My husband and I have a dream of living abroad.  We’d love to take the kids and move from one country to another, settling for a time being in each, getting jobs, learning the culture, the ways of that world, knowing the people, and eating the food.  Whether we ever will, remains a mystery to us.  In the meantime, we’re happy to read about other families braver than we are.  Families such as the one belonging to Rebecca Ramsey, author of French by Heart.  I marvel at her courage to uproot her three small children from their South Carolina home and follow her husband to France for four years.

Rebecca is as charming and as hilarious in real life as she is in her book.  I’ve read French by Heart twice, I love it so, and I also bought an extra copy because I wanted to give it to someone to enjoy it just as much as I did.  Please visit her blog: #mce_temp_url# to read more about her, and also go on and purchase a copy of French by Heart.  #mce_temp_url# has some amazing deals (don’t they always?)!

The contest for this book is through next Sunday at noon (my time).  Everyone who leaves a comment on any of the posts is automatically entered.  Have fun!

Congratulations to Corinne of #mce_temp_url# for winning last week’s Writing Home giveaway!  Stop on by her place and say hello.  She is a wonderful writer.

Writing Home ~ Cindy La Ferle

When I was young my grandmother used to say that children are our inheritance from the good Lord. As we receive them into our families, we inherit their dreams and their futures as well, neither of which we should take lightly. Now, fully an adult and a parent as well, I understand the magnitude of her words.

Responsibilities come and go, but this is one that stays with us. Years and years of preparing them for adulthood, making mistakes along the way, learning together (in my case, at least), yet knowing there’s nothing arbitrary about the values we try to instill in them. We hope to infuse their life with meaning and with joy. We try to be good examples, yet remain true to ourselves. And we get tired along the way, and wish to just give in and let things be.

There are inherent risks in all we do, in life itself.  Sometimes the most we can offer is emotional safety. Because life nonchalantly goes on in it’s own way in a blatant disregard to our opinions and wishes, our duty to our children’s future is so vital and so much more rewarding than we can even anticipate.

And with this in mind, I’d like to introduce you to Cindy La Ferle.  I read Cindy’s collected essay book, Writing Home, nodding my head at her words, knowing that I have lived or thought about every single issue about motherhood that she brings up.  Immediately I went out and bought another copy.  It is so good that I know others will greatly benefit from it.  For more of Cindy’s words of wisdom, visit her at #mce_temp_url#. You may also purchase the book and receive it within a few days from #mce_temp_url#.  This drawing is open to all readers until next Sunday at noon.

Finally, huge congrats to Julie at #mce_temp_url# and Mwa at #mce_temp_url# for winning last week’s giveaway.  Stop on by and say hello!

Love to all of you.  And a beautiful week!

early christmas morn

I apologize for the poor quality of the photo.  It was taken with my iPhone rather than with a good quality camera, because a good quality camera does not offer the convenience of an iPhone.  Or fit in my back pocket.  And also, since it was around 3:00am on Christmas morn, it’s probably a good thing that it isn’t too clear.

Christmas Eve day dawned foggy and cold.  I awoke before the darkness lifted though, as I was in charge of the family lunch and the house was a mess from the previous day’s baking with my mom, sister, and husband.  The kitchen was a nightmare, with pans piled on every surface!

I cooked and cleaned and washed and laundered and set the table, and before long everyone arrived, laden with goodies.  We sat and ate and talked and laughed and ate and drank some more.  The lunch stretched into the dinner hour.  Noticing the lateness and marveling at how quickly time passes, we put a stop to all the fun and festivities and prepared ourselves for church. On Christmas Eve we always go to church.

And, oh how beautiful it was!  The brass band blew away on their trombones, their tubas and their horns.  The one hundred person choir performed O Holy Night and Handel’s Messiah, and it truly felt as though the angels of heaven descended on earth with their tidings of great joy.  My spine was tingling and my hair stood on end, from the beauty of it all.

After church we hurried home and changed into comfortable clothing.  It was time to make our rounds to the Christmas Eve parties already in session.  We didn’t linger long for we wanted to be at the party where traditional carols and carolers would be.  And so we went to my friend’s beautiful estate high up in the wooded hills.  The food was amazing and in abundance.  The company awesome!  Even Santa paid a visit, handing out bonbons to the wide-eyed children.  There we stayed caroling and listening to visiting carolers, eating, socializing, and telling stories until 4:30 Christmas morning.

