Farmhouse Update: Spring Cometh

I apologize for the previous (wordless) post, though I hope you enjoyed the pretty pictures. So much has happened and we have been so busy and I have been so exhausted that I just couldn't muster up anything except...pretty pictures.

Needless to say, since this post the situation at Wise Road has improved. The last absolutely necessary changes and repairs were made. A new electrician fixed the horrible mistakes of the Dude. A plumber (like, an ACTUAL plumber) hooked up the sinks and toilet (yes!) with relatively little incident. Things weren't perfect with our new set of workers. They fixed some things, but not to our standard of quality/neatness. They left a big mess. We are pretty convinced that we will have to call in Kansas City workers for future work and pay them the big bucks. We have become just a wee bit disillusioned with the standards out here in the country. Sigh.

But, one way or another, the work was finished enough for us to "move in." Devin and I went up without the kids and filled an ENTIRE dumpster with the trash that various workers had piled on our back porch. And trash that had blown off the back porch all over the meadows and down into the woodland. And trash that had been left in every room of the house. We worked for a good two days, clearing, sweeping, scrubbing, vacuuming. There was a lot of dust, a lot of mouse droppings, and a lot of bleach used. I almost asphyxiated myself by mixing two cleaning solutions that...um...weren't supposed to come into contact. One should always read warning labels.

After all this the house began to look like a house. We actually ate dinner in the kitchen! We made a little campfire and watched the stars! We actually slept in our bedroom.

There is still a lot of work to be done. The trim was left with primer alone and nail holes, so...more filling and painting. We still haven't replaced the drawer in the kitchen that the Dude misplaced. We still haven't fit the dish washer with its matching white front.

A lot of the remaining work should be fun and exciting. It's mostly decorating, finishing now. We are going to build open shelves in the kitchen from wood salvaged from the barn.The hollow-core front door will be replaced with a solid door with a window (the view out this side of the house is beautiful). The chairs will get new cushions (no, orange was not the original plan). I am going to make some curtains. We will get a local carpenter to build us a new table (the one we are using is usually on our front porch and is a bit too weathered for indoor use). Bookshelves will be installed. We'll swap the bare bulbs for some interesting overhead lights. There will be wallpaper on the huge blank wall in the kitchen (I'm excited about that one!). And the list goes on.

But there is a place to sleep. (Here is Hattie's little nook. We are hoping to build bookshelves around her bed, kind of like this.)

There's a place to bathe and...powder one's nose.

Outside is much the same. An almost infinite amount of work to be done. For instance, here is my garden:

Since this picture was taken we planted a row of onions and some pumpkins, just "to see." But next year (or the year after that) will bring a total overhaul.

The fruit trees are in bad need of major pruning and I have NO IDEA where to begin. There are a few venerable pears that still bear... But what do I do? Any ideas??

There is plenty of room for dreams, plans, failure and success. But for now I am content: a place to sleep. A place to be quiet. Every time we are there I am struck again by the quiet. And the darkness: how dark it is at night, how lonesome. It's wonderful.

Farmhouse Update: In Pictures

No one knows how children learn.

Don't be alarmed. These pictures were taken in the Fall. It is still winter here too.

No one knows how children learn.

I have always found it beautiful that the first thing a child learns, the first thing that he sees, hears, touches, knows outside himself is his mother. He sees her, and he recognizes--- what? his own body, his home, his source, and—surely!—unmediated, unadulterated, unconditional love.

That first learning is a deep mystery. And subsequent learning is an extension of the first. The child looks, reaches out with curiosity and wonder, and finds something outside himself, other than himself, but also something gloriously native: something he recognizes, a world that speaks of beauty and of—could it be?—love?

This is all mysterious and beyond our control and comprehension.

Let me repeat: beyond our control.

Because no one knows how children learn.

This is a truth that all teachers and all parents know, or soon find out. And as parent who also hopes to home school my kids, I think it is essential that I learn the lesson early and well.

It is tempting to think, as one carefully prepares ones’ curriculum, that by controlling the texts, the methods, the timing, etc. of your child’s education, you are actually controlling their education. You might be tempted to think, in fact, that *you* are educating them. But the best books, the best plan, the best theory, won’t ensure that your child will learn anything. Because learning is mysterious. No one knows how children learn.

Again and again I hear stories from home-school moms. They always go something like this: “It was the middle of winter and I had just had (baby number 3, 5, 10) and half of the household had the stomach flu. I hadn’t done any lessons for a month. The kids had been wearing the same pjs for days.  It was an epically horrible week. A week of home-school (and life in general) FAIL. And you know what, that was the week my daughter learned to read.”

It’s not that all the phonics, the letter games, the reading out loud, all that stuff—it’s not as if it didn’t matter. It did. These were the material and the tools of learning. These are the things we can offer to our children. But the learning—the learning itself—we cannot force that, require that, manufacture that.

This must be the most humbling and the most liberating fact for educators to grasp. Humbling (humiliating even) because we must learn that all our efforts, all our plans and intentions, all our theory, count for very little in the end. Because no one knows how children learn. Liberating because the child (our child!) does learn—often in spite our teaching.

All this means that the teacher must learn to let go, relinquish our control (which is in truth no real control) over the learning process.

Now for my confession. This is a very difficult principle for me to accept. Naturally I am a perfectionist and a control freak. I hold myself (and everyone else) to impossibly high standards. When I let this tendency reign, my life is, for obvious reasons, a misery. Because this is my natural inclination, and because I recognize it as a fault, I am constantly trying to avail myself of the wisdom which comes from parenting styles/philosophies that are in direct opposition to these tendencies. Thus I believe firmly in hours of unsupervised play, in dirty children playing unattended outside, etc. etc. (This does not mean, by the way, that I don’t believe in discipline, but that’s a topic for another post…)

And when it comes to homeschooling, I am most attracted to methods and curricula that give the greatest responsibility back to the child, and require the instructor to step back and away.

This is why I am attracted to the methods and writings of Charlotte Mason.

Mason’s first principle of education is that “children are born persons.” What does this mean? It means that a child is not a blank slate (to be written upon by careful teachers), or an empty bottle (to be filled by conscientious educators). Children are *persons,* with a will, an intellect, a personality, and a choice.

Persons are mysterious. Persons must be respected.

If we accept this fact then we must act (and teach) accordingly. We must not manipulate a person (even a child). We must not “encroach” upon their free will.

According to Mason the learning process must never “be encroached upon through use of fear or love, suggestion or influence, or upon undue play upon natural desire.”

Now if your education was anything like mine, these “tools” were used every day. In fact, it seems to me, that rarely were any other tools used. Desire for praise, fear of chastisement, desire for good grades, fear of bad grades.  Love of a teacher, love of peers, fear of teacher, fear of peers.

Could this be why I don’t remember much of what I “learned” in school? Because, so often, I was not—free?

So if we cannot use these tools, what can we use to help our children learn? Is the teacher useless? Is education divorced from the work of the educator? Is the only option some kind of radical “unschooling?”

Of course not. Surely this is not true.

The old adage tells us: you can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

In the same way we can’t make our children “drink”—or learn. But we can, in fact we must, bring them to the water.

So how do we do this?

To My Hugo

You turned two on January 23. How did the days pass so quickly between then and now?

How did the years pass so quickly? A moment ago you were a baby, now--you are a boy.

Happy Belated Birthday, my golden child.

When I found out that I was pregnant with you I could not fathom how I could love you as much as I loved your sister. I didn't say anything, afraid to admit my fear.

From the moment I first felt you stirring in my womb I knew you were a different kind of child. Gentler, more deliberate than your fierce and tumultuous older sister. When you were born I waited for that wrenching newborn scream--but it didn't come. You smiled and went to sleep. You have been smiling ever since: delighting in the world you find.
                                          

Your sister is like me, fortunately or unfortunately. You are nothing like me. You are like your father. Fortunately. Only fortunately. When my grandmother saw you for the first time, she said (in her arch, Georgian way), "Well. We know where You came from." I love you for your father, for the happy spirit you inherited from him. I love you for your self.

I am so happy that you came. I am overwhelmed with pride at how you have grown, and troubled with grief that you are growing up.


*** The fantastic photos at the beginning of this post were taken by Chelsea Donoho, who is an incredibly talented artist based in Lawrence, Kansas. Check out her site HERE. 

