Category — A World of Family

It’s not the easiest thing to recap the adventures of a week. I’ll try.

We were staying with some friends outside of Sacramento. It’s the coolest thing when you know people for years and years and you have two little girl babies who are only three weeks apart, and one thing, you’re at a Mother’s Day party with your tiny newborns, sleepless and exhausted and happy, and next thing you know…

Bam!

They’re six! And that means dressing alike in any way they can, as in the photo above and…

and

It even includes water wings. But that water was a little cold for my kids who are used to the Arabian Sea.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Our hosts did an excellent job of showing us around, which is no easy feat, since sometimes hosting us feels like this:

We stayed in Chrys’s studio. She’s a magnificent artist, so every night it was sort of like going to sleep in a beautiful dream world and my dreams were filled with charcoals and oils.  Her site is here. (On the left is a grid and the fifth painting from the top on the left hand side is called Transfiguration. That’s my favorite, though they’re all beautiful.)

This is Jacob. He drives this crazy thing:

Sometimes with kayaks.

We all went to the lake nearby. Oh golly, the fun!

It was hot in Sacramento.

Kid A did some kayaking while anchored by a rope that Jacob was holding. It was pretty cool for him. YaYa went out the same way, and Leafy went on Chrys’s lap. Chrys and I took the kayaks out and saw mud swallows under the bridge on the columns, a hundred feet up. Between the swallows and the glimmering sparks of the light on the water on the way back, it was heavenly. I need a kayak.

These boys watched very seriously.

Our friends have made this wonderland of strawberry plants and a veggie garden and ridiculously fragrant herb garden, as well as bunnies and chickens and turkeys, all in their backyard. The girls played with the bunnies, and Kid A helped his friend feed the animals every day.

All in all we managed to keep cool and have a lot of fun.

Jacob and Chinua also put skins on drums and spent a lot of time playing them.  It was a beautiful time. I’m very thankful.

A word from Leafy:

“What if Star Wars was really Animal Star Wars and Darth Vader was Darth Camel?” (He stares off, thinking.) “And Luke Skywalker was Luke Puppy?”

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I hear that all of the money for the truck was raised, Hallelujah. Perhaps some of you donated without letting us know. Thank you.

I’m glad for those kids. I’m sure they can use every blessing they can get.

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I’m back and feeling refreshed. Ready for the long haul. I’ve been thinking about gypsies. Real ones. The kids and I have been reading about them.

We’ve been traveling from home to home, welcome everywhere we go, loved, welcomed with open arms.

But imagine being a traveling family and not being welcome. Being reviled. Looked down upon.

It gives me a sense of perspective.

(Photo of Gypsy Woman by Chinua)

And Mayhem won!

Thanks to the nine of you who donated. Mayhem, I’ll email you soon about the necklace and getting your address.

And now, I’m off. I’ve once again come to the end of my resilience, and I need some time to process. It is all too much. My only home (house) is halfway across the world. I saw a raintree the other day and cried. I love everything around me, but I’m afraid to attach to it.

In short, I’m everything I warn myself against. I’m no longer able to take my own advice.

I’m taking a day of solitude. (Much-needed.)

I love you guys. (I’m a little emotional.)

xo- Rae

UPDATE: Link fixed

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On this beautiful morning (soon to be afternoon) I wanted to draw your attention to a very worthy cause.

My dear friends (I have written about them before) have taken on the job of helping a big ol family thrive, in Thailand.

It is not an ordinary family. There are forty children, for one thing, who have lost their parents and survived the ceaseless (and pointless) acts of violence toward their people groups by the government of Burma. (The same government that has slaughtered their parents.)

A family of survivors, young children who were rescued by a man named Chala, who has undertaken the life work of giving them a home. You can imagine how stretched a budget is with forty children in the house. And I can assure you (having a first hand account of the simplicity of life in a village in Thailand) that they make do with a lot less that we have.

Right now they have a very simple need: a truck.  A vehicle of their own to drive the kids to school, to get them to medical care if it is needed, to do all the various small things that make life just a little beyond survival. One of the kids was hit by a motorcycle on his way to school, walking down the treacherous highway that they need to walk along every day.

So there you are. We need to put money together to help buy these kids a truck. I know that my readers are already a giving, conscious type of people, and I’m hoping we can stretch a little more to get all the rest of the money together for this truck. They need $6000, and at last count they were a little over halfway there.

(Updated link. To give, visit this post and click on the Donate Button embedded in the post.)

One last thing, after you donate, pop back over here and leave a comment. I’m going to give away a handmade necklace with a Thai silver pendant to one randomly selected donor. Alright?

(I don’t have a photo, because I haven’t made the necklace yet.  If you are the winner you can customize the length.)

It’s amazing, in a time of various troubles that seem to pile up in a ridiculous manner, (oh, the Gulf, the GULF of Mexico, oh God help us all) to have the hope that we can put a small amount of money together to help so many children, survivors of war, kids who will grow up remembering the love that was shown them when they needed it.

