Category Archives: Family

Little White Lights, for the Season of Light

December 12, 2012 Wildtrumpetvine

I prefer to avoid overhead lights whenever possible. They scream institution: school, office, hospital, the DMV, and perhaps worst of all, the department-store fitting room. They drone on of chores and unpleasantness. Best to use them, I believe, under only three circumstances:

1. To quickly (and briefly) illuminate a dark room upon entry (to avoid falling over the dog or some misplaced, unexpected obstacle).
2. When cleaning, as in vacuuming, scrubbing floors and dusting.
3. In case of emergencies.

Nothing makes a room or its inhabitants look sadder and more forlorn than a ceiling light casting its cold and dismal glow. The light is either too harsh or too dim. The angle is all wrong. I suspect there are untold numbers of people unwittingly suffering a diminished quality of life because they persist in flicking on the overhead switch, and leaving it on.

Were they to employ a decent-looking table lamp instead of the ceiling light, a space that once appeared mournful and dejected might become cozy and pleasant. They might find themselves inexplicably cheerier.

I’ve acquired lots of lamps over the years, mostly at flea markets, yard sales and antique stores. Others were gifts from my mother, from whom I acquired my distaste for ceiling fixtures. Our house probably has too many lamps. In December, some of these are relegated to the basement. Christmas demands a softer, warmer, more festive glow than most lamps can offer. The outside of our house gets its special holiday treatment, and the inside is not neglected.

During the Christmas season, the optimal sources of interior illumination, I believe, are strands of small clear white lights. To some degree, they mimic the effect of candlelight. Yet compared to candles, they involve considerably less mess and threat of fire. I discovered the charm of such lights one year as we were preparing for our annual holiday party. Now we decorate for the party and keep the lights up through Epiphany, January 6.

White lights peek out from the ivy at the feet of the large nativity figures occupying the tops of the TV armoire and the adjacent bookshelves. They’re entwined in garlands on the stair banister, atop the secretary in the living room, the sideboard in the dining room, and sometimes on top of the piano.

They adorn our big Christmas tree in the living room, typically a blue spruce. In the first years of our marriage, before a child came along to distract me, I spent the better part of two days wrapping nearly every branch with lights, for a total of about 1,300. Now, I lack the time to be so obsessive (at least in that regard).

White lights decorate our several small artificial trees, like the alpine trees above in the dining room. ( I found that one of these trees alone appears bedraggled and pitiful, but a grouping of three is just right. We hang our homemade pinecone and cork creatures, pasta and seashell angels on these trees. See posts from December 2011.)

Around 5 PM each evening, as the winter night settles in, I start plugging in the many strands of lights. (Unfortunately my husband has not developed a one-switch system, as he has with the electric candles in the windows and the exterior spotlights.) Our rooms begin to glow, as if enlivened by tiny stars. I am reminded that we are in a special season, a time when we focus on the miraculous light that God sent to shine in our dark world.

The manger scene atop the bookshelves.

The nativity figures are so large that the magi and their well-dressed camel occupy the armoire on the adjacent wall.

White lights add a warm glow on the dining room sideboard.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Holiday

Lighting up the Night for Christmas

December 7, 2012 Wildtrumpetvine

One of the things I love best about the Christmas season is the chance to light up the darkness with light. My husband and daughter feel the same way. Like Clark Griswold in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (which we watch every year), H has a vested interest in exterior illumination, although he takes a somewhat more subdued approach. There is no stapling of a thousand strings of lights to the roof, no plastic Santa and reindeer; only some carefully placed spotlights and a candle in each window to highlight the wreath above.

During the day, it’s evident, at least under close scrutiny, that our home has many needs: it needs painting and new siding. We really should do something about the windows at some point. (But I like the old, wavy glass from 1920, as well as those costly to replace “true divided lights.”) None of this matters, though, as dusk falls every evening in December. With the click of a switch in the basement, the house gleams newly white and clean. Instead of highlighting flaws, the light, like the true light of Christmas, makes them disappear. All dreariness, all weariness, is erased. The effect is simple and pretty. One month each year, we get to live with light in the darkness. And we decide, yet again, that no home improvements are necessary for a while.

