The Mrs Miniver Society

Mrs. Miniver the Mother

2011-01-30T13:16:00.003-08:00

Zac has not developed a massive mole. He's sucking on a nerf bullet.

I've mentioned the book, Mrs. Miniver, a few times before but something happened this week to remind me of this passage (which begins with an introduction by a reviewer):

So much of the fun of parenthood lies "in watching the children re-make, with delighted wonder, one's own discoveries". On Christmas morning, when they burst in shortly after six to open their stockings: how odd, she reflects, that the tangerine in the toe of the stocking lingers even though children get a good supply of fruit all the year round.
This is one of the moments -- when the stockings are being opened, and the dawn is breaking, and she can hear the distant tinkle of teacups -- which Mrs. Miniver feels

paid off at a single stroke the debit side of parenthood: the morning sickness and the quite astonishing pain; the pram in the passage, the cold mulish glint in the cook's eye; the holiday nurse who had been in the best families; the pungent white mice, the shrivelled caterpillars; the plasticine on the door-handles . . . the alarms and emergencies, the swallowed button, the inexplicable earache, the ominous rash appearing on the eve of a journey; the school bills and the dentist's bills; the shortened step, the tempered pace, the emotional compromises, the divided loyalties, the adventures continually forsworn...

Isn't that what it feels like sometimes? You're about to be buried alive by a mountain of petty frustrations ('I've made that stinking train track six times already. Stop messing it up if you want to play with it!') and then you're handed a gift that transcends them in a second.

Zac takes a bath in the sink and hands out transcendence.

Jonah was making his lunch this week and was thinking out loud.
Him: Mom. Dad. Child abuse is wrong, isn't it?
Us: Yes, of course it is wrong.
Him: It would be like me taking advantage of Spencer because he's so little.
Us: Yes. What made you think about child abuse, Jonah?
Him: I was just thinking about how lucky I am to have a safe home and parents who love me...

... paid off at a single stroke the debit side of parenthood...

Thank you God for letting me be a mother.

I also ran across this article this week titled 'Why We Have Children '. I love this passage:
In retrospect, however, my life prior to parenthood was like a symphony constrained to a single note. In the year that followed my daughter's birth, I felt—really felt—the whole spectrum of human emotions, the depth and richness of human experience. Through my daughter's eyes, I remembered wonder. Her laughter and unbridled joy reminded me why the world is good. She was a vessel of grace, a sacrament, and she returned me to life.She made me human. We make children who make us.

Penny for the guy?

2010-11-05T11:45:00.001-07:00

"THEY didn't take the children down to Starlings much in the winter, until the Christmas holidays. When the days were short a week-end was scarcely worth while. They made an exception, however, for Guy Fawkes' Day, that kindly and prescient spirit having planned his crime to coincide -- or as nearly as makes no difference -- with the autumn half-term."

Flower Hunt

2010-08-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to find out how to grow Chrysanthemums, not the scrubby bushy mums that are available at every plant seller each fall but the gorgeous kind that photographers take photos of and come in your bouquet of flowers. I can't imagine Mrs Miniver arranging the bushy kind of flowers can you?

Not These,
but these,
and these,
You would think it would be fairly straight forward but I am having a very hard time. I can't find anyone on-line or in real life or in print who can tell me where to get and how to grow the pretty kinds. The Portland Chrysanthemum Society is playing hard to get but I am going to be persistent.

I just named my house Starlings and chrysanthemums will grow at Starlings.

2010-02-08T17:02:00.000-08:00

Last week I packed up my books, my lucky baking powder can and painted over the deep purple of my bedroom with beige. Preparing to sell your home has got to be one of the hardest things to do. How can we sell our home for money to strangers? How can someone else sleep in the room where my babies were born? How can some one walk up the stairs never knowing how may times my children have slid down them? I am painting over the art work and the smudges hiding all of the work and love that has gone into every surface of this house.
It is just a house however, it isn't really our home, our home is our family and our memories in our hearts.
It is just as though I am throwing away the really cool packaging that ought to be saved.

Welcome October

2009-10-01T12:19:00.000-07:00

I love October and since I am busy with wedding preparations I leave you with the wisdom of Mrs Miniver:

"It was lovely, thought Mrs. Miniver, nodding good-bye to the flower-woman and carrying her big sheaf of chrysanthemums down the street with a kind of ceremonious joy, as though it were a cornucopia; it was lovely, this settling down again, this tidying away of the summer into its box, this taking up of the thread of one's life where the holidays (irrelevant interlude) had made one drop it.... She unwrapped the chrysanthemums and arranged them in a square glass jar, between herself and the light, so that the sun shone through them. They were the big mop-headed kind, burgundy-coloured, with curled petals; their beauty was noble, architectural; and as for their scent, she thought as she buried her nose in the nearest of them, it was a pure distillation of her mood, a quintessence of all that she found gay and intoxicating and astringent about the weather, the circumstances, her own age and the season of the year. Oh, yes, October certainly suited her best. For the ancients, as she had inescapably learnt at school, it had been the eighth month; nowadays, officially, it was the tenth: but for her it was always the first, the real New Year. That laborious affair in January was nothing but a name."

