Change and Hope

My plan for your future has always been filled with hope.
Jeremiah 29:11

The girls of the Little White House could perhaps use your prayers.  It’s hard to know where to begin in explaining all of the changes and opportunities that have come knocking over the past couple months…I think our silence was inspired in part by the fact that we received some valuable reproof–that we were portraying our lives here as almost unrealistically idyllic and lacking in real content in such a way as to cause envy and stumbling in our readers. (Looking back, though, I think we’d all have to agree that our “honeymoon” months were rather unmitigatedly idyllic, to be fair.)

Now, though, what’s going on in our lives is often so nebulous and intangible that it’s hard to put into concrete words. However, I shall try.

Lilac Corner

Big, bushy bouquets of lilacs are overtaking the Little White House. We’ve filled vases and pitchers. . .It has been warm enough for the first time to sleep with the windows open, and the scent of lilacs ruffles through the moonlit rooms on cool, fresh breezes, and colors our dreams.

The pea plants, in other news, are flourishing, and I crafted a trellis the other day by screwing hooks into the overhang of our shed’s roof, and stringing twine down in a triangular fashion to a metal rod laid on the ground along my row of peas. It was uncharacteristically handy of me, and I’m proud.

There are mysterious shapes looming on the horizons of the girls of the Little White House. . .

May Days

I am reporting from our white wicker porch swing to the tune of its creaking chains and the first songs of the crickets’ spring soiree. The nights are still cool, and I’m wrapped up in a green woolen blanket, the sky is bluely darkening and turning translucent, the lamplight spilling across the street is tingeing the spring-green leaves with gold, and it smells like night.

A few moments ago, Bex popped out onto the porch with three tubes of toothpaste inquiring which I claimed, for they were organizing the bathroom “instead of going out to party;” and awhile before that, a little old man in a green cap strolled by on the sidewalk. We tossed hullos across the yard, and after he passed, he looked back once more over his shoulder. I was still smiling faintly after him, and he smiled, too, though sheepish at being caught. I’ve never seen him before–which is odd, because we’ve been here long enough to recognize so many of the people who stroll and bicycle by, and he had the slow, careless air of a regular.

I love the way the tall pine tree across the street stands up darkly against the evening sky. It reminds me of a lone pine standing up in the middle of a Minnesotan cornfield I once knew, a black sentinel against a rose-red sunset on the distant horizon.

The days are passing quietly enough here. Yesterday, though, a basket of petunias from Grace’s parents, that had been hanging quietly and well-behavedly from a porch-hook ever since its arrival two weeks ago, suddenly and inexplicably fell twice in one afternoon; and the second time, the pot cracked.

I’ve taken to living out in the garden. . .I’ll spare the lengthy enumeration of my plantings, though, for rumor has it that it’s already contained in an entry Bex is working on for this journal… But I will say that my grandmother sent me a box good old Minnesotan dirt in the mail, and next to our shed I’ve put the descendant-root shoots of a snowball bush that once lived on my great-grandfather’s farm. And three of my grandpa’s hostas have been transplanted into our side garden. I can remember, as a little girl, watching him carefully dig up and split hosta plants before bedding them back down; the way he firmed the soil around them and sculpted a well around each plant came back to me, and I found my small, white hands doing what his stocky, tanned and weathered ones once did.

There was some catalyst in the past five minutes that cleared the ceiling of the sky, and even from our porch, bathed as it is in pinkish-yellow light from the streetlamp, I can see stars twinkling.

Reader, you’re here. Across the porch, our rocker is gently rocking, and I think it must be you.

Days Go By

Three months. 

That’s how long we’ve been denizens of Patty’s Place. (Plus one day!) A quarter of a year. The time goes by so swiftly – I woke a few days ago with the morbid thought that someday we’ll all be old and gray, sitting around a porch in our rocking chairs, holding bright-eyed grandchildren spellbound with tales of the good old days, when Grandma was a girl. 

(”Were you ever a girl, Grandma?”)

Grace and Bex have been gone on a visit to North Carolina for a week, but they’re finally back! It had been a wee bit quiet around the house with the two most outgoing girls gone, but Rissa and I managed to rattle along together pretty comfortably. It’s seriously awesome to have them back again, though, filling the house with laughter and chatter.  *happy sigh* 

We were supposed to be in the middle of a snowstorm of epic proportions right about now, but at the last moment it fell through and just turned into a sloggy, thick, white sort of rain. Once we’d decided we’d actually really enjoy having a snow day, the prospect of up to twenty-four inches of the white stuff was pretty exciting! So it’s actually disappointing that winter seems to have abandoned us for good. 

