Dappled, fading Japanese maple in the late afternoon sun
November sunset
Brilliant pokeweed stem in the woods
Rosehips in my garden
Sunrise over the Waldorf school’s woods
The last of the cherry leaves on the tree
Thanksgiving frost on my canas
Sunlight through the plum tree
We have a traditional celebration called Pyanepsia, which is adapted from an ancient Greek festival. It is one of my favorite holidays of the year because it brings my darlings together for an evening of community, food, and thanksgiving. It’s a festival in honor of the changing of the seasons, from the outer to the inner, from the light into the darkness.
We use heaps of bay laurel.
We feast on fine foods, bean stews, and wine.
We make candles.
This year, we dipped autumn leaves in beeswax to preserve them. Why not, when we were making candles anyway?
We make a giant communal eirisione, hung with wool and trinkets, evidence of our many blessings, in the hopes we will continue to be so blessed. Many thanks to our gracious hosts. xoxo
We have a quiet Thanksgiving Day today. Quiet enough to think a bit about what I’m grateful for.
* My beautiful sons, strong, brilliant, and hale. They are the sunlight of my days. They have transformed me.
* My loving, noble husband who takes care of all of us and brings out the real me. He is my shelter and my heart.
* My parents and Ian’s parents, for all that they are and do, and for all they helped us to become.
* My precious, clever, quirky, shining friends. They know why.
* My safe, comfortable home filled with all that I really need and lots more besides.
* My ever-hungry brain and my many hobbies, which nourish me in so many ways. I am still growing.
* My undeniable, abundant opportunities, a plethora of blessings and experiences that I’ve enjoyed all my days. I am especially grateful that we can now offer amazing opportunities to our children as they grow.
* My family members whose love and courage are so great that they do the tasks that no one else wants to do.
We are so very, very rich. I am sending out my love to all of you on this Thanksgiving Day. Blessed be.
I couldn’t be prouder of Lucas today. He was so mature, so considerate, and so well-behaved today at Nana’s funeral. He combed his hair and dressed up and everything. He had told us that he wanted to say a few words at the service. I was surprised when he actually stood to speak, as the room was packed. He was brave and sincere. Many people told us and him how much they appreciated what he said today. My heart was bursting. He was my bright light in an otherwise sad and dismal day.
Many thanks to our friends, K and J, for lending us some of J’s dress clothes for today.
Inspired by SouleMama {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
Today is a very full day. We are attending Lucas’s third-grade Eurythmy performance of The Firebird this afternoon. We are also attending a Martinmas potluck and lantern walk with Asher’s preschool this evening. Both of these events are happy and exciting. Both are dampened by my grief over Nana’s death yesterday.
Part of me would like for everything to feel normal. A part of me thinks it’s crazy to be normal—working on freelance projects, worrying about deadlines, arranging babysitting, and attending school functions—at a time like this. But, of course, life goes on.
And isn’t that a miracle?
In the midst of a busy and rich life, we pause to grieve. In the midst of a sad time, we snatch moments of elation and joy, pride and comfort to buoy us up. There is a symmetry there, a balance.
Both darkness and light.
I don’t know what to think or feel, but lighting a candle seemed right.
It hardly feels much like November, with so many recent days over 70 degrees!
Wild grape leaves in the woods near the Sacramento Waldorf School
Swan at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater in San Francisco
Lucas with the golden cherry leaves in our yard
Neighborhood tree in the morning
The blackest liquidambar leaves I’ve ever seen. The boys and I found these at Fair Oaks Park.
A fallen tree star (also liquidambar) in Asher’s hand
Scarlet dogwood berries; little black and gray birds are eating them up
A neighbor’s lawn
The crepe myrtle that hangs into my backyard.
I wrote a bit about this third-grade building project recently. I got to go to the school yesterday to take photos while the children left their hand prints in the freshly poured cement. What these three photos don’t show are the twenty-seven OTHER shining faces of Lucas’s beautiful classmates. They glow with 8- and 9-year-old vitality.
Here is the Oak Stage construction site. That big, dark tree trunk at the back is a gorgeous old oak tree. The little trunk in the middle of the stage is also an oak. At the front is the river rock moved by the third graders to make a drainage area. No symmetrical shapes, per R.S. architecture.
Here’s Lucas waiting for his turn to make his mark.
Here’s M and Lucas. This dad, Mr. C, is the lead on this project and he is graciously donating his time and expertise to make it happen. Other class parents and grandparents are volunteering every day to work on the stage, too. Ian’s there right now, enjoying his day off!
I stand here, quietly gaping. Not too close, but neither am I uninvolved in what my son is doing in school these days. I watch with eagerness, hoping for glimpses into his life away from home, where he is encountering challenges both familiar to me and also completely alien. I listen with keen interest to every morsel he brings home and chooses to share. I am talking about my son’s experience of third grade at his Waldorf school.
In past years I have describe his school and its curriculum as “magical” or “enchanting.” It still is that, but this year it has taken on a new quality—a feet-on-earth quality that is serving to ground him and build him up in confidence and competence.
I will try to illustrate what I mean.
In third grade, the children study gardening. They will do so throughout their Waldorf lower school grades, but gardening is emphasized this year in particular. They are also studying ancient Hebrew culture and also cooking. To tie all of these together, they have harvested fruits and vegetables on the school farm, made soup from the harvest, built a sukkah (hut), and celebrated the Hebrew festival of Sukkot by eating in the sukkah. They are also learning songs in Hebrew. It used to be rare for Lucas to sing for us at home songs he learned at school. Now he swells with pride to sing in Hebrew a song about beating swords into ploughshares so that nations will go to war no more and that people can grow their vines and fig trees instead, which is taken from this Bible passage:
“They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation shall not take up sword against nation, they shall never again know war.
But they shall sit every one under their vines and fig trees,
and none shall make them afraid.” (Micah 4.3-4)
Recently, they made bread in cooking class. But like the Little Red Hen, they really MADE THE BREAD. They cut down the stalks of wheat that they themselves sowed last year in second grade. Then they threshed the grain. Then they winnowed to separate the grain from the chaff. Then they ground the wheat to make flour. And only then, did they make and eat their bread.
Do you see why this boggles me?
Right now they are in the midst of a building block. This is a key element to the third-grade curriculum. Their class is going to rebuild and expand the school’s Oak Stage, an outdoor stage set in the woods on the school grounds near the American River that was getting a little too rickety. The children demolished the stage last week and together moved 8 tons of river rock! (Many hands make light work.) They poor cement tomorrow, barring rain. They will place their handprints into the foundation of the stage they are building for the school. Next week they will be measuring, sawing, hammering, building both the stage and their own skills.
In the classroom and in the kitchen (which are the same this year), they are learning about measurement, too. Tying in with their language arts study of the Old Testament and the Hebrews, they have learned how big a cubit is (debatable, but roughly the length of the forearm from elbow to tip of middle finger—about 18 inches), and that Noah’s Ark was 300 cubits long. Today they went out to the school’s field, rulers in hand, and measured out the size of the Ark, to see for themselves how big it might have been. “That’s 450 feet long, mom!” They are also learning about spans, fathoms, yards, and feet, experiencing these concepts in their own limbs.
“Firmly on the earth I stand.”
