I always look forward to the weekends.

As a mother who works from INSIDE her home rather than OUTSIDE, it would seem that Mondays through Fridays would run together with Saturdays and Sundays. And, believe me, sometimes it does.

But Saturday mornings I always run a longer run and then I come home and make blueberry pancakes for my family. Chad is home and he helps with the girls, sitting in front of cartoons in the morning. Sometimes we have errands, sometimes we have a date later in the evening, but usually Saturdays are spent playing and resting.

When I come up on a weekend like this one coming up and a month like how this March is scheduled, I get a bit discouraged. We are busy, and I don’t seem to have set aside anytime to let our minds rest and play. We have good things and necessary things on our schedule, time spent with people we love, but I always long for time at home.

Seems strange because I stay home during the week.

My mind needs to rest. I need to put away the Kindergarten backpack and my gym bag. I need to have time to actually do my hair rather than pull it up into a ponytail. I need to roll around and tickle my girls rather than feel the guilt of a table not wiped or dishes not washed. I need to have time to bake a batch of cookies with Hope, slowly and with the messes that come with a six year old helping. I need to play. Not for long, just a little.

Its difficult not to have the time to reset and renew and put one week away to welcome a new one. When this happens, I feel like I begin a Monday on a half-tank of gas, hoping that it will last until the following Friday. I need time for the lessons and trials of the week to marinate in me and to make new choices for the upcoming week.

I am hoping to find a piece of rest, a portion of quietness before our week begins again. I know its there, I just have to find it.

I never thought I would be brushing blonde pigtails.

Life just turned out better than I could have ever thought up by myself, with more joy and closeness than I would have written into my own story. But I guess, I am not the only One with a pen.

It was one of those things that other mothers told me about parenting and I heard it spoken about in moms’ groups. A friend experienced it with one of her twins, but not the other.

It is when my baby doesn’t want me. It is when she decides that her daddy will be her comforter or her grandmother, or even her sister. Anyone but me. She calls out for him in the night…DADDY! She asks for him when she wakes up. She begs for him to put her to bed.

When I go to pick her up or hug her or kiss her cheek, she squawks and pushes my shoulder and says…NO MAMA NO MAMA NO MAMA NOOOO! She screams when I hold her, she runs to her father to read her a book, she doesn’t want to sit on my lap. For weeks she has been doing this.

How deep is that hurt?

I know young children will cling to different parents at different stages; their affections ebb and flow and it is vital for their development. They grow out of phases and stages and who knew it, I’ll turn around tomorrow and she will love me again and push her father away. Blah, blah, blah.

I know this….brain stuff sometimes doesn’t drip down to engulf my mother’s heart. I ache for her and want her to be close; to smell her face. When she trantums and screams, it makes it doubly hard when she isn’t coming to me for comfort after she has worn herself out. She should be screaming and yelling (two year olds do) and then when it is all said and over and done, she should come pat my face with grubby fingers and sigh, MAMA…

But she isn’t patting my face. So my heart is open and gaping and wounded. I feel like my love for her is unrequited, unreturned.

What keeps me going are the glances into her own baby-heart. She’s been created with a capacity for love that is growing and changing and she is learning how to be a person. She will get through this stage and she will love me again.

The windows into her are there…she will grab my hand and say…COME ON, MAMA, COME! And I follow her and I smile and I know that she is in love with me on the inside. I can feel it and I can see it, even if in glimpses.

Photo by Misty Matz.

This is what I want for my girls: it isn’t perfect but it’s ours only.

The sea always evokes something. It asks a questions and begs an answer. For me, this morning, the ocean is healing.

I run for over an hour, beginning at one far end and run as far as my time will allow. The sun is high even though it is early because we are inching toward spring. I forget that sometimes the clouds are blown away from the shore and the sky is clear and blue over the water. It has rained for a week and this is the first dry morning; the sandy-footprints of yesterday’s rain-puddles are left on the cement. The water is dark green and tipped with white and the waves rise and crash over again.

I am almost alone. A few walkers and cyclists. The surfers are watching the waves, no wetsuits, just wearing their soft boots, sweatpants and sweatshirts holding their coffee…maybe the waves are too big? Maybe they are just too broken by the storm-summoned surf. Some of them are old and tanned and grey-headed, and some look like they are on their way to high school.

