Category: Parenting

CREATING MEMORIES, V
looking forward & back

It’s Mother’s Day! And I am in the blessed scenario of both having a mother and being a mother. Do you know, when I was a young child, my grandma had the pretty unique blessing of both being a grandma and having a grandma?! Yes, we had five generations alive at one time—all the way until right before my ninth birthday, when my Great Great Grandma died, still sharp as a whip. A lot of my childhood memories hold a lot of old people—my great granddaddy James (who lived with us for a while, right before he died), my great great grandma Martha, my great grandpa Willard, my great grandma Van, and all four grandparents (two of whom lived with us for a while) for a good bit of my childhood. And oh, how I wish there were some way to harness more of those memories—there is just nothing like generational blessing, and I so desperately wish I could cling to those times with my older relatives with more detail in my memory. It is one thing that makes me long—on the other side of the coin—to give my children as many opportunities with their grandparents and great grandparents as possible. It’s one piece of why my heart breaks at the thought that my children may never see my grandfather again—and their great grandparents on their paternal side never really knew them—and even their paternal grandparents are so far away… Knitting generations together is a beautiful tapestry, and sometimes it is hard to weave (sometimes impossible, because heaven is a long way away…), but it is so worth every effort. Every memory I have of my parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and great great grandma are treasures. True treasures.

My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle…
Remember that my life is a breath…
Job 7:6-7

Peek around at our intro, part I, part II, part III, part IV, quotes and Scriptures and thoughts of grace.

And now as we finish up our conversation on creating memories, I am looking forward as well as looking backward. I am recalling some more little things from my own childhood. I am thinking of some more little things that I wonder if my children will remember when they are grown. And ultimately, I pray that my children will have the incredible blessing of knowing faithful generations on both sides of their own stories, and have treasure troves full of memories that these relationships weave through their lifetimes.

Remember how short my time is!
For what vanity You have created all the children of man!
Psalm 89:47

 

Looking Back

~I remember my childhood church, and filling a really long pew in the balcony every week with five generations. I remember the Sunday School building, and how Pastor Flood had a gumball machine filled with jellybeans where we could spend pennies for the goodies, and a couple of my friends didn’t like the black ones so I always got extra. I remember going to Thursday School in a far back building on the church campus, where we did neat projects and I felt like a big kid because one day I week I got to “go to school.” I remember the children’s choir—originally called the New Creature Choir, where I learned how to play recorder. I remember musicals, dying to play a lead part, and singing with all my heart. My family didn’t do Awanas, but sometimes I got to go with a friend—we didn’t regularly do VBS either, but I remember going with friends one summer and being totally overwhelmed by the puppet show. I remember weddings and funerals there. I remember the big grass field where we played games, and the area of trees that bees flocked to and stickinesss covered the ground—I’ve long wondered what kind of trees those were. I fell in love with Jesus there, I fell in love with singing there, I fell in love with piano there, I made some of the best friends a girl could ever ask for there. I have very fond memories of my childhood church.

~I remember my childhood home, where I lived & loved from 4 to 14. I don’t really remember the little house we lived in before that, except for little snippets that have been largely aided by photographs I have seen throughout my life. But I remember my bright pink bedroom in our big house on the hill. I remember loving the swimming pool in the middle of the hill and the creek at the very foot of the hill. I remember the horse corral, and wishing it were not a dilapidated fence just to play around but rather a real paddock where I could run my own real (rather than imaginary) horses. I remember the blackberry bushes and the poison oak. I remember the tall grasses. I remember my brother finding pinecones to harvest pinenuts from like an Indian. I remember learning to dive in our pool. I remember friends staying in the poolhouse, which was our guesthouse. I remember my mom sponge painting the two changing rooms on the side of the poolhouse. I remember having a hot tub that never got used, until it was removed one year so my dad & brother could build a crazy computer room in its place. I remember where the little old television was set up downstairs, and the ceiling-high set of shelves covered in VHS tapes. I remember my brother sat in the oversized chair on the left, and I would sit with my dog Goldie on the grungy couch on the right. I remember having friends over to “play prairie” with me in the backyard (especially after my dad and brother built me my prairie house with the triple bunks, the window with shutters, and the fold-down table), and then we would eat mac & cheese and drink Diet Coke for special lunch treats.

