Just like breathing

Last night I wanted to be able to say something special about Mother's Day. I sat down to do that before I went to bed and got started several times only to stop and delete everything. The truth is, I still feel a bit like a phony when I'm being celebrated on Mother's Day. Maybe that's due to my relative newness on the job (I've only been performing those duties for about five years now to my mom's 34), or maybe I'm just still skittish of the job title. If someone asked me about myself I'm not sure "mother" would be the first descriptor out of my mouth. I consider myself so many other things besides, so many other things that require work and dedication, like being a runner, or a reader, or a seamstress (because sewer definitely isn't right), or a cook. Which is not to say that being a mother isn't a matter of dedication and work, but motherhood was a choice I made those five years ago and now it is simply a part of me. It is like breathing. Maybe I feel funny about celebrating my motherhood the way I would feel funny about celebrating my breathing. Each breath is joyous, each day as a mother is joyous. To look at it any other way would be folly.

So that was yesterday. It was a beautiful, warmish, sunny day. We cleaned up and relaxed, we went to the store. My boys gave me a really special present (Proust, third edition uniform 12 volume set, 1949) and some really sweet cards. We had our own mothers over and my aunt and we all celebrated motherhood together. And breathing, too, because the spring air was so fresh and sweet it would be just the day to celebrate something like breathing.

And today I woke up and I was still breathing and I was still a mother, and both were precious. Even as we did laundry and shelved books at the library. Even as we watered new plants and cleaned up the yard. Even as we sat outside in the still vibrant sun reading our own books separately, and then the Aeneid together. Especially as we walked to the mailbox pretending to sidestep the Harpies (robins) and to run from the Cyclops (tall pines) only to be blown to Carthage (the park) in a violent storm summoned by Juno. Yes, especially then it was all precious. See? Just like breathing.

Can anyone say Bengay

We are all so tired tonight that we can barely move. Our day started early, which is always easier when the sun is out. I was at the library by 8:30 to oversee set-up and the first two hours of selling at the book sale and the guys were off for errands. We met back at home at 11:30, and that would be a quiet day if it had ended there. Instead we took up our earth moving tools and headed to the back yard where we remained, sans breaks for lunch and drinks every now and again, until the pizza we ordered arrived at 7:30. Or, actually, we came in fifteen minutes earlier to shower the dirt and grime off first. And thus we are are all so tired that we can barely move. At least Jon and I feel that way. Calvin is fast asleep.

There is much to show for our day, although when my hands are that dirty I don't take pictures. All the gardens are edged, weeded, and turned, the lawn is mowed, the hummingbird feeders are out, and the seed feeders are all full (although that is a constant job) and two new cypress trees, a service berry bush, and a lilac now fill out the back garden. Our work is done there! At least as far as major plantings, like trees and bushes, go. And that is if the birch we planted last fall comes back to life this year, though as of now it's seeming sluggish, maybe even unlikely. But while the evening sun faded we stood on the deck basking in the glow of our hard work. Today's hard work, last year's hard work, and the hard work from the year before. The yard is really getting there.

And another thing to show for our day. I came home from the book sale this morning with a fifth edition, second state, copy of the Wizard of Oz. Printed in the late 1920s it has eight color plates of Denislow's original illustrations. A real original, a real collection piece. Calvin is in love (and so am I).

If my hands stay cleaner tomorrow I'll come back with more pictures.

I needed Eeyore's help

For two days now we've been quietly going about our way. I didn't write last night partly because, for the second time this week, I fell asleep on the couch almost immediately after Calvin went to bed. But also I didn't have much to say. That's not to say that we haven't done anything, it's just that it was all life as usual, all that incredibly enjoyable, fascinating, soak-up-the-world kind of life as usual, but still life as usual. And the sun came out, and the weather was warmer, and we put on sunscreen and spent hours in the gardens, or going for walks. Yesterday we sat on the garden swing and read the Aeneid. Today Calvin read to me from The World of Pooh while I set about the tedious task of digging out all the thistles growing in the garden (if only Eeyore had been there to help, Calvin tells me).

