rewinding a bit

oh goodness, life is just hurtling along.

this morning as i was attempting (and failing) to sleep just a bit longer {failing because as of 6 am a wide-awake 3 year old had hijacked the other side of the bed and was forcibly sharing my pillow}, i thought about how full the last month or so has been. and the month before that. and so on...

somehow the days pass so much more quickly than i have time to post these days. so, a little bit of a rewind over the last month, starting with our pre-emptive mother's day celebration. matt planned a day full of fun on friday of mother's day weekend, since we celebrated his mom on saturday and my mom on sunday. he had already spoiled me with a pretty letterpress card every day that week. it was a busy weekend! my favorite is when he makes all the plans and i get to just go along for the ride...

we hoped into the car for our secret adventure,

and true to matt form, 

i never could've guessed how our day would unfold:

 the tow reasons i get to celebrate mother's day in the first place

we started out in our own city...matt pulled over at a random industrial looking building that

surprise! houses a vietnamese bakery. 

{driving up to it, it reminded me of when i was in grad school; our grad studios were in an industrial warehouse full of different businesses. on the floor above my studio there was a bakery that made muffins to be packaged up and sold at different places (like trader joe's.) there was no signage, just a big open industrial looking space with racks and racks of muffins cooling and mixers the size of a smart car. if you wandered in with a little cash (i think it was $1.50) and a hungry look on your face, someone in an apron would come over and make the trade-your cash for a black market muffin. 

but i digress...}

 i stayed in the car with the girls and matt emerged with a bag full of massive croissants 

 notice, the croissant is larger than my hand.

 breakfast in hand, we drove to our first destination...

an hour or so later we pulled up to

a goat farm!

why would matt think i'd want to go to a goat farm?

because i love love love goat cheese, 

and at this awesome spot

you can sample tons of goat cheese. 

pretty much my heaven.

 these little snuggly goats are only 4 days old!

 m sneaking a peek at the baby goats

 ruby was a little cold

 look at that little smile.

 her toothless grin kills me

 ruby takes a turn watching the baby goats

 there are a couple of llamas at the farm too

the girls played pretend with the wooden kid sized dining set while i went inside and sampled lots of goat cheese:

 (via)

 after loading up on goat cheese, we headed into the town of pescadero where we window shopped & went to duarte's for some lunch & a piece of their famous pie

we accidentally ate all the pie before i could get a picture

with full bellies, we piled into the car and headed home with a stop off in half moon bay to drop in on the store that m's teacher and her husband own and then back to oakland for naptime!

matt's parents arrived that afternoon, so we had babysitters for a night out!

matt gave me a little mother's day gift of cuteness that i could wear for our dinner out -

(cute, right? i'd admired them on my friend jennifer, whose nice husband got them for her, 

and matt tracked them down with her help.)

once the girls were down, we headed out to a surprise location for dinner!

matt picked plum,

a newish oakland restaurant that stays open super late.

we realized it was the first time we'd been out just the two of us in a very long time; 

i loved it.

(via)

(via)

we sat right here, at the bar, and got to watch them prepare all of the food.

the food was all so delicate and intentional and pretty.

(although some dishes were better than others)

our favorite part?

the desserts-they were amazing.

over dinner matt had me share the ways i think i'm a good mom,

so it was fun to think about the things i love about mothering my girls.

all in all it was a fabulous day,

followed up by a little actual mother's day celebrating with a movie on sunday night!

(we saw the movie win win, which was great)

hooray for treats, goats, adventures, shoes, yummy food, and most of all, 

hooray for my little family that i love from here to the sky.

sneak peek at my newest mother's day card!

yesterday i got samples of my new mother's day card! i always have a hard time finding a good mother's day card for someone special who isn't my mom but who i still want to honor and treat on mother's day. 

this card is available wherever papyrus cards are sold and at independent retailers nationwide.

go buy one for that kind-of-like-a-mom-to-you-who-really-deserves-some-recognition in your life!

also loving

lots of small moments that make a whole lot of wonderful:

time celebrating with friends

a. our newly painted black bathroom. love. love. love the black.

b. final preggy belly moments

(here is one of my last attempts to document this pregnancy with more than 3 photos)

my cute niece sadie fern.

6 months of cuddly, smiley babyness.

