It's A Beautiful Life (being Mother and House-Wife)

 I'm sending lunch to my sister's farm today. (Hamburger Stew, bread and cheese)

Her place is all a-flutter with wedding preparations because they are hosting their son's wedding on Friday...

Their first fledgling to leave the nest so, bittersweet Beautiful Days in a mother's

Beautiful Life...

Here are bits and pieces of my last fifteen hours of a beautiful, busy life!

Happy First Day of Autumn!

It’s laundry and dishes

And half-come-true wishes

Its dinner-filled pots and pans

Broom-and mop-chores

It’s bake-a-cake, take-a-break

Plan what’s for supper

It’s school-lunches, bloom-bunches

And so much more

It’s weeding and hoeing

And coming and going

It’s garden-rows glowing

With offspring of seeds

Its pruning and picking

It's ‘slow-that-clock-ticking’

And dusting, and trusting

God for our needs

It's mending and tending

Homefires. It's sending

Prayers up to heaven 

While bending to earth

It's taking and giving

It's sweet, simple living

It's bitter and sweet

Mingling sorrow and mirth

It’s holding and scolding

It’s wiping and folding

And laughing and sighing

As years fondly flow

It's diligent duty

And domestic beauty

It’s teaching while learning

To hold and let go

It’s love spelled in places

Of daily God-graces

It’s familiar faces

When daylight is spent

It’s Mother and Wife,

What a beautiful life

It’s sing-to-God praises

For kind blessings lent

© Janet Martin

(and now, a quick hour to go get my daughter who suddenly decided to come home for a day. She is away at school and between work and study is finding life very busy as well)

Of Home's Humble Happiness

After dropping my daughter's friend off at her home tonight and picking up groceries I returned to stare at my CHAOTIC kitchen to tidy up, mop floors, do dishes...and leave the rest for another day after a big day of peach-canning! In spite of all its short-comings,still home is the best place in the world, isn't it?

Shielded from eyes that would criticize

Home is a God-granted paradise

Here in the comfort of domestic mirth

God opens windows of heaven to earth

Safe from the hurrying, worrying throng

Home is a haven of laughter and song

Wealth gleams in piles of soiled laundry and such

Here children learn beneath mother’s soft touch

…and midst the clatter of everyday noise

Women and men emerge from girls and boys

Here, though the cares of life must have their way

Home is an alter where we bow to pray

…pray we remember Whose hands kindly bless

And thank Him for home’s humble happiness

© Janet Martin

Tip 'o the Hat to Little Touches

I finished reading the book Little Women yesterday. Here is another bit from the book that brought a smile in my 'little while' with the Marches. Jo is learning the art of Beth's housekeeping duties after Beth's death;

‘Wholesome, humble duty…little touches here and there to keep everything fresh and cozy which was the first step in making home happy'…Louisa M. Alcott in Little Women

It inspired me to see where I could create a bit of 'happy' for our home...

 peonies from the garden

pictures for the wall

 

pillow for the chair (Birthday gift from my sister)

poetry for the table,

flowers from the fence-line

Kind little touches do so much

 To make a house a home

 A little flower on a shelf,

A book of prose or poem

To make the reader take more care

Of his or her wee life; aware

That nothing ever stays too long

And so we splash the air with song

Or set a kettle on to boil

To pour some tea between our toil

Where all those must-be tasks soft-smile

And add the worth to our while

…and so we put a pillow here

A sprig of willow on the mirror

Or walk along the fence to find

Wild blooms that wind-song left behind,

Or sweep the porch before we set

A pot of pansies on its step

Or hang a picture on the wall

Or bake a cake knowing the small

Touches of love cheer those who come

To little things that make a home

And oft we should season the air

With words of kind comfort and prayer

And treat this gift from God with awe

That He in tender mercy saw

It fit to bless a bit of loam

With happiness that we call home

© Janet Martin

I hope you are inspired to create your own 'bit of happy'.
God bless our homes!

(This poem was written with the assumption that faith, hope and love abide,

For then what good is all the rest but painted bits of pride

Then pray the Lord our homes to be reflections of His kind mercy)

Job Offer

I tripped over a hockey-bag while starting laundry, when I heard the bus pull up...Victoria always looks for Mom's 'see-you' wave...

He asks, with eyebrows raised

If ‘do I think that possibly

I miss the thrill of knowing

My full potentiality

Implying, ‘Here

Among the mundane-ness

Of household chores and such’

He dangles it as ‘nothings’

…all these things that I call love

And do I think it is enough?

The noise of boys

And toys

And ‘little things'

Which fill me with

Ten-thousand unnamed joys

He asks me if ‘I never

Long for more than merely this?’

I wonder, does he mean smiles, hugs

Or pudgy, smudgy toast-crumb kiss?

And then, he lays before me

What he calls a golden ladder

Promising money,

As though it could buy

Those things

That really matter

© Janet Martin

For the Love of Home

Kara at Mundane Faithfulness asks,  "What is home to you? Where is your exhale? What dreams sometimes steal your contentment of what you have?"

She makes me want to live Love with arms wide-open! ...to crave the Glorious Mundane

It is much more than she deserves

The comfort of its love-worn curves

Where heaven’s subtle shadow lies

Within the frame of laughing eyes

And Time together; set apart

From life out there, its heart to heart

A joy that money cannot buy

But grants to folk like you and I

Who, by the kindness of God’s love

Received a crumb from Favor’s trove

It is more than pen can express

Home’s pure simple-sweet happiness

Of love and learn, of spills and tears

…how fond and fleet the will of years

Melds moments into memories

And tickles time away with ease

Where suddenly we are awestruck

By the beauty of mercy’s muck

…a harbor on hope’s heaving sea

That only home-sweet-home can be

It is more than she can quite grasp

Time’s tangled cords slip through her clasp

Where Fortune wears a strange disguise

Yet weaves a holy paradise

And who knew that love’s constant mess

Could foot the crux of happiness?

Or how Mundane will ever be

The apex of excellency

In four-wall halls of chipped-paint bliss

Where home is surely heaven’s kiss

© Janet Martin

...Victoria and I watched one of our favorite black and white movies last night;
Little Women starring Katherine Hepburn

...For The 'Heaven' Of It

Poetics Aside has us pondering voyages today...

I've been working at spring-cleaning so I suppose right now my family thinks cleaning, laundry and cooking is all I do;)

(they do not read my blog:)

Maybe to you my voyage seems to be a bit like housewife hell

My dear, someday I hope your dreams will find the heaven in its swell

And if it were but laundry-mop-and-dishes metronome

Perhaps it would be drudgery but oh, it is for Home

Maybe my voyage seems unglamorous, dust-cloths and brooms

Are not so very amorous, tis true; but in these rooms

I touch the Place of happiness for this is where we come

Away from gawking greediness to this; our home sweet home

…and I suppose there is no title for the pro of scrubbing pots

Or wiping up of cookie crumbs; picking forget-me-nots

And maybe all these miles I’ve vacuumed seem an aimless tome

But I have yet to find a kinder destiny than Home

© Janet Martin

I been asked by my kids, and even hubby on occasion; 'don't you ever get sick of your life?', or 'how do you stand it?'

I tell them its not always the doing but the Cause that gives me utmost pleasure!