, arches, tents, and whorls (which she demonstrated for me by tracing them in the dust on my nightstand lamp—shh, don’t tell Flylady). Rose read Daddy’s new book to Beanie. Scott poured endless glasses of Gatorade, gave numerous backrubs, fed those members of the family who retained their appetites, and kept things humming along so that I was hardly missed. Well, he might have missed me a little. He certainly missed a great deal of sleep. And two days of work.

We are now bracing for the inevitable second wave of the plague: there are still four members of this family who have not yet been struck. With luck, the Sears guy will have nursed our washer back to health before the next onslaught.

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Kim says:

Sickies and no washing machine? Bless you. That is a special kind of torture.
Posted on March 1st, 2006 at 6:58 pm
Karen E. says:

How do washing machines sense the absolute worst times to break down? And they usually like to make their point in a particularly forceful way — i.e., while full of water.

I hope the machine and all of you are completely healthy soon!
Posted on March 2nd, 2006 at 6:06 am
Mary Beth Patnaude says:

OHH, I feel for you. That terrible plague ripped through our house bac in Dec, when the baby was 5 days old. Hope you’re all better soon!
Posted on March 2nd, 2006 at 12:21 pm

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Jane, 15 yrs old
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Wonderboy, 6 yrs
Rilla, 4 yrs
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“Exploration,” says John Stilgoe, author of Outside Lies Magic, “is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”

Yes: it is so, so much fun, and that is why I write these posts all chattery with excitement over this or that connection the kids made today. (Or that I made myself!) I know I get carried away, but that’s the point, isn’t it, that way leading on to way has carried me away?

And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?

(from a post called Way Leads on to Way)

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Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.

(Excerpt from this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)