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postmodernfamilyblog

Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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I'm a mother of twin toddlers and two adult daughters. My dad says I ran the engine and the caboose on grandchildren, but I'm having a really hard time driving the potty train. (They always told me boys were harder!) I am passionate about family, football, politics, and good books, and I'm liable to blog about any one of them on any given week.

Building a Collected Space for (and from) my endless stacks of words

There are words I love for their sounds, like pixelated, Appalachian, alchemy.

And names I love for their looks, like Dierdre, Ariadne, Fizzy Dianthus, for instance.

And then there’s phrases I swoon for thanks to texture and taste, like green glass goblin, mist-spangled sea oats, and bumblebees tumbling through wildflower banks.

They all tickle my brainstem like mothwings in incomprehensibly wonderful ways, so I collect them like fireflies, then leave them floating like flotsam in a file — a file I call “poetry snippets” — thoughts fleeting, but recorded, pinned in a dark corner, piled up in heaps of broken images. I round up the parts, construct nothing of substance, then go out and gather some more, flitting through fact and fiction storehouses in my mind, snatching scenes, sketching silhouettes, silent stacks clustered in the cloisters of my laptop:

the dried and pressed blossoms of innocence,

               the reclaimed wood of childhood,

                              the trawled testimonies of trauma,

                                             all the tapestries woven not even half-way…

sonorous symbols, signifying nothing.

I so want to craft these trinkets into treasure… but like a painter who never paints her own house, it seems I’m a writer who never writes her own world.

I want – I need — to give them a home. Is it possible for me to rearrange and repurpose them, strip and paint and polish them ‘til the treasures I’ve stored up adorn every floorboard, enliven each corner and window and door? So, when I’m done, I’ll have erected the coziest, most comfortable little work of art with carefully crafted characters living in whimsy and purpose, surrounded by gleaming pewter sentence sets and winks of wisdom?

Where they’ll flourish and feel at home — my characters, yes, but my readers too?

That’s the prose and poetry I pray I can piece together in this next chapter of my life. A collected space – my favorite kind of space — that visitors will return to year after year with a cup of coffee and some introspection.

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You had me at Burrow

I just read a headline from House & Garden UK that says cottagecore has given way to burrowcore. I’d say, they’re speaking my love language.

I’m a lover of little havens full of favorites, both my tribe and my trappings. A good book, a soft throw, a mug of coffee or glass of wine, my family gathered all around is heaven to me. Add soup on the stove or scones in the oven and I will never leave.

I bought into minimalism when we first purchased our house – or as minimalist as I could ever get. I painted nearly every surface alabaster white (which I still love, btw… see my kitchen above), but my favorite room in the house is my office, with its dark bronze walls, books stacked to the ceiling, daybed piled with pillows, and the heavy, muted rug my dear Aunt Jan gave me underfoot. 

My truest loves are comfortably cluttered and full of flavor. Always have been, and always will be.  I love my home like I love my literature, full of moody tones and blowsy sentences. I love my decor like I love my food, full to bursting with spice and dense layers.

Minimalism is sparse. It feels deconstructed. Like Hemingway details, sharp and dry. Like food plated by a Michelin-starred chef: angle of substance, line of nourishment.

Maximalism, on the other hand, is overwhelming. Too many things competing for attention. See me! Pick me! Exhibitionist energy in big, bold colors, heaps of fussy meringue on display. Like a great big bowl of Eton Mess. A saccharine toothache.

But burrowcore… THAT’s my speed, my flavor, my jam.

It’s introverted, homey, cozy, layered. All soft spaces, lit with lamps and candles and sunny windows. It’s equal parts shadow and sun, forest flavor and fragrant meadow. It’s collected, gathered, connected, maintained. It’s family hand-me-downs, antique shops and internet finds. It’s Beatrix Potter making best friends with Faulkner. It’s comfort food served warm from the stove.

Here’s to burrowcore forevermore.

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The Fate of a Showgirl

We’re all Sisters of the Pleiades — limber, almost-deities,

out here dancing with our assets glowing

like the ends

of cigarettes, like

Schiaparelli silhouettes,

our skilled pirouettes and

lithesome fingertips

spinning Fate

in the palms

of our hands.

Sexed-up angels,

winged goddesses

up on our catwalks, we

set the sun to swooning

and the moon to mooning,

but the true secret is…

Fortune and her

kaleidoscopic wheel

                                                                            — while a fun ride –     

                                                            is always a strumpet.

                                             And we’re ever one misstep,

                              one missed rep,

               from being tumbled,

then ground to

quintessence

of dust,

just as the next big thing in her slender, goodly frame struts and frets her life up on the wire.

So goes the providence of a songbird.

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And All the Men Laughed

I loved a lot of things about these Olympics. The dedication of the athletes: the timeless hours spent on ice, the slopes, the weight rooms, the training facilities. I loved the spectacle of opening and closing ceremonies. The routines and runs and games and events. The highlights of the athletes on podiums and the wolfdog on ski-trials.

What I didn’t love is the part where gender became war. Where it became us against them, she against him. If we can’t compete in the rings, then why pit us against each other outside of them?

The locker room joke heard round the world cut me to the quickening place. I mean, isn’t that what was intended?

The jokes on U-terus?

The president took a slice at the slice… and all the men laughed.

Alysa Liu shared a taste of her joy with us this week. Women’s hockey shared communion and love.

Then, men’s hockey came ‘round serving up backwash and bile.

May they all taste the backlash of that.

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Thanksgiving Blasphemy

Since our big meal is Saturday for us this year, and since our tradition of putting up the tree the day-after-Thanksgiving is out the window thanks to the blessing of 3rd round of playoffs, I’ve done something I swore I’d never do. I’ve decorated BEFORE Thanksgiving.

And y’all, it may be blasphemy, but I’m a big convert. Huge. Obsessed.

And I keep looking at insta for new inspo. It’s a dangerous habit.

I’m officially hooked on retro Christmas. I initially couldn’t decide if I wanted midcentury, maximalist, or Christmas Carol quaint. If I should dry orange slices, add old-fashioned tinsel to the tree, sling in some beads, add ribbons and bows..

So I decided to just do it all.

Over the course of the last three days, our house has become a veritable cornucopia of Christmas.

In the kitchen nook, the Canes tree celebrates the season, plus there’s a new, white beauty with my grandmother’s Shiny Brites (salvaged from her basement straight out of the 1950s), and a few beloved ornaments gifted me by my girls.

In the library, there’s the boys’ tree, featuring both homemade and Bug and Bear themed ornaments, all tied together with paper garland.

In the living room, stands the largest and proudest tree of all, with an eclectic mix of blown glass, and this year, vintage bulbs in all their technicolor glory. And yes, I got tinsel!!!! — I love how it shimmies with the least little draft.)

And in the dining room, no tree, but Thanksgiving Boxes stacked to heaven and waiting on my precious loves, and a mixed metal centerpiece with matching chandelier.

Close by, on the mantel, my dearest Aunt Ann’s hand-sculpted A Christmas Carol dolls that she made for me my first year of teaching, and which my beloved Aunt Jan outfitted to perfection.

The porch got a tree too, of course, along with our snowman blow mold.

And the oranges?  Well, I’m still figuring out where those will go, but they’re dried, folks, they’re dried.

In the meantime, dawn has draped ribbons of sun and cloud through my backyard pines. She, too, has decorated early.  

Soon, laughter and conversation will percolate – a masterpiece of memories in the making – but for now, there is only my coffee and twinkling lights while my favorite ghosts of Thanksgivings past occupy my mind while I bask in the abundance of this Thanksgiving present and praise Him for whom all blessings in the future will surely flow.

Happy Thanksgiving and God bless us, every one.

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Thanksgiving Joy

I first fell in love with Thanksgiving when I went to live with my grandmother in East Tennessee. Until then, it had always been my immediate family gathered at the table for prayer and thanksgiving. A quiet, fellowship thing.

