As is.

We're just a few hours from a brand new year now. I've spent the evening cleaning the kitchen, watching The Kids Are All Right (which was marked as a comedy in Video on Demand and most certainly is not a comedy but good nonetheless), and mopping the dining room floor. The kids were in bed criminally early tonight, because they needed to be.

I spent the day mediating fights and wiping tears and enforcing discipline and exercising remarkable levels of patience as the girls pushed each and every button I possess. Wayland worked, came home, played games with the girls and helped Mad build an ant colony. I started the book "The Orange Eats Creeps," and it's pretty incredible.

Yesterday I ran four miles for the first time in forever and rode that high for the rest of the evening. Wayland and I had dinner out, which was good despite terrible service. I read all of "I Am Number Four," which was pretty good.

It's nothing remarkable, is it? But: yes, actually. Highs and lows and marching on. It's what we do! We tangle with our lives, trying to sort out strands and make sense out of things, give ourselves a purpose, find something that makes us feel noble or useful or grand in some way. Oh, life. It's a tricky thing! Our highs and lows and marching on: it's what we have. This is the noble thing, right? The useful thing. The grandest thing of all. Look at us all, tending to our shoulds, the little pieces of our lives that stack together and take an amazing shape even when we're too mired in it to recognize how amazing it is.

I try to think of how to sum up 2010 all succinctly and I'm at a loss: Wayland and I both started new jobs. I am working full-time in an office and miss my girls acutely. Wayland worked so hard toward a new career that had to be sidelined a bit while he stuck to the support-his-family-pay-the-bills job, which sucks, but again: how grand. Madeleine started play therapy, Violet started physical therapy. We floundered a bit financially, gained some ground, floundered, gained again, floundered.

It's all in flux, a great big question mark. 2011 is on the horizon and I want to see something grand for the year, I want it to be the year our lives change for the better, the year things settle, the year we are all content right where we are, and all I can think is: those things do not go hand-in-hand. Content right we are does not mean our lives have to change.

Maybe it's boring, but what I see for 2011 is highs and lows and marching on, everything the last two days have been, everything this year has brought us. We unfold pieces of our lives as we go and maybe we'll uncover something we never saw coming, good or bad, and it will become a part of us, of what we do, add texture to what we've been doing all along. Just living, and finding joy in it, just like we did at 5 or 15 or 25 or thirty-freakin'-one, something we've been working at our whole lives.

The shrinking, spinning heart.

We're just saying goodnight to Madeleine when she says, quite calmly and sweetly, "I don't like you, Mama." I feel that little clench of dismay around my heart but squelch it. I know she's looking for a reaction, so I don't give her one. Instead I lean in and give her a hug. "I love you, Madeleine. Goodnight."

She wiggles, kicks her feet a little. "But I don't LIKE you," she says in that same sweet tone. She turns to Wayland. "I don't like you either, Daddy." You'd think she was telling us how much she loves us based on her tone, but no. "I really don't like you."

Our faces are drawn and weary, and even though I know she doesn't mean what she's saying it still hurts. "I'm sorry to hear that, Mad, because I love you so so much," I tell her. "Goodnight." Wayland kisses her forehead and she hugs him tight. "I don't like you, Daddy," she says again.

We look at each other with the same blankness, the supreme effort of trying to wipe emotion from our faces and failing: we're stressed, tired of her antics, more than a little concerned. We leave the room.

She's running out of her room a few minutes later. She hurls herself into my lap. "I'm sorry I said that," she says. "I DO like you."

"I know you do," I say. "So WHY do you say things like that?"

I'm surprised when she answers. "It's my heart," she tells me. "My heart sometimes goes around and around like this" -- she whirls her fist in a circle -- "and it gets really tiny and it doesn't look like my heart anymore. That's when I get wild. But then it calms down like this" -- she slows the whirl of her fist -- "and then it's like my heart again, and that's when I feel sorry."

I give her a hug, and as she snuggles close against me, Wayland and I make eye contact. We're both...flummoxed. I appreciate her description but worry about all that turbulence inside her. "Thank you for telling me that," I finally tell her. "That was a really good way to explain how you feel when you start behaving that way. But next time you heart starts spinning and getting smaller, do you think you could tell me that's happening? I'd like it if we could find a way to help it stop spinning before you get too wild and say hurtful things to the people you love, Mad. Do you think we could work together on that?"

She nods and then snuggles in closer.

I don't know. I can't think of the right way to end this. I have no answers, no deeper meaning, but I wanted to write about it because I so appreciate the simple strength of the right words, the way even a 4-year-old can feel things and express them so perfectly. We've all been there, haven't we? Our hearts shrinking and growing, pounding and trembling, felt feelings overcome us in such a way that we don't even feel like ourselves anymore. I want to say: I understand you, Mad, and I see your heart: It's bigger and stronger than you even know.

Eyes to the sky.

