Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Family life

Celebrate the First Day of Fall

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 “How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.” -John Burroughs

Saturday is the first day of fall. I must confess that my feelings about this time of year have shifted rather dramatically. I used to delight in everything about fall – crunchy leaves, red apples, the start of school. But now that I share my days with two little ones, fall does not not hold quite the same appeal. I love summer with kids – gardening and running through the sprinkler and throwing the doors wide open in the evenings — so it’s hard to say goodbye to it. But, ready or not, fall has arrived. Here are a few simple ideas to observe the change in season:

  • Reflect:

Do we subconsciously tip waiters more on sunny days? So says Leonard Mlodinow  in Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Life. And changes in the weather probably affect us in countless other ways that we’re barely aware of.

If you have some time this season to reflect on our relationship with nature and how closely our emotional states mirror the “capricious, moody earth itself”, I recommend David Abram’s mind-bending long-form essay “Air Aware,” which I read in Orion three years ago and still think about all the time. Here’s an excerpt:

If our sense of inward confusion and muddledness is anciently and inextricably bound up with our outward experience of being enveloped in a fog—if our whole conceptualization of the emotional mood or “feel” of things is unavoidably entwined with metaphors of “atmospheres,” “airs,” and “climates”—then it is hardly projection to notice that it is not only human beings (and human-made spaces) that carry moods: that the living land in which we dwell, and in whose life we participate, has its own feeling-tone and style that varies throughout a day or a season.

  • Read:

What better way to celebrate cooler weather than with a stack of fall-themed library books? Here are a few of my family’s favorite autumn picture books:

  • Too Many Pumpkins by Linda White
  • Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert
  • Autumn is for Apples by Michelle Knudsen
  • Apples and Pumpkins by Anne Rockwell
  • Fall is Not Easy by Marty Kelly
  • It’s Fall! by Linda Glaser.

It’s also fun to read aloud from The Autumn Equinox by Ellen Jackson, which educates on different modern and historical cultural traditions celebrating the day.

Looking for adult reads to help you wile away the cooler days? Check out some of the season’s new releases.

  • Eat:

Fall is a time of abundance where I live: bushels of sun-ripened tomatoes, every variety of squash . . . and pumpkins. Here’s a recipe that will bring some of the best tastes and scents of fall into your kitchen.

Pumpkin Bread

  • 1 and 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
  • 1 cup pumpkin, baked and mashed
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon ginger
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1/4 teaspoon cloves
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup olive oil or butter
  • 1/4 cup maple syrup
  • 1/4 cup honey
  • a handful of walnuts or raisins (optional)

Mix and pour into an oiled bread pan. Bake for 50 minutes to an hour. Test with a tooth pick. Cool and enjoy.

(Thanks to my friend Craig, who generously shared this recipe with me several years ago, including all of his healthy twists.)

Wishing you a happy first day of fall. You can find many more ways to celebrate the season here.

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Cruising the Blogosphere

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Last week I asked you for your favorite blogs, and you gave me so many to explore. Thanks for your feedback! I’m already familiar with some of them, but it’s exciting to find a few new ones.

For anyone looking for new reading material, here’s a small sampling of the recommendations, described in the bloggers’ own words.

“I created the Art of Doing Stuff  because let’s face it, I’m going to do all this stuff anyway so I might as use my self diagnosed OCD to make the world a better, cleaner and more organized place. Because currently, my know-how only benefits my ungrateful friends and family members who make fun of my somewhat fanatical approach to figuring stuff out, and yet, call ME when they want to know how to rip the membrane off a rack of ribs. They can suck it.” – Karen Bertelson

“The idea of foregoing the convenience of modern America and embracing a do-it-yourself attitude is a daunting one for many people. But mostly? It’s about a change in attitude. In a world where soup comes in a can, pudding from a box, and bread from a bag it’s easy to forget that just a few decades ago those items were made at home from scratch – maybe even from foods grown right outside the door.” – Kris Bordessa

“After a conversation with my neighbor on Memorial Day 2008, we decided to become minimalist. This blog is about our journey. … This blog is about the joys and the struggles. It is written to inspire you to live with less. And find more life because of it.” – Joshua Becker

“My hope for this blog has always been to share kind honesty, beauty, and simple guidance through a hectic world.” – Heather Bruggeman

“This is a journal of my small organic gardens in north eastern Ohio, zone 5(a).” – Susy Morris

“I write about old-fashioned cooking, which means: from scratch, with real food, and great taste is more important than fancy presentation.” – Drew Kime

“As humans, our priorities have been skewed. We have lost sight of what true happiness is and can bring, succumbing to a lifestyle that is unsustainable, unhealthy, and so disconnected from the natural world that we have resorted to “saving” it. We have found false solace in the material while being dominated by its pursuit. This blog is about changing that.” – Bill Gerlach

Still don’t have enough to read?

