Johanna S. is a writer who lives with her husband and two children in Walla Walla, Washington

In her own words:

I live in Walla Walla, a small town (pop. 30,000) in eastern Washington. We moved here four years ago when my husband, Chris, was hired to teach in the theater department at Whitman, a small liberal arts college here. Walla Walla is sort of a cultural island in the middle of rural eastern Washington. It’s traditionally a wheat growing place, but in the past few decades the wine industry has become a large force in the town’s economy. Quite a bit of the farmland is now planted with vines, and with wine has come a thriving tourism industry. The other large source of jobs here is the Washington State Penitentiary.

There are many things I love about living in such a small town. I like how, being so isolated, the town has to turn to itself to for its cultural life—Walla Walla is home to a large number of visual artists, writers, musicians, and artisans (vintners, cheese makers, candle makers, weavers, etc.)—and that, because of the town’s size, the cultural life is easily accessible. On any given weekend there are free concerts, art openings, craft demonstrations, a farmers market, etc. But there are also many things I don’t like about the town’s size and location: jobs are very hard to find, there is a high poverty rate, it often seems as though everybody is in the know about everybody else’s business, there are very few options for school, and I have a hard time with the dominance of religious worship in most aspects of the town’s life.

I have two children: Lucien, age six, and Mila, age four (or, as she would like the entire world to know, four and three quarters). Lucien is in first grade and goes to the public school down the street. I love his teachers, but wish there was more available at the school to challenge him. Mila goes to an amazing preschool that I will be broken hearted when she has to leave.

I grew up in northern New Jersey and miss the East Coast quite a bit.

List three words to describe your home:

Messy. Open. Windowed.

What is your favorite room, and why?

My bedroom, because the way the light shines through the window makes me feel like I’ve entered some kind of other worldly zone of peace. Chris and I have had sleeping issues in the past, and when we moved into our house we decided that all we wanted in our bedroom was our bed—no clothes, no clutter, nothing. It’s upstairs, away from the main living areas, and is the only place in our house that is never messy. You cannot walk into it without feeling as though you can suddenly breathe again. Unfortunately (for me and Chris, not for Mila), our bedroom will become Mila’s bedroom as soon as the kids are able to consistently sleep through the night. Then we will move into a room downstairs where we will have to content ourselves with cozy instead of transformative.

What is your favorite item and why?

My favorite thing in the house, not really an item (though as far as items go, hands down, my computer), is the view from our living room of the house across the street. I could sit on our couch and stare out our living room window for days. The house across the street is a craftsman that was built around 1910. The man who lived in it until recently, when he died in it, had lived there since the forties. He was a committed steward of the land, and every tree, shrub, and flower on the property has been tended with enormous attention for seventy years. The house is bordered in the back by Yellowhawk creek, and beyond that is a farm. Beyond the farm is vineyard, and as the leaves fall off the trees in the winter, those properties become visible as well, in a sort of misty, tree-obscured way. There are large coveys of quail that move back and forth from our yard to his yard to other neighbors’ yards, and wild turkeys, and occasionally I see a great blue heron rising like some kind of prehistoric creature from the creek, where its nest must be. We have some nice things in our house, but none of them move me quite as much as looking out the window.

What is your favorite color in your house and why?

It’s called “Winter Wheat.” We have a whole room named after it: the Winter Wheat Room—because we couldn’t come up with a consistent “this is what we do in that room” description. Winter Wheat is a kind of neutral greenish brown. It’s what our bedroom is painted in as well. I suppose the color is echoed everywhere in the winter landscape around Walla Walla, what with all the wheat fields. It’s a very soothing color.

Describe your evening and morning routines.

Mila usually wakes us up at 6:30. We can see the sunrise from our bed, and sometimes she likes to get in to watch it with us. Then Mila gets dressed, and afterwards we wake Lucien up, who is pretending he’s asleep in his bed in their room. He gets dressed. Then we go downstairs and make breakfast. Mila usually helps me or Chris make breakfast while Lucien reads or works on some kind of project. If she’s not helping cook, they are probably off somewhere pretending they’re giant spiders. Then we all eat. Then either Chris or I wrangle the kids back upstairs to brush their teeth and wash their faces. Mila and Chris leave for preschool and work by, fingers crossed, 7:30. I usually spend the time after they leave making Lucien’s lunch and then reading or chatting with him. Then I take Lucien to school. We try to be out of the house by 8:10. We should walk to school, it’s only a third of a mile away, but we are almost always involved in something that prevents us from getting out of the house in time to do that.

