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Of Babies, Boxwood and Bamboo

August 23, 2023 by Margaret Philbrick 9 Comments

Three weeks ago our first grandchild surprised us by coming into the world a month early, welcome Asher Scott! Countless friends have told us, “Being a grandparent is the most treasured time in life.” So many in fact, that we began to doubt this itty bitty generalization. With almost 34 years of marriage behind us, there have been many treasured times in life. Why or how could this one be even better? To wrap my mind around such a question we turn to one of the most trusted plots of answer, the garden.

While growing up, our family spent many wonderful vacations in Nashville, TN at the home of my cousins. My Aunt was a talented formal gardener. Everything was knotted boxwood, cascading herbs and trickling fountains. The nearby Cheekwood Estate served as her model and “Martin Boxwood,” long established and revered there, provided inspiration. I learned to dislike the acrid, baking in the sun and humidity smell of boxwood. Although its deep green eternal color and lovely leaf flatters a garden the plant smells like cat pee.

When we finally could afford landscaping at our own home we planted a long row of tiny boxwood on either side of the front walkway, several inches apart. Wonder of wonders, you can grow Asian boxwood in the north that does not smell, but gives the same tidy effect. My husband and I babied these plants. It took about a decade for them to finally grow together and form a low hedge. We knocked the snow off them in winter and watered them consistently in summer. Our kids dreaded the “Go out and weed the front walkway” chore, but the boxwood deserved a clean flagstone walk. The plant grows about six inches a year in warm climates and less in cooler ones. It needs lots of trimming to promote filling-in growth. After a couple of decades the desired effect took hold and it looked dreamy in front of our home, providing an established french country welcome. A few months ago I drove by our former home (we moved away five years ago) and saw that several of the boxwoods had yellowed or died. Some were replaced with baby new ones, so the perfected look of our walkway was gone. Asian Boxwood has a life expectancy of 20 to 30 years so this should not have happened. Did it dry out in summer, suffer too much salting in winter? Who knows, but in 20 or 30 years I will be a much older grandma, and our new grandson will be in the prime of his life. God willing, he will not be yellowing, he will not be in decline. The majority of babying and tending will fall to his parents. We get to take in the beautiful view and watch him grow! Less work, more immediate benefits! Maybe that’s one of the reasons grandparenting is treasured.

I occasionally exchange panda videos with our youngest son, now the new dad!!!! (Can’t believe I’m writing this?) Together, we envy and laugh at these bamboo eating bumblers. We can’t get enough of them sitting all day mowing down vast swaths of the brittle canes, roots, shoots and leaves. When our son went to college at Belmont University in Nashville we began to notice that there is bamboo all over the place in that hot and wet town. The climate is perfect for it, but sadly too hot for pandas. A bamboo cane grows for only sixty days and takes three years to get established below ground. During this time it sends out massive amounts of roots which send up new canes. Our new grandchild is growing at a rate of 1 to 2 inches per month, not quite as fast as bamboo, but his growing season is much longer than 60 days! Getting to marvel at his growth without being consumed by laundry, spit-up, spraying SHOUT and non-stop changes and diaper cream and … you know the list, allows grandparents to focus on and appreciate every little thing their grandchild is doing and becoming. We are not thinking about anything else, like when do I go back to work or how am I going to pay the bills? Grandparenting is a time of unique, singular focus. Maybe that’s one of the reasons it’s treasured.

And now a bit about the treasure himself. Despite being born a month early he is doing everything he is supposed to be doing! He looks exactly like his mother. I think our son is handsome but his mother is gorgeous so that’s better. He rarely cries – how can this be? He is eating on an every three hour schedule. Did our kids do this? His hair is starting to lighten and get wavy. He is already looking fuller and chubbier, especially his full tummy, which translates to even more adorable and better sleep for his parents.

Dear God keep me from being one of those grandparents who brags endlessly about how brilliant and supremely gifted our grandchild is. I know this is impossible, because he is already finding his fingers and sucking on them and this usually happens at four months old so he is brilliant and supremely gifted and gorgeous at three weeks. Oh dear, I’m already doing it, but look at him! We are so thankful for this tiny but mighty blessing. To all our friends who told us about how special the grandparent world is, all we can say is Bravo! You are indeed, right.

Leftover Lace

August 16, 2022 by Margaret Philbrick 2 Comments

The Wedding is Over, Now What?

