Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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her second mother’s day

The moment she announced her growing family, we all shrieked with joy. And I mean SHRIEKED. No one was expecting it. We were all just so happy to be together. About 25 family members were holding hands in our living room, saying grace over the fragrant and long awaited Thanksgiving feast. She was the last person in the family to speak her gratitude (her fiancé was the first. He must have seen the opportunity and stealthily guided the group’s clockwise sequence), and she did so with her standard calm, quiet reserve. It took exactly half of one second for the news to cross the air between her pretty mouth to all of our ears, and it created such a stir of energy, such a wave of joy and chaos, that I think no one will ever forget that moment. We caught most of the family response on security camera. There was much jumping and hugging and a little crying.

This is actually her second Mother’s Day weekend. Her first was spent in the hospital welcoming that peach fuzz baby boy we have all become obsessed with and who we each believe regards us, one at a time, as his favorite uncle or auntie or cousin. Grandma and Grandpa have zero competition from us.  

Her craving for motherhood was kept mostly quiet over the years, but her talent for it has been obvious, displayed in the myriad ways she lives and loves. She has always exuded compassion, concern, stability, wisdom and a kind of softness that is matched only by her strength. She is both disciplined and playful, able to hold it all at once. She has spent more than two decades, it turns out, building an emotional and practical nest for her baby bird that is so strong, so comfortable, so safe, and so nourishing that now, at this moment, we see she is not only the mother he needs, the mother he chose from Baby Heaven and came to Earth to find; she is in many ways the mother we all wish to be.

Last November I was lucky enough to spend about a week with my baby sister and her baby boy in their nest. I got to see firsthand her tenderness, the way her lean arms scooped him up, tiny as he was then, into his favorite embrace. The way she fed him and bathed him. I got to watch both of their faces light up when they made eye contact. I heard her voice, which has in our adulthood issued some of my most treasured deep and serious conversations, collapse gently into songs like The Itsy Bitsy Spider and Frère Jacques. I got to see her weep when he was briefly inconsolable during a long car ride. She felt his pain, and she always will. I remember silently hoping she was ready for that part.

I went to California thinking maybe I could impart a smidgen or two of motherly guidance, ha! But no. She was already overflowing with instinct and goodness. She was a steady, shining conduit for every single thing he needed, right when he needed it. And that is exactly how it will always be. In the months since, she and her husband, our new brother we love so much, have shared hundreds of photos showing this peach fuzz baby boy’s growth and vibrating happiness. It is bizarre to think back to that Thanksgiving, to that moment right before she announced her pregnancy, back to the reality where we did not yet know this whole new person.

They say that when a baby is born, a mother is also born. I love that. I think it is true for many women, but in my baby sister’s case, I think she just finally emerged. She had already been a mother for a long time, growing herself behind the scenes and waiting for ripeness and good partnership, a gift every baby deserves. She is one of the most luminous mothers I have ever witnessed, and I am so thankful she has added a nephew and a brother to our big family for us to love, too.

Happy Second Mother’s Day, Gen.
LYLAS
xoxoxo

the first two weeks of this sparkly new year

Friends, hello! Happy New Year to you! I am coming up for some serious air from a rabbit hole of my own making, a rabbit hole of my own words in fact, trying to get my house in order on this blog. I made a Farm Journal Entry earlier this week and had to verify the date twice after typing it. Only the fourtheenth of January? Are we sure? It feels like many weeks have passed since our litte NYE shin dig with friends. So much has happened.

The weather shifted from weirdly mild to bitter cold but dry and then to a Narnia-like snowy paradise, followed again by sundrenched, early spring vibes. All in two weeks. At this writing we are just a couple of days away from another Arctic front, potentially a wet one, which is not great. So there is some work to do to prepare the farm for that.

((snow day with Klaus, Max, Sadie, and Charlie!!))

We give thanks constantly for fat, healthy animals, more grain and hay than we need, abundant water, and a warm house full of groceries. I do worry sometimes about the horses in this cold, but we have made it through seventeen years of extreme weather so far. I feel like worrying is not the right move.

