Kate Murry, Victoria Austin, and My Mom

I've always wanted to be like Victoria Austin.* Not really like Vicky Austin - I related very well to her, but I didn't aspire to be like her. But her mother, Victoria, really embodies the type of mother and homemaker I want to be.

Kate Murry, on the other hand, is a molecular physicist (I think? Someone correct me if I'm wrong in that). I certainly don't aspire to her career, but I do admire the way she integrates her work and her family. She does what she loves, what she is gifted at, but she still (mostly) manages to care for her husband and her children, even, if necessary, making stew on her Bunsen burner.

In short, I want my household to feel like Victoria's does, like Kate's does. I have a very specific mental picture from countless times reading and re-reading these books, but that's hard to put into words. Some of the things that I hope will characterize my own home: good, home-cooked food; several varieties of dogs and cats; music, whether it's classical or folk-rock or blues, live and in the next room or recorded; a sense of peace and orderliness despite minor bouts of chaos and clutter.

Of course, the thing that ties all of those things together is love. I know, how cliche. None of those things will happen, though, or at least they won't have the desired result (the 'feel' won't be right) if love isn't driving them. I know I won't always feel warm and fuzzy about cooking dinner for my family. I won't always jump up and down at the idea of washing a small someone's dirty laundry. I may sometimes just want a little peace and quiet more than I want to hear my children practicing musical instruments. But even if I end up burning dinner more often than not, even if my children are violently allergic to animals or don't have a musical bone in their bodies, even if the house is covered in toys and clothes and junk...if there is a pervasive spirit of love (first and foremost to God, next between me and my husband, and third from us to our children), I think I will have succeeded in following in Victoria's and Kate's foosteps.

Since Victoria Austin and Kate Murry are fictional, and, much as this would thrill me, I can't just go sit at their feet and get them to teach me everything they know, it helps that I have a real, concrete person to emulate as well: my mom. Even though our house growing up didn't look exactly like the Austins' or the Murrys', in large measure because I was an only child, the love was there from the beginning. I never wondered if my parents loved me. I didn't agree with their assessment of things from time to time, sure. ("What do you mean I can't drive out on curvy country roads at two in the morning on a snowy New Year's Eve??") But that base-level security was always there.

I am discovering how much I am becoming like my mom. I never used to understand why it would make her so happy if I willingly emptied the dishwasher or swept the porch without complaining, or even without being asked. Now, though, when my husband surprises me by welcoming me home from work with a clean kitchen, my heart swells. In the world of Love Languages, I wouldn't say Acts of Service is a primary one for me, but I have learned how well it can convey love in a way I never grasped before.

To look at it from the other side, it helps me to see how all of the hours my mom spent in the kitchen, making hot, delicious meals from scratch (even when it was 95 degrees outside!), doing our laundry, decorating the house, and scrubbing the floors were, at the deepest level, ways she showed my dad and me how much she loved us. Of course, she said it out loud a lot, too! You can't have one without the other. But it's becoming obvious to me how important both sides of the coin are: overtly-expressed affection, and the more subtle, service-expressed kind.

What I hope to do on this blog is to document the ways I am attempting to become more like Kate Murry and Victoria Austin. More like my mom. Some of the time this may focus on outward things, like new recipes I've tried or ways I am learning to be more domestic, and some of the time I may write more about the inward stuff, stuff that needs to be worked on inside my heart so I can love God and others better. I hope it will be an encouragement to you. Please feel free to comment - I'd love to hear from you!

*Note - if you aren't familiar with the Murry and Austin families in Madeleine L'Engle's books, you won't know a lot of what I'm talking about in this post, at least not the beginning part. First, what are you waiting for? Go read The Time Quintet and The Austin Family Chronicles! Second, as much as I love these characters, they are really more of an inspiration for this blog, and probably won't be as intimately involved in the content itself.