Fifth Position

Audrey is 5!

March Teen

We didn't find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow -no, I wouldn't go so far as to say that - but we did play Pin the Tail on the Donkey and Duck, Duck, Goose, and Round and Round it Goes. And then there was the business - the inestimably serious business - of the piñata. A very, very large piñata in the shape of a white pony with hearts on its hind legs and a rainbow-colored mane. So. No leprechauns. And no pot of gold. But lots of silver platters piled high with powdered donuts and miniature red velvet cupcakes and laughing children and a dining room full of red balloons. I don't know about other people, but that is as good as a pot of gold to me.

March Teen

...is only four days away. We're getting ready to party - to Pinata Party, to be exact. And pin the tail on the donkey. I ordered red wax lips for all the girls, black mustaches for the boys, and I plan on singing a few Irish tunes while I snap photographs.

Cinderella

We made a mad/magical/marvelous trip to Disneyland last weekend, with Nanny and Ella and Kate, to celebrate their mother's birthday. After the fireworks show, the others went ahead, and it was just Audrey and I, making our way alone through the crowded park. I was still thinking about Cinderella's Castle, which had been resplendent below great popping bursts of pink and blue and white - Tinkerbell and Dumbo each took turns shooting across the sky to songs of dreams come true, sounds of merriment and exclamations of wonder. It was just about the closest thing to heaven I've seen. And watching it with Olivia's mother made me long more than ever to go there.

Audrey walked beside me, her hand in mine, wearing Evangeline's blue satin dress - the one with the full skirt, the sweetheart neckline, and the lovely tulle roses strewn across the bodice. A gift from Uncle Ry and Aunt Carrie. With her little white sweater snug around her shoulders I noticed for the first time that she looked very much like Cinderella.

When I told her so, she said, "That's what I was trying to tell you this morning!" Apparently I hadn't been listening.

"Yes, your blue dress and your white sweater - even your yellow hair - all match Cinderella."

"My yellow hair!" It was a thought that had never occurred to her. Her hand shot up to finger her braid in astonishment and then a smile of wonderment spread out across her face. "I never noticed that before," she said, very slowly and very quietly. A sudden gasp, as though she'd seen a spider. "But! But - our eyes don't match. I have brown eyes and Cinderella's eyes are blue."

"Yes, blue. Like Daddy's."

"Like Daddy's!" Another wonderful, revelatory thought. She touched her cheek. "But our skin is matching."

"Yes, you do have the same color skin."

Audrey looked at me very solemnly. "Me and Cinderella. We really have a lot in common."

"Yes," I went on, smiling, "and do you know what else you have in common?"

"What?"

"Well, you both love mice and birds. You love to talk with them and play with them."

Audrey started giggling. "Yes, we do! We do!"

"And do you know what else?" I was thinking of the little family slogan that Dutch has begun to teach the girls, reciting it whenever they begin to grouse and shrink from cleaning up one of their messes. "We're Bakers," he says. "We work hard, we work fast, and we don't mess around!" Parroting him really does help to revive their working spirits, so I told Audrey: "Cinderella is just like you because she works hard, she works fast, and whenever her stepmother gives her an order she doesn't mess around!"

More laughter, followed by a sudden seriousness, as though Audrey were considering whether or not this were true. She sighed. "Yes," she conceded, "I am learning about that."

Surf and Sand

My computer has been on the fritz for nearly three months... Many of my photographs from our California Road Trip are trapped on its hard drive but I managed to grab a few - including a few here that feature Morrow Bay and the Getty Villa - before it went back to the repair shop. Few things soothe my soul so much as seeing images of my girls fully engaged in the beauty of God's world...

A Child's Prayer

It was a quiet afternoon. I sat on my bed, sorting books while Audrey arranged her dolls on the carpet beside me.

“Guess what Audrey?” I asked.

“What?” Her head popped up over the edge of the bed.

“Ella and Kate are coming home in two days!”

“Two days?” Her weary eyes widened.

“Yes, two.”

Suddenly her eyes glazed; she looked away, abstractedly, then sighed. “O,” she said, turning her eyes back to me, “and Olivia won’t be with them?”

It was half a question, half a lament - one little note of protest, testing the finality of the absence she had learned to call 'death.'

“No,” I said, my voice quavering, “she won’t.”

That night at dinner Audrey prayed: "Dear Jesus, thank you that Ella and Kate are coming home soon. And please help me and Evie to be patient about having our princess dolls. And please help Becca and Brice to be patient about seeing Livia again. Because I know they still cry.

Amen"

The Wrong Side of the Door... Spring Retrospective

“We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves – that, though we cannot, yet these projections can enjoy in themselves that beauty, grace, and power of which Nature is the image. That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can’t. They tell us the ‘beauty born of murmuring sound’ will pass into a human face; but it won’t. or not yet. For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day Give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendour of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy. At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get in.” ~CS Lewis, "The Weight of Glory

Lady Bug

March Teen Collage

My Favorite Day

We tugged at our wet bathing suits, on our way to pizza. It had been a long day – a good day: “March Teen;” the day we celebrated Audrey’s fourth birthday. In the morning she sat around the wooden dining table, surrounded by friends, and ate a decadent breakfast of cold cereal, bagels with cream cheese, boiled eggs, fresh berries, chocolate milk, and orange juice. Afterward, the children opened presents before streaming outside to blow bubbles.

