Every time I drive to San Diego I get lost.

I am not a person prone to losing my way. I usually plan for things, come armed with maps or write out meticulous directions. And in recent years, I have come to rely on my GPS navigation system in my car.

But there is something about San Diego that makes me confused, befuddled and near to cursing by the time I take my 5th or 8th wrong turn. One way streets and alarmingly similar numbers on highways always get the better of me.

This morning was no different.

I was traveling 2 hours south to meet Kristen. This was the first time I had met her other than on her blog. She will be running 26.2 miles tomorrow morning in San Diego’s Rock and Roll Marathon. I will be running 5. Here. Maybe. If I can get up.

But I will be thinking about Kristen as she does better than she thought she would.

Still the prospect of meeting a blog friend was not enough to keep me on the right streets in my journey this morning. I eventually found her hotel, after a call to the front desk and a couple hard right turns, and I found her in the lobby.

I was no longer lost, in fact, I felt found.

She brought me a sweet gift and we immediately began talking. After a Chai Tea Latte, an Americano and an hour and half of conversation, I had to go home. We hugged, snapped a few pictures, and I was so thankful for one more woman I can call “friend”.

I felt “found” by a new, but old and familliar-feeling friendship.

I headed back to my car, and I realized I had no map to get home. Backwards-reading my Mapquest directions doesn’t work on ONE WAY STREETS. It just doesn’t.

More cursing. More scary highway numbers. After 15 minutes of running yellow lights in the downtown district I finally found my freeway entrance. I wasn’t lost anymore. I found my road.

And I had found a new friend.

Only 43 people have ever been president of the United States.

Just 12 men have walked on the moon.

We’ve been taught to teach our kids they can accomplish anything. ANYthing. Heck, we teach our kids that because we were told that ourselves. But we sit here with our normal jobs in our beige living rooms doing ordinary things. We eat grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner.

(For the record, there is nothing wrong with grilled cheese or beige walls.)

But out of all of the millions and millions of children in the US, how many will actually be astronauts or presidents?

Do we do our children a disservice by continually telling them they can be anyone and do anything they choose? Or would we better serve them by taking into account their needs, their motivations, and their affinities; what they love and the costs they might be willing to pay.

I mean, I wasn’t president. I remember distinctly someone (probably a teacher) telling me in about 5th grade,

Sure you can be president if you want….

I really didn’t “want”. In fact, I didn’t know what I wanted. I ended up teaching school because it seemed like the only likely answer.

I don’t want to squash any perfectly formed, freshly youthful dreams. If one of my girls wants to change the world by becoming president, I surely don’t want to waste her energy by being a dark realist. But if she wants to change the world by becoming a mother, I want her to understand that that is equally important.

For about 6 months last year, Hope had a brief fascination with space travel (unusual for a girl, maybe?). She wanted to be an astronaut.

I tried to be balanced in my answer to her. I told her that she could be an astronaut if she wanted to. But that astronauts study math and science and astronomy and geology and go to school probably as long as doctors do. Its not as fun as simply putting on a space suit and firing a blaster gun. But once you become an astronaut, you are an expert in your field and you are the best in the world at what you do.

As far as I know, she gave up her “dream”. Whether because of six-year-old whimsy or because she didn’t want to go to school for the next 25 years, I’m not sure. But now she wants to be a horse rancher.

So, in my honesty I confess I find it difficult to tell my daughter she can be ANYTHING she wants to. Of course I want her to shoot high and do the best she can possibly do and to succeed at the gifts God has given her. I want her to be excellent in whatever path she chooses.

I guess one of my girls might be president someday. And if they ask, I will tell them that it is possible. But difficult. And there are costs.

But it would be fun to live in the White House.

She’s gotten into my makeup drawer and is smeared with (thankfully, a pale color) peppermint-scented lipgloss.

I only know this because she has snuggled up against me in my bedroom; I am folding laundry and she is still soft in her pajamas. She smells like mint and I look at her mouth. Lip gloss, light pink, under her nose, on her cheek and not on her lips. I smile and hug her briefly and land a mama-kiss on her sticky face.

I love you too, Mama.

I hadn’t said that I loved her. She responded to my quick, unthinking affection as me saying those words. She told me she loved me too, as if she was answering my kiss with the right words.

She understood perfectly that my actions meant that I loved her.

As a writer and a reader, words are my life. I appreciate well-written cards and witty quotations. I love words that are rich with meaning and overflow with significance. But how much better to express love in my actions without having to say “I love you.”

I want my life to be more distinct than anything I could say or write. Underneath my actions, I want others to assume my love, and see what I do as an outpouring of who I am. I want what I do to show clearly how much I love.

To use an overused cliche, I want my actions to speak louder than my words.

Naomi cuddles up against me still, half-begging me to tickle her tummy. And I do. She says she loves me again, this time through a giggle. I love you too, Sweetheart.

I’ve been watching for the signs since she was about two years old.

Because of his ADD, we have been careful to watch for signs in our girls. One in four children with one parent with ADD will exhibit the disorder. If a child has two parents with it, the probability rises to 50%. As early as her second birthday I began to wonder.

A little girl never outgrows her fascination with butterflies; the pull in her heart to run after them; the secret curiosity of what it would be like to be one. Even this little girl.

Spring comes early and short where I live. The winter warms up enough to allow the hills to explode with yellow and lavender flowers, and then just as quickly, continues to heat and sucks most of the colored beauty from the hills. The blooms dry up before May even comes and we are left with tall brown stalks of what used to be wildflowers.

This is what I slowly picked my way through this morning. On this Saturday-like Monday, I ran by myself out of doors for the first time in about 10 days. Recovering from my weekend out of town last week had left me unmotivated and exhausted. I had to push myself out my front door and force myself to lace up my running shoes.

