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.

That second of attainment.

Sticky hot, and miserable, my limbs are heavy and tired. My eyes are fuzzy; it feels like sand beneath my lids. Things are slightly out of focus and I have the stirring of a headache at my temple. I don't really want to be here, but I'm trudging along, trying to find my way through the muck, to find comfort in old patterns. It's not what I want to do, but I know it's what I should do, and that right now, when I feel this way, what I want to do is a trap. I don't want to get stuck there.

I want to smash through this fuzziness, plow through it, remember energy coursing in my muscles. Remember joy. Remember that life isn't this gross haze I've been slogging in.

My husband is walking just behind me with Violet; I am walking with Mad. Mad is carrying a clear plastic tupperware container, excited at the prospect of catching a lizard. I wonder at her dogged enthusiasm for the endeavor, and wonder at the stirring of excitement I always feel at the prospect of lizard-hunting. I'm sure that one day we'll find The Big One, meaning that we'll find some lizard, any lizard, and bring it home. Mad would be ecstatic.

Violet's been in a mood, but when she sees me ahead, she breaks into a smile and runs to me yelling "Mama!" And I am worried she's going to trip because she's still so....loose, