reunionizing with the family

The great gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people

you might never even introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you.

~Kendall Hailey

The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe,

to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother -

as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one

in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by

an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born.

~Pearl S. Buck

If you don't believe in ghosts, you've never been to a family reunion.

~Ashleigh Brilliant

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These three quotes were rattling around in my head during our family reunion last week. (I'd been searching for good quotes for a craft project I submitted for our auction.) Together, they sum up an extended family: a bunch of people you might not otherwise have befriended and yet whose existence informs your perceptions of yourself, your ancestors, your progeny. I studied quietly those cousins of my mom who were all raised together and were obvious influences on each other, wondering how a whole generation can love reading and pass books back and forth to each other by the sackful. My grandfather's siblings still have identical hand gestures and expressions after decades of living in different states.

Grandma (in white) and her three living sistersGrandpa and Zora

Aunt Nadine (Grandpa's sister) and me

That second quote is so relateable. One of the biggest joys of having a kid is introducing her to the greater family. Little Zoralee has gotten a year's worth of loving and manhandling over the past weeks. Wow. Whether she was perched at the table in her Sassy Seat for a meal or furthering her crawling skills on the lawn or being strolled or carried about, she elicited a "Heeeey Zoooraaa!" from every passerby, usually in a voice two octaves above normal pitch.

And now for some pics, although oddly enough, I didn't take many. Or, I didn't take many that were of people other than Zoralee. Fine. I am smitten.

the auction mid-week, featuring homemade and regional itemsgames

And now, some of my favorite Zoralee-centered moments:

When my dad made announcements at mealtimes, speaking loudly about when group photographs would be taken or where the sign up sheet was for sweeping the dining room or riding horses, Zoralee turned to him and grinned. Sometimes she talked back, sure as sure can be that Grandpa was addressing her individually. This ritual turned into quite a crowd pleaser.

It is especially endearing to see my brothers and boy cousins with Zoralee, protecting her from the wild animals and also small gravel bits that might make their way into her mouth. I dunno; you sort of expect the girls to sidle up to a baby (sorry about the stereotype, but hey), so when the guys just want to sit in her presence and watch her try to crawl - that's, as my aunt Lavonne said, "sweet and precious."

Zoralee and I (and I'm sure everybody) would reach a point every day of over-crowding, a limit to our sociability. One day, when she was waaay beyond that point, I took her back to the tent and we laid down to nurse. I thought she'd be konked out in 30 seconds, by the way she looked. She tends to break out in a rash on her face when she's overly tired, and this was the worst I'd ever seen it. But, after nursing, she looked up at me with love, and giddily cood her appreciation for being taken to a quiet place. She then proceeded to crawl around the tent for an hour soaking up the sound of nothing. It was perfect.

I've mentioned before that Zora is a mover. A wiggler. A squirmer. But one evening, for inexplicable reasons, she sat upon the grass very contentedly for twenty minutes, simply watching. She strained her neck to watch birds fly past, and I followed her gaze to a bee buzzing from clover to clover.

By mid-reunion, Zoralee looked like a real camper, with mosquito bites and random scratches and scrapes to her face and body, and filthy fingernails. I was so proud of her! A real outdoor girl. There's something about dirty fingernails that gets me high on life. Here's her first morning waking up in the tent.

This is getting long, so I'll wrap it up with a couple of other favorite moments, having nothing to do with Zoralee:

One day, I was in the main lodge playing cards with a group of the old timers. There were between 35 and 60 years between me and them. Two of my second cousins, who are young and trendy, came in to say goodbye to everybody. She is a gorgeous, professional dancer with wild hair and supermodel sunglasses. He is the handsome sporty type, with a fantastic build and spikey hair. As they walked out with hips swaggering like the show people they are, they both held up the peace sign and said, "Peace! Peace!" over their shoulders. It stood in delightful juxtaposition to this table full of old people sitting on wooden benches, their cards spread across a plastic tablecloth in a game of "Hand and Foot."

Playing music is just about as important to this family as eating. We ain't professionals, but we do love to play together. If somebody is sitting still for more than a few minutes, they are sure to pick up an instrument and commence, and passersbys will likely join in. It's great having the cousins come over, because we introduce each other to new songs and bands. And then we get to hear Grandpa Gene's old timey classics like "Deep Ellum Blues" and "Mama Don't Allow No Guitar Playin' Around Here." The best is when the non-musician audience isn't particularly paying attention and you can jam and experiment with no pressure to perform.

Zoralee and Aunt Melody dancing to the music

A group that was still around after the reunion played softball on July 4th. We had a real hoot, bad-mouthing each other and combining and twisting softball and baseball rules from around the country. It stank that two of our youngest players got injured within 10 minutes, but they recovered well. Softball was a big part of my growing up years, and it's weird how common of a sport it is in my extended family too, kids and adults alike.

