Bergen Hawkeye
Anyone can slay a dragon . . . but try waking up every morning and loving the world all over again. That's what it takes to be a real hero.
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weekend ramble (break week is over, we threw axes, I want the sunshine to stay)
Although break weeks are glorious, they are also troubling. They end too quickly.We stay up too late.Our meals are haphazard and not at usual times.We all get a little extra sad when they are over. And this break week pretty much rained every single second of every single day. Here are a few things that happened: Mosely made a nearly perfect chocolate cake with some sort of dreamy fudge icing.Ryder enjoyed the remainder of the fudge icing because we walked out of the kitchen thoughtlessly.I started reading a collection of poems by Billy Collins that are so wonderful.I had a half day window of time that I was actually…
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Fishing and Uncles and The Video Proof
They talk about it all the time. Otto wrote a short story about it for his class. Fishing. And, in particular, fishing with Uncle Danny. My two sons have an obsession. And Uncle Danny is like a rockstar. And he lives on a lake too – which wins big bonus points. So when the opportunity arose to get those two young fishermen casting their lines into the water with my brother, we each got in our cars and drove to the TN line and exchanged a couple of wide eyed, big grinning fellas for a couple of days. My heart felt a…
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Small Projects: Recycling Wooden Crates
Right now is officially an In Between time. We’re still living in our current rental home. But we’re mostly packed and we’re anxious to be living in our new home. And it will be time to move soon enough, that’s true. Unfortunately, I have never been good at limbo. Waiting is not what brings about the best version of me. (Which is unfortunate because if it was, I’d be my most awesome self by 45. Because I’ve waited for a LOT of things in my life.) I like beginning the new thing but I don’t like hanging out in the old thing. Rip the band aid off, right? Don’t…
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He’s Thirteen.
I’ve been writing about this boy for his entire life. That time he brought me flowers in his grubby four year old hands. His obsession with soy lecithin and BHT that sent our entire family down a new food direction. The lessons he has always been teaching me. If I spend too much time reading back through old blog posts and looking at old videos and photos, I’m afraid my heart will implode and I’ll be a blubbering mess. From his first breath in this world to this very evening when I tucked him into his bed, his last night as a twelve year old boy, Bergen…
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Adventuring with Bergen: An Early Birthday Trip
What a busy busy week it was last week. Even though it was a few weeks early, Bergen and I took off to celebrate his thirteenth birthday. We had to seize our opportunity early because his birthday wish for his adventure was to go skiing. And you just can’t go skiing in the south in April. Shoot, often you can’t go skiing in the south in March. But like a little birthday miracle, not only was the ski slope open for one last week, we actually even had legitimate snow falling all around us. We drove up in the mountains north of Asheville and the snow was…
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you pick the story from our day: a beautiful & terrible world.
Which story should I tell you about my day? The one where the kids and I sat on a gigantic rock outcropping behind poet Carl Sandburg’s house in Flat Rock, NC and read his poems to one another while the mountains and the trees listened in? Or the one where my kids acted so ridiculous at the dinner table that one of them spewed lemonade all over his sweet potato? Should I tell you about how we visited a new to us apple orchard and loved the dwarf trees and the views and the staff there? Or should I tell you how my…
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Five Finds Friday (Bergen is very funny, a chance to help and a really great documentary)
It seemed like I had a little more time to do things this week. Oh, that’s right. It was our rest week from school. Of course I had more time to do things. Today the kids and I and some friends went on a dual purpose outing – a field trip and an interview for Travelers Rest Here. The couple was a fantastic pair of humans beginning this charming and exciting tea farm. They shared about their lives as I asked them questions and I was impressed slash overwhelmed slash in awe of all they have thus far accomplished and we all looked to be about the same age.…
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Five Finds Friday (tzatziki sauce. big feet. tats.)
I don’t think I conquered a Five Finds Friday post last week – maybe it was Farm Week? (It’s too hard to keep up.) This week has been oppressively hot. We’ve had theatre rehearsals and auditions and I am so glad for an organization like our local Logos Theatre where I feel good about my kids receiving both quality and safe instruction on stage. I’ve started staring at the lists of plans and books and ideas to begin to homeschool a FRESHMAN this fall and I feel both excited and horrified, capable and out of my league. I only have TWO children left in elementary school and…
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Beyond Wildwood: Ranch Ramblings (On Hawkeye)
Deep calls to Deep. Wild calls to Wild. Where have I heard that? Did I read it somewhere? Did someone speak it to me? I’m sure I’m forgetting my source and not giving credit where it is due. Last year I wrote the same thoughts in some other version. When I say these words – Deep calls to Deep – I am thinking of my oldest son. It’s written all over Bergen Hawkeye’s face. His body language. His grin. His easy conversation with the folks at the ranch. This boy feels at ease here. Feels comfort and feels free to be wild. (Not rowdy-wild, free-wild.) And…
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From One Gigantic Number to the Next: Happy Birthday Bergen Hawkeye
Today my oldest son turns twelve years old. Twelve years since I hugged his wee baby self in a hospital room in Virginia. His Monday night birth caused us to miss Riley’s third grade recorder recital. A recorder recital. With twenty third graders. Playing their plastic recorders. (And Bergen’s been bringing good gifts like that our way his entire life.) Ironically, the delivering doctor had a daughter in Riley’s third grade class as well. A third grade fellow recorder player. He, also, offered his sincere thanks to our freshly born son. The very next day after Bergen was born, he and I alone in a…
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watching the hawkeye shed his skin
I watch my children. I study them. Like it’s my job. Because, I think it is. For the past few years I’ve noticed a trait in my oldest son. Possibly it’s hereditary. Or circumstantial. Or both. I’m not sure that it matters which. I just know, I’ve seen it on my boy. I have seen it on him like you would see a heavy cloak – or a bathrobe – or if he decided to play dress up in a grown man’s oversized dress shirt. Fear. It’s dangly and uncomfortable and it doesn’t really fit his form. It’s hindering him at every single step and he is certainly…
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the end is not like the beginning: A God story
I don’t have a new year’s introspective look-back look-ahead kind of post inside me tonight. Not for this year. Not for the last year. Maybe next year? Who am I kidding? I can’t emotionally afford to think about New Year’s Day 2018 right now. I’m literally sitting at my kitchen table with zero plan of how this simple blog entry will even end in a few minutes, I certainly don’t have what it takes right now to envision an entire year looming in front of my face. To my right, my vanilla tea is hot. I’m thankful for that. The fridge is a wasted storage space for nothingness because…
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words for bergen hawkeye
Recently I had an opportunity to watch my son interact with a bunch of other fellas in a group setting. I was able to sit along the side, unobserved, and just watch all of the boys and the group leaders work together. It was funny, for sure, to sit quietly in a room exploding with boy and to watch the conversations and the awkward and the regular. Of course, I had to write down words, which led to other words, which led to this poem of sorts. __________ Oh, these boys. The hair choices they are making. The both wanting to fit in and the wanting to…
