::: it's been a hard day's night :::

This week, I have all of my kids at home. It hasn't been like this for a while, with Houdin being gone at discipleship training for the past couple of months and Bard off at college. It won't be like this again for a while. On Monday, Bard will head back to college and on Tuesday, 18-year-old Houdin will leave for an eight-month outreach placement to Africa. But while they're all here, I'm reminded of the dynamics of this family, both good and not-so-good. The changes we're experiencing are positive; we're all learning things as we move through this transition towards more permanent change. I'm taking notes, my friends. I'm taking lots of notes.

With all of the Thicket Dweller kids under one roof again, plus a couple of friends along for the ride, it's impossible to avoid a jam session. Most of the family used real instruments to belt out The Beatles, Coldplay, Muse, Leonard Cohen and Kimya Dawson, but a couple who are not as musically adept and a couple who are just plain goofy joined in on the Beatles Rock Band instruments. Can you believe that these silly people played for hours? HOURS? After serving a second dinner and a third dinner and a couple of snacks and a few desserts, this roadie headed for bed. I'm told they knocked off for the night around 3:00 A.M.

This house will be so different when they're gone.

::: turkey carcass soup :::

Hop on over to Time to Cook and dig that turkey carcass out of the fridge. Didn't make a turkey this year? Go borrow a carcass from the neighbors. It's worth it for a batch of Turkey Carcass Soup. I've got a pot simmering on the stove as I type.

::: happy thanksgiving! :::

::: true story tuesday: children of the corn[field] :::

Being an only child can be quite a challenge. I remember hearing people tell my parents that only children did not socialize enough and therefore would be spoiled rotten or or hyperactive or just plain strange.

They were totally and completely right.

I spent a lot of time with my cat who had been given to me by our neighbor Linda Wise when I was about five years old. I think the kitten knew immediately what was to be in store for her, using her keen kitty senses, because as soon as her little white paws hit the living room floor, she was off, hiding behind the couch for hours. While she trembled back there, I named her.

Five times I named that cat.

Popcorn. No. Snow White. Uhuh. Snowball. Nope. Peanuts. Nah.

I needed something more original. Something that was as unique as I was. Something no one had ever thought to name a cat before, ever.

So I named her Miss Kitty. Kitty for short.

Kitty curled up at the foot of my bed at night, played with me when she felt like it, tolerated me until she didn't feel like it, and mostly napped in the rafters of the basement. A couple of times, she got out of the house and scared me out of my wits, because I was sure I'd never see her again, but she came back, and she remained an inside cat for as long as we had her, which was until I moved out of the house at 18.

Kitty wasn't my only friend. I also spent a lot of time with my good buddy Pancho. Out of all of the kids in the neighborhood and all of the kids at school, Pancho was my very best friend. She was so cooperative and kind, ate dinner with us every night, and spent the night with me when I wanted her to. She took long walks with me, accompanied by her trained pony and her very colorful and incredibly tame pet parrot. The biggest problem I had with Pancho was getting people to take her seriously. It really bugged me when I had to tell people not to sit on Pancho, or not to step on Pancho, or to stop interrupting Pancho when she was talking. It was just rude. Nevermind that they couldn't see her or hear her. Just because she was imaginary didn't mean she didn't have feelings.

Pancho and I spent a lot of time in the cornfields around our house. Our ranch-style home sat on five and a half acres of land, but we only used about an acre and a half of it. The rest was rented out to Coony Geiger, who farmed it and all of the other fields around our house with corn. So, essentially, our house was surrounded on three sides by cornfields. In the Spring, Coony would pay my parents and plow our garden plot in exchange for the use of the field. This, to me, was just ridiculuous. I couldn't believe that my parents actually got PAID to have Coony plant the corn. After all, a cornfield was better than just about any playground I'd ever seen.

