Picnic

This post is part of the Creativity Boot Camp, Day 2. 

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What is it about a picnic that inspires us so? Is it like coloring outside the lines? Breaking the rules a little bit? And why are we humans like that? Why do we work so hard to keep our lives the same, resisting change, creating stability and structure. Then we want to rebel. We want something new and exciting to happen. We want to do something that isn't so ordinary and boring. We want to be distinguished. We want, in fact, the very thing we do not want...change.

So, we have little ways of breaking up the sameness. We have picnics. Oh, the joy of eating outside on a summer day, spitting watermelon seeds in the grass, not worrying about the spilled lemonade or the crumbs all over. We feel free. 

And I've come to the conclusion that these little things feed our spirits. Our deviations from security and sameness wake us up a little. We delight in taking off on a road trip, eating under the open sky, stopping wherever we wish. It brings us freshness, like the smell of ripe tomatoes still on the vine, pungent and new. 

We return, though, always we return (or wish to return), to our place of security, the taste of freshness and freedom keeps our secure places from growing stale. The picnic blanket tucked away reminds us that we're still free, even as we continue to walk the daily-daily of life.

Ivory

I have been longing to join the Creativity Boot Camp along with some other wonderful women bloggers (whom I discovered through the Momalom gig), but the first word prompt on Day 1 threw me so badly that I had to let it rest for several days. I was planning to remain several days behind the rest of the camp anyway, as Boot Camp began in the days prior to my oldest flying out of country, and I needed to spend time with her. Anyway...the first day's prompt was the word, "Ivory," and I haven't been able to finish the piece of writing.

Here it is in its partiality...so that I can move on, and let it sit while I continue with the boot camp prompts.


Ivory makes me think of elephant tusks and piano keys and the book about the tooth fairy that I used to read to Mane when she first started losing teeth. It also makes me think of wedding dresses, of the more muted and elegant color of ivory in contrast to the stark white of...well...white. And then there's the stigma that off-white is for the non-virgin bride. And then my thoughts spiral away like elephant tusks thinking of the damage done in the name of female virginity.


I finished a novel about a week ago called Breath, Eyes, Memory about a Haitian girl who comes to live with her mother in the U.S. at the age of 12 and her experience with the practice of mothers "testing" their daughters to check the status of their virginity until they marry. This is to insure that the family name will not be dishonored by a woman turning out to not be a virgin on her wedding night. This, of course, raises myriads of questions for me. Among them: What kind of husband parades a bloody sheet through the streets after his wedding night? Should he really be proud of himself for that? 

And then I think of the opposite of the ivory wedding dress...the ivory tower: the elite untouchables, those who are too clean and pure to touch the rest of the world. Strangely, I feel that both the obsession with virginity and the cloistered elitism are part of the religiosity of conservative Christianity...or, perhaps, it isn't Christianity, but just religiosity, which seems to fall so readily into legalism. I'm not talking politics. I'm talking about graceless religion...the kind of religion that looks down its nose at people but refuses to get dirty in the trenches doing the real work. Hypocrisy. Claiming to love but refusing to love anyone who is lost, or wounded, or misled.


And I keep picturing the curve of the elephant tusk, the fine, easy graceful curve...the dangerous curve...both sides of the same coin. 


That's really all. Spiraling thoughts, eh?

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Questions from Mane

Today Mane asked me, "Have you ever noticed that you can't lift something up that you're sitting on? ...I mean, did someone discover that sometime?"

Of daisies, streamers, balloon, and bouquets...

This is what was left of my Mother's Day flowers two weeks after Mother's Day. My husband and my beautiful children brought me a bouquet of roses and lilies and daisies and greens. After the roses and lilies started to droop, I took them out and kept the daisies and greens. Today, a single daisy still remains in a bud vase on my counter. ...I like to draw out the bouquet as long as I can, cutting stems, replacing water, and picking out the drooping blooms until it's time to let it all go. I think we do holidays like that, and birthdays, too, here at The Midnight Cafe. The streamers from Niteo's surprise birthday party over a week ago still grace the doorways, just as the balloons from Mane's party hung from the trees in the yard until they wrinkled up and had to be cut down. And Vespera's wedding bouquet still hangs from the hook in the kitchen ceiling. We honor the person(s), whose day it was, as we pass by the bits of their celebration day after day.

I heard once that your birthday isn't over until you receive the last card. I like that. We like to draw things out, milk them dry to the very last drop, and then we can be ready to release them...because the memory will be ours, even when the balloons have wrinkled, and the streamers have fallen, and the daisies have, at last, faded. 

I read a poem yesterday by Will Allen Dromgoole called Fragments From the Years, and the last line sticks with me. In speaking of memories, he says, 

"And sometimes, when life seems to hard, we give them greeting, 

And know that memory is a possession, too."  

I think of the way we hold onto the last vestiges of bouquets and decorations as out way rehearsing our memories before we tuck them away.

I'm honored!

Post Mommy surprised me today with a "Versatile Blogger" award! I've never received a blogging award before, and I'm honored! I met Post Mommy through Momalom, and it's been delightful reading her blog (hint: that = go on over and check it out!)!

It appears that I must tell my readers 7 things about myself and then pass the award on to others. So, here are my 7 things (trying hard to come up with things I haven't already said in this blog):

1. In spite of all my talk about organic foods, natural products, attachment parenting, and the like, I cannot grow a garden worth beans.

 2. I wore a bikini for the first time last summer.

3. I've been to 5 other countries outside the U.S.A.: Canada, Mexico, England, Scotland, and Belize - in that order.


4. I've known my best friend since we were 7 years old. (Go see her over at Driving With the Windows Wide Open!) We used to pledge our friendship over a stream in the woods behind her house, and we played with paper dolls that I still have in an album on my bookshelf.