If you must see more, my sister, Rachel, posted a bunch of totally different pics from our reunion on her blog at this link.

an old cartoon of Rachel's

Rachel drew this cartoon at the tender age of 8, and I thought it would be fun to post in light of her recent post about Cam. Did you know they met in Hawaii?! I found this tonight in the 6th issue of the "Special Delivery Paper," a weekly collection of stories and pictures we made for our parents for a couple of years during childhood.

It's a little hard to see. A woman is drowning and is saved by a man. She first says, "Help me" then "Oh, thank you" then "Oh, my hero." The intense final dialogue has the woman saying "Hawaii is great" and the man responding with, "I know."

eggs and our pubescent chickens

About 10 days ago, the hens began a 2-day squawking and cackling festival. They were LOUD. We knew something was up, and it turns out, someone was fixing to lay an egg. When she did, rather than use the laying boxes Jason had built, she decided a cozier spot was here, wedged between a pile of fencing, a prickly broom, and a paper sack.


Now then. That first paragraph might sound all cool and relaxed, but the truth is we were out of our minds with joy when we found this egg. Watching the chickens and Zoralee and more recently our plants grow this spring, we keep having these surges of surprise over the natural life process. "Things are doing what they're supposed to do!" we keep saying. "That's insane!" We don't know what we ever did to deserve chickens who actually lay eggs, but it's witnessing a small miracle every morning.

Here we are exploring and tenderly loving our first egg.

We had learned that as the chickens got sexually mature, their combs and waddles would grow and become bright red instead of pale pink, and sure enough, we'd been observing it for a couple of weeks in our chickens before the first egg came. Again, we were incredulous that what we'd been reading about actually happened. See here the comparison between two hens at different stages (photos taken on the same day):

On day 2, we got another single egg on pellets Jason had laid in the box. But the weirdest thing is that the inside of an egg (no shell) had fallen from a chicken while she roosted at night. It was in the poop box below. This whole thing has the feel of chickens going through puberty. Hormones are all weird, they're laying eggs evidently on accident at night. Just like a period. We are so proud of them. They are growing up.

So, Jason filled the laying boxes with hay and shaped nests to make them more inviting. We set the mature hens in the boxes, to show them how lovely they were. The next day, there was another single egg, and this time it was nestled into the hay in a box! The next day there were two eggs in one box, the next day three.

What you see below is one of our eggs on the right and an average-sized grocery store egg on the left. Ours are starting out small, as is typical. They will grow in size and keep that rich coloring, an indication of their good diet.

Yesterday, we got four eggs (Gosh, it's cool!!) and found one of these water balloon, shell-less eggs. Here's a photograph, though by today the moisture has started to seep out of the membrane. Evidently this happens occasionally while the hens' bodies are still adjusting to egg-making. We are NOT eating this thing; it's right out of Alien World.

As you can see, we're pleased as punch about our eggs. They're little packets of protein, dude, in a protective shell that our chickens push out as little love gifts to us! It's just nuts.

company

Our family reunion (for my maternal grandpa and grandma's families) starts Sunday afternoon, so people are starting to arrive from out of town. Yee-haw! One of the best parts of hanging out with relatives now is everyone meeting, fawning over, and commenting on the ever-expanding wardrobe (ever-expanding, in part, due to their bringing her things!) of the first baby we've had in our immediate and pretty immediate family in over a decade. That'd be Zoralee. Besides the joy of simply having a baby around, we're also reaping the health benefit of building our immunities by exposure to each other's germs via her ears. What did we ever do for fun and health before her?!

Zoralee doesn't hand out smiles willy-nilly. She is a very cautious girl and looks a person over real good before deciding on her excitement level. She has a long week of decisions ahead of her.

"Story Time With Zoralee"

(practicing for her syndicated talk show)

We also just got to spend two days with Cousin Autumn, from my dad's Alaska side of the fam. Gosh, it was good to see her! This is a girl with whom many of our travels and adventures and dreamings are intertwined. She is a kindred spirit in so many ways. Crud, we've plunged ourselves into glacially-fed rivers for the shock of it (stupid), spent days and nights and days and nights hiking through the Alaskan wilderness (rad), dug ditches for water lines in the sweltering Guatemalan heat (jewel in crown), dreamed of communal living, sustainability, building cob houses, and running hostels (coffee-induced highs). Can you imagine how thrilled we were to see her? Can you imagine what a drag it was to let her go this morning? Booooooo for that!

Luke and Rachel both think Zoralee looks quite a bit like her.

family look-alikes

And while I'm on the subject of family look-alikes, I'll post a pic of Jason's niece, Ashley, who I've personally seen the most of in Zoralee since she was born. This is Ashley's high school graduation three years ago.

Zoralee and Great-grandpa Gene seem to be a favorite family-wide comparison, especially the backs of their heads. (Note the hair ribbons in this shot.)

love you, Pops

happy day of fathers to my main man

I love you, Baby.

