Ikea Roses

When our fourth annual Bestie Beach Day was forecasted to be cloudy and rainy, we knew we had to come up with a back-up plan.

Me: "This is totally random, so feel free to shoot it down. A trip to Ikea? I've always wanted to go."

Kels: "I LOVE IKEA!!!!"

It was settled. And even more settled once she reminded me that there was a Cheesecake Factory conveniently on the way home.

Ikea was everything I hoped it would be- inspiring and fun. We walked through display after display, oohing and ahhing over all the fun kitchen, living room and bedroom items. We made our way down into the warehouse portion, and I quickly found a few items that grabbed my attention:

A blue and white patterned coffee mug to match my blue-themed kitchen (as I placed it in the cart, I realized it was the first mug I had ever bought myself!)

A simple, white tablet stand that I could use in the kitchen to see recipes better.

A trio of metallic cylinder-shaped containers, perfect for holding band-aids, q-tips, etc. They were white with a pretty pink rose design.

Always cautious with how I spend my money, I rarely pick up something I don't need and put it in my cart without thinking about it. These containers, however, were different. I couldn't really put my finger on the "what" and "why" that made them stand out to me so much. I made a spot for them on a shelf in my bedroom, and it looked like they've always belonged there.

I finally figured out the other day why I was, and still am, drawn to them.

Every day after school, the bus dropped me off at my Grandma E.'s house. She had many homemade baked goods to choose from for an after-school treat, and hot cocoa was the drink of choice in the cold winter months. I would go into her pantry, and pick out the mug I wanted to use that day.

There was a white one with a yellow rose design, one with a blue rose design, and one with a pink rose design. I'm sure you can guess which one was my favorite.

I can still feel the solidity of that mug in my hands, and the warmth of it once it came out of the microwave. I remember my grandma sitting across from me at the table, and telling me all that was new with her, and asking me questions about my day.

I remember feeling loved and special. Those simple, pretty containers from Ikea make me feel that way all over again every time I see them.

Hi, Friends.

Hi, friends. It's been a while, huh? A little over 3 months since my last post, and more than 6 months since I was posting regularly.

Life got a bit busy.

When I started Lines from Lithia in April 2013, my main occupation was stay at home mom. I was on one committee- school committee- and that met once a month. Fast forward 2 years, 4 months.

Currently I hold 3 part-time positions and am on 4 committees. I'm not really sure how that happened (well, I'm pretty sure it involved me saying "Yes", that I do know). Why that may sound a little crazy, here's the cool thing:

Each of the positions (Assistant town clerk, Council on Aging Newsletter Editor, Goshen Playgroup Co-Coordinator) directly impact my town, Goshen. The town I hold most dearly to my heart.

Same goes for the committees (School Committee, Goshen Historical Society, GHS Bylaws Committee, Cultural Council). Each of those are Goshen-related.

Anyone who has known me on a certain level also knows that this was one of my life goals. Simply put, I wanted to serve my town. Specifically, I wanted to serve Goshen. I take deep pride in this town where my descendents have always lived. I wanted to continue my family's tradition of giving and contributing.

I couldn't be more pleased with where my life is heading right now.

The best part for me is that I'm still a stay at home mom. I get to enjoy both worlds. My life became busier at the same moment that both of the kids were getting ready to head to big things- Kindergarten for Rosie, Preschool for Buddy.

I couldn't have said "Yes" to any of the above things if I didn't have the support of my husband. Steve has long known my goal of serving the town, and has been stellar at helping me achieve that goal. Several nights a month, he puts the kids to bed when I'm at meetings. The three of them have developed their own routine, and while it made me a little sad at first, I realized it was no different than the routines the kids and I have established all during the day while he's at school.

I've been good about making time for exercise and for being with friends and family. Now I want to make time for this space again, Lines from Lithia. I've missed it. I can't tell you how many blog posts I've started in my mind that I haven't been able to type yet. I want to tell you about the playground I helped build this spring, and about Rosie's deep conversations about Heaven. I want to tell you about a memory I have of my grandma's chipped coffee mugs and about Buddy's "girls".

I highly doubt I'll ever get back to 3 blog posts a week, but I am going to try to write again.

Cheers!

A True Throwback Thursday

I'm a sucker for magazines.

The glossy, colorful pages full of helpful tips, gorgeous photos and words that inspire me. It also helps that the magazine industry must be slightly desperate, as I was offered two magazines, a year subscription of each, for $12.

How could I say no?

The last few issues have been particularly bright and cheerful, in spring hues. As I tore open the clear plastic covering one of them, out slipped a promo for Seventeen magazine. I picked it up and smiled. I loved that magazine in high school! I read the blurb:

"Send one year of Seventeen for only $10 to a special someone in your life! Offer includes free make-up tote and make-up."

I glanced at the grainy picture next to it, showing this free gift. My eyes widened and I laughed out loud!

This free gift? It was the same exact black make-up tote that came with my Seventeen subscription... back in 1997 or so! I would recognize it anywhere- I used it for years! How I laughed, because, while it seems like most everything has changed in the last 18 years, some silly things like this, remain the same!

How apt that this happened on "Throwback Thursday."

Loud and Lived In

My house is a mess.

Once, from my spot in an office chair at a desk that I sat at for 5 years, I thought that stay at home moms must have the cleanest homes of all. I mean, they are home all day, right? Why wouldn't their houses be clean? The scary thing: I was thinking this even having been a Women's Studies minor. How un-feminist of me.

This is what I know after having been a stay at home mom for almost as long as I worked in that office: Our houses are not super clean. There are toys, boots and dress up clothes strewn everywhere.

This is not because we don't pick up a few times a day. We do.

This is not because we're lazy. I'm pretty sure it's impossible to be lazy when you can't even use the bathroom alone.

This is not because we don't care what our houses look like. We do. Just a lot less than we used to. As my husband knows, I like things neat and orderly, and usually by the end of the day, 85% of the house is put back that way. But in the mean time?

We're living here, every day, most of the day. We're playing here, inside and outside. We're learning. We're laughing. We're creating.

You know what I'm not doing? Using every spare minute to clean this house just so it can be cluttered the next minute. A little birdie once told me that cleaning with kids in the house is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos. That little birdie is correct.

Another little birdie told me that I have years ahead of me when my house will be so clean... because no little ones will be living in it. No one will be pretending the dining room table is a secret fort or overturning the couch cushions in a frantic search for lost treasure. No one will be rummaging through the dress-up bin looking for a glass slipper or building elaborate walls and roadways in every room.

When I get discouraged about my messy house, I try to keep the above in mind. Someday my house will be clean, and it will be quiet. But right now it is loud and lived in, the way homes are meant to be.

Pendulum

My kiddos.

My sweet, crazy, awesome, tiring kiddos. At 4.5 and 3, they're the best of buds one minute and, as it appears at times, actively trying to kill each other the next minute. We have such fun times together, the two of them and I. We play, we laugh, we learn, and yes, completely exhaust one another at times.

Every day, I have a pendulum in my heart that swings between the following:

1. I love these precious days of being home with them before they start school and get older on me. I love our after lunch reading time, with the sunlight streaming in through the windows, and their giggles and my laughter filling the living room.

2. I can't wait for the day they're both in school so I can have just a little time, just a little space to get things done. A small example? Easter is a little over a week away. I just want the flexibility to go to the store and get Easter items, By Myself. No having to sneak things into the grocery cart, which really doesn't work now that my youngest, a keen observer, has turned three. I'd just like a little uninterrupted time to work, to write, to hear myself think.

Lately this pendulum has swung more often to #2, and with winter dying a slow death and no real warmth yet in sight, I'm not surprised. We have Cabin Fever like crazy in this house. I honestly feel that until we are able to spend a lot of time outside, it's going to be this way for a while. The kids are just fed up with each other, I find myself raising my voice much more than I'd like, and we just need Winter. To. Be. Done.

I think it's pretty normal and healthy to swing between both #1 and #2. I know that even though I'm eying #2 with great favoritism, I'll be a sobbing mess come September. Oh, the irony! We'll keep on truckin' and I'll try to enjoy our after lunch reading sessions while they last.

That is, until Buddy and Rosie fight over what book to read next, and who can hold it, and who can sit on my lap. There goes that pendulum again!