There are many, many other great suggestions in the comments section here, and be sure to check out all the suggesters’ fabulous blogs as well.  In addition, here are a few blogs that I’ve discovered recently in other ways, which I think you may enjoy:

“6512 and growing is the story of growing a family (plus 7 chickens, thousands of honeybee, a large garden and a small orchard, while butchering an elk or two) at 6512 feet, our Colorado hometown elevation.” – Rachel Turiel

“FOTL is the intersection of food, foraging, and the outdoors.” – Langston Cook

“I created this blog because I saw a need to formalize the advice I was sharing with friends and family about ‘green living’ including habits and routines that are better for your health, the health of those around you and the planet.” – Lane’ Richards

“The Urban Country‘s mission is simple. We publish 2-3 quality articles per week to advocate for using bicycles as transportation in North America to improve our cities, our people, and the world. – James D. Schwartz

Happy reading!

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17 Ways to Celebrate the First Day of Summer

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Tuesday, June 21 is the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. The sun will bathe the Arctic Circle in 24 hours of daylight, and ancient monuments around the world will align with the sun. Historically Europeans celebrated the summer solstice by gathering plants and holding bonfires and festivals. Native American plains tribes held sun dances.

The first day of summer is a great time to start new family traditions. Seasonal celebrations are a fun way to connect with nature and they can be as easy or elaborate as you want them to be. Here are a few ideas:

1.  Take a trip to the library a few days before your celebration and pick out books about summer. Some of my family’s favorite summer picture books include:

  • Before the Storm by Jan Yolen
  • Summertime Waltz by Nina Payne
  • Canoe Days by Gary Paulsen
  • Sun Dance Water Dance by Jonathan London
  • Summer is Summer by Phillis and David Gershator
  • Under Alaska’s Midnight Sun by Deb Venasse.

For adult reading, check out these lists of 2011 summer must-reads compiled by NPR, Newsweek, and Oprah.

2.  Place a bouquet of roses, lilies, or daisies in your family members’ bedrooms while they sleep, so they wake to fresh summer flowers.

3.  Find a special place outside to watch the sunrise and sunset. You can find out what time the sun will rise and set where you live here.

4.  Eat breakfast outside.

5.  Trace each other’s shadows throughout the day to note the sun’s long trip across the sky.

6.  Take a camping trip. Light a fire at night to celebrate the warmth of the sun. Sleep outside. Wake with the sun.

7.  Go on a nature hike. Bring along guidebooks to help you identify birds, butterflies, mushrooms, or wildflowers.

8.  Make flower chains or a summer solstice wreath.

9.  Display summer decorations: seashells, flowers, sand dollars, or whatever symbolizes summer in your family.

10.  Gather or plant Saint John’s Wort. Traditionally Europeans harvested the plant’s cheerful yellow flowers on the first day of summer, dried them, and made them into a tea on the first day of winter. The tea supposedly brought the summer sunniness into the dark winter days. If you don’t have any Saint John’s Wort in your garden, consider planting it. It is  an incredibly useful herb, and it thrives in poor soil with little attention. Find out more about it here.

11.  Visit a U-pick farm to harvest strawberries, snap peas, or whatever is in season where you live. Find a “pick your own” farm near you here.

12.  Make a summer feast. Eat exclusively from your garden or the farmer’s market to celebrate the bounties of summer in your area.

13.  Host a “locavore” potluck.

14.  Turn off all the indoor lights, light candles, and eat dinner outside.

15.  Play outside games, watercolor, or decorate the sidewalks with chalk until the sun sets.

16.  Read aloud from The Summer Solstice by Ellen Jackson.

17.  Read aloud, watch, or put on your own rendition of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. For kids, check out the book A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Kids by Lois Burdett or Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Kids: 3 melodramatic plays for 3 group sizes by Brendan P. Kelso.