(being held here by my brother aaron's super awesome girlfriend sarah)

my first handmade mother's day present from little m

these beautiful anemones from matt to me as a pre-mother's day bouquet

the amazing team of friends and family who love on my daughter

(here are a few of them..my sister becca, my brother aaron, and matt's sister chrissy)

this practical & also cute basket of housewarming treats from my mom-in-law,

chock full of my very favorite housecleaning products, mrs. meyers

these crazy stunning amaryllis from my mom-in-law's garden.

so red.

so lovely.

last but not least, strawberry season.

oh strawberries,

how i adore you.

i could eat you all the day long.

(my mom made TWO strawberry pies for mother's day that just ruined me:

a strawberry rhubarb and a fresh strawberry.

delicious.

i will never be as good of a baker as my mom.)

how about you?

any small but beautiful moments in your life lately?

the best mother's day present possible

for months, i have been trying to get little m to say "mommy."

but no, sweet thing calls me "ma".

she also calls my mom and matt's mom ma. that's right, we are all ma.

meanwhile, matt is daddy or sometimes daddy-oh (yes, seriously). she says all sorts of two syllable names, even three syllable ones: micah, cameron, kalia, becca, cassandra, etc etc.

but i have just been "ma."

i mean, i am the one who carried her in my body and gave (painful) birth to her-

i figured i could at least get that second syllable,

or be differentiated from the rest of the pack in some way.

it didn't seem like that much to ask in light of all the other

(may i add slightly less important) names she says...

for example, the name of the contractor working on our house,

who has been in her life all of two weeks.

just saying.

i asked sharon, her therapist at school, to work on it with her.

but to no avail.

no matter what sneaky tricks i tried, i was still just ma, lumped in with the grandmas.

which is all fine and good of course,

but i had it stuck in my head that i wanted that second syllable.

(silly, i know.)

on sunday, matt taught m an adapted version of a song we sing at school called "special, special family;" he changed it to "special, special mommy" and it was my mother's day present from little m.

except that of course when the time came to sing it to me, she refused.

not a single note or stanza.

instead, out of the blue she shouted, "MOMMY!"

i stopped and cheered (literally),

"you called me mommy!!!!!!!"

and my heart did a flip flop.

it was the best mother's day gift ever.

and since then, all week long, i have been mommy.

not ma.

mommy.

she's screamed it, whispered it, sung it, stated it.

mommy.

in fact, yesterday at target, (when i was standing all of two feet from her)

she cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted at the top of her lungs,

"MOMMY! MOMMY!"

(and to add on to the gloriousness,

she has marched around the house singing the special, special mommy song,

which pretty much melts my heart every time)

love.

her.

(ps i give matt full credit for somehow getting her to say mommy. 100%.)

(happy mother's day)

last year i wrote this about the gift that is all the different sorts of moms in our lives. i read it again this morning and another year into being a mom it seemed even more true to me.

i am so thankful for the moms in my life. i am so thankful that i get to be a mom.

to honor my own amazing mom today,

a few of the things she's taught me along the way:

• live with integrity, even when it costs you
• it isn't called getting lost - it's called "we're going on an adventure"
• at the end of the day, it's more important to spend an extra few minutes with your children than it is to make sure your kitchen is spotless
• tell your kids how much you love being their mom, and how glad you are that they are in your family
• remember that your children are individuals - that means loving, disciplining, supporting, and interacting with each one according to who they are as unique human beings
• if you love deeply, you'll grieve deeply too.
• you don't have to follow a recipe exactly. (in fact, you don't need to follow a recipe at all to make some pretty delicious food.)
• the end of summer vacation is the worst time of the year, because that's when your kids have to go back to school.
• pray for your children & pray with your children
• stand by your convictions, even when it embarrasses your kids
• hug & snuggle your kids. comfort them. delight in them. laugh & cry with them.
• treat other people as if they are a part of your family-you'll end up with a whole lot of extra adopted children along the way
• silliness is an essential ingredient in being a good mom

happy mother's day!

(sneak peek)

been working like crazy

here are a couple of quick peeks

of cards in the very beginning stages

the rest was mailed off yesterday

(father's day and graduation for next year)

so you'll have to wait 

until it's in the store!

or instead of waiting an entire year, buy one of my mother's day cards that is out now!

here are a couple you can buy you can buy wherever papyrus cards are sold or at independent retailers nationwide.: like this one or this one , 

two of my favorite mother's day cards i've done.

these are my people

(mother's day weekend was full and busy)

grateful for all of the mamas, motherly figures, and mommys-to-be in my world.

matt spoiled me with gifts that remind me how very well he knows me, 

like a paper doll book i had as a child, so i could share it with my girls, 

some of my favorite treats, 

a trip to the most amazing succulent store in san francisco, 

a haircut, an afternoon to myself, and other thoughtful gestures.

late on sunday afternoon, we went to lake merritt and played.

some of my very favorite moments in the whole weekend, 

even though all we did was hang out on the grass.

i love being a mama.

i love these girls.

i love that every day holds something new & unknown.

it is bittersweet watching these little humans grow up. 

i want to squeeze all of the wonderful out of every day 

but then that means a new day comes and faster than you would think, 

that stage has passed and these little ones are just a bit bigger.

