Fabric is pretty! 

Sometimes there's just so much to write about it's hard to know where to start. Well, I'll start with my mom. She's good. She's responding incredibly well to chemotherapy, and her blood counts are great. There's a lot of guarded optimism about her chances of remission. She, of course, is certain she'll be in remission by January, and in the meantime plans on living her life instead of just waiting around to be 100% well. She has books to read, quilts to quilt, and friends to visit.

Some of the best news is that the chemo isn't making her sick. She's tired, but not nauseated. She's losing her hair, but not throwing up. Right now she's on her second round of chemo, which means she's in the hospital, but she's trying to take walks at least twice a day to keep her strength up.

So thank you for your prayers. And please continuing praying! My mom's name is Jane, and she believes that all the prayers are helping.

***

Next up: Back to school! School starts next week, and even the boys are admitting they're ready. As always on this last week of summer vacation, we're all being total slackers. I'm turning a blind eye to extra computer time and too much TV. Whatever it takes to get us through the next few days. When school starts, both of my guys are going to be crazy-busy, so they might as well be lazy while they can.

I'm living in that la-la land most moms I know live in this time of year, imagining how the return to order and routine will make my life lovely and simple and neat and tidy. I'll write lots of books and quilt lots of quilts and make lots of cookies and muffins and put in a fall garden and go to the gym at least three times a week, probably more like five, and, oh yes, lose that last fifteen pounds. It's all possible!

History has not proven this out. Oh, those first couple of weeks of school are glorious. Things are neat and tidy, making lunches every night isn't a pain, and the children jump out of bed like little jumping beans before the alarm even goes off. By week three, of course, it all falls apart, but let's not ruin the dream, shall we? Let's pretend a little longer.

***

I wonder how I'll remember this summer. There have been some lovely moments. Many of them have taken place on my screen porch early mornings, the garden filled with butterflies and hummingbirds. But there's also been the intensity of my mother's illness. You always wonder how you will bear things.

What's hardest to bear right now is my father's anxieties. He's so worried and afraid. He won't be comforted, and to be honest, I don't really know what to do but pray for him.

And there is the working things out with my brothers--how often should we go see my parents? What do they need from us? My older brother, himself a cancer survivor, thinks one of us should go every other week for a few days. I'm not convinced that's what my parents want, but my brother (who is a dear, thoughtful man, but like all of us is bringing some baggage to the table) is not convinced we should leave these decisions in my parents' hands.

This is a discussion we've just started having, but it's made me realize that even the best-intentioned people (and I think that would describe everyone involved here) can be at odds with one another in a way that can result in hurt feelings, tension, even rifts. I'm proceeding with caution. Everyone is tired and emotional.

In spite of the sadness and the tiredness, I'm actually doing okay. I know I'm delusional about the order and tidiness I imagine fall will bring, but I'm still energized by the dream. So onward into September, into cool mornings and high blue skies and a fall garden filled with lettuce and kale. God is good. Let us proceed.

Jack's backpack, which he carried from preschool until fifth grade. I tried to toss it in the trash, but the Man was appalled I would even consider such a thing. And you wonder why decluttering my attic is such a problem.

I need to make this quick. I have a haircut appointment in forty-five minutes and I mustn't be late, especially since I cut my own bangs last week and did a remarkably bad job of it. It's become hard to look in the mirror.

It's 10 o'clock on Tuesday morning. The Man has gone to work, and Jack and Will are still asleep. This is the first summer that Will has slept in. As we know, sleeping means growing. It won't be long before I'm the shortest person in this house.

Right now, I'm trying to fight off a cold. I'm supposed to go visit my mom tomorrow, but she has approximately ten white blood cells right now, so I can't go if I'm the least bit sick. Will had a cold last week, and I can feel it coming after me, so I'm drinking lots of tea and taking zinc lozenges every two hours. I feel like I have 1/8th of a cold. I'll probably put off my trip until Thursday, just to be safe.

So, my mom has had one round of chemo and is home from the hospital, though she could go back again if she develops a fever. I'm very sad to report that after some initial good news, we got bad news--my mom has Stage IV Lymphoma, and there are cancer cells in her bone marrow. There is still hope the cancer can be tamed into remission, but it will be a hard fight. Please keep praying!

