7 Quick Takes - Ups and Downs

After a month already passing (wow, that was fast!) since I did my last quick takes, I thought it was time for another round.  I apologize in advance, however, if this one is a bit of a downer.  Not that my problems are huge because they aren't, but it has been one of those weeks, if you know what I mean. Feel free to click away now if you are looking for something a little more uplifting.  I won't blame you a bit!

--1--

Blogging has been taking a bit of a hiatus here as we slowly move out of summer. Any spare time in the past month went mostly towards digging potatoes, canning tomatoes and green beans and planting our fall garden.  Then, just as things began to slow down, I got hit with a bad case of food poisoning last week.  We hardly ever eat out, but I caved last Sunday and took the easy way out.  Man, did I pay for that decision. Thankfully, nobody ate the same meal that I ordered, and everyone else in the family was fine.  I'm thankful, too, for a husband who was at home (and not on a business trip) and able to pick up the pieces while I was out of commission for a few days. If there was a silver lining to this nasty episode, it was that I had him for backup. I think that is the last time I will eat fast food for a very long time.  It's never worth it.

--2--

Part of our new end-of-summer routine has included Joah starting preschool two days a week now and continuing with homeschooling for John.  John just finished up his pre-reading workbook today and was so proud of his certificate!  It took him 12 weeks to complete the workbook and he has done so well.  He is ready to start reading his first beginner book now.  He is growing up so fast, and I'm so glad I still get to spend my days with him rather than watching him go away to school every morning.  That day will come soon enough.

--3--

However, there is one part of homeschooling that I was completely unprepared for and that is the disapproval that so many people have towards homeschoolers. I've really had to grow another layer of skin this past month, and my tongue is getting numb from biting it. I had no idea so many people are against homeschooling! Most of the reactions have been elephant-in-the-room silence, but a few have been snide remarks and passive-aggressive comments.  It hurts considering this has been coming from close friends and family who I thought knew us well enough to trust our parenting decisions. Anyhow, I'm sure those of you reading this and who are experienced homeschoolers are not surprised, but for anyone who still may be considering it, just be ready for some backlash. Most of the time, I don't try to justify our decision.  I'm hoping that time will tell the tale and perhaps some of them will come around.  Thankfully, I've become quite accustomed to being the odd-duck and so this is not unfamiliar territory.

--4--

We got another potential adoption situation this past week, too.  And again, it slipped right through our fingers.  Not because we failed to respond.   We just failed to respond fast enough.   Five hours after we became aware of the situation and were asked if we wanted to present our profile to the birthmother, we were told by the agency that they were not taking any new profiles.  Five hours! That's how competitive the domestic adoption arena is, folks.  There were so many waiting families that responded to this one birthmother situation that within a few hours, no other families were being considered.  It is all done on a first come-first serve basis.  My husband and I didn't even have time to discuss the situation before our window closed.  This has happened to us more than once now.  And these are not perfect situations.  These are situations that have already been passed over by other waiting families and are presented to couples like my husband and I who are open to special needs, etc.  And even then, these babies are wanted by so many...desperately.   Of course, that's a good thing.   It's just hard to wait so long and miss even having a chance by a few hours.  Infant adoption should never have turned into such a competitive and expensive business in our country, but it has.

--5--

As time continues to pass by with no adoption possibilities playing out, I find myself often wondering if we should just throw in the towel.  Our home study will expire in three months, and this will be the third time it has done so.   During those three years, we've never even come close to being considered.  Part of that is our own fault, because we are not willing to adopt at any cost and do have certain ethical boundaries we do not want to cross.  Part of it is because we listed with agencies that do not promise birthmothers the moon, so to speak. And part of it is because of our age now, which certainly is not working to our advantage.  Our boys still ask often about when are they going to have a new baby sister or brother and now I tell them it may not happen, and that not everyone who wants a baby gets one. It breaks my heart each time. We have been so ready for so long.

--6--

On a lighter note, we celebrated the Blessed Mother's birthday this past week.  I made some cupcakes using this recipe, which I love because it is easy and the cupcakes are firm and not too crumbly, which is important when you have kids who insist on walking around while eating.  To keep it even simpler, I just dusted the cupcakes with powdered sugar and stuck a candle in each one.  The boys loved them! Joah called them sweet muffins. I also made frybread for supper for a special treat, as a nod to our Lady of Guadalupe.  A little honey on some frybread will bring out the happy in anyone, and I hope Our Lady smiled as she watched us.

--7--

That's about it from here.  One high point of this past week was discovering that a couple of photographs I submitted to a local photography contest made it to the finals.  They announced the winners last weekend and even though I wasn't one of them (not that I should have been...some of the other photos submitted were much better!), it was exciting to at least be considered.  Below are my two photos that made it to the finals.  One was of John when we went hiking this past spring, and the other is a very rare species of snail found in the forest here.  I hope the photos inspire you to get outside this weekend and enjoy what I hope for most of us is some beautiful early autumn weather!

