It’s the first day of school! This morning we cast aside our lazy summer routine and got up early to get to class at 8:10 a.m. This is my handsome eighth-grader and my charming-but-not-the-least-bit-enthusiastic third-grader. They have had 94 days off for summer and it’s time to go back to school!

Let’s just say that again, shall we?

94 days off.

94.

Ninety-four.

Ninety-four is so many days off I don’t even know how to spell ninety.

NINETY-FOUR.

94.

Days off.

In a row.

Holy moly and goddamn! I’d have to be disabled in some freakishly horrible accident to get that many days off—in a bloody row.

But. I have tried very. very. very hard NOT to complain this summer about … summer.

You might have noticed how I said very little. Because I was definitely not complaining.

I’ve been very quiet in this space over the summer, compared to other summers.

It’s partly because I have a young teen who is now quite sensitive about what I post, who wants to control his own online image. I respect his wishes, though it is hard for me to have to check with him about ever damn photo. I have had a gag rule imposed upon me by this amazing boy who has always taught me so much—about him, about the world, about myself. Who has been the source of so many invaluable lessons. Who has been my initiator into so many new experiences over the last 13 years. For years, writing about my life as a mother (as Lucas’s mother) has allowed me the opportunity to think, reflect, and process a whole maelstrom of feelings that at times have threatened to engulf me completely. Writing this blog has been at times a link to sanity, to the knowing voice that whispers deep and quietly within my soul.

But he gets to say. Because I love him. And I respect him.

And oh, my! There are so many amazing things about him that I’ve not said.

Gag. Rule.

And another thing: Sometimes you just have to curl up and form a chrysalis for a while. Go deep, rest and heal, in the hopes that something whole and amazing will emerge. I’m still waiting, quietly. Won’t say much about that. But, you know, I’m still here. Drop me a line?

Asher, well … Let’s just say that Asher has had a wonderful summer full of lots of his favorite people, and lots of his favorite self-directed activities. And, in a nutshell, he isn’t all that keen to spend his days being directed by, you know, teachers and such, who have their own plan for his time.

Now, to be fair, these rather mopey pictures were taken at 7:35 this morning. Few of us are at our strongest best at 7:35 a.m., in my opinion. This afternoon, at 12:35, I received the report that the day went well for both of them. There are new teachers and it was a pretty good day.

So.

Just so. For the first day of school.

Independence Day! = Friends, new puppies, antics, swimming, relaxing, meeting people, fireworks, neighbors, barbecued pork ribs, corn on the cob, cucs (a family specialty), rum and tonics, fresh blueberry pie, love, a bit of risk, and a whole lot of chill.

Blessed.

It’s here! Glorious Summer is here! Actually, we are now starting our second week of the boys’ summer vacation. These are days full of lovely things, like swimming and day camps,

nature walks with friends,

and family,

swimming pool horsing around,

a few runs at our river parkway, which I try to accomplish mostly in the shady areas,

some gaming with Daddy and neighborhood friends, both D&D and LOADS of Magic the Gathering,

and this. Lucas has been in a junior lifeguard camp (with three friends from school) for the last two weeks at Folsom Lake. This photo is from the tryouts day. I’ve been BLESSED by another mom, an angel who is doing most of the driving to and from camp, and so I only have photos from tryouts. The kids have been trained in CPR and choking rescue, gone river rafting, practiced water rescues, and I don’t even know what else! Their days are full of physical conditioning—running, core exercises, push ups, swimming—and these kids come home TIRED and sore. It’s great! We’re packing enormous lunches and liters of water every day to keep Lucas fueled and hydrated.

On May 3, our Waldorf school celebrated May Day. It was a perfect day. Not to hot, not overcast and cool. The community turned out to celebrate the turning seasons, schoolwork in full blossom, and the soon-to-graduate eighth-grade class. It was marvelous and inspiring, as it is every year.

(Photo by Melissa Sam Rainsford)

This year, our second graders had a part to play. They played a song on their flutes and sang, standing all in a large ring around the may pole. They were the prelude to the eighth-grade may dancers. My sweet Asher has learned to play the pentatonic flute!

I’ve said this before, but these children are breathtakingly beautiful to me.

(Photo by Melissa Sam Rainsford)

(Photo by Melissa Sam Rainsford)

They played and sang beautifully with movements to go with their songs. I’m so proud of them. You can tell some are very happy to be performing, and others hang back a bit, a little shy to be in the spotlight with the school community watching them. They are growing so fast.

(Photo by Melissa Sam Rainsford)

Honestly, I cannot get enough of this gap-tastic smile Asher has right now. It slays me every time he flashes it. I kind of hope his new tooth never comes in.

I love a boy with flowers in his hair.

