The house is quiet and each one of us sleeps softly through the early morning. These days, before it is even light, an internal clock inside each one of us begins to gently ring its own alarm, inside, in the middle of a dream. And it is the same every morning.

My toddler wakes, usually first, and sings a faint song in her crib. She kicks the crib in her footed pajamas, and is calm. She waits for the rest of us.

Even the cat rouses herself from her midnight wanderings, and climbs the stairs to cry to be let over the child gate.

My daughter rolls over in her bed and mumbles something in a half-sleep. She says something about a horse being really just a unicorn in disguise.

My husband sinks deeper into the bed, turns toward me and lays his hand on my arm. This is how it works in the early morning: a light touch to see if the other is there.

My thoughts come into focus and I think of what today will be. I have my best ideas before six in the morning, unintentionally, whether I am laying in bed like this morning, or running.

I lie waiting for purpose to rouse me, and when it does I listen to the house coming alive again. I become a part of its inside-workings, and my internal alarm clock begins to count the hours until lunch, then dinner, then bed again.

Each of our inner timepieces tick toward events: my toddler needs my arms around her, my six-year-old needs to retreat to read by herself in her room. Mine ticks quickly toward the time that I need to sit down, to quiet myself and write.

Because we are a family our inner clocks ring together, as in a shop filled with them that all signal 3 o’clock at the same time. And in my family, I am never late, I am never early, I am always on time because we our home together: our clocks beat in time with one another.

In the evening, we each feel the coming need for sleep. My children become restless and irritable: their clocks are telling them they need to retire. I know my husband needs to spend an hour alone with me without the beautiful, constant questions of young minds. I need the quiet too.

We all rest, in our beds, and our hearts and minds and clocks are reset for another day. It is quiet again, the only sounds are a final cough, a sleep-murmur, and then nothing but the sleeping house.

The only experiece I’ve had with wells has been from watching re-runs of Little House on the Prairie (and let’s not mention how much I used to resemble Laura Ingalls before I got braces in 7th grade).

If I had to think of it, I wouldn’t be able to explain how they worked. I know there is a hole and water in the hole, and a bucket of sorts. But how the water is replenished, IF it is replenished, I wouldn’t be able to say.

At my conference this weekend, I listened to a writer and publisher from Africa, Lawrence Darmani, speak on the daily discipline of writing. He said that when he was a child they dug a well and that in order for the well to maintain freshness, one had to draw water regularly. When the people would draw water from the well daily, the water table would replenish the water automatically and the water would stay at the same level. It was as if the supply was endless, IF there was a daily harvest.

Writing is like this. In fact, any creative venture is like this.

If you capture the light and shadow with a camera, take photos. Everyday.

If it is music you make, create song. Everyday.

Whatever it is you create, do it and do it often.

I write, and I write each day. This daily discipline, the flexing of muscles, creates stronger ones and then creates a place in which inspiration can be born. It is replenished. The fresh coolness is maintained.

I don’t want to allow the water to become old and stagnant. I feel compelled to draw from this well often and take part in this daily harvest of words.

I was convinced my two-year-old was going to hate me when I got home from my 5 days away. I had visions of her pushing me away, turning her head if I tried to kiss her and running from me when I reached out to hold her.

Because toddlers do that.

I know that she didn’t quite understand why I had to leave. I know that she probably couldn’t understand the hole in her life when I was gone; why she felt achy when I wasn’t there, why I didn’t put her to sleep in the evening and then come into kiss her late at night. I know she probably wondered if I was coming home.

I thought she was going to punish me.

When my husband brought her to pick me up from the airport, she ran to me and clung to me. She grabbed my neck and touched my face and smiled gently. She patted my cheek to see if I was real.

Mama…

It wasn’t a squeal, but a sigh. As if it wasn’t me who had come home, but her.

I’m going home tomorrow, and even still I feel so far away from my girls, my bed and everything familiar.

My husband texted me this morning with words more poetic than I could ever write. It was about hearts and closeness and the beauty of that. I still feel far.

My Kindergartner’s teacher emailed me today about some problems at school the past couple of days. I am stunted, stopped – arrested even. I feel like anything I could do or say would be without consequence. Once again, I can’t fix things at home and this too makes me feel so distant.

Like a student late to class, I ran outside this afternoon on my way to a workshop and in the midst of my rushing and clamoring, all of my thoughts came to a halt for a moment.

We are in the middle of a coastal forest filled with evergreen trees and redwoods. This place is quiet and crisp and the loudest sounds are the trees swaying. The strongest scents are in the piney sharpness of the trees and the sweet smell of nearby woodsmoke.

I only had a mid-stride moment to stop, to think, to wait, to realize my distance from my family. But then to feel the closeness to the air and the sounds here. I thought of camping vacations as a little girl, of beach bonfires and marshmallows, of my own girls and hikes in the forest. The multitude of places and times that rushed to the front of my memory amazed me.