Have a wonderful weekend, and don't forget to visit Kelly at her blog for more Quick Takes!

The Firefighter

Today, there is a memorial being held for three wildland firefighters who were killed in the line of duty on August 19.   For two decades, I participated in the wildland firefighting scene, so it always tugs at my heart when I hear of these kinds of events.  I was never in a situation like these three firefighters found themselves in, and I thank God often for that.  I also thank God for giving me the opportunity to get to know so many of these great men and women, and allowing me to learn from and work side-by-side with them.  It is an amazing job done by some amazing people.  I wrote this story about one of them, but it could also be a story about so many more of them.  Please say a prayer for all those who are being affected by the wildfires that are still marching across the west, especially those who have lost their homes, friends, or loved ones.  May our good Lord be with them, and may the rains come soon.

*******

Being a wildland firefighter is in his blood.  From the day he fought his first fire, when he was barely a teenager, he was hooked.  Watching the flames lick at his bootheels had stirred his blood.  Feeling the wind suddenly shift from his face to the back of his neck, knowing that such a shift could signal an impending “blowup”, sent adrenaline coursing through his veins.  The smell of the smoke, the feel of the rake in his hands, even the gasping for breath as he carried forty pounds of water on his back to the top of a mountain, all of it made him feel like he had found the purpose for which he was created.  As a young man, he quickly learned that wildland fire is both manageable and unmanageable, predictable and unpredictable, life-giving and life-destroying.  Now, forty years later, he is still being drawn to this great paradox.

For some, the study of fire science is a life-long profession filled with charts and graphs and research into fuel types, meteorology, climate, and landscapes.  For him, understanding fire behavior is a sixth-sense.   His ability to “feel a fire” is uncanny and a God-given gift possessed by only a few.  He has only to step outside to know if the air carries with it the promise of a “good burn” or the denial of yet another “fire day”.  He has only to crush the leaves, grass, or pine needles in his palm to know if the fire will carry across the landscape unencumbered and unchecked, or if it will allow some level of control, or perhaps, not be enticed to burn at all.  He was made for being around fire and he knows it. 

The old wildland firefighter joke, “If they weren’t putting them out, they’d be setting them,” isn’t far from the truth.  On a good burn day, he is restless, wanting either to be dispatched to a fire that needs to be brought under control, or to be asked to assist with a fire that needs to be started (a controlled burn).   Either one will do.

In the beginning, when he was young, there were no control burns. During his childhood, he, along with millions of other schoolchildren, watched the Smokey Bear filmstrips and, like so many others, had been convinced that fire in the forest is an aberration.  So, his early days of firefighting were spent doing only fire suppression.  Believing the Smokey Bear message whole-heartedly, he and his comrades would attack any wildfire with a strong sense of mission and vigilantism.  He proved his value on the fireline during those early days, and was soon considered one of the best.  Years later, as forest ecologists began to understand that fire is an essential ingredient in maintaining the health and diversity of many ecosystems, the need for men and women with his fire skills and sixth sense became even greater. 

And so, in order to help meet this need, he began to train others.  He taught them in the classroom about the fire triangle, and he emphasized that fire is both friend and foe.  He would lead his young crews to a fire on a mountainside, walk with them up the hills, wait to see who fell behind, who loved it, who hated it, who wanted to run, and who faced it with respect but not fear.  He would guide his crews through the thick smoke, pointing out the standing dead trees along the fireline that proved more of a real threat to any of them than the flames ever would.  Hazard trees, also known as widow-makers, he called these trees, and sadly, more than a few firefighters had become victims to them.  He drilled them on the Ten Standard Firefighting Orders, and he watched for those in his crew who possessed the same sixth-sense about fire that he had been gifted.  Those, he would pull aside, and encourage and in time, those would be the ones he would mentor and prepare for leading others, as he had been. 

For decades, his life has revolved around fire.  Each spring and fall has been filled with watching fires burn through the Appalachian forests, many of them controlled burns, many more arson.  Once the humidity climbs in the east and fires will no longer burn late into the spring, he turns his focus to the west.  He packs one half of his “red bag” with the essentials…toothbrush, comb, two sets of Nomex shirts and pants, a few changes of underclothes, toilet paper, beef jerky and chewing tobacco.  The other half of the bag, he fills with his gear… tent, sleeping bag, helmet, radio, water bottles and the required fire shelter that is meant to be used only as a last resort to protect him from the flames should something go terribly wrong and his sixth sense fail him.   Packed and ready to respond within hours, he waits for the request from dispatch that will send him into the frontlines of another western fire season.

