one of the best parts about spending the month in western north carolina is getting to spend time with my brother, who lives in asheville. and one of the best things about his status here as a local is that he takes us on adventures that cannot be found on trail maps and in guidebooks. who knew that there are hidden trail heads on exit ramps and places on earth where poison ivy and private property give way to scenes like this?

the monkey and bird were experiencing  their first day of clubs, a day camp at montreat, while the adults were embarking upon waterfall hike. but i could not help but be distracted by daydreams of a future time, when my little boys will be big boys, old enough and eager to climb the rocks and dunk their heads under the rushing water. sometimes there is so much promise in the future that it is difficult to stay in the present.

in our current stage of toddlerhood, afternoon naps, and the boys’ almost constant need for assistance, it is so easy to get swept away by far off notions that someday, adult conversation and uninterrupted sleep will re-enter our lives. and then i catch myself forgetting that this time of sloppy nose-kisses, uninhibited delight, the honest articulation of fears, sweet sweaty ringlets, triumph over small accomplishments, and the natural wisdom of innocence is fleeting and precious.  i know i will long for this stage when it is gone.

when we were on our way to the mountains on friday, i received an email from the rental company pressuring us to decide upon our rental plans for next year. never mind that we had not even begun our mountain adventure for the current year. never mind that we were, at the time, simply trying to make a bag of pipe cleaners last for the remainder of our trek down I-40.

the world will lure us prematurely into the future if we haven’t already wandered there ourselves. for me, being fully present in the moment is something i talk about and value, though i find it almost impossible to do! apparently, as i learned on our hike, wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the words, “BE PRESENT” does not automatically calm the multi-tasking mind.

funny how this does, though:

i take solace in the fact that there are moments scattered here and there that seem to stand outside of time. thank goodness for a spontaneous plunge into frigid water; the surrender of the bird, who stops resisting his nap long enough to rest his head on my chest; and the first cup of coffee enjoyed on a tree-top porch.

speaking of coffee, let us not underestimate its importance when it comes to living in the present and parenting small children.

i was in second grade when the challenger, carrying teacher christa mcauliffe and a crew of brilliant scientists and explorers, was snatched out of the air by a fiery fate. as my classmates and i whirled around on the school’s blue cafeteria stools trying unsuccessfully to trade our carrot sticks  for others’ sugar-coated desserts, the grave voice of our headmaster came through the loud speaker and shocked everyone into stillness. he told us what had happened to the challenger, and i watched as my teachers looked aghast and teary.

my world was full of smocked dresses and church-league sports, and homework was the closest thing to a tragedy i had yet experienced. but in that moment, i got the sense that the grown-ups knew much more than i did about the world, which could apparently be sad and scary enough to make even teachers cry.

now, over two decades later, as i vacation with my family and extended family in florida’s beautiful white sandy gulf coast, i have those same second grade school cafeteria feelings, only this time, i’m in the role of a teacher. with two kids in my charge, one of whom will likely have half-memories of the oil leak like mine of the challenger’s explosion, i wonder how much of the world’s underbelly the monkey is taking in.

of course he doesn’t fully understand what has happened or how to fix it. does anybody? but he can use words like “dispersant” in conversation now. he looks, with his cousins, through binoculars at the boats in front of our condo and runs with packs of older children to inform adults that the boats are “laying out boom.” was the monkey standing on the shore when my brother plucked a small oil conglomerate out of the surf and used it to draw a slick black line on his hand? or will this trip go down in his personal history as the one when he first tried boogie boarding?

the beaches a few miles west of us were closed yesterday after black, gooey, half-baked pancakes of slippery black oil washed up on shore. my brother and sister-in-law trekked down there with the the sense of awareness and responsibility that comes when one knows that history is being made right before one’s eyes. as i type, the water in front of me still looks beautiful, but some say it’s already marked by a different texture and enough dispersant to cause a rash. it will not be long before the oil hits here in full force.

