email to my mom

did you see this post secret? I think I probably agree...
 

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weary in a way I am not sure I can come out of on my own. so ready to be with you this weekend. being the change I want to see is just so damn hard sometimes. especially when people hurt little kids and the world doesn't always feel safe.

 

 

in other news, cora called grandpa bob on her pretend phone today. she said he hasn't been feeling well, but he's okay. love marches on to the strangest drummers. thankful for that. and for you.

 

 

how can I love my kids enough? how can I teach them what peace looks like? how can I explain that I am sad because love isn't big enough to set the world right all the time? and then explain that I am probably wrong about that, too, becaue Love (with a capital L) is certainly big enough, given enough time and space, and I probably don't even know what "right" really looks like. jamin's school sent beautiful emails, full of all the gentleness and peace that we love about the staff there, reminders that our children can guide us, reminders that love casts out fear and we cannot be lead by fear if we are to raise peacemakers in a fallen world. so I will keep on loving bigger, looking to the helpers just like Mr. Rogers says, because the blurriness of tears makes it too hard to see anything else. I am so glad you are my mom. I'm so glad you set this mothering standard so high. I am so glad you love big enough to let it spill on my kids too because sometimes I feel too empty to do this job right. but I am not called to do it by myself.
 

I hope I will be out of tears by the time I see you this weekend, but that probably won't be the case. it is what I do, this crying thing. and you have taught me to love that about myself, to hold myself in the gentle way you would hold me. and because of that I can tell jamin and cora that I am not scared of their tears either. and if I am not crying, I know we will laugh hard enough together to make the tears come again. and I love that, too.

 

 

pray for me and I'll pray for you too. that's just what we do.

are your hands getting filled?

I am pretty sure I cry more than most people.  this used to really bother me.  at a recent family gathering my mom and I were talking about having teenagers in the house and all the tears that were involved.  my sister mused that she didn't remember tears being a notable part of her adolescence.  my mom and I just looked at each other and laughed, not that carey was a crier, but that I more than made up for both of us.  "my grandmother is a very emotional woman," I am quoted as saying regularly in our family lore.  I suppose I am just following in her footsteps.

I do most of my crying in the car these days.  in my twenties this was a huge marker of dysfunction to me.  I can remember having to pull over on 240 in west asheville because I was crying so hard and chastizing myself because THIS IS NOT WHAT NORMAL PEOPLE DO, which of course just made me cry harder.  I did a lot of screaming at the top of my lungs in those days, and the car was the safest place to do it.  I could scream almost the enitre distance from burnsville to the unca exit, that long stretch of 19/23 that brings up much more pleasant memories when I think about it now.  back then my tears were a mark of all that was weak and unhealthy and crazy about me.  now crying in the car is just part of my commute.  and I don't really scream anymore.  much more gentle emotional outpouring now.

we don't have a way to play cd's in our house, mostly because we are cheap.  so when a friend burned me some new discs I knew the car would be my place to listen to them.  and it fit right into my therapeutic crying time.  I still can't make it all the way through a mumford and sons song without tearing up, especially if jamin is with me and singing along.  "isn't this a great song, mama?" he shouts from the backseat, his whole body wiggling in time to the banjo solos.  so this week when eric and I had been having particularly heavy discussions about what's next (a constant conversation in our gemini marriage), I needed him to hear the song that has brought me to tears the most in my time in the car this week.  so, kids cozily in bed, we headed out to the truck to take a listen.  and there we sat, and I cried in the car.  par for course.  it is what I do.

here's what moved me.  feel free to ask me how my brick-layin's coming when I need a proverbial kick in the pants.  I'll know what you mean.

where my feet are

I held a hummingbird in my hands today.  I was volunteering at jamin's school, hippie woo woo school we call it, where children run amuck and talk about catching "peace fever" and use feeling words with each other like tiny psychiatrists ("how did you feel when she pushed you?" teachers prompt gently).  we were playing in the gym, children running freely, chasing tennis balls and each other, girls playing "baby" with each other and boys making siren noises.  the gym has big sliding doors on all sides; it houses the gymnastics equipment for a girls sleepover camp all summer, then transforms into a romper room in the fall for these free-spirited sprites.  the room itself is chilly on these autumn mornings, and I stood huddled near one of the doors in a triangle of sun while I watched the carefully orchestrated free-for-all.

