Letter to my children: Love languages

Letter to my children: Love languages

Dearest Beloveds,

There are many ways to communicate. Words are very useful but also constrain. You will realize when you become familiar with more languages that languages are both a container and a funneling of experiences/wordview. The most glaring example that comes to mind is the ability to own land vs belonging to the land vis-a-vis the Europeans and the Native Americans (respectively).

The wonderful thing about strong relationships is that communication can happen without words - and often does.

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Letter to my children: “Give me a bunch of while whiles”

Dearest Beloveds,

About two weeks ago your father and I started noticing this conversation happening. One of us would be washing dishes/feeding the dog/chopping vegetables/putting on socks/etc.

“Momma/Dada! Where are my socks/hat/shoes/big boots/bathing suit/goggles/etc.”

“I will be right there. Give me a second to finish up and I will help you.”

A small pause.

“It has been a second. WHERE are you?!! I can’t hear you moving!”

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Letters to my children: Berry season

Letters to my children: Berry season

Dearest Beloveds,

When we lived in Michigan I thought the 5 pound boxes of blueberries one could purchase were obscenely amazing. I would eat blueberries for a week straight, until my tooth enamel yelled at me to stop (too much acidity).

Now we live in New York, with pick your own berry farms surrounding us and I realize that obscene is not the word. The words are glory, bounty, lavishness, profusion, cornucopia, richness, or abundance.

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Letters to my children: Complicity

Dearest Beloveds,

There are times when I think about the lessons your father and I are trying to teach you and I feel proud. To look in someone’s eye when they talk to you, to not give up before you try, to share our allowance with others who have less, why we turn the lights/fan off when we leave a room, how to take turns, why it is important to eat salad etc etc.

Other times I am not so proud - this morning was one of those times.

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Letter to my children: Why do Baba and Meme live with us?

Dearest Beloveds,

The subject of this letter was in my original outline that I wrote before Baba died but the sentence sounds better with a double barrel as opposed to just Meme, so there we are.

Meme lives with us because when your Momma was in my early twenties I helped Meme put Grandma (her mother) into a series of assistant living and nursing homes.

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Letter to my children: Axes and Extinction

Dearest Beloveds,

It has been a while since I wrote because we have been all over the place in terms of doings. Our RV trip to NM, your Dad taking off time for us to split wood, our first trip on an airplane in 2 years… the past two months seem to have flown by.

And here we are, the glory of spring has passed and it is now summer weather.

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Letter to my children: Dinner Games

Dearest Beloveds,

I know I need to focus and go back to the outline I made of what I wanted to cover for you two in these letters, but I feel this is super awesome and I don’t want to miss this.

There are three games we are currently playing at dinner: I Spy, Animal Vegetable Mineral, and Guess the Number - each with their own vagaries, shall we say. I Spy is fairly straightforward.

Dragon, “I spy with my little eye something yellow.” Then we all guess and can usually figure it out fairly quickly.

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral involves partners because sometimes the items can be tricky.

Bean and I will drum on the table and sing while the Dragon whispers his to Dada.

Bean, “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral.”

Dragon, “Animal”

Bean, “Do we eat it?”

Dragon, “No”

Bean, “Does it have four legs or two?”

The Dragon will look at Dada in confusion. Dada, “I think four legs.”

Dragon, “It has wings and drinks blood.” (Darling, for some reason, after more than 2 or 3 questions, you always jump in with a huge hint.)

The Bean smiles hugely, “Is it a mosquito?”

Dragon, “YES! A squito!”

The Guess the Number game has changed the most since we started playing it a few months ago. It used to be that one player would have a number in their head between 0-20 and the other players would guess. The player with the number would say higher or lower and eventually the number would be revealed. Bean, with your math learnings, you have changed the whole equation.

First, you share the new rules, “Okay, so come up with a number between 0-50. Momma, do you have one?”

“Yes.”

“Is it an odd number?”

“Yes.”

“Does it have a 4 in it?”

“Yes.”

“Is it 41?” I nod no. “43?” I nod no. Your voice and face get more and more animated as you circle round the number and hone in on what it could be. “45?”

“YES! You did it! That is amazing! I love how you honed in on that so rapidly by using your noggin. Such good noggin work!”

It is incredibly impressive Bean to watch you use your math prowess to approach the numbers game in such a new way. I can see your neurons firing so bright and that is awesome.

This snapshot of our current life, so grateful I am for you both. Thank you for being my beloveds.

Letter to my children - our wall of white privilege

Letter to my children - our wall of white privilege

Dearest beloveds, what a glorious time to be alive. I am going to continue to talk to you about today about what I have been talking about all week.

On our wall we have framed pieces of lace from Great-Grandmother’s many boxes of linen bequeathed to me over the years. Nearly every holiday gathering Baba’s family would do a distribution.

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