Ordinary Days--Family Life in a Farmhouse

We drew up a chart, and each of us was responsible for setting the table and making breakfast one morning of the week.

For a long time, Paul and I were the only ones who put any effort into our breakfasts, his specialty being pancakes and mine breakfast burritos.

The children, on their mornings, all served the same, easy cold cereal and toast. We decided not to push the issue, hoping that eventually maturity and initiative would blossom and the children would try something more complicated.

But the cereal and toast continued, week after week, month after month.

Last week, however, I was awakened at 6 a.m. by clattering in the kitchen.

I found Amy, age 13, dressed and alert, stirring up a batch of muffins for our breakfast. She found a recipe in an American Girl cookbook and decided to try it, she said.

A few days later, as 11-year-old Emily headed upstairs to bed one evening, I heard her asking Paul to get her up early so he could teach her how to make blueberry pancakes.

For me, these two incidents were like finding the first ripe tomato hidden in the vines - a rich reward for a summer of waiting and work.

At this time of year, signs of fall are all around.

When I park under the oak tree, I am often startled by a loud bang on top of the car, the sound far larger than the acorn that caused it. Across the driveway, walnuts lie scattered on the grass like Lego blocks on a bedroom carpet. The maple trees arching across Powerline Road drip wet, yellow leaves on my windshield as I drive underneath.

It's the season of ripening, harvesting and gathering in. The grapevines south of the house were stripped weeks ago. The apples from our trees are stored in grass-seed sacks in the back porch or turned to applesauce.

In the garden, the beans are tilled under and the cornstalks chopped down and hauled away.

Fat jars of green beans sit placidly on my shelves, and the corn is tucked away in the freezer, stiff and yellow in Ziploc bags. I canned the last of the tomatoes not long ago, listening for that satisfying little "ping!" as the last jar sealed.

Summer is the season of diligence: weeding, watering and watching for bugs. Now, I'm leaving the garden to marinate in mud until next May.

All summer, I hovered over the potted plants, pinching here, coaxing there. In the fall, I compost the leftover petunias and stack the flowerpots in the back porch. The walnuts are drying in old pillowcases by the furnace.

Inside our grass-seed warehouse, the summer's crop is cleaned and bagged. Paul is planning projects around the house - insulating under the floor and installing the new range hood in the kitchen.

It's time to unpack my wool sweaters, plan sewing projects and watch the leaves on the snowball bush turn red.

Nature and the calendar tell me it's fall, but in the timeline of our lives, our family is only in midsummer. Our five children range in age from 2 to 15, and this is our season of hard work, constant activity and endless vigilance.

The laundry hampers always seem to be full, triple batches of cookies disappear magically, and the kitchen floor seldom stays clean for more than half an hour.

Our schedules are full of school and church activities, doctor and dentist appointments, piano lessons and driver education classes.

I am constantly vigilant: alert, monitoring, averting disaster.

Does Jenny have an earache? Is Amy extra quiet, or is it just my imagination? Ben needs new blue jeans for school, Amy needs new contact lenses and Emily needs a birthday gift for her friend's party.

I never know when I'll find 2-year-old Jenny snipping my grocery coupons into little pieces, or when Matt's latest scientific experiment will dim all the lights in the house.

"Enjoy these years," older women tell me, and I do.

I'm past the teen-age agonies of wondering what to do with my life, and I treasure this time of knowing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.

Raising my family is the most important work I'll ever do.

At this stage, I am never bored, constantly entertained, and seldom alone or lonely. Yet, in this summer of my life, I watch for signs of fall. For our family, it's still a long way off.

"Do you realize," my son asked me last year, "that you're going to have at least one teen-ager in the house for the next 18 years?"

My husband's aunt, I'm told, can stitch a quilt in a week.

"She likes to finish!" her sister tells me emphatically. "It's not that she enjoys the actual quilting that much. She just likes to finish!"

I, too, like to finish. I admit, I get such a thrill out of checking an item off my to-do list that I'll even write down something that I already got done, just for the joy of checking it off.

As much as I enjoy this season, I find that the most difficult thing about it is that it's so hard to finish anything - from sentences to grocery lists to painting a bedroom.

My day's planned activities give way to a series of interruptions. My Saturday cleaning frenzies are never quite completed before it's time for supper and baths.

Of course, the biggest project of all takes the longest to finish - this enormous task of turning a child into an adult: responsible for his own decisions, capable of taking care of himself.

I look forward to autumn. I anticipate a day when my children will apologize without being prompted and I'll hear one of them say, "Sure, you can sit in the front seat if you like."

I look forward to seeing them consider our advice and then launch out on their own.

Someday, I hope to complete this work, to feel finished, and to see the results of all these years of working and waiting.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for fall, this annual ritual of reaping and resting. I am thankful for my family and this season of our lives.

And I give thanks for muffins and blueberry pancakes for breakfast, the taste of a fruitful autumn yet to come.