Archive for the 'Friends' Category

June 27, 2008 @ 10:15 pm | Filed under: Friends, Uncategorized

Sometimes other people’s secrets are as much fun as your own. I’ve been bubbling over with one of Alice’s for weeks. Go look, go! Is it not the prettiest place on the internet? Be sure to click all around. One thing that especially delights me is having easy access to all her tea menus. These teas are one of her best innovations and have been enriching my own family’s feast-day celebrations for years and years. I was one of the lucky ones, you know, who got to reap the benefits of Alice’s particular genius long before she came to the internet. (Forgive me if I gloat a little.) I remember when she presented her first themed tea menu (a Shakespearean repast, that one) to her teeny tiny girls waaay back in our young-mama days. A decade later, I am still giggling over some of her menu items.

Her Midsummer Night’s Dream tea is another masterpiece, invented for the cast party of her local group’s performance of that play. Because I (more gloating) got to read her upcoming book in manuscript, and because she is including that tea in an appendix to the book, my San Diego friends and I got to enjoy the very same feast after our Shakespeare Club’s performance of scenes from that play—the club itself being an enterprise I was inspired to launch after hearing Alice’s Shakespeare stories. This is the effect she’s had on me for years, and the effect she’s had on the online homeschooling community since she joined that party: she has all these great ideas and makes them sound so easy and doable. So you jump up and do them, and she’s right. I see the fruit of her genius all over the internet.

Which is why people are going to love her book. One of the reasons why, that is. The personal narrative itself is captivating, and I’m not just saying that because I’m a recurring character. Although she did make me cry a goodly number of times as she recounted the story of our own budding friendship back in Queens, NY. What delicious days those were! But beyond the fact that her book tells a darn good story, there’s what I always think of as the “practical inspiration” factor—does a book inspire me to get up and DO? Haystack Full of Needles does. Which I think is pretty impressive, considering I talk to the author on the phone almost every day, so you’d think I’d have heard all her ideas by now. Not so. Because the woman is a fount of them; they bubble out of her. As I read the manuscript, I was thinking, gosh, people are just going to wish they could live in Alice’s area and be part of the things she’s describing. But as I read on, I realized that no, the effect of the book goes much deeper than that: you find yourself energized and eager to put her ideas to work in your own home and circle of friends. It’s a beautiful look at family and community, what we give each other and how we grow together. Which is exactly how I characterize my friendship with Alice Gunther: we have grown up together, as mothers—we met when her oldest was two and my only(!) child was fifteen months old. I’ve been the lucky recipient of her brilliant ideas ever since. It just tickles me pink that now the whole world can enjoy the riches too.

August, 2000. Post Barnes & Noble booksigning celebration. From left: me, unidentified man’s bottom, Alice with our friend Brigid’s sweet daughter Emily on her lap. Photo by Brigid! You can’t tell because we’re sitting, but I was pregnant with Beanie—Alice’s future goddaughter.

Tags: Alice

January 11, 2008 @ 12:02 am | Filed under: Friends

After looking at yesterday’s photos, Mary Beth wanted to know if Rilla ever gets a chance to wear that oh-so-fetching pink hat here in sunny San Diego. Listen, that hat is so darn cute it’d be worth running the air conditioner in winter to lower the temp enough to chill a baby’s ears. Fortunately, our nights here on the edge of the desert can be quite brisk, almost what you Easterners call nippy. We’ve even had a few days lately where we had to wear long sleeves. On Christmas Eve, when we drove up to that little mountain town, we thought about bringing jackets just in case, but they were all buried under our surfboards and beach towels, so it’s a good thing I had these scrumptious knitted caps on hand for the three younger girls. And credit for that goes totally to (whom else?) Alice. She called me one day last month especially to tell me Hanna Andersson had the world’s cutest hats marked down to a ridiculously low price and I hung up on her to get my order in rightaway. As always, she was one hundred percent correct. Cutest hats ever.

October 9, 2007 @ 7:48 am | Filed under: Family, Friends

In response to a French book containing "40 reasons not to have children," the inimitable Karen Edmisten has written a list of her own: 40 Reasons to Have Children. It’s a gorgeous, powerful, right-on-the-money list.