Farmhouse Update: February

It has been a while since I wrote an update on the farmhouse. Actually, it's been a while since I blogged at all. The radio silence can be explained in part by the frantic busy-ness of the holiday season and the ensuing exhaustion and winter-induced lassitude. Then I broke the computer.

No, really. I broke it. I put it on top of my car and drove away. My mother-in-law found it a few blocks away on the side of the road. 

Anyway, I got a new computer. Then that one stopped working, through no fault of my own, I swear. Though I am beginning to suspect that I harbor an anti-technology poltergeist. I cannot TELL you how many devices have expired on my watch (like the computer in graduate school that literally CAUGHT FIRE while I was writing an essay??). 

Anyway. Those are a few of my best excuses.

But the real reason I haven't written about the farmhouse lately is: ...that I haven't had the heart. Remember the last update? The one about asbestos floors, and warped doors, and I can't even remember what else? Well, it got worse. Many of you counseled me to fire our contractors. And we did, my friends. We did.

After we fired our contractors our first action was to hire a guy to finish the painting we had been unable to finish. We found a local Dude at loose ends looking for odd jobs. He came up and painted the ceilings and the room we hadn't finished. So far so good. Painting=not rocket science. Dude then offered his services for exterior painting. We agreed. And this is where Devin and I took a wrong turn and found ourselves "within a forest dark [...] the very thought [of which] renews fear, so bitter it is, death is little more."

Well, not quite that bad. But bad enough.

After the exterior paint was finished (also to our satisfaction), the Dude continued to offer his services for tasks that we had yet to finish. Our Ikea cabinets were still in boxes. Would we like him to assemble them? ("Well, why not?") The finish carpenter wasn't returning our calls, would we like him (the Dude) to finish the trim? ("Um, can you do that? Well, okay..."). The electrician was hard to pin down, so would we like him (the Dude) to install the switches and outlets. ("Well...") Can you see a pattern here? We were exhausted, frustrated, extremely strapped for time and cash. We were vulnerable to the temptation. In fact, we were so naive as to be hopeful. Maybe the Dude could finish up these last few things for an absurdly small amount of money. Maybe?

But as the days turned into weeks we began to suspect that Something was Up. The Dude became increasingly hard to get hold of. He was never at work before noon. Sometimes he said that he was working at the house and then, when Devin arrived, he would be gone, and there was no evidence of further work completed. The project stalled. We finally decided to go up one Saturday and assist, hoping to encourage efficiency.

We arrived on that morning to find a complete and utter disaster. How can I explain it? Every wall was scratched, smudged, and banged. Every room needed to be substantially repainted. The newly finished floors were filthy. Someone had been "working" on the electrical outlets, obviously with no knowledge or skill. There were bare wires everywhere, tangled and cut. The outlets that were "completed" were crooked and the walls around them damaged. One outlet was so poorly installed (glued?) that the sheetrock for a foot on either side was soaking wet and disintegrating. You could put your finger right through the wall. The trim had been installed using tacks nailed in every inch or so, with gaps at the joints and between the quarter-round and the floor. The cabinets had been partially constructed, but incorrectly. Some of the drawers were missing. Every bag of screws/nails/parts had been dumped out on the floor in no order, with no way to tell what pieces went with what piece of furniture. The same had been done with all of our light fixtures. Every floor, every surface, was covered with trash, nails, scraps of wire, old food, tools, and mouse droppings. 

It was truly terrible. I sat with the children huddled on the couch, afraid that they would hurt themselves or contribute to the general chaos. For a good half and hour neither Devin could say anything. And then we said things. Many things. 

Needless to say, we sent the Dude packing and spent the rest of the day trying to clean up and take stock of the damage.

All of this is, of course, our own stinking fault. "Sarah and Devin Learn a Lesson" in good American Girl Cautionary Tale form. Never again will we hire a worker without references and credentials. But this has been a costly lesson for us to learn, both emotionally and financially.

The next week Devin hired a very referenced and credentialed electrician to come out and take stock. He brought along a similarly skilled plumber and finish carpenter. They were possibly more shocked by the state of the house than we were. But, unlike us, they have the skills to diagnose and treat, which is what they have been doing in the past few weeks.

