the beauty of loss

I share these photos because even in our heartbreak and loss we saw the beauty and we want you to as well.

The evening before Andy died there was a song circle outside our bedroom window.  Beautiful voices of friends and family helping Andy find his way.

And in the morning after he passed we lovingly prepared our cabin to hold his body for two days and our farm to receive visitors to say goodbye.  An around the clock vigil was set up with friends and family taking shifts sitting inside the cabin and also outside at a fire that continuously burned.

And then food arrived and tents to protect from the rain and so many children and friends.  In the midst of deep ache there was comfort in our surroundings.  The girls and I walked many times from cabin to fire to house and back again.  Always held.

And on the last morning the beautiful box that Andy’s dear friends had built arrived and we placed him in it with cedar and pine and so many beautiful flowers and small tokens of love.

And as the children sang and collected more flowers his body was carried up the hill behind our house to the place his dad and brothers had dug one shovelful at a time.

And beautiful words were said, and another song was sung, and we took turns tossing sacred earth into the hole. And we stood in a circle and looked inward at each other and recognized that Andy was now there in each of us, and we turned outward and looked beyond at the greatness of nature that is now Andy.  And then out of nowhere the fawn appeared. 

Our hearts have much healing ahead but please know that each and every one of you who has held and supported us will never be forgotten.  Your comfort is felt.  We love you so.

kickapoo love

Yesterday while I was in the living room working, the kids called out that a package had arrived in the mail.  It was long and slender with a return address of “The Goofballs at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve”.  We were intrigued.  When we opened it up we found a photo poster depicting the images above.  There were some tears.  Here’s the story as I know it.

On a January afternoon a couple of weeks ago, a bunch of our Kickapoo friends trekked out to one of our favorite places on earth to show our family some Kickapoo Love.  They all wore red, they stomped hearts in the snow, they held up letters of love and they even found a guy with a drone to capture it all.  I’m sure there was plenty of laughter and fun.  Can’t you feel it?  We sure can!

Even when the world seems dark and scary there are people out there holding up the light for you.  Giving you strength and confidence to carry on.  We feel the love from that little valley flowing like the river right here to the city of Miami.  Filling us up, carrying us along.  We miss you all and can’t wait to come home.

Cheers.

with photo credit to Jackie Yocum and Garick Olerud

adventures in miami

We made it to Miami!  We are settling into our house and neighborhood nicely but feeling overwhelmed by the traffic and city just a few blocks away.  (I didn’t photograph any of that!)

It’s very green.  We haven’t tired of walking around the neighborhood admiring all the crazy tropical plants, and stucco and tile houses.  Elsa loves all the lizards.  The air is warm, but smells like city.  Sometimes it seems kinda quiet, most of the time it doesn’t.  Certainly we are in environmental and cultural shock.  Country fish floundering in a big cosmopolitan city.  Luckily Andy and I can call on all our various pre-kid travel adventures and at least act like we know what we are doing.

One of the first things we did was take the kids to the urban “farm” we found when Andy and I visited a couple weeks ago.  It’s just a neighborhood over, in Little Haiti, and it’s funky as all get out.

They rent rooms in the airb&b treehouses.  They grow veggies and eggs and honey.  They rescue animals (the potbelly pigs were the most fascinating) and they have volleyball games and vegan potlucks a couple times a month.  We’ll definitely do some hanging out there.

Yesterday after school and music practice and some work for me, we ventured out to an urban state park, just a few miles from our house.  Weird to have acres of wilderness in the city, surrounded by highrise skyline.  But we revel in nature where we find it and there was plenty to admire.  Thousands of tiny hermit crabs, a lightening whelk, jellyfish and even stingrays in the lagoon (the girls weren’t so excited about the purple flag beach warning that means “stinging marine animals”). 

This morning we walked to the farmer’s market, a few blocks down along Biscayne Avenue with non-stop traffic whizzing by.  But we found organic veggies, and homemade kombucha amd tempeh, fresh squeezed tropical fruit juices, crusty fresh bakery breads and even free range organic eggs (for $7/dozen!).  There is so much to discover and we try to take it in in small bites, retreating back to our little house and fenced backyard to chase lizards and put out food for the feral cats, so that the world doesn’t feel so strange and new.