((Dusty has at last found peace with Scarlett and Rhett))
((Chanta is only growing sweeter and more mellow in his gentlemanly years))

The Commish has entered a new era this week, and if you know you know, this is huge news. I get chills thinking about the momentum that Handsome will now be free to build, all the progress and grit and joy he will now have the bandwidth to generate.

Sorry for saying bandwidth. I know that expression has run its course.

It took me every bit of two weeks to remove every little speck of our Christmas decor, including spent paperwhites. It was a gorgeous, sparkling season that lasted for over two months, and it just felt so cozy and cheerful. I gave myself permission to dismantle it all in stages, so the house did not suddenly feel bare and sterile.

((taking Klaus to see Santa at the Choctaw Christmas festival))

Well, sterile, ha! As sterile as an actual farmhouse can possibley feel.

I don’t really have the bandwidth to keep this house sterile.

LOL

So sorry. I cannot help myself.

So the house is just cozy and wintry now, with a tiny dose of Valentine pink and red here and there. And we are enjoying it very much. The older I get, the more I find myself deeply relishing each season and all kinds of weather. The only thing that really bothers me about winter is how it can hurt the animals. Personally, I feel well adapted. I walk outside as much as possible all day long, and my eyes have grown so accustomed to the browns and sepias of the landscpape, plus the glittery white snow when it falls, that when I happened upon a photo of the garden from last June it was truly startling. All that emerald green grass! All that saturated color in the flowers! It was almost too much. It felt to my eyes the way too much icing on a bakery cake feels to my teeth. That’s crazy, how thoroughly we can adapt to anything, even dormancy and slowness. Even cold, mostly.

Speaking of adaptation, my body is no longer in marathon shape, ha! I felt incredible for the race on October 27. It was a day I will remember forever. My brother and I walked a few miles the very next day. Then I took it easy and I mean super easy for the following four weeks or so. For one of those weeks, for the first time in ten years, I only walked a tiny bit, zero running, while in Los Angeles getting acquainted with my baby nephew. Since Thanksgiving my daily activity has increased gradually, but it is literally hilarious to me at this moment to think of getting up to run hard workouts of 10 to 14 miles on a weekday before working outside until dusk. Ha! The adaptations that got me to that start line healthy and strong happened pretty quickly, and the deconditioning has happened even more quickly. Human bodies are miraculous and humbling.

One of the projects on my heart for this new year is to complete and nicely polish a manuscript and book proposal for The Lazy W Farmily, a collection of children’s stories to document all of our beloved animals and their antics over the years. I have been chipping away at individual characters’ stories, but now I feel strongly that they all need to be synthesized into one book, like maybe a longer chapter book for reading aloud. I have tried doing a little DIY market research to learn what age group I want to target and whether it should, in fact, be a thick chapter book or, instead, a set of slim volumes; but I feel a little lost, to be honest. At least the stories flow onto paper well. We have enjoyed so many magical relationships with animals in the seventeen years here on these nine acres. I am overjoyed at the thought of documenting it all.

Today, January 16th, 2025, is Jessica and Alejandro’s fourth wedding anniversary! We feel so priviledged and happy to be on the front row, watching their little universe grow and expand and solidify. They are very generous with their time as newlyweds, so we get to see them lots. Holidays and brthdays, of course, but all the other times in between, too, in dozens of casual, meaningful, fun and important ways. They are one of the most compatible, effervescent pairings I have ever seen. And gosh we just love them and their pups so much.

((alex and jess on their cold, beautiful wedding day in 2021))
((Alex, Jess, Bean & Laika, Christmas Day 2024))

I did a quick tally of all the hosting we did here in 2024. The statisctics surprised us! The year passed in such a blur of energy and effort, so much color, you know? And overlapping heat waves of activity? That by New Year’s Day we were a bit numb from it all. It felt good to put a few numbers to why we landed on January first so tired, ha! More on this soon. But let me just say that we did not exactly set out last January with a clear cut plan to open the farm thirty-nine times or to dog sit for eight cumulative weeks; that’s just precisely what we felt called to do, gradually, and it was also just exactly what our souls needed.