Family, Nature, Walking the Dog

November Woods

November 19, 2012 Wildtrumpetvine

While there is no denying the bright glory of mid-October foliage, I find the muted palette of November equally beautiful in its own way. After most of the leaves have fallen, our neighborhood woods wear their subtle winter tones of gray, beige and brown. The few remaining autumn dashes of orange, flame-red and green stand out like colorful stitching on a sensible tan tweed jacket. On this day, the leaves were so deep that the familiar path was hidden. Kiko, however, our sure-footed guide, knew the way by smell.

I like the star-like shape formed by the core of this fallen tree’s roots.

D and Kiko on the banks of the hidden lake.

Community, Family

On This Election Day, Go Vote!

November 6, 2012 Wildtrumpetvine

My maternal grandmother Nora was born in 1894. In 1920, when the 19th Amendment, the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, was passed, she was twenty-six. She had been married to my grandfather for five years, and they were the parents of a two-year old son, my mother’s oldest brother. Having lived through a time when women could not vote, my grandmother took that newly granted right very seriously. She never missed an election, either national or local, and she was quite vocal in encouraging other women to get out and vote. Not voting was a sure sign of laziness, ignorance, or just “being plain sorry,” according to Nora.

I wish I had thought to ask her, before her death at age 94, about the presidential election of 1920. I would like to have discussed the details, such as where she voted and how. Were there long lines, and did the women turn out enthusiastically? Like most rural Kentuckians and Southerners of her generation, my grandmother was an ardent, lifelong Democrat. I assume she cast her first vote for James M. Cox, the Democratic candidate, newspaperman and Governor of Ohio. Cox, by nearly all hindsight accounts the better man, lost to Warren G. Harding, now remembered primarily for the rampant corruption of his administration. Twelve years would pass before my grandmother chose the winning ticket, when she, no doubt, voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932. Interestingly, a young FDR had been James Cox’s Vice Presidential running mate.

Today on election day, I’m especially grateful to the generations of determined women who fought for nearly a hundred years for the precious right to vote. Because of their efforts, my grandmother voted in 1920, I will vote today, and my daughter will vote before long. In years past, I may have supported candidates that probably would not have won my grandmother’s vote. But this year, I feel confident that she would strongly agree with my choice.

On this election day and always, may God bless the United States of America!

Crafts, Family, Holiday

New This Year: Spooky Trick-or-Treaters

October 31, 2012 Wildtrumpetvine

This fall, my daughter and I spent several amusing afternoons in production of these big-headed, bug-eyed trick-or-treaters to add to our Halloween decorations. Using a Dremel, we drilled indentations for the wooden bead eyes, which we anchored with Sobo glue. Our goal was to create a variety of strange and crazy-looking little figures, so we rather indiscriminately raided the craft closet in search of odd miscellaneous items.

For hair, we used yarn, felt, an old shade pull, and some of the stuffing that Kiko was at the time pulling out from the toy he was attacking. Hats are acorn caps, wooden craft cups, and in one case, a plastic spider ring. For bodies we used small spools or corks. Toothpicks or wooden beads form the arms. One figure received oversized white plastic hands on springs that came with a set of Halloween pencil-toppers. We made two dogs, one with ears of pecan shells, the other with wooden bead ears. Maple leaves from a craft punch adorn several of the creatures. We covered miniature Nerds boxes with orange paper to make trick-or-treat bags. Because we didn’t intend our creations to be perfect or traditionally cute, no one (and I won’t name names) flew into a rage when a slight crafting hitch or two arose.

Family, Holiday, Parenthood

From Little Pumpkin to Halloween Jack-‘O-Lantern

October 29, 2012 Wildtrumpetvine

It’s an easy and logical progression from pumpkin to jack-o’-lantern. Mother/baby Halloween parties across the country are crowded with crawling, crying, babbling, drooling, toddling jack-o’- lanterns. Our first Halloween event was typical.

The three jack-o’-lanterns at our Halloween playgroup party are assembled here for a photo opp. The middle pumpkin took offense, perhaps at the indignity of being sandwiched between two other pumpkins.

She continued to protest, loudly and forcefully. The other two pumpkins seemed mildly interested, at best.

After the party, D relaxed at home by quietly ripping the flaps off a seasonal pop-up book.

We reused D’s jack-o’-lantern costume on her second Halloween. As we had expected, our not-quite-two-year-old voiced no protest at having worn that same old thing last year. On her first Halloween, she was not yet walking, and the costume proved cumbersome for a crawler. Here, at our Gymboree party, she enjoyed being a jaunty pumpkin on the move, walking, running, jumping, and bouncing.