(don't get me wrong- some days i am more than ready for a new day to dawn)

(happy)

Memphis on my Mind

Day 5: Memphis 

About ten years ago, just before I went to grad school and after Matt finished seminary, we drove across the United States. Our first leg took us from California along the Northern part of the United States to New Jersey in the Fall. A few months later, our drive back home was from Philadelphia to California and we drove through the South and then Southwest. Memphis was one of the cities we drove through, but at the time we passed through the National Civil Rights Museum and Lorraine Motel were closed to visitors, so instead we went to Graceland! (Yes, really.) This time we skipped Elvis' eternal flame and the over-the-top-at-the-time decor. 

After such an intense previous day, we needed some down time, so Matt headed to the amazing breakfast spot downstairs from our mediocre and kind of weird hotel/apartment and I blogged a bit. We hoped to avoid the crowds, so by noon we went to spend the bulk of the day visiting the National Civil Rights Museum, connected to the Lorraine Motel where Dr. King was assassinated. 

The motel hasn't been a working motel for a very long time, and the entire edifice acts as a memorial. 

Our friend Jeff had told us to allot plenty of time to the museum, and we ended up spending four hours there! It was easily one of the best museums I've ever been to, and even though there was overlap in historical content, stories and artifacts with many of the places we'd already visited it was still incredibly moving. As a white American I know about the civil rights movement in generalities with knowledge of a few key people, but hearing about these stories and specifics repeatedly in a week, I realized how little I truly have embedded in my long term memory. Good to read and re-read and tell and retell. 

I walked through this museum and took 8 billion pictures, but I will spare you most of them. Suffice it to say, it is worth a trip. Here are a few snippets from our four! hours of walking through the museum.

I loved this quote:

The area for listening to every day people's oral histories from the Jim Crow era was simultaneously touching and disturbing.

There was an entire exhibit committed to students and activists who worked from equality in the school system. Students of all ages sacrificed their safety and well-being to integrate schools. Teachers pushed against the status quo with ongoing professional repercussions. Families and communities gave rides, physical and emotional support to the children who put themselves in harms way to go to schools. 

I loved the below letter from Grace Lorch, a white mother who was active in the civil rights movement with her husband Lee. Upon moving to Little Rock, she wrote a letter to the local school superintendent asking that her daughter eleven-year-old Alice be allowed to attend the neighborhood school: "Since we live at 1801 High Street, located in a Negro neighborhood, this would be a Negro school," she wrote, adding that it "might also provide a useful and unobtrusive example of benefit to the process of integrating Little Rock schools." The school district denied the Lorch's request. The Lorch's went on to be involved with integration in Little Rock and helped escort the Little Rock Nine (who integrated the high school).

Also loved the emphasis on recognizing the hundreds of anonymous, hardworking and brave women who made the Montgomery Bus boycott successful. 

This photo is from the Highlander School, an integrated training school in Tennessee. Rosa Parks is on the left next to Septima Clark, Myles Horton, and MLK Jr is at the end. This photo (among others) was distributed as anti-civil-rights propaganda. 

The interior of a bus similar to the one Rosa Parks was sitting on, soon after she went to study at the Highlander School, when she refused to get up and move for a white passenger, which sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

An exhibit honoring the lunch counter sit-ins. 

This quote brought tears to my eyes:

Clara Luper (her pic is below) was a high school teacher in Oklahoma City, and she was instrumental in desegregating lunch counters in Oklahoma. She was arrested TWENTY SIX times!

My girls have a wonderful children's book about the Green Book (which I highly recommend), so I wanted to take a picture for them of an actual green book. The Green Book was published from 1936-1966 as a travel guide for African Americans. "African American travelers faced a variety of dangers and inconveniences, such as white-owned businesses refusing to serve them or repair their vehicles, being refused accommodation or food by white-owned hotels, and threats of physical violence and forcible expulsion from whites-only "sundown towns". New York mailman and travel agent Victor H. Green published The Negro Motorist Green Book to tackle such problems and "to give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trip more enjoyable."^[2]"

Powerful words and a brave woman:

A reproduction of the Greyhound bus full of Freedom Riders that was burned near Anniston, Alabama on Mother's day in 1961. 
I'm including this excerpt from Wikipedia summarizing this event:
"The Birmingham, Alabama, Police Commissioner, Bull Connor, together with Police Sergeant Tom Cook (an avid Ku Klux Klan supporter), organized violence against the Freedom Riders with local Ku Klux Klan chapters. The pair made plans to bring the Ride to an end in Alabama. They assured Gary Thomas Rowe, anFBI informer and member of Eastview Klavern #13 (the most violent Klan group in Alabama), that the mob would have fifteen minutes to attack the Freedom Riders without any arrests being made. The plan was to allow an initial assault in Anniston with a final assault taking place in Birmingham.

