Hope fell off a horse yesterday.

She isn’t hurt. Not really.

Yesterday afternoon, however, her wails echoed clearly across the canyon.

She was wearing her helmet and was jogging Blondie in the arena. A neighbor on horseback passed on the trail adjacent to the arena at the exact moment Hope exhibited her refined skills of inattention. The other horse must have startled Blondie and because Hope wasn’t paying attention, she simply toppled over on to the dirt.

She rode on a bareback pad which has no stirrups and no saddle horn. Aside from a short strap where the horn should be, there really isn’t anything to grab onto. She has only been riding for 2 years and she hasn’t really learned to fall well yet. As soon as Hope felt unstable she should have grabbed the strap on the pad. She might have regained enough balance to fall on her feet rather than her hip and back.

She screamed and began to cry as her instructor calmly walked over to where she had landed. She spoke to her quietly and after making sure she wasn’t more than just a little bruised and scared, asked her to find the reins. Hope continued to yell as she stood up awkwardly and walked around Blondie to find the reins she had dropped in her distress.

She hopped back up on the horse with a groan and her teacher’s help. Still crying softly, she walked her horse around the arena, slow and quietly. After a few minutes, her instructor explained to her why she fell and how she could have grabbed the strap to help. She probably still would have slid off the bareback pad, but she might not have landed as hard on her rear end.

Hope nodded with a few leftover tears on her cheeks. I think she learned and hopefully next time she falls (because she will fall again), she’ll think quickly and try to land upright.

It isn’t if we will fall, but merely when. Anything that requires skill and discipline carries both reward and risk and a certain amount of failure is inevitable. But, failure makes us learn.

Part of it is learning how to fall well, to regain our balance and land on our feet.

My husband and I have lived 4 places in our almost 12 years of marriage:

Apartment 1: One bedroom. Two cars stolen from the parking lot. We could walk to the mall. We spent our first two years of marriage here. This equalled slammed doors, raised voices and many midnight tears.
Apartment 2: Two bedrooms. Near the beach. Lots of cockroaches. We moved to get away from the roaches, but we will ALWAYS miss the coast.
House 1: 1928 bungalow in a historic part of town. Cute. Quaint. 1050 tiny square feet and a guest bedroom that slightly sloped toward the street. Had a baby. She learned to walk here.
House 2: More than doubled our square footage. Had another baby. Gained a view, a proximity to coyotes and wildfires and a microscopic yard. Let’s just say that we will be here for pretty much ever.

Even though we needed to, leaving our first house was bittersweet.

The kitchen was small and the cupboard space was deplorable. The breakfast nook was fit, for perhaps mice, but certainly not a family who might eat their first meal of the day. The “dining room” spilled into the living room, which itself was only large enough for a television, and two small sofas. There were three bedrooms, but the “master” bedroom which was next door to the only bathroom was only large enough for a queen bed, two nightstands and a small path around. The closets were strange, tiny and dark. The raised hardwood floor was in moderate condition, but echoed when any person walked more than two steps in any direction.

But the walls were green. A perfect green, with just the right amount of brown throughout that it wasn’t olive but it also wasn’t mint. It was calm and it soothed.

The yard was wide and had fruit trees. I made lemonade each summer.

My baby had her own perfect baby room with hardwood floors and two small closets. It was next to ours and I could reach her crib using about four steps. This came in handy during sleepless nights and in the one earthquake that shook when we lived there.

My husband and I always felt at home there. We always felt like we belonged and that this home fit around us like a tailored coat.

We could have raised our girls there. But they wouldn’t have been able to ride their bikes in the street because it was so busy. We couldn’t have let them play in the front because there was always pedestrian traffic going to and from the university we lived 3 doors down from. With only one little girl running through the rooms, we were already starting to outgrow the thousand square feet of living space. Our best-friend neighbors moved away too, so the house felt empty even as we were beginning to leave.

This morning when I woke up in the bed that inhabits House 2, I was grateful that I could see the sunrise on the hills, hazy and warm. I could hear only one car as it passed on its way to work or school (rather than many). My girls were each still tucked in their own beds and the cat roamed the hallway. We are meant to be here, to bring up our family.

But our first house is still like an old friend to me. One who I will never speak to again, not because we fought or exchanged harsh words, but because she is simply unreachable. My old house, with its coved ceilings, vintage fixtures and tiny bedrooms, will never be mine again. It was sold, and since then, sold again, and someone else lives there now. Someone who I don’t know and has put two strange gold lions on the front porch.

When I was a little girl, the way my mother would wake me up in the morning was by finding my hand beneath the quilts and rubbing my palm and my fingers, so that I would wake up slowly.

Now, when my husband leaves some days in the early morning, he wakes me gently by kissing my cheek, whispering something I never remember and pulling up the blankets to cover me. Sometimes he opens our window so that by the time I do wake up, the cool new air is coming in.

But by far my favorite way to be woken up these days is an old cliche.

It is by the pitter and patter of little feet.

On this spring Sunday morning, I woke up at 6:34 and the sun was aleady high. It wasn’t the light in our room that got me up, but my daughter’s soft stepping down the hall, past the top of the stairs, around the corner and into my room. Her bare feet made little “pat-pats” on the carpet. She crawled into bed, up and over me from my side, her young foot lodging itself in my thigh and she nestled in beside me.

Softly, “Wake up, Mama.”

No need, because I was already awake, her quiet footsteps waking me as gently as my own mother rubbing my hand.

I am a girl-mother.

I don’t mean I pull their hair back tightly in buns and make them stand in First Position while wearing ballet-pink from head to itty-bitty toe (although my stairs are at times peppered with dance bags and tap shoes).

I don’t make them wear dresses, or matching bows in their hair at all times. If the barrette falls out in the middle of a park outing, their hair will blow wild with sand and sunscreen rubbed throughout.

I am a girl-mama but I don’t force “girlness” on them.

But they do pick flowers for their braids and ask for nail polish. They twirl around in ruffles in the living room with fairy wands and plastic crowns. They ask to take dance classes and request dolls for birthday gifts. I don’t hop over toy cars on the carpet, but over miniature horses and lavender-sparkle legos.

My girls choose these things on their own. They like to walk in the woods and pick up bugs like any regular boy, but they also love all things princess-infused like pink beach towels and dressing their stuffed dogs in tutus.

And also, without my intentional direction, they are beginning to nurture each other like little mamas. My older daughter runs to her sister if she’s fallen down. She’ll pick her up, set her right, and then coo and hold her.

The little one watches her big sister for every emotional cue. If the older one is sad, Naomi will ask her what is wrong with a concerned look on her two-year-old face. She’ll express her “empathy” with some iteration of “Its okay, Hopey” and then try to make her giggle with a pretend-hiccup. She is learning to nurture in her own way.

And then, like surprise gift, unexpected and perfect, once in awhile, they will nurture me. Hope might let me put my head on her legs and she’ll smooth my hair. This afternoon, Naomi sat in my lap and instead of me rubbing her little toddler back, she ran her hand up and down my own. It was as if she did the only thing she knew how to do to “mother”me.

This “girlness”, a dim reflection of future-mothering, is innate to them. I haven’t had to teach them to watch out for each other, or even to transfer their need to mother something to their dolls or to me.

I like being this girl-mama. I like having dance bags and ballet-pink tights litter my hallway; I enjoy the trips to the horse stables for lessons and the purple princess dresses that fill their closets. I love these girls and I like having little-mamas in my home.

“I can’t understand you when you’re whining.”

She says with tears and emotion and purpose, “But I want a granola bar!”

“I gave your sister the last one. You are just fine. You just finished lunch. Please stop whining.”

Sob, sob, sob….for about 12 seconds. I walk out of the room.

The granola bar is forgotten in favor of Super Why.

She wasn’t hungry. She wasn’t hurt. She just wanted what her sister had. And I have to partially lie when I tell her that I can’t understand her through her whines.

I do understand. I do understand her outrageous demands through blubbers and snot and sniffs and wails. I understand her in the midst of her whines.

What I am trying to explain to her is that when she whines it makes it nearly impossible to separate her request from her overly emotional burst. Her whining is selfish and is directs all eyes to her and her usually irrational desire. Whines come in the form of

I don’t want to go!

But I had it first!

You’re hurting my hair!

But she…but she….

It makes me wonder, this afternoon, as I am trying to see straight after waking up from a nap that I couldn’t help, that I expect the same from God when I whine. He does understand me through my whines, and He doesn’t claim to be ignorant of my requests, however they are delivered.

I whine…What about my extra five pounds, my tantruming toddler, the messy toy room, my out-of-style clothes, the money I don’t have and the bills I owe….what about…?

I sure do whine. And I whine loudly, but my whines come out in the forms of irritation at my husband or my kids, and frustration with my closet or my inability to keep things organized for more than a week. My whines are intended to direct eyes on myself, on my selfishness.

I guess, at these times I should take my eyes off myself and try to relinquish my selfishness. And like any good Parent, God just might remain silent until I am done. He waits for me to stop whining until I am ready to rest quietly and begin to listen to Him.

