Forgetting

During the middle of a back-arching tantrum, it is so difficult to remember the sweetness of her crib-songs. And when she is returning to the drawer I continually tell her not to touch so that I cannot prepare dinner, I might forget her kissable cheeks and two-year-old smile.

When the giggles are gone for the evening and there are only the whines that childishly try to make a defense as to why brushing her teeth each night is unnecessary, it is hard to think about her laughter.

Beauty is quickly forgotten. Just like they each forget their smiles from the minute before. But then so are the tantrums.

I am a mother, and I am wiser than my daughters. I can choose to remember, and I can bring to mind their imperfect perfection and their embarrassed grins. I can choose to discipline like a good parent should, but then open my arms wide to their affections after the pain is forgotten. I can choose not to hold grudges and to instead hold little hands.

Spring

The older I get, the more I realize where I am, or rather when I am.

Call it increased self-knowledge, or awareness, but I've never noticed spring like I am right now. The signs of spring are hard to come by where I live: no snow melts, very few daffodils push through and then, only when they've been planted in a yard and the air only sometimes smells of new blooms.

In the past I've been more aware of the situations around me than I have been of the season. Last year, I was planning my daughter's summer and looking toward Kindergarten. Two years ago I had a newborn. And each year I taught I always looked with longing toward the two months of ease that June and July brought.

Spring in California is moderate and fair and brings warm breezes and puffy clouds. It is calm and points forward. Spring sneaks by and paves the silent way for summer. This year however, I can't help but stare at the bright hills and the mustard blossoms behind my house. Spring is loud this year and scented and for an instant I might feel as if I live in a climate with four distinct seasons.

So maybe it is more than me just stopping to watch the clouds and smell the air; maybe it is more than me being aware of the season. I am distracted as usual by upcoming summer schedules and other responsibilities, but this spring is different. Only a wet winter can green the hills and soak the soil enough for flowers to come through.

Maybe this year is special. This year I am noticing everything and not letting it go by in silence. This year I am chronicling it daily. This year I am paying attention to the season.

Searching

We spent the last day of our spring vacation searching.

We went to the tide pools at Laguna Beach yesterday, and what should have been an overcast and grey morning turned out to be brilliant and sunny.

Hope ran over the rocks with the pack of older kids we'd come with looking for crabs and narrowly missing stepping on anemone disguised with tiny shells. Hopping over little streams in the sand she searched for something that was living. The tide was low and there were fish caught in little pools in the rocks waiting for the waves to come and rescue them later in the day. She found little urchins and barnacles and possibly a sea cucumber.

I watched and shot pictures of her and her friends while trying to avoid stepping on the sharp rocks with my winter-tender feet. I looked for the perfect frame, the moment of discovery, the waves crashing in. Instead I found the backs of a lot of childish heads bent over a small marine pool, and hands that prodded gently at a small crab. I tried to follow closely, but I found it hard to balance holding my camera and at the same time keeping my feet in tact.

I took as many pictures as I could hoping some would turn out well when I looked at them later.

It was spring-warm, not summer-hot. Swimming in the ocean with it's spring temperatures was out of the question, so after the tide pools we joined my toddler who had been playing in the sand nearby with my parents. She of course did not want to wear the pretty pink polka-dot bathing suit I'd brought for her and opted to run around in a saggy, sandy swim diaper and her t-shirt.

She ran from the water to the sandcastles, back to the water, the whole time carrying a pail full of heavy wet sand. Because a toddler's span of attention is so short, she searched for many things all at once: the special yellow sand shovel, the shell she'd been playing with, a gritty bottle of water, and of course, freedom from anyone who tried to keep her close.

She spent the middle part of the day giggling and singing and playing in the little waves.

Each of us may not have found exactly what we were looking for: Hope for the tropical fish she will never find on California's shores, me for the perfect photo, and Naomi for her freedom. But instead we found laughter in the little things of the day and joy in simply being together.

Nerd

I was kind of a nerd in high school. I wasn't a cheerleader like Linda, or funny like Annie. And I surely didn't have cute fluffy hair like Lisa or Mel.