It was beautiful, but it wasn’t perfect. As I shared the post-wedding download chat over the phone with my dear friend we both concluded that life is “tainted.” Even in the moments of our greatest joy, something icky tries to steal it away.

My dad is 87 and I love him. We long ago determined that we were going to move heaven and earth to ensure that the only living grandparent made it to the wedding. This involved him doing physical therapy for months leading up to the event so that he would be strong enough to attend, buying him the Cadillac of walkers to get around (only to end up renting a wheelchair), flying he and his caregiver/escort up from Arkansas and finding them an “accessible” cabin … everything inched along on track until day 2 at our house when he started sneezing. “It’s just allergies,” he assured us. Our bride and groom cringed, we rolled the windows down in the car to air out his germs. Too late, this mother-of-the-bride caught his spewing nose inferno and I was the only blessed recipient of this gift come wedding day. Enter bottles of DayQuil, NyQuil, Airborne, Nettle drops in water, Zycam, Covid tests just to be sure (they were negative) — anything to get through the four day extravaganza of parties and people with a smile and some level of enjoyment.

It all happened. As we boarded the trolley bound for the reception I took my last large shot of DayQuil. French 75 cocktails, best-man and maid-of-honor toasts floated by in a fog. The evening I imagined dancing the night away turned into me stifling and submitting to coughing fits in the downstairs locker room, trying not to contaminate everyone else. Sadly, my repeating thought was, “Can I go home now?” Thank you to my sweet friends who took me home so I didn’t have to wait for the return trolley trip! Thank you to my beloved college roommate who grabbed me and my wheelchair bound father and helped get us on the dance floor, EARLY in the evening! Thank you to all our friends and bridal party who did have a blast and danced until they dropped!

We got him out there! photo credit: Paper Antler

Hey there tambourine man! Photo credit: Paper Antler

Now it’s over. The bride and groom returned from their honeymoon and drove their presents and their Persian cat (Smushie) back to St. Louis. The bridal bouquet is drying in the closet, the wedding dress back in dry-cleaner plastic. The question remains, “Was it worth it? Was my dad’s participation worth the cost of my health and enjoyment of the biggest day in our daughter’s life?” I honestly don’t know. We are called to honor our mother and father, but at what cost? We live by our choices in this life and hope for the best.

As I unpacked a zip-lock bag of leftover lace from the seamstress who remade my wedding dress into Jessie’s wedding dress, I thought of her reassuring words to our daughter, “If it doesn’t work out, you can always turn it into a christening gown for your first baby.” Well, it didn’t quite “work out” for me, but our daughter and her adorable groom said it was “the best day of their entire lives” and that was certainly the goal.

Life is a sacrament infused with the power of God. As long as we are breathing, there is another moment in life to celebrate. As long as the sun rises and sets, a jewel to behold.

For my friends who want the truly breathtaking photographer’s take on Jessie and Michael’s wedding, here’s the highlight reel with music. If you need a photographer for your family wedding you’ll see by this reel that there is no one like Paper Antler, www.paperantler.com Thank you to our dear friends Jonny and Michelle for seeing J + M’s wedding in a way that none of us and most especially me, could possibly have seen that day. Your photos are a huge gift to all of us. We love you and we hope everyone we know uses Paper Antler for their family wedding!

https://paperantler.pic-time.com/4KV7vWx9dD1TD

And… I’ve already moved on to thinking about that baby gown, wink-wink.

Maid of Honor Taylor and her “princess of the field.” Photo credit: Paper Antler

Building 2020

February 24, 2020 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

Often my husband and I walk our dog Snuggles and talk about the next thing we want to build, lately that conversation has centered around how our baby church plant is growing up, a new garage or filling the massive potholes where we park our car. Building is tangible, it takes vision and resources and you can touch it when it’s done. Yet, there is something satisfyingly intangible about this process. You can’t be entirely sure how it’s going to turn out and unplanned obstacles interfere along the journey, causing a shift in thinking and dollars. This requires flexibility and creativity on the part of the builders. “How could we value engineer this to get the same result, but not incur the significant up-charge?” A question forever plaguing and refining the building project.