My days are so normal, sometimes they aren’t even worth blogging about.

Elevator music.

I live this true, gritty, who’s-going-to-take-out-the-trash life, in which my bedroom is a constant repository for clean piles of laundry and kids’ dvds. It is where I have a giant basket full of unmatched socks and a weight bench that is rarely used. My life is so true and regular that it is either charged with stress and adrenaline or so tedious I fall asleep at 2:15 in the afternoon.

My weekday mornings run together in an endless stream of market trips, gym workouts, snack-picnics at the park and toddler play classes. My afternoons are filled with the school pickup line, power naps on the living room sofa, loading the dishwasher from breakfast, refereeing Kindergarten yells and toddler shrieks in the backyard and usually a mad rush to begin dinner sometime around 4:47. Only the weekend brings a reprieve.

Its like the CD I have in my car that I haven’t changed since Christmas. When I get in, it plays. When I get out, it stops. And when I get in again, it picks up where it left off. It is a never ending circle of normal music that my kids know and I sing in my head when I am in line at Target.

I am far from perfect. I throw down hairbrushes because I can’t take another, YOU’RE HURTING MY HAIR!!! I pile papers on my table and shove things under my bed I can’t stand looking at any longer, and I am putting off potty-training because I am lazy. I raise my voice too much, I snap at my husband and I watch “Hell’s Kitchen.” This is me. This is the symphony I am writing.

It is normal, and real and sometimes it looks tedious.

But then, once in awhile, the regular notes of the day come together to make something sweet and perfect. There is a swell.

The light and air are just right in my bedroom in the evening before bed. The day has faded and I can’t read the recipe in my magazine any longer. The cool air is coming in the open window and it is beginning to smell sweet like the sage outside. Hope is nestled in her sea of books and horses on her bed and she is reading. She is quiet on the inside and outside. Chad has begun to play something on his guitar for Naomi. He is letting her strum while he holds the chords.

My life is still gritty, grimy and in need of a bath. And the downstairs trash still needs taken out. And I know that the same CD will be in my car tomorrow when I drive to school.

We are here together, and somehow the adrenaline and stress and elevator music of the day has been forgotten for a few minutes. And I feel quiet on the inside too. There is a swell in the life-symphony and it is beautiful.

When my six-year-old becomes frustrated with a task, she growls or screams or pounds the floor. The first time she did this I was flabbergasted, wondering at what gene of my husband’s produced this reaction in her.

We are trying to teach her to control her frustration, quietly asking an adult for help, using words and not grunts, and attempting the task again with calm concentration rather than the fire in her eyes minutes before.

It doesn’t always work.

In fact, it usually doesn’t. Sometimes, instead of growls, her frustrated cries turn into small whimpers. I still often look in amazement at her exaggerated emotional outbursts and shrieks at not being able to succeed at something.

Last night, as I was working on an article that I thought I might submit, attempting to rework the structure, inserting the right descriptions and removing the unnecessary ones, I became frustrated.

I told my husband that it wasn’t even a good idea. The whole basis of the article wasn’t worth going forward with it. I shut my laptop and laid my head on the table. I was done.

I didn’t shriek or pound the floor, and I didn’t growl at anyone. But I stopped and I didn’t press through. In essence, I committed the same crime as my daughter. I gave up.

So tonight, when the house is quiet after the girls have fallen asleep, I am going to attempt it again, this time with calm concentration and hopefully renewed strength. I will have a new eye that hasn’t looked at it for 24 hours and I might have a new idea throughout the day. Hopefully, tonight, I won’t give up.

People were designed to live in the present.

The past and the future make little sense because we aren’t meant to live in either one.

We view the past through lenses of bitterness or nostalgia, watching for someone we used to know or waiting for something to jog our memory and remind us of a better day.

We experience the future through sieves of hope or dread. I look forward to things that may or may not exist, to “futures” that I envision so often that they become goals to reach. Goals that aren’t real.

People were designed to live within the present.

Of course I learn from my past. All of the journeys I’ve already walked become part of my journey now. And I plan for the future.

But I am beginning to believe that the only way I can take the most out of life is to live now.

So I want to take back today. I don’t want to live regretting the laundry I didn’t fold yesterday or dreading the pile I have tomorrow. I want to fix the battery-powered horse of this afternoon and watch it walk across the kitchen floor not concerning myself that it might not work tomorrow. I want to talk to my husband today and laugh with him, forgetting about the words we exchanged yesterday morning.

I don’t want to live in tomorrow or last night. I want to take my today back.