Wordless Wednesday: Lily

My 11-year-old took this. Isn't she good? More Wordless Wednesdays here and here.

Setting the Table for 5

My guys are back after 16 long days away. They spent four days driving and 12 days on the trails at Philmont Boy Scout Ranch in New Mexico, hiking around 75 miles. Their adventures also included rock climbing and rappelling, horseback riding, shooting, blacksmithing, spar-pole climbing (like a lumberjack), and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember.

There is something profound about that moment when you see your child for the first time in two weeks. He seemed to have grown a couple of inches, and he was standing so straight. His face is tan and his curly hair even curlier. I had a terrible, beautiful glimpse of what it will be like in a year and a half, when he comes home from college for Thanksgiving break for the first time. Terrible only because there will have been weeks at a time that I wouldn't have seen this son of mine; beautiful because taking flight just is.

I took a certain delight in setting the table for five last night. The three of us back home rarely ate a meal at our table. With the dining room project going on the whole time and a week of VBS that included dinner each night, meals were haphazard and odd.

Dr. H. and Jesse expressed proper amazement at our newly remodeled dining room, and then we sat down to eat, all together again.

Life is good.

Wordless Wednesday: Masked

More Wordless Wednesdays here and here.

Project Dining Room and Other Miscellany

* My dining room project is nearing completion. My floors are too gorgeous for words, except for that one little spot today that Laurel pointed to and said, "Hey look! There doesn't seem to be any shiny stuff here!" Oh well. If it took us 4 days to notice, hopefully no one else will. I have a second coat of trim to paint tomorrow, and then I'll be done with the major stuff. I can't figure out how to get my custom-made blinds down, so painting the window frame will have to wait.

* Our Hobby Lobby has about 8 aisles of stuff on 80% off clearance this week. I got these enormous candleholders for $4.40 each. They look too fabulous in my new dining room.

* Tonight was night 3 of Vacation Bible School at our church. This year Laurel is a craft helper rather than a participant, and she is loving it. I'm not sure why I'm so exhausted after VBS, but I feel like jello when it's over each night.

* Every evening after VBS we've been coming home and eating popsicles or ice-cream on the front porch while we watch the fireflies. That has got to be the best part of summer.

* This weekend is the big homeschooling fair in Knoxville. This year we have an American Heritage Girls booth there. We have 5 troops in our area now, which is incredibly exciting, but we are always hoping that a few troops will start in neighboring cities. We are working toward having our own council in the next few years! Caroline and I will spend Thursday afternoon setting up our booth, and then we have a bunch of mom/daughter pairs from the various troops who will be manning the booth and spreading the word about AHG.

* I'm addicted to a new game on Facebook, which is sucking up way too much of my time. But I have to go play just one round now…

I Heart Faces: My Littlest Boy

The theme this week at I ♥ Faces is "Let's Hear It for the Boys" to honor the special men in our lives. That's my littlest man in the azaleas, badly in need of chapstick and a haircut but so adorable nonetheless!

Just One of My Father's Legacies

My childhood was rich in the cadence of words, both written and heard. There was always the sound of my father's voice telling stories, and the image of my father in the middle of everything, quietly reading a book.

My family had books everywhere. Bookshelves lined our den and bedrooms, corner shelves were stacked full with books in the living room and dining room, and books crept onto the polished tops of coffee and end tables. My father never used bookmarks or even turned down the corners of pages; he was—and still is—a spine-breaker. He left his trail face-down, books sprawled out on surfaces, waiting to be picked up again, their spines permanently arched and cracking.

My father could be alone in a house full of us. The bustle of the family could hum all around him while he sat, cross-legged, rubbing the corner of a page between thumb and forefinger. "Jim," my mother would say for the fourteenth time, and he'd look up, eyes mystified and foggy under his black-rimmed glasses. Any true reader knows that to swim to the surface and bob up into reality can be disorienting.

My father has never been a monogamous reader. He splits his time between his bedroom novel, his coffee table magazines, his scientific journals, his biblical texts, and whatever anyone else is reading. He reads every book my mother brings home from the library and cannot be in my house for 10 minutes without visiting the nearest bookshelf and pulling out a book. He's easy to find and predictable, there on the green couch with his legs crossed and his thumb and forefinger doing their page rubbing.

But my father has never been stingy with his love of reading. The earliest recording of my voice is me at about age three with my father. "What do you want me to read?" he asks in his gentle Southern Illinois drawl, like the rolling hills of an orchard. I answer back in the same accent, "Just any ol' thing, Daddy." Though my mother was my daytime reader, my father read to us each evening from the big white Pearl S. Buck story Bible.

After supper and on long car trips, he was a storyteller. He knew how—still does know how— to tell a story. He knew all about character development, plot, climax, conflict, and denouement, and he used those devices with skillful ease. He is a master storyteller, rich in language and suspense.

A passion for reading is certainly not the only gift my father has given to me, but it is perhaps the one that links my life so solidly to his. This we share more deeply than our delight in the perfect sail or a slice of the sweetest peach: a passion for words, both written and spoken, for the sound of language and the joy of a well-turned phrase, and for sheer delight of a perfectly good book.

(Repost from SmallWorld Reads. My apologies to those of you who subscribe to both!)