The Bay Area is a little harder for me to take in than Humboldt was.  I look at the cars and wonder, “Where are you all going?” There are so many houses. Everything is big.

It’s beautiful here. We went to Muir Beach the other day and burrowed into the sand. The kids made friends and dug some big holes with people. Chinua went for a little walk around to the next cove and accidentally discovered a nude beach. Why is that man wearing no pants? he wondered, before spotting another dozen people with no pants.

The strange thing about staying in this house with our friends is that the last time we did this, their kids were our kids age, and ours were either babies or not even thought of yet. Then they moved overseas and rented this house out.  And we moved overseas later, and in the meantime, they came back.

Now we are back here together.  They have teenagers and we have young kids. I remember trying to stay out of my friend’s hair while she did school in the morning with her kids. Now they are in the local middle school, and I’m the one at the table, homeschooling. At the table beside the window that looks out on the lovely valley with all the houses.

The oldest of their kids turned eighteen yesterday. We had a party and I volunteered to make Indian food. Another old friend came by who is probably the best cook that I have ever met, and she assisted me in making chapattis.  I joked that I’d come up in the world, having her as my assistant. It was fun.  It felt like home, like Goa with all the food on the rooftop.

I’m working on necklaces.  I hope to have a bunch more in the shop by Wednesday.  It’s so lovely to have handwork to do.  I sit and oversee Math and make knots, thread beads, play with tangible things. In the early morning I play with intangibles, the world of words, trying to put what I see in my head down on paper.

Making necklaces is a more reassuring practice, but I guess craftwork and writing go hand in hand.

We just dropped into the Bay Area last night, after a teary day of driving. The sky was crying also, great buckets of grey tears, and that may have had something to do with my mood.  And it may have been leaving the ranch. And it may have been coming back to a place of such beauty in my life, as well as such pain.

Some of the most precious and most sorrowful things of my life have happened here.

We are with friends in Marin County. We have not yet crossed the bridge. (We will when we come to it- Oh sweet Lord, a pun on my blog!) We woke up to the sun and are carving into the day slowly.

As for the necklaces, you sweet people, I love you! Thanks for the sold out message!

I have enough of the lovely coral pieces to make one or two more of those, which I will put up when I make them.  And I have many beautiful stones.  I’ll let you know when new designs are in the store.

The house we’re in now is one of the first places we stayed when we were newly married, and also one of the first places that Kid A visited when he was a little freshie, just out of the womb. What memories. I will sip them slowly, and with hope. There are so many lovely things ahead.

(This photo is unrelated to the post: just a beautiful oak tree here on the ranch.)

Yesterday was adventurous, and not always deliberately so.

We dragged ourselves out of the house, because it was sunny.  Or rather, we leaped out of the house, beaming, but rather later than we planned. We drove through forests and fields, exclaiming over the wildflowers. It never gets tiring to us, we are easy to please.  We filled up at a tiny little gas station, in a cute little town, planning to drive the hour and a half to Shelter Cove.

When we stopped at the grocery store, we saw an old friend in the parking lot. It’s always nice to see an old friend in the parking lot!  She pointed out that our tire was getting low.  It has a slow leak. Mmmm hmmm! we said, and then headed into the store to stand in the chip aisle for about an hour, gaping over the 800 brands and styles of chip. How does one choose? And then another old friend found us there, and gave us big hugs.  And so we invited her to the coast with us. She said that maybe she’d meet us later.

I don’t know what happened in that grocery store. It was like a vortex.  It felt like we had been there for our whole lives. It felt like one minute we were dipping our toe in the world of food products, and the next we were emerging from a sludgy pool of time waste, gasping and spluttering. I know that I spent far too many minutes staring vacantly at price labels. Part of the problem is that, Post-India, I still don’t understand money. What is a dollar, exactly? What does it represent? When I look at something that costs $3.00, for instance, I think with excitement, “Well, I have three dollars!  I have three dollars right here in my wallet!” And then I buy it. But was it a good price? I may never know.

We did leave, eventually, with bread, hummus, swiss cheese, pickles, salami, and crisp, hard apples.

And promptly forgot about the tire.

Which meant… that we drove twenty minutes down a remote road and then had to fill it with our little emergency tire inflater thing, that you plug into your cigarette lighter.  (I didn’t even know that we had a tire inflater thing!) The only problem was that our cigarette lighter doesn’t work. Fortunately, a sweet woman was waiting in her car for her grandson to get off the school bus. And she was more than kind. We used her cigarette lighter and chatted for a while. The kids scrambled up and down the hill, grabbing onto trees and digging in piles of dirt and pine needles.