When we built our home in northern Wisconsin the power generator established by the developer sat out on the road and it turned out we needed to add an (unplanned) new junction box closer to the house. The power was too far away since we chose to put the house in the back of the lot. This meant that the limestone apron we hoped to wrap around the entire base of the house got axed. The money for the stone now went to the new power source, an aesthetic sacrifice for a practical reality. Our creative minded general contractor said, “Let’s still put in the extra thick foundation and that way if you want to add the stone apron in the future, you can.” Problem solved, with an eye to the future solution.

My first experience with the joy of building things hit me in sixth grade at Jill Oddy’s slumber party. Jill lived in my favorite house in our neighborhood a couple of blocks from ours. Her parents gutted it, kept every rich historical detail and updated the color scheme with tons of Swedish blue and yellow florals, toile wallpaper, and painted tiles featuring peasant village scenes around the fireplace. Her birthday party occurred between the old wallpaper coming off and the new wallpaper going up and her parents let us write ALL OVER the stripped down walls. Profound quotes by Oscar Wilde, the Bible and Shakespeare would underlay their new decor. Just kidding, “I LOVE MICKEY AND MICKEY LOVES ME,” written inside giant hearts conveyed the sentiments of these pre-teen girls. Just as Snuggles marks her territory on our morning and evening walks, we long to do this as well.

When our church bought a 98,000 square foot warehouse to convert into a gorgeous, post-modern sanctuary, we held a candlelit assembly to worship in the emptiness and mark the old concrete floor and steel girders prior to renovation. We covered that decrepit Alcoa factory in Bible verses written in permanent ink Sharpies. Beneath today’s creamy, ceramic tile those unseen verses undergird the congregations’ walk with Christ. Twenty years after Jill Oddy’s slumber party we wallpapered our own dining room walls in floral yellow and blue and my husband and I wrote life-changing messages all over our own stripped down walls, “C.P. + M.P. – True Love 4-Ever.”

All of this takes me to Nashville a couple of weeks ago. Our youngest son is about to graduate with a music degree from Belmont University and he is involved in a couple of bands who record at “The Basement Space” studios. This start-up began literally in the basement space of a home the brothers lived in during college and beyond. The business grew and they are about to christen their trendy looking, take-your-breath-away recording studio behind the house. We toured this work in progress and took in the writing on the walls…

The owner’s face beamed as he told us about how the builders, a father and son team had experienced a significant growth in their faith since working on the project and they also wanted to contribute messages to the walls. He talked about all the enhancements and expansions the new space will bring to their recording work and I could see energy and light wash over his face and our son’s smile as they contemplated future opportunities.

The new Basement Space Studio in Nashville

A dizzying amount of preparations take place prior to breaking ground and that is what Lent is all about. We are on the cusp of a season where the Lord wants to build new things in us prior to the celebration of Easter. When we submit to his desire to write on the walls of our hearts he builds new light and life into us, often by revealing the decaying darkness of our own hearts. Lent is a building work and it starts this Ash Wednesday. Come and break up some ground and prepare a room for him these next 40 days. The master builder is looking for people to take up his trowel and his towel.

Thankful? Our New Life – Six Months Later

November 4, 2019 by Margaret Philbrick 10 Comments

We couldn’t wait to get here. A gale force wind seemed to blow us across the Illinois border. Everything fell into place, even our dog loved her new life on Langdon. What dog wouldn’t love finding discarded pizza slices lying on the ground with every morning walk? Today she trotted out a blueberry muffin between her jaws from beneath a tree. Our street, filled with sorority and fraternity houses a.k.a. party row is loud, which means Sunday and Monday are the only nights we don’t sleep with a fan cranked on high to drown out the street noise. We are definitely “not in Kansas anymore,” or “the Shire,” our nickname for our former home and town of 29 years. So how is it going? What have we learned in these short few months?

Adults get homesick – Returning to our condo after a blissful July vacation in the Northwoods, left me standing at midnight in our tiny linen closet searching for pajamas. With no working light, I fumbled around in the dark for the hooks and my familiar T.S. Eliot nightshirt. Nothing felt like it was in the right place, our new home didn’t smell like home. I’d forgotten where I’d put things and nothing owned a designated spot. Were the pajamas in the linen closet or in a box or in a drawer? A sick feeling of longing for familiar places and spaces overcame me. I wanted to see our Portuguese tile in the kitchen, listen to the creak of the stairs underfoot, stand in our tiny shared closet and know that my p.j’s hung on the same hook as my robe. All of our kids lived through homesickness at summer camp and now it was my turn, but this wasn’t camp and home sat on a corner 159 miles south of here.