I looked on child rearing not only as a work of love & duty
but as a profession that was fully as interesting & challenging
as any honorable profession in the world
and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it.
~Rose Kennedy~

~I remember going to classes. I remember ballet—I remember loving Miss Tammy to pieces, and wanting to be a ballerina forever. Later I remember another teacher, Mrs. H, poking my tummy and telling me I was getting pudgy—and how that has plagued me for over twenty years now. I remember going to art class, and adopting my teacher, Miss Carmel, as another grandma. I remember doing a writing class. I remember a group of us homeschooled kids getting together to put on a production of Anne of Green Gables. I remember literature classes, logic classes, a class on the Civil War. I remember piano lessons—I had three teachers in California, one teacher in Washington.

~I remember falling in love with writing. I remember creating my Little Women’s Society magazine, and meeting hundreds of young ladies across the country (and a couple internationally as well) through my publication. I remember spending hours writing, compiling, typing, formatting, honing computer skills, printing & collating & stapling & addressing publications month after month (every other month for a long time, eventually quarterly, and then by the time I was in college, I had to give it up altogether). I remember sharing my life on paper with friends and strangers alike.

~I remember having fifty penpals at one time, and I regularly corresponded by hand with each one. I loved these long distance friends keenly. A few, I got to meet in person when traveling, and some I actually moved to live near. I still know many of them. And there are a couple (Joanna in the midwest and Samantha in sunny Cal!!) who I still communicate with long-distance but have never (yet) met in person.

~I remember Sunday evenings at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Five generations, usually at least a dozen people in attendance, gathered in my grandma’s house every Sunday evening. I remember Grandma and Mama cooking, Aunt Wendy washing dishes. I remember watching America’s Funniest Home Videos after it was all cleaned up. I remember helping my little cousins take baths, playing Duplos together, teaching a cousin to play Go Fish.

You were and are mother to my father—
the tree from which apples fell and grew
from which apples fell and grew
from which apples now fall and grow.
You are gone from this orchard, but [we] […] will grow on,
pointing toward the Son you showed us.
We will live—and we will die—in Christ,
thankful that He placed us downstream in the river of your human grace.
~N.D. Wilson, Death by Living, p169~

~I remember my parents dressing up to go the Civic Light Opera, dropping us off at Grandma and Grandpa’s house for dinner and sometimes a sleepover. I remember trying to spin in the leather-plastic chairs at the dining room table with my brother (they must have been from the 70s but they were spinny and fantastic fun when nobody was looking!), but getting Grandpa’s stern eyes—the same eyes we’d get if we put our elbows on the table or got too wild. I remember Grandma’s frog cookie jar. I remember spending nights at my grandparents’ house sometimes—I would sleep on the floor next to my grandma, and my brother would sleep in their walk-in closet. I remember an entire shelf of cereals in their cupboard, and how my grandparents would mix different cereals and then pile a mountain of various fruit on the very top before drizzling a little milk over it all. I remember Great Grandpa’s woodpile and workshop. I remember how he built me a Victorian dollhouse by hand after he cut off all the fingers on his right hand with an electric saw (when he was about 90). I remember Great Great Grandma’s stiff chair with the doily on the top. I remember my noisy uncles always causing one raucous or another. I remember Grandpa and his avid gardening, especially the tomatoes and the roses. I remember making chocolate chip cookies with Grandma, and playing board game after board game after board game. I remember her trying to convince me that math was fun because it was just like a game, and the right answers were always “the win.”

~I remember going square dancing with my grandparents, their weekly date night out. I remember hearing about how my parents met at ten years old at a square dance in my other grandparents’ basement across the country. (I regret that I have never learned to square dance, and I hope better for my kids somehow.)

~I remember the parties my mom threw—St. Patty’s, July 4^th, swimming parties, tea parties, Thanksgiving extravaganzas, Christmas parties of all sorts—kid parties where we made things with painted macaroni, or elegant evening parties with candlelight and classical music. I remember the food and the decorations. I remember how she worked hard but how she lived it up. She may not have had sparkly high heels on, but she wore aprons with pearls.

Oh, Marilla, I thought I was happy before.
Now I know that I just dreamed a pleasant dream of happiness.
This is the reality.
~L.M. Montgomery, Anne’s House of Dreams~

~I remember trips. I remember spending Halloween weekends at Disneyland because all the costumes were fun princesses and silly characters. I remember going away for three weeks at a time with my parents and my brother on road trips around various corners of the United States, with our maroon minivan packed full and our grey plywood car top carrier full of suitcases. I remember little tiny bits about going to Michigan when I was five, with both sets of my grandparents. I remember my granddad buying me a purple bike at a garage sale so that I could ride around Mackinac Island with everyone else. I remember my grandmother’s basement—the way it smelled, the cement floor and the fun toys, and imagining the square dances they used to host there. I remember the hot air balloon festival in New Mexico, and buying my own pair of moccasins near the Grand Canyon in Arizona. I remember staying in Las Vegas, all the bright lights and the fancy hotels, and my parents having fun with nickel slots one night. I remember traveling back east with our best friends, going through all the Colonial hot spots we had studied together in history, seeing it all face to face and reenacted. I remember driving around in a rented motorhome one time, falling in love with people and places, lying on the bed in the back with my dad while we drew pictures of future dreams while Mama drove us around and Colin manned the maps.