The seventh grade played the music for the eighth-grade may dancers. Most were on soprano, alto, or tenor recorders, with one boy on tambourine and another teacher accompanying them on guitar. Lucas was fond of saying they had to play the same difficult, quick song 86 times. I try to remind Lucas that he can do all kinds of things I never learned to do. (My son plays piano, flute, recorder, and violin!) These kids are more impressive with each passing month. Next year, it will be their turn to don white clothes and flower crowns and dance! Be still my heart!

Alas, I had a major camera failure and didn’t get any pictures of the beautiful dancers this year. Something is wrong with my Canon, either in the battery charging process or else the camera is draining the battery rapidly. I suspect that perhaps it’s not really off when I flip the switch to turn the camera off. I need to take it to a shop to be cleaned, checked, and repaired, but that will have to wait. (I daydream often about getting a new, better camera.) My trusty phone ran out of available space too, so, these are the shots I got. C’est la vie!

Much love to these musicians of all ages, to the dancers, to their parents, and the school community, who together support this amazing festival every year. It fills me up and makes me hopeful and happy every time I see it.

My little son asked me last night, “Mama, are you going to do the path of hearts again?” And my heart grew three sizes in that moment. I’ve always tried to make the little holidays and festivals special for my family, and his asking about this little tradition shows me that he has had some memorable experiences of family celebrations in our home. I usually do all the magic-making at night or early in the morning before they wake. Tomorrow, we’ll have a special breakfast of pancakes and strawberries, I think. And I’m hoping Ian will make me a pretty steak dinner tomorrow night.

Asher’s class celebrated by exchanging valentines today. I’m so grateful to his teacher for splitting the class into groups. Asher joyfully made six valentines. If he had had to make 27 valentines, it would have been a different story. Lucas made brownies for his seventh-grade classmates.

How do you do Valentine’s Day? Here’s a few ideas for you:

• Here is a list of Valentine’s Day books I recommend for young children.
• Here are some sweet little projects you can do to celebrate with your family. They’re not too hard, I promise, or I would never have done them.
• If you have kite paper or tissue paper, you can make these Valentine Window Transparencies. Make them all weekend!

In other news, the boys are currently with their grandmother celebrating the end of the week and grandma’s dog’s birthday. (We do a lot of celebrating, I guess.) The kids have next week off. Ian’s prepping for a big conference. Lucas will play a basketball game tomorrow, and then play in a tournament next week. It’s 70 degrees today and gorgeous, and it feels entirely like SPRING.

Happy Valentine’s Day, my friends. Wherever you are and whomever you love, may you revel in the joy that connection brings. And may your heart be open to receiving all the love you inspire.

Our tree is beautiful this year. We drove up to fetch it from Apple Hill on a perfect weekend in early December. The tree farm was part of Boa Vista Orchards, where Christmas trees and apple trees still wearing some autumn colors were growing practically side by side.

The golden leaves in the orchard and the gnarly apple trunks in late afternoon sunlight were to die for.

There were a few grumbles this year à la, “Why do we have to take all this time to get a tree? Can’t we just go to the local tree lot?” Because Mama wants to, that’s why.

The hot apple donuts that came with our tree purchase made up for the inconvenience, I think. They were amazing!

And, despite our late-day start, we even got home before it was completely dark, and enjoyed this beautiful sunset as a companion on our drive down into the valley.

The boys and I enjoyed rediscovering our favorite ornaments while Ian cooked dinner for us. Thank goodness for Soma FM’s “Christmas Lounge” stream, which is our traditional decorating-the-tree soundtrack. I wonder how my kids will feel about this tradition when they’re older. I know I think back fondly on the tree-hunting trips to the mountains that I made with my family as a child.

Yes, I know Halloween was a month ago. You know, Life happened.

Lucas was Gaara from Naruto for Halloween this year. Naruto is his favorite manga these days, and he says Gaara is a really interesting and sad character. The kanji on his head is the character for “love”; poor Gaara has never known love in his life. Lucas wouldn’t smile in any photos because Gaara is never happy. Gaara carries a huge jar on his back full of magic, living sand, which helps Gaara fight. (At least that’s how I understand it.)

The kids has a Halloween dance with the seventh and eighth grades at school. It was their first dance and the guys all seemed to enjoy it a lot.

We also went trick-or-treating on the night of Halloween. Lucas found that his Gaara bag was plenty big for getting candy.

We said goodbye to Lucas this morning. He went off to school and won’t return from there until Wednesday evening. His class is in the middle of a chemistry block, and they are staying overnight on the farm to build and mind a lime kiln.

Yes, we totally had to look up “lime kiln.” Thank you, Wikipedia:

“A lime kiln is used to produce quicklime through the calcination of limestone (calcium carbonate). The chemical equation for this reaction is

CaCO3 + heat → CaO + CO2”

The experience is a recreation of lime plaster, as produced through a series of chemical transformations, known today as the lime cycle. Lime plaster has been used by humans a building material since 5000 BCE.