Need more inspiration? Check out these resources:

The Magic of Storytelling

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“Mama, will you tell me a story?” my three-year-old son Ezra asks as I tuck him in at night.

Who could refuse, right? Of course, the moment I utter, “The end”, the follow-up request comes: “Another story, Mama? About a turtle.” We usually negotiate the number of stories to three.

Inventing three stories a night and often a couple at nap time can be daunting. Fortunately Ezra likes to hear about the same characters over and over again: a little boy named Henry, a lion he named Anagoa, Horatio the hippo, Fiona the crocodile, and an elderly turtle couple who live by the ocean. He also likes true stories, especially about the rainy June day when he was born three years ago and the sunny September afternoon when I met his dad 12 years ago.

Like most things to do with parenting, storytelling could feel like a chore, especially at bedtime – a time of the day that recently inspired one dad to write a bestseller called Go the F**k to Sleep. But I’m enjoying our daily stories as much as my son for a few reasons:

  • It gives my imagination a workout.

Hanging out with a three-year-old is great for your creativity. They are master pretenders and can jump into the imaginary world instantly. Just as when writing, I try to include sensory details, setting, conflict, twists, and dialogue in my stories. Those devices make for more entertaining stories for my son, and using them is great practice for all kinds of writing.

  • It forces me to turn off my inner editor.

At the keyboard, I can go over the same sentence five hundred times moving commas around. But when I’m telling my son stories, I have to improvise and let the characters lead me forward. It’s great practice for writing first drafts.

  • I have a captive (and honest) audience

It’s fun to tell stories to someone who’s enraptured with your every word. When Ezra is still talking about a character or story days after I told it, I know I successfully created a world for him. On the contrary, when I ask him, “Was that a good story?” he occasionally replies, “Not really.” For a writer, honesty really is the best policy; it’s the only thing that makes you better.

The Magic of Storytelling #narrative #parenting

If telling stories sounds boring or more pressure-packed than taking the bar exam, you might be surprised at how much you enjoy it. As Lisa Lipkin writes in Bringing the Story Home, “Since the time we enter this world, we live in stories, inhaling and exhaling them.”

As a society, we pay lots of money and spend hours having people tell us stories on television, in books, at the movies, and on podcasts. We can also do it for free at home, and tap into the magic of live entertainment and human connection at the same time.

If inventing yarns holds no appeal, don’t let that deter you. Fictional stories can help us understand human emotions and relationships and take us to faraway places, but telling true stories to your kids probably serves an even broader purpose: it helps them connect with their parents and understand who they are.

“Our children need a sense of somebodiness,” Roland Barksdale writes In The African American Family’s Guide to Tracing Our Roots. “Giving them a connectedness to the past can help, which comes through story telling.”

When I was a kid, I loved the stories my dad made up for me and my sister, memorably nightly installments of the adventures of a pica. But I was even more captivated by my parents’ true stories about where they grew up, how they met, and about those mysterious years they spent together before my sister and I were born. Those stories placed me in a family, connected me with relatives I’d never met, and helped me to understand who I am. Most importantly they helped me get to know my parents and set up a family culture of openness, conversing, and enjoying one another’s company.

So if you don’t already tell stories as a family, consider carving out some time to do it. Once you start, you might be amazed at how entertaining you can be – and by how much your family loves this simple, free, and ancient pastime.

If there's one universal thread that binds all people together, it's their need for stories. - Lisa Lipkin #storytelling #narrative #parenting

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Learning Outside the Lines

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Recently I heard an interview with the herbalist Cascade Anderson Geller. She shared a story about a teacher and healer she met in the remote Choco region of Northern Ecuador, where she went to learn about the local plants and healing methods.

Geller had been suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome and had consulted scads of doctors and bodywork practitioners in the United States. She didn’t tell the healer about the carpal tunnel, but he immediately went to work on her wrists. The next morning, she woke without the nagging tingling and pain she’d been coping with for months.

Later the healer saw her consulting a book about the plants in the region and approached her. He sniffed the book and ran his hands over it, then asked if he could borrow it.