In the midst of all of this, life, to nobody's surprise, goes on. People get haircuts, boys spend too much time on the computer, dinner gets made. On Saturday, the Man picked up Jack from camp. Good thing Jack called on Friday to ask what time he was getting picked up the next day--we had planned to pick him up Sunday. We can't figure out why, since every bit of documentation says clearly Pick Up Your Child on July 27th and Not a Second Later. We're old; we get confused.

So Jack arrived home an inch taller, relatively clean, nails recently clipped (I dreamed a couple of weeks ago that he never clipped his nails at camp, and when we picked him up they were like Cher's.) It's clear he had a great time, because he actually told us stuff that happened. He actually shared with us. Amazing! And then he went upstairs and we haven't seen him since.

Will is getting over his cold, and I hope to take him to the pool today. It's beautiful outside, sunny and in the low '80s. A good day to swim, and if you're me, lounge in the shade, fight off a cold, hope that everyone gets well soon.

A List for a Post

Will's friend Jackson going off the high dive.

Things I've been thinking about, in no particular order ...

1. Theologian Sam Wells says that if you can't make it happy, make it beautiful. I can't be happy about my mom's cancer, but I can knit her soft, peach-colored socks and send up prayers of gratitude that she doesn't feel sick in spite of the chemo, and that her friends, family and church folks are gathering around her. I can call her on the phone every day and tell her that I love her.

2. My mom could live to be ninety-nine, and I'll still be sad when she dies.

3. I hope my mom lives to be ninety-nine.

4. A question I need to ask myself every day: What feeds me? I've been going to Weight Watchers, and a couple of weeks ago the meeting leader asked us, "How many times have you eaten something and then thought, 'That wasn't worth it'?" For me, the answer is: too many times to count. I've eaten junky stuff just because I wanted the comfort of food, and then realized that junky food doesn't comfort me.

But a sliced homegrown tomato with basil leaves, mozzarella and a splash of balsamic vinegar? That feeds me.

And it's not just about food. I'm trying to get better about not surfing the Internet when I'm bored, and picking up a book instead. I'm always complaining I don't have time to read, but maybe that's because I waste too much time checking Facebook or Pinterest or seeing if any interesting articles have been posted on Slate. And afterwards I feel the same way I feel when I've eaten a stale supermarket doughnut. Undernourished. A little bit ill.

What feeds me is good talk with friends or the Man, walks with Travis, poetry, time in the garden, good books. And homegrown tomatoes, of course.

5. I'm ready for Jack to come home.

6. There's a part of my driveway where the trees on each side form a canopy with their branches. I don't know why this makes me so happy, but it does.

7. I know the Royal Family is mostly make-believe, and we have no idea what these people are really like, but the pictures of Kate and William holding their baby are so lovely, you can't help but feeling like a tender aunt, wishing them all the best as they start their brand new family.

Summer Report

 Watching the Durham Bulls from the Press Box.

Mostly this summer had been good, but it's been weird.

Summer, in my book, is almost always weird.

Right now the weirdness lies in the following things:

1. My mom is undergoing aggressive chemo as of yesterday. She has leukemia. Formerly, she had Chronic Lymphatic Leukemia, but now she's got the acute kind. The good news is, her doctors think that she's got a good chance of beating it. The bad news is, well, she's got cancer. If you're the praying type, please pray for her!

2. Jack has been at camp for two weeks, and will be there for one more. I never know how I'll feel about things until they happen. Before Jack left, I wondered: Would I miss him? Would it be a relief not having him glare at me all the time? Would the house feel emptier without him? The answers: Yes, yes, and yes.

I'm happy to report that he's have a great time at camp. It's an academic camp being held on the campus of Wake Forest University, and Jack's course is Mock Trial. He says the kids are nice, the class (which meets Monday through Saturday, 9-4) is interesting, and the food is good. I'm pretty sure he'd be happy to stay there the rest of the summer, but we need him home, so home he comes next week.

3. One of my best friends, the oft-mentioned-on-this-blog Danielle, is moving. It's throwing me off-balance to think of her gone. Fortunately, she's only going to Charlotte, a two-hour trip, so it's not like we'll never see her again, but still. And to add insult to injury, she's taking one of Jack's best friends, her son Aidan, with her. So it's rocking our world a little bit.