My most fascinating, imaginative and frightening stories happened in the cornfields. When Pancho didn't feel like playing, my other friends (the kind with actual skin and bones and stuff) would play hide and seek in the cornfield. Around the middle of July, the corn was so high you could run through it and no one would be able to see you. We were always very careful not to pull up stalks, because my mom said that every cornstalk we destroyed was robbing Coony Geiger of his crop. So we only ran between the stalks with wide spaces, like where the corn hadn't grown or the corn planting machine had forgotten to drop a kernel. We'd run through those fields, trying to get as far as possible before "IT" could count to fifty, and then we'd scrunch down very low, looking for any sign of "IT"'s feet so that we could take off running again. The leaves of the stalks would whip my arms and legs as I ran by, and later, when I showered, the tiny scratches left behind would burn and itch when the water hit them. That was what summer truly felt like.

I remember one summer taking a walk through the cornfield all alone not long after it had sprouted, so it was probably only about two feet tall. As I was walking, I spotted this strange looking thing sticking up out of the ground, all red and orange and yellow. I crept cautiously up to it, trying to identify it. It kind of looked like it was growing out of the dirt, but the again, it looked like maybe it had been buried there. Upon closer examination, I was sure I knew that it was...

...a chopped off finger!

I examined it as closely as I dared. It really looked like a chopped off finger all right, and it looked like someone had stuck it right in the mud, like they wanted to see if it would grow. It had definitely been there for a while, because, while it wasn't decayed, it was all kinds of freaky colors. I picked up a piece of cornstalk and poked at it very carefully, ready to take off running if the rest of of it clawed its way out of the earth. It didn't move. What if, I thought, this wasn't just a chopped off finger. What if, I thought, it was actually a whole body, and this was just the finger sticking out of the ground! I could barely stand to stay there much longer, but I could barely pull myself away from this creepy thing that was sticking up out of the ground, all red and white and black, just like a dead finger should look. After concentrating on the dead finger for a while and convincing myself that, yes, this was indeed a dead finger, and it could actually even be a dead finger that belonged to an alien (I had just seen Close Encounters and knew that there really were aliens and that they would come to talk to me soon), I freaked myself out enough that I was almost afraid to turn and run. I knew that the minute I turned my back, the dead finger would jump up out of the ground and chase after me. Don't ask me how a dead finger can run. I don't know. But in my eight-year-old mind, that finger was gonna run, and when it caught me, it was gonna do horrible dead-finger-like things to me.

After a while, I couldn't stand it anymore, and I knew I had to leave. I was so afraid that my parents were going to ask me about this dead finger, or, scarier yet, that they were going to find out that I knew about the dead finger they had planted in their cornfield and then they were going to plant my dead finger there, too. I was so afraid of it that I never told them about the creepy dead finger that I found. I was afraid to go back into the cornfield for a week, just in case the dead finger could move around to different parts of the field, or it had dead finger friends who were also waiting all around the cornfield to rise up out of the ground and chase me.

For many years, I believed that there was some kind of finger or dead person or other creepy thing buried in our cornfield. But time heals all dead fingers, and eventually I couldn't stand the thought of staying out of the field, because it was my playground, my hiding place, my magical kingdom. Pancho and I got up the courage to go back into the cornfield, and, before long, we were picking up leftover ears of corn on a hot August evening for her pony, Wildfire. After a while, I stopped being afraid of the creepy dead finger. But I never forgot about it.

It wasn't until I became and adult that I saw that creepy dead finger again. In my adult mind, through my adult eyes, it was very easy to see that the creepy dead finger was just a fungus. A bright red, black and white fungus that looked like a creepy dead finger. My adult mind could see this and know it.

But that doesn't mean that my adult mind didn't entertain the possibility that even a fungus could be an alien.


You never quite get over being an only child.

Photo from ChuckDoherty.com. 

::: bare :::

The branches of the silver maple outside my window are completely bare now. Where less than a month ago there fluttered beautiful leaves the color of which I can only recall now by looking at photos, there is nothing. Three weeks ago, I couldn't see beyond the tree for the abundance of leaves. Now, I can see all that was hidden behind it.

Maybe this is why the starkness of winter is so sobering to me. It reminds me of what it feels like, what it looks like, to shed all outward beauty, all color and opacity and splendor, and just stand, naked and vulnerable and transparent, cold and singular on a hill, exposing everything you've managed to cover for so long--the forgotten kite, the abandoned nest, the broken branches--and slip away into a deep sleep, like a grandmother who has dozed off in front of the tv with her mouth open and her bifocals askew. 

But deep season-long sleep is for stately trees, not for common women with families and friends, feasts and fast-food-drive-through lunches, plans and obligations, electric bills and grocery budgets, mice in her fruit cellar and children needing taught. And so the hibernation must take a different form, the nightly kind, with some reading of King Arthur to little girls who are learning to knit and embroider, and some episodes of The Office while snuggled in bed under a big, down blanket, and some blogging with the fierce sound of little mouse-teeth scraping away at something determinedly underneath my big bathtub.

Which means that Spring must come each morning, with a handful of vitamins and a glass of Benefiber, a must-have to-do list, and the sheer will power that keeps one sleep-stiffened foot shuffling in front of the other.

Drawing by Monet

::: a million canaries :::

How do you explain to a child,
that seeing is not always believing?
That the stars still exist in the daytime,
even when the sun is out,
but that there are no monsters
under her bed
or
in her closet
or
outside her window
watching her lay scared into sleeplessness?

How do you explain it to a child,
that God loves us,
protects us,
provides for us,
through the reality of nightmares,
the cruelty of friendship,
the unfairness of death?

How do you explain to yourself
that believing is more than seeing?
That yellow birds hang suspended
in the cloud-dotted blue?
That the greatest of these
is that one thing
that doesn't seem to be working?

How do you explain to yourself
that God loves us,
protects us,
provides for us
through the reality of disease,
the cruelty of depression,
the unfairness of economic poverty?

And yet he does,
and he does,
and he does.

When the yellow bird sails
and my fingers bend
and the stars shine,
I know.

Men can take from me
my life,
my Prozac,
my 401K,

But if the yellow bird hanging suspended
in the cloud-dotted blue
spirals to the ground,
he knows it,
and only he holds my soul
and he values me--
he values you--
more than a million canaries.

So I will speak in the daylight
what he tells me when I bolt upright,
in a pool of cold sweat;
What he whispers in my ear,
I will sing in my own voice 
as I stand on the shingles of my roof.

He does!
And he does!
And he does!

::: say cheese...cake! part 2 :::

Fifteen cheesecakes! An incredible band! A wonderful audience! In other words, a great success.

Yes, it was a lot of work, but there were amazing people who came to my rescue, running to the store, washing dishes, giving me hints and tips, offering encouraging words, and, of course, making beautiful and delicious cheesecakes.

Here are a few photos from the cheesecake auction and Honeytown concert. It was so much fun that we're talking about making it an annual event to benefit whatever the need is at the time of the auction.

Thanks, everyone, for all of your hard work, prayers, generosity and thoughtfulness. I'm so blessed!

::: say cheese...cake! :::

Yesterday and today, the Thicket Dweller family has been busy in the kitchen making cheesecakes (photos to follow) for tomorrow's concert and cheesecake auction to benefit Houdin's trip to Africa. We've got some amazing cheesecakes coming in from local people who are donating their time and talents to contribute a very unique selection of cheesecakes, with everything from Savory Herb Cheesecake to German Pumpkin Kaesekuchen to Habanero Lime. There are straightforward (and delicious!) ones, too, like Key Lime, Milk Chocolate, and Pecan Rum cheesecakes. Boy, I hope we get a good turnout, because these cheesecakes sound fabulous! If you're in the area, drop me a line and come for a night of music, fun and cheesecake! Cheese and crackers, veggies, and punch will be served.

::: true story tuesday: keeping up with the smiths :::

It's important to find things to keep you occupied when you live in the country. It's especially important to make friends with your neighbors, and to keep the friends you make. When I was a child in my neighborhood, there weren't many houses, which means there weren't many families, which means there weren't many kids. But there were the Smiths.

The Smiths lived in a really nice two story house three cornfields away to the north. Gene and Marilyn Smith were Catholic and had three kids when I first met them, and then had a fourth child later. Dawn was a two years older than I; Tony was my age, and Steffy was three years younger. Timmy came along when I was about eight or nine.

Gene and Marilyn were loud and colorful, and they always had the best things. Gene was a plumber and must have made a nice chunk of change because he could afford that nice two-story house, a very nice yard with a lot of flowers, an in-ground pool with a big, tall fence around it, and all of the coolest toys.

I remember one summer, Gene bought a moped for Tony and I happened to be there when they were riding it. Tony was riding it all over the yard, being the daredevil that he was. It looked so easy and so fun that I just had to try it, which was probably the best bad idea a person could ever have. Naturally, I got my turn. Naturally, I mistook the gas for the brake, and naturally, I flipped the dumb thing over. I didn't get hurt, but I've had a healthy respect for two-wheeled motorized vehicles ever since. Tony, however, did not have a healthy respect for me, and I was teased about this all the way through our school years together.

I spent many hours swimming in the Smiths' pool, which was a miracle given that, #1, my parents didn't seem to care too much for the Smiths (but my parents never had many good things to say about anyone) and, #2, my parents were so overprotective, I wasn't allowed to associate with anyone that they even suspected of being a shifty character. The fact that they let me splash around in the water with people like The Smiths without even staying to watch is, frankly, a bit hard for me to believe now.

Somehow, though, I was able to spend a lot of time with the Smiths, and I was able to spend a lot of time in their pool. Obviously, I didn't spend as much time in their pool as they did. This was so apparent because of my total inability to make any graceful movements in the water. Tony was always very quick to point that out.

"You call that swimmin'?!?" He would laugh his obnoxious Tony Smith laugh. "You're just splashin' around! Don't you know how to swim?"

We had this conversation every time I tried to swim in their pool. Every time, I would splash ungracefully, and every time, he would laugh at me. To this day, when I try to swim, I remember that I really can't swim because Tony Smith said so.

When the pool got boring, or it was too cold to swim, we would play Engine Engine Number Nine in the front yard:

Engine, Engine Number Nine
Going Down the Chicago Line
If the Train Should Jump the Track
Do you want your money back?

And then, there was:

Bubblegum, Bubblegum in a dish
How many pieces do you wish?

And my very favorite, because of the fantastic mental images it conjured:

My mother and your mother were hanging out clothes.
My mother punched your mother right in the nose.
What color was the blood?

I always chose green.

We would also play freeze tag, or TV tag, or some other kind of tag, or hide and seek, or we'd pretend we were spies (sometimes we really were spies, spying on Dawn who would get mad at us and tell us to grow up).

If totally necessary, Marilyn Smith would let us play inside.

In spite of what my parents said, I thought Gene and Marilyn were really nice. They both laughed and smiled a lot, and Gene always had some kind of joke to tell that I didn't really understand. Marilyn never failed to gently touch one of my springy curls and sweetly tease me that she was going to cut them all of to keep them for herself. She loved my brown ringlets.

But Marilyn Smith had rules, too. For instance, we weren't allowed in their living room because it was to stay clean just for company, and we weren't allowed in their parents' bedroom because...well, because it was simply off-limits. I did sneak in there one time, though, because Tony had told me that they had a sink that was made just to wash his parents butts. I didn't believe him, so I snuck in one time, just to see if it was true. And sure enough, there it was. Right by the toilet. It was a toilet-looking thing made just for washing butts, which I now know was a bidet.

But I would have to say that Tony's biggest claim to fame as far as I was concerned was the booger. Tony was the kind of kid who was obsessed with bodily functions, even more so than most boys his age. Tony was the only kid I ever knew who would try really hard to smell his own farts, admitting with no shame whatsoever that he did it because he liked the way his own farts smelled. He liked to brag about any kind of sound, fluid or goo his body produced, and that, of course, included boogers. If Tony found an exceptionally large or gooey booger, he would not for one second hesitate to show it to the closest person, except for his sister Dawn. Dawn was very mature and only tolerated, with a very low patience level, the antics of her annoying little brother, and, in turn, the antics-by-association of me. So, if there was a choice between showing Dawn the booger and showing me the booger, I would win every time. I think.

The thing that was different about Tony was that he didn't get embarrassed when anyone mentioned bodily functions. In our house, no one EVER said the word "fart," though my mom was the queen of gaseousness. And if I were to be caught in school with a booger hanging from my nose, I would simply have died. But not Tony. No. Tony would just laugh and pull it out, maybe even measure it, and show anyone who was nearby so that they could all appreciate the fineness of his great big boogers.

One day, when I got on the bus, there were no seats anywhere, except for next to Tony. Now, I played with Tony during after-school hours mostly out of sheer boredom, but when we were on school property, I really would rather not have seen or been seen with him. What do you expect? He was embarrassing, for crying in the mud! But I was also a fairly nice kid, so if his was the only seat left on the bus, I wasn't going to make a big deal out of it.

So, I sat down next to Tony and started talking to him when I noticed that he had something stuck in the top of his blonde hair. Being the nice person I was, I reached out for it, this thing that was stuck there, right on the top of his head. I took hold of it and pulled, and it was cold, sticky and rubbery.

It was a booger.

I was so totally grossed out, I could have puked. I shook the disgusting thing off of my hand and stared at Tony with repulsion. He just laughed, as if he had placed it there himself, just so I would find it and pull it out of his hair. And maybe he did.

To this day, when I see something in a person's hair, I either point it out to them, or I let them discover it themselves. I never, ever, ever touch it.

::: the mighty oak :::

Today, I touched the very tip-top of the old oak tree. Leaves and branches that had likely never felt the hand of man were easily within my reach. Who knows how many years it had stood there? The rings were too close, too packed together for me to even begin counting. It was strong and healthy, its trunk showing no signs of rot or weakness. I don't know why they cut it down--to make way for something else, or to make money, or some other reason--but that thing which had lived longer than all of us here, that surely stood before Ohio was a state, and maybe even before these states were united, surely when old Tom Lions roamed these parts, camped out in the creek collecting tongues on a rawhide, threatening the white men and children that theirs might be the next in his collection.

::: guilty either way :::

There are times when I need to just shut my mouth.

During these times, I think it's best to stare out the window silently and feel sorry for myself. The greatest satisfaction comes when I think of something so terribly sad that my eyes cloud up and mist over and all of the sadness spills out, and when I squeeze my eyelids together, it runs down my nose and tickles the outside of my nostril until I have to push it away with my sleeve or the tip of my finger.

There are times when I need to just speak my mind.

During these times, I know it's best to pause until the right words pop into my brain which cooperates with my mouth to bring forth the intended meaning. As the sentiments spill out, I know when they're hitting the mark, just like a basketball player who knows that the ball is headed for nothing but net the moment it leaves his fingertips. It just feels right.

What I should have learned by now, as an adult, as a human being, as an intelligent woman, is which times are which.

When I stare and the sadness spills and the nostril tickles, I feel childish and self-pitying.

When I speak and the words hit and they're nothing but net, I feel hubrish (it's not a word...yet) and bossy.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there is no right time for either. Maybe this is a causal oversimplification. There are likely many reasons why I feel childish, hubrish, self-pitying, bossy.

Either way, I feel like I should apologize.

So I'm sorry. I'm sorry for saying nothing, and I'm sorry for saying everything.

I hope that covers it.

::: fiction friday: untitled :::

Part One

It's been said that the Eskimo people have hundreds of words for "snow." It sounds logical, given that they supposedly live around the frozen precipitation their whole lives, but it's not true. The Eskimo people don't even have a single language. In addition, if you look at all of the Eskimo languages--Siberian Yupik, Qawiarak, Labrador Inuttut, just to name a few--the word for snowflake is pretty much the same. You don't have to speak any of the Eskimo languages to see that.

There are words for "niece" and "nephew," but there's not a generic word for both. There are words for "cousin," but there's not a specific word for a girl cousin or a boy cousin. 

If you're a child who has lost both of your parents, you're an orphan. If you're a person who has lost their spouse, you're a widow or a widower.

But there's no word for me. There's no one single word in the English language for what I am.

The first time I met Liz, she was having a pretty intense conversation with our comparative linguistics professor about the history of the word "agrestic," and I was waiting to talk to him about why my paper on experimental phonetics hadn't earned an A. I'd seen Liz around campus, but we had never talked. She and her friends seemed silly and childish, more interested in social events and boys than their actual education. Admittedly, I found her attractive, but I'd made a serious commitment to my studies and hadn't found much need for a romantic relationship as part of that commitment.

She turned from her conversation and her eyes fell upon me. Gesturing towards me, she asked the professor, "Would you find him agrestic? I mean, doesn't it all depend on your perspective? Someone from, say, New York City or Paris certainly would, don't you agree?"

"But that's only if you're adhering to the original meaning of the word, Liz. The meaning has morphed since then. Calling him 'agrestic' would be insulting to him, really."

"Well, I don't argue that," Liz conceded, "but in this case, maybe he fits all meanings of the word. No offense...um..."

"Larry. It's Larry. And none taken."

I waited a minute longer, but the conversation didn't seem to be slowing down, so I decided to postpone my conversation and headed back to my dorm where I looked up the word "agrestic." Had I been any kind of a real comparative linguistics major, I'd definitely have been offended.

I didn't meet Liz again until the linguistics club hosted a Halloween dance party at The Pizza Loft the Autumn of our junior year. She was Isaac Newton in his younger days, with a prism in one hand and a Bible in the other, when he was more attractive and hadn't yet become a bi-polar jerk. I was Jean Francois Champollion, the French scholar who deciphered the Rosetta Stone. I dressed in Egyptian garb and carried a Styrofoam stele carved with hieroglyphics. A couple of them were real, but mostly it was scribbles that my suitemates had etched into the foam with the end of an ink pen, the ballpoint retracted.

I'm not a dancer. I'll just say that right now. It was completely against my will that I participated in the dancing aspect of the evening, but the numbers were uneven, and some young lady would have ended up without a dance partner, which, in retrospect, may have been for the best. Nevertheless, I approached the circle, reached for a ribbon from the mass of brightly colored strips and held on.  I chose the green one, the one with the frayed edge, a thread hanging from it brushing against my wrist like spider's silk. On the count of three, we all pulled back, and Liz was on the other side of the circle, her eyes rolled ceilingward, holding her own frayed end of the green ribbon.

::: whatsoever things are lovely :::

The landscapes were so inviting tonight, the moody skies meeting the ever optimistic sunbeams. I grabbed my camera and Bo acted as my chauffeur and we ambled our minivan along the back roads of our neighborhood to see what the sun might be kissing.

Think on these things.

::: created :::

The sunbeams were so gorgeous yesterday that they filled me with a strange sense of nostalgia. It helped immensely that one of them made itself at home in my bedroom, that it chose to highlight something I had completed--washing and folding linens. From my desk, the basket of thrift-store embroidered napkins, cotton tablecloths and quilt-pieced aprons just about drove me to distraction. I loved the look of those freshly-laundered things, and all I had done was wash them and place them in a basket. I hadn't even created them, yet they filled me with a sense of accomplishment. That's no small feat these days.

So often, what the sun brings to light, or at least what I see, are my shortcomings. The smudges on the windows, the dust on the bookcase, the handprints on the walls. Is everyone's tendency toward seeing that which is undone? Why can I not focus on those things I've accomplished? Why can I not give thanks for the good things? Why can I not be at peace?

My daughters have been working on a care package for their brother who is going through discipleship training before leaving for Africa the first week of December. I haven't had the patience or taken the time to teach them needlecrafts. I was never interested in learning to sew, though my mother sewed wonderful things for me and for our home. I don't really recall that she ever tried to teach me; the only recollection I have of my experience with the old metal Singer was a duffle bag for Brownies and a broken needle which brought about my mother's wrath. Sweetheart in particular is so drawn towards needlecrafts of all kinds, whether it's sewing, knitting or anything else that involves needle and thread, and I feel guilty for not having the skills or even the interest to teach her.

Thankfully, my mother-in-law spent time showing her how to cross-stitch and that has sent Sweetheart's finger flying. She has even taken to teaching her little sister a few simple stitches.

A few years ago, a friend of mine was sharing how her eldest daughter grew up and left home before she realized that she'd never shared with her daughter her passion for preserving. She'd always been so caught up in the actual process that she 
never taught her daughter how to put up beans or make jam or can applesauce. Her daughter was now in college, living on the other side of the country, and the realization that she'd "failed" her left my friend weepy and grief-filled.

Shortly after the realization, her daughter called home to give a life update. After some chatting about this and that, the daughter shared offhandedly, "Oh, and guess what, Mom! There was a group of grandmothers who got together to can jelly, so guess what I learned to do!" My friend's shoulders lifted from the relief of that weight. Education never ends! Learning comes from everywhere! Teachers are all around us!

For today, I want to focus on our accomplishments. I want to wander through the day and dip our toes into our interests. I want to trust that my gaps will be filled, that should I forget or skip or run out of time to share some passion of mine with my children, that they'll find it along the way, if that's what they need.

For today, I want to see the beautiful things that the sunbeams illuminate, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential they might be.

::: true story tuesday: living off the land :::

There was no question in my mind that I could do it.

I sat in the back yard, behind the dog pen, hunched inside of a makeshift tent that was constructed out of heavy wooden beams and a big, black tarp, something my dad had brought home (read: stolen) from the rubber shop where he worked. I had in my hand a small mason jar full of ripe red raspberries, picked only minutes ago from the row of bushes that ran along the north side of the chain link fence that was the dog pen. I was attempting to make raspberry jam, using a spoon and smashing the raspberries into a thick, gooey pulp. No sugar needed. These babies were plenty sweet. Not necessary to cook it. Plus, I wasn't allowed to play with fire. And who needed toast? It was a jam good enough to eat with your fingers, right out of the jar.

This was all part of a plan to prove to myself that I could live off of the land.

It seemed to me, even then, that it wasn't completely necessary to have grocery stores. After all, everything that you could buy at the store could be made or grown at home. Well, with the exception of bananas and baloney. But I could live without bananas and baloney.

My thinking was this: I really needed very little to survive. First off, I was pretty skinny. I had been a skinny kid since the very beginning, and had worried my parents because I "ate like a bird." They would take me to the doctor, who would assure them that I would eat when I was hungry, and then he would assure me that he would marry me someday, and let me choose a reward from the treasure chest (I always chose a ring, so I could say that it was from the doctor who was going to marry me someday). My great-grandfather, who we called Big Grandpa because he was very tall and was married to Little Grandma, who was very short, would shake his head at me at every family gathering. "You look like a bird! You're going to dry up and fly away!"

But I really don't think it's fair to say that I didn't eat, because I really did. I loved fruits, vegetables, bread and bacon. I ate a lot of stuff. And I ran around a lot. And I think it's because of the things I liked to eat that I came to my conclusion that I could live off the land.

After all, what could be better than a fresh carrot, straight from the garden, plucked from grandma's vegetable plot before it was big enough? Well, a tomato, of course! A red, sun-warmed, juice-drips-down-to-your-elbow-burning-the-scrape-on-your-arm-from-the-bike-accident tomato is one of the best things that can ever happen to a real, garden-loving kid. There's no store-bought tomato that could even pretend to be more than a tasteless water balloon. And corn! Well, if a kid could start a fire (once she was allowed to use matches for more than burning the trash once a week) and boil some water, corn would just be the best thing in the world to eat! And since I was such a dairy addict, I certainly had to have a cow. With a cow, I could have milk, and butter, and ice cream. None of those required matches. And what did cows eat? Grass! How hard could that be to grow?

Given all of this staggering logic, I knew that I never really had to have a job. I could eat fruits and veggies straight from the garden, sleep in my tent, and drink milk and make butter from my cow who only needed to eat grass. It was a flawless plan. Sometimes, I still pull elements from it. This is why I needed to know how to make bread from scratch, or how to knit a scarf, a hat, or a pair of mittens, how to milk a cow, how to raise a goat, how to butcher a pig, how to make yogurt. This is why things just don't feel right if there isn't a garden filled with herbs, veggies, fruits and weeds in our yard. This is why I've made homemade horehound drops, why I read books by Gene Logsdon and Wendell Berry, why I get so excited about mulberry season, and why I have a get that goofy nostalgic look on my face when I see a row of red raspberries, gooseberries or currants. Because when I was seven years old, I had a plan. And I was sure that I could live off the land from that moment on. It would work. How could it not?

As long as it stayed summer all year 'round.

::: it was easier to fly slicing potatoes :::

As long as I can remember, my father has taught me fear. Don't take risks, don't take chances, don't dream dreams or trust others. Just fear. I didn't recognize it as fear when I was a child and was told that if I was ever found riding my bike on the road, it would be locked up forever. Living on a rural piece of property with no good riding land, I just never rode my bike. I wasn't allowed to spend the night with friends, go on dates or take walks. I wasn't allowed to have poor friends, black friends, hispanic friends or friends whose parents were divorced. I still had them, of course, because my dad, in spite of how much he loved me in his own way, wasn't really involved in my life.

Still, his fear branded me, instilling in me an unhealthy obsession with freak accidents and a very vivid imagination (okay, maybe God gave me the imagination, but my dad helped me with the vivid part). To this day, if one of my children has gone overseas, or over to the neighbor's house, if they are jumping on the bed or jumping on the trampoline, if they are climbing ladders or climbing trees, he's there, fretting, warning, instilling fear.

I was cutting potatoes for dinner when The Baby came running into the kitchen, her pink My Little Pony from McDonald's held firmly in her grip.

"Can I help cut potatoes?" she asked, grabbing one of the wet potatoes from the bowl. My first reaction was to tell her no, that I'm busy, that I want to get this done quickly.

And then I heard my father's voice behind me. Literally. He was sitting at the counter reading the paper, and I heard him say, "No, no, no. You'll cut yourself."

And then I remembered my grandmother, my father's mom, placing a potato in my hand long after I should have learned to cut potatoes, showing me how to cut towards my thumb, letting the blade meet the pad of my thumbprint. She taught me to peel them so that a long, unbroken string of brown peeling would fall to the counter with each peeled, naked potato.

I also remembered my husband's grandmother teaching me, long after I should have known, that potatoes need to be started in cold water when making mashed potatoes.

I took a knife from the utensil crock and handed it to The Baby. She dropped the My Little Pony on the wet countertop, taking the knife into her hand. It took a few tries to show her the right way to hold the potato, the right way to hold the knife, to keep her fingers out of the way, to angle the blade toward the pad of her own thumb, but soon she was peeling potatoes, cutting them into cubes and dropping them into the big pot full of cold water, which went onto the hot stove, and was turned into delicious whipped potatoes with browned butter, which she brought to me in a little vintage bowl and asked me to photograph.

I know that my father loves me. I know that he loves and wants to protect his grandchildren. But I will choose today not to allow my children to be bound by fear, not to let others bind them to fear, and we will both be better for it.  And maybe my father will even be better for it, too.