I was a get-good-grades non-athlete who didn't drink and certainly didn't smoke ANYthing. I was overweight and I went to a small private school with my graduating class numbering only 69 students. To still be a nerd in a group that size is quite an accomplishment.

But because our school was so small, everyone knew everyone, and everyone knew everything about everyone, including past mistakes and probable future ones. It was like living in a small town within the larger megalopolis of Orange County. Nevertheless, I did manage to keep a small group of friends whose members would ebb and flow with each new year and whose interests were similar to mine.

We were nothing special and really didn't fall under a label. The interesting thing about a school the size of mine is that there were a fair amount of kids with excellent grades in Math and English, but also possessed talent on the volleyball court, popular boyfriends, invitations to parties, and cute legs in cheerleader skirts. I just wasn't good at anything else besides studying. There were no distinct groups like a larger school. All of our groups were nebulous and each one branched out to include students from other ones. The head football player might also be the lead in the musical, or help in the science lab.

My constant A's on papers and tests did nothing for my popularity. Those were also the days when grades would be posted on the insides of windows and at the fronts of classes on blackboards. In a school our size, everyone could recognize one another's student number (it was 6 digits that I had kept since 7th grade). Everyone knew I got an A.

I learned early on to keep my mouth shut when I got something back from the teacher. Nobody wanted to be friends with a girl who got good grades AND told everyone. I would either lie (but that wouldn't work because back then I was a terrible liar, and they knew I surely didn't get a bad grade) or I would try to avoid those conversations altogether.

I began to guard my words in an unhealthy way.

If I trace back my aversion to being the center of attention or my horror at speaking my mind and someone not agreeing, I always come back to this: being embarrassed about being "smart". I can follow my ten year silence back to this, I think. Forever self-conscious, I've always wanted to fade into the background of a room.

I guess I still think of myself as a nerd. I have lost weight and I have accomplished a few athletic goals in the past 8 years, so I guess I am not as much of a nerd as I used to be. I will never be a cheerleader (thankfully because who would really want to see a 33 year old mother trying to turn cartwheels), and I will never be the center of the laughter at a party (I'll leave that to my husband). But I am learning to write and to speak the words that come. I am learning that I don't have to keep my mouth shut.

Carrot Cake

I have never tried so hard to make something perfect.

Even the beautiful three layer carrot cake with sweet cream cheese frosting and chopped walnuts on top: even that creation looked great and I didn't try that hard. I just gathered the ingredients, set aside a time for baking and followed a recipe.

There is no real recipe for writing. This article that I am attempting to perfect (with the profound and extensive editing advice of three friends) is driving me crazy. I guess I had fancied myself someone to whom easy words came fast and furious, and that I could work with them well on a page.

I am not so sure anymore.

I've worked on the same tiny thousand-word article for about a week now, melding my friends' editing suggestions into my own work and still trying to retain my voice. I have reworked and restructured and reworded; I've removed adverbs and adjectives and replaced them with stronger verbs. I've put it to bed and then revisited it the next morning.

You know when you read the same word over and over again it begins to not look like a word any longer. Then you think you are crazy because you know it is a word in your head (heck, you've written zillions of papers and a thesis way back when - you should know the English language). Then you show the word to your husband and say something like, "I know this sounds silly, but is 'Easter' really a word?"

He looks at you like you should be committed.

That is what I feel about this article. I've read the same words and rewritten the same sentences over and over and it is beginning to look like a mumbling mess.

I guess it won't be perfect. Even if I structure it perfectly and the ideas flow well from one to the next, the publisher still might not like it (unlike my carrot cake which everyone loved). This particular article probably won't be accepted. At least this time.

My only solace is that working this hard and this long on the same 1000 words will produce something. It may not be perfect, but it will be written well. Even if it is not published in the compilation I am sending it to this weekend, it will be mine to work with again and resubmit it else where.

And maybe like my three-tiered carrot beauty from last weekend, it will be good even if it does lean a little to the right.

Apology

Dealing with a two-year-old tantrum in the middle of a crowded zoo could never be categorized as a fun outing.

She melted into a toddler puddle on the ground when we needed to let another child have a turn on the stationary play truck. She screamed and kicked and tried to climb out of my arms. Her tears turned into a runny nose, she arched and then she tried to pull the backpack from my back bruising my arm. She wouldn't be distracted by anything: bright orange birds, a passing train, or even a playground. It was as if she was determined to shriek at the top of her vocal range and she was not going to be quieted.

We had only been there about 40 minutes (she yelled for 30 minutes: not a good ratio) and we had just begun to look at the animals. Of course my six-year-old was unhappy at her sister's screams and the prospect of leaving so soon, but there was no other option. She wasn't satisfied with the quick trip through the aviary and the race between the monkey enclosures to get back to the car.

So we left.

After tantruming the first half of the car ride home, she promptly felll asleep. Almost in an instant. Like she had given up and given in and was too tired to fight anything anymore, including her own sleepy eyes.

After her nap she was happy, and rested and giggly. She didn't offer an apology to me for kicking me. Or for yelling for more than a half-hour. Or for making her sister leave early. She didn't apologize for bruising my arm, or for rolling around in the dirt on the ground. She didn't apologize for running away from me when I called for her.

She didn't need to. Although I am attempting to teach her so say she is sorry when she takes something she shouldn't or wrongs her sister in some way, this kind of apology is different. And even though I was exhausted from the afternoon escapade, I was not angry. I was not hurt because I know her tantrum was the product of her age and her fatigue.

Her apologies are in her sighs against my shoulder when I get her up from her nap, or her kisses on my cheek, or her happy songs in the backseat on the morning drive to Hope's school. Her apologies are in her laughter and smiles.

Priceless Words

Words have power.

Spoken,

sang.

Whispered,

written,

or unsaid.

The words of a friend are among the strongest.

I asked for help with something I was writing. I wanted critique and I wanted advice. I want to get better and to advance in this craft. I really need to learn. I sent a short article-length manuscript to three friends, exposed myself to their wisdom and waited. Vulnerability is difficult.

Faithful as friends are, they responded. I have never seen as much "red pen" in my life, even as a former English teacher. Rewrite across the top would have been easier for each one of them. They each have jobs, families and much more important responsibilities than helping me with my article.

Getting their three responses back, I might have been tempted to procrastinate. Its easier to leave the emails in my inbox. Instead, I printed each one out and laid them out on my bed, complete in their marked-through finery. I cringed first, but then I began to wholeheartedly agree. The sections I knew needed work, they each noticed too. The sentences I couldn't seem to write well were marked with better ideas. In fact, each one of them (from different corners of the country) agreed with each other without discussing it with among themselves.

I actually surprised myself with my own response. Instead of feelings of rejection or hurt, I nearly immediately felt gratitude. I agreed with them and I felt so thankful that I had women who cared enough about me and wanted me to advance in this craft that they spent the time to give me their helpful and detailed edits.

Patronizing words are powerless. Words spoken in love with truth are priceless.

Thank you, friends.

Dandelions

A field full of dandelions, white and puffy, are a little girl's dream.

When we were small, my sister and I would race through the front yard, competing to pick the most dandelion flowers. We'd grab them, then roll around in the summer evening grass and blow the feathery white pieces out into the air. It was as if we, in the powerlessness of childhood, were trying to give something of ourselves away.

On my run this morning in the grey, before the yellow of the sun popped up over the hills, I saw a dandelion by the side of the road. I often pick things up on my runs for my older daughter, small, pretty rocks, a bright flower or an autumn leaf.

As a compulsion left over from my front lawn dashes, I wanted to pick the dandelion. And I wanted to pick it for her. I wanted her to feel the brief respite from childhood impotence that I had felt. I wanted her to be able to blow the dandelion and watch the spores float away in the morning air.

I paused, but I realized that I still had about 2 miles left before I would reach my house. If I picked it for her the white puffs would be gone by the time I got home.

I think I am going to have to let her pick her own dandelions. There are things I can point her toward, but cannot do for her. She will have to think of her own dreams and let her own feathery puffs float on the wind. I can help her, but the only thing that defeats the powerlessness of childhood is actually growing up.

Little Voices

When we were new parents, my husband and I would look over the crib at our baby, and whether she was sleeping or screaming (as she often did in colicky fits for almost a year), our hearts would truly be filled with new love for her. We'd wonder at the incredible love that was expanding our hearts individually and collectively for this infant.


She was amazing in her own right: beautifully formed with perfect fingers, toes, and lips, and full of wild energy and fire. She would smile and giggle one minute, and the next unfold her unhappiness in the form of tantrums and yells. Our new baby was almost divine in the spell she had on both of us: we were equally in love with her and incredulous at the amount of energy she would expend in the midst of her colic.


One day my husband thought aloud to me in a rare quiet moment, "I wonder what her voice will sound like --- when she starts to talk. I wonder what her little voice will be?"


At this point in my induction to motherhood, bouncing between exhaustion and intense emotion toward my new baby, it was difficult to think about anything coming out of her tiny mouth other than a newborn shriek. She either slept, screamed, or ate and screamed at the same time due to her case of infant reflux. Nursing was nearly impossible because she cried nearly the entire time she fed.


It was the first time I realized, truly, that this baby was not going to stay a baby forever. The every-two-hour feedings would not last for eternity and that someday she would begin to walk and to talk and to run. She would turn into a little girl. In my new motherhood it dawned on me that I was beginning to raise a "child", not merely a baby. She would learn words and speak sentences, and someday she would learn to read.


Someday this wailing baby would have her own voice.

As she grew, like most babies do, she also grew out of her colic and became a busy, happy toddler. She began to speak early and by the time she reached her second birthday, her words came one after the other like water. She learned new words every day and formed sentences and thoughts that astonished us and made us laugh. Her second birthday also brought a period of tantrums unlike any before, as well as more yelling and screaming. Now, however, her words were enmeshed in her screams. "Nos" were peppered between "Get me OUT!" and "Let me GO!"


I could finally hear her voice and it was loud most of the time.


Sometimes she would sit quietly and talk to me like toddlers do, with words only intelligible to mothers who must translate to everyone else what their babies are trying to communicate. She would laugh and point and name the world as it went by. What I hadn't realized when she was an infant is that a child's voice surfaces gradually and a mother warms to it gently. Word appear here and there and eventually, without any pomp or eventfulness about it, a child begins to speak. Her voice emerges.


My oldest daughter is six now and she has a beautiful, soft little-girl voice. She sings when she is alone, she reads aloud to her dolls and she pretends conversations between her toy horses. Her voice, by nature is small and sweet. When she whispers in my ear in mother and daughter games, it is music. She says true things and has learned to love words like I do. She is only beginning a lifelong classroom of experimenting with language and learning how words harm or help others. Just like her father guessed over five years ago, her little voice is perfect, beautiful and sweet.


She hasn't lost her fire, though. Also, by nature, my daughter is emotionally charged and most days this escapes through her mouth. She gets angry easily and her feelings are hurt irreparably just as easily. She yells and storms around, almost like she did when she was so little. Now, she is a tall Kindergartner with fiery brown eyes and long auburn hair. She ricochets between speaking gently and crying out with extreme emotion so regularly that it is as if she is an infant again moving quickly between bouts of colic and laughter.

She uses her voice to speak truth, and usually is is a childlike truth that I have either forgotten in my comfortable adulthood, or I have missed altogether. Her words can ring true in the back of my heart as if she has been there all along.

And of course like most children who test their voice, there has been the occasional lie. And also like most children, she has learned that lying is wrong by treading tenuously on the surface of a untruth only to be found out and gently scolded. We then have the discussion that my mother had with me about trust and lying and the harm our words can do.

Since my six-year-old was small, we've added another baby to our family. She is now a equally passionate toddler with as much thirst for life and as loud a voice as her sister. When she was born two years ago, my husband and I gazed over the crib of our second daughter and wondered out loud the same thing that we had wondered about our oldest. We thought about her future and her voice and the words she would speak.

And she does speak. Her child's voice has burst through the confines of toddler hood to hit life full force. Her words come tumbling out after one another like water out of a faucet constantly finding new places to rest. She speaks quickly and uses her words as eloquently as a two-year-old can.

