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totally normal day
Only at a 4-H fundraiser are you chasing a chicken through the Tractor Supply parking lot on a Saturday afternoon ….and nobody even thinks twice about it. Totally normal day.
Only when you live on a farm do you send texts like this to your kid’s friend’s mom….on a regular basis… “The girls were running with the goats on their leashes and [name here] fell down. She scraped her hand and knee a little. Just washed it up and put bandaids on. She is fine but wanted to let you know. ” Totally normal day.
Only when you live in a crazy barn do you have to spend 20 minutes figuring out how to feed the feral barn-cats in their transition cages without getting mauled by them because the farm dog decides she’s now a guard dog against those wild things. Totally normal day.
Ummm, did you really turn the goats loose in the back garden to eat the weeds? Now, call the crisis line–we have a jumper.
Only, ahem, ….here, do you find yourself stopped in the road waiting for cattle to cross on your way to a birthday party. And then find yourself at the end of a gated dirt road trying to climb a hill for signal to get better directions to the party…
And then, when you finally get back home and go inside for a break– there’s the chicks suddenly flying out of their brooder and the inevitable scramble for wire -or something, anything!- quick to cover them because it’s still too cold at night for them outside but now you have chickens flying …quite literally….down the hallway. Totally normal day.
At the end of the day, when the sun is starting to set and you finally think it’s time for things to quiet down…you find your kid in the arena training her dog to jump. “Watch mom! We’re going to enter agility competitions!”
And, of course, this was my day “off”. Totally normal day off.
Oh, should I even mention that one of the barn cats had her babies…
Sooooooo….. I’ll make some hot chocolate, put it in a thermos and say good night
Totally normal end to a totally normal day.
Good night from the barn folks.
the difference
A little story.
I can’t put books on hold at the library right now because my late fees went over $10. I need to go in and pay the fines. Homeschool parents and book addicts understand the pain. I used my daughter’s card to finish my hold request. Her fines are at $9.00. This is of utmost importance to take care of before all book access is cut off.
My daughter talks a lot about the girls at dance and their phone addictions. She doesn’t have a phone and we have limited technology/media use in our home. We often notice how others appear to be so caught up in it simply because we’re not so we pay attention to others more. She laughs about how the girls at dance hide in the locker room to be on their phones and then get in trouble for being late to class. They ask to go to the bathroom in order to check their phones. They text and Instagram each other on water breaks….when they are sitting right next to each other. One girl has tried hiding her phone where she can see it behind a fan at the ballet bar so she knows when a text comes in.
How are these two stories related? My daughter just told me that last night at dance a girl told everyone that she was “crying because she forgot her password and got locked out of her Instagram account”. My daughter said “you were crying over that? My mom was crying about getting locked out of her library account”.
where the mountain meets the moon
this moment
quiet
Irish Hot Cross Buns
There’s a book I own that sits on the nightstand near my bed…one my mother gave to me when I was a child. The binding is tattered and the corners are torn, but I never mind that…the book means the world to me.
Behind the faded cover is a collection of poems known as Mother Goose Rhymes and one of my favourites is called Hot Cross Buns. Of course you know the poem:
Hot cross buns, hot cross buns.
One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns.
If you have no daughters, give them to your sons.
One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns.
In my youth and innocence, I had no idea what a hot cross bun was: I’d never seen one, let alone tasted one. Looking back, I’m not even sure I knew what a “bun” was. In America a bun is an updo-hairstyle…
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meeting john muir
“The mountains are calling and I must go”
What a moment. Could you imagine… crossing paths with John Muir on a hike one average, quiet day on our way to a grandmother Juniper tree on a butte?
Our lil’ homeschool group meets on Fridays for “forest school”. Perhaps you remember I’ve spoken of our forest fridays here before. We meet somewhere in nature, for a hike, for a play-day, for communion amongst the trees. Well, it just so happens that Mr. John Muir himself stumbled across us along our hike today–arranged by one of our mamas. A historian who told beautiful stories of the man from Scotland, immigrated to Wisconsin, homeschool educated himself and grown to appreciate nature, courageously explore lands, dream and work marvels in history that ultimately preserved such beauty.
His life is such a monument.
But here we are in this modern day. And an actor-historian arranged to cross our paths. Magic woke up here. Under the trees.
Mr. Muir asked about our group, we said we were home-schooled. He asked what we were doing out there. The children replied…”schooling, hiking, playing, learning, having fun”… I smiled inside when Mr. Muir said “what are you talking about? Schooling in the forest?” and our children responded “yes” like it’s a totally normal thing. Which of course it is for them. For these children, school=play=adventure=learning=loving=being. All one in the same. There was no difference and that indeed was a beautiful moment. Mr. Muir began his story telling by asking the children to close their eyes and listen to the music of the wind in the trees. I took a deep breath. I heard the music. Of the wind. Through the trees. I breathed.
It is easy in the chaos of life to sometimes forget that stepping outside, bending over, picking up a fallen soft leaf, a simple nothing movement, is communion with God. When times feel lonely, when times feel separate, when sadness and grief moves in, the communion comes steadily breathing in and out. In verse. In rhyme. In breath. In a walk, a hike, in the music of the wind. In nothing more than simply showing up, making the hike and breathing in and out. The magic might so happen to just step out somewhere along the trail.
this moment
thoughts on power
“You can blame whoever you like for your problems, but that blame is like a big roadblock keeping you from the confidence you need to move forward. It keeps us from believing in ourselves because it hands over power to someone or something outside ourselves…Be on guard against blame”.
Chris Irwin “Horses Don’t Lie”
barnraised 