Last night my husband and I grabbed a thick sleeping bag, laid it out on our driveway, curled up under blankets, and watched the sun cast the earth's shadow on the moon. We were quiet, staring up at the reddening moon, while a cool winter wind blew in the first official bit of winter. The leaves in the tree above us were deep orange and made that pleasing shhhhh sound with every gentle gust.

It's not often that one can get a sense of where they really are in the universe, to have an idea of the inner workings of the cosmos, to see if only for a moment how it all matches up. To witness that perfect symmetry.

It made me feel content to essentially close out 2010 with such a sighting. I hope to usher in 2011 in much the same way: feeling the alignment of the great big world around me, catching a glimpse of my place in it, eyes to the sky, always.

Do I dare disturb the universe?

I get random lines from random poems stuck in my head, usually because I like the cadence of the words, the rhythm of their arrangement. These chosen lines that stay with me stay because of how they settle into my brain, comfortable in the folds, like they were always part of me, words that keep the synapses firing.

One set of those lines comes from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot. The lines are, "Oh, Do not ask, 'What is it?'/Let us go and make our visit."

The thing is, I haven't read the whole poem in YEARS. I recently came back to it and was kind of knocked over by it, particularly this excerpt:

:::

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair -
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin -
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all: -
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measure out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

:::

(Read the whole thing here.)

I love, love the lines:

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

But the whole thing, to me, speaks to our place in the grand scheme of the universe - that we live our lives almost in an unreality, chasing the ethereal but tethered by tangible things (tea and marmalade and perfumes and downy brown hair on an arm). These little things are our beauty, and our undoing. What we live for and what we fight against all at once - chasing mermaids "Till human voices wake us, and we drown."

Perfection.

Lovely Music: Kele Goodwin

For when you have a moment alone in the car and you are lost in your thoughts. For calming kids at bedtime. For when you need a good, deep breath, and your soul is all curled up and tired. For cold winter days: bare trees and gray skies, leaf-littered streets and warm coffee.

Heart bones.

A bone in the heart,
she says. When you get old,
your bones fall out,
and there is a bone in your heart,
so it doesn't work anymore.

I think of an old heart,
made sturdy by a slender bone.

One day, your bones fall,
and the slender bone of your heart goes.

What else is there to do?
You collapse.

:::

This morning Mad told me I'm going to die. I struggle with the response because of course she's right. I will die. But for this kid with her tough outer shell and the bundle of worries inside it, I don't want to say too much. So I ask, why do you say that?

Well, I don't want to die, she says. But you're going to die.

I see the things she's struggling with. The viewings of Bambi and the missing mother in How to Train Your Dragon and the myriad insidious ways that kids are confronted with death on a regular basis.

It is 7:00 a.m. I am trying to get ready for work. How to field this question? I settle on a lie: I'm not going to die, Mad.

"You're not?"

No.

"Okay!" She says brightly, and drops it.

This lie. I feel the steady beat of my heart, the slender bone holding it up. Already so much weaker than hers.

Daydream believer.

I picture a small, old house out in the country, somewhat isolated, surrounded by lush green and ancient trees. It's a loved house, full of creaking wooden floors and rooms that are hard to keep warm in the winter but stay cool in the summer - thanks to a network of fans circulating air down a hallway, throughout the rooms.

It's peeling paint but still quite lovely; the front yard is wild and barely tamed. Wildflowers bloom everywhere. Dandelions are actually encouraged.

Somewhere within walking distance is a winding creek full of snapping turtles and crawdads and frogs and minnows.

I have a tiny office somewhere in the back of the house, and it's got a window overlooking my vegetable garden. (I know how to grow vegetables in this picture.) I'm a writer, but I'm writing things that thrill me. My first book is due out in just a few months.

My children run the length of the house and up the stairs where their rooms are. They are connected with nature and full of passion. They remind me every day that life is sweet.

My husband has just returned home from work. He is a teacher at a local middle school.

We are planning a trip to Iceland. We'll go to the library later to pick up books on Iceland, books on learning the language.

As a family, we are always learning.

Cat world.

I've barely moved this morning, just rising out of sleep, when Mad crawls into the bed next to me. "Mama?" She asks, her voice a loud whisper. I pry open my eyes. "Mama?" She says again, now in a normal voice. "Can we go to cat world?"

"Cat world?" I croak.

"They have butterfly cat houses there. That is really cool."

Indeed.

Religion.

“It’s better to say a prayer before you eat,” my daughter said before dinner one night. We don’t pray in our home, so I asked her where she got that idea. “School,” she said. I didn’t know prayer was a part of her school day. I asked what the prayer is, and she folded her hands together and bowed her head, eyes closed. “God is great, God is good. Let us thank him for our food,” she recited.

**

A few months ago I came across a prayer tent set in the middle of campus. From outside of the folded-open flap of the white canopy, I could see written prayers dangling from strings inside and people standing in clusters, reflecting, or individuals kneeling, heads bowed. I felt longing.