All of the electrical had to be redone. Every socket, every outlet. If we had hired this electrician in the first place it would have cost around $500 total. With the damage done it cost us more than twice this amount. The trim also had to be completely ripped up and reinstalled.

So after many, many steps backward, we are now finally making our way forward. In fact, despite EVERYTHING, we are now very close to being really and truly finished. This past week the cabinets were hung and I went up to watch the counters being installed. We found a really gorgeous remnant of white marble which we had honed by a responsible workshop here in Kansas City. Thank goodness for professionals. Look at this marble!

Ignore the unfinished painting.

While the counter-guys worked like pros, I spent the day repainting the walls and cleaning the house. By the end of the day I felt much better about the whole situation, glad to have been able to do something that actually HELPED, happy to have finished a project. The day was gorgeous and I was able to walk through the fields, enjoying the silence and the melting snow.

It is going to be okay, people. It's going to be great. The end is in sight, there is light at the end of the tunnel. But the tunnel has been pretty dark.

   

Deep Clean: Hattie's Room

My "Fall Cleaning," which I so ambitiously began...in the fall...became, as days (and weeks and months) passed, the "Advent" deep clean, and now has become the "New Years" deep clean. If I don't post quickly it will soon become Spring Cleaning true and proper. In my defense, despite the lack of blog documentation, I did energetically pursue my deep cleaning throughout the Fall. And then Advent struck and Christmas and there was no time to blog. I love the Christmas season and its joyous traditions, religious wonder, family celebrations, friendly meetings, food. But I must admit that I am glad its all over.

Deep cleaning is a funny thing. In that it doesn't stick/stay. Already I am finding that the kitchen which received the treatment only a month ago, is almost in need of another scouring. Alas. And today we removed the Christmas tree, which scattered a million tiny pieces of itself in every room and (somehow) under every rug to ensure we will remember it fondly till...next Christmas.

Today's Deep Clean feature is Hattie's Room. The photos are already obsolete, having little to do with the post-Christmas reality of one thousand tiny plastic princesses and their furniture and accessories. Not to mention Hattie's expanded winter wardrobe courtesy of the Grandmothers. But the feeling and vision of the room remain: simple, whimsical, bright. Hattie's room with it's books, its comfortable chair, its southern exposure, remains one of my favorite rooms in the house. It was here that I nursed my first baby for whole days at a time while reading thousands of pages of Charles Dickens novels I somehow missed in nineteen years of formal education. It was here I paced back and forth with said baby in the middle of the night, staring out at the bright winter sky. It's a good place, always evolving and changing as my daughter grows.

Excuse the poor quality of these photos. I made a mistake somewhere in the editing process. And now both of my children are awake. So. Too late for extra edits.

Sources:
Wallpaper: Sanderson's "Finches"
Bed: antique. This was my mother's bed and mine as well. It shows its age but I love it.
Storage furniture: vintage
Glider: Pottery Barn
3 Bird Pictures: These pictures are by an Edinburgh artist. We bought three little images just before I found out I was pregnant with Hattie.

On Minimalism and Socks

The last time I was pregnant I went through a violent nesting phase. This is not uncommon. But whereas most expectant mothers tend to hoard (food, diapers, blankets, etc), my “nesting” went in the opposite direction. I wanted to Get. Rid. Of. Everything.

This purging instinct was not always popular in my house. My husband and my toddler were prone to revolt, so that often I was forced to resort to subterfuge.

I started reading minimalist blogs when I should have been writing and making secret trips to Good Will when I was supposedly running to the grocery store. 

Much of this new minimalism was a reaction to a real and overwhelming glut of stuff in our home. 

You see, for the first five years of our marriage we didn’t have that much stuff. There were the books, of course. Okay, lots of books. But books aren’t “stuff” (right?). We moved to and from Scotland with two suitcases. (I shipped the books.) And when we bought our house I was overwhelmed with the vast and empty rooms, the cavernous basement. How, I wondered, would I ever fill up all this space? Ha. Ha. Just a few years later and I wonder at my own naiveté. During this time one of my grandmothers passed away and the other downsized. And then truckloads of furniture, books (more books!), linens, toys, and who knows what else descended upon us.