Happy middle of January, friends! Thank you so much for checking in. As I contimue to clean house on this blog, I am open to suggestions, topic requests, and more. And if you have some insight for me on the children’s book, please track me down. I woudl appreciate a bit of guidance. Stay cozy and safe. Keep on choosing JOY!

“We are living out the stories we tell.”
XOXOXO

heart of the home

We had another plumbing emergency last week.

Around 7:30 Wednesday evening, Handsome wandered into the pantry to get some animals crackers for Klaus and discovered standing water and dripping wet shelves. A water pipe behind the kitchen pantry wall, and actually behind the built in cabinets surrounding the refrigerator, which makes it much worse, busted and leaked water all over our well stocked dry goods, cast iron skillet collection, large countertop appliances being stored there. All over the walls, all over the floor.

It is, unfortunately, a familiar sight. We have expereinced this a handful of times now, in different parts of the house, so we knew exactly what to do and jumped right to it, with maybe some snarling and groaning and WHY WHY WHY thrown in for good measure. Are you familiar with the scientific study which found that some gentle cursing helps alleviate physical pain? I think this also applies to plumbing emergencies.

My cute guy provided all the brain power for discerning the needed repairs, then he swiftly and patiently made those repairs. Cleanup and reordering the kitchen is my responsibility, which I am always happy to shoulder. That night the kitchen was sucked dry of standing water, and all the broken sheetrock was removed. The fridge was even wheeled back into place only after the floor there got rubbed to (almost) true white. But, truly exhausted, we surrendered at that point and went to bed with the shockingly voluminous contents of our tightly packed pantry strewn all over the dining room table and limited countertop space in the kitchen. It was a wild sight. Like a small grocery store had exploded in a very small space.

The next morning when I stepped into the cold, blue-black kitchen for coffee, it was all still waiting to be reordered. Piles and stacks of kitchen contents, all shadowy and chaotic and, in some places, still damp. The pantry mostly empty, yawning and awkward and asking me if, while we’re at it, should we paint?

(No. We should not paint.)

I actually kind of love jobs like this. I love rehabbing overgrown gardens, and I love a good, vicious decluttering job. In fact my early November task list was already headlined by “audit and deep clean kitchen,” in order to be ready for Thanksgiving. This was perfect timing. (Hey please nobody tell my husband I was glad it happened. Thanks.)

Okay here is the real story:

During those first hours that next morning, when the kitchen was repaired but in utter disarray, I could not focus on much else. I did all the basic farm chores first thing, but the state of the kitchen was preoccupying me. Although neither of us needed a full meal yet, nor were we expecting any guests, it was unsettling. I can tolerate lots of things undone, but not an unmade bed and certainly not an insane kitchen.

The kitchen is the heart of the home, after all, and when your heart is our of order or in disrepair, or even when it is not clean and refreshed, all other systems are at risk. Nothing else feels quite calm and safe to me when the kitchen is wonky.

So I spent several hours getting it just right. And it was great. Better in a dozen ways than before the mess, even. Every surface got scubbed. Every ingredient got inventoried and replaced to fresh new food bins. Every applaince got a once over and a tidy new spot. I refolded the ten thousand kitchen towels we have apparently accumulated, and I made long overdue decisions about mismatched napkin sets. By the time Handsome was headed home, I could cook dinner like I was playing in a new playground. And I relished the sensation of openness it all created inside me.

Now that our small, cozy kitchen is back in order, clean and shining and restocked, I feel equally compelled to make sure my heart is in order. As much as I want to feed our family a gorgeous Thanksgiving feast in less than three weeks, and then host many fun little Christmas parties after that, I mostly want to be healthy and soft and strong, reordered in my bones and in my soul, to serve my loved ones a good emotional feast, too.

