Prospect and Refuge

Our first Christmas here at Burbridge St. Geoff got me this book that described each home's need for both prospect and refuge. Spaces of refuge was easier for me to make sense of. Especially with little kids. The primal need for a cozy, warm embryonic space. A place to be warm and safe, nestle in. The prospect is the opposite, a space that is open, that has a grander, long view. This makes me think of the way my Dad would drink coffee at 1610, staring out the sliding glass door onto our backyard. It was like he was saying, "Mine, mine as far as the eye can see!" The view beyond our property was all farm, Wengert's Dairy.

The book talked about the importance of prospect and refuge within the home. I want to remember the refuges my kids create. Especially while they are home on Spring Break. Manny and Benicio inside this tent, they brought dozens of pillows in there ones from beds, couch cushions, too. Also, the purple sleeping bag, a few plush animals. They called it their "Huffy-Puffy Sleepover."

The girls refuges are also phenomenal. In their room, between the mini-recliner and the wall, there is a 2x2 sq. foot spot. The base is a big floor pillow,piled with 5 baby quilts, and then nestled in there are 2 baby dolls, a rag doll, a fancy ballerina doll, and then, I'm not even joking here, 15 books.

Calliope, at 2 yrs. makes much more itinerant refuge spaces, much more ephemeral. For example, behind my desk chair, she has a tangle of yarn, 2 pairs of pajamas, and quietly resting therein are her purple Croc, an irridescent mancala bead and 2 pre-chewed apple peels.

A few weeks ago, I went with a friend to a parenting seminar from the Rudolf Steiner tradition. One of the illustrations the presenter gave was this elaborate description of a scientist working in a CDC lab. Silently seated at his microscope, notating his findings. Then in juxtaposition, how would it be for someone to traipse into his lab and ask something as condescending as "Whatcha got there?" or disrupt his study by just cleaning it up with one swoop, disregarding the scientist's setup? Her point was that this is what play is for our kids. This was humbling to me. It taught me to look really deeply at their arrangements. To study and relish their habitats, the totally intentional placing of a baby-doll on a dishcloth, or a tiny seashell filled with water next to a plastic toy kitty, or a tangle of yarn as a cozy spot for some lonely marbles. Or even from a non-relational read on their stuff-- yeah, why wouldn't it make sense to recruit every single pillow in the house if you were going to have a sleepover?

The prospect is another story. I am still coming to terms with whether or not we allow balls in the house or jump rope. Clara makes me want to call Edmund Hillary's mother for advice. This need to check out the precipice, walk to the edge, a fascination with train tracks! Wish me luck as we embark on another swimming season! Yikes!

Spending Hiatus:What I Seek Is What I Have

Lent is more than halfway through. Geoff gave up internet news. Benicio gave up asking for toys. Geoff happily shrugs when I ask if Barack is getting slandered. Benicio marched the Target circular right into the recycling bin. One of my low-points was getting a vicarious buzz while I spoke to Maggie while she was at Anthropologie. A little too interested in the contents of the sale racks was I.

More than not, though, I have been blessed by my Lenten resolution. I feel like I have been re-given the gift of my home. "To dust you shall return," the minister said on Ash Wednesday. This past week, Geoff did demolition on our first floor bathroom in order to rebuild it. On the two days that he did this, a fine layer of dust has settled in and on places as high as the third floor hallway and as obscure as inside the kitchen cupboards. We have mopped more than three times. I have kept the feather duster at my hip like a holster. The dust is everywhere. I cannot help to face our transience, our impermanence when I am dusting. This will all be dust-- from the quilt set from India I want to the photo of my Mom and I when I was 2, all of my writing, all of it will be gone one day! What is that verse that says "what moth and rust shall destroy?" Wow, so heartening and upbeat, I know.

When I am not fondling price tags at the Gap or wishing away the hours online at Miniboden or for that matter, scouring our local junk shop, there is a part of me that comes to life. This different part who is good at unearthing the home in my home. This Lenten season, I found myself reading the boys' early doctor's records-- Benicio's cord stayed attached the longest and Manny's over-active gag reflex really had me worried. The other day, I labeled every drawer in the girls room-- a drawer just for camisoles, tiny girl camisoles more than a dozen! My thoughts return to Edith Schaeffer who writes about how the home is not just a place but it is an environment, a habitat in which the family's souls thrive. There is beautiful simplicity in cutting apples for my kids, in making our bed again, in pulling sheets from the dryer. Each day awaiting the tulips we planted back before Clara's birthday. Your home is your zone, the tribal stead, the touchstone for your kids. The x and y axis for the marriage.

Since I have pressed "pause" on all my great quests, there is more space in my daily intention. Instead of planning my morning around a trip to Target, I have tried to reach out to meet a friend. Instead of zooming in at the Orla Kiely bags online, Ames gave me a robust tutorial on how to pack the perfect purse. Maggie also came over got down and dirty with our pantry. My session with her taught me, counter-intuitive to me-let it all run out. Buy what you will use. Use it all up. When the shelves in the pantry have space, you can see what you have. I am beginning to get it now, when the shelves in your heart have space, you can see, heart completely aflood with gratitude, exactly what it is that you do have.