**

My friend asks me what my thoughts are on God/spirituality, and I am stumped for a minute. My brain tugs at the strands of religion, tries to separate them from the concepts of God and the spirit. I come up with this: I think all people should feel connected to something greater than themselves so that they can cultivate gratefulness for their blessings. That comes to me most often when I am outside, staring up at the enveloping sky, looking down at the tiny bugs, holding hands with my lovely daughters.

Nature is my religion, I think. The universe is my “God.” Whatever that means.

**

Before school one morning, I ask my daughter if she knows why she prays at school. She says no. I ask her if she knows who the God is that she’s praying to. She says no, and stops bouncing around on my bed. She’s generally interested now.

“Some people think that God is the person who made everything in the world. They think he made the whole world: the dirt and the bugs and the snakes and the trees and the clouds and the sun and the whole sky. Even me and you. So when you pray, you are saying thank you to God for making your food.”

I watch her as she thinks that over. “But where is God?” she asks.

“Some people think he’s in the sky,” I tell her. “In a place called heaven.”

She’s silent, thinking. “No one has ever seen God, so some people don’t think he’s even real,” I tell her. “I don’t even know. So you’ll have to think for a long time about what you believe.”

My daughter laughs suddenly. “Noooo,” she says. “I think he’s in the clouds! He’s getting his head rained on!” She doubles over, laughing hysterically, and starts flopping around on the bed again.

There. I feel it tug, a sense of rightness, somewhere in her silly answer to a serious question, in her very simple and concrete view of what God could be. If I could break that simple response down into its essence, I think it could be a whole bible. The book of light, verses of joy.

Hearing nothing, everything.

It's easy in the bustling clashes of spring to see beauty everywhere. Green burgeons into yellow into blue sky, and everywhere there is the buzz of bugs and people going outside for the sake of it. Warmth that jostles the cells of your skin so that even you feel a certain burning. Life is blooming everywhere in all of its noisy, chaotic urgency. An obvious beauty.

It's easy to forget, then, how beautiful it is to walk in late fall. How simply necessary it is, how vital it feels to the soul. We walked yesterday just before the sun went down and it was chilly and gray and brown and still. The trees have been scraped nearly barren over the last few weeks, and where leaves remained on branches they were yellow and fragile, shivering in the wind. You can see for miles through the tress now and everything stands so certain, so solid and resolute.

If you stopped walking to listen, you would hear: nothing. Nothing except a cold endless sweep of sound in the distance, cars rushing down a nearby road, the lonely sound of a plane overhead, the tiny rustling of leaves from creatures burrowing deep against the cold.

The river, even. The swirls and eddies that I could swear make noise in the spring are eerily silent, slipping and overlapping in one long, continuous run over the top of the water. Little whirlpools appear here and there. We stopped to listen and heard: nothing. A long silence.

On the walk home we talked of poetry, and I told the girls about the Yehuda Amichai poem where he describes a woman whose skin is made of lizards, and all of them love the sun. We talked about the same poem, where the woman has the laughter of grapes, many round, green laughs. I asked the girls what that would sound like.

"Shaking," Madeleine says. "Like when they're in the trees and the wind blows them."

We're quiet as I contemplate that. It's a perspective I hadn't considered - I always think of when you eat grapes, how they feel in your mouth and how sweet they are when you bite them. I like her take here in this long, quiet cold - the poem feels sadder to me from her perspective, more grounded. I picture green grapes hanging from the vine, trembling in the wind, on the verge of falling. I feel grateful.

Dream little.

There's all this talk about the importance of dreaming big. I took a whole online class on the subject, in fact, and found it wonderfully inspiring. I just found a notebook for dreaming big - complete with three steps on how to get to the big dreams (I guess), and I was so lured by those gleaming words - "dream big" - that I felt that little buy it! click in my brain. It's the answer, my brain whispered at me. That's where your happiness is.

No. No no no no no.

I love the idea of dreaming big because I think it's important to inflate your concept of what is possible, to stretch the boundaries of possibility and explore them, and to take it further and step outside of them, just to see what happens when you do. That's where the excitement is, surely, and some would say the contentment is there, too.

But you can't live there.

Climb the shiny turrets as far as you can, take in the view from up there and appreciate the big picture for all it's worth. But don't live there.

I say: dream little. A dream is just a beautiful idea of what reality could be, and the thing is that a beautiful reality is always right in front of your face if you want it to be. Little is where you live. Little is what you are. Contentment is up there, but it's down here, too. It should be, anyway. Lift up a rock and look for it. Toss a pebble and watch it ripple across water. Feel it in the small hands of your children and the smell of coffee and butter melting on toast, in the sound of biting into an apple and the thump of your very own heart in your chest.

It takes time to build a home in the clouds, above the shiny turrets, just like it took time to build a home right where you are today. Who knows if the impossible is even attainable? Who cares? Take slow steps. Keep your eyes firmly ahead, even if you're climbing toward something. It's so easy to forget the beauty right in front of you if you're always reaching for something higher.