4. I haven't been quilting very much, or blogging very much, if you've noticed, or doing some of the stuff that keeps me grounded. Mostly it's because I've got a lot of writing projects going on right now, including the revision of a novel and the documentary project I've been contributing to, Bull City Summer. Now, I love to write, but the Bull City Summer project is pushing me out of my comfort zone. In a good way, I think, but they keep making me go interview people. It's scary!

5. Just the general weirdness of summer, with its lack of routine, and funky weather (we've had tons of rain--I wish I could send some to my friends out West). Overall, Will's been doing well, but I think if school started next week, he wouldn't complain too much. Overall, I've been doing well, and I would complain if school started next week because I'm enjoying my slow mornings. But I'll be happy about the return of routine when it comes.

The good things: I feel good! No bad gut! I've tried some new recipes that have worked really well. I haven't had a bout of the summer blues (yet). I'm walking a lot. I've been hanging out with my dear friend Amy at the pool and having wonderful, long talks. We don't get to hang out a ton during the rest of the year, so our poolside chats are a real treat for me.

How's your summer been? I think I'll go read your blog and find out!

Back from Vacation!

I bet you didn't even know I was gone! A lot of times I post when we go to the beach, but this year I got very paranoid about letting the world know we weren't at home. Not that I think you, my dear friend, would spread the word to local robbers and bad guys, but sometimes robbers and bad guys read blogs. Okay, probably no robbers or bad guys read this blog, but, well, sometimes we're not entirely rational creatures, now are we?

Plus, I spent a lot of time at the beach napping. Or else rocking on the front porch of our rental house. Here's what my view looked like:

I like a beach house with a front yard. We were on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, on Ocracoke Island, and the beach itself, the part of it where you can actually hang out, is about a mile up the road from where we stay. The nice thing about Ocracoke--or one of the many nice things about Ocracoke--is there are lots of trees. There are also hidden family graveyards, and one really good bookstore, called Books to Be Red. We can't figure out why it's not Books to Be Read. Maybe they started out as a distributor of Marxist tracts?

Isn't that a great old tree? All the trees on the island get beat up by the wind, and are quite beautiful and spooky.

So, anyway, we had a nice time. There's always at least one day on vacation where you wonder why you ever had children, because this trip would sure be a lot more enjoyable without them, but for the most part the boys were friendly and fun. We played a lot of Scrabble and ate a lot of pimento cheese (well, not Will--pimento cheese is waaay outside of Will's comfort zone, as are most foods with coloration or flavor).

We came home Sunday to lots and lots of rain. Big floods over in Chapel Hill, The creek she's a-rising, Mama sort of stuff. My garden is looking pretty beat down, and the dang squirrels are eating the green tomatoes. Plus, the mulch around my flowers is starting to smell sort of bad. But the green beans are doing great!

And the rain continues. It's supposed to go away tomorrow, at which time I'm going to hang strips of fabric soaked in peppermint oil on the tomato cages. Will read that keeps squirrels away. From what I know of squirrels, nothing keeps them away besides a shotgun, but maybe we'll get lucky.

There was a statue of St. Francis in the garden of our beach house, so Will and I started making offerings to his little bowl. We found a couple of plastic gems and a snail shell, so we put those in, and on our last day we put one of the plastic red-eye tree frogs we keep in the car (because you never know when they'll come in handy while driving) into the bowl. We hope he'll still be there next year, as we plan to be there next year, too.

How to Change the World One Clothespin at a Time

My neighbors Amy and Anthony have a New Year's Day Champagne Brunch every year. This year, as the party was winding down and several couples were sitting in the living room chatting, I asked Anthony if it actually made a difference whether or not I hung my laundry out to dry.

Given the amount of carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere everyday, could it possibly matter if my little dryer sat still while the family's underwear hung on the line?

Anthony is a professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies at a nearby university. By nature and by profession, he's a thoughtful man, and the subject of climate change is one he's thought a great deal about. What he told me New Year's Day was, yes, the choices we make, no matter how local, how seemingly insubstantial, make a difference.

What if, for instance, other neighbors notice that I hang out my laundry on the line? Maybe one of them will be inspired and string their own line across the backyard. And then somebody sees that line and gets inspired ... Maybe my simple act will multiply exponentially, one clothesline at a time.

I've recently read two books about climate change, Mary Pipher's The Green Boat, and Anthony's book, Mobilizing the Green Imagination: An Exuberant Manifesto. Both are good, but I'll be buying multiple copies of Anthony's book to send to friends and family. It is the happiest book about climate change I've ever read. Not that it denies climate change; quite the opposite. But instead of preaching gloom and doom, Anthony asks us to get innovative and imaginative. He goes beyond band-aid prescriptions.