Lebanoney

I write in response because folks seem to think I'm down in the dumps from reading my last post. In fact, I am not down, I am a serious and reflective person and as a guy in college put it, "an L 7 buzz kill." I don't mind being this way, my major facial expression is a scowl (as you can see my kids have inherited) and I think God made me this way so that I won't get messed with.

Anyway, this had me thinking that maybe I am this way because of where I grew up and a discussion with Geoff: Would we rather be where people are warm but uninteresting, or a place where they're unfriendly but cool, or a place where people are self-loathing AND standoffish? And this reminded me, of course, of Lebanon, my birthplace. And as much as I would like to rant about it, what keeps coming to mind is my parents' unrelenting stay there (25 years) and the way the profoundly and successfully made it work. I want to point out all these flaws and recount them bitterly but then I realize that these are products of my adolescent angst. That place is culturally anemic-- I think this comes from my own racial-identity process. My parents found other Filipinos and had meaningful exchange with them. Maybe I couldn't embrace my own heritage and so I assume that the other Asians or Hispanics felt alienated or isolated. Another one is that there is just nothing fun to do in Lebanon even though we had 2 acres where we played countless rounds every summer of Hide'n Seek, played sports outside four seasons of the year, camped out regularly. Maybe I have shut down any affection for that town because I define myself around my disdain for it.

Now that I am a parent, I can see everything my parents loved about it-- it is remote, all the farmland, people keep to themselves. The cost of living is down. They bought this big stead for us and we had run of it. We had a little parish school and a parish. My parents laid down the rules but we could bring any books and any friends into our little compound. Looking back, I can see that they really made it their own with a homesteader's conviction: We will put roots down and we will thrive!

A few weeks ago, I took Manny and Benicio on a Friday night on the town back in Lebtown. We were sitting at the Mama Jean's and Benicio asked me why everyone in there was so old and sleepy? It was true, everyone eating there had white hair and barely anyone was speaking. And then later, at Cedar Lanes, a mother told her daughter to "Shut up, stupid." What's weird was that both times, I found myself defending Lebanon. And even though, it was sleepy and depressing there, I felt oddly content there. And oddly proud to show it to my kids. Sometimes, when I'm emotional or had 2 glasses of wine, my voice will end on a high and inquiring note or my syntax will change, "Now did he really want to now?" or "Please reach me the fork."

Maybe it's that primal need to be home, to have something to call home. I love that in the hospital I was born in, there were real china teacups and the nurses would brush the mother's hair for her. I love that the Farmer's Market is exactly the same downtown. I remember discovering the star-shape in a blueberry for the first time at Martin's market in Myerstown. I remember how Boscov's would sell hot-dogs and sauerkraut in the lobby. I loved the Sample Store where my Mom found the best one-of-a-kind samples of kids clothes for us including this leather trench coat I had that was the color of pumpkin butter with a real belt and fur trim when I was three? I loved taking my kids to Iona Swimming Pool this past summer and making the "I-OWN-A-POOL" joke that my best friend's Dad used to say. It's so weird how punchy Geoff and I get when we go back home, this adolescent rambunction combined with this deep pride that we got out mixed with this sadness that it no longer belongs to us.

I split a proscuitto, Lebanon-bologna, mustard and escarole sandwich that I made from home yesterday with a friend. She said, "I just love Lebanon baloney!" I was warm with this odd hometown pride, "That's from my hometown, you know."

The Great Lenten Ass-Kicking

So far, this Lenten Season, I have had my ass kicked. Or, to use the active-voice: I am a spiritual "soup-sandwich" as my brothers would say. For me, this has meant many fraught moments, "What if our financial aid package is bleak?" Or just having put away 2 baskets of laundry, finding a pile of dirty clothes I overlooked. Usually, I think it's distasteful-- ramblings about domestic matters, whiny rants about the cost of things. I find, though, that my nerves and my spirit are frayed and scatter-shot. I have found myself in tailspins of unbelief and dark spirals of blame-shifting.

The Bible says that if you are fasting you should wash your face and groom yourself, so as not to make a show of your Spiritual exercise. But frankly, I need help. My sacrifice this Lent has been to try and avoid useless spending. It sounds easy enough. But I am beginning to see how much I do it and by not doing it beginning to see how much time it required. Anyway, I am not trying to make a show of it but like Meredith says in Yoga: Notice your own thoughts without judgement. I am able to witness where my mind goes when in neutral: Anthropologie dresses, Indian bedspreads, thrifted tea cups. Are the Orla Kielys in at Target? Have the little down jackets gotten marked down at REI? The precious real-estate in my mind is so densely populated with crazy consumeristic fetishes!

The best illustration is this: On Ash Wednesday, the girls and I met Geoff at Raven Hill Chapel for his school's ecumenical service. It was a beautiful and spare service. We were invited to reflect, to turn a new page, to allow God to show us things afresh. Anyway, I realized later that my ashes were imposed on my forehead not in the center, just above the eyebrows. My ashes were off to the side, my cross that the reverend smudged onto my forehead was actually more above my right eyebrow. Later, I stood in our bathroom mirror, Calliope systematically stuffing cottonballs into the shampoo bottle and Clara pedaling my sewing machine like an elliptical. Seeing the Cross askew like that, I had to laugh, this is exactly where I am right now. "From dust you came, and to dust you shall return," said the minister. How fast the pace of our life just now, may I hold still even briefly.