I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of writing. It’s a trifle difficult without the luxury of my own laptop, but I manage to pound out a few hundred words every once in a while, and every few hundred words is just that much closer to a finished manuscript! Although…if you look at the prose in this post, it’s easy to see the quality of my writing isn’t precisely anything to boast about.

Icicles and Dvorak

A small blizzard buried the girls of the Little White House on Thursday.

This is just a note to say that the sun is shining brilliantly today, and we are an island in a sea of white, and I am listening to Dvorak (loudly) as Abby clinks silverware and rustles papers in the next room, and icicles are falling off our roof with a pristine, metallic slash and clatter much like I imagine the guillotines of the French Revolution must have sounded.

An Army of Cheer

LITTLE WHITE HOUSE — Four girls carrying a large quantity of yellow balloons were seen traveling north near the corner of 12th and Cleveland last night at dusk.

Passersby on that busy thoroughfare reported that it looked like faces had been drawn on the balloons in permanent black marker, ranging from the typical Smiley to one that curiously resembled Eeyore. Their motives were, at that point, unknown; their appearance, however, was mischievous enough to unsettle Loveland’s rush-hour commuters.

Investigation has brought their errand to light. Between the hours of three and four this morning, a weary man was returning home from a night-shift of work. He trudged (at least, we presume his step was not sprightly) into his kitchen. A yellow balloon with an Eeyore drawn on it was taped to the countertop; this was the first sign that something was amiss.

The yellow balloons grinned out at him from whatever cupboard he opened. One was in the shower caddy, another in the refrigerator; the girls had not even omitted to bug his clothes dryer. Further inspection turned up a smiling card on the refrigerator, and cheery notes left on every notepad or otherwise writable surface in plain view.

Cheer was inescapable: when he looked out his kitchen window, even the house next door had a smiling yellow balloon hanging in the window directly opposite.

The girls’ mischief ended there, but they, too, were in for a surprise. When they awoke this morning, stumbled into their kitchen, and peered around the smiling balloon they had hung from the light above the window, they observed a message written on what appeared to be napkins or paper towels taped in the window opposite:

“YOU GIRLS ARE THE BEST!”

A Small Smattering

 

The weather forecast for the next few days brings happy tidings of spring-like weather! No more waking up to snow on the ground and seeing it peeping out from the shadowy parts of the yard to remind us that winter still had her clutches on the world.

I sat on my bed the other night, looking out through the window to the great darkness beyond. The tree branches were in dark purple silhouette against a clear sky, and there was a milky-white pulsating star just above one of them. I was filled with a deep sense of longing . . . a deep ache. And yet, at the same time, contentment washed over me. There was a yearning for more, a sense of something deeper not yet attained . . . and a feeling of sincere and real contentment with where God has me right now.

Rissa received a seed catalogue in the mail recently, and it makes me feel warm and fuzzy and spring-ish inside to pour over it (even by lamplight in the evenings) and dream big dreams of big gardens and big flowers and big vegetables and . . . big smiles. We’re going to plan out what we would like to do with our backyard and then have the landlord come down and see what she thinks about it. Rissa has great plans of morning glories twining over the fence, beans and peas spiraling up the chain-link, flowers nodding happily (but she intends to keep a wide berth between herself and the tomato patch. “They smell weird.”) We figure that if we make lots of improvements on the property, renew our lease, and be overall perfect tenants, then perhaps . . . perhaps they might let us have a kitten—or a puppy. Just maybe . . .

 

I can’t believe it is already the middle of March. March of 2009.

Bex and I were off visiting friends the other evening and apparently have impeccable timing. We were informed that during the course of the evening while we were gone, we missed out on the beginnings of a high-speed car chase just outside our house. Rissa’s car was nearly smashed into smithereens. Tiny ones. Policemen, EMTs, and “firemans” were swarming our neighborhood, inspecting Rissa’s (undamaged) car, the gravel  in front of our Neighbors house (for reasons we can only try to understand), measuring skid marks, and other such things. Abby was so excited she could hardly handle it . . . and I hear that she was just getting ready to take coffee and dinner out to the “firemans” (I told you she was excited—she could hardly talk! ) when they all up and were gone, leaving one lonely police car on our street. So, I guess that was the excitement of the week, and Bex and I missed it.

St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner and we’re all set and ready for it with a corned beef brisket in our freezer and a head of cabbage in the fridge. And our tree is being very green and festive.

Happy Spring, everyone! 

“I had thought…a picnic!”

 

The weather here in Colorado is not to be depended on. At all. All last week the inhabitants of the Little White House were seen overtaking the park and quite astounding everyone with their tennis and basketball skills (or lack thereof, perhaps?), and then yesterday Bex and I woke up to a blanket of snow and had to dig our car out before heading to work at a most ungodly hour of the morning. Today is perfectly sunny and nice again. (Rissa is insisting that it is “not nice…it’s cold!” I still hold that it is “perfectly sunny and nice again…but still cold.”)

We do tend to make good use of the beautiful weather, though. Last week we were lazing around the house on a gorgeous day and decided that something needed to change. We couldn’t let the day go to waste! A picnic in the mountains was proposed and accepted, and the little house was soon a flurry of activity. I began the makings of a picnic meal and soon realized we had no picnic basket. I hollered from the kitchen stating the same and Rissa soon came running in with her sewing basket. Perfect! Abby and Bex took the top down on Bex’s red convertible. We snatched water bottles, jackets, books, sunglasses, food, tablecloth, and any other accoutrements we felt might be necessary, and headed down the road…or rather, up the the road, as we were headed for the mountains. It was a perfect drive that afternoon, and we found ourselves at a beautiful park in the mountains by a river. Our hair was a little worse for wear, but the park was empty and there was no one but ourselves to see us. We set up our picnic table and sat down to a lunch which quickly disappeared without much ado.

After lunch we all went our separate ways and explored the park. I love walking alone up there…so peaceful and quiet. I reflected on many things, stood on a bridge overlooking the river and was mesmerized by the swirls and eddies, and thanked God for such a beautiful creation. I could not help but sing right then–

“When through the woods, and forest glades I wander,
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees.
When I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur
And see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze.

Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee
How great Thou art, how great Thou art…”

I came back from my jaunt to find Rissa perched on a rock overlooking the river, Abby was squealing as she poked her toes in the water and found it to be snow run-off (very cold!), and Bex was spread out smack dab in the middle of a great expanse of grass with her book. The next hour, or so, was spent in much the same activities. (I might add that Abby’s squealing did not necessarily continue for the next hour.)

Today is another beautiful day, the snow has all melted, and I think a walk downtown might be in order before heading to work tonight.

 

Waiting for Patrick

I write this sitting curled up cross-legged in a patch of sunshine. Rissa is in a similar patch just across the room – we’re currently the only two at home. Life is good here, despite the odd worry that crops up once in a while.

Bex has taken to smirking at me when I stumble bleary-eyed out of my room in the mornings; looking up from her perch on the sofa to flash me a fiendish, entirely-too-wide-awake grin. My mind is at its most sluggish, and I blink at her wordlessly for a few seconds before mumbling the tail end of whatever my train of thought might be. It hardly ever makes sense, because somewhere along the path from my brain to my tongue, the words generally get altered to an “ugh” or similar wordless grunt.

I am in love with the sunshine. We all are (although the true winner of Grace’s heart might just be her bed. ) If we all happen to be home at once, you’ll generally find us sprawled out over our little blue porch, reading or scribbling in a journal or just sitting in the sun.

(Note: Patrick is our mailman – though his name isn’t actually Patrick. It is my opinion that all mailmen ought to be named Patrick. Ours is a jolly-looking fellow with a white beard and a safari hat. Doubtless he adds a little spice to his daily rounds by imagining himself on the veldt as he walks from door to door, humming sea chanties – he also looks vaguely old-salt-ish – and delivering life-saving packets of malaria medicine into each person’s mailbox.)

(yes, he totally does that. *nods*)

Softly Falling Snow

A deep stillness came over house this afternoon, and a pervasive chill has seeped in at the windows. A few hours ago, the sky began to spit down tentative snowflakes, and now seeping down through the dark branches are the largest and softest of snows. The instinct seemed at first to be for hibernation, but I think the impulse for snowball fights is creeping in.

“They’re big enough that we could float on them!” Bex says. She’s in a furry, white hat with ear-flaps, and on her way to work for the evening.

Life at the Little White House has trundled ever onwards. Our poor dear Grace has vacillated between varying degrees of sickness, and my job-hunt has been at times depressing, and Abby and Bex do this and that. But that all sounds rather bleak and depressing, and it isn’t, really.

There have been visitors and neighbors, and moonlit strolls to the park, and wild glee, and plans for mischief. All in all, I think we are very happy. And–good heavens, it’s nearly five!–I think it is a hot cocoa night.