Fear less.
Love more.
Eat less.
Taste more.
Shout less.
Listen more.
Regret less.
Hope more.
Do less.
Be more.
  (author unknown)

Recently I subscribed to a blog.  A beautiful blog filled with gorgeous photographs. And classical music that plays softly as I read the daily entry.  It's beautiful.  Absolutely beautiful.  You can tell she is a much better person than I am.
She quotes scripture a lot.  And appropriately !!  She draws beautiful conclusions and encourages others while she raises her good sized family and homeschools all of her munchkins with grace and style.

Did I mention that the site is beautiful?  I don't know what she looks like but I'll bet she's beautiful, too.

I, on the other hand, have turned in to a middle aged woman facing an empty nest and recipes that fit 9x13 inch pans when we have turned into 9x9 inch family.

Can I read this blog and just feel encouraged - plucking out any good that will touch my life today?  Or will I become depressed because I didn't raise my children as beautifully as she is raising her children?  (do you know that they have never given each other Christmas gifts, instead give gifts to the needy in war torn countries?)  I spent a lot of time each holiday season finding the just right lego set or doll. Should I feel badly about that?  I could.  Maybe I even should.

But one of the joys of being 50 something is that I really can look back on my years of parenting and say "I did the best I could."  And then I must trust God to take care of the rest.

If you click on my blog and you hear classical music you can assume you are at the wrong site.  Although I do enjoy classical music, I have become a huge fan of Jack Johnson lately.

But please don't tell the blog lady.  I don't think she'd understand.

I have a writer's memory, which makes everything worse than maybe it actually was.   Amy Tan.  

Our youngest turned sixteen yesterday. Back when we started this parenting adventure, thinking of our baby turning sixteen seemed an utter impossibility. I was sure I would be parenting small children forever and ever! And homeschooling them forever, too.

I remember when Mariah was little and she said

"When I'm the Mama and you are the grandma, who is going to be the honey?"

Years have past and I am now old enough to be the grandma.

But I can happily say that Mariah will always be the honey!

Happy Sixteenth Year, Mariah!

Into the big green chair in our bedroom, I would climb each morning, pulling one leg up under me while using my right foot to slowly rock back and forth. First reading from a morning devotional, then writing in a journal with my favorite pen, I'd sip a hot cup of coffee, while I'd slowly wake up to face my day.

After two surgeries in one year, my dad having a traumatic accident while we were visiting and our two oldest sons moving out, I found that chair more and more often throughout the day. I'd rock back and forth while I watched the birds in the big old birch tree out front and saw the neighbors and their pets rushing here and there, all while I kept an eye on the weather.

In the evenings, it became easy to click on the TV across the room. Click, click, clicking the remote, trying to find something. Maybe a new life?

Don't get me wrong, I loved the life I was living as a home educating mom. But our children were growing up and moving on, and the homeschool mom part of my life was becoming obsolete.

When a bedroom became completely empty and we didn't have enough kids at home to fill the bedrooms with even one occupant, I grieved that our household was getting smaller after all those years of bursting at the seams.

But this did not change the facts that the bedroom was empty, it had the potential to be a den, and I hated the wallpaper. In a fit of insanity, I offered my husband a deal. “I'll clear all the wallpaper off the walls, if you will paint.”

Days later, I had no fingernails (oh, they make a tool to scrap the wallpaper and paste off with?) and I had ripped, pulled, complained and scrubbed until every trace of wall paper was gone. Eventually the room was painted a calm “Almond Brittle”, a new light fixture was hung, and my roll top desk, little shelves and file cabinet were moved in to their new places. Favorite framed cards and sayings were ready to be hung on the walls to inspire me.

Plunking myself into that big green chair in our bedroom, I cried. I had always longed for a space of my own but I longed for all my kids home even more. Silly me. Really, I was immensely proud of them and had been their loudest cheerleader as they found their way. Now the two oldest were graduated from college and working at meaningful jobs. No way would I wish either of them back to the top bunk in that bedroom down the hall.

Our bedroom looked empty now that all the office furniture was gone. My husband and I pushed our bed and dressers here and there, back and forth, looking over the whole room and shaking our heads. “No, this just doesn't look right.”

Looking at that green chair, I realized it didn't fit our room anymore. It was big and clunky and faded and old. Like I was feeling.

We banished it to the basement and dragged the compact wooden rocker upstairs, setting it near the window by the good reading light.

Both my husband and I eyed the TV. It was convenient and comfortable to lie in our bed at night click, click, clicking the remote but without a word, we both gave a nod of our heads and exiled the TV to an upstairs' closet.

These changes may seem small but they were a new beginning. I had been reminded that my life couldn't be found in the green chair or the TV or turning the clock back to when we all fit in this nest we call home.