I have gotten it wrong plenty over the years. In ways I did not mean to, in ways I was not aware of at the time, because I was focused on the wrong details. The wrong themes in general. I have been in phases where I focused more on table settings than repairing relationships. I have focused more on the dessert table than on speaking sweetly, or thinking sweetly. I have sometimes focused more on making sure we cook enough for everyone to have leftovers than on making sure we have an abundance of quality time with each other.

None of these hostessing priorities are bad, but they are not the most precious things. When I get them out of order, people feel it.

((My Mom always gets it right…xoxoxo))

Something cool God is showing me is that it does not have to be one or the other.

We actually can offer each other both a beautiful table and a feast for connection. We can deepen and enrich relationships while we plan and cook and share traditional foods. We can enjoy the dessert table and pretty centerpieces and we can speak sweetly.

It is all available. It is all part of the best feast.

How wonderful that time and grace have afforded us year after to year to improve. How magical that our family contiues to gather, however many people we add to this lucky roster, however busy our separate lives are, however much grief or stress we are feeling. We gather. And we need a good kitchen and lots of good hearts.

A kitchen that has been cleaned and organized, well stocked and prepared, can feed an army beautifully. A heart that has been filled with truth and good messages, that makes an effort to scrub out bitterness and ego, a heart that is full of the best gifts, can then share the best gifts while serving the best food.

While my kitchen is almost ready for Thanksgiving, my heart could used some attention, and I am so grateful for the time and appetite to do it!

“I cleansed the mirror of my heart,
now it reflects the moon.”
~Renseki

we are the lucky ones

“We are the lucky ones,” my sister Angela reminds us gently. She often says this in a slightly hushed tone, happiness about life tempered with the realization that it might not have turned out this way.

Coming off of a particularly joyful and celebratory year, our family is well aware of how blessed and lucky we are. How different things could be, how beautiful life is. We still have dark valleys and shadows, and we still wrestle with unresolved trauma and unanswered prayers; but wow Love is here in the midst of us. Wow! We feel rescued and uplifted, filled with purpose and surrounded by comfort.

Last summer all one thousand of us (haha) gathered in Oklahoma to celebrate our parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. This dovetailed into an engagement party for one of our sisters, and lots of hooping and hollering about nieces soon committing to college and wahoo the Navy bunch is back in the western hemisphere. A few months later we gathered again for Thanksgiving, which is peak feasting for a family this big. Somewhere in here we learned of a baby about to join the happy ranks. And over and over again jobs are secured and made even better, travel plans happen, health is restored, and Mom feeds us mightily for all kinds of reasons. We attend high school performances. We play games, uphold traditions, swim, trade names for Secret Santa and maintain the world’s wildest group chat, The only thing our Family at Large is not great at, it seems, is Zoom meetings. But man do we try.

On Christmas Eve, at Mom and Dad’s house, the sound track was pure laughter, dotted with raised voices and overlapping conversations. It is a private language only we know, and it is not for the faint of heart. I was in the kitchen, and Dad walked in. He said to no one in particular, “Man I would not want to be an outsider with THIS bunch!” He is so right. We love and welcome new people all the time, and our family prides itself on hospitality; but there is definitely a feral element to our core. We are a bit wild and very protective of each other.

To illustrate this: Even after more than twenty years, My husband and my brother’s wife are often caught at family events, huddled together, their eyes wide and watchful, like prey among predators, just catching their dang breath for a second, ok? Now they have a new member to indoctrinate into their subculture of in-laws, our little sister’s soon to be husband. Funny to me that a family of brown eyed blondes has chosen three green eyed brunettes. The thing is, this makes it easier to see who the outsiders are. Ha. Anyway, it’s the three of them now, against the rest of us. They’ll be fine. We chose well.

We are the lucky ones.

We are lucky enough to have warm, beautiful, comfort-filled homes. We are lucky enough to have all these amazing jobs that not only provide for our needs but also serve our communities and maximize our talents. We are lucky enough to have the foundation of church and extended family and cultural tradition, all the invisible things and memories that become our spiritual framework. We are lucky enough to know how to choose the best habits, cultivate relationships, play and work and forgive each other when we are not our best selves.

