Field Notes #1 - Summer
A seasonal reflection on my reading / writing / heeding / delighting.
To those who responded to my recent note saying you would love to see snippets of my current poems-in-progress, I am grateful for you! (Because gosh, I love Substack when it’s interactive, don’t you? It feels just a little bit more real.) Since then, I’ve been brainstorming how I might go about sharing that and landed on the idea to begin a new “series” of seasonal reflection. Seasonal, because I personally find so much fulfillment in aligning myself with the seasonality of the created world. But also—seasonal, because posting these reflections only four times a year feels attainable to me.
It’s summer, and life feels both full of blooms and a little on the verge of heatstroke too. There are more fireflies in our yard than I have ever seen. Our transplanted hibiscuses have produced dozens upon dozens of massive wine-colored flowers despite it being only their first year in our garden. My toddling daughter is already in love with the sunshine and fresh air (she calls outside, “dada”). At the same time, my husband and I are just now coming out of several weeks of tiredly soothing feverish, coughing children while simultaneously dousing our own sore throats with honey. We’re worrying about the way the grading on the south side of the house has flooded our foundation with rain. And we’re still in disbelief that our minivan’s alternator decided to go out on the interstate in the middle of western Kansas on our way to meet up with family for a vacation in the Rocky Mountains.
Our summer is not lacking in vibrancy, to be sure. So let me get on with my summer update. I’m calling this series my “Field Notes,” because it’s a glimpse at the field (life) I’m at work in and harvest from (write about). I hope it’s worth the ride.
READING:
A History of Holding by Allison Mei-Li
I read this collection in one sitting. I could not put it down. And oh—it was a treasure. Allison so graciously and beautifully pulls the reader along through the ups and downs of both grief and joy. When I think of this collection, I think of shades of blue and moonglow and lapping waves and warm skin on warm skin. If you’re a mother, I especially encourage you to give it a read.
Some of my favorite poems were “Origin Story,” “Born,” “A Moon, A Sun, A Pile of Laundry,” and “If I Had My Own.”
A few favorite lines:
“My son used to be a star / I wished upon. / When the sky dripped / ink and indigo, / I crept, half-lidded . . .”
“If you are lucky, / most days will be ordinary, / deliciously predictable . . .”
Adorning the Dark by Andrew Peterson
I have been (slowly, slowly) reading this book alongside Abigail and Lauren Alison. We text each other pictures of our favorite parts underlined and what we thought of each chapter. The three of us have encountered countless “Oh good, you too!” moments throughout the book, which are so necessary in the life of creative people.
A few quotes (but also, just go read it):
“I began to understand the peril of asking God to let you write songs that would comfort the lonely and brokenhearted—peril, because the only way to do that is to walk through the dark forest of loneliness and heartbreak.”
“Maybe the song you’re writing is for one specific heartbroken soul who won’t be born for another four hundred years.”
“We’re invited to join with all nature in manifold witness to his great faithfulness—and since creation is going to declare it either way, we might as well jump in with our half-finished songs and join the chorus.”
(Definitely had to include that last one!)
Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry
Well, this one might deserve a whole post of its own. Goodness gracious. I read Jayber Crow last year and adored it, though I sometimes found it a little slow. That might sound silly to describe Berry’s writing as “slow” in any negative fashion. It is slow in the most brilliant way, for it describes the beauty of the ordinary. I think I connect more with Hannah Coulter as a narrator, which is understandable given her similarity to me in being a woman, wife, and mother. I have been particularly moved by the way she describes the individuality of her love for her children, as well as the way love and grief intermingle as her children leave the home.
A favorite quote:
I have this love for Mattie. It was formed in me as he himself was formed. It has his shape, you might say. He fits it. He fits into it as he fits into his clothes. He will always fit into it. When he gets out of the car and I meet him and hug him, there he is, him himself, something of my own forever, and my love for him goes all around him just as it did when he was a baby and a little boy and a young man grown.