When he returned it, he said, “You know, you can’t really learn anything about the plants except from the plants themselves.”

He asked her what the book was made of. She told him, and he explained that the reason the book must help her was because it was made from trees, and the trees were speaking to her.

“It was profound,” Geller says. “But of course, I still like books, because that’s what I was trained with. Whatever we were trained with as a child, that’s what we relate to and what we go back to. … With our training in academics, it’s a stretch to trust any other source.”

Geller’s experience reminds me of my journey through pregnancy and birth several years ago.

I grew up in a house filled with books. I always loved school, and books were a huge part of my childhood and my life. My love of words and research have served me well in many areas. They helped me excel in college. They’ve helped me get jobs. They help me write for publication and understand many things about the world and about people. No one can deny that words have power and that books can change us, heal us, teach us.

But several years ago, like Geller, I realized that books also have limits. I was nearing the end of my pregnancy, and like so many expectant mothers, I’d read towers of books and endless magazine articles and websites about pregnancy and birth – about what to expect during labor, about how to handle contractions, about breathing and positions and the various “methods” of coping.

I felt like I was lost in a wilderness of techniques – Bradley, Birthing From Within, Hypnobabies, with their various colloquialisms filling my mind. Which one would help me tackle this Herculean thing I had to do sooner and sooner with each passing minute?

With just weeks left in my pregnancy, I had an epiphany. I didn’t need to cram for birth like I was taking the LSAT. I didn’t need to manage it like I was putting on a benefit concert. I just needed to show up and experience this thing, whatever it was going to be – the pain, the emotions, the exhaustion, the joy. I just had to live it.

It was such an incredible relief.

I would tell you more about the actual birth, but I don’t remember it well. I do know that the experience changed me more profoundly than any book I’ve ever read. And afterward came a truly Herculean task that would make all my preparation for birth seem absurd and hilarious – parenting. Just weeks after my son was born, as I paced the halls with him, I knew that birth would be the easiest part of our journey together.

Who would I turn to for advice? Dr. Spock? Dr. Sears? Penelope Leach? The Baby Whisperer? The Smartest Baby on the Block? How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk? Love and Logic? I read them all, and many more.

Then my son turned one, his personality started to emerge, and the parenting books began gathering dust. I’m sure it helped me in some way to read them, especially the ones that emphasize kindness, listening, compassion, warmth, and connection. Those are good reminders for all walks of life.

But parenting books can also get in the way. Recently I was talking to a writer friend and mentioned a how-to-write-fiction-book that I love, and he replied, “I can’t read any more how-to books. They just make me a worse writer, because I stop listening to myself.” I think the same can be true of parenting books.

Learning Outside the Lines #parenting #family #learning

I used to run into another mom at the park occasionally. She had a new baby and a five-year-old, and she was training to become a parenting educator. She loved to talk about parenting books. Her favorite was How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk. She had charts in her bedroom, with scripts to help her remember what to say when dealing with behavior problems. If her five-year-old was acting out at the breakfast table, she would excuse herself for a moment to consult the dialogues.

She is a smart person and a loving and patient mother. But I noticed something strange about her interactions with her kids. They were stilted, scripted, and unreal. She wasn’t being herself.

That’s when I decided that being ourselves with our kids is the most important thing we can do, more important than handling every behavior issue perfectly, more important than having a baby who sleeps all night or a toddler who eats vegetables.

As my son grows older, I’m learning to trust things that you can’t learn in books, namely my instincts and my relationship with him. I try to let them guide me in knowing what to do when he’s tired, stressed out, sad, or angry. I don’t always do the right thing. I’m not always patient; I’m not always kind; and I’m not always fair. Neither is my son. So I’ve also come to trust in the amazing power of the apology.

Mostly I trust that just as it was when I was growing up, family life will be messy. It won’t fit into scripts or how-tos. Books will never capture its insanity, or its joy.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Family life is messy. Books will never capture its insanity or joy. It must be lived. #parenting” quote=”Family life is messy. Books will never capture its insanity or joy. It must be lived.” theme=”style1″]

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"It is the absurdity of family life, its raggedness, that is at once its redemption and true nobility." - James McBride #parenting #family #quote

What do you think? Are there things we have to learn outside the lines?

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