I think it feels like a vacation with a lot of uncertainty and fear and worry mixed in.  I know we are so lucky to be here.  To have the resources to “move” to Miami to get the best care we can find.  We work hard to count those blessings.  When the girls are in tears missing home, missing friends, missing pets and bickering with each other because they are just uncomfortable inside themselves, I remember this is hard.  Hard for all of us.  And I remember that there are some things we can control and some things that we can’t.  And it will always be like that.  And I continue to pray that this path is making us strong and resilient and full of compassion.  And I remember, with so much gratitude, all of you who send love and support our way.

the beauty we love

 

Summer is so gorgeous.  Sometimes I think I love the mornings most, with the fresh dew sparkling in the morning light, the flowers in full bloom by 5:30, the air full of bird song, the otherwise quiet cool. But then sometimes I think I love the evenings best when the moisture descends into the valleys and the shadows make everything green in a new way.  Sometimes I think I couldn’t love this place more. And then I do.  We are so lucky.

We spent a weekend in the Twin Cities recently with friends and family.  An annual retreat for us to city and poolside.  Always such a pleasure and always so good to come home to this lush country. 

Andy built a new screen door for us this week out of butternut boards he had milled from a tree that came down in my dad’s neighborhood.  It turned out really lovely.

Tuesday we head to Mayo again for two days of testing and discussion.  Maybe we’ll decide what’s next, maybe we won’t.  It really couldn’t be more unknown right now. 

Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.

Don’t try to see through the distances.

That’s not for human beings.

Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened.

Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.

Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

~Rumi

Today we planted ourselves at home.  Taking care of a few things in the garden, hanging a laundry, brushing the pony.  Finding comfort in everyday things. 

Tonight I step outside with the dog and the sky is lite with stars.  It’s so beautiful.  I breathe in a vision of health and wholeness for him, for us. I breathe out. My heart is a vigil of prayer. 

homeschooling now

School is still a combination of things around here.  There is some of what you remember school to look like:  workbooks at the table.  There are also reading groups (comprised of Iris, Elsa, Andy and me).  This season there is a day spent with another homeschooling family- a day of group learning, and science experiments.  There is still Monday group just like the past 4 years.  There is Nonnie day for baking bread, learning about darkest Peru (after reading Paddington), art class on Wednesdays, and music lessons once a week.

There is still staying up late to watch the harvest moon eclipse (with self directed journaling!), and archaeology digs under the side porch, and monarch life cycle observation, and housekeeping outdoors, and calculating how many felted cookie cutter shapes you need to make and sell to grandparents to earn enough money to buy a horse.

I’m sure some people wonder how we pull it off these days.  And the truth is, of course, that some days we don’t. Still Iris’ reading has exploded, she loves math  (I’ll take that any day, no matter how slow her memorization of facts), she is eager to learn about ancient history, and world religion.  They both love story so much.  They re-enact what they see and hear in books and bring that learning alive in a way I never had a chance to do while I sat at my desk at school.  Their British accents are impeccable, their Balinese dancing and costume exquisite, their knowledge of horse care and horsemanship growing by the day.   Are they “behind” in some things?  I’m sure.  Will they fill in the gaps when they need to?  Absolutely.

Despite the hardships, or maybe because of them, homeschooling is still so right for us right now.  When your dad is on the couch and can’t get up because he is bone tired from chemo treatments and it hurts just to look at him, it’s good to go to a friend’s and let out your worry and fear by playing wounded soldier or orphan slaves all day.  When you dad is finally up and at em again, it’s good to settle in on the couch and read about magical worlds, and draw pictures from ancient times together, and contemplate in small ways why life works like this. Hard things happening to good people.

