This spring, I’ve been reminded over and over why I love gardening. I’m no horticultural expert, mind you. There’s just so much divine creativity at work in the flowerbeds that circle my house, it’s hard to keep track of it all.
Not that I haven’t been trying, of course. Ever since I spotted the first crocus peeking out from under the heavy mat of last fall’s leaves, I’ve been chronicling the season’s progress with photos on Instagram.
As I’m writing this, it’s the last week of school and my mind is full. Just this morning, I’ve forgotten my hair stylist’s name when I was trying to reschedule an appointment, and I sent Lilly’s dance teacher an email three times because I kept forgetting to include an attachment.
The less-structured and (hopefully) lazier days of summer are on the way, and I couldn’t be happier about that. But before we turn the calendar page on another season, here are a few things I learned this spring.
♦ Ever since we moved into our home six years ago, our noisy dishwasher kept people from falling asleep at night, interfered with conversations in the kitchen, and basically sounded like a freight train was rumbling through the house whenever it was running.
I wouldn’t normally recommend replacing an appliance simply because it’s too loud, but the racks were starting to fall apart too, so that made the decision to get a new one a little easier.
We like to measure things around here, including sound levels. And here’s what we’ve discovered, thanks to our recent appliance purchase. When it comes to dishwashers, there’s a huge difference between 73 decibels and 46 decibels.
The new dishwasher is so quiet we barely notice it’s running at all. Now all we have to do is figure out how keep the “cycle completion signal” from going off in the middle of the night.
♦ Most of these seasonal lessons don’t involve actually learning how to do something. If you’ve been following along with me lately, however, you’ll know that I really did acquire a new skill this spring—I taught myself how to bake homemade bread.
And after spending my entire adult life avoiding recipes that contain yeast, I can’t believe how delightfully therapeutic it is to dig my hands into a soft, warm mound of dough.
♦ I am capable of sitting in a waiting room by myself while my husband has a scary sounding procedure done on his heart. It might sound silly, but before Randy’s heart ablation in late April, I struggled with whether I should ask someone to join me as I waited that morning. The hospital’s long hallways are too hard for my parents to manage, but I’m sure I could have found a friend who would have been happy to accompany me.
I woke up one night with this thought pressing on my mind: I don’t know if I want to brave it alone. Almost immediately, the still, small Voice whispered: “I will be with you.”
Peace followed, and my quandary was solved.
As it turned out, I wasn’t alone in the waiting room after all. God was with me, and His presence calmed my anxious heart. Friends and loved ones were a quick text away. And, as you may recall from my recap of that day, a couple of total strangers kept me distracted and (at times) secretly amused for a good part of the morning.
♦ On the last day of winter—an 80-degree Sunday in March—I went running with Lilly and Molly on the bike trail near our house. I do most of my exercise on the treadmill, so running outside is a bit of a challenge. I set a goal for how much I wanted to run, and I was so excited about actually meeting that goal that I failed to notice the uneven ground where the paved trail meets the sidewalk that goes back to our street.
My foot hit the edge of the sidewalk and I went flying, sliding on my knees on the rough concrete until I came to a complete stop. I didn’t break any bones or tear any ligaments, but I did learn this: Skinned knees heal much more slowly at 46 than at 10. And I still have the scars to prove it.
♦ When you pray and ask God to show you what you need to see, He does. I’ve found this to be true in my role as a mom over the years, and lately, I’m finding it also applies to the help I’m giving my parents.
When thoughts pop into my head—check this, ask about that, probe a little deeper there—I’m learning to follow up on them. Sometimes, it’s nothing. Other times, though, what I discover enables me to nip something in the bud, assist more effectively, provide comfort or encouragement, or alert others to needs they can meet.
♦ Last summer, the serpentine belt on our van broke soon after we returned home from a lengthy road trip. We got it fixed, but around this time, we also started noticing a persistent rattle. I just chalked it up to wear and tear—we had driven a long way on some pretty mountainous roadways, so I figured our van was finally starting to show its age.
When it comes to cars, I don’t embarrass easily. Bird poop on windows, stained floor mats and slightly dinged-up back bumpers don’t bother me at all. But over time, the rattle started getting on everyone’s nerves, including mine. It was so bad that Molly once correctly identified our van coming down the street before she even saw it.
We had resigned ourselves to the fact that we’d probably have to spend a lot of money on some difficult engine issue, but we hadn’t scheduled a service appointment yet. Then one Saturday, Randy decided to give the problem one last-ditch troubleshooting effort.
“I’m just going to look in there and see if there’s bolt rattling around,” he told me.
He didn’t find any bolts, but he did find a socket that must have been left there when the belt was replaced last August. He removed it, and—much to everyone’s relief—the rattle disappeared.