With a full tire, we were back on the road.  We drove up hills and down hill, curving around, and then back around the other way. Suddenly, I realized that my brakes weren’t exactly working.  I leaned on them with all my weight and slowed down enough to pull off the road. I put the van in park and pulled the emergency brake. Immediately, smoke was billowing out of the wheel wells. There was no fire, but they were hot. I burned them. I’m very sorry.

We let the brakes cool, hoping that they would work again. We inspected the flowering tree by the roadside, which I thought was purple. YaYa disagreed. She thought it was blue. In reality, it was probably periwinkle.

We peered at wild irises. Chinua taught the kids to throw stones so they could hit a knot in a tree. I tried to meditate. I prayed. I thanked God for the view and for being able to stop, and for my family.

Eventually, eventually… we were ready to go again. The brakes worked fine.

Our friend had passed us and probably wondered what under heaven was taking us so long, but she stopped and talked to us and we decided to follow her to a spot she knew of.

A spot where the waves crashed wildly, in a frenzy. In a mad, uninhibited, orchestra of frenzy. It was very soothing.

We climbed on top of a very big rock, and she told me she’d been sitting on that very spot when the recent large Humboldt earthquake had occurred. I thought that was crazy, to be sitting on a piece of rock at the ocean when the earth starts shaking? Wow. I mean, if you’re going to be anywhere when there’s this shaking, this dog-pick-you-up and toss you back and forth shaking, maybe the line between earth and sea is the place to be.

We hung out for a few hours. We ate our picnic. We talked. The kids ran around and Solo ended up wading through very cold water.  I pulled his socks off and rubbed his little feet. We decided that it was time to go. It was getting close to sunset.

And we drove home, our friend following us, just in case our tire tried anything sneaky on us again. And we made it back to the ranch, ready for bed and sleep and the absence of dreams of going down hills with no brakes.

(Updated to add: the tire is fixed!  And my camera is found! Two good endings.)

Our animal lover, YaYa, has been in bliss.  The boys have also been in bliss. YaYa is animal-crazy, the boys, in comparison, are only animal-happy, but they all have been having a great time.

(A friend emailed me today, encouraging me to take all the goodness and kindness from family and friends as treasures into my heart, storing them well.  I thought that phrase, storing them well, is so exactly representative of what I have been doing.  Storing up rest, and ease, and peace. The kids are storing up on pet love.  It’s a far cry from the beach dogs of Goa.)

YaYa, getting her horse ready for riding.  She’s an industrious little brusher. Charlie is an elderly horse, very gentle, very slow.  Good for kids. Sadly, he’s getting to the end of his life.

Tj readjusting YaYa’s helmet.That’s Johanna, in the background.  She’s Tj and Mark’s lovely new daughter-in-law.  She and Eric live here on the ranch, in a cabin a few miles away, and she and Tj have been wonderful about giving the kids riding lessons.

At first, Johanna led Charlie.

Then Tj gave YaYa a riding lesson in the arena.  She’s concentrating pretty hard.

Oh, just look at her!

So cute.  I just want to squeeze her.  She rode back to the barn on her own. (With us close by.)

Kid A also did some riding, and got his own lesson. He looks handsome on his horse.

And Leafy! Leafy turned into a warrior. Charlie was led around the yard with the warrior on his back.

We’ve also been working on schoolwork while sitting in the sun.  We need to take every opportunity to get the last books read from last year’s curriculum, because the new one is coming soon.  But the kids are definitely getting a well-rounded education.

I’ve also been making necklaces, which I’ll be putting up on Etsy. I was looking for some jewelry to sell, when I was in Bangkok, something to help with the cost of traveling, and I realized that I wasn’t crazy about anything that I was seeing.  I was crazy about the stones and beads I saw, however.

So I’ve been making some stuff.

I miss India, also. There is always a feeling of immense blessing and happiness over being here, and just underneath, a thread of longing for my little house in the village, for lunchtime on the roof. For crowds and dusty hot days and severe, staring faces. But here we have grass and mild breezes and animals to love. Friends and dinnertime around the table. So the longing is just that little thread, put away until it will be time to go back. It is the traveler’s curse, I think. The little thread of longing that weaves through everything.

What better way to celebrate a birthday than with a loaf of bread (which is meant to be a portrait of your face) made by your kids (with help) and a vase full of lilacs?

Add Tj’s spaghetti and meatballs, bluegrass music played by your friends, a serenade by your husband, and lots of quiet talks, and you have a beautiful birthday dinner.

Thanks for all your good wishes!

A day outside in the fragrance of leaves and mud, fir needles and warm grasses.  We reached the top and sat in the sun.  Chinua sang the Sound of Music. We were outside together, walking and talking, heading upward until it was time to clamber back down and drink the iced coffees that Candace had packed. Carrots and hummus, tortilla chips and salsa.  I may be in heaven.

I love this reconnection with old friends.  We have seen each other’s children born and growing up. Candace told me that she is so used to me being pregnant that she kept feeling that she needed to check to see if I was alright, on the hill. We sang at their wedding.

This is beautiful.

S