What I've Been Doing

My first summer project began last Saturday when I put the first coat of paint on my dining room walls. It all started because I wanted to redo the parquet floors, which were in dire need of refinishing. But of course since I had to move all the furniture out of the dining room anyway, it seemed logical to repaint the walls, as well. It's been eight years, after all.


When we first moved into this house nine years ago, the dining room had a hideous vertical-striped wallpaper on the top and something else on the bottom. Peeling wallpaper and painting was chore, especially with a newborn. My friend Tracy did most of that work while I watched all the kids. I'm not sure who got the better end of the deal, but that was eight years ago. I'm tired of green.

Look at this floor! Okay, this is after I sanded it, but it really didn't look much better before sanding. I was somewhat intimidated by the thought of sanding, staining, and polyurethaning a hardwood floor. I read a few websites and got the general idea, and then I sent the kids to day camp and worked my heinie off.

And here it is four days later. The first day I sanded and stained. The next day I rested. The third and fourth days I put coats of polyurethane on and made everyone stay out of the dining room. That was tricky, since we have to go through the dining room to get to the kitchen. But the kids were great, and we enjoyed eating out!


And here are the new wall colors. The photos isn't terribly representative of the "sauteed mushroom" and "Belgian chocolate" combo, but it is fabulous. Now I just have to paint the trim and buy new switchplates. And new picture frames. And a clock. And paint a chest. And most importantly…

move the very large dining room table OUT of the middle of the living room and back into the dining room!

Wordless Wednesday: Rose Petals

More Wordless Wednesdays here and here.

Monday Memory: Treasures in the Pages

Having left hers at church, Laurel needed a Bible to take to camp with her this week. She needed a lightweight one to carry in a backpack, so I found one of my old Bibles on a shelf. This was the NIV I carried through college and through the first ten years of my married life. I kept lots of stuff in the pages. Last night I shook all the papers out before I gave her the Bible, and right before bedtime I sifted through these lovely treasures.

I found a note from my college friend Lindsay. I don't know why she wrote it. Maybe when my grandmother died my freshman year, or perhaps some other time when she knew I was down. It says, "I love you! 'Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous fall.' Psalm 55: 22." I am blessed to have such people in my life.

I found a note from my mom, with the salutation, "Sweet Paperdoll." That was always my favorite nickname that she had for me.

I found a note that fluttered like a ghost. I knew what the green sheet of paper was before I opened it. How many times had I read this letter from my college friend Dee Ann? Somehow I had forgotten all about it, and now that she's gone, I will treasure it even more. I remember well the confident curls of her cursive.

I found my first boyfriend's obituary, and the finality of his death hits all over again. And his age: 23. And I found the note from his mother, thanking me for traveling from Tennessee to New York for his funeral. As if I could have not been there.

I found a letter from my future mother-in-law, encouraging me after Bryan's death. What was really sweet about that letter is that Randy and I were no longer dating when she wrote it. But she said she always knew—or hoped—we'd get back together.

I found a poem from Randy after we did, indeed, get back together. A snippet from that:

"Two people met in the faraway hills of Tennessee
that learn to call each other home
And find that life without a home
is like no life at all."

I found a poem that my father wrote for me, called "Little Girl." A snippet from that:

"You weren't all that impressive
when you first arrived, you know;
Just another little pink baby,
open-mouthed and squinty-eyed.
Brothers would just as soon have a dog.
'Druther, maybe;
dogs are smarter than sisters and train better too…
Mom and I decided to keep you anyway,
At least for awhile.
Any new pet's nice to have in late winter,
helps with cabin fever.
It was dogwood season when you really joined the race—
dogwoods by the window,
white crosses and pink
blowin' in the wind,
blowin' laughter in the wind,
blowin' beauty in the wind.
My Sarah in the wind,
Sarah in the dogwood wind.

My heart is full of treasures,
little girl,
full of treasure pictures,
row on row,
year on year,
treasured treasure pictures in my heart...."

It goes on for another page, and I can't even ever get throught the first stanza without weeping. I am blessed, so blessed, by this man who is my father.

And I found the poem my father wrote for my mother on their 50th anniversary, called "Always Twenty-One." That one I can't even read. At all. Especially with my parents (who celebrated 60 years last August) 800 miles away. But I have it here if you want to read a beautiful love poem.

I found a few other things, too: a letter from my college best friend when I graduated and left, a note from my uncle after my Great-Aunt Flossie died at age 104, a postcard from Randy when he went to Venezuela, and a note from him titled, "Happy Hopefully Pregnant."

I think it is entirely appropriate that, tucked inside the Word that has always sustained me, were words from people who have loved me, touched me, forgiven me, given me unspeakable joy, and blessed me immeasurably.

Flag Day Parade

Don't they all look so happy? This is as we were heading out of the nice, air-conditioned cars to meet up downtown with our Cub Scout pack and American Heritage Girls troop for our city's first Flag Day parade. (Or at least the first in the past few decades.)

Thirty minutes later they weren't looking quite so happy. Vests came off and shirts came untucked. Sweat was pouring and tongues were hanging out of their mouths as they cried "WATER! WATER!" We finally started marching after they'd been waiting nearly an hour-and-a-half. It was really, really hot, as days tend to be in the South in mid-June.

Next year, I will remember these two things: 1) there is no need to line up an hour before the parade begins; and 2) bring water. That would have been a really good idea.