Almost There

I was going to write a post lamenting about how long the winter has been, and if I see vomit one more time around this house, you'll see me buy a one way ticket to California.

Instead, I'll talk about the good.

Since we turned the clocks ahead an hour last week, there is glorious sunlight almost all the way up until 7pm. It's amazing what an effect it's had on our family. The kids are no longer grumbling about nothing to do between the time they get up from quiet time until we have supper. For some reason, with it being light out later, they seemed to find it easy to find things to play with while I'm food prepping (I'm totally jinxing myself right now). Speaking of food prep, I've almost been forgetting to prepare supper in a timely fashion because I'm not used to doing so when it's still light out!

The snow is melting. Little by little. Just when it seemed like it was going to be freezing cold and snowing forever, the pattern broke, long enough to give us hope that there is, indeed, a light at the end of the tunnel. That light involves all snow melting, and green taking over the grey. It means the sun feeling warmer on our faces day by day, and it means the wonderful realization that our winter coats are no longer suitable for the milder weather.

We're almost there. I can't wait to walk in the quarry again with the dogs, and walk in general. Outside. Explore the woods, go to parks, just be uninhibited by the weather in general.

How do I know we'll make it 'til then? We're already 2.5 months into 2015. If that's not proof of how quickly time is passing, I don't know what is. In the meantime, let's try to enjoy any goodness that March tries to throw our way. There is something good in every month. Maybe for March, it's the promise of a warmer tomorrow.

Three Babies

There's so very much I want to write about, that I haven't had time made time for. Where do I start? I guess I'll start with what's most on my mind.

I have to talk about these three babies.

I've known for quite some time that my Gram Carpenter lost one baby, in 1961. "She came out blue when she was born" was what my very young ears heard. I knew she was a little girl and her name was Diane. She would have been the third girl: my gram had already had two- my mom, Donna and my aunt, Denise. I remember feeling sad for my grandma when she told me the story, stoically, but not thinking too much of it.

Not like I do now, as a mother myself. Now that I know what's it like to carry a baby full term, to get in those final weeks, days and hours and know you're so close to meeting the little someone who's been kicking around in your stomach the past few months. And then to have that moment come, and see not joy but pain and sadness... I literally can't imagine how horrific that must have been. And how, if my understanding of the 1960s is at all correct, the whole ordeal was probably swept under the rug and my grandparents were to go home to their two and three year olds who may or may not have understood that a baby was supposed to come home, too, and they were all supposed to carry on like nothing life changing had just happened to them. My poor gram. I can only imagine the pain and loss she felt.

I've also known for many years that my Gram Eldred lost two babies- Vivian and Donald. I really didn't know much beyond that except that their gravestones somberly read "Vivian 1948-1949" and "Donald 1950-1951". Such loss is such a short period of time! If wasn't until this past week that I was able to put some of the pieces of the puzzle together.

I was looking for something in the town's Death Records book, when I flipped open to a page of deaths from the 1940s. I scanned the page and found Vivian's record. Cause of death: accidental asphyxiation (today's SIDS). This coincided with the awful story my mom related to me of gram walking her baby in the stroller up Route 9 to her mother's house, and finding her 2 month old baby girl dead when she went to take her out.

My poor, sweet grandmother. What a living nightmare.

I flipped just a page or two to 1951. Donald's cause of death- pneumonia- wasn't the thing that shocked me the most. What shocked me was that he was 15 months old when he passed. He was not a newborn. Donald was a part of the family for longer than a year. Did I ever hear his or Vivian's names mentioned, ever? No. This again confirmed my suspicion that when these tragedies happened, the family was supposed to keep on going and not look back.

My heart aches for these three babies and their beautiful moms who played such a huge role in my life. My heart aches because I'm sad that my grandmothers lived during a time that encouraged suppression of feelings, not finding support and help through groups and counseling. My heart aches because the pain they had to endure is almost impossible to imagine, yet they were both some of the strongest women I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.

I think of those babies- Diane, Vivian, Donald- and think about all the other tiny souls taken far too soon. Every day babies are lost- some while still in the womb, others at birth, and still more after birth. We, as a society, are just starting to talk about it, acknowledge it. We still have a long ways to go. Each life impacts this world in one way or another, and the generations that follow.