Oftentimes, when Mr. Quotidian asks me what I’m thinking about, I have to answer “nothing.” Which isn’t to say that my mind is empty, but that what’s going through it cannot quite be called “thinking.” It’s much too fragmented and garbled to be a thought. What it can be described as is tinkering. Like Belle’s father in Beauty and the Beast, I half absentmindedly fiddle with a half forged idea. Most of the time, these musings simmer on the back fire while I putter about my life, occasionally pulling them out and trying to prod them into something coherent. Then, suddenly, when my back is turned, they will boil over into a mess of thoughts on the floor.
These posts are my way of taking those melted thoughts and trying to pound out something useful.
Here we come a-swaddling
With a cloth so soft!
Here we come a-cuddling
All comfort to adopt!
Love and joy come to you,
And to you a swaddle too!
And God bless you and send you a long night’s rest.
And God bless you and send you a long night’s rest!
So, once you have a Little like the one above, what do you need? As I began to see the whites of my due date’s eyes, I searched in every nook and cranny of the internet for the answer to that question. What I found was disheartening: endless product reviews and tired lists of the stuff everyone thinks of (nursing pads, onezies, diapers, ect). What I wanted was the stuff you didn’t plan on having around but couldn’t have done without. The “I happened to have this in my cupboard and it saved my life” list. I could not find such a list. I determined in my heart that I would keep an inventory of the things that were especially useful to me in the weeks immediately following Theodore’s birth, and so make my own list that might help some future mama-to-be.
So without further ado… Continue Reading…
Little Guy.
Baby Bear.
Theo.
Buddy Bear.
The Little.
Thed.
Snuggle Bug.
Little Burrito.
Buddy.
Little Bear.
Sweet.
Glo Worm.
Teddy.
Cutie Patootie.
Mine.
Ours.
Theodore Mark.
There is a new sight around Casa de la Fredericks these days: Little Man Clothes! I know the day will quickly come when this sight is so commonplace to me that it will inspire chagrin more than anything else. But for now it gives me a little buzz to see all these eensy little things hanging in a row. For such tiny things they sure take up vast amounts of clothes pins!
While I don’t seem to have ever caught the full-out nesting bug of pregnancy (mostly I’d just rather sleep than clean the base boards), I have been perusing unknown areas of thrift stores recently. Like the baby clothes and children’s books. There is the usual rush of finding some unexpected and unlooked for treasure in a pile of dusty debris. But there’s also the added frisson of knowing that my baby is going to wear that onesie someday and I ‘m going to read that book to my toddler someday. It’s the thrill of thrifting married to the insistence of nesting that makes shopping for used baby items so addicting. It’s thristing. Or is it nefting? I’m inclined to go with nefting.
And the “Find of the Day” prize goes to:
The vintage, well loved copy of The Wind in the Willows.
I can’t wait till Theodore’s old enough to read this with me. We can discover this classic together, as I haven’t ever read it either.
A wet black tree all
smothered by downy green leaves
seeps serenity.
A fresh loaf of bread
cooling on a wire rack
in time for dinner.
No other time of year seems to hold as many traditions for me as Christmas. The ornaments get hauled up from the basement, the dust blown off the old pear boxes they’re stored in. Each is carefully unswaddled from its nest of ten year old paper towel and hung on the tree. Little Bethlehems are constructed throughout the house, forming a kind of Yuletide suburban sprawl. Each of the mangers stay empty until Christmas morning. The soundtrack changes frequently as each of us takes our turn choosing our favorite music. Little Brother with Mannheim Steamroller, me with Bing Crosby and Ella Fitzgereld, Mom with hymns.
And then there are the nine different tins of Christmas cookies piled on the counter. Their colors a hodgepodge of cheery greens, wintery blues, rich reds, and ornate golds. Inside each tin is a different cookie– mixing of different cookies into the same tin is strictly forbidden. The cookies range from simple peanut clusters that take just minutes to make to Springerale cookies that get printed with a special rolling pin, cut apart, then left out to dry overnight. Chocolate pinwheels look fancy but are easy to make. Of course sugar cookies make their appearance, the amount of frosting and sprinkles adorning Rudolph’s antlers directly correlating to the age of the person who decorated them.
Somewhere in that pile of tins lies the gingerbread men. These always arrived with grandma’s return address on the box. There was exactly one gingerbread cookie per person. But we never thought we were getting jipped. These weren’t just any gingerbread cookies. As a child, they were as big as my face. I know this because I did it . . . holding the cookie up to my face and inhaling the sweet spicy scent. And they were intricately decorated with all different colors of frosting. The gingerbread men had textured vests and pants. The gingerbread girls had striped skirts and braids that looked almost real. They were the kind of cookies that the children in “The Night Before Christmas” dreamed about. Because they were so big, these cookies were eaten piecemeal . . . an arm or a leg at a time. Each of of us had a different method of decimating our cookie. I worked in a clockwise pattern starting with the head. Continue Reading…
It is an almost universally acknowledged fact that a man in possession of an item of food is in want of its origin. One can barely bring up the topic of last night’s dinner without someone bemoaning the fact that people don’t know where their food comes from. What they mean to highlight when they say this is the industrialization of our food system. By and large, not only do we no longer know the farmer who grew our food, we can’t even be exactly certain as to its continent of origin. And that’s true. A quick look around the produce aisle proves that most apples and garlic are from China, the asparagus is from Chile, and the raspberries are from God-knows-where. We could all get to know our food better, whether that means stopping by a farmer’s market or finally figuring out what’s killing the squash.