meanwhile, we will continue our evening softball games in the courtyard. the monkey will continue to delight in this village extended family. he’ll continue to work on his new swimming skills in the pool, and he’ll probably even get to make a few more sandcastles. but somewhere, in the midstof all of this, he must be intuiting that human beings, for all of our creativity and intelligence, are limited. it must be dawning on him, little by little, that the world can be a sad and scary place. he is gradually joining the rest of us in a world beautifully described by william sloane coffin as a place that is “too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love. ”

[the pictures from this post were taken yesterday near the east pass in destin, florida by my brother, jamie.]

happy memorial day weekend, folks!

for the memphians, if you’re not too busy at the shell, zoo, or sunset symphony festivities, you should know that there are probably some strawberries still ripe for the picking at the agricenter.

i took the boys last weekend, and we had a blast!

the monkey pretendedhe was at an easter egg hunt. the bird pretended he was at a cafeteria. (thankfully, there are no pesticides on these berries, just a little fertilizer, which our little guy needs.) i pretended to be the paparazzi.

this week, thanks to the boys’ picking prowess, we’ve enjoyed strawberry short cake, and this delicious berry syrup, good over ice-cream, pancakes, or in a sparkling adult beverage.

it was not until i saw the memphis in may world championship barbeque festival and cooking contest highlighted on television by the food network and BBC and described in great detail by al roker, that it occurred to me that my city’s annual pig out is a big deal.

 i used to think it was normal for a city to smell like smoked meat for an entire 5-day period and for grownups to walk around wearing hollowed-out rib-bone necklaces. i now recognize and even delight in the fact that  the event, boasting 200+ frat-house-like booths, a serious cooking contest by day, and a raucous party by night, is quite a spectacle.

this delight is new though. my husband’s annual participation in this hog wild extravaganza has historically led to such (un)pleasantries as:

• our kitchen’s transformation into a cooler-stacked, wall-to-wall meat storage unit,
• the sensation of sharing a bed with the unmistakable aroma of a bbq sandwich,
• and, the pummeling/dragging incedent that took place between my little monkey (then almost two) and a beer-filled wagon. (and that was on “family night,” i might add!)

in spite of these annoyances and minor tragedies, i have spent enough time swining and dining at this year’s fest to have accrued a whole hamper of smokey-smelling clothes. and i must admit, it’s been fun! partly because i’ve been fascinated by the makeshift way in which things come together down there by the river.

for example, this is “herman,” the smoker, which my husband and a friend (mostly the friend) welded together out of old industrial parts found in a warehouse.

and this is an old sink, procured for $50 from a restaurant supply company, against the backdrop of old school lockers that a team member found on the side of the road.

another contributing factor to my new found enjoyment of the shin-dig is that today, for the first time, i was in the booth for the much-anticipated visitation of the judges.

you would have thought that god, herself, was getting ready to pull up a chair and enjoy a rib bone! the place was spotless (there was vacuuming), and the food was incredible (i ate a slab and a half of ribs, myself).

and when it was time to submit a mouth-watering entry to the “blind judging contest” taking place a few (hundred) booths down, guess who was called on to complete this mission — yep, the monkey. maybe this important role will somehow erase his association between the fest and bizarre injury.

now perhaps you are wondering how a strict, five-day diet of smoked pig meat is received by the human digestive system. the answer is, of course, NOT WELL. but there is no need to worry.

there are plenty of free tums for everyone!

motherhood seems to come with inherent questions to be faced daily, whether we realize we are facing them are not:

are we to measure the truth of what we read against the truth of our own experience, or are we to measure everything we experience against the truth of what we read? motherhood is not without its sacred texts or its powerful experiential learning. how can we weave these things together into an authentic version of motherhood, or moreover, an authentic way of being human?

on most days, for me, experience trumps book knowledge. i tend to draw much of my parenting tendencies from my own experience of being a child. there are many things about how i was raised that i want to duplicate for my children.  i expressed one of these ideals in my post about neighbors, in which i called to mind a time when “there were no scheduled play dates or activities. our parents simply let us loose to waltz through each other’s back doors and live out our days covered in sweat, mosquito bites, and melted popsicle juice.”

but a comment on this post reminded me that we cannot simply transplant the parenting habits of decades past into our lives without having wrestle with our fair share of questions. lane writes:

“I am challenged to find a balance between encouraging the friendships and life lessons of playing outside and the very real dangers that lurk in the spaces that we cannot supervise. How old to ride a bike on the street without a parent? How old to walk four houses down alone to play? How reliable is the adorable dog playing in the yard across the street? How well should you know a family (neighbor, classmate, whatever) before your child has unrestricted access to their house?