Nearly six years ago when my new mother's heart was enlarged with so much love for my first baby, I had no idea the affects that she and her sister would have on me. It is their eyes that capture me late at night when they are closing for sleep and their sweet faces that sweep me up in love for them. But is their words that seize me. Their little voices cause me to stop and pay attention closely to new truths set to toddler song, and adult-sized words that emit from a six-year-old mouth.

They speak and I am listening.

Independent

Walking together, too little to hold hands for very long (the older is responsible, but the younger has other things on her mind), they act independently from each other. Secretly, on the inside, they wouldn't know what to do if the other wasn't here.

Hope can barely remember life before her baby sister.

Naomi knows no differently.

Someday they will live life apart, they will attend high school at different times and they will have their own homes. They will have their own children, dogs, and dishes to wash.

But today they walked together, holding hands briefly, a sticky, sweaty toddler hand in a six-year-old hand with fingers that are beginning to slender. The younger follows the older, until the younger becomes impatient and races ahead.

They each want independence in such different ways. The Kindergartner wants to walk alone to her classroom with the older kids, to say Goodbye to me loudly so the other students know she is big enough to walk by herself. My toddler exerts her independence by refusing to hold my hand in a parking lot and trying to crawl under the stall in a public restroom because she doesn't want to wait. They each want to do things on their own.

But in the end, at the park when Naomi tried to run off to visit a far away tree, Hope yelled for her in a frightened voice, no doubt worrying she wouldn't come back. And Naomi, as independent as she tries to be, allowed me to pick her up and carry her to the car when we were done, exhausted from running and wanting someone big to hold her.

They will learn to hold hands again, whether they are whispering sisters who giggle in the dark, or they are old ladies who have long ago become the last in the family. Either way, life wouldn't be the same without the other.

Clocks

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.

Daily Harvest

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.

Homecoming

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.

My First Editor

I haven't yet been published in a periodical. Nor have I even been published in an online magazine. (Although I did recently dig up a copy of my college publication from about 12 years ago in which one of my poems was published).

But as for my current venture into writing, I am brand new. I am making plans, and making contacts, but I have a lot of work to do.

Several weeks ago my very good friend Lisa asked me to write something for her for her jewelry. I wrote a short mini-poem that she beautifully hammered into a mothers' necklace.

So I wrote, and she liked it and now it's in print. Not in a magazine, or a website, or even in a book. But my words have been married with her creativity, and now I can see my own words in print - on a necklace

Someday I will see my own byline, I'm sure. Someday articles and book chapters might come easier to me.

For now I am satisfied and thrilled that one of my very best friends is my first editor.

Visit Lisa's site at http://www.lisaleonard.blogspot.com/ for her handmade jewelry.

Inches

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.

Laughter and Hobos

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.

I belong

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.

Fixing Problems

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.

New Friends

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.

How Much I Have to Write

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.

I feel as if I should be wiping a runny nose or grabbing a toddler who has become limp and screaming in a parking lot. I didn’t make the noon Kindergarten pickup; I didn’t run today. My routines are all jumbled.

But I am here in the redwoods, in the midst of a conference where I only know a couple people. I am here without my family, where the air is a little cooler and fresher and spring flowers have already bloomed wide. I am here ready to learn, ready to soak, and ready for direction.

Everyone asks why I am here or what I write, as if that puts a label on my forehead. So far my only byline is my blog which doesn’t get me very far in a sea of people most of whom are older than me. I don’t write fantasy or romance or children’s literature. Yet.

But I am here.

I am here with a pen in my hand ready for the next chapter. I am quickly realizing how little I know and how much I have to learn. But I am also discovering how much I have to write.

Looking for the Stink

Yesterday, something in my living room smelled really bad.

First I checked my shirt to make sure it wasn't me. I WAS still in my workout clothes, but even I don't smell that bad.

Then I thought it was my toddler's dirty diaper. I changed it, wrapped it up and took to the outside trash. The room still reeked. Really badly.

Maybe there was a rogue old milk sippy cup somewhere...I looked underneath all of the furniture and I found a cup at least a week old with congealed milk sloshing around inside. I promptly emptied it in the garbage disposal and threw some orange rinds in after to remove some of the smell. That was in the afternoon.

After dinner, something in that room still smelled rotten, enough so that my husband almost began a search for the thing that had died behind the wall. Still recovering from a cold, my sense of smell is not nearly superior right now, but I started sniffing everything in the room. Sofa - dusty but not dead. Toy box (who knows what lurks at the bottom) - messy but not rotten. Pillows - the covers could use a launder but they were not the source of the stink.

We narrowed it down...something in this corner....something low...the rug. We have a large, nice wool area rug in our living room that is dark and hides dirt and spills quite well. A few weeks ago, something spilled in the corner of it and I thought it was water. I had cleaned it up and made sure the rug was dry, but now as I lifted the rug and saw the outline of a large, whitish looking spill, I realized that it must have been milk.

Milk stink does not come out. We got rid of our last car because a milk bottle had spilled in it and after frequent cleanings and detailings, the rotten smell was still there.

I was ready to buy a new rug. Immediately. I would never be able to tolerate the rotten, dead smell emitting from the corner of the room where we all congregate. The rug is about 5 years old and is beginning to show wear, so this might be the perfect time for a change. I must say that my husband is usually the one to dispose of something while I try to make life work with what we have. But in this case, the roles were reversed.

While I made my way to search online for a replacement, he quickly got out the carpet cleaner and sprayed and scrubbed. I was sure that it wasn't going to work judging by the distinctness of the smell. But, I have to give my husband (living as a part of the disposable generation) credit for saving the rug and my sanity (and the $450 we don't have that I might have spent had it been up to me) .

It worked. The cleaning solution dried and he vacuumed it away. When we woke up this morning, the room smelled fresh and normal. No stinky milk.

And thankfully, I can leave for the next 5 days knowing that my living room won't smell when I return. Unless there is a new spill that goes unnoticed....

Gray Haired Grandma

In her delightfully, friendly manner, Naomi put her foot in her mouth this morning.

Not the cute, infant-y way they do when they are about 4 months old and they discover they HAVE feet, but the adult kind of way: saying something you should not and making yourself look foolish.

Because I go there so often (its a little like a compulsion...I get in my car and it drives itself there, I think), I know all the older ladies who work at Target. Not by name, necessarily, but by face and by smile. They must think that I am desperately lost because I am in there so much.

The older woman that checked us out this morning has a contagious smile, a beautiful face, and distinctly gray hair. All of it was either white or some shade of gray. While I paid, Naomi sang a song, tried to grab the gum and attempted to escape the cart all at the same time. As we were pushing away, Naomi clearly says to the woman,

Good-bye Grandma!

My jaw dropped as I looked at her amazed and embarrassed, then quickly looked at "grandma" to see if she had heard.

Yes, of course she would hear (everyone in Target did), but she just giggled, and smiled, and nodded. She waved good-bye to Naomi sweetly and I shook my head as we left. Its funny, I guess gray hair, to Naomi, means grandmother. Neither of HER grandmothers wear their hair gray.

I guess she was just (in her little two-year-old mind) collecting all the data and making an assessment. It turns out she was probably right, judging by the woman's nod.

Naomi did not look like a fool, not like I would if I assumed somebody was pregnant and they weren't or judged someone ten years older than they really were. She just looked cute and happy and two.

Walking

Her life is unique. It will be lived by no other person than her.

Her journey is special and it will only be walked by her. Her feet will tread old, worn paths, or they will make new ones. They might even stumble.

Sometimes I want to live it for her. I want to tell her what to say, or I want to control her tears. I want to wear her shoes, it would seem, to walk her journey for her. I'm wiser and have made mistakes. I know where the rocks and roots and thorns are. Most of them, anyway.

But my feet are far too big for her littles shoes. Even if I could wear them, they wouldn't look right. And they would hurt.

For now, I must be content to walk first in front of her, then next to her. And finally, when she is grown, I might walk behind her to watch the wonderful worlds she will discover. I might even catch a glimpse of myself in the process.