when we'd first come in for playtime there was a dead hummingbird in the middle of the floor.  nights now are too cold for tiny cold-blooded creatures, especially those who should have headed south a week or so ago.  it made me feel guilty that our feeder at home is still hanging up, inticing the flutter of wings with free, easy-to-find nectar, tricking the birds into thinking flowers still might be blooming so there might be reason to stay.  I (and 17 children) watched as a teacher gently swept the bird into a dustpan and take her out of the gym to be handled later in the day.  children were quick to settle back into activity with far less questioning than I'd anticipated.

later during playtime another hummingbird appeared on the floor.  a teacher called me over and pointed it out.

"there must be a nest in the rafters," she said.  "I just saw it fall straight down with a plop.  but this one is still alive, I'm pretty sure."

it was indeed.  "do you want me to pick it up?" I asked, unsure of what parent volunteers were actually expected to do in situations like these. 

"whatever you feel comfortable with," was all the help I got in figuring it out.

so I did.  I picked up a hummingbird, those mysterious animals that buzz like big insects, the only birds capable of backwards flight.  we'd watched the flit around our feeders all summer, jamin and cora annoucing their simetaneous arrivals and depatures from the breakfast table every morning: "hummingbird! it flew away."  holding this one in my hand felt nothing like I'd expected (not that I'd ever thought much about what holding a hummingbird would feel like).  this tiny body felt more like a marshmallow that an animal, and those wings that were always just a blur before were still enough to make me nervous.

somewhere this week I read the reminder that "your ministry is where your feet are."  I need reminders like this every so often, especially when I get bogged down with being still, with not being able to do enough to save the world, with being boring in my (not so very) old age.  last week I started three new parenting classes, an overwhelming mix of people insistent that they don't need any help with their parenting, a family with kids so out of control we cannot provide them with childcare, and even one family that required a report to dss.  weeks like that make me hug my own kids extra hard, give an extra shout out of thanks for all the support systems I have.  weeks like that also remind me that my ministry is where my feet are, in more ways than one.  there is need right here, right where I already live, and of course that is part of my ministry where my feet are, in a very literal sense.  but more than that, there will alway be need, there will always be families who need a boost, kids who need to feel safe, people who need to find their tribe.  and since my feet will always be wherever it is I am, that is another way to minister where my feet are.  ministry will just follow wherever I happen to be just because that is the way it works.  compassionate hearts find needs to fill even when they don't really want to.

so today my ministry was to a hummingbird.  I carried that little marshmallow body outside to a warm picnic bench and no sooner had I placed it down gently than the whir of wings started and off flew my little friend.  that is the kind of results I am most fond of: immediate and highly visible.  there is power in that reminder, power that every little bit helps, power in being in the right place at the right time with a willingness to listen to what needs to be done.

we can stay here and I can teach parenting classes.  I can quit my job and homeschool my children.  we can move to hawaii and work in a group home.  we can join an organic farm in vermont and raise children and garlic and potatoes.  it is all ministry.  it is all exactly right.  we will keep listening and loving and learning and that will all be exactly enough.  wherever our feet may be.

song for this world

There's a stone around my belly
Keeps me up at night
Makes me want to feed it
Makes me want to fight with the world
[ Lyrics from: http://www.cloverlyrics.com/e68984-darrell_scott~theres_a_stone_around_my_belly_lyrics.html ]

god tells us his grace is sufficient.  I like to think of it as more than that, as abundant and overflowing, and I know it is, but it is interesting that how he describes it is merely sufficient.  enough!  exactly enough.  when I want over-the-top and beyond-my-wildest-dreams, the heavenly hosts pull me back down with whispers of sufficiency.  and when I am bored and stagnant and can't imagine putting one foot in front of the other for one more step, it is still sufficient.  and when I am overwhelmed and spread too thin, sufficiency is still the name of the game.