On May 14, Mother's Day, in Anniston, a mob of Ku Klux Klansmen, some still in church attire, attacked the first of the two buses (the Greyhound). The driver tried to leave the station, but was blocked until KKK members slashed its tires. The mob forced the crippled bus to stop several miles outside of town and then firebombed it. As the bus burned, the mob held the doors shut, intending to burn the riders to death. Sources disagree, but either an exploding fuel tank or an undercover state investigator brandishing a revolver caused the mob to retreat, and the riders escaped the bus. The mob beat the riders after they escaped the bus. Only warning shots fired into the air by highway patrolmen prevented the riders from being lynched.

That night, the hospitalized Freedom Riders, most of whom had been refused care, were removed from the hospital at 2 AM, because the staff feared the mob outside the hospital. The local civil rights leader Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth organized several cars of blacks to rescue the injured Freedom Riders in defiance of the white supremacists...

When the Trailways bus reached Anniston and pulled in at the terminal an hour after the Greyhound bus was burned, it was boarded by eight Klansmen. They beat the Freedom Riders and left them semi-conscious in the back of the bus.

When the bus arrived in Birmingham, it was attacked by a mob of KKK members aided and abetted by police under the orders of Commissioner Bull Connor. As the riders exited the bus, they were beaten by the mob with baseball bats, iron pipes and bicycle chains."

A few of the hundreds of Freedom Riders who were arrested throughout the summer of 1961:

I should have written an entire post on bada$$ women, because there were so many, including Virginia Durr, whose car was overturned and burned by a mob while she was inside of a church with others.

 From Birmingham in 1963:

From Freedom Summer in 1964, and the work in Mississippi to get blacks registered to vote, which soon extended to also teaching reading, writing and organizing.

 Images from the Black Power movement, which was emerging in the late 60's, evolving away from Kingian non-violence.

From the Sanitation Workers Strike in Memphis, which King had come to support - footage of a mass meeting projected onto one of the sanitation trucks

The museum ends outside of rooms 306 and 307, the rooms where King and his friends were staying the last night of his life.

King preached these words shortly before he was killed. Powerful. 

 

This patch of cement where King fell after being shot has been cut out and replaced, as there was a great deal of blood staining the concrete.

Across the street from the museum you are able to look through the window from where it's believed the shooter shot at King, killing him. It's quite surreal. That wing of the museum is entirely made up of exhibits regarding the theories about King's assassination. We kind of walked through that area without spending much time on it, although it is really detailed.

Heartbreaking words from King's father:

The next morning we drove to Mason Temple, where King preached his last sermon- I've Been to the Mountaintop. 



Today Mason Temple isn't in a great part of town, which we noticed in many of the areas we visited. Decades of racism, poverty and a lack of economic opportunity have taken their toll in these neighborhoods. I wondered so many times what it means today, in 2015, to shift that. I don't have the answers. But despite the economic depression that was so prevalent in many of the areas we drove through, and that is throughout my own city, I was challenged to keep thinking about these disparities and injustices. It isn't hard to see them, but it's hard to figure out how to address them. I'll end this post with an excerpt from King's last speech at the Mason Temple, just before he was shot and killed. 



"Now, let me say as I move to my conclusion that we've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We've got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. If it means leaving work, if it means leaving school -- be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.
Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus, and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters of life. At points he wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew and throw him off base....
Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a priest passed by on the other side. They didn't stop to help him. And finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. But he got down with him, administered first aid, and helped the man in need. Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the "I" into the "thou," and to be concerned about his brother....

That's the question before you tonight. Not, "If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job. Not, "If I stop to help the sanitation workers what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?" The question is not, "If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?" The question is, "If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?" That's the question.

Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you....

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.
And I don't mind.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
And so I'm happy, tonight.
I'm not worried about anything.
I'm not fearing any man!
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!"

 

To being as concerned about our brothers and sisters as we are about ourselves.