One year ago today I had the immense pleasure of meeting up with Karen and her three children, Anne, Betsy, and Ramona-who-makes-me-laugh, at a motel in Salina, Kansas. They had driven all the way down from Nebraska just for the rendezvous. Karen and I had been close online friends since 1998, but this was our first time meeting in person. It may as well have been our 500th, like we were meeting at a park for our weekly playdate. The kids hit it off like they’d grown up together. In a way, they had. I’ve been regaling my children with tales of the Edmisten girls’ hilarious exploits since all these lasses were teeny tiny. They’d read all the same books, shared a common lexicon, enjoyed the same brand of mischief. An hour in their presence and I could come up with another forty reasons for Karen’s list.

Wouldn’t be half as lyrical as hers, though. Go read and you’ll see what I mean.

August 14, 2007 @ 8:26 am | Filed under: Family Adventures, Friends

So I know I’ve been quiet here lately. First we had company of the very nicest sort (about which, more later), and then the kids and I took a jaunt up the California coast to rendezvous with Alice and her family. You should harass Alice for more pictures. I loaded her memory card onto my computer and it is ridiculous how many adorable shots she snapped. Like this:

Whereas my shots always come out like this:

The car part of the trip was a lot harder this time around, but I blame L.A. On the northbound trip we crept in bumper-to-bumper traffic from San Diego to thirty miles north of Santa Barbara. (Later, Rose reported to Alice: "We sang 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall all the way to the end!" Alice, to me, deadpan: "Oh, honey, you WERE desperate!")

The return trip on Sunday afternoon was much brisker, hardly any slowdowns, but spirits were low after our tearful parting from the Gunthers, and the back-seat contingent sought to relieve their feelings with bickering of the most crazy-making sort. After a while I began to feel like Nurse Ratched in a mobile version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. In an impulsive move even more desperate than the launching of 99 Bottles of Beer, I pulled over at a Toys R Us close to the highway and bought Rose and Beanie each a Tamagotchi. Because, you know, incessant electronic bleating is so much nicer to listen to than sweet childish voices raised in song. I told you the bickering was crazy-making!

(Best Tamagotchi moment so far: yesterday I was cooing over the then-and-now baby pictures Alice posted, marveling over how much Rilla and her pal have grown. Beanie heard me and mournfully agreed. "I know just how you feel, Mommy. I miss my Tamagotchi baby so much!"

Me: "What do you mean? You just got it!"

Beanie: "No, Mommy, it’s a toddler now! It hasn’t been a baby for HOURS!")

While the 600-mile round trip proved more sanity-challenging than last October’s 2800-mile travelpalooza, the two-nights-and-a-day sandwiched in the middle were blissful. Except, you know, for when Wonderboy wouldn’t stop shrieking because someone had turned off one bedside lamp and left the other one on. And because he was alarmed by the pull-out sofabed. And because the baby was playing in the closet. And because Beanie was holding the remote control. Poor, poor kid. Poor, poor lodgers in the rooms on either side of us. At one point I realized with a jolt that we had become those people. You know, the ones whose overpowering noise makes everyone else in a hotel gnash their teeth.

But downstairs in Alice’s rooms, delight reined. Our girls picked up right where they left off, right down to the Snoopy songs and the homemade comics. Beanie and Patrick tested every possible surface for bounceability. ("What are you shooting out of your wrists, Beanie?" "Vines, of course! I am Vinesnapper, you know!") Maureen mothered the babies (and Wonderboy too, when he would let her) in the most adorable manner. I got to see all of Alice’s San Francisco photos, which alone would have been worth the trip. Beautiful stuff she’s got, and she already knows the city’s history and architecture through and through. Amazing.

I shall enter this closet to make my brother scream!

(This is a cute picture, so Alice must have taken it.)

Ooh, it all went too fast. I feel like Beanie, mourning the all-too-brief infancy of her Tamagotchi. I wonder when—and where—our next rendezvous will be?

April 18, 2007 @ 6:21 am | Filed under: Friends

Online friends of mine will remember my desperate pleas for prayers for my beloved friend Brigid after she was nearly killed in a terrible car accident four Decembers ago. I still get letters all the time asking how she is doing now. If you’d like to know, head over to Cottage Blessings, where Alice has posted a beautiful and heart-wrenching tribute to the miraculous recovery of someone for whose life we both thank God every single day. Love you so much, Brigid.