Peacemaker

My mother is over this evening, helping with the kids' baths and doing my dishes (even though I keep telling her to sit down) while Chad is working late. She quietly empties my dishwasher, hangs up the wet towels, or changes a diaper....all without being asked.

My girls are recovering from a weekend without me and are fighting in the living room. Naomi is the ever-bothersome baby sister, wreaking havoc on the "village" Hope has created with little horses and dolls. One screams, the other squawks and I walk into the kitchen to let them work it out.

No doubt one will cry tears of frustration over injustices suffered at the hands of her sibling, while the other smirks over the toy won in the most recent struggle.

I smile at my mother over the sink as she wipes it and I ask her if it sounded familiar. I vaguely remember her frustrations at the volatile and frequent arguements my sister and I shared growing up. She chuckles and puts down the sponge, and walks into the room where my girls are. She gently and calmly helps them work out their struggles when I don't have the patience any longer.

I guess this is humanity. We should pick up where someone leaves off, take over when someone needs a break, step in when wisdom begs us. Or, this also might just be my mother who, in her nature, her second skin, is a peacemaker. She, without thinking, calmly quenches the fire that lives in each of my daughters. And in me, sometimes.

Wildflowers

Saturday, my mother and I took a nearly three hour hike in San Diego at Torrey Pines. Spring has definitely come to Southern California.

Burst

Little girls' feelings rumble close to the surface, always waiting to break through. It is as if they are looking for an excuse to seep or burst beyond the thin barrier keeping them at bay, like a train speeding loud and fast behind a wall, shaking it where it meets the ground. There is little control in the emotions of a little girl...tears are always ready, as well as laughter.

The tiniest word or event can tumble a little girl's world on it's head. When I tell my six year old that she has to leave the park to go home for her sister's nap, she sinks into the semblance of a wet lump on the grass. She is too far away for me to hear her protests, but her face shows her displeasure. Intense, too much to handle, her life has ended, it would seem. She believes she will never again see her friends, that this is her final farewell.

My toddler, even as independent as she is becoming and so content to often play on her own, she crumbles into a tear-burst when her daddy leaves for work. Of course he will be back, but to her a whole day spend without him might as well be a year. In her world it is eternal.

In the same way, the most minor pleasures bring such a show of joy to their faces. They light up and squeal at the sight of a horse on the trail or at the thought of going to the "pancake store". Joy, it seems, bursts through just as easily.

As we become adults and grow into the people and the personalities that end up sticking, we learn self-control. The feelings that were so quick to emerge, now rest behind a calm adult facade. They are quelled. The train that races behind the fence slows to a crawl.

I'm not quite sure if we are meant to quiet the rumble; if we should push down the emotion so that it lives so far beneath the surface that when we need to, it is too difficult to muster.

I only know that my life has been at its fullest when both my tears and my laughter are equally ready to burst through. They seem to go hand in hand.

Queen Hope

On Monday, all the Kindergartners filed out of Hope's classroom wearing crowns on their heads.

Queen Hope. With yellow butterflies, shiny stars and pink flowers stuck all over. She had drawn a green flower and red curly lines. Queen, I guess, for a day.

I asked her why she was wearing a crown. Was it...."Q" week?

No, I think its "K" week.

Okay, what were you studying...

I don't know. We just made crowns in groups today.

There must be a grander, more scholarly significance for the Kindergarten crown no doubt lost on my six year old. But now that I am looking at it, at least for a little girl who makes her horses princes and princesses, and fashions pillow castles for them in her room at night, there might not need to be a greater reason for a crown.

She can wear a crown simply because she is six. And as long as she brushes her teeth and makes her bed every morning, she can be Queen Hope whenever she wants to.

Green

A week from tomorrow I am going here. I am a little scared, nervous, and really don't know why I am going except that I think it is the right time.

I feel a little like a middle school student (I vividly remember Jr. High...), not really knowing anyone (I am, however, going with a new friend who has been the biggest encouragement to me), and feeling so much as if I am not supposed to be here. I remember not being able to feel comfortable at lunch time, trying to find the right table to sit at; not knowing if someone will pick me as a partner; knowing no one would pick me for their team during PE. I have a gnawing thought that this conference will be like the awkwardness of being 12 again.

