When is it OK-- is it OK?-- for a mom to do something for herself?  I'm not talking a girls' night out or a pedicure or bubble bath.  I'm talking something that will enrich her life.  Something that she can't necessarily get solely from being mom.  Or wife.  Or both.

I keep getting a lot of mixed signals.  

Hey, this is an age in which women can do anything!  Have it all! Be whatever you want to be!  Just as long as you don't forget that every minute you take to do something for yourself is a minute you take away from your child that they'll never get back!  And just as long as you remember that because you chose to be a parent, you're being an ungrateful yatch if you want to do or be something in addition to a parent.  

I keep getting these messages that being a mom-- as wonderful, as awe inspiring, as fabulous as it is-- should be enough.  I should be wholly fulfilled and satisfied with tasks and challenges of motherhood.

But what if I'm not satisfied?  What if I want to do or be something else as well as a be a mother?  I LOVE being a parent.  But what if I could love (and be good at) being a parent and being something else?  

And then there were five

This is Milkweed (or, rather, was Milkweed)  She was the prettiest and most docile of all my hens (and one rooster).

Last night my big dumb dog killed Milkweed.  I think poor Milkweed was her favorite target.  She's the one the dog traumatized the first day the girls were here.

After inspecting the cage, I think the dog found a weak spot in the wire and pushed a hole through.  Poor dumb little hen never had a chance.

RIP Milkweed.  :(

Have I shown you this?

My grandma was born in Oklahoma in 1922.  In 1940, she left Oklahoma for California, where she moved to start a new life.  She's been here ever since.  She once told me about the bus ride from her tiny hometown of Rush Springs to California.  She said she could barely believe her eyes when she saw the mountains.  Purple Mountains.  Higher than she could imagine and capped with white snow.  She said, "Honey, it was just like the song.  Purple mountains majesty..."  And I imagine what it might have been like for a country girl from Oklahoma, not quite 18 years old yet, to make that step; take that journey.  I don't know that I could have done it.

But life then was different.  All the talk this past week of the current economic crisis has seen lots of comparisons to the Great Depression.  It doesn't seem-- at least yet-- to be at all the same.  Yet, people are afraid.  Afraid of what may lie ahead.

To me, the Depression era is represented in large part by a quilt.  As someone who's lived in relative security, albeit far from wealthy, all her life, the Great Depression is an abstract; an academic and historical fragment that is, in all honesty, hard to truly conceive of.  I've never wanted for basic things like clothes, or shoes, or food.  My grandmother did.  She was one of seven sisters (nine surviving kids all together).  She was the fifth daughter, and thus, saw lots of hand me downs.  They made their own shoes and slept five to a bed.

Sometime during the 1930's, her grandmother (my great-great grandmother) took all of the girls' old dresses and cut them up to make a quilt.  She pieced the quilt by hand, using flour sacks and muslin.  The design is a double wedding ring made completely out of my grandmother's and her sisters' dresses.

A few years ago, my grandma gave the quilt top to me, knowing that my awesome mother-in-law is an excellent quilter, and asked me to finish it for her.  And my awesome mother-in-law, Gwen, did indeed help me finish it.  With her help, I picked out vintage looking green pajama stripe fabric for the backing and a matching basting for the edges.  Gwen quilts by hand, and so set up the quilt in her basement where we worked on it together while I was visiting.  I left with much work to still be done, but she finished it for me and brought it to me a few months later.

My grandma didn't want the quilt back when I presented it to her.  She just wanted this legacy of hers finished.  So now I am the very grateful owner of a quilt hand pieced by my great great grandmother, out of fabric from my grandmother's and aunt's childhood dresses, handed down to me and finished by my mother-in-law.

It's a gift that I treasure and a story that ties me to three generations of my family.  Talk about a family heirloom!

bedtime with EB

Actual conversation while putting EB to bed tonight, started mid book:

EB:  mommy, I hab a dragon!

ME:  Really?  A dragon?

EB: Ya-aaaa

ME:  Is it a big dragon?

EB:  Um... yep.

ME:  Where is your dragon?

EB:  outside now.

ME:  So, what does your dragon eat?

EB:  Grass...  an' birdies.  

ME:  Can I see your dragon someday?

EB:  Um....  NOOOOOO!   No mommy see dragon!

Well then.  OK.  No dragons for me.