February 23, 2007 @ 12:34 pm | Filed under: Family, Friends, Geography

Another delightful missive from our globe-trotting pal…

Feb. 12, 2007
Bangkok

Dear Rose,

I think people in Thailand must love elephants. I’ve seen many statues of them as I explore the city. They are in different positions & as big as real ones. I think I’ve seen as many elephant statues in Bangkok as real elephants in India. I like the real ones the best.

Also in Thailand are a lot of geckos. They scamper all over the place & they move very fast. Do they have geckos in California? I think you’d like them.

The hardest part of being in a different country is reading maps & signs. The written language in Thailand is totally different than English so I can spend a lot of time standing on a corner trying to figure out which direction to turn towards. Usually someone comes along to tell me where to go. I’ve gotten myself lost many times, but I rather like the adventure of finding  my way back again.

The most strange thing about Thailand is the potato chips. They are flavored with fish, crab, shrimp, & even seaweed. Rose, it’s as gross as it sounds! If you were here with me, I’d buy us a bag & we’d get lost together!

Love,
Keri

August 26, 2006 @ 10:09 am | Filed under: Friends

The kids and I just got back from another little road trip, this time to Northern Virginia to spend a night with Elizabeth’s clan. While we were there we got to sneak in a visit with Amalah and her so-cute-I-think-I-need-to-keep-him baby Noah. I got home to find super-nice (WAY too nice!)* posts about both visits, and it was funny to read them because all the way home yesterday I was composing my own post in my head.

*(Example of way-too-niceness: Amy kindly omitted to mention that when we saw the small piece of poop lying on the floor of Barnes & Noble, I was terrified that it had come out of Wonderboy’s diaper. He was running up and down the aisles, and since a little trip-packing snafu had resulted in his having to wear one of Rilla’s diapers, it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that there might have been, um, a containment problem. But I chased him down and (oh so glamorously) sniffed his bottom and WHEW, there was only the sweet plastic aroma of Huggie.)

(Of course, when I recounted this story to Scott later that night, he said, "Well sure, all the poop had fallen out." Thanks for the reassurance, honey. But I swear it WAS NOT OUR SON’S POOP. There was no evidence of fallout in the diaper, if you know what I mean.)

Anyway. I loved meeting Amy, who is smart and funny and down-to-earth and tolerant of small children wading in public fountains. Noah is completely delicious, so much so that Beanie almost killed him with love. I had to threaten her with NO ICE CREAM if she didn’t stop squeezing the poor little guy, and for a minute there she was actually torn. Baby? or Ben & Jerry’s?—really quite a tough choice.

It was awfully sweet of Amy to drive out to Virginia for the rendezvous. Beth the Playgroup Dropout was supposed to meet us too, but I fear it seemed too much like a playgroup and she dropped out. No, no, I’m kidding. Actually her poor little Mia had a fever the night before and Beth had to beg off, which was a bummer because I was really looking forward to meeting them both. I hope Mia’s better now, Beth?

After the Ben & Jerry’s/Barnes & Noble gathering (pretty much my only criterion for choosing a meeting place was that it have an ampersand in the name), we hopped back on Route Sixty-Slow, as it will forevermore be known by my children, to head for Elizabeth’s house. The whole way there I was thinking about how much the internet has brought to our lives. Elizabeth herself was an internet friend first, many years ago. Almost a decade, I think. I first met her through the Catholic Charlotte Mason yahoogroup that she and Michele Quigley founded. We quickly moved from e-list acquaintances to email friends to telephone friends to the kind of close friends you pack your five kids in the car and drive hours to go see.

(Perhaps even more to the point: the kind of friend who COOKS FOR YOU, really incredibly delicious meals, even though she is mere weeks away from giving birth to her eighth baby, and who, when you ask what you can do to help, airily waves you into a big comfy armchair and says, "Just keep me company." I, on the other hand, am the kind of friend who, when you visit me, says "Let’s order a pizza.")