I feel far, and I am far, but I am close, because as my husband put it this morning,

“My heart is but mere inches from yours…”

He is surely the poet, not me.

I will never be as funny as Mel.

Nor will I be as self-deprecating as Linda. Its alright I call her that because she self-deprecates herself as self-deprecating. It works. Its funny. She’s writing a book, so what can I say. When I grow up I want to be like her.

And, finally, Annie, who is young (the youngest here besides the teen track kids) and might just be one of the funniest person I know in person (yes, Chad, she might just be more hilarious than you).

We went to a humor workshop late last night that my hobo-friends dragged me to, and I discovered that I will never be able to as funny as my friends. I have been laughing so much my abs hurt (I guess that is good because I haven’t really been working out).

I will never write a humor article or a funny book about baby diapers (although I have SO MUCH material). I’m not even sure how we began laughing about hobos. I do know that I might be somewhat funny, sometimes, but never as funny as my new lunch-table friends. I’ll leave that to them.

Writers are strange bunch.

I understand that the 400 or so people at this conference are only a very small portion of the larger group of writers in America or worldwide, but I can see that there are specific reasons why people choose to be writers. I have only just begun to think about writing, and specifically MY writing, so watching this group move and breathe like a body at this camp is wildly fascinating.

There, of course, are the groups of over-achievers. They sit in the front row of workshops, they get up at 5 in the morning to workout (oh wait, that was me…), and they try to get in the fronts of all the lines at meal times. They are here because they studied English or Journalism in school and got all A’s (oh wait, that was me too…).

Then there are the writers who have a book-baby: they’ve birthed this project, they feed it, care for it and carry it in their back pocket. If you sit next to them, they will almost stumble over their words trying to explain why their “baby” is the best. They are living through this conference on edge trying to meet editors and publishing house representatives. They just want someone to believe in them.

I’m not sure where I fit in this group. I’m looking for direction and I think I am finding it. However, I believe that my “looking for direction” might be a life long journey. I do know that I’ve found a small group of writers that I trust and whom I feel comfortable laughing with and sharing my writing with.

I don’t have a book-baby. And although I am an over-achiever, I really have no reason (yet) to get in the faces of editors or agents. Maybe next year. The very fact that I am here says that I am also a part of this strange bunch. I am a writer. And I am proud to say that I belong.

Trying to fix a problem at home when I am a few hundred miles away is difficult. Actually, its impossible.

After speaking with him on the phone, my husband has assured me that all is well. My Kindergartner is at a play date with her favorite twins up the street and she has had a full day which has included the park and a game of monopoly. And aside from a tantrum she threw this morning (nothing new), my toddler is fed, rested and contently watching “Tom and Jerry” on the sofa.

“However”, he tells me, “Naomi misses you”.

My baby two-year-old who has little long term memory and seems to only recall the last few moments of anything misses me? I had assumed that she would partially forget me when I was gone and then happily be reunited with me on Tuesday. I had naively thought that it would be my 6 year old who would have the rougher time.

He tells me that this morning she said in her daily expanding toddler vocabulary,

Daddy, where’s Mama?

I am in Northern California. I can’t hold her, I can’t whisper to her right now. And I surely can’t kiss her cheek and make her laugh. I can’t explain the concept of “Tuesday” in terms she would comprehend. The only thing I can do is miss her.

I am powerless to fix this. As a mother I am usually an applier of bandages, a toy repair-woman and a battery replacer. I make meals and beds and I file away the clutter that collects on the counter. I glue on broken horse legs and comb tangles out of dolls’ hair. I fix things for a living. But this I can’t repair. The solution must wait until I come home.

I have to focus on my job for this weekend: learning all that I can about how to be a better writer and gaining new tools to be able to better capture my children and observe their lives.

I have to be alright with my baby girl not understanding why her Mama isn’t there, but understanding enough to know I should be home. I have to be okay that there are some problems I just can’t fix.

At least not today.

There aren’t a lot of bloggers here at this conference, but there are a few that I’ve met and I’d like you to meet them too.

Annie from Georgia who is at about the same place that I am in my writing: looking for direction and for her niche. She’s fun and bubbly and there was an instant connection.

And Mel from the Pacific Northwest is where I want to be soon. She’s written and published articles in some periodicals (in print and online) and she has one out in the new Marriage Partnership. I’m having fun getting to know her. (Plus her room is next door to mine and can hear EVERYTHING through the walls – including my constant coughing!).

And of course, Linda, who brought me, is pure encouragment and a testimony to getting a book contract her first time at the conference (last year). She is working on a mother’s devotional that will be appearing early next year.

This is an amazing experience and exactly where I am supposed to be, and I don’t feel like I am Jr. High…I have a lunch table and thanks to these women, I feel at ease.

My arms feel empty and my hands feel idle. I haven’t washed a dish or wiped a table in almost 20 hours. I haven’t folded laundry. My hands are idle but my mind is spinning.