Don’t get me wrong. These are lovely things. Beautiful and meaningful things. But THINGS. Things that we must move, care for, clean, and (inevitably—we do have children after all) repair. Things are a burden!—who knew! Even getting RID of things is a huge task.

And this is just “grownup” things. The kids are a whole other universe of things.

I swear I don’t ever buy my kids toys, yet I pick up roughly one thousand small, brightly colored objects from the floor every day. And the socks. The sheer number of tiny mismatched socks is enough to give me a panic attack *right* *now.*

And if all of this is making my palms sweat now, just imagine how I felt when I was 9 months pregnant and roughly the size of a beached whale. I was tired of digging play-mobile people and single socks (socks!!) out from underneath the couch.

In addition to this not unreasonable pregnant frustration, I was also, in my new minimalism, keenly aware of the rampant consumerism and materialism that pervades our culture. I recognized that so often I was complicit, saw that my little daughter, when confronted with shining packages of Disney princesses, looked, hesitated not a moment--and was undone. Things, I thought, are an addiction, a drug. And I didn’t want that for myself or my family.  I wanted my home to be a place for people and not things. I wanted the things in my home to be either beautiful, useful—or both. Things that reflected and strengthened relationships, rather than crowding them out.

These were the better motives for my new minimalism.

But there were other motives, less noble.

Some nights I found myself frantically searching online for images of minimalist homes: homes with no toys, homes with hardly anything in sight. “There are no toys on the floor,” I said to myself gazing on in awe and (dare I say it?) something like lust. And then suddenly the observation changed. “There are no toys” became “there are no children.”

And this was the dangerous part. Because part of my minimalism was more than a mere rejection of “stuff” and the burden of “stuff,” it was, in its worst moments, a rejection of the people and relationships associated with the stuff. Because people are burdens. Relationships are messy.

Part of me wanted to get rid, not just of the things, but of the people attached to the things. “Why can’t you people just leave me alone?!” All I want is to be alone in a white room with nothing in it: no responsibilities, no emotions, no mess…and no socks.

I think it was the socks that finally got me to recognize the darker side of my “minimalism.” I was sorting socks. And there were a lot of socks. In a moment of frustration I declared to my husband (who happened to be passing) that I was going to throw away all of the socks. Then there would be no more socks to dig out from under the couch, no sweaty socks to wash, no single socks to match. Just think of it! No Socks! Devin looked down at the pile, skeptical. “But we need socks!” he said. And I knew he was right. We need socks: dry socks, clean socks, matching socks. The only way to get rid of the socks is to get rid of the people who need socks.

Minimalism can go wrong when it forgets that we are human and humans need things--because we *are* things: fleshy, physical, relational. We aren’t just souls, meant for contemplation and solitude. We are bodies and families and we need to eat and sleep and play. We need houses and food and beds and toys. And socks. 

This meditation is timely because (if you haven’t noticed) we are now deep in the Holiday season, when things (and things and things) are what everyone is doing and thinking about. Our consumer culture insists that “things” are what it’s all about: lots and lots of things under the tree and in the stocking so GET TO THE MALL! And I think we all can agree that this is a perversion of the Christmas spirit.

But no matter how we feel about materialism and greed, there is another kind of “thing” which comes with Christmas:

There is the advent wreath, lovingly decorated with greenery from the garden, the candles lit night by night as the family sings together (though sometimes out of tune). 

There is the tree, brought home with much pageantry, installed with wailing and gnashing of teeth (at least in my house), yet a thing of beauty, wonder; the children lie underneath it and look up through the lit branches. 

There are the ornaments, some passed down through several generations, some made with macaroni and glitter, but all meaningful, all embodying a memory, a person, a relationship.

Things are not evil. And sometimes things can be more than things: they can even be sacramental.

There are lots of stuff-objects-things to deal with at Christmas time, and I think it is an appropriate time to think about things, and the physical nature, the thingy-ness, of our own human reality. Because this is the time of Incarnation, when we celebrate the fact that God became a baby, that Spirit became…a thing. If God did not scorn “things” then neither should we. God became a child and played with toys. God became a carpenter and worked with tools. He made breakfast for his friends. He gave bread, wine. He rode a donkey. He wore sandals (if not socks).