It’s funny how well you can get to know someone online. Sure, you have to be cautious about revealing too much to potentially creepy strangers. Internet friendships take time and discernment; you don’t necessarily click with someone as immediately as you might if you met her at, say, a neighborhood bakery where you bonded over scones and nursing toddlers, just to throw out a random example. But over the years, online friends can become every bit as real as your "real-life" ones.

This is what I was thinking about on the trip home yesterday. About Elizabeth, and how her book came along to invigorate and inspire me at just the right time. About Karen, who emerged from a sea of voices on CCM to become someone whose name in my inbox means a lift for my whole day. About so many other CCM and 4Real friends, far too many to name, whose children are as real and dear to me as members of the family. There’s the CCM friend who heard I was moving to Southern California and sent me a book about fun things to do there, just because she is nice. Or the amazing 4Real friend who leapt into action and found places for Scott to stay during his first couple of months out there, while we’re waiting for this house to sell. I mean, that’s pretty huge. These people are letting a total stranger into their homes, feeding him pizza, offering up their washing machines. Washing machines! These are large families we are talking about—washer time can be as precious as bathroom time, believe me.

And really that’s just the beginning. There’s a tree in my yard that’s a baby gift for Wonderboy from a group of longtime AOL friends. (How I hate to leave this tree, a beautiful river birch.) We’ve all known each other for eleven+ years, since the days we wandered onto the "Baby’s Here, Now What?" message board on AOL when we were all pregnant. I’ve known them as long as I’ve known Jane. Eventually we ditched the message boards in favor of a private list, which we dubbed Technologically Advanced Mommies because, you know, we were all such techno-gurus with our fancy 14.4 modems on dialup. I drifted away for a short while after a big list blowup, but when Jane got sick in 1997, the other TAMs were right there with care packages and hospital visits, arms and ears wide open.

Rilla is upstairs right now sleeping on a blanket handmade by one of these friends, Holly, whose trip to meet her recently adopted son I pointed you toward not long ago. My house is full of gifts like this: the box of paints from Jacki, the handknit baby cap and booties from Sue; the tattered, cherished copy of More More More Said the Baby that Jenny sent when Rose was born. But even more precious to me are the relationships we have built: the journeying together through little trials and big ones, sharing the funny moments, the hilarious ones, the I’m-sure-it’ll-be- funny-someday ones and the really-not-funny-at-all ones. We’ve traveled some rough roads together; nearly everyone in the group has weathered some kind of major life crisis with the help of all the others. I can’t imagine life without them.

This morning when I woke up—with this post already percolating in my head—there was an IM on my screen that had come in late last night, after I went to bed. It was from one of the moms who had been part of the TAMs group ten years ago but we’d lost contact with her after that. She still had my name on her AIM buddy list; I hadn’t used AIM in a million years but now that Scott’s on the opposite coast we’re IMing each other like mad. Sarah saw my name pop up and sent me a note. I’ve thought of her often and was actually talking to some of the other TAMs not long ago about trying to track her down. And now here she is, back on my screen. Which you have to know, means in my heart. That sounds hopelessly sappy; I keep deleting it and then saying what the heck. I mean it.

My whole educational philosophy is about making connections, building relationships. I guess that’s my internet philosophy too. The internet is about connections and intersections. It’s about seeing Amy’s Noah and feeling like I knew him already because I’ve applauded so many of his milestones; it’s about looking eagerly each day for a new Elias or Ramona story. (I really wish my sisters and Scott’s siblings had blogs so I could read daily niece and nephew stories too. Ahem.) It’s about my friend Joann bringing a bunch of her kids to stay the night and all of us hugging like it was a family reunion, when really it was our first time seeing each other in person. It’s about a whole new crop of west coast friends already rolling out the welcome mat for us, and friends here saying "At least I can keep up with you through the blog." It’s about holding my breath when the Bookworm went into labor, and counting down the days until Elizabeth’s newest daughter arrives. Sitting in her beautiful learning room with a passel of kids playing games on the floor, surrounded by shelves full of all the same books I love best, I had to laugh at how little I could have anticipated the treasures that pokey old 14.4 dial-up connection had in store for me.

Elizabeth’s boys saying a tender farewell.