From "Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struthers.

Putting Away Summer

2009-09-16T21:39:00.000-07:00

"Just a year ago she remembered, she had stood at that same window putting the summer away and preparing to enjoy the autumn. And here she was again: only this time it wasn't chrysanthemums she was rearranging, but values." -Mrs. Miniver

I have been putting away summer. Relieved that autumn has come at last. This morning it was hot and muggy and finally the rain came and broke the summer. Autumn is here.

Often I find myself in the middle of mundane tasks and I think, "This is my now, my present. One day I will think this same thing and this moment will be a memory just like all of the other moments when I have acklnowledge the present."

September Deliberations

2009-09-04T17:28:00.001-07:00

The problem with September is deciding what to wear.
The weather is still fine and it is perfectly acceptable to wear light summer clothes but the smell in the air and the angle of the sun suggests fall, long trousers and cozy knits. Boots and stylish scarves.
Each day I stand in my closet debating whether to wear my garden dress for possibly last time this year or wasting the sunshine and wearing my jeans...

Recumbent

2009-09-04T09:57:00.000-07:00

I am sick. Properly sick or maybe Mrs. Miniver would say with a delicate vagueness that I was "laid low". I'm suffering in stoic semi-silence (wherein I only complain to people who ask me how I feel or to people who accidentally get close enough to be coughed on). But it would be better if I had a Scottish nurse to watch my Vins and Judys and Tobys and to deliver hardscrabble advice along with mustard plasters. (No fancy tisane for her.)

She would rout this thing fully.

Parking Lot Bliss

2009-08-06T07:24:00.001-07:00

I love how parking lots are no longer burdened with those cement barriers; the ones that tell you when you've pulled in to the parking spot far enough, thank-you-very-much. Do you know how much it costs to fix a car that's driven over one of those innocuous looking lumps? And besides, I think I know well enough when I've adequately fitted my car into a parking spot; I don't need a piece of cement to school me.

Mostly though, I very much enjoy taking advantage those parking spots that are empty on both sides by pulling all the way forward into the next spot. I adore it. The joy that comes from saving seven and a half seconds by not having to drive backwards when it's time to go home makes me feel, in a word, smart.

Those double empty spots can be elusive and it's not every day I'm able to acquire one. But when I do it's like a gift. Like the universe saying, "you are so clever...why don't you take a little extra time in Target since you are so efficient."

By the way, the universe also says to browse the book section to get library book ideas and to buy the toffee popcorn canister on aisle 12. Honest...it's not me, it's the universe.

In Which I Spare You The Egg Pun

2009-07-28T12:58:00.000-07:00

The other day I was making a cake that called for 3 eggs. Odd numbers of eggs, at least for me, alway present a little puzzle: Which side of the egg carton will end up with the extra egg? Can I rearrange the remaining eggs so the carton is better balanced? Should I just use 4 eggs for the sake of egg carton symmetry? You see, I like an even, balanced egg carton; it's a matter of common sense, really.

Generally, my egg carton strategy is to use the eggs from the outside and work in, keeping the sides as equal as possible. This way, when the carton is pulled from the fridge, you aren't misled by a very light side that then becomes a very heavy side once the whole carton is off the shelf.

Plus, don't my grade AA's look prettier in the carton this way?

Pass It On

2009-07-28T07:43:00.000-07:00

It occurs that as a Society we ought to have a secret handshake or something that identifies us to other Miniver-ians (-ites? -ettes is a little on the spirit squad side.). In the nature of gang signs that we could flash each other outside our theoretical wrong-side-of-the-tracks mini-market, we could carry a talisman that would discreetly whisper our allegiance to the cause when we meet in semi-upscale department stores. Maybe a green alligator daily planner, or a Chrysanthemum scarf, or a small fire cracker, or a Guy Fawkes effigy pin...Maybe a whispered "Scotland wins" would be more to the point.

In lieu of that I vote we all correct people when they try to shoehorn us into that awful, truncated, defeminizating "Ms." I am Missus Dominguez. Or Senora, if you will. My daughter is Miss!

2009-07-27T11:19:00.001-07:00

The Mrs. Miniver Society

While browsing through some second hand kitchenware I came across these milk glass green cups. We need small cups at our house and I loved these so. There was also a matching sugar bowl. I have no need for a sugar bowl and I am trying to economize but it looked so lonely sitting there on the shelf without its cup friends. So after agonizing for quite some time I brought it home with me as well. I just couldn't bear to break the set.