We're in a sort of combined exploration mode. We've been playing around volcanoes for a while now, and when my parents got back from Spain and mentioned the Roman ruins, and Calvin connected those with what he knew about Pompeii, the leap from there to here was a done deal. So the Aeneid it is. And a bit of the Iliad, and some Roman myths, and the ruins, and the system of government, and the army. And Pompeii and Vesuvius, of course. He wants to absorb it all.

And there was a brief return of the Egyptians, too. That had mainly to do with proximity, the Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians all being on the Mediterranean Sea and whatnot.

Jon found a Britannica Kids app for the iPad that had great photos and videos of volcanoes, as well as mapping features and a few tame games (and by tame I mean they aren't video games and they aren't "learning" games, but things like puzzles).

But like I said, the real glory of the past two days has been the weather. Between rain falls the sun has been demanding of our time. Demanding that we spend our time with weeds and plants and birds and bubbles and joy and laughter, and the sweet smell of the damp, warming earth.

We set a record this week. Four days out of the last seven we have spent almost entirely outdoors. Three days out of the last seven we have thrown our windows open to the fresh air. It has been a long time coming, and I daren't say the wait is over, but I am slowly releasing a long held breath in the sound of an elated sigh.

Frost warning in effect

I cannot keep talking about the disappointing weather, about the gray skies falling far short of a spring awakening. I cannot dwell on the late blooming of our flowers and the prolonged season of indoor amusements. There are only so many indoor amusements, you see. So I won't keep dwelling on them, but will put on extra layers and venture into the unwelcoming outdoors anyhow. So there. We have edged and cleaned up two of our garden areas so far, as well as watering the new trees. Now I hear that there is a frost warning for tonight, the third night of May, mind you, but I won't dwell on it. I'll just worry a bit about my flora. The sun was a visitor today, though, a relative novelty as far as things go, and that always adds to a day's enjoyment.

Yesterday morning Calvin announced to me that he wanted to learn about ancient Rome. I think I've been waiting for this for a while, longer than I've been waiting for the Dinosaur inquisition that never came. He is interested in ancient Rome, in part because of Pompeii (the volcano kick is still alive and well), and in part because my parents just came back form their Spain trip with stories of the Roman ruins they visited there. As soon as he mentioned this new interest we broke out the encyclopedia and I asked him what more he wanted to know. Then we started reading the Aeneid for Boys and Girls and today we picked up the appropriate Magic Treehouse books when we were out running errands (have I mentioned how much I love the 25% discount homeschoolers get from Borders?). And that's the road we are following at this moment while we wait for spring to actually show up in full regalia.

Cutting with scissors

Sometimes you just have to read a book and you don't even have time to actually get all the way into the house before you do so. Good thing I cleaned the floors recently.

Calvin is still on his Nate the Great kick. It's all you can do right now to get him to put down a book and participate in something lively in body as well as in mind. I'm not really bothered by this. In fact, I'm a little in love with his love for reading. That being said, with days of rain in the upcoming forecast I thought it prudent to take in some of the sunshine that was peeking through today's cloudcover, so I promised him dirt followed by a bath, and that did the trick. So we spent all afternoon cleaning up the the garden along the side of the garage. Which is the smallest garden space we have. There is plenty left to do.

We counted over fifty worms as we worked, gently depositing each one back under a pile of dirt. "Hidden from bird view" as Calvin put it. We swept out the old and the dead and broke up the dirt, which is actually clay, for the benefit of the living. I think it's funny that just yesterday I was laughing with Jon about how Calvin understands many bizarre things, like medieval feudal systems or number concepts up through the thousands, but has never practiced things, like cutting in a straight line, which is on a number of preschool "achievement tests" (which are things I pay little to no attention to), and then today he used my gardening sheers to gently and precisely trim back plant parts. With supervision, of course, but actually without help. I've always heard/read/been told/adopted as belief that he would learn (or just know) things as they came up. There was no need to push for skill procurement just for skill procurement. I guess here is my proof.

And to show off our work, some before and after shots: