This morning I woke up to Caleb’s little feet step-step-stepping down the stairs. A moment later, I turned under my covers to see his little self trying to climb up into bed with mommy and daddy. I heaved him up into the middle of the bed. After a while, since I couldn’t go back to sleep, I got up and left him, trapped under the heavy arm of his dad.
I went out to the kitchen. . it was quarter after 7. . a dark and rainy morning. I made myself some coffee, prepared it in my favorite Alaskan mug, and toasted some white bread. Yes, it was raining, and yes it was cool, but the porch was tempting. I bundled up, grabbed a couple of magazines, my coffee, my toast, a blanket. . and out I went.
What more can a busy mom want than a quiet morning? To sit on the porch with just a few simple things, knowing that her loved ones are behind her in the house, still cuddled up in their warm covers?
I was inspired by an article I read about a girl who grew up in a country farmhouse, with a mother who delighted in filling the house with beautiful things. Sweet, simple pleasures. We could all do these things:
“No other farmhouse I knew boasted a tall amethyst-glass candlestick, or custardy-yellow berry bowls, or a large flower-embossed silver spoon for the Sunday gravy.”
“Mother saw to it that we spoke the language of the flowers”
“On a bright June morning I might awake to find a treat on my painted dresser: an old china teacup filled with tiny ferns and forget me nots. And next to it, for no practical reason at all, would lie our one linen guest towel, starched and snowy and artfully placed to show the embroidered versions of the same dainty blue flowers.”
“Our lace was Queen Anne’s, and as long as nature turned it out from unseen bobbins along the roadside, it trimmed our kitchen shelf from a blue milk pitcher.”
“Mother would accept a wilting bouquet of dandelions from a milk-sticky little hand with the graciousness of a queen receiving orchids.”
“Sometimes we spent days collecting glass shards of blue medicine bottles and clear green cups and red pickle dishes, then wrapped them in cloth to snap smartly with a wooden spoon against a flat rock. The kaleidoscopic jewels that resulted were mixed and shaken into prettily shaped bottles–and set on a windowsill. When the sun was right, there was the stained glass glory of Chartres, refracted on the ceiling just as simple as that.”
“Like a grand lady, our house changed perfumes seasonally. It wore cinnamon in autumn when the apple pies never stopped coming, and attar of roses filled the sunny rooms of summer. We kept spruce and juniper boughs in crocks in the hall all winter, never even pretending they had anything to do with Christmas. In spring we splashed the scent of lilacs everywhere.”
~written by Patricia Myruski, for Country Living magazine, September 1989
So on this happy Saturday, I am in the mood to beautify my home. I can hope that in future years, my own children will look back and remember my little attempts to make home a lovely place.
Rich took the three older children with him to the nursing home this morning. After they left, the rain cleared away and the sun started to shine. The outdoors beckoned to me and so I worked to get David and Caleb ready to go out, complete with the best purchase for SPRING ever:
black rubber boots
Rich just got home with the children. . . . . .and has a new bike for Grace. I suppose all the pretty little touches in the world can’t compare to that! Or maybe childhood is a balance of both parents showing their love in the way they each know best.