You kick pants at being a Papa.
Happy first Father's Day.

gardening so far...dening

You may recall the utter flop that was our attempt at gardening last year. Or not. It wasn't particularly memorable. We set up a nice garden spot and did all the appropriate digging and dirt-moving and manure-adding we could, but the water we sprinkled on it wouldn't go away. A couple of local experts said we had a streak of nasty clay running through the property and that we were best off to forget about it and just haul in good dirt.

So, we canned the garden last year, and not in the traditional sense of harvesting bountiful bushels of colorful fruits and vegetables, cutting them into bits, and trapping them in glass jars with a pressure cooker to eat throughout the winter. I mean "canned" like threw in the towel. By then we were out of time, money, and motivation. (Those three scoundrels frequently run out of our lives together, holding hands, just when we need them the most.)

But this year is going to be different, we are saying. We have gone a whole new direction: Square Foot Gardening. And to keep in tradition with other new directions, we have a book as a souveneir:

It really is a fascinating concept. SQGs take up about 20% of the space of row gardens and take only a fraction of the labor and ongoing maintenance - after you get the boxes built. You fill the boxes with the dirt mixture that Mel Bartholomew recommends, which is a one-time cost, and then you simply update your soil with compost. This sounds more like us! What do we know though? We haven't succeeded at any growing much yet, other than one dog and one baby and now some chickens. Okay, and our love. And our waistlines. Dang. We've grown a lot. But to illustrate my point, the last time we attempted a quasi-garden was in Alaska when Steve came over to our cabin and planted carrots. All we had to do was water them. Easy, right? At season's end, we pulled at their beautiful green tops, and out of the earth came one-inch miniature carrots.

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Jason and I actually have lots of gardening in our family roots (pun fully intended), but this year is our first serious go at it for ourselves as adults. Here's Jason building the boxes and attaching black paper to the bottoms to keep weeds at bay.

My job was to mix up the dirt recipe and fill the boxes. I recruited Brother Dave to help.
We still had a bunch of seeds I'd ordered last year from Amishland Heirloom Seeds, and then Jason ordered a bunch more from the Good Seed Company, which specializes in cold-hearty plants. Both companies are dedicated to heirloom seeds, which means they are not genetically modified to be only one-generation plants. You can harvest the seeds off this year's plants and use them next year. Anyway, those very special old-fashioned seeds sat in our fridge full of energy and potential, waiting for someone to plant and nurture them into life-giving food. But instead, we came along. [The Benny Hill Show theme music plays.] In late April and early May, we planted brocolli, brussels sprouts, sage, and cabbage indoors. This, in plain old seed-starting soil. Watered them. Loved them. Wished them to grow. Out of 80 or 100 little plastic, squared "pots" grew a handful of measly, pathetic seedlings.

Our friends, Jese and Nikki, ordered seeds from the Good Seed Company about the same time and had great success. We were so jealous! They're starting a community garden, so blessings are being showered down upon them. Actually, the main difference in their procedures and ours was the light bulbs. Tip: you've gotta use the ones with labels that refer to "growing things." Doh.

We did plant our few piddly seedlings into the garden, and within a few days, strong winds destroyed them. Another note to selves: wait and transplant strong plants, not just ones with a couple of true leaves. So two weeks ago we essentially started over with a new batch of seeds, and by then we had to plant different things - tomatoes, peppers, basil. I also direct seeded into the garden winter squash, zucchini, cucumber, three lettuce varieties, beets, and sugarsnap peas. We had some elephant garlic bulbs from the same Steve (and wife Darla) who'd planted us carrots before, and those are coming up beautifully! Jese and Nikki were overrun with successful plants, so they gave us some cabbages and tomatoes transplants. They are what makes our garden look like, well, a garden.

It's a rough start to our second year's attempt. But we're still going and learning a lot, typically by mistakes. For instance, within days of planting cucumbers and winter squash in the same 4x4 foot box (albeit not in squares directly beside each other), a lady I know said we'd better keep all gourd varieties separated from one another or we risked cross-polination. Dangit! So I carefully dug up my cucumber seeds, which were barely starting to sprout, and moved them to another box. I keep thinking how lucky we are to have time for mistakes, as opposed to homesteaders in a remote wilderness.

The main box we planted seems to have an inordinant amount of ant visitors too, which is disconcerting.

Have you noticed the holes in the leavery, perchance,

Measured and cut by protractor-legged ants?

Yes, I've got those same ants back home in my yard

And to keep them from working is hard.

I visit our garden every morning, often wearing Zoralee on my back. It is a sweet time of day for us. Near dawn a few mornings ago, I caught some images of dew drops on the cabbage.

What will happen next? Will edible things grow? If so, brother, we will be walking on sunshine.

Fun fact: as I wrote part of this post about gardening in northern Montana in June, I listened to a Mexican Salsa Christmas cd. Zoralee needed something peppy, and it was there.