We are the lucky ones who still have our parents with us, loving us, hoping we can coordinate our fantastic lives often enough to not lose touch, As if any of of us could ever be happy without each other.

We are the lucky ones who actually enjoy being around our siblings and who are proud of each other’s accomplishments. We love our nieces and nephews so much, and probably each of us at some time feels like the favorite aunt or uncle, because we all make so many fun memories with these precious kids.

We are the lucky ones who can talk about loss openly, because we feel safe with each other. We can also talk about alcoholism and addiction, healing and recovery, and the terrifyingly thin veil that separates us in this warm, glittering life from a very different one.

We are the lucky ones who can support a long calendar year packed with colorful traditions. From Easter to anniversaries, school events, retirements and engagements, Thanksgiving, and the gift giving month of December, with all the delicious seasonal foods that connect our hearts and bellies, it all matters. And it does not come easily to everyone. We could do away with every bit of it and still call it a life, but this is LIFE. We are the lucky ones who have received this immense gift, and we appreciate it. We are so thankful to be passing this gift on to the next generation. Teaching the management of it to them, sharing the joys of it as it trades hands.

((thanksgiving 2023))

We are not perfect, and we are a lot. But we are certainly the lucky ones.

XOXOXO

fathers day 2023

For a man whose nature demands that he take action and responsibility for every problem that enters his periphery, for a man who sees the world’s threats and pitfalls a split second before he sees its beauty, fatherhood is a natural fit. He is protective to a fault, and he is the most vicious troubleshooter you will meet. Anyone who lives under the wings of his protective reach is safe and well provided for.

I look at the examples of fatherhood in his life and see strength, a love of family and tradition, an immovable sense of responsibility, and passionate streaks. He exudes all these qualities and more.

I also see severe exhaustion, dutifulness that can lead to martyrdom, and maybe disappointment. He has experienced the richest gifts fatherhood can offer as well as some of the bitterest hurts. I worry about this. I already see these shadows casting long and dark in his legacy.

Life is like this, the brackish water always flowing. Sweet and bitter, mixed together, and every day we do our best to side with hope, live with Love, and choose joy.

He is completely trustworthy. He is perfectly reliable, able to foresee solutions to complex crises, able to maximize resources, and willing to take the back seat. Over and over again.

Since he agreed to take on the role of stepfather more than two decades ago, he accepted never being in the spotlight but always being the foundation, the back stop, the pillar.

He places a high price on fun and has over the years tried to carve out family adventures and daily silliness to lighten the heaviness of routine life. He has a desire to make dreams come true if possible, and he is painfully aware of how quickly time slips through our grasp. Sometimes it breaks my heart to watch him fight against the elements. It makes me want to protect him, for all the protecting he does.

His paternal instincts reach far beyond our home. Animals are always the first to enjoy his gifts. Then children in need. Children of friends. Employees and their children. Strangers. If someone crosses his path and activates his sense of guardianship, then nothing can stop him. I love this. I love that he is fulfilled by meeting the most fundamental needs in others.

((scarlett resting near the earliest daffodils))

I hope that in time his heart heals from these last several years’ shocks and injuries. I hope he begins to see his private fatherly investments yielding beauty and growth and absolute joy. I know he misses his dad. I know he misses Jocelyn. I know he loves every minute he gets with Jessica but wants something more. I know he wonders about other family relationships but keeps a light touch. I did not expect fatherhood at this stage in life to be so fraught with stormy emotions. But gosh it is. Fatherhood bears the weight of so much in this world. And it is embattled. Challenged. Watered down. Our best men are asked to do more and more with less and less acknowledgment and support.

Happy Father’s Day to the man who has more than earned celebration. May your resources be refilled. May your hope be renewed. May your own dreams come into focus and then come true. I love you always now and forever.

God knows everything
XOXOXO