The kids who had been playing with the other 20 or so children, fell asleep the moment we put them in the car.  And we did too, just as soon as we brushed our teeth and tumbled in bed, 15 minutes later.

my darling babies on Christmas Day

Christmas Day was quiet.  We got up around noon, opened our presents, and had our breakfast.  We read, watched movies and took long naps.  The skies were beautiful and blue, sunshine streaming brightly, but we just ventured out for a little bit as the wind was quick and sharp.  At night we read in front of the fire and fell asleep in a pile on the bed, the kids tucked in between us.

And so today, this second day of Christmas we celebrated some more, and tomorrow and the next we will too.  The presents that most children would receive on just one day are spread out until the twelfth night (January 5th), the eve of Epiphany.  On the 6th, on that Three King’s Day, we will have a special cake, wearing silver and gold (foil) crowns, searching in the richness of the cake for the King’s ring.

Then the season will conclude.  Our hearts will be lighter, our spirits richer, our bodies probably fatter.  But who cares?  Lent isn’t too far off.

When I was a child my favorite Christmas story was The Story of Holly and Ivy, written by Rumer Godden. It is a lovely story about an orphan child wishing for a doll and a grandmother, and also the story of a doll wishing for a dear child’s arm around her.  My sisters and I loved it so much we kept checking it out of the library over and over.  As I got older I forgot about the magical story of a wish coming true, until I got pregnant with my son and started on making my dreams of a children’s library a reality.

For months and months I couldn’t find it anywhere.  Finally Powell’s Books, my favorite local bookstore, located a used copy for me.  And wouldn’t you know it, but a few years later there was a new printing of the book, and suddenly they were everywhere.

A new book I am adding this year is Jane in Winter by Elizabeth Wix.  I just ordered this fairy tale and can’t wait for it to get here.  Evil queen, forests, children, winter!  My favorite kind of story!  You can read more about it and order it from the author’s own site: #mce_temp_url#

Also, check out my friend Michelle’s Christmas blog: #mce_temp_url# Michelle loves books!  She’s got a collection close to 2000 of them, not counting the Christmas ones.  I’d love to spend a weekend in there just looking around.  Besides that she is one of the best book reviewers out there, and Christmas is her favorite holiday.

Following is what I consider to be essential reading:

The Gift of the Magi     O. Henry

The Fir Tree     Hans Christian Andersen

A Miserable, Merry Christmas     Lincoln Steffens

The Legend of the Christmas Rose     Selma Lagerlof

The Birth Of Christ     St. Luke 2:1-16

The Three Wise Men     St. Matthew 2:1-14

A Pint of Judgment     Elizabeth Morrow

The Miraculous Staircase     Arthur Gordon

The Story of Holly and Ivy     Rumer Godden

The Little Match Girl     Hans Christian Andersen

Jane in Winter   Elizabeth Wix

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe     C.S. Lewis

The Mitten   retold by Jan Brett

The Gingerbread     retold by Jan Brett

Toot and Puddle: I’ll Be Home for Christmas     Holly Hobbie

Christmas in the Big Woods     Laura Ingalls Wilder

Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree     Robert Barry

Eloise at Christmastime     Kay Thompson

Are your favorites on my list?  If not, what are they?

Apparently I work too many hours, have horrible eating habits (too much chocolate, coffee and pastries), and sleep too little.  For the second time, in as many weeks, I am sick again.  I’ve had the flu shot and the H1N1 shot, to no avail.  I have no idea what exactly is the matter, as I dread going in to see the doctor just to be told to go home and rest.  But my right ear hurts so, I feel like cutting it off, and I who have never smoked, have a smoker’s raspy voice.

It’s been sunny, yet very cold.  At night the wind scratches at the windows and sends the kids to our bed, where they snuggle in wide eyed, clutching at the covers and twining their legs with ours.  And although I am sick and should know better, I love the warmth of their little bodies and let them stay, only to awaken hours later my limbs all numb, hubby gone down the hallway to sleep in the empty room.

My hours awake are spent in bed, looking through my journal for favorite recipes,

pasting cutouts of images from my favorite magazines,

opening my mail (yay, Christmas presents have arrived!),

and reading this lovely book I have first heard about on #mce_temp_url# in early October.  By the way, if you haven’t been, go visit Pamela and Edward pronto.  You’ll be transported into a magical, enchanted land of beauty and wonder.  Pamela throws the most fabulous dinner parties with her songwriter husband and their two lovely dogs, in the beautiful home she has designed herself, as she is an interior designer as well as a poet and a curator of the disappearing art of living gracefully.