A Lebanese coworker of mine commented how Americans are the most generous nation of people to respond in a crisis, but as individuals, we keep our doors locked tight (figuratively and literally!). We DON’T typically know our neighbors, and we often don’t bother to try. I wonder how we can manage to be both at once?”

these are excellent questions, lane, and ones that move me out of the state of idealistic nostalgia and into a more real and complicated place. in fact, this is the place to which i keep returning, whether i want to or not. this place seems to be on the way to everywhere else i want to go. it’s a place of CONSTRUCTION.

what's a blog post w/out a cheesy stock photo?

i started this blog because i perceived that there is a gap between our cultural models of motherhood and the kind of mother i aspire to be. after looking high and low for models, mentors, and reading material to fill this gap, i realized that no ready-made solution exists. i will have to build one to suit me. we all will. so much of a mother’s job is construction.

and here, in the gap between the outdoor play of past and present and in response to all the questions about bicycle boundaries, strangers, and yard dogs, no ready-made solution exists. again, i will have to build one to suit me. we all will. so much of a mother’s job is construction.

i admit that i would often rather settle for a ready-made model and avoid the messy work and on-the-job training involved in building something new. but just knowing that there are other women out there donning their hard hats, scaling towers of literature, and descending into their own histories, actually makes this motherhood experiment fun. i’m so grateful for the company of so many who are committed to crafting something that is good and real.

my dad, a residential realtor by trade, has recently listed an antebellum home that was occupied by the same memphis family for 150 years. in response to my begging, he recently invited andy, the kids, and me to crash a happy hour gathering of architects at the site.

the archetects were like kids in a candy store, and joined me in shameless picture-taking and investigating every square inch of the home and its features, from these aqua curtain tiebacks (the product of the last re-model),

to the fourth story attic tower.

but what struck me the most about our tour of this magnificent home and the enchanted grounds around it were the conversations i overhead while we were walking around. “what would be the best use of this gem?” people asked each other. it could, once again, be a single family home, of course. or it could host a downstairs business and an upstairs residence.

or… (and these are the ideas that really inspired me) the home and grounds could be shared somehow. one architect’s idea was that two or three families could live in the home. there would be private residence space for each family and a few common area rooms. another thought was that a single family could live in the antebellum home, and several smaller homes could be built on the grounds. these “lots” would sell for modest prices, and the homes would occupy a small footprint and not diminish the manicured wildness of the tree-filled landscape. my imagination was off and running with dreams of sharing this place with family and friends, committed to raising our children in this expanse of nature located right in the heart of the city.

i have always been intrigued by groups of kinfolk and comrades who build a life together that strays from the “good fences make good neighbors” mantra of traditional american culture. when i was in divinity school, i became enamored with the bloomsbury group — virginia wolf, her husband and sister, and all of their various artist and writer friends who shared a home in england.

members of the bloomsbury group on the grounds of their home in sussex

what attracted me then was the creativity and exchange of ideas fostered by this sort of life. but now that i am a parent, i am also attracted to the idea of shared responsibility and the notion that communities or villages might just do a better job of raising our children than we can do alone.

let’s face it: andy and i cannot really afford to move our family into antebellum bliss. but our brief time on the grounds has me thinking about making intentional connections with neighbors and constructing a life where responsibilities can be shared. this is not a new idea, of course, and folks in other countries have been living this way since the beginning of time.

in bad mother, ayelet waldmen writes of her mother’s committment to shared resonsibility:

“during the headiest era of my mother’s feminist phase, she even figured out a way to spare herself the bulk of the cooking; she and the other members of her consciousness-raising group formed a supper cooperative. each day a different one of them would cook for the group, separate the food into individual family-sized portions, and drop them off at the others’ houses” (54).

along those lines, i have friends who take turns going to each others’ houses to help each other with home projects. and jennifer, who was featured in one of my early “mothers of invention” posts, wrote about a makeshift cooperative pre-school that she and other mothers created for their children.

perhaps we don’t have to pick up and physically move our families in order to move into a space of shared responsibilities. it has been said that by partnering with someone in marriage, one’s burdons are cut in half while one’s joys are doubled. perhaps this is true of all of our cooperative affiliations.

so, when i’m not thinking about how i can make the quick million i would need to move into “the big old house,” as my children call it, i’ll be pontificating about how my version of motherhood might entail becoming more of a village person. it’s fun to think about, don’t you think?

