The Round-Tower

Blogging about this trip to Minnesota is proving to be almost as difficult as blogging about our Initiation into the Catholic Church… and in a way I suppose I understand why.  All but one of the people we met this past week were ’strangers’.  I had talked to a few of them on the Sonlight forums, but had never spoken to them in real life, or met them or their spouses or their children.  In fact, I spoke to the wife of the couple I stayed with for the first time two hours before arriving on Monday.  So to find ourselves on the way home on Wednesday feeling as if we’d been to a family reunion was a bit of a surreal experience.  In fact, it felt like a family reunion of the kind we’ll have when our time in the Shadowlands is over and we are at long last Home.  Therefore it is not only surreal but of a type of joy and contentment to which words do not come easily.

Most of the time, we were 5 adults (Cherie in WI and her dh, Touchstone and Mamadala, and myself) and 13 children (Cherie’s 5, Mamadala’s 4 - not counting those two precious twins on the way, and my 4) but when Rachel44 came over with her family we maxed out at 7 adults and 15 children from age 5 to 14. The children hit it off in minutes. Touchstone spent hours dragging them around the lake on a huge 6 kid tube while the parents took turns giving individual rides to their kids on the jetski’s.  They played games of all kinds, swam in the lake, read books together, went to the Zoo, and any number of other activities.  The adults got to play with the kids, sit and visit with each other, feed the children, and cruise the forums via our laptops from the same kitchen table. Fabulous fun, but woven were the ties that bind and new friends of all ages were made old. When we got ready to leave, all the girls exchanged addresses and promises to write amid hugs and tears. The journey home continued the fun in a somewhat limited fashion via the telling and remembering of many stories, some by kids on grown ups!

Arriving home, we brought with us some of that peace and contentment… and new energy for yet another leg of the journey. Not only that, but those friendships from the forums have a real life dimension to them now that enriches the forum interaction. These friendships in the forums have ’sharpened as iron’ and in person they have done that and more.  To be accepted as one is and wordlessly encouraged to strive ever more to be more like the Lord we all love…  What a precious gift in friends… such a thing is rare indeed, and here, in one fell swoop, are many such ones. 

In the end, I still don’t feel I’ve done the trip justice.  Skirted around it, touched on it a bit, but in the end it defies description… as surely as all those moments when heaven and earth seem to draw close enough to give us vision into the Peaceable Kingdom.

Micah (daughter #2) has decided that she is ready to wax her eyebrows for the first time. Do you know how hard it is to successfully wax a giggling eyebrow?

I’m not ready…

All of which I found amusing until I realized that this COULD’VE happened on a trip planned in the not too distant future, worse still, a trip to Chicago itself for a mother/daughter weekend… I can just imagine the Sonlighter friends reaction… Yeah we used to meet homeschooler’s from the forums until this one car thief came to visit and the cops showed up at our house…

I wish with all my heart, that I had written this… but alas, I did not… that said, I would like to share it anyway! 

I think I’ll print it and tape it to the refrigerator… he he he…

Librarians are unsung heroes.  We have a home library, it has taken years of work to catalog and maintain, not to mention new acquisitions… and the process has given me an appreciation for Librarians unlike almost any other profession.  The office of Librarian must be one of the most anal-retentive jobs on the face of the earth, and also the most masochistic.  After all, so much work and effort to achieve and maintain order… and then they OPEN THE DOORS and LET US IN!  How they manage to not SNARL at the NERVE of the intrepid souls who touch the sacred shelves is beyond me, ok, that’s a lie, snarling I’d understand… it’s the RESTRAINT of not KILLING US that boggles the mind… 

Those who know me best are laughing by now.  They know what brought this on… Yes, I have been cataloging books once again in preparation for the new school term, always necessary before planning the lessons for said term.  Once cataloged, the books must be shelved and as they are NEW, room  must be made on already groaning bookcases for the new arrivals. Shelving books in our home library is not unlike walking into a child’s room for the first time in six months.  The disorder apparent at first glance is deceptive, greater evil is afoot beneath the sheen of disarray and if it is not yet radioactive, it is not for lack of effort. For the bookcases, this translates into books shelved improperly… adults in the juvenile section, 550’s in the 590’s - or vice versa, books pushed behind others so as to be invisible when searching spines… all manner of evil to the librarians eye, and all done by those most HELPFUL of  creatures… the children. 

One of those children made the mistake of entering the Lair of the Librarian while she was at work. The Librarian (me) barked a request of intent to said child… and as this was the ELDEST child who’s self-preservation instinct is the more reliable, said child stopped cold in it’s tracks and carefully swivelled it’s eyes round to the Librarian and cautiously said, “I was going to get a book?” with the proper inquisitive tone.  The face of the Librarian must have given away the carnivorous desires lurking deep within, because the look on said child’s face instantly changed and it said, “but I really don’t need to do that right now!” At which the beast within the Librarian grumbled a bit over the lost meal, as it watched said child back slowly away from the books… and if that beast muttered something along the lines of ‘my precious’… well, what Librarian would blame it?

In a few days, when the Librarian has finished the job and has exchanged the Librarian hat for the one which says Teacher, when the books currently lurking forgotten in the recesses of the house have been read and reread by… those creatures… and the Teacher is once again lost in the planning stages of the next school term, the children will again enter the Lair of the (now dormant) Librarian and gleefully pillage the shelves for stories and other lore for yet another term in safety under the more benevolent eye of Teacher or Mom… but the Librarian only slumbers and who knows when she will awake…