When I last spoke with him, it was early springtime.  He had heard I was back in Kentucky and did I want to go burn the woods, for old times’ sake?   He was restless, it had been a long winter, a wet winter, and he was longing to get out and smell some smoke.  I understood.  It had been too long for me as well.  We’ll take my boys, I said, and my father, and he loved that idea.  If only your grandfather was here as well, he’d said.  And I agreed.  My grandfather, the one who’d started it all.  He’d had the same sixth sense and decades earlier, he’d recognized it in this firefighter who later, had trained me. 

So, one sunny day last April, we lit a match and my father and my sons and I watched as this firefighter’s sixth sense was awaken from a winter of dormancy.  Gradually, the flames began to spread and the firefighter smiled.  It’ll burn, he said.   It’ll burn!   We grabbed our drip torches and walked back and forth, spreading a thread of fire behind us. My sons stood back with their grandfather, watching with excitement and awe as I had done years ago with my grandfather.  In a few minutes, the small one-acre plot we’d burned around my house was only smoldering.  The fire was over, and for me, it was enough.  I’d been transported back to my days on the fireline, and I’d enjoyed the visit to my past, but for me, it was just that, my past.  Now, as we watched the smoke slowly diminish, I took off my gloves, and my thoughts turned towards what to make for supper. 

But for him, it was only the beginning.  I didn’t hear from him again after that.  A few weeks after we’d burned my backyard, spring fire season in the Appalachians was again underway and he was off to do his part.   And then spring became summer, and the west heated up, and another western fire season that they are calling “unprecedented” is underway.   The last I heard, he was hoping for a call to go to Alaska.  No doubt, he got his wish.  No doubt, he is out there now, somewhere in the smoke, telling one of the hundreds of firefighting stories he always carries with him, and spitting tobacco juice into the flames.

Mary, Take The Wheel

This past Saturday, the Feast of the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, marked the anniversary of our son John’s baptism.  I am still amazed at the many ways God and our Blessed Mother have made their presence known to us through our ongoing journey to build our family. There was certainly no plan to have John baptized on that Marian feast day, but that’s how it turned out.  Our parish priest always did baptisms on Sunday after Mass and that particular year, August 15, 2010, this feast day just “happened” to fall on a Sunday, three weeks after I gave birth.  In hindsight, it seems very providential, but after the bumpy crossing we had made in order to become parents, not at all coincidental.

I used to know a lot about parenting but then, as the old joke goes, I became one.  There once was a time when I had answers for everyone else’s parenting issues.  Today, having parented for five years, I have no answers.   I don’t even have many theories.  All I know for certain is that parenting is the hardest, most challenging job I have ever faced and in spite of what everyone has said, no, it is not getting easier.  Instead, one challenge seems to be replaced by another.

It has taken me a while to accept this truth…that parenting does not always get easier.  The level of sacrifice, patience, and consistency required of me has been way outside of my comfort zone.  I’ve had to mature emotionally and spiritually by leaps and bounds over the past five years, and I have a long ways to go.  I spent too many years (before children) imagining the kind children I would someday have (or wanted to have) instead of simply being open to what I may (or may not) be given.  My children would be my idols. Perfect versions of a “mini-me”.   My, oh my, did I have it all wrong. 

Last month, my husband and I spoke with a child behavioral therapist.  We want to improve our parenting techniques.  We are admitting that we do not have all the answers and need help.  Our children are thriving; they are happy, affectionate, adventurous little boys.  But there are also too many days when we struggle to manage more extreme sides of their behavior.  It takes a toll on them and on us.

In a few weeks, we begin Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT).  I never imagined ever having to go down this road.  I never imagined being a mother who would not have all the answers to her own parenting questions.  But I also did not understand that part of being a parent means practicing humility and swallowing my pride and knowing when to reach out for a little more support and help.

Our therapist is encouraging and believes that time will resolve most of our concerns.  As she put it, “Most people have children who are like dandelions; they are easy to care for and require little extra effort.  But some people have children who are more like orchids, and not just anybody can raise an orchid.”   All my life, I pictured myself raising dandelions but instead, I seem to have been given orchids.  These fragile, delicate plants that are my children have the potential to bloom into a radiant inflorescence if only I can build the proper greenhouse.

This past Saturday, we took another step toward building that greenhouse.  We have found earthly help but we rely even more on the divine.  On the fifth anniversary of my son’s baptism, we decided to formally consecrate all our children to the Blessed Mother.  It was something I’d contemplated for a long time but never had done. Now, the time just seemed right.  Now, finally, I understand. I cannot do this alone. I need all the parenting help that I can get, especially from my Heavenly Mother.  I need you, Mary, to take the wheel.   Together, let’s raise some beautiful orchids for God’s garden.