5. I have a daughter and son-in-law from Mexico, and I still don't speak Spanish worth beans.

6. I don't really know how much beans are worth.

7. I resisted blogging for a long time, and I still sometimes wonder why I'm typing everything on the internet for the whole world to read. 

I hereby bestow the Versatile Blogger award upon...

Driving With the Windows Wide Open because she truly is a Versatile Blogger, moving in and out of newsy items, stories, links and videos, and a timeline of Tolkien's life!(Just click on the award to make it load in a new window & copy the link to post it in your blog!)

Lauren at Something Glorious because I know she reads my blog, and I really, really want to see her post something in hers! You've got to read this woman's writing! It's fabulous!

and

Ash at Simple Gifts, also because this woman is totally Versatile!! He blog has some serious and spot-on thoughts on parenting, fabulous photos, prose that'll make you laugh and cry, and a garden enough to make you hungry!

I would nominate Char at Well Blue, Productions, but I'm afraid she's busy with newborn twins right about now. Love you, Char!!

Peace!

~ MidnightCafe

Where There is No Vision - More Marriage Thoughts

My Bible study group was discussing recently something Beth Moore once said about how churches get all caught up in legalism and things that don't really matter when they aren't actively living out a mission together, when there is no goal, no vision, no active work of God's Spirit or God's presence. When there's nothing active happening, the waters stagnate. Churches die, and the people that are left end up arguing about minutia, spinning circles with nothing to do.

Proverbs 29:18 says (in paraphrase), "Where there is no vision, the people perish." It seems to me that marriage is the same way. When we lack vision, common goals, something we're actively working on together, the marriage dies - from lack of attention, from neglect and boredom. And this happens even when life is busy and it seems like you're doing a lot together (i.e. childcare, household care, meetings, events, etc...). You can be very, very busy, and still lack vision. Vision gives your life purpose and direction.

For busy couples with young children, it can be enough to make the things they're already doing together their vision. It's about intentionality. If raising your children together really is your vision and you're intentional about it, you can be just that - intentional and present. Still, what we've found is that when we finally have time alone without children, is that we used to spend the time wondering what to do. We needed direction for ourselves as a couple apart from the daily daily of life...long term and short term intentional things we wanted to do and accomplish together. Some things currently on the list are as simple as going to see the Dead Sea Scrolls at the science museum. That's a goal sometime when we finally have a minute to spare.

Mango and I were talking about this the other day, and he offered this perspective:

Marriages need things that couples are working on together - common goals, common interests. Sometimes life gives you these and you need to work together or support each other. When it doesn't you have to create your own common goals. But every couple should anyway. What do you want your life to look like? What do you want to accomplish together? What do you want to do to enjoy life together and enjoy each other? What things do you want to do together, learn about, what skills do you want to develop, what places do you want to visit?

Couples need to plan time that they can spend together and ask each other to do the things they want. Otherwise they end up living side by side parallel lives - together but alone (that's the worst kind of aloneness to have). So time for each other needs to be a top priority. If people don't make some plans, their time will just slip away and leave them feeling disappointed that they didn't do anything valuable with it. Or they will default to doing their own thing or things that are easy but neither of them really care about (and watching TV doesn't count). It will start to feel like they should have just worked more hours or done things with someone else. But in reality, it's not that they don't enjoy time together, it's just that they haven't given themselves a chance.

Also, couples need to make space to be intimate together. Instead of just waiting for an "appropriate" time to initiate something, like when you are going to sleep, and already too exhausted, couples should talk about desires ahead of time and spend a nice evening together anticipating what they planned for later - set up expectations and give intimacy a chance, give anticipation some time to build.

It is fun to be really spontaneous, but sometimes complete spontaneity doesn't work. We keep a note book of places we have heard of that we want to visit and things we want to do together. It's not like it's a lot of work - just a place to keep the cards, advertisements or places or events that you jot down so you can actually do them. Then instead of not knowing how to spend your time when you finally have some, these things make you really look forward to having time together and being excited about it. It will start to feel like you never have enough time to experience all the things you want together. It lets you be more spontaneous because you always have things you would like to do.

So, there you have it folks...more thoughts on marriage by MidnightCafe & Mango!

Say Yes!

I received a very valuable piece of parenting advice once. The advice was to say "yes" to my children as often as possible so that when I needed to say "no" they could respect it.

I must say that 8 years into this parenting adventure, this advice rings true. I find that, for me, the word "no" comes far too quickly. When I know that things will be messy or exhausting or chaotic and they'll require a lot of set-up and clean-up and monitoring, I'm tempted to say "no." I have to ask myself if my "no" comes from a good reason or if it's just my own impulse to keep things neat and clean and simple.

Because when I say "yes" I let my child know that what they want is important, too. I let them know that I hear them, and that I want them to have a say in how their life should go. I open us both up to new experiences and possibilities just by being willing to try out a "yes" before I decide if "no" is really worth it.

Saying "yes" releases me from the power struggle of saying "no" for no good reason. It builds contentment in our relationship because we aren't constantly fighting about what they can and cannot do.

"No" still isn't always well-received, but I know that it's built on a foundation of "yes," and that means our relationship will recover. And because I know that my "no" isn't just instinct or impulse, I can provide a valid reason and respond with confidence. My confidence gives my child confidence - confidence that I know where the boundaries lie, that they will not just keep running to the edge of the world until they fall off, but that they will, indeed, meet up with a fence that keeps them safe.

And so I try to practice "yes" because I know that "no" will come anyway.

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This post is a part of Momalom's Five for Ten...