Finally, I will be enjoying a bowl of this delicious stew prepared by my darling hubby, with a chunk of crunchy French bread, at the kitchen table surrounded by the dear faces of my family.  I adore the primitive taste of bone marrow.  There’s something so satisfying in it’s goodness.

And then off to bed for sleep and another day of the same, until I feel better.  Stay safe and healthy!

Shopping at our local Farmers Market for this:

and this:

and this:

and this:

is one way hubby, the kids, and I love spending our weekend.  I married an imaginative, inventive, fearless man who takes that same passion he has for life and applies it to the dishes he puts together.  Someone once said to me that she has no exact recipes for anything, and so she rarely replicates her dishes.  Hubby, however, is blessed with the most advanced visual memory of anyone I know.  He can remember the details of a meal prepared years ago, as well as the exact ingredients used, the people partaking, the music playing, what we were wearing.  Needless to say, whenever he makes something it turns out superb.

Yet this past weekend was spent in another sort of market.  I look forward to this Autumn event all year long not just because this is how I get my celebrity fix, but also because these celebrities are the only celebrities that matter to me, and not just that, I consider them the most intelligent people I may ever meet.  It thrills me to know that I am in the same room with them, for hours!  One of my sister’s and I (who is just as obsessed with reading as I am) talk about it in advance and we clear our schedules with our husbands and kids in preparation of pampering to our love.

Attending readings, getting books autographed, chatting with the authors, browsing the exhibits… What fun!  I was a little nervous and feared that I’d ask silly questions.  They were all so gracious, yet I still worried about coming across as a lunatic.  A small handful of the authors present were: Jeannette Walls, Julia Glass, Debra Ollivier, Laurie Sandell, and James Ellroy.

How did you spend your weekend?  What interesting things did you do?

In 1979, a secret unit was established by the most gifted minds within the US army. Defying all known accepted military practice – and indeed, the laws of physics – they believed that a soldier could adopt the cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them. (Jon Ronson)

“This is a true story” begins the first line of this book given to me by a close friend who knows just how much I appreciate a good conspiracy theory. And I read it within a few hours, so engrossed was I by all that it claimed. It is entirely full of bizarre characters performing peculiar acts, asserting that the US government explored the use of the paranormal for the last three decades. The author claims the matter comes from declassified government documents, and goes on to interview several military officials, who trace some of the experiments to torture techniques employed in the War on Terror.

When I think about the US military, I like to imagine men and women that deal with hard facts and the laws of nature. Dabbling in the supernatural should be left to charlatan palm readers that frequent state fairs. I am not so naïve as to believe that strange government-funded experiments do not occur. Still… it is horrifying to imagine the reasoning behind most of the experiments, even if on paper they come across as light and funny, which by the way, the book is. Perhaps that is why I find it so unbelievable.

Anyway, I am looking forward to the movie, which is coming out November 6, 2009 and stars two of my favorite actors: George Clooney and Ewan McGregor.

Years ago, a friend and I took a few sunny summer days to explore the Pacific Northwest coast. Our main goal was to stay off the beaten path and experience life at a slower pace. Antique shops, flea markets, and art galleries were our destination, as were berry farms, deserted beaches, dusty book shops and coffee houses. We had reserved a couple of nights at bed and breakfast places along the way, provisioned ourselves with a picnic basket overflowing with Belgian chocolates, crusty bread, and the best cheeses we could afford, and set out.

She was to be married that summer, and soon after to move away. I suppose, in a way, we were gifting each other a last memory of our girlhood. Ours was a friendship that had carried us from childhood, through the turbulent, self-conscious adolescence, and into our twenties.

The views were stunning. Rolling pastoral beauty giving way to dense emerald forests. We followed a river that shined like mica and came into a village right out of a nautical painting. The sun was setting, all rose and apricot colored over the bay. We parked our car and strolled the heart of the main street in search of a coffee house. With steaming drinks and chunks of cheese filled bread, we made our way to the beach, content to sit on the sand and soak up the beauty before us.

As darkness was approaching, we didn’t linger too long. Somewhere along those dusty roads, the hostess of a white Victorian house was awaiting our arrival, probably eager to lock up and go to bed. Our bedroom, at the top of three flights of stairs, was under the eaves and decorated with a large-scale lilac print wallpaper right out of a Victoria magazine. The brass, queen-sized bed was piled up with fluffy pillows, and in the bathroom a claw-foot tub occupied most of the space. We loved it.