I don't have a manuscript. I don't even have a focus. I feel so green. But I know that even though I am so new at this craft, I want to do it. People ask me what I expect to get out of this. I really don't know more than that I want to sit in the sessions and absorb it all. I want to know if this is something that I can do, if it something I should pursue, or shelve.

It is a family sacrifice, financially and emotionally, spending 5 days away from my girls and husband. I know I am going to be lonely. More than that, my girls will be sad and won't understand why I am gone for so long.

But maybe this is a little like being 12 again, when my whole life was sitting there ahead, no real mistakes made yet and everything waiting to happen. Maybe, even through the "greenness" and red-face embarrassments, this is a new start for me. Possibly I get a chance to begin again, in a small way. Maybe now with adult wisdom and knowledge only gained through bad choices, I can choose more carefully than when I was 12; I can skirt some of the awkwardness because I am more confident and sure.

Its okay to be green, it just isn't easy.

Empathy

This sweet six-year-old came home from school yesterday, with a couple of skinned knees from trying to get to the front of the line (we had a discussion as well as I could with a scratchy throat). I told her that I needed her to be a big girl today because Mama was very sick.

Her face fell and she looked sincerely concerned. Her empathy was the same, it seemed, if she had imagined one of her dolls or toy horses was sick and needed attention. The concern was real, deep, but part of me knew she didn't understand just how sick I was.

I asked her to remember how sick she was a few weeks ago, and told her I felt the same as she did then. She said,

Oh Mama! I'm so sorry you feel bad!

Its okay, sweetie. I will get better soon. Can you just try really hard to be a good girl and get along with Naomi?

Yes. But I'm sure I feel worse than you with my skinned knees. Can you put some bandaids on them when we get home?

I had to laugh a little, because then I was sure that she didn't understand. But I do know that skinned knees are a big deal to a 6 year old, perhaps as big as being sick.

But when we got home, as I tried to get lunch together, I heard her take her little sister into the playroom and together, clean it and organize the stuffed animals. They (as well as two little ones can) straightened up their toy room so that I wouldn't have to do it. Whether she was intending to help me because she knew I felt bad, or if it was out of the fun of bossing her baby sister around, I'm not sure. But I do know that they played well with each other yesterday afternoon.

The empathy of a six year old will expand as she grows and changes and experiences hurt feelings of her own. She is beginning to understand the big things of life.

Caregiver

When my girls are sick, life stops for them. They can wear pajamas all day, and eat ice chips on the sofa. They can watch movies, one after the other, and fall asleep at the end if they want. They can cozy up with the fuzziest blanket in the house and gather all their toys around them for company. They are too young for schoolwork or housework to pile up and wait. They simply try to get better.

When they are sick, I am nurturer, medicine-administrator, maker-of-warm-soup, and the puller-up of the quilt. I am comforter when their tears run down for no reason. My maternal jobs are focused and magnified when they aren't well enough to leave my home.

When I am sick, however, the story is a different one. My head is cloudy and my chest aches with some sort of bronchial attack and I can't stop coughing. I also can't stop mothering.

There are no luxuries of fuzzy blankets and someone to make sure my fever is down and my quilt is pulled to my chin. There is no one to care for me because I am the care-giver in my home.

However, in the same way that my motherly duties are magnified when they are sick, it seems as if their needs are somehow intensified when I am sick. As soon as I don't feel quite well enough to do the normal clean-up of the house is when they decide to dump the toys in the playroom ("But we wanted to play school and needed more students..."). When my voice is strained from a sore throat is when they focus their energy on arguing and my voice is too weak to talk it out with them. When I sit down to rest for a few minutes, my six-year-old immediately becomes helpless and cannot find a snack on her own.

After my half-awake night of coughing and tissues and more coughing, my girls were still asleep when the sun was bright. I thought about my day ahead, of all the responsibilities and future fatigue and my foggy head, and I knew that it was possible. Not easy, but possible.

And actually, I haven't lived today yet so I shouldn't really speculate it's ending.

Alive

Even at night, my house is alive.