You won't find me staring out the window at the birch tree anymore. And you won't find the green chair in the basement. Son number three snagged it for his bedroom.

While watching a bunch of rambunctious toddlers at a local MOPS program, my daughter Mariah was interrogated by an older woman who also was volunteering her time.

"So, you are homeschooled? Do you really do school every day? What about Math? Every day?

Does your mom check your work? Does your mom use tests? Do you have to send any test results to the state?"

When Mariah later told me how she had answered the woman, I was proud of her. She was respectful, and answered the questions well.

And then Mariah began to laugh.

The woman's last comment was
"Well, I know some homeschoolers and they don't know nothin'."

Seriously, what do you say to that??

Recently a maniac squirrel was messing around with our electricity. Okay, maybe not a maniac squirrel. But definitely a very windy day that caused our appliances and lights to go on and off, crazily.

As we backed out of the driveway later that day, our fifteen year old daughter said "I liked it better when I was little and you used to tell me not to worry. That everything was going to be okay."

I guess that having me racing around the house wasn't exactly the picture of a mom in control. (I could picture THAT squirrel perched by our alliant energy box, messing with the wires while watching me through the patio doors and laughing.)

But maybe it's in those moments of indecision, of life happening, that our daughters begin to see us as they really should. Not super mom who protects from every danger, but a woman doing the best she can. Just like my daughter will grow to be someday. In her travels through life, she'll have to face her share of trouble and she may not have a clue what to do. But hopefully she will remember that I often didn't know what to do either, but I did try to do the best I could. Making some mistakes, yet moving forward.

Who'd have expected that lesson from a maniac squirrel?

When our daughter was little we lived in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. Bears prowled around the woods on the edge of our back yard. And occasionally one came out to look in the window at me. (okay, okay, that only happened once... but it was traumatic!)

Understandably, our daughter was fearful of being outside without a parent with her. Recently, she told me that I reassured her by telling her this:

"Oh honey! You are so sweet that any big old bear would save you for dessert. He'd eat your brothers first and since you have three of them, that will give you plenty of time to get to the house."

Good grief. What was I thinking???

Catapulting cheesecake

I carefully mixed the cream cheese, sugar, eggs and vanilla in the big bowl with the blue stripe. Slid the cheesecake into the oven, then checked it regularly to make sure it didn't get overdone. Poured the sour cream, sugar and vanilla topping over the slightly cooled cake and then back in the oven it went.

The morning of the meeting, I gently rinsed and dried the fresh raspberries, and meticulously arranged them on the chilled cheesecake. When lunch time arrived, I removed the cheesecake from the refrigerator and carried it across the kitchen. The impractical plate it rested on matched the other dishes perfectly and I was pleased.

For a few seconds.

Because as I set the cheesecake on the counter announcing “Be sure to save room for dessert”, it slid on its spring form pan bottom, off the impractical-but-pretty plate – across the counter, and catapulted over the stools and onto the floor.

The collective gasp, huge eyes and lips formed into perfect giant O's would have been comical had it not been such a sad moment.

I couldn't look. I stood with my hands over my eyes. But one of the efficient ladies scooped up the raspberries and washed them off and another picked the cake up and set it back on the counter and we laughed.

And then those lovely ladies ate the cake. Almost every crumb. Not only did they eat it but they smacked their lips and licked their forks clean.

My husband heard the story later and looked horrified, not at the cake catapulting across the stools, but at the fact that the ladies ate the cake!

I chalked it up to good female friendships. They may have had their qualms about eating that cake, wondering when the floor was washed and did we have any pets in the house, but they cared more about making me feel better.

But after talking to a few of them, I realized it was more than that. They wanted cheesecake.

And that is the kind of friends I want to surround myself with. Throwing caution to the wind and collectively licking our cheesecake forks clean before we take up our knitting or our book club selection of the month or our pens to tackle that new writing prompt. Ready to support each other to the end. But mostly, wanting cheesecake!

All of our kids were home for Christmas. Plus a girlfriend or two that were in and out of our house quite regularly. There was more laundry than normal. Less leftovers. (way less leftovers) and once again I felt like I needed to stop by the bank and take out a small loan prior to going to the grocery store.

It felt good. To go to sleep at night knowing that they were all home. Knowing that the questions I had forgotten to ask could easily be asked in the morning.

When we dropped the last one off in Madison, to catch his flight back to Tucson, I road silently

for many blocks as I wiped tears and blew my nose.

But I know that deep down in my heart, I don't want them to have to move back to the bunk bed down the hall. I want them to fly high, dream big, and pursue the God-given passion in their lives.

I think it is going to get easier to have them gone. But it will never change how much I love to have them home.