On the way home from Hope’s dance class last night, in the cool suburban twilight, Hope asks me why we don’t live in the country. She asks me why we can’t see the stars. Its hard to explain to her about the urban electric glow at night, the ambient light from all the street lights, the stadiums, the homes, how it all glares upward to hide the stars that are really there. Through the marine layer and through the smog, the night sky is truly there in it’s deep blackness; the stars are vivid and bright and the planets can be seen. Orion is dressed in his winter brilliance and steadfastness. The stars are there, really, we just can’t see them.

It is hard to explain to her that in my own little girl heart, I wish we could see the see the stars too. I wish the city’s lights didn’t fade the beauty of the night sky, that the dark-brownish sky really isn’t how it is meant to be viewed.

Chad and I’ve grown up here. Our families are here, our business, our established friendships – all of it is here. Grandparents, church, home, history – the life that is familliar, it is in California.

My heart ached when she finally said, I just want to see the stars…

How can I explain to her how the same desire is in my own heart, but that as her parents, we’ve decided that the relationships she is able to develop with her grandparents and her family is WORTH not being able to see the stars each night?

I know some of her country-desire is fueled by the fact she wants a pasture that has pens for both her unicorn and her pegasus, and then one for her normal horse too. I know that she dreams, as a six-year-old girl, in giant leaps and wide-arching thoughts and consequences are things she is just beginning to understand.

I think she gets it. Her next wish was that we could live in the country, but then all of our friends would come to live too. It seems she understands the importance of relationship and I think she is beginning to learn that sometimes you must choose between two good things; that some choices have drawbacks but that there are worthy benefits.

I say to her, “I know, baby, we all just want to see the stars.”

Yesterday in her play and music class, I watched as Naomi helped in the group’s clean-up. She gathered small musical instruments and colored sticks to return to the teacher. When the call for clean-up came, she began to pick up the items, one by one, until her arms were full with about eight different things, too much for her small hands to keep a hold of.

When I was a child, I was fascinated with maps. Road maps, maps of California, you-are-here-maps…anything from a birds’ eye view with interstates and rivers and county lines and borders. Anything that planned out the landscape and showed me my proximity to something else.

During our family’s occasional trans-continental car trips as a kid, I could waste a good hour or two simply riding in the backseat with the map. I would stare, unfolded map flapping in the wind of the rolled-down window, at the cornfields, the small towns the old trucks as they flashed by. I would look down to see how far we’d come.

The lure of maps has followed me into my adulthood. When we travelled through France in 2001, I faithfully traced our journey on a large-foldable map of the country. Each day, for each leg of our trip, I happily studied the map and marked exactly which road we drove, to which cities and any side trips we took. I observed and labeled any town or city we might return to when we return someday: Biarittz is nice, St. Paul de Vence is quaint, and sense-intoxicating Paris, of course, is exquisite. Located in the central north of France, Paris seems to sit on a throne, looking disdainfully down on the rest of the country, as it to catch the best view.

Maps have layers and levels and unending intricacies. A wide view of the entire country can be focused down int a single tiny town with its rural roads and streams. The open landscape has an infinite number of stories to tell.

The man that I married, I have now known for over fifteen years. His face is the most familiar in the world to me and it carries with it its own intricacies and infinite stories. The face of my husband is its own map worth studying, its landscape is perfect and is complete with layers and levels and depth that are unable to be seen from the surface. His map carries the pains and joys of a life being well-lived, and I seem to be able to measure my proximity to him by looking into his eyes, our closeness is reflected there.

My children, their faces so fresh and unwritten, the landscapes of their lives have yet to be mapped. They are so close to the beginning of the process, their maps are filled with empty and fruitful fields, waiting for life to fill them up with what comes next.

Maps will never lose their charm for me, and especially those of my family, my dear best friend and my daughters – theirs are the maps worth studying for the infinite number of stories and joys they have lived and have yet to write.

“It might not be the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen, but its a new day“

I usually don’t quote song lyrics, but poetry as they sometimes are, this one always speaks to me.

Every day is remade in the next one, and everyone should be give the chance to start again. Each day IS new but it may not look beautiful to begin with. It may not even end pretty. But it is all new.

It is fiery and difficult, and other people may be angry from the day before. The kids may still be grumpy and I am surely tired from last week. My husband may still be stressed and I might be hurt from last weekend’s phone call, but today is new.

It is something to be remade. Remake yourself.

The yogurt from the new natural frozen yogurt shop was expensive, far too expensive for a snack. And, it stormed this afternoon, the rain coming across sideways in the wind. I would have rather been home on a Sunday afternoon, in sweats with a warm cup in my hands.

When I was in college, I worked as a barista before I knew what that was. On weekends, summers and during the holidays, I worked at a coffee bar in our local mall before Southern Californians had even heard of Starbucks. Only the most elitist of coffee drinkers knew what a machiato was, the difference between a latte and a cappuccino and what a long espresso was. Starbucks, and like businesses, would soon invade our county, but at that point, The Coffee Trader was my home.

It is around this time every January when the rain and the dreary mornings promise that this month will never end, and the excitement of Christmas is only a distant memory that I get an itch., to go. Pack the kids in the car and just go. (We are swearing off planes for awhile post Europe)

So, we are going here in June: not as balmy as Hawaii, nor as warm, but the California coastline holds it’s own beautiful perfection. We won’t be there during whale watching season and the water might not be warm enough for swimming, even in early summer, but there will be sandcastles, and seashells and bicycle rides. There will be, for certain, a trip to the aquarium, and hopefully some naps in the afternoons. There will be cold mornings and breezy evenings, and cups of coffee while watching the Pacific.

My mother observed something at once simple and profound about my toddler. Something that my wiser mother-friends have told me about toddlers. Something that I should have remembered having already endured my oldest daughter’s two-year-old woes a few years ago.

Transitions. Transitions are hard for little ones. Last week I lamented that my youngest screamed at the top of her lungs for most of the morning, and then the remainder of the afternoon after her too-short nap.

I complained to my mother (as all good daughters should) and in her unobtrusive manner of giving advice, she reminded me that 2 year olds have difficulty with simple transitions. OH YEAH…

Let her finish brushing her teeth before I whisk her into the bathtub. Explain to her (I really think she is beginning to understand) what our day entails and where we are going next. Give her 10 and 5 minute warnings – this is the only way they learn even long before they understand time concepts.

So, I have begun to warn her before we are getting ready to leave. I tell her what we will be doing each morning. She hasn’t been tantruming nearly as much this week as she sings the word, MARKET, when I tell her where we are going. Instead of picking her up and laying her down to change her diaper (from which I received many kicks squared to my chest last week), I am now asking her to get a diaper and lay down in front of me. If she doesn’t concede, I gently pick her up and explain to her that she must lie down so I can give her a fresh diaper.

Seems like an easy concept. Even I relish in knowing (at least in general) what is coming up next. I don’t like to be rushed. Neither does my baby. She fights the rush with every ounce of energy in her little 3T body. It doesn’t mean changing my schedule to fit her – quite the opposite. All it means, is beginning the process of transitions earlier and not allowing myself to get behind so we are all running out the door at the last minute, shoes in hand and coats flying. It means fitting HER into MY schedule in a way that suits her. It means taking the time to watch her.

She is still quickly approaching two. She still screams, loudly and often. But this week has been much more peaceful in this home, and I imagine, in her little heart as well.

My kids. They smell like me. Or some version of me.

Mama, when you were a little girl, were the TV shows and cameras in black and white?

No, they were in color. But when your Poppa and Mamma were little, the TV shows and movies were in black and white then.

But they were in color, right?

Yes, honey. They were in color.