~I remember uprooting and starting over with my family, moving from city to country. I remember watching my dad put pieces back together. I remember him starting churches. I remember God’s hand at work in my parents. I remember testing their faith. I remember old dreams and new dreams. I remember my dog dying in my arms. I remember knowing what joy was. I remember learning what grief was.

You make the best choices you can at the time with the information you have,
and then you deal with the consequences,
and that’s the part where your life happens.
Every major decision we’ve made involved prayer and advice from wise people,
but that was no guarantee that it would turn out the way I wanted,
with a little white house and a picket fence.
~Myquillyn Smith, The Nesting Place, p39~

~I remember so many little snippets, just little sprinkles on the icing on the cake… and I don’t want to forget. But I do, and I will. So I want to enjoy the memories while I have them.

 

Looking Forward

~I wonder if my children will remember how hard we worked to grow our family, how we prayed and cried and kept trying again. I wonder if they will remember standing in the bathroom with me while I put shots in my tummy and they take turns counting to ten for me while I inject. I wonder if they will remember life before and without one another, if Gabriel will remember his years as an only child when he cried & begged & prayed fervently for a little brother or sister.

~I wonder if my children will remember the schooling we give them—if the books, facts, lessons, tests, fieldtrips, and experiences will sink in deeply and take root. I wonder if they will have loved their educations as much as I did mine.

~I wonder what my children will remember about their grandparents and their great grandparents. I wonder whether it is the big memories like the family vacations or the big holidays they will remember most, or the daily ins and outs of living life together that will be the monuments in their minds.

The childhood shows the man
As morning shows the day.
~John Milton, Paradise Regained~

~I wonder if they will remember me asking their forgiveness when I have lost my temper or otherwise sinned against them. I wonder if they will remember me saying yes more often than no. I wonder if they will look back on their childhoods with delight instead of regret.

~I wonder what trips will stick strongest in their memories, and which birthday celebrations or holiday traditions will maintain monuments in their minds. What will be the traditions that our kids, once grown, will want to cling to and come back home for? Will any of our kids remember their lives here in the country so fondly that they too want to build on the family land? Will I have grandchildren who know me, love me, remember me?

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not;
remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
~Epicurus~

~I want my children too to remember little snippets that will be the sprinkles on the icing on the cake. I want them to enjoy the memories they keep, and I want us all to enjoy making the memories in the meanwhile—by God’s grace and for His Kingdom.

As we approach the end of our conversation on creating memories for our children, (see the intro, part I, part II, and part III, as well as quotes and Scriptures on the matter) I will share some specific ways that we pursue particular routines & events to create memories for our children which we hope & pray will solidify the family culture we seek to create in our home & family.

CREATING MEMORIES, IV
how we pursue creating specific memories through
routines & events to solidify that family culture

~bedtime serenades~
Last summer during some power outages (two weeks’ worth, ten days apart from one another), I picked up piano playing again. My pretty little baby grand had been gathering country dust (which honestly is unavoidable where we live) but had also been largely unplayed and unloved in recent years. During those weeks with no cd player, no internet, no videos, no electronic anything… I returned to making music. I pulled out Beethoven, Debussy, Bach, Mozart, Rachmaninoff… along with some collections of other random composers both historical & contemporary… and I simply began to play. But it is hard to play during the day when other things call me… like children… or chores of all various & sundry types. Especially once the electricity returned, and I could cook and clean and launder and internet (can I please use that as a verb? thankyouverymuch) normally again, I found that finding uninterrupted time for music making is really quite difficult.
But the children begged me to play for them, and my husband is more than delighted when I play as well. I do desperately want my children to remember their mother as partly musician, and definitely as a true lover of music.
So it happened: bedtime serenades were born.
Now, after tucking them in, kissing them, praying for them, and blessing them, I scoot myself over to the piano. I play for roughly thirty minutes, and the children love falling asleep in the midst of it. I guess it’s been a habit for over nine months now, and it is definitely rooted in the evening routine at this point.
Recently, they have begun requesting harp in addition to piano. Sometimes I play one instrument per night, other times I play a little of each. There have also been occasions recently where I simply am too exhausted to play at all, and I beg their forgiveness even as their little pouty lips show me their true disappointment.
So I do my best to keep up with the tradition, and all three of my kids nightly remind me of my musical commitment to serenade them in their beds. It’s funny how such a joy for all five of us has become a habit, part of our evening routine, and now something I hope we will all remember in years to come as something which filled our home with joy, beauty, and melody while the crickets sang and the stars twinkled outside and little ones’ bodies fell into slumber in the comfort of their own little beds.