Got a heart full of darkness
Got a headache full of dreams
Got a lifetime of memories
I don't know what they mean to this world
Is there a place in this world for a dreamer
If dreaming were all he could bring
Would you listen to a man with a stone around his belly sing?

my struggle is contentment.  I want it all at the same time and then I want it all to leave me alone.  it has always been this way for me.  I want to have grand adventures all over the globe and I want to settle down to offer my children roots and stability.  I want to live in a small town and I want the diversity and variety that comes with living somewhere bigger.  I want to open our home to those who need it most and I want to protect myself from the hurt and sadness that opening can bring.  I want to be valued and appreciated but I don't want to be blamed or used.  there's such a fine line between all those things.

There's a reason for the sadness
There's a reason for the song
I have reason to believe that i won't be too long for this world
Sixty years seventy-three if I'm lucky
Take this stone take this belly to a cabin in kentucky

but the important part is that it doesn't matter what I want, so much.  my plans aren't the important ones, my feelings of coziness aren't the focus.  this is all a part of it, this great tapestry my life is, the dissonance and the lack of resolution, the push and the pull and the tearing apart.  balance is a goal, but never a constant because the center itself if fluid and in motion.  and there is balance in the off-kilter teeter of my life.  that's all part of it, too.

Well I've been up on the mountain
I've been rollin' like a stone
Searchin' this whole world over
For a place to be alone
Alone to see the sunsets
And to count what i have lost
Alone to read aloud walt whitman
And to live like robert frost

so I will say yes to little babies that I might not get to keep.  and I will take the tears that come with phone calls that hurt more than heal.  I will love as deep as I can reach even when I know that isn't nearly deep enough, even when I know there are cracks and crevices I will never be able to fill.  even when the job is thankless and harder than I'd imagined I will do it over and over again because I know that there is sufficiency just in answering what I have been called to do.  and I know that it is part of my song for this world.

(lyrics by darrell scott.  see you in october, darrell!)

tribal living

I love my tribe.

I think it was friend who first introduced this idea to me: a modern day tribe.  the people you call when you have a flat tire, when you need emergency childcare, when only a beer on a back porch can solve your problems.  the people who call because you were on their mind, the only people you aren't bothered by when they drop by unannounced.  the people who help celebrate birthdays and just-because days, the ones that get the bad news phone calls first. 

I grew up surrounded by a tribe, although that certainly isn't how I thought of it then.  my mom has always said that my dad collects people the way other dads collected sport memorabilia or electronic equipment, but I think my mom did her fair share of people collecting as well.  the tribes of my childhood where families from church small groups, neighborhood friends, and the occassional colleague of one of my parents.  these were the families where we knew where they kept the silverware in the kitchen and whose dogs never barked at us because they saw us so often.  these were the folks we camped with, prayed with, potlucked with, and counted as our own.  my family moved a lot growing up, but we found our tribe wherever we landed.

my tribe in brevard is more tangled than anywhere else I've lived.  I've thought a lot about this and I think it is because our family has more needs than we ever had, partially because our family is bigger than it's ever been.  when I lived by myself in asheville, I only needed friends for me, and most of those friends were single folks themselves.  when it was eric and I together, we mashed tribes for a while, but married life parred down our tribal numbers, and only those that mattered most made the cut, I think.  the people that could value eric and I together and appreciate us separately are the ones that stuck around.  I can remember sitting on the porch at the HEAP having an in depth conversation with ally about who was actually tribe and who was "from a neighboring tribe where we have good relationships and intermarriage is allowed even if they aren't really our tribe."  my definitions were broader than hers, but we both counted each other as in the inner circle, and that is the important part.

now that we have kids, our tribal needs are different yet again.  and it isn't just that we need families with kids in the mix, although that is important.  we need people that get us, that value us, ALL of us; people that understand us as a family and as individuals.  people who have much to teach us and much to let us teach them.  our tribe is the village in which we are raising our children, the village where we are being raised as well.