These girls are so tuned in to their world, so observant.  Sometimes that translates into noticing the first ripe tomatoes in the garden or finding the eggs where the wily hen has hidden them.  And sometimes that translates into holding the grief and worry you feel in your house.  It means now more than ever, they need the comfort that has always been home, they need us, their grandparents, their good friends.  We are all holding them, and teaching them, and learning with them.  Homeschooling for love and comfort.  What a blessing.

change

After the second chemo treatment Andy’s hair started falling out.  Lots of other cancer survivor friends gave us advice to just shave it off right away.  The girls couldn’t wait.  It’s funny how something that for Andy and me was wrought with emotion (we were trying to balance the unbelievable fact that Andy is losing his hair because he’s doing chemo, with embracing the medicine that can make him better) was new and interesting for the girls.  

We took their lead and had some fun with it. It didn’t take long before it all came out, his head is pretty pale and shiny now and his beard is nonexistent.  The girls like to pat his soft head.  I like to wonder what his hair will look like when it grows back in.  Hopefully thick and dark like it was before, but we’ll take it any way.

Iris scurried around and pick up a few fallen locks.  I found them later in a ziplock tucked into her bunk.  She’s a sentimental protector, that girl.  It’s all so hard on them but they are so loved and cared for too.

And so what better time than in the middle of cancer chaos to do a room make over for the girls?   Actually we thought long and hard about it, but the girls had been ready for months.  Up until now, they had been (so sweetly) sleeping together in a queen bed, but had been voicing their eagerness for their own space and dreaming of bunk beds.   I figured if we were going to go for it we might as well paint over the nursery yellow that had gone up before Iris was born.  In truth, I shuttered to think of how they’d agree on a color but within two minutes at the paint store (I’m not kidding) they agreed on Rhapsody Lilac.  So there it is. 

We couldn’t have done this without so much help (thanks Nonnie and Mike and Kelly for rocking the painting and Uncle Chuck for bunk bed transport).  

The girls are settled in and loving the space.  Iris was able to use a corner to recreate a little home/nursery for her boys and Mae was able to fill her shelf with “invention stuff”.  And, for the first time in eight years we are no longer lying next to a child as they drift off to sleep and as much as I loved (o.k. and sometimes hated) that time, we were all ready.  And I’m proud of them that despite the hardships right now, they tackled this.  They showed themselves that change can be o.k.  And they showed me too.

weekending

A long and restful weekend.  Andy was slated to go winter camping with a friend but well laid plans fell through when his friend came down sick.  Everyone was disappointed but he made the most of it and spent the weekend in his shop working on a fun project we hope to have moved inside the house soon. 

 We re-arranged our little corner study in anticipation and

I found a few hours in my little studio to craft some tote bags that we’ll be needing.

But the best part of the weekend was the friends with which we shared it.  Thanks Amy, Ava, and Liam for driving down to keep us company.  Our “girls” weekend turned out pretty sweet I’d say.  Here’s to many more hours of playing baby and legos, drinking tea, knitting (here and there) and discussing the ways of French eaters.  We miss you already. 

a little bit of northwoods

This weekend we traveled just a couple hours north to visit some friends at their cabin. It’s amazing how less than 200 miles in the car can bring you to a different world. Goodbye deep river valleys and bluffs of the Kickapoo, hello miles of evergreen and birch.

We took a short walk in the late afternoon. Not 10 minutes down the trail we spotted a porcupine in a tall white pine. Tracks of deer, coyote, maybe a bobcat traversed the creekside. It was cold as we slid the children along on sleds through the woods.

Back at the fireside there was good food and late night talks. These friends of ours dream of moving north for good, to the wilds of this part of the state. I can see what they love, there is really something a bit more wild, a bit more north there.

But back at home today, it was easy to remember what we love, here. Our special spots all over this little 50 acres. Topography and views. Out little valley and ridge within this big driftless valley. It’s a good place to be. Rough-legged hawk graced our views today, a fairly rare sight and a nice welcome home.

Back inside, all on her own, someone dug out the guides and got to work with her “bird study”. She’s really been into drawing and labeling owls lately (see upside down juvenile snowy owl on her right). Sure does tickle this mama and papa to see a tiny naturalist in works.

Happy Monday all.