But then, in Tennessee, I found aunts and cousins, uncles and my grandmother, all around a bustling Formica table with aluminum chairs and red vinyl seats. It was all so busy and breathless, in the best possible way.

There were spinning chairs and laughter and games and pump organs and so many pies. And there were people here and there, and here and there, and here and there and everywhere. My heart and belly were overflowing with joy.

That’s where my love for Thanksgiving began.

And here’s where it flourishes now. In my own home as I prep for the arrival of all the chaos and children — now aunts and uncles, many with children of their own, and I, the mother, the grandmother, the matriarch.

I love a full house, full of blessings and thanksgiving.

Though one of my loves is in Miami and can’t be here this week. She’s tending to others as a brilliant badass surgeon and this year is her year to be there on call. And though I’m happy she’s there for her patients, I’m sad she can’t be here with us.

Still, she’s here in my heart, like all the rest who will be here and there and here and there and here and there and everywhere.

Joy is not made to be a crumb.

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Comfort and Cozy Season

Sometimes you want sweet and settled. You want cozy cottages and wood smoke drifting lazily out of chimneys. Fog in the hedgerows and field mice scampering through the meadow.

But you don’t live in a fairytale and you don’t like (no really don’t like) mice. So, you shift your vision a bit. To here, where we are. After all, we need softness here now more than ever.

Your sweet and settled spot can be anywhere you are. Mine is a brick ranch home settled in a wooded lot. There’s a fire in the fireplace and a fog drifting through the half-acre wood. Squirrels scamper through lichened pines.

There’s comfort to be found here. And shelter from life’s storms. There’s a wreath on the door, lights on the porch, and cars soon parked in the half-circle drive.

Here, mornings are damp in November – the air newly cool, the earth still warm and exhaling mist. Groundhogs brewing coffee, so they say.

Now, fill each room with your favorite things: blankets and pillows, trinkets and treasures, plush, scattered rugs, pile after pile of well-loved books. (But only if that’s your thing. It’s most definitely mine.)

But most important of all, bring in your favorite people: family and friends, loved ones, neighbors. Pile on the comfort. Slather the joy. Love them, most tender and true. You wish you could do the same for the rest in this worrisome world. (I get it. Me, too.)

Because outside, leaves tumble and turn. Outside, spiders build nests for the winter. Outside the light gets dimmer and the air gets cold.

But inside there’s cozy. There’s comfort. There’s joy.

It’s not inside the house, though. (I mean it is. You’ve taken such trouble to pile on the posh pillows, after all.)  

But the true cozy cottage you’ve built is your heart. Peep those lights in the window, there? The fire in the hearth? That’s all inside you. Along with sweets baking, gratitude singing, memories building.

Inside you, live the ones you love most in this world. So nurture them – and your own sweet, tender self too – so very well in these trying times.

Let thanksgiving stretch, slide soft into her warm, fuzzy slippers, and put the kettle on to boil. For in you, abides comfort and cozy. And joy.

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Searching for Softness

They tiptoe around back, 
velvet flanks broad, 
flashes of cream tails, 
not raised in alarm, 
but wagging in whispers,
graceful necks dipping for moss 
or lifting for leaves. 
I nearly missed them,
these soft, silent, beauties. 
Don’t you, too.

Keep an eye out for the
nearly silent beauty, 
still nibbling away 
at the underside of shade. 
It’ll be what keeps us going,
keeps us lifted and searching,  
ears twitching, feet pattering 
	toward goodness and mercy.

		Find and follow the tender path.
			There’s still softness to be found.

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Fletcher and Harper

Postmodern names
of prepubescent children
felled by a postmodern problem
of colossal proportions
we refuse to accept.
so, we mourn them in post-shooting
posts with thoughts and prayers
and posthumous praise,
in postmodern funeral repasses
on Facebook, where families and friends
and communities and country
can come together
to wax poetic on
somebody’s children,
somebody’s teachers,
some bodies,
always bodies,
more bodies,
more babies,
posted about
postmortem,
but not fought for
while alive

Heather Peters Candela


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