a Lego poem by Philip

Philip had an assignment for his AG class to write a poem that was a metaphor. The metaphor was to center around the story of the Mexican migrant workers in Arizona in the 1920s who were making such low wages that they walked out of their jobs and walked some 300 miles in protest. As Lego is the language that Philip speaks best, he used a Lego man as a metaphor.

Lego Sadness

I am the Lego head.

What a sad life I have lead.

I am the Lego hand.

I am worth a pile of sand.

I am the Lego arm.

I do not mean any harm.

I am the Lego leg.

Bad Legos I wish to peg.

And then there's the body.

We don't know about him.

He's come to help.

We now are one!

We now can walk & talk!

Our former lives are dim!

Yay!

eight.

This past weekend was chock full of celebration. In addition to Paulie's birthday, Paul and I celebrated our eighth anniversary. Eight years. Sometimes I can hardly believe it's been that long since we decided to blend our families, already full with 3 little ones. In other ways, it feels like Paul has been part of my life forever, and eight seems like such a small number compared with the experiences we've shared.

Piazza Navona, Rome, 2005

As an ode to our eighth anniversary, Paul posted this fitting tribute on my Facebook wall:

I wanted to ferret out one of my favorite stanzas about deep, abiding love in honor of our august milestone. But all these children are so loud! I can't think straight. Perhaps sadly, perhaps appropriately, the only stanza I can conjure with any lucidity in this foggy-minded kinder-chaos is this, from Eliot's Burnt Norton.

Words strain,Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them.

As I think about it, further down the stanza we do get this, which might work better initially, but ultimately ends up interrupted again by children. 

Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves 
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always -
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.

There you go...eight years in a nutshell.

our simple little courthouse wedding, 10/06/2005

I rarely post photos of the adults in this family here on the blog, much less photos of us together. Here we are at the beginning, and, well...a few years ago. Because we're actually bad at even getting our photos taken at all.

2011, photo credit: my brother

resolutions

New Year's Day is a time for making resolutions. Resolutions to improve life, get healthier, choose happiness.  I've never been one to really make resolutions.  I tend to make changes when and how I want to do them not at a particular time to follow societal expectations. I do tend to reflect on my life and the direction I see it heading at this particular time of year though.  This time 2 years ago I was on the cusp of a big leap. I left the business world and decided to stay home with my littles full time. This time last year, I was homeschooling Finn with the expectation that Elizabeth would be homeschooling this year for middle school. (You can read more about why that didn't happen here.) And now, there are no huge changes on the horizon, no expectations that this year will be much different than the last.

Although I have no grand resolutions to share right now, one thought has been on my mind over the last few weeks. The thought that I'd like to bring more poetry into our, particularly the children's, lives.  I mentioned this to Paul before Christmas, and he gifted me with a fabulous children's poetry book for Christmas: A Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme. So maybe that qualifies as a bit of a resolution after all.

I also think it might be nice to share a bit of verse every now and then that the kids or I find particularly enjoyable or moving.  Here is the current favorite of the house (that I had to read 3 times over lunch today):

I Knew A Gnome

Trevor Smith Westgarth

I knew a gnome

Who had his home

Right in the middle of an oak tree.

He wore a hat

And breeches that

Were all of the colour of the oak tree.

Two squirrels lived above his head,

Some rabbits burrowed beneath his bed,

"I keep them warm and safe," he said,

"All in the middle of my oak tree."

A wise old owl

She found a hole

High in the trunk of the oak tree.

And come what may

She slept all day

High in the trunk of the oak tree.

But when at last she took her flight,

Hooting in the pale moonlight,

The gnome rode on her back all night,

Swooping all around about his oak tree.