The moral of the story is this: Sometimes, to solve a persistent and annoying problem, you just have to find and remove the leftover socket that you didn’t even know was there.
That’s my list. What have you learned this spring?
♥ Lois
When you pray and ask God to show you what you need to see, He does. Share on XTwo months after my husband and I adopted our older daughter, I found myself sobbing on the treadmill in the middle of the night.
We had waited so long for our sweet girl. In a short time, she had completely captured our hearts. I had every reason to be blissfully happy, not crying alone at midnight.
What’s my problem, I worried. What kind of person does this?
The next day at church, I saw a friend who had adopted her first child after 10 years of marriage. She listened carefully as I described how I felt.
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We’ve covered some weighty topics in this space lately, mostly because that’s how life has felt around here and I see no point in trying to hide it.
That said, I’ve also been paying attention to little things that are bringing me joy along the way, and now seems like a good time to share some of them. This is kind of a departure from my regular blog fare, but just consider it an appetizer to the “what I learned this spring” post I’m planning for next week.
Over lunch a while back, a friend asked if I was angry at God.
Close loved ones are going through trials that, while mostly not immediately life threatening, are a mixture of exhausting, sad, frustrating, uncertain, overwhelming and stressful. These things are not happening directly to me, but they are directly affecting me in ways that bear some of the same results.
A few weeks after I officially graduated from college, I had major surgery to remove a grapefruit-sized cyst on my ovary (and, it turned out, repair other damage from the severe endometriosis I didn’t know I had).
I had completed my coursework a semester early and was back living with my parents because my first “real” job didn’t pay much. This arrangement, while maybe not what I had hoped for, turned out to be providential because I was able to recover at home with plenty of TLC from my mom.
One of my fondest memories from this period in my life is sitting on a comfy chair in the family room, eating my mom’s Italian meatballs while an NBA playoff game aired on the TV in the background. (I had zero interest in professional basketball; I suppose I remember that detail because this scene is captured so beautifully in my mind.)
My mom is famous for her homemade pasta sauce. Over the years she taught many, if not all, her seven children how to make it, and she served it countless times when company came over after church on Sunday.
And the only thing that is better than her sauce is her sauce with meatballs.
I can almost taste them now, exactly as they were when I was eating them so long ago. I was somewhat frail and quite underweight back then, and the meatballs—infused with the perfect blend of fennel seed, garlic salt and breadcrumbs—were just what the doctor ordered to help me recover after my surgery.
It makes me hungry and cheers my heart just to think about them—especially this week.
It doesn’t happen in the life of every mother, but sometimes, after many years of raising children and running a household, the caretaker becomes the one receiving the care.
This has happened in my family over the last year, which is making this Mother’s Day particularly poignant.
There are many thoughts I could have about my mom and what’s going on during this season of her life. Right now, though, I’m trying to focus less on processing and more on being present. And for me, being present—for my parents and my own family—seems to have a lot to do with food.
My mom taught me how to make her meatballs when I was much younger, and this little culinary project still evokes feelings of love and home. Just a few weeks ago, in fact—when the stresses of life were swirling at an ever-quickening pace—the smell of pasta sauce with meatballs filled our house with warmth and comfort.
But it’s not just the meatballs that remind me of my mom.
Late last year, I felt the urgent need to learn how to make her Italian biscotti—another favorite staple from my childhood that I had always considered too difficult to try myself.
I tracked down her original recipe (she didn’t have it anymore but my sister did), bought the all-important anise flavoring and set up a little baking station in my parents’ kitchen. Step by step, my mom helped me through the recipe.
She mixed the dry and wet ingredients in the big green Tupperware bowl. She instructed me how to turn it out on the counter and knead it the rest of the way. She showed me how to fashion the dough into loaves, using her hand to make a series of indentations along the top of each one.
I had never done anything like this before, and it was kind of a sticky mess for a time. But although my first batches of biscotti weren’t perfect, they were good enough. And even better was the experience.
While we learn many things from our parents when we’re young, I don’t know how often an 84-year-old mother gets to teach her 46-year-old daughter how to do a new task from start to finish. It wasn’t just about making an heirloom recipe, either—at least not for me.
In teaching me to make biscotti, my mom was empowering me to try other things I’ve never done before. Successfully handling a big bowl of sticky biscotti dough gave me the confidence I needed to make homemade bread for the first time ever—something I had always wanted to do but had been afraid to try.
That led to the realization that yes, I actually do have what it takes to teach my 15-year-old daughter how to drive. And yes, I actually can sit by myself in a hospital waiting room while my husband has a scary sounding procedure on his heart.
I don’t know how to explain it any better than this. Somehow, it all began with the biscotti.
My mom doesn’t do much of what she used to do. But in her own quiet way, she’s helping me to be brave.
And what daughter doesn’t need her mother to do that?
♥ Lois