A corridor of dirty, hollow brown bushes that used to be green and yellow and fresh. Dead now and waiting for the autumn wildfires.

Some spring birds. A little color on their chests. A dragonfly-like insect buzzes by me – large with a bright orange abdomen.

A little bit of color in the drab hallway of dead stalks. Life isn’t gone from this hill; it is just hidden.

Then a small butterfly lands on the path in front of me and spreads her little wings wide, as if she hasn’t yet sensed me running toward her. Brilliant yellow and black and orange like the spring flowers that have already died. She is a vibrant fragile dot on the rocky trail.

The vibrations from my feet on the ground scare her and she closes her wings tight. The underside of her wings are brown and grey, just like the dirt she is resting on. She is almost invisible for an instant and then she flies away. Fluttering bright and drab together, she disappears.

I’ve seen this tiny butterfly against a curtain of dusty brown and I feel a little like this insignificant animal: one minute brillant and the next invisible and scared.

I thank God for this simple beauty. The simplicity of the brilliance of a tiny butterfly. I feel a rising in my heart to meet this perfect God-given beauty of the morning.

God can teach me humbling, quiet things even in the dust.

I am not Scottish.

I am 2 generations removed Irish, however.

The Annual Highland Gathering this morning could be heard from the outer reaches of the fairground parking lot. Bagpipes bellowed and their drummers pounded and the girls were entranced. As was I. We had never really heard anything like it. At least not on this scale.

We had no clan booth to go to. We are not Scottish. We did not wear kilts. We are not Scottish. Even so…

We watched:

Throwing the Weight and Putting the Stone,

Sheepherding,

Fiddling,

Pipe Bands marching

and High Step Dancing.

We participated in:

Archery,

A sack race (Hope)

Dancing (Naomi only),

eating and shopping.

Hope plugged her ears when we walked too close to the bagpipers. Naomi screamed and did not want to watch the Highland athletics.

Even though I am not Scottish and I could sport no tartan, had no kilt hose to pull up and tie with a tassel, and definitely no bagpipe to blow, I had fun.

I check on my littlest one before I go to sleep.

Her hand is steady. She’s been in bed for three hours now – enough time for her little body to settle into its sleep rhythms and breath patterns, into its own warmth it will keep during the night.

Her hand is warm – not the sweaty fidgeting of falling into sleep, or the cool skin in the early hours of the morning when the light seeps through her shutters. But the comfortable, safe warmth her body lives in in the middle of the night as she sleeps.

(I thank God that I can keep my children warm at night. Under familiar blankets. In smooth beds. With fresh scents and clean sheets. I thank God I can bathe them in the evening and place them on their pillows with damp hair.)

I check on them. Before I can sleep, long after they’ve closed their eyes, I need to check.

Maybe it is that promise I need to keep. To them. Or too myself. I’ll check on you…

Or maybe it’s seeing that she is safe before I can give my own mind over to rest.

Maybe it is simply checking that her hand has reached its warmth – that she is under her blanket (the fuzzy side, not the silky side) – and that her dreams seem peaceful to me looking in. Her blondish curl is stuck to her forehead and she turns and lets out a sleep sigh. It is long and drawn as if she is too caught in sleep to stop her little voice. I put my two fingers in her palm and she immediately, slowly, curls around me. She grabs my hand and loves me, even in her sleep.

Maybe this is why I check on her. Selfishly so, to feel her love for me before I go to my own bed.

She emails you and asks if you want to hang out. Something non-awkward, non-threatening, at your leisure…whenever you want. Let’s bring the kids to the park. In fact, you pick the park, she says.

Up to this point I’ve only known her in the lackluster world of the blogosphere. I guess this would be my first “meet-in-real-life.”

So lifeless and one-sided, we bloggers are. Really. We can’t escape it, not a one of us. We share what we will and keep some things close, and are painfully honest and open about others. No matter what we say or write, be it our toddler’s vomit or our teenager’s anger issues, we are still just Internet entities until we know one another in the real world.

Even me, I’m afraid. I write what I do, and if you don’t know me in real life, you don’t know what my voice sounds like, or what my handwriting looks like. You don’t know my facial expressions (that I really did look like Katharine McPhee when she was on American Idol – mostly because we had the exact same smile and smirk – I’m ten years older, though). You don’t know the way my house smells or my voice when I tell my kids to quiet down and stop poking me in the back of the head when I am driving.

So in reality, I’m somewhat colorless and plain. At least here on the Internet.

I’ve only read her blog, and I haven’t even spoken to her on the phone. I’ve seen her picture on her site and I hope that I will recognize her.

I get out of the car and there she is. With a wide smile and a laugh she yells my name from across the parking lot. And now we are friends.

Like a Flat Stanley come to life, Elizabeth is now a real person to me. We walk to the playground and our kids begin to dig in the sand. We talk without pause for an hour and half. I find out how close she lives to me and I that I pass her church every day on my way to Hope’s school. I think our husbands will probably get along and I wish I could meet her twin baby girls. I find out she and I were at the same wedding ten years ago.

It is a bit surreal, meeting someone in the normal world that I’ve only met while blogging. I guess that there are reasons why I read certain blogs – that I feel like I could be friends with them were I given the chance.

I know if I were in Oklahoma, I’d want to have lunch with Cindy, or in Boston I’d have coffee with Mandy. I’d for sure grab Denise for chocolate chip cookies if I was near her. And who knows who I would meet if I found myself in Branson!

So, thank you, Elizabeth, for emailing me and becoming a friend in real life!

(Now, go visit her at Kids, Twins and Laundry Bins!)