On D’s first Halloween, we went with some of our playgroup friends to an afternoon celebration geared to young children at the local mall. We couldn’t justify trick-or-treating on behalf of a baby in a stroller. But on year 2, we hit our neighborhood. Up to this point, I had limited our daughter’s exposure to candy. She got a few sweet treats, but, as the baby books advised, not many. That Halloween, however, the jig was up. The great wealth of the candy universe opened up to her like a treasure chest unearthed, and she rejoiced. While Kit-Kats were initially her favorite chocolate, she quickly developed an eclectic, enthusiastic palette. Here, she sits in a trance-like state savoring a lollipop, the contents of her trick-or-treat pumpkin spread around her in what was then the bareness of our kitchen.

Family, Holiday, Parenthood

Looking Back on our Little Pumpkin

October 25, 2012 Wildtrumpetvine

When my daughter and I were choosing our Halloween pumpkins last week at a pleasant local farm market, we were surrounded by parents photographing their little ones among the seasonal displays. Babies and pumpkins look good together; it’s a natural fit. Both tend to be round, fat, cute and firm. Facebook is understandably full of adorable pumpkin/baby duos this time of year. Our baby is no longer pumpkinesque, which is fortunate, considering she’s nearly fourteen. But I’m prompted to look back on the years when she was, very much so.

On our first trip to the pumpkin patch with our daughter, the chill of the late afternoon took us by surprise. We had dressed D in soft overalls and a Scandinavian-style fleece jacket, the first of a series that my mother would sew for her over the years. But either Mama hadn’t yet made the matching fleece hat, or we didn’t think she’d need it. Her baseball cap clearly didn’t keep her warm, and her lack of mittens didn’t help either. Her little feet must have been freezing, in lightweight cloth tennies. In these photos, it’s painfully evident that the kid, not quite ten months old, was borderline miserable but making the best of a bad situation. She looks as though she’s thinking Where are we? What are these cold round shapes? Why do they make me sit on such scratchy stuff or on a hard, icy seat? I do, however, rather enjoy being pulled around on this thing.

Here, D is wedged in on the Radio Flyer between pumpkins and the bulky camera bag we were never without during those early years. We had bought our first video camera in anticipation of our new baby, and, like so many new parents, we filmed our growing child during unremarkable moments. Look! She’s tilting her head! Look! She’s blinking her eyes! She’s lifting her hand! Amazing! Marvelous! No doubt we have extended live footage that documents her discomfort on this outing even more clearly.

The next year, we made sure to choose a warmer day for pumpkin picking. Here is our girl surrounded by pumpkins on another red wagon. Despite the more comfortable temperature, she still doesn’t appear to be very happy. But I’ve never appreciated a photographer’s insistence on BIG SMILES! I remember this day as being a fun-filled one. I’m hoping our baby, despite her conspicuous lack of a big smile, nevertheless enjoyed herself. I resolve to think she did, because in the years to come she would look forward enthusiastically to pumpkin patch visits.

Maybe now she’s really had enough!

Family, Nature, Parenthood, Travel

Glory in the Pumpkin Patch: The Ford Farm in Churchville, NY

October 18, 2012 Wildtrumpetvine

After our return from the railroad tracks, the predicted rain was not yet falling, so we walked past broad flat fields to the Ford Farm Market, a showcase of pumpkin glory and diversity. On this beautiful old family farm, Tom Swain, a former middle school science teacher, grows a vast variety of pumpkins and gourds. Signs proclaim the availability of pink pumpkins. Indeed, some are peachy-pink. There are pumpkins in nearly every conceivable earthy hue, including white and many shades of yellow, orange and green. There are also multi-colored varieties, some speckled, some striped, some uniquely patterened. The range of sizes is equally wide, from tiny palm-sized pumpkins to enormous giants, and everything in between. In years past, the largest Ford Farm pumpkins have topped 1,000 pounds. Tom’s wife Sharon is a pumpkin carver of great skill and imagination. Each year she creates a series of gigantic, intricately designed masterpieces. The family’s extensive and charming collection of Halloween decorations is displayed in the barn.

We made no pumpkin purchases because we would soon be flying back to Virginia, although D bought an apple for the walk back. A cold rain was falling steadily by then, but our cheery dose of Ford Farm fall spirit sustained us along the way.

In front of the old farmhouse, more pumpkins, including some of the giant ones Sharon Swain typically carves.