We don’t risk because it’s easy;
we risk because of hope,
because we see the promise of something better.
~Myquillyn Smith, The Nesting Place, p85~

 

~joy at the table~
We need to keep working on this one, I’ll just say honestly from the get-go. 🙂 I long for my children to look back at mealtimes not just as opportunities to fill our mouths and bellies with food, but to love one another and spend time with one another… especially the dinner table where all of us sit down together. Breakfast and lunch, at this point in our family’s life, are meals the three kids share together, but Steven is at work and I am bustling around doing multiple other things. So evening dinnertime is our daily hallmark to sit together, speak together, laugh together, and spend time in one place together. The dinner table is not a time and place to focus on ourselves or to suddenly become introverted and quiet while we stuff forkfuls of chicken and rice in our mouths. This is a time to feast together not only on food, but on one another. As the kids grow, I know our conversations will also grow… at this point, it can obviously still be pretty tricky to carry on much of a real conversation. But conversation, even if in fits and spurts, is better than all quietly munching on our food side by side. I try to pass questions off to each of the kids (preferably not when they have just filled their mouths with a big bite… but my timing is not always stellar…), and encourage them to tell their daddy about their day. We also try to teach the kids to ask questions of others, too, and encourage conversations that way. Sometimes jokes and giggles and silly sounds make their way into the dinner routine, and I can’t help but throw my hands up in laughter and let it go. Manners are definitely a work in progress, but joy is a more important work at this point, and we are eager to continue growing in this daily time together at the table, and hope that as our children look back on their life in our home, that it will be a blessing they count in their memories, and a place they long to return to for more feasting on all the best kinds of fat things together.

Get advice from people who are doing the thing
the way you want to be doing that thing.
It’s a universal law that can be applied to almost any situation.
~Myquillyn Smith, The Nesting Place, p92~

~Sabbath as a joy & monument, Christ everyday & in our everyday~
Have you ever read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Farmer Boy” and been taken aback at the description of Sundays? As I recall, it’s the same in “Little House in the Big Woods,” and I don’t think the legalism and harsh realities of what “Sabbath” meant to people is really very far-fetched for most of us. But my boys, who are old enough to pick up on the nuances of these details we read about, find it absolutely unimaginable. They love Sundays! They happen to love dressing up, so wearing their Sunday best is anything but a chore (and I think that took some training, both habitually and watching their father learn to enjoy dressing up as well ~ because of course the boys really just want to be like their daddy!). They get leftover pancakes or waffles (because Steven has a tradition of making breakfast on Saturdays, and he always makes leftovers so the kids can have sweet goodness on Sunday morning that won’t take me a lot of time or work to prepare), and I often give the kids each a special treat like a piece of candy and say, “whose day is this?” The Lord’s Day! “and what do we do?” Be Glad In It! “and remember that it is sweet!” Then we head off for an hour of Sunday school before going to worship together. Our children learn from infancy about liturgy and participating in worship: they recite creeds and other liturgical phrases, they sing (at the top of their lungs when they know the words!), they kneel & pray, they pass the peace of Christ with the brethren around them, they partake of communion (and teach us adults so much through their attitudes of peace and abandoned delight as they kneel at the altar). We fellowship with other believers: whether in the church building or in homes, we love another with hugs and handshakes, over plates of food and cups of coffee, we seek the good of others, we ask questions and answer questions, we converse and seek to delve ever further into sharing life with these people who are our brethren. We encourage our kids even as little people that spurring one another on to love and good deeds is what church life really boils down to, and glorifying God through our fellowship, worship, learning, growing, sharpening, and sharing the Good News. We encourage multi-generational worship & fellowship, delighting in filling a pew with three generations as well as often going out to eat with my parents after church (which is monumentally exciting for the kids week after week!) if we don’t have people over or have not been invited elsewhere. We love to pray in public, and the kids frequently ask to do it. They never mince words or turn down the volume, and it’s winsome. If we aren’t spending the afternoon with other folks, we generally head home to read and play and rest and sometimes nap. We love reading by the fire in wintertime, sprawling on the grass in the summertime.
Then there is our Sunday evening family fun night, detailed under the next heading.
And after the kids go to bed on Sunday nights, it’s time for my husband and me to have our own little restful date night, usually with wine, cheese, olives, & chocolate.
We seek to grow continually in our Lord’s Day practices, and to engage the children in the process, so that our Sabbaths are simply joy-filled days of resting in the Lord & delighting in His world. We long for a truly robust habit of Sundays, which joy oozes out into the other six days we spend cultivating the world God made and loving the people He created for it.