I don’t like flannel shirts – This city has a penchant for flannel in all seasons of the year. Some people like comfort food — these crunchy folks love comfort clothing. I imagine they sleep in flannel sheets and pad around in flannel slippers with badgers jutting out from their toes. Long ago I slept in my husband’s flannel shirts, but now menopausal Margaret melts just looking at the tried ‘n true plaid fabric. Our youngest son nicknamed me M.P. M.P. (meno pausal margaret philbrick) and my slightly fancy, artsy wardrobe is not in step with the sorority girl shredded black jeans and tied-at-the-midriff flannel shirts. I’ve never thought I looked old until I moved onto this street.

Deck gardening comes with benefits – Our Halloween forecast called for freezing cold and several inches of snow. Yet, our lovely deck continued to burst with red and white begonias and red hot pokers, channeling U.W. colors. My heart wasn’t ready to say goodbye to my little friends. It takes time to make new friends in a strange city, but plants extend a welcome handshake and smile, even when no one on our street makes eye contact as we pass by. So in about 30 minutes I’d carried all our pots inside and filled our kitchen with their life-giving oxygen, but also spiders. In late fall it used to take all day to cut down our garden and put it to bed, now numerous pots nestled throughout our condo in less than an hour.

Tending a baby (church) brings joy – My sweet husband often turns to me whenever we walk in the front door and says, “Welcome home.” The problem is, a place that feels like a European airbnb doesn’t resemble home. There is no history here, no roots. It’s like looking at the pretty leaves without the rest of the tree. One Sunday he turned to me and said, “Welcome home” in church and I physically felt a secure, tangible sense of home seeping into my bones. Our barely one year old church plant feels more like home than any other place in this college town. Why? Jesus’s house is our home and when we are there we’re one step closer to our heavenly home. Most of our new friends for the most part attend this church as does our baby goddaughter, who is an angelic bundle of smiling fun. These people in this gymnasium form our communion. Serving this baby plant keeps us supple. Every Sunday we meet new people, every Sunday we bend in new ways.

My different to-do list – A good friend recently shared this illustration with me: “When I was in Rwanda, our guide said, ‘Africa will always be poor because the man who goes out into the country every morning to tend his field stops along the way to talk to a neighbor. They spend about an hour talking about his farm and family and then he walks on. After another mile he stops and talks to another neighbor. After an hour he moves on and arrives at his field about noon. He tills his soil for a few hours and heads back home. He stops and talks to several other neighbors along the way. For the African farmer, life is more about talking to his neighbor than tilling his field.’” As we sat by the fire, I thought to myself, this is my new to-do list…people along the road, not projects. God used this dear friend to illuminate for me the dramatic shift in my to-do list. I’ve been suffering from a dearth of what was normal, i.e. papers to grade, kids to drive, overgrown tomato and basil plants to harvest and turn into pesto and marinara sauce. My friends words brought fresh energy and perspective to the reality that this season in our new city is about people, not projects.

Yes, we are thankful for change and challenges. In the words of one of our favorite worship bands, United Pursuit, “Though the seasons change. your love remains, your love remains.” Without his divine love, we can do nothing.

A Mother’s Day Letter to our Children (on the eve of losing their childhood home)

May 8, 2019 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

Dear kids,

Sorry, but we are packing boxes and probably annoying you with photos of random pieces of art accompanied by, “Do you want this?” May 24th is coming and then we’ll stop.

We bought our little french cottage in February of 1991 and when we took your great-grandmother to see it she said, “Oh what a lovely little bungalow.” We thought it was a mansion and pretended we weren’t insulted. Every room except our bedroom (painted a disgusting shade of dark brown) was light blue so we came out to the suburbs on the weekends for two months, ate Dominoe’s pizza on the patio and fixed it up. Our first Valentine’s Day dinner was spent in an empty new house, eating asparagus pasta salad by candlelight on the floor. We tried to make a fire, but didn’t know how to open the flue. We smoked out the interior and ended up wrapping ourselves in a quilt after opening every door and window to air out. Of course, we drank champagne, but it was cheap champagne, Freixenet, which is actually a Cava.