A colorful celebration of roadside vines and wildflowers.

A view of the fields across from the Ford Farm.

Community, Family, Nature, Parenthood, Travel

Rochester, Down by the Tracks

October 16, 2012 Wildtrumpetvine

When I was young, I spent my summer days
Playing on the track.
The sound of the wheels rollin’ on the steel
Took me out, took me back.

Big train, from Memphis.
Big train, from Memphis.
Now it’s gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone.

–John Fogerty, Big Train from Memphis

For many of those who grew up hearing the whistle and roar of passing trains in the night, the sounds evoke home, family and childhood. My husband and I each became accustomed to the music of the trains, and we miss it here in Virginia. When we return to Rochester or Atlanta to visit his parents or mine, we savor the familiar, comforting sounds of the train.

H and his childhood friends really did spend their summer days playing on the tracks and beneath the adjacent highway overpasses, at least when they were not deep in the neighborhood woods. The tracks are easily accessible from his sister’s house in Rochester. If we have time, we head over to see what’s new and what’s as it always was. It’s a particular joy for H to explore the area again with his daughter by his side. She appreciates his tales of boyhood adventure as well as the desolate beauty of the landscape along the tracks.

D was delighted to find this sturdy rope well-anchored to the underside of the bridge.

The unruly landscape bordering the tracks gets a beauty treatment of fall colors.

A mingling of the seasons: touches of gold and green among the fallen brown leaves.

D negotiates the tangle of weeds as she emerges from down under and years gone by.

Family, Nature, Parenthood, Travel

Rochester: Into the Woods

October 11, 2012 Wildtrumpetvine

This past weekend we went to Rochester to celebrate Grandma’s birthday. In between the frequent meals, the snacks, the cookies and the birthday cake, we managed to squeeze in an afternoon walk in the woods. My husband wanted to show our daughter a spot much loved by him and his boyhood friends. Enjoying a freedom from adult supervision nearly unknown to kids these days, they met there on their bikes after school. Using found lumber and fallen trees, they built hideouts and forts, which they outfitted with discarded furniture. They shot their BB-guns at cans (and occasionally, at each other, but with a strict one-pump rule). They made campfires for roasting hot dogs and for the sheer joy of watching things burn. Responsibilities were divvied up, and H brought the explosives. (It’s no coincidence that he went on to study combustion in grad school). He hadn’t set foot in these woods for decades, and he was worried that they had been developed or modified beyond recognition.

We were relieved that the entrance to the woods, several streets away from H’s childhood home, was just as he remembered. As we walked, it became apparent to him that some paths had been widened, neatened, or rerouted. But thankfully there was no sign of encroaching development, no nascent parking lots, shopping malls or townhouse complexes.

The weather forecast had predicted a full day of rain, but early morning showers had given way to a sunny afternoon. The light on the turning leaves suffused the canopy with a golden glow. The woods took on a magical, enchanted aspect. Our daughter appreciated their appeal as keenly as H had when he was her age.

Rochester’s fall palette was bright and varied. The yellows and oranges of the trees were especially brilliant.

The ground was carpeted with green moss and colorful fallen leaves.

Perfectly formed mushrooms, the small white kind that fairies rest on in childrens’ books, were a frequent sight underfoot among the leaves.

Beech trees, their leaves just beginning to turn yellow.

The kindness of trees: one member of this group of trees, having lost its base, is supported by its neighbors.

Our ultimate destination was the secluded pond where H and his friends had focused many of their boyhood activities. D and I followed H as he wandered, searching uncertainly through the swampy, heavily tangled brush, looking for landmarks to point the way, such as the tree on which they had carved their names. As my feet got soaked, I regretted not stuffing my hiking boots into my suitcase. Repeatedly, the pond wasn’t where H thought it should be. He began to fear we wouldn’t find it. Finally, with the help of the GPS system on his phone, he located it. It looked the same as it had all those years ago, H said, except for the greater accumulation of algae on its surface. A small boat was tied up in the reeds by the shore, suggesting that the pond continues to be the haunt of local explorers.

The walk back to Grandma and Grandpa’s house was a happy one. It was enormously satisfying to see that every once in a while, despite the fleeting pace of time and so-called progress, we can return to a place that still matches up with its treasured memory.

A blog about motherhood, marriage and life: the joys and frustrations, beauty and absurdity, blessings and pain. It's about looking back, looking ahead, and walking the dog.