So we don’t draw the line there, leaving our pursuit of Christ and His holiness on Sundays, of course. We pursue God’s Kingdom every day of the week, and seek by our words and our actions to lead our children in this way. We pray out loud numerous times throughout the day (we take turns doing it—the children love to lead in prayer, to speak to their Father in specifics), we read Scripture (I have Scriptures around the house in various art forms or presentations, and I try to read with the kids going straight through books of the Bible in conjunction with learning catechism together—we’re finishing Genesis right now before jumping to one of Paul’s epistles again), we praise God for both big and little things (like finding a baby’s heartbeat on the doppler! or finding a parking spot right next to the shopping cart return…), we talk of the fruits of the Spirit and sing of God’s grace and faithfulness. We discipline and disciple as diligently as we can, and grace with forgiveness are emphasized again and again throughout the days. We use catechisms and Scriptures the kids know to “hold them by their baptism” as one of our pastors would say. There is never a moment where they are not bound up in Christ, filled with His Spirit, and heard by the Father—so there is never a moment where we should not seek to act like His children, in thought, word, and deed. That is our endeavor, our pursuit, our hope, our prayer, our privilege, our delight.

 

~weekly family fun night~
As I said above, part of our merrymaking on the Lord’s Day is how we wrap up the day with family fun night: the intent being to do something fun and to eat something fun. At this season of our little family’s life, that means watching movies in Mommy & Daddy’s room while eating popcorn and ice cream. Someday, we look forward to developing it further with board games and blended drinks, for instance! We hope this weekly tradition (which the children adore) will grow and deepen as our kids do, and that its fun will continue to reflect our family relationships and the joys we find in one another.

Living is the same thing as dying.
Living well is the same thing as dying for others.
~N.D. Wilson, Death by Living, p84~

~love of learning, delight in playing, embracing of all we call neighbor~
Especially as a homeschooling family, but regardless of it just the same, we seek to daily inculcate a love of curiosity and creativity and learning. We emphasize that education is all around us, and that we should enjoy reading, uncovering, discovering, and continually attaining knew heights in our education all the time, every day ~ all of us, not just those who qualify as K-12. We love books, and try to give countless opportunities for reading fiction and non-fiction and Scripture and schoolbooks throughout the days. Trips to the library require muscles these days, as we bring home dozens of books filling a large basket, and we often renew them as many times as we can in order to best glean from them and love them. Our oldest son now often begs to go to bed right after dinner, just so he can read by flashlight for hours in the evening!
We encourage a delight in playing, especially playing together. Our kids do love toys (don’t all kids?), but they love their imaginations more. When the playing is no longer fun, the salt has lost its savor… so we encourage them to move on to new fun and different playing. They learn, they grow, they rejoice, they love life when they play together delightedly, so we try to have plenty of time each day where they can nurture their imaginations and play together with joy.
We also seek to embrace our neighbor in these things, especially as learning and playing coincide. When bringing cookies or Christmas poinsettias or loaves of fresh bread to literal neighbors, we remind our kids that we love in action in addition to our words. When we meet new families on fieldtrips or at the library, we remind our kids that these people too are our neighbors. In our church home, we teach our kids to embrace all of these people with all of these stories in all of these generations because they too are our neighbors. We try to help our kids come up with creative (or not) ways to embrace people: with handwritten or hand colored notes, with gifts of homemade foods, with various forms of opening our home & sharing hospitality, with smiles or handshakes, with grace and forgiveness.

If you were suddenly given more than you could count,
and you couldn’t keep any of it for yourself,
what would you do?
That is, after all, our current situation.
Grabbing will always fail.
Giving will always succeed.
Bestow.
Our children, our friends, and our neighbors will all be better off
if we work to accumulate for their sakes.
If God has given you a widow’s mite, let it go.
Set it on the altar.
If God has given you a great banquet than you can possibly eat, let it go.
Set it on the altar.
~N.D. Wilson, Death by Living, p110~