The spotty rain made a potential zoo trip this afternoon impossible at worst and a bad idea at best. So we stayed home, with the shutters wide to let in as much natural light as possible on a grey day. It seems colder outside than it actually looks, though, but it is surely because of the damp. A carrot cake is in my oven and the pizza man is on his way. The sun is setting, I’m sure, but there is no way I can see it beyond the dark clouds. No California sunset tonight, just a steadily deepening sky.

And we are warm and dry inside tonight. We are aware of the blessings in this home, even though the terrible-twos are racing through here like a train and the toddler seems manic in her affection or repulsion. The emotional outbursts of a six-year old girl are events in their own right and she wavers between giggles and distraught hysteria almost by the minute. We are united as a family in our love for one another, even with the sometimes frenzy.

We are inside, and warm, and will sleep on clean sheets in safe beds tonight. We can lock our doors and cozy together under blankets to watch a funny movie or just listen to the rain.

We are reminded that there are so many people who don’t have warm places and don’t have safe beds. We are reminded that others don’t share our peace and our blessings. We are reminded, simply watching the rain, and we explain this to our daughter who is old enough to understand this. Her face darkens a little, like the sky, and she says…

We ARE blessed, aren’t we?

Yes, we are. And it makes me wonder how we can remain aware of this, as well as teach her to be present in her own blessings as well.

Be thankful, and be present; be aware of the warmth even when it feels like your second skin.

Congratulations to my father on completing 40 years with the same organization, 40 years working in youth ministry, 40 years in service to God and others.

Congratulations, Dad, for your amazing accomplishment! I am proud of you.

I made her spend an hour and a half by herself in her room yesterday afternoon. Her sister was sleeping in the next room, and I sensed that she needed some time to rest, some time by herself.

I am speeding through Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. She talks about writing and life and creativity and characters and everything speaks to me now, where I am. She speaks to me in my uncertainty about writing and in the newness of it all for me.

I told my husband that I could read it cover to cover once a month and still find the richness in it. I would be inspired to sit down with my computer by the window and write by the natural light, or to take a walk in the hills listening to the spring come.

She says to write every day, at least 300 words to train your brain and your hand in the art…it is something I am already doing. She is writing 14 years ago, before the weblog-explosion, which in fact, is what has caused me to fall in love with the craft again.

So I write, and I read, and I am wondering what comes next. I write and I am interrupted almost by the minute by toddler feet thundering through the hall, and by the cat, and by the fact that I am writing on my laptop hunched over sitting on the floor of my bedroom. I am surrounded by a mound of clean-unfolded laundry and by toast-crusts from this morning. I am makeup-less with wet hair and I am thinking about the craft store errand I must run in a few minutes. I am thinking about Hope’s 100th day of Kindergarten and the 140 goldfish crackers I must deliver to her room.

I am thinking about the fact that I have carved out a writing area for myself in our loft but I haven’t had the chance to sit near the window and create. I am here, in the messy room with my books piled at my feet. And it keeps nagging at me this morning that I can’t find the newest, most interesting one I just bought: a series of most intruiging writing exercises that I’ve just begun to bite into. It’s here, I am sure, but I probably won’t find it until I fold all the clothes.

So I live, interrupted, for now. I am at peace with it because in the center of all the interruptions is a small child who needs a healthy snack or a husband who needs to hold my hand. And I am quite alright with the disruptions, because, in the end, it gives me something to write about.

Tonight, at the end of chaos, before the safety of bed, I am also at the end of my words. I’ve wasted them with meaningless requests, I’ve sung them to new songs. I’ve used them to express frustration and I’ve spoken today to show empathy to a teary six-year-old.

First, I thought that it was impossible to write tonight because I am sitting in front of the silliness of American Idol. I do have things to say. Watching bad singing isn’t my problem.

I am out of words.

Usually when I run out of words, the sentences I do form in spoken thought become unfeeling, or weary or caustic. I say things to loved ones I don’t really mean to say…I lose my tenderness.

When I run out of words when I really WANT to write something profound or startling or perfect or beautiful, or just plain REAL…maybe that is when I should just close my mouth. Or quiet my hands.

Time to retire to the ease of sleep. Time to reset the word counter to begin at zero. Time to refresh my mind with a dream.

In which case, I should probably just say Good Night.