Running errands in this small town is a pleasure. Especially when it's just my girl and I, setting off on foot. The signs of spring were in full magic this day and we soaked it all in.
Oh, March, how I love you.
(Please excuse and/or enjoy the spring photos in this post. It is mid-January. I know. And I need to look at asparagus and tulips to help my toes warm up today.)
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When Lupine was born three years ago we were strangers to nearly everyone in this town. We had lived here for just six weeks, and knew only a handful of people. And then the phone rang. It was an acquaintance/friend from before our move. A woman who had moved here less than a year before us. "Is anyone doing your meal wheel yet?" she asked.
Our what?
"Your meal wheel. I'll organize it for you," she offered.
While we didn't really know what it was all about, we got the gist: people would be bringing us dinner every evening after our baby arrived. Never mind the fact that we really didn't know anyone here yet. That didn't seem to matter.
And it didn't.
Night after night strangers arrived at our door, carrying meals. Not just main-dish entrees. Meals. Amazing. Magical. Delicious. Meals. Baked salmon. Salads. Pasta with bacon, spinach, and cream sauce (Anne, we need that recipe!). Wine and beer. Dessert. And notes with phone numbers and welcome notes bringing us into this new community.
Seriously. We hit the jackpot with this town. They just kept coming, night after night. More than three weeks later we were ready to start cooking for ourselves and our meal wheel had run its course. It was the most amazing welcome I have ever experienced.
If we were having a baby today, most of those same people would be on our meal wheel again. Next week we are bringing a meal to a neighbor who just welcomed their new little one into their arms. And recently a meal wheel organized for an older woman in town who was navigating some health issues.
Just today I received an email from a friend-of-a-friend who participated in a meal wheel I organized a month ago and now has started one of her own to help an injured loved one.
Below is an email I recently sent out as I organized a Meal Wheel in a community where it is not a familiar concept. I made a few edits to make it more universal. Feel free to copy and paste this into your own email:
What is a Meal Wheel?
A meal wheel
is a rotation of friends and family delivering a complete dinner, hot
and ready to eat to a family who needs a little extra help. When a new
baby comes, the Meal Wheel
really allows the family to foucs on the important work of getting to
know their new little one, get into the nursing and napping groove, and
relax. As a longtime friend of <my friend's name> I wanted to share this priceless
gift with her and her growing family. It was the most valuable gift we
received when or last child was born.
How it Works
Participants sign up for a specific night. You arrive with a complete, hot meal
(dessert and all if you can pull it off!) at their door around 5:30,
stealth into their kitchen, and leave it on the table. <This is one way to do it. Other families will not be comfortable with this and will prefer a traditional ring-the-doorbell approach.>This is not your
"meet the baby" visit unless the new parents are inspired. It is really
just a quick, quiet delivery and fast exit. This is their time to
snuggle in and meet their new little one rather than socialize. That
will come later!
Who Can Do It
Friends, neighbors, family,
coworkers, colleagues, acquaintances, friends-of-friends… anyone. You
get the idea (tell everyone!). Please pass this email onto others who
you think would consider participating. We'd love to fill up three to
four weeks of dinners for them.
Sign Up!
Please email your date preferences to me at <your email address>.
I am scheduling from <enter dates here>. Please send me three date
options, beginning on the early end of the schedule (IE: this week).
You can also call me at <phone number>.
The Meal
Deliver your
dinner between <family's preference times, ex: 5:15 and 5:30 pm> ready to eat at <address here>. Enter the house quietly and leave the
meal on the kitchen table. Especially in the
first few days, Mama and baby will likely be resting. Label your dishes
with your name and phone number to make returns easier.
That's it! Many thanks for participating and passing this invitation along. Thanks so much!
<Your Name>
As I headed to pick up my kids post-date night I drove by this tumble-down building in a nearby town. I pass by it often and have always been captivated by it's monochromatic tones and its slow decay.
Being alone in the car I had the luxury of stopping to explore and make a few photographs.
As I stepped out of my car and raised my camera a truck pulled over and a man got out. As he crossed the street he spoke to me. "It use to be a grocery store. Years ago." He went on to tell me the history of the building – grocery store, slaughter house and meat market, dairy, and finally surplus store and apartment building.
He was a neighbor and was as happy to share stories as I was to hear them.
There is something both magical and creepy about the energy around a building like this. I have long been drawn to decaying houses in the country. Even the flowers for Pete's and my wedding were gathered from a long forgotten lilac hedge besides a lost farmhouse. (Hopefully that sounds sweet and not just weird.)
I have been know to emancipate
occasional treasures from these forgotten homesteads, lest they be lost
forever through the crumbling floorboards.
When Pete and I first moved to the country there was a farmhouse we would visit often. It was abandoned, with holes in the floors and holes in the roof and raccoons taking up residence on the couch. Amazingly, everything was still inside. Toothbrushes. Toothpaste. Clothes. Dishes. Furniture. Eye glasses. Everything. It looked as though life stopped there in 1955. Simply stopped, frozen in time. I wondered for many years about that place, about the people and stories that lived out their lives there.
It has since been torn down (or perhaps collapsed), and I wonder if they ever cleared out the belongings or if they were simply plowed into the earth when the house fell in. I am so sensitive, so emotional, that I took several items from that house when I was in my 20's as an act of respect for whomever they originally belonged to. In the story I spun in my mind, I imagined that the people who lived there had died and noone ever came to clean up their life. There was so much sadness in that for me.
Vandals broke in regularly to make mischief and smash things onto the floor, which added to the sadness of the story. I fell in love with some coffee cups, a can opener – just random things – and took them home. We used them for years, and I would imagine the stories of what might have happened at that farm.
As a mother, I don't break into abandoned buildings anymore. I don't have the constitution and there is that whole modeling good behavior business. But they still captivate me. Lost buildings, lost stories.
(Note: For a phenomenal story from NPR about one such place, This American Life's House near Loon Lake
will have you glued to your speakers. It aired years after we discovered "our" abandoned house and the story was so similar at times I had goosebumps. Perhaps the best radio story I have ever heard.)
edited: More photos can be found here.
We were blessed with piles and mountains of beautiful snow this week. A day on a nearby hillside was just what we were wanting. Sleds? Check. Snowboard? Check. A few favorite friends? Check. Icy cold cheeks and perpetual smiles? Check, indeed.
Viroqua is a hockey crazy, ice skating crazy place. For being a town of a mere 4000 people, we have an awesome indoor ice arena which opened for the season late last month. While we are not a hockey family, we are a skating family. The Ice Arena is a blessing in the early and late season when outdoor ice is inconsistent.
Our homeschool cooperative schedules a day on the ice every two weeks and last week was our first skate. Sage was comfortable starting slow (I smiled to see him packing a helmet in the car with his skates) but in no time he was in his bliss, flying around the ice.
And Lupine? After boot skating last year, Lulu was ready for double blades this season. Thought she spend much of her time like this:
Or wrapped around me like this:
I know, I know. Its past my bedtime and I shouldn't be posting, I should be sleeping. (St. Nicholas is sure to arrive tonight, and the kids will be up by six, eating peppermint sticks and chocolate coins before breakfast. I must be ready.)
But I'm not much for should's. (Though I will keep it short.)
Today was a perfect December day.
It began with an early(ish) morning walk. The kids were certain they saw the following tracks:
1. Cat
2. Rabbit
3. Mama
4. Gnome
Along the way we shared a quiet, snowy moment with Buddha, and then…
…arrived at our destination: our local Waldorf School's annual Holiday Fair. Between the peppermint oranges, wool felt crafting, music, luscious organic food, and all sorts of handmade awesomeness, we enjoyed ourselves completely.
Although we have chosen to homeschool, we are so blessed to have the Waldorf school here in our small town. It has created an energy in our community that we love and attracted so many kindred spirits to our area. (I never thought I would blend so well in such a small town.)
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And tonight? Yes, St. Nicholas will be here soon. I should go to bed so that he doesn't have to come back later (he's pretty shy, Sage tells me). Every year he brings us a silly poem, a few chocolate coins, some nuts, and clementines. He's pretty mellow but so looked forward to around here.
I adored the tradition of St. Nicholas as a child. It brought the holidays in so close, so early and I delighted in it. My best friend's family didn't share the tradition so I justified the discrepancy in holidays as follows: they don't celebrate St. Nicholas because they are Jewish. (Never mind that I often attended Catholic mass with them – in their church.)
And now, as a parent? We didn't intend to celebrate St. Nicholas in our family. I struggled with Santa and St. Nick and the Easter Bunny and all of the magical deceit when Sage was small. But the magic of childhood prevailed, and we invited Santa and the Bunny. (I drew the line at St. Nick.) But after a fated December visit to a friend's house a few years ago they found out about the jolly man in red #2, and they have invited him ever since.
Frankly, I'm glad. I always was partial to St. Nick.
Sweet dreams, and a sweet morning to you all!
Some evenings just weave together unexpectedly, with all the right components. Tonight was like that. The random formula went something like this:
Start with: 2 kids with 4:00 pm squirmies
+ 2 additional kids (unexpected)
+ 1 gnome hat, 1 witches costume, 1 fairy wand
+ 1 typewriter
+ 2 secret witches poison recipes
+ the unexpected development of social skills for my kid while navigating the world of his older friends.
=
why we live here.
A magical – then challenging – then magical evening. Perfect. Truly.
Each week from March through November we receive an overflowing box of amazing local fare from our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm. (You may remember this post from last spring.) Connecting with and supporting a local sustainable farm has many benefits. Thanks to our local food source, we are intimately connected to where our food comes from, understand the cycle of the seasons, and feel the impact that weather has on our food supply.
For families with children, the connections they make to their food is one that will impact their relationship with their dinner for the rest of their lives. (Food comes from the earth, not the grocery store).
When Sage was two he would scold correct me if I sang "Old MacDonald Had a Farm." "No, Mama! It's Not Old MacDonald. It's Jay and Donna Had a Farm." Jay and Donna were our first (beloved) CSA farmer's. We joined their farm, WormFarm, while I was still pregnant with Sage. They were small enough that they were able to secretly add extra leafy greens to my family's weekly share because I had a tiny baby and they knew I needed the nutrients. (Thanks to them, I am now a passionate Chard/Kale/Collards eater!) Jay and Donna lived just a few miles from our country house, and we loved them. We would have subscribed for those overflowing boxes of tomatoes and greens for the rest of our lives had we not moved away.
Our current CSA is less intimate (a much bigger operation), but the food quality and quantity is unsurpassed. They even offer additional local shares, like cheese and coffee from small regional producers.
CSA's come in an endless variety, and there is certainly a farm near you that can provide much of your seasonal eats. The CSA concept is simplified like this: you select a farm and join (ie: pre-pay for your seasonal food). The money you pay is then be used by the farmers to acquire the supplies and equipment they need to plant the crops that you will enjoy. You share the benefits, you share the risk.)
Winter is the perfect time of year to find your CSA for next season if you don't already have one. This website is a great way to locate your new farm. I assure you – you'll never look back!
This week we found this sassy little carrot man in our share. He made himself at home in our dollhouse for a bit, until tragedy struck…
Pete is traveling for work, and those days are often packed with "to do's", like laundry, cooking, parenting, and generally holding the ship together. Today (his first day away) we were invited on a hike with some dear friends. We ditched the to-do list and put our boots on.
It was a perfect day. Sunny, breezy bliss. There was milkweed to make wind-magic with…
An abundance of love – with plenty of hands to hold,
and the beauty of nature to hold us close.
As fall inches towards winter, these days are vital. Connecting with
the people we love most (even with my sweetie away) out in the sun and wind is also vital.
Laughing, walking, talking, relaxing, picnicking… truly a perfect, magical
autumn day.
As we walked the final stretch back towards the trailhead, Lupine sprinkled sumac berries along the trail. She said, "These berries are for Mother Earth. She can gather them up in her fairy wings and fly away to the earth, her home, to plant them."
A day like this breeds magic indeed.
Over the years we've built many wonderful traditions in our family. Halloween is no exception. We celebrate with part family tradition, part local tradition, and a bit of good ol' American gluttony.
This year Lupine chose to be a bluebird. It wasn't much of a stretch, as her birthname is Lupine Bluebird Wolf, and she has claimed the name since she was barely two ("No me Lupine. Me Bluebird.") Sage, who loves the darkness of halloween was transformed into a vampire.
The hat was based off of a free Ravelry pattern called the "Wee Balaclava". I knitted the beak free-form and embroidered on the eyes. It will serve as her everyday winter hat this year as well.
Sage created his own costume in its entirety, save the bat wings that he asked me to sew. I love watching him grow into his own authentic person and create from the ideas in his mind.
The opportunity to have a bit of food coloring- and corn syrup-free Halloween fun, combined with community connection is one the the blessings of living where we do. After the Enchanted Forest Walk we take to the streets for trick-or-treating. Our town is small, so we see many friends as we travel our two block route.
After returning home we eat some sweets and choose a few candies to keep. The rest we leave for the Pumpkin Fairy. We read a Samhain story from Circle Round, then the children place an apple in their windowsill for Grandfather Deer (a character in the story). By morning The Pumpkin Fairy has worked her magic and the candy has been transformed by into a small treasure for each child. The apples, of course, are gone – taken away by Grandfather Deer on his journey to the Isle of Apples.
With each season we carve out a bit more or our family's traditions. It is grounding to know the rhythm and customs that each season brings, and we appreciate the new magic that comes with the cycling seasons.
And what about you? What traditions does your family look forward to? (Share a favorite or two in the comments field. You might just inspire another family with a wonderful new tradition.)