Your dad and I count it an unbelievable blessing that we raised you on this humble and beautiful corner in a God-fearing town that hasn’t changed much. We still have the same neighbors who adore you after 28 years and ask us about you each time we cross through their Liberty Drive gate. Your “kids club” in the backyard still has the red, white and blue picnic chairs inside the center of that hollowed out trinity of trees. And now it’s time for you to make your own homes without the safety net of this faithful corner. I know a permanent displacement is hard, I still drive and walk by my house on the Fox River where I grew up at least once or twice a year. So, as you grow into life without your pastoral anchor, here’s some intangible truths that you’ve learned for safe keeping in your hearts:

Plant a garden – Two decades of spring have passed with seeds sprouting on windowsills which we hardened off and ultimately planted in your “kids garden.” Getting your hands dirty is a virtue, watching the earth embed into the cracks of your index finger so deeply that you can’t wash it out means that hard work should yield a harvest, but some things will forever be beyond your control. Don’t let those unexpected forces get you down, devilish squirrels and August storms are a part of life and the sun comes out again, a new day is made and fall Kale tastes as good a spring sugar snap peas.

Dream big, live small – Live where you can hear the floors creak, where you know when each other gets up, goes to bed, flushes the toilet, creeps downstairs in the middle of the night for a glass of water or microwave popcorn. Intimate living where the rhythm of life is shared in the sacredness of the everyday equals closeness. We know Jessie spent nights up late organizing her closet and dancing pique turns across the wood floor, so we called her the “night-stalker.” We know Nathaniel couldn’t stay up long past dinner and always went downstairs to play drums when the dinner table “conversation” became too heated and Caleb constantly stayed awake looking at his globe late into the night wondering, “Where is Afghanistan?” or, “When will I climb Mount Everest?” All of you grew up empowered by your dreams and we shared those dreams close in, with all their sorrows and joys and we will keep doing that even when this home belongs to another family.

Invite others to inhabit your world, share – Probably more than ten people lived in our home and basement: grad students, our foster daughter, aimless college grads wondering what to do with their lives, those who fell on hard times. With one bathroom upstairs this wasn’t always easy. You sacrificed your precious teenage shower time and if someone who didn’t know better flushed the downstairs toilet during your shower, screams echoed through the walls because somehow flushing the cold water meant you lost the hot, (why? I never figured this out.) You grew up in a family of extroverts so maybe that made sharing our small space easier, but now you all LOVE people. I see a burning compassion in your eyes for the person on the street with nothing. I remember recently eating lunch in an outdoor cafe on Michigan Avenue and a homeless man approached our table, leaned over the canvas barricade and asked one of you for money. You reached into your pocket and gave him everything you had, $20.00, without blinking an eye. Keep living and loving with that kind of fearless abandon and say “yes” to pets. My old friend Ed Homan from the Danada horse barn always said, “You can tell how a man is gonna treat his wife by how he takes care of his animals.” Based upon how your dad has treated our animals, that is true.

Be faithful and find space to take deep breaths – Life gets hard, tax bills increase, pneumonia threatens our Nutcracker ballet performances, cramps shut down our State Cross County meet winning aspirations, flu attempts to overtake our final season in the high school musical pit orchestra, (another evening wrapped up in blankets and gutting it out:), but God is faithful. Keep trusting in Him and his boundless love. You are never alone. His plan for your earthly home may change, but his eternal definition will always stay the same; “Jesus answered him, ‘If a man loves me, he will keep my word. My Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our home with him.’”John 14:23. Wherever you live, find the space that is your go-to for recharge. A forest preserve, a river, a prairie view from a bridge, a tall sand dune— nothing fancy, but a vista that’s real, set apart, and imprinted on your mind. Breathe in this place and know that home resides there as well.

You are grown up and the world desperately needs your gifts, your light, your spark. No longer do you exist on “blue box” mac-n-cheese. Today, you are literally calling me on the phone asking how to cook ratatouille for a gathering of ten, (say —what?) We’ll keep making home together, but now you’re equipped with everything needed to create your own. Store up in your hearts what you’ve learned on our cozy corner and if you don’t, well, count on me to write it down for you:)

Peace and always, love…

Mom

Nathaniel’s fifth grade Mother’s Day present, a tissue paper covered bottle vase.

p.s. While typing this, our neighbor kids are practicing their marching band competition routine in Nick’s backyard to the BLASTING strains of “God Bless America.” Despite all the swirling, twittering fury that is America today, kids still play baseball in the street and parents do tuck their kids into bed at night. Never lose hope, because this country is your home too.