A misty morning arrived too soon. We took our time over breakfast in the ornate dining room, both decided that the food could be better, yet stuffed ourselves nonetheless, and set off for a day of treasure hunting. It seemed that time stood still. The clouds and morning drizzle cleared away, and our minds emptied of everything but the joy of each other’s company.

That night’s bed and breakfast was a far cry from the first. We took one look at it and turned our car around. It was spooky! Our overactive imaginations had us roaming the dark roads in search of acceptable lodging. Finally, after it seemed as though we drove for hours, we found a newly built hotel, devoid of character, as expected, but with views of the silver ocean lapping at the rocks below.

Before we headed home the following afternoon, we stopped into a local bookshop and sealed our three days together by each purchasing a copy of Jane Eyre. It was a favorite book to both of us, and a talisman to remember our friendship and our last adventure before matrimony.

my attempt to design my dining room

my study... favorite room in the house

Many houses are deserted by the men of the family for lack of… simple comforts. (Edith Wharton)

The Decoration Of Houses Edith Wharton

I love interior design almost as much as I love to read.  I salivate over glossy magazines and books featuring exquisite residences from around the world, and wish that my work would be featured as well.  Wishful thinking.  For one thing, it’s nowhere near as good, and for another, I could never be as detail oriented as required. 

Edith Wharton, however, was not just one of the best female American authors  (Ethan Frome, The Age of Innocence, The Custom of the Country, and The House of Mirth, are just a few of her novels) she was also a superb interior designer. The Decoration of Houses, is one of the best books I’ve read on design.  On the Lenox MA property she had bought in 1902, five years after she wrote the book, she created a peaceful and harmonious space where she was able to entertain her closest friends.  Known as The Mount, it is currently owned by a preservation group, who has restored it to its original grandeur, as the original furnishings are long gone.

Readings of her books and tours are offered daily during the summer months. Check out: http://www.edithwharton.org/index.php for more info and some great photos.

Hunting and Gathering Anna Gavalda

I love this book!  A love story of the best kind.  That’s all I’m going to say about it.  Have to add the author on my fave list.

12th century church

When older people get together there is something unflappable about them; you can see they’ve tasted all the heavy, bitter, spicy food of life, extracted it’s poisons, and will now spend 10 or 15 years in a state of perfect equilibrium and enviable morality.  Irene Nemirovsky, Fire in the Blood

I have a few friends who are well into their eighties; women who have lived their lives thoroughly and enjoyed the amassed daily moments to their fullest extent.  I love these women for what they are.  There is wisdom in their advice, a sense of humor in their actions.  They’ve come to terms with the destruction life has in store. Physical health and beauty deteriorating, husbands and friends lost to death or alzheimers, children and dear ones far away, their bodies betraying them daily.  But their kindness, their compassion, their love survived every treachery and evolved into a beauty transcending the physical.

I know they have fears.  Whenever I see them upset at their lack of control over their bodies, they fear for their dignity. For their self-respect and the respect, or lack of, others have for them. I like to remind them that their self-esteem need not suffer because their bodies fail. They are more than that. More than fragile bones and decrepit muscles. They are the light in the eyes, the smile on the lips, the love they exude.   

Some have come to terms with death encroaching, others have not. But, I don’t believe it is death they fear, or maybe not as much; what they fear is their disappearance; the disappearance of their voices, their laughter, their memory.  The fear of becoming a dusty one-dimensional photo. The cessation of their story.

And then the fear of eternity. Who is immune to that?  All around, so vast and unfathomable. Like grains of sand or stars in the night sky. And all that had been left undone and unsaid. All the mundane and not so mundane choices made daily that may or may not have purified the soul. Or whether their faith will pay off and they will be in the presence of God and their loved departed ones, or rotting away, first their flesh and then their bones. 

And yes, for some the fear of death as well. Of what happens at that moment when this earthly life ends and the other begins. That transition from the mortal to the immortal. The termination of one and the beginning of another. How will it be? What will they feel? Where will their soul go and how will it get there?

Yet, despite all these thoughts in their minds and in mine, I marvel at their depth, at the lives they’ve created, at their multi-dimensional facets, the little glimpses into the girls they were and the women they’ve become. So graceful, caring, resilient.  And I look forward to my old age, not in despair but in hope; the hope that I’ll become like one of them, enduring and persevering.