This Week Was — Here in the Bonny Glen

February 5, 2010 @ 8:06 am | Filed under: Family

• getting set up for Journey North (first batch of clues are out today, woohoo!)

• watching Beanie fall into Redwall

• wobbly steps growing more confident…suddenly this baby is EVERYWHERE

• LOST is back. I is happy.

• thinking and thinking about Carney and Winona

• Candlemas with Mallomars

• George Mason and the Bill of Rights

• Big Bad Bunny until I know it by heart

• magical red blooms on the amaryllis

• lots of stuff to read online—Salinger, Apple, Macmillan, and Amazon kept me busy

• several kinds of waiting

• measuring cups scattered across the floor

• Rose’s blue ocean in a casserole dish

• Jane and Gulliver

• a phone call that made my week (I’m gonna be a godmother)

• Wonderboy and Rilla on stools at the counter with eye droppers and food-colored water (thanks for keeping them busy, Rose!)

• Rilla in clompy heels (“clip clops,” she calls them)

• old photos unearthed by my dad…look, there’s Rilla in 1971! (And could my parents be any cuter?)

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Christine M says:

The picture is adorable! Sounds like a good week!
Posted on February 5th, 2010 at 11:38 am
Lisa says:

My kids broke my heart by hating Redwall–I still don’t understand why!!! Love the photo!
Posted on February 5th, 2010 at 11:48 am
Penny in VT says:

Sounds like a fun and BUSY week – congrats on the good news!

(very very cute photo )
Posted on February 6th, 2010 at 4:30 am
coffeemamma says:

I is happy, too. And no, your parents could not possibly be any cuter (the glasses!!).
Posted on February 6th, 2010 at 10:25 am
Jane says:

My daughter called them clip clop heels. She’s still jamming her feet into the one pair she’s had since she was 2. It’s bittersweet to see her at the store, asking if I think THESE will fit her.
Posted on February 9th, 2010 at 10:44 am
Jane says:

I forgot to note that she is now a very tall 8 year old!
Posted on February 9th, 2010 at 10:46 am

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Jane, 15 yrs old
Rose, 12 yrs
Beanie, 9 yrs
Wonderboy, 6 yrs
Rilla, 4 yrs
Huck, 19 months

and Scott, the love of my life

“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!)