The bone I do wish to pick, however, is with the shallowness of the statement. “People don’t know where their food comes from,” is, at its core, a statement of geography. Nothing else. Concepts of terroir aside, we must recognize that food is more than geography. There is more than a where, there is also a how. People don’t know how their food comes to them. They have no idea the kind of effort, skill, and knowledge that goes into growing food.
I originally wrote this for a Creative Writing class.* The weather today and a recent conversation with my sister made it seem appropriate to post it here.
The sky soothes into quiet and Light commences a waltz with Shadow around the sála. The bamboo chimes begin to move, at first a slow seductive twirl like a dancer’s hips but quickening till the chimes spin way out like a whirling dervish’s skirts. In the beginning, the rain is all humility and meekness. It’s coming is heralded by small, not gaudy, changes – the patterns running down the window, the spattered mud leaping a few inches up the wall, the banana leaves casually bouncing like a woman’s foot when she crosses her legs. And the sound!…echoing differently off each wall, as if trying to find the right pitch. It’s accompanied by the wonderful cool breeze that blows through the windows, making the curtains drum their fingers in rhythm. Everyone in the room seems to perceive its advent at exactly the same moment, and they hover around the window to watch the nativity progress.
The birth of the rain smells like dust. I count each tiny bead of water as it falls to the ground with a hollow plop. But then the plops increase to higher sounds, like marbles dropped in a sink. The air now smells clean, all the dust being purified from it. I can’t do anything but lie back on my bed and listen to the sound of the whole jungle surrounding me, drowning in soft pattering drips. The angel chorus of birds still sing…bursting out in occasional solos, their sopranos balanced by the deep bass of thunder. All of this to the beat of a million drops, each one hitting its own note and boggling my mind that I am hearing every one of them.
Soon, its still small voice beckons to me between the drops. I rise from my bed and follow it. I hug the wall and slither past my mother. Then it’s all splashing in puddles and squeezing mud between my toes and getting gloriously, gloriously wet. The rain trickles down into my eyes and plasters my hair to my head. The moisture hangs heavy on my eyelashes and transforms the ordinary world into trickling visions. The weight of it forces my eyes closed and the vision slides down my cheeks like tears. I look behind me at my footprints in the mud. I watch as the rain fills them and the shapes are distorted into puddles. I again think of each individual drop it takes to fill the puddle. As each new drop lands, the puddle itself reaches up, as if begging for more.
I gaze across the valley and watch the approaching wall of grayness, knowing I have only a few moments before I am discovered and my mother calls me inside. So I race the oncoming bulwark to my favorite tree. Slipping and sliding all the way, I scramble up the slippery bark, onto my favorite branch, barely beating the barrage of wetness. It hits me in the face like sopping sheets. I reach out to stop them, only to discover they slip through my fingers like ghosts and smack me anyway. The rain swaddles me in its self, making me breathe in its rhythm. I cannot see past the shroud it has hung on the outermost branches, burying reality. It is easy to wonder if all the rest was merely a dream.
Just as I get accustomed to this revelation, my house begins to materialize…cloudy at first, as if turned impressionist, but becoming clearer and sharper. A sense of relieved disappointment fills my chest as the rain welled up in my footprints. I must go back. The way back is longer and more laborious. I am forced to pick my feet up high with each step out of the mud, like an ancient Hebrew slave making bricks. The clothesline guards the border to reality and I watch the rain drops tiptoe to the middle of the line and hesitate until the next one pushes too hard and it slips off into the unknown. At the back door my mother is already wielding the hose, trying to look condescending, but not quite able to banish the smile from her eyes. Deep down I recognize her own longing. I see her mouth form the words “filthy” and “clean up” but can’t hear it above the rain on the tin roof. With a shake of her head, she commences the ceremonial cleansing which I must endure if I wish to enter the house -first my face, then my arms and legs, and finally my bare feet. I surrender to her ministrations until the mud swirls down the drain. Then I shloosh free. My feet smack against the cool cement floor and I find I must walk carefully or risk slipping.
Once inside, I prefer not to shower, liking the natural feel on my skin. I return to the cloud of people at the window and join the eager curiosity of witnessing the front yard fill up like a bathtub and guessing which step that afternoon’s rain will climb to….
That is the rain in the Philippines. Everything else is just drizzle.
*While this is my writing, the original inspiration came from another missionary kid many years ago. He published it on a MK message board. If anyone knows who it was, I would love to give him credit.