The Irish Goodbye by Beth Ann Fennelly
I read Beth Ann Fennelly’s first collection of micro-memoirs, Heating & Cooling, years ago when studying the intersection of memoir and poetry for my thesis work in my MFA program. It was one of my favorite examples of such hybrid writing, alongside books such as The Crying Book by Heather Christle and Bluets by Maggie Nelson. Understandably, I was excited to see that Beth Ann had a new book for me to dive into, and I have certainly not been disappointed. I’m still working my way through it, but I’m really enjoying the fragmented form as well as the way grief and humor are both intertwined and juxtaposed.
WRITING:
A year ago, I posted that I was ready to dive back into my memoir manuscript after the birth of my daughter. Well, it’s been more toe-dipping than diving, but I am trying to get words on the page and worry about the restructuring later.
What I have been writing is poetry. I have several poems nearly ready for the submission process, so I thought I’d share a few excerpts until they find a publication home.
A sacred peek into my notebook, if you will.
From “As If Looking Again”:
The baby / coos, and the mourning dove coos, and some buried, hard / part of me loosens as I watch my eldest pull his brother / back when curiosity draws him too near to a dining bee.
From “Wild Goodbye”:
Porch lights / are turning on. The blueness of night / is almost palpable now, and still— / we linger. We deepen. We crane our necks / in anticipation of shadows taking flight.
From “Thus Saieth the Lord, in Green”:
I don’t care how many times / it’s been said, God’s voice must / sound like the June wind rushing / through the treetops.
From “When the Wind Blows”:
My daughter / practices lifting her fuzzy head from the quilt / I laid beneath her, and when she hears / the susurration, her eyes widen, searching / for the source. I follow her gaze and open / wider, too. I watch the leaves write a poem, / then turn back to memorize the furrow / in her brows.
HEEDING:
The Lord is teaching me the goodness of His design for order.
Because I know much of my audience here consists of fellow artists, I am certain many of you will smile in understanding when I tell you I am a messy person. When I first learned of the term “maximalist” a number of years ago, I was absolutely thrilled at being able to describe my style in a way that was not “cluttered” or “a lot.” We somehow have three gallery walls in our small thousand-square-foot home, and every bookshelf is filled with almost as many trinkets as books. My husband likes to say that we are just trying to make our home akin to a page spread from an I Spy book (which feels very much achieved whenever I’m trying to find something like my daughter’s left shoe, the nail clippers, or the tape measure).
Long-winded intro aside, the Lord has been hammering his chisel on my clutter-inclined soul. While I am happy to lean into my “maximalist” style when it comes to decorating the walls and shelves or filling my wardrobe with bright colors and patterns, the armchair piled with laundry is a result of laziness—not personality. It is not loving to my husband for him to come home day after day to a sink overflowing with grimy dishes. It is not the example I desire to set for my children when there is barely enough room for dinner plates to be set on the table because I have only scooted the unread mail, miscellaneous toys, and coloring pages to the side instead of putting them where they belong. It is not honoring to my body to cause daily undue stress because I can’t find something or because I step on something or because of the mere sight of visual chaos in every room.
Day by day, baby step by baby step, I am striving to bring more order to our home and our family. We all deserve it. There is a reason tidiness and order make us think of words like peace and balance and even beauty.
In fact, I’m wondering if I need to stop working on this draft right now and put away the piles of who knows what littering my desk…
The Lord is teaching me to listen before speaking.
Of course, I have always known that I should do this, but I have never been very good at putting it into practice. Proverbs 18:13 warns, “He who answers before listening—this is folly and shame to him.” James 1 encourages us to be “quick to listen” and “slow to speak.” As an extroverted verbal processor, I have never been great at biting my tongue. Or maybe I should rephrase that in a more positive light—I love to connect with others through talking (though it’s a fine line between talking with and talking at).
As my family and I are putting down roots in a new church community these last few months, it has been my prayer that God would help me to remember to listen first. I am trying to ask more questions, to think of myself less, and to practice much needed self-control.
The Lord is reminding me that every ounce of my creativity comes from Him.
I’ve been trying to begin my few-and-far-between writing sessions with prayer—not just in my head, but to actually write it out, whether that’s with pen or keyboard. Earlier this summer, I wanted to submit a poem to a contest but didn’t have anything that fit the theme. I sat down and prayed, “Lord, if it’s your will for me to submit something, then you are going to have to provide the words.”