Our evening routine is something like this: dinner at 5:30. Whoever is not putting the kids to bed cleans up the kitchen afterwards. Piano practice (Mila singing and making up songs; Lucien working on his music for the week) around 6:30. Upstairs for bed at 7:00. Get in pajamas, brush teeth, sit on Mila’s bed to read a story. Multiple hugs, kisses, and bounces. Books in bed for Mila and on night table for Lucien. Water on night table for both. Go downstairs. Mila almost always turns out her light and falls asleep immediately. Lucien reads until Chris or I remind him at 8:30 to turn out his light.

Chris and I then collapse until we make it up the stairs to get into bed ourselves.

Name three things in your fridge?

Milk. Eggs. Kale. I am particularly fond of the eggs, which are from chickens raised by some kids a few towns over. For a little while I tried the milk from a different town a few towns over, but found that I can’t stomach the grassy taste, so I go with Organic Valley, which I read somewhere makes a point of only sourcing milk from farmers who treat their cows well. If we’re lucky, then the kale is from our garden and not in the fridge at all. If the time of year’s not right, it’s from the supermarket.

Do you recognize anything about your aesthetic style that reminds you of your mother’s home or your grandmother’s home? (Or other close relative)?  Your inspiration?

My parents are divorced and I think that I owe certain parts of my aesthetic to each of them. That we are most likely to be influenced by our mother’s aesthetic choices doesn’t seem quite right to me. I’m sure my own children are equally as influenced by their father’s idea of home as by their mother’s. The way our house looks and feels is certainly at least as chosen by Chris as by me. But anyway, parts that represent me and my heritage in the house: I love plants, as do both my mother and my father, and as did my paternal grandmother. I love having flowering plants in my living room in the winter, bringing light to the northern US in the same way my German grandmother loved having flowering plants in her living room in the winter bringing light to northern Europe. My house is far messier than either of my parents could have coped with—I have not inherited the skill of finding a place for everything that both of them are blessed with. My house is quiet in the way my parents’ homes are quiet. My house has the same kind of windowed openness that my father’s house had when I was growing up. My mother is much more interested in “cheerful” than I am, but our kitchen is painted a similar yellow to the yellow she has in her apartment.

Parenting tips to pass along?

God—do I even have any?

Read to them, read to them, read to them.

My theory about kids and food is this: if you HONESTLY love the food that you are asking your children to eat, then they will believe you when you tell them it’s good, and take the time to notice that it actually IS good. But if you are trying to trick them and don’t REALLY like something (say green vegetables), then they will feel the same way. My kids both love most things that are green—kale, collards, broccoli, etc.—and I think this is because these are some of my favorite foods, too. But I also love soup, and neither of them seems to like that.

I think consistency in routine is necessary for my sanity, and makes my children happier too. But I am also working hard on allowing flexibility into our routines.

What do you pack for lunch for your child?  Snacks?

I pack pretty much the same lunch everyday for Lucien: either a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or a ham sandwich; an apple or other kind of fruit; carrot sticks; apple sauce; water bottle. If we have had some kind of special treat, like cookies or crisp, then that goes in too. Sometimes nuts. Sometimes pumpkin seeds. Sometimes chips.

What is your child’s favorite activity, craft, or game?

We have an “art table” set up in the kitchen: there are always paints, crayons, pencils, and paper out for them to work with, and they spend a lot of time there. Both of them really like cutting shapes out of paper and taping them together to form larger things: Lucien, when he was four, started this on his own by one day announcing that he had made a bicycle. He’d cut shapes out for the handle bars, frame, wheels, seat, etc. and taped them together. Mila did the same thing yesterday, making a griffin. Lucien loves doing origami. They both pretty much love any kind of project: felted balls, paper mache lanterns, finger knitting, paper stars. They like sewing and felting and anything yarn or fabric related.

Lucien loves chess. He has a hard time finding someone who wants to play as often as he would like to.  Mila loves mancala. They both like UNO, though we’ve lost our cards and have to use a real deck and invent alternative rules.  Dominos are pretty well-loved as well.

They both like pretending they are animals and that I am their owner: Lucien consistently wants to be an owl, and Mila mostly wants to be a cat, though sometimes she wants to be a horse or a unicorn. Lately they’ve been into being spiders.

I’ve noticed that when we are all fed up with one another, the best thing to do is make sure they get time outside (surprise, surprise). We have a big yard and a fort for them, and during much of the year we have berries or vegetables in the garden that they like picking. Everything gets better once they start running around.

Ultimately, though, probably their favorite thing is reading or being read to.

What has being a parent taught you?

That I am neither as patient nor as kind as I thought I was. That kids are endlessly fascinating (which I knew before in theory, but had never really experienced)

Click here to read a recent article by Johanna; and click here to purchase her novel, City of Ghosts.