Lime Cycle diagram by Peter Bell

“Calcium oxide (CaO), commonly known as quicklime or burnt lime, is a widely used chemical compount. It is a white, caustic, alkaline, crystalline solid at room temperature. The broadly used term “lime” connotes calcium-containing inorganic materials, in which carbonates, oxides and hydroxides of calcium, silicon, magnesium, aluminium, and iron predominate. By contrast, “quicklime” specifically applies to the single chemical compound calcium oxide. Calcium oxide which survives processing without reacting in building products such as cement is called free lime.

Quicklime is relatively inexpensive. Both it and a chemical derivative (calcium hydroxide, of which quicklime is the base anhydride) are important commodity chemicals.”

The teacher informed us, “Today’s children have little opportunity to observe actual industrial processes. Almost everything comes magically ready-made and packaged. Nevertheless, the lime cycle studied in 7th Grade chemistry offers an opportunity for the students not only to observe an important industrial process, but to build and fire a kiln used in the process.”

So. SCIENCE! Chemistry. Construction. Fire. Campout at school. Social Arts. Collaboration. 28 seventh graders and three teachers tending a fire through the night in November. Plus a large support staff of parents. I am still amazed at the lengths to which these people will go to give our children a hands-on learning experience.

Now, Lucas is unenthusiastic about this experience. (The current phase of seventh grade seems to involve a lot less enthusiasm for everything. And lots of sighing and rolling of eyes.) He knows it will be cold and hard. He knows he will finish school on Wednesday and have to go straight into the first basketball practice of the season. He knows he will be tired. He won’t be home until dinnertime.

I know he’ll never forget it.

What an opportunity! My son is on a seventh-grade trip to the Balclutha, a tall ship moored in San Francisco Harbor that was built in 1886. They will be there about 18 hours, during which they will work on the ship. We parents were asked to write a letter to our child, as if we were living in the Age of Sail (or in the early Renaissance, which is what they really are studying right now), and the child had been gone a while at sea. Here is my letter.

Dearest Son,

It has been eight long months since we received your last letter. We take it out of our special items box every Sunday evening to read it again. We all talk about you and wonder what you are doing at sea, and we never fail to pray for your safety and well-being, morning and night.

At home, life goes on just how you probably remember it. Father wakes very early each morning to do all the heavy lifting around here. I wake in the dark and make us all a hearty breakfast. We are blessed with a full larder, thanks to Father’s hard work and sound investments. I have been enjoying being creative in the kitchen. The morning air is full of autumn’s chill now, but the days are still bright and warm. It looks to be a good harvest this year. All the farmers hereabouts go to and fro with a smile on their faces. In two weeks we will go to the harvest festival.

Your brother is the one who changes quickly. You might not recognize him now. He has grown so tall. His teacher at school tells us that he is learning his letters and plays well with the other children. How fortunate we are to be able to send our children to school! Sometimes I wonder, Son, whether you miss your carefree days at the schoolyard, learning sums and verses, and playing games with your friends. Now that you’ve gone to sea, I expect your days are full of labor and adventure.

I met a woman at the market last week, who told me that her husband, a Captain in the Navy, says that life aboard a ship is terribly frightful at times, with storms and weather beating the sailors down, day in and day out. But I wonder if there might also be times of boredom—if, perhaps, you sometimes find yourselves adrift in calm, glassy seas without a wind to blow you onward. I’m sure that able-bodied Seamen such as you and your mates still have plenty to do during such times. I beseech you, My Son, please do keep your behavior Godly and seemly, and I pray that you do not fall prey to temptations you might encounter when you anchor off the coast of some island town, where there might be vicious scoundrels and worse.

Forgive me, Son. I know you are a man now, making your way in the world using your good mind and strong body. I know you will succeed and make Father and me proud. I wait eagerly for your next letter. Please write to us to tell us that you are safe and sound. Remember that we pray to God for your safe return to us, and that, while you are away, you meet with fair winds and favorable seas.

Blessings upon you.

Sincerely,

Your Mother

First day of school, September 2, 2014. Lucas is in seventh grade now. He is handsomer, and more grown up every day. (Alack! He is 5 feet 1.25 inches tall now!) He is bracing himself for more and harder schoolwork. I think he knows the stakes are higher and more will be expected of him. I’ve seen him mature a good deal over the summer. He is ready.

Asher is starting second grade. Asher really didn’t want to go (this is the only shot he let me take in the morning before we drove to school). Asher gets a little nervous. I choose to take this sad face as evidence that he really enjoys his family time.

But he jumped right in as soon as he saw his friends, playing tag, racing up the play structure, and then horsing around in line before shaking his teacher’s hand and going into the classroom.

Asher says recess is the best thing about school. He is excited about music class, with Ms. Greenberg. “It’s so fun!” Main lesson is boring, he says (they are beginning with Form Drawing). He likes German and Spanish, but German more. He hates Eurhythmy. So basically, he’s right where I’d expect him to be. My beautiful precocious boy is right on the cusp of learning to read. He cracks this joke all the time in a silly English accent: “I can’t read!” But soon, that won’t be true any more.