Oh, friends. You wouldn’t believe how quickly and graciously He provided.
I’ll save the specifics of that story for whenever I get the chance to share that poem with you. Though just a small moment (and a small poem), the experience truly felt like a linchpin in my creative and spiritual journey.
DELIGHTING:
I’m a gardener!
A woman from my local “Buy Nothing” group stopped by this morning to pick something up, and when I stepped onto the porch to speak with her, she turned her gaze to the flower bed and exclaimed, “You’re a gardener!” I was a little taken aback, since the more common compliment goes more along the lines of “Your yard looks great!” or “I love the flowers!” To have a stranger state with such sureness that I am a gardener—it surprised me. And it delights me too, of course. A decade ago, I’m not sure I could have easily identified a maple tree from an oak tree (no, seriously). Today, I could take you out onto my lawn and show you the difference between clover and wood sorrel and chickweed and goldenrod volunteers that have been mowed short. A lawn that grows anything but grass may not count as gardening in your book, but when I think of myself as a “gardener,” I think of my role as a steward. A tender. A knower—someone who is familiar with this little place that is mine and knows its inhabitants by name. (I actually wrote an essay about this very topic years ago that was published by Fathom Magazine. I still laugh because the cover photo they chose for my piece is of a Saucer Magnolia even though my essay talks about the Royal Star Magnolia. Ha. Close enough!)
Homeschool Kindergarten Loading…
Another thing I’m delighting in this summer is my preparations for my first year homeschooling my eldest. I’ve been reading curriculums and education philosophy, rearranging the playroom, sorting books into new piles and adding more to them. I didn’t think I’d get emotional about my son starting Kindergarten, but then I read the introduction to a free Charlotte Mason curriculum1 I found and oh—I got a little weepy! In this curriculum, each age group is assigned an animal “companion,” and the one for ages 3-5 is the Rabbit:
There is something wonderfully fitting about beginning here, among soft fur, twitching noses, bright eyes, and ears that seem forever listening to the world around them. The rabbit belongs close to home. It makes its dwelling near hedgerows and gardens, often appearing quietly in the cool of the evening when the world itself seems to slow. It is gentle, curious, and content to delight in the ordinary gifts of each day . . . The youngest years of childhood are much the same. These are not years for hurrying. They are the years for lingering over picture books, collecting smooth stones, watching ants carry crumbs far larger than themselves, and discovering that every dandelion is worthy of examination.
As someone who has always been in love with school, or rather with learning, I am absolutely thrilled to continue to foster a love of learning in my children. This isn’t new, of course. I’ve been teaching him everything he knows about the world for the last five years. But this new role as his Kindergarten teacher is one that excites me and—you guessed it—delights me to my very core.
Et Cetera
A few more silly delights to top things off: Costco Churro Sundaes, homemade matcha lattes, Season 2 of Everybody Loves Raymond, The Little Fur Child by Margaret Wise Brown, this Kickstarter, salt & pepper pistachios, snail mail from friends, the squirrels peppering our roof with walnuts, and my husband’s jokes (no, he didn’t pay me to write that; yes, this is a test to see if he’s reading my Substack).
I’ll be back with Field Notes #2 sometime this autumn! As always, thanks for being here. It means more than you know. XO - Riley
P.S. I’ve been working on recording myself reading all of my old Substack posts/poems and creating graphics of the poems to preserve line breaks across the various screens of my readers.
Got 5 minutes? Take a listen:
“Honeymoon on the Olympic Peninsula” - pine trees, imagism, romance
“Buried Alive” - psalm, depression, rescue
“Of Prairie” - yellow, self-portrait, embodied nature
“Look Anywhere” - motherhood, depression, faithfulness
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This was beautifully packed with layers, so many fun insights and deep quotes. My favorite being excerpts of your poetry. 💗
This was lovely in every sense; we also are starting homeschool kindergarten with our eldest! I’ve been pouring over CM resources and curriculums to try and find a fit, so thanks for linking the cottage curriculum. I’ll give it a look and happy to see another kindred mother teacher starting at the same time!