children

Changelings

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

To put in the Who-Are-You-And-What-Have-You-Done-With-My-Children? File:
1.  This morning, the one who looks like my four-year-old child named Joss, woke up and got himself dressed entirely by himself.  Without fussing.
2.  This evening, the Joss one ate his supper without asking me to feed him.  Without fussing.  And it was soup! (see #3)
3.  For supper I served eggplant soup.  Both of these people who look like my children said it was the best thing ever, and could I make it every evening?

All I can figure is that there must be faeries about.

2013 July 106
This is a photo from yesterday: Joss eating slices of raw onion.  When he was two, I left him in the market room by himself for a few minutes, and when I came back, he was sitting on the floor munching on a raw leek.  He ate at least four that day, maybe five.  He still likes raw onions, though now he needs to have a cup of COLD water handy, and he does sometimes get a little overwhelmed by them.  Today was the first that he showed an interest in eggplant.

Gratitude List:
1.  Thunder
2.  Jon Weaver-Kreider
3.  Today’s picnic lunch.  The boys decided that we were having a family picnic up at their garden, to eat what they harvested.  Hot as blazes, but I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.
4.  Eggplant soup
5.  Thumbs.

May we walk in Beauty.

The Importance of Story

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

“I can’t tell you why your story is important, only that it is.”
— Mara Eve Robbins, at TEDxFloyd in Floyd, Virginia today

2013 April 156

Gratitude List:
1.  Wise friends
2.  The zebra-stripey heads of the white-crowned and white-throated sparrows, extra intense this time of year.  The white-throat’s vivid yellow eyebrows.  And to think, I used to blow them all off as just a bunch of little brown jobs.
3.  This developmental stage of my children.  They still fight and carry on and get needy and demanding, but they can entertain each other for long periods of time while I get other things done, too.  I feel like my own life is expanding.
4.  Sore muscles–feels like lots of good work got done today.
5.  Cool, clear water.

May we walk in Beauty.

Bluebirds and Miracles

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Gratitude List:
1.  Bluebirds.   When I went out to tend chickens this morning, a pair of them sat in the little tree nearby and talked to me.  The wrens yell, “Here’s where I belong and don’t anyone get into my space!”  The yellow-throat sparrows call, “Here!  I’m here!  Won’t somebody please notice me?”  And other birds sing joyfully and exuberantly.  But bluebirds sing so quietly and sweetly, you could almost miss them: “Everything’s going to be okay, you know?  Here, let me tell you a little story.”  And there’s a bluebird that signals my father when his meal-worm feeder is empty.  But then when it’s filled and the bird has eaten all it wants, it comes back and sits on a little perch my dad put up outside his window–you can’t tell me that bird isn’t there to say thank you.  Oh, and there’s a pair inspecting the birdhouse out back for a potential nesting site.
2.  The laughter of chickens.  Okay, so they don’t actually laugh.  They sort of fuss and dither and clook about the daily fare.  They’re probably a little too simple-minded to get the joke, so they don’t laugh much.  But Jessica thought that’s what I wrote yesterday (see below), and I love the whimsy of the thought of laughing chickens.  Delightful.
3.  Meeting an online friend in person.  These connections we make with other people (in physical life, in computer realms) are like spiderwebs–gossamer, exquisite.  Treasures.
4.  Cerulean.  I’m back to bluebirds.  Isn’t that an exquisite color when the sun shines on their shoulders?  Thoreau said that the “bluebird carries the sky on his back.”  Oh yes he does.
5.  Milagros.  Doesn’t that just sound like a pleasant word?  Even before I looked up the meaning, and having heard it in various contexts without knowing its meaning for sure, it was a word I wanted to carry around for a while.  It’s Spanish: miracle, wonder.  Paul Simon could have just said that these are the days of milagros.  Oh, “the way we look to a distant constellation that is shining in the corner of the sky.”

May we walk in beauty like the bluebird walks on air.

 

February 25, 2013

Gratitude List:
1. The laughter of children
2. The curiosity of chickens
3. The steadfastness of friends
4. The healing powers of the body
5. The nourishment of food
Namaste

2012 August 018
Sunny in the summertime

Highlights

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Gratitude List:
1.  The Wisdom of children.  (“Mom,” says Joss, “we have boats because of salt.  Because we need the boats to go get the salt.”)
2.  True entrepreneurial spirit.  Kristen is building her own business, and doing it with flair and panache.  And she makes people feel beautiful in the process.  I love it.
3.  Flavors of East Africa
4.  The wolf is not at the door, and even if he were, he COULD be a friendly wolf.
5.  Loving the work.
May we walk in beauty.

2012 July 056

Hold the Moment

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

I had intended today’s poem to be a children’s poem.  It’s coming out more like a poem for my children.

I want to snag your memories,
to hold your busy brains and say,
“This.  This is one to hold on to.
Here.  Don’t ever let this moment go.”

Remember that day
when you first sat
in the butterfly swing
up on the hill?
I pushed you
so high
you thought you were flying
above the house
into the clouds.

Remember when we went sledding
down the barn hill
on little plastic sleds
over a bare sprinkle of snow?
“Oh, yay for sledding day!”
you hollered
as you danced
back up the hill
through the powder.

Remember the day
we went to pick up the chicks
and I saw you suddenly change
from one who is cared for
to one who cares for others?
You held the soft down
up to your cheek
and your eyes shone
with the mystery of
sudden love
for the small ones.

Remember when
you first began to read?
How you said,
“You read this one,
please,” but
you couldn’t resist
reading aloud with me
at the good parts.

Our days are constant and comfortable.
The stream of life carries us
moment to moment,
and it would spoil it,
I suppose, to try to grasp it all,
to hold onto every shining treasure.

Oh, but I want to hook these few,
hold them to me like warm quilts
carefully crafted by the grandmothers,
and pass them on to you to treasure.

Prompt for Friday

I think tomorrow I will try a chant-style poem.  Join me?

Gratitude List:

1.  “Yay for sledding day!”–Joss said it and I agree with him.
2.  Making gnomes with Ellis today.  What a delight to watch him make something that he treasures.
3.  The breezeway is clean–thanks, Jon!
4.  Fidelity, loyalty, integrity, being true, garnets.
5.  This:  “Ten times a day something happens to me like this – some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.” ― Mary Oliver

May we walk in beauty!

2013 January 023

Ellis made the star gnome.

2013 January 018

Four new gnomes.

Addressing Fear

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Poem-a-Day Day 3 Prompt:  Write a poem that scares you.
This one is really challenging me.  The worst fears that I could
conjure are the negatives to the work that I have chosen to
do in the world.  I do not want to speak it.

This is the four o’clock ramble
the tumble into chasms
the angst that awakens me into the story
of the world I fear I have delivered these children to:

Where the grab and the fist
assure the rights and privilege
of Me and Mine above all else.

Where rage is the fuel that carries
the fool between apathies.

Where greed is the creed,
and the goal of existence
is the next shiny trinket
constructed of toxins by slaves
in some faraway land.

A world without spinners
and dyers and knitters and painters,
where poets write ad copy,
where wonders on a screen
fascinate more utterly
than feather, stone or tree.

I can write no more of this.
My hand is frozen into a claw
A roaring fills my ears.
I dare not let this story
see any more light of day.

I’ll tidy up the mess of negative emotions at the end here with a
Joseph Campbell quotation: “The cave you fear to enter holds
the treasure that you seek.”