Back Home

We came home from vacation yesterday. Aaron and I spent yesterday doing all the just got home after a few weeks away camping type things. Seven loads of laundry, mowing the lawn, unloading the leftover odds and ends of groceries. Cleaning all the beach sand and keep kids occupied while driving obscene amounts of both distance and time items out of the van. Those types of things. Life type of things. Today we were right back at it. All the kids had VBS this morning (I'm volunteering) and Liam went back to soccer skills training. Aaron was at the office for 13 hours trying to get a little caught up there.

I picked our raspberries and our beans - the tomatoes are starting to ripen and the peas were a bust this year. We sorted and distributed 500 or so pounds of fruit from my parents no spray orchard to my food coop friends out of our kitchen. We hit up the library to return read books and pick up some new items on hold. We needed milk and a few other basics so we went to the grocery store too.

Moving from camping holidays where the pace is so slow and steady (even monotonous at times) to the first few filled overflowing days at home leaves me off kilter. I'm happy to be home: to sleep on sheets with no sand in them and to have a longer shower where I'm not wearing flip flops because the campsite shower floors are always dirty.  But I'm also dizzy at all there is to do.

Those first few days I'm always wondering what to do next until the catch up is done and things are back to our normal home rhythms. Where we are moving from the wonder and beauty of being all together outdoors by the sea to the wonder that is our everyday life.

This weeks chalkboard wisdom. Art by Haven.

Mondays and cupcakes

We had to wake up early on a Monday after a full, full weekend to get to an appointment for one of the kids. No one within our walls is a morning person by nature and we were all wishing for an hour more sleep. My house smelt like five people's stale, sweaty soccer gear waiting to be washed and garbage that should have been taken out the day before. No one was getting ready, or eating breakfast or brushing their teeth. I kept finding them all with books or toys, quietly settled instead of staying on task. There was one giant melt down before we left the house - I told them it was okay, they were sad, they were frustrated and rubbed their back. I ignored my impulse to tell them there was no time for this, they were too big for this, this was not a big deal.

Sometimes it feels like there is no time for compassion.

We made it eventually, we all got in the car, two out of three with brushed teeth and made it to our appointment just on time. Then, we start the drive home. There was a lot of bickering from the back seat. I put in one headphone and turned on my music (highly sensitive mama's driving with kids survival tip).

Still it got too loud and at one point I yelled 'would everyone be QUIET!'. It worked for two minutes before the bugging and bickering started up again.

So I took them all for cupcakes.

Here is one tiny thing I know about life. Sometimes we all act like assholes. We pick a fight when we should pick peace, we yell when we should listen. We melt down when it is inconvenient.

There is no such thing as perfect.

Yet there is such as thing as beloved - it has nothing to do with how we act - it has to do with who made us. It's an unfathomable idea. How we are so loved all the time, no matter what we do. How that love is expanding continually like the universe itself. Nothing can ever convey it fully.

I still feel this urging inside to try though. To give my children and myself glimpses that it is okay to melt down, yell, disagree, bug, bother, be selfish and act ungrateful. All that doesn't change how you are loved. How you are needed. How you are cherished. How you are safe here in this place of beloved love when you are not at your best.

And just for one day, that looked like cupcakes.