I love my tribe.  I love that this is how my children are growing up, that they will remember people in their lives who were both their friends and their parents' friends all at once.  and my hope is that they will make finding their own tribe and a tribe for their own families the priority it deserves to be.

the blue zone and the new zone

I'm reading a book called Blue Zones, all about these pockets where people consistently live to be 100 years old or more.  it is an interesting read, even though it is written in a "you too can live to be 100 by doing these things!" sort of way.  and most of those things are just not part of the typical amreican lifestyle these days (slow down, make time for a spiritual pratice, put emphais on family, eat a plant based diet, drink nothing but water...).  it makes me sort of smug to relize that I already do almost everything suggested, even though I have never had great aspirations to live forever.  but the quality of life descibed in these "blue zones" is certainly something to be desired.  much different than the old people I know, for sure.

it is quite a juxtaposition to be reading and thinking about extending life at the end while being here to celebrate and support a life that started a bit ahead of schedule.  baby eliza decided to get a jump start on us all, and is actually ("ashu-a-whee") doing a pretty good job with it all.  seeing her tiny body doing such hard work already while thinking about people on the opposite end of the spectrum who's bodies have been through so much for so long is a comforting thought in my mind.  I think of the technology available now that wasn't even thought of 100 years ago, the miracle that eliza gets to be, partly because she was born in 2012 and not 1912.  but there is also so much to be said for the basic instinctive care that is helping her thrive: kyle's hand reaching into her warming tray to connect with her as only a papa can; breast milk, both from carey's body and from donations of other mamas, still the very best food we know of for little ones, even after years of research and experimentation; richard reading to her so she knows how very loved she is from every direction she can think of.   there is such balance to what we need and what we know we need without knowing we need it.  there is such beauty in caring for those we love (an oursleves!) by doing what come naturally. 

so welcome to the world, eliza lyn.  may you live to be 100 and outshine us all.

come dance with me

this makes me think about my mom and my kids and my life, past present future, in all the best ways.  it makes me hopeful and wistful and happy and teary all at once.  it makes me want to do more and want to do less all at the same time.  I can't wait to dance my way through the next adventure.

why we live where we live

in transylvania county, the manner family is big news.

here's a little snippet from the thursday, june 7 transylvania times, see off news section...

"would you believe the see off mountain homesteaders had a drum circle monday evening?  there was the usual yummy potluck supper.  then about three dozen percussion instruments, from buckets to bongo drums to tambourines, were brought out and after elaborate instructions by nancy richards lasting about 20 second, she started a rhythm and everyone else joined in for a few minutes of joyful beating.  this was repeated several times with different rhythm starters and different rhythms.  everybody had a good time, including 100-year-old maner ware and 2-year-old cora manner

cora's father, eric, manner, has a passion for gardening.  he has worked in nurseries, so he knows a lot about horticulture.  right now he's tending to 120 tomato plants in his garden.  for his birthday he was given a broadfork, a tool with tines that you stand on to work into densely packed soil, which eric says is like using a tiller but with your own muscles and no motor.

cora's mother wendi [ed note: I love that she misspelled my name because her name is "wendy", too.  like it couldn't be possible that we both spelled our names the traditional boring way.  like I must be way out there with my yogurt making and weird name-spelling] likes to make yogurt from goat's milk.  she and marjorie masters, whose husband aaron raises goats on their mini-farm, spent some time monday evening discussing and comparing their methods for yogurt making."

there's a little more see off news, but those are the exciting manner highlights.  at the potluck we also saw eric's aunt phyllis.  I can't remember how exactly she's tied into the family, but it is pretty strange that she lives half the year less than a mile from our house.  never a dull moment at a see off potluck, that's for sure.

there is a push and pull in every day, every moment, really: what I want to do, what I "need" to do, what I feel obligated to do, what I really should do.  then there is the reality of what I actually do.  to balance it all takes careful consideration, forced listening to the still quiet voices, and a partner who holds me accountable in ways I grumble about but actually depend on.  so here is my attempt at balance: a space to write, something I want to do, should do, and have been begged to do by my husband.  one simple act fulfilling so many parts of my daily push and pull.  and whatever ends up in this space is exactly right and exactly enough. 

this is my leap.