In the haze of afternoon Grandpa and Aunt Sommer took Audrey to the Gaslight Theater while Dutch and I and Evangeline went out hunting for an old piano – we found one, a 1929 Wurlitzer which, as we drove to dinner, was hid beneath a sheet in the entryway, waiting for Audrey to unveil it.

The sky was black and starless – the moon hung like a giant paper lantern in the sky, white and round and smooth. “The biggest moon in twenty years!” a little voice proclaimed in astonishment. “It’s the biggest moon in twenty years!” I turned around to look - Audrey was nuzzling Snowflake, the little toy dog Walker had given her as a birthday gift. “It’s for you, Snowflake,” she said ebulliently. “It’s just for you – because today is your birthday.”

She leaned her head back - her wet hair slicked back like a little golden helmet atop her elfin shoulders - gazed out the window, and sighed. The moonlight streamed in from outside, lighting up her face and forehead and I saw what looked like little white stars dancing in the brown oceans of her eyes. “O,” she said, to no one in particular, “this is my favorite day.”

My heart swelled; suddenly it was my favorite day, too.

Dear Sweet Audrey Sophia,

Four years ago today, at one o'clock in the afternoon, my life was changed forever - because that was the day I met you. It was the day God gave me the great, glorious task of being your mother. Every day since has been made more beautiful, richer, and full of greater joy, because of your presence; and every morning when I wake up I am overwhelmed with gratitude - if a little mournful for lack of sleep - the moment your and Evie's bushy heads nuzzle into bed beside me.

Yesterday morning, for example, we we were sitting at the wooden dining table - you were eating "pop cereal" while I drank my coffee, a little bowl of blueberries between us, when you flung your head back and suddenly exclaimed, "Oh, Mudder - you're so kind to your daughters!" I smiled and told you I did try to be kind.

You put down your spoon and your eyes widened, a look of sincere puzzlement on your face. "Mudder,” you said, “you don't have to try!"

“Really?” I asked. “Why not?”

“Be-cause,” you said. “You're just kind. You don’t have to try."

While I struggled to suppress the bubble of laughter welling up inside me, you went on breathlessly, as if something even more extraordinary had just occurred to you: “And, Mudder," you said panting, "you have your king – Daddy, he’s your king - and you're the queen, and you have your precious daughters. So you don't have to worry!”

Then I did laugh, but it was a welcoming, appreciative laugh, and you sat back in your chair and beamed at me with pleasure. "How is it," I said, "that you, my little not-yet-four-year-old daughter, can speak to me so incisively?"

You shrugged and said you didn't know. I shook my head and said I didn't know either; and then we both laughed heartily.

Even now, as I recount the story, tears prick my eyes - and I wonder, how will I ever recover from the absence of you little ones, when, one day, God-willing, you grow up and are gone? I don’t know; but, as you suggested, I will try not to worry it - try, instead, to keep entrusting all of us to God, who promises to meet all our needs in Christ Jesus.

After all, tomorrow is a long way off. Today is your fourth birthday, and I am doing my best to simply enjoy your presence.

Corn!

Do all little girls go through a unicorn phase? I know I did. I must have been five or six... I don't remember how it came into my possession - but I was the proud owner of a porcelain music box with a rearing white unicorn atop its smooth round pedestal. I loved to turn the little brass key on the underside of the box, then prop it on the white wooden windowsill in my bedroom - and watch it twirl round and round in the sunlight, its music wafting out the door and down the dark hallway into the dining room.


Audrey acquired the luminous "Corn" - as she calls him - from Nanny. She loves to put him in her butterfly net. They travel everywhere together, Corn and Audrey. And when we leave the house to run errands she drags her blankets into the car and makes a nest for Corn so that he can rest snugly while we drive around town because, "He really has to take a resty time! Otherwise, he'll be cranky."

A Gift from Bennett's Millinery

One Saturday in January Audrey and I went to the Library Sale. In half an hour I had filled my bag with biographies of Isak Dinesen and Willa Cather, a history of the Third Reich, and a two-volume copy of the Gulag Archipelego. Audrey found a pristine hard-cover edition of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and was swimming in happiness. We exited the building like a couple of hummingbirds just come in from a field full of wildflowers. It was then we noticed an antique shop across the street, its front window filled with enormous conch shells and white coral specimens so big they looked like ancient pieces of driftwood. We went inside and wandered through the musty rooms. Hanging against a wood-planked wall, on a crooked nail, were several old hats. One of them, a creamy white one with costume jewels stitched onto the bill, caught Audrey's eye. "Oh, may I see it, Mom? May I try it on?" I could not but comply. "Oh, please can you get it for me, Mom - for my birthday? For March 'Teen?" I turned the hat upside down. It had three tags - the first said it was a Frances & Walter Helkin hat. The second, that it was from Bennett's Millinery in Evanston, Illinois; best of all the hat was stamped with a seal that read: "Melusine Registered; Made in Czechoslavakia." I considered that a Melusine hat from Bennett's Millinery is probably an uncommon request from a three-year-old, and when I walked out of the store the hat was tied up with string, in a box under my arm. Upon returning home I shoved the box onto a shelf in my closet... today someone spied the box and opened it... She very much liked what she saw.