[for more info about the source for this post, check out the bibliography page on the sidebar to your right.]

i grew up among packs of children on a quiet little street in the heart of town. the lives of my brother and me were filled with driveway basketball games, tree-climbing, lightning-bug-catching, lemonade stands, and the like. but there were several families in particular who really shaped the days of my youth and the lives of my mom and dad as young parents: the L family, the C family, and the B family surrounded us on three sides.

the L, C, and B children were pretty close in age to my brother and me, and while we were busy getting along famously, our parents were constantly helping each other out. our moms took turns picking us up from school and keeping each other’s children during impromptu errands made easier without kids in tow. there were no scheduled play dates or activities. our parents simply let us loose to waltz through each other’s back doors and live out our days covered in sweat, mosquito bites, and melted popsicle juice.

ours are the only kids who play outside in our current neighborhood, apart from our next-door-neighbor’s granddaughter, who visits occasionally and much to our delight. those who live close to our family are simply in different stages of life than we are but their roles in our existance are still essential. at some point while i was discussing the particularities of perennials, bulbs, and shrubs with our friends next door, i knew i could call on them to gather our mail when we’re out of town and even watch the bird in a pinch while i fetch the monkey from school. in turn, i water their bushes and cover them in baked goods.

there is a certain peace of mind that comes with knowing that there are families around who are ready and willing to lend me an egg, eat my leftovers, venture outside for impromptu conversation, and be available in case of emergency. parenting is just easier when you have good neighbors. i’m full of gratitutude for mine!

[the pictures above are from my childhood and serve as payback for all those times my neighbors beat me in basketball, kicked over my bike, and cheated in flashlight tag.]

we are back from an eventful “family camp” weekend in middle tennessee at camp NaCoMe. with the exception of an unavoidable conflict here and there (such as my brother’s wedding last october), i have gone to this church camp twice a year since i was five years old. in all of these 28 years, i have yet to adequately describe to others what exactly we do at NaCoMe and just why it is so much fun.

we dance…

…sing, eat lots of food, practice yoga, do some makeshifting…

jog, eat more food, walk in the creek…

…eat more food, play horseshoes, catch crawdads, play tennis, eat, talk to old friends on the porch…

and let grandparents, other people’s parents, and other people’s children look after our little ones.

in turn, we look after other people’s children and grandchildren too. the great outdoor challenge was not such a challenge in this beautiful, green, wide open space.

this nacome had the added element of four (FOUR!) tornado warnings/watches that sent us to our cabins to clutch our packed-and-ready emergency bags and to prepare to huddle together in a crawl space down below. in the end, the crawl space remained empty (apart from a few adventure-seeking children and their gracious parental chaperon), and we were left on the porch to watch the sky unleash its wrath on a little town five miles down the road.

this morning, it was as if the storms never happened.

as the sun brightened the rain-soaked trees, we packed up our boys, with new memories of adventure, and carted them back to memphis. there, they too will fail to describe to others what exactly we do at NaCoMe and just why it is so much fun.

the monkey and i made these creatures as part of the great outdoor challenge. here’s a mouse:

here’s a dragonfly:

and last, but not least, this is apparently a rare species of bird called the “pick” bird (pronounced “pick boowd”).

though there have been days when i thought that the playground at the pediatrician’s office was going to have to count as our outside time, we have somehow managed to play outside every day since we signed up for the great outdoor challenge.

today’s adventure was a neighborhood “nature hike,” which, like many of my favorite activities, involved trespassing. look what we found in our neighbors’ yards!