Take recycling. Recycling is better than throwing something directly into the landfill, but it has its limits. Most paper and plastic products can be recycled a couple of times before they're too degraded for further use. But what if the pages of our gardening magazine had seeds embedded in them so we could plant the pages when we were done reading? What if that Starbucks coffee cup was edible?  Anthony suggests we need to start imagining ways not to recycle, but to upcycle.

One of the things I appreciate about this book is that it gets past politics. Anthony thinks the climate is changing, but he admits we can't say for sure that we know why. We can certainly point to a correlation between rising carbon emissions and rising temperatures, but correlation isn't causation. Maybe the sun is getting hotter. Maybe climate change is the combined result of  human activity and naturally occurring phenomena.

He argues that given that we don't know decisively what's causing climate change, we ought to err on the side of reducing carbon emissions. Why not? The less we rely on fossil fuels, the cleaner our air and water will be. The less we drive, the less time we spend in traffic jams and just plain traffic. If we drive less, we live more locally, and that can have its benefits.

It's so easy to despair about climate change, and there's much to despair about. But--and this is a major point of Mary Pipher's book, The Green Boat--humans need hope. We don't make much happen when we're living in despair. Mobilizing the Green Imagination makes me hopeful. It makes me want to get involved in my local community as well as change some of the ways we're living at home. How can we use less plastic? Reduce waste? Grow more of our own food? Connect more with our neighbors?

I can't change the world, but I could think about the place I live--this house, this yard, this city--and imagine how to make things better. Storms will come, and there will be difficult times. We can grieve, but let's not despair! As that old labor activist Joe Hill once said, Don't mourn, organize!

The Big Declutter: Day 4.5

Walking through my neighborhood in the early evening ...

Okay, so I sort of forgot to post yesterday. And it's not like I did too much anyway, but I did a little bit, and I should have posted about it, if only to make the point that doing a little bit a day is not doing nothing. It's doing a little bit of something.

All I did was recycle the collection of boxes that have been living in the cabinet under my bathroom sink forever. We don't have a recycling bin upstairs, so I throw empty product boxes into the cabinet and let them fester. (Fortunately, they don't actually fester. They just sit there.) So yesterday I took three minutes to pull them out and break them down and put them in the box I'm gathering the upstairs' recycling in as I declutter. That's it. Just a little bit, but something.

My decluttering project got interrupted this week by two writing assignments. One's here, if you care to look. It's about blueberries in North Carolina. Not too exciting, really, but it was fun to write. Another is about fathers and baseball. It's going to be posted on Father's Day, and I'll post the link when it's up.

Speaking of baseball, Will's team won its championship game on Wednesday night. It's been a good season, especially after his dismal basketball season with his lame basketball coach. His baseball coaches have been awesome. They're tough, but they also praise and they've taught the kids so much.

Here's my favorite coach story from this season. Two games ago, a kid on our team named Sam was at bat, and he got hit by a pitch. It wasn't an intentional hit--the pitcher didn't have the kind of control to hit him intentionally, and anyway, that doesn't really happen at this level of ball.

Anyway, the pitch knocked Sam's tooth out--a permanent tooth, I might add. The ump called time out, and Sam left the field, and somebody found his tooth (thank goodness). Sam departed with his parents to find an emergency dentist. The pitcher stayed on the mound, looking miserable. He really hadn't meant to clobber Sam. He was just trying to get the ball into the catcher's glove. At this level of ball, getting the ball into the catcher's mitt is a really big deal.

The ump called time-in. So one of our coaches, Coach Guy, ran across the field to resume his position as first base coach, but on his way, he stopped at the pitcher's mound and patted the pitcher on the back, like he was saying, "Don't worry about it, son--accidents happen." 

And then our head coach, Coach Stewart, who was coaching third base, walked out to the mound and shook the pitcher's hand. He patted the kid on the shoulder. No hard feelings. Don't let it throw you off your game. You're doing great.

I got a little weepy then. Because it's not every day you see such incredible displays of decency and good sportsmanship. It's not every day someone models that kind of stuff for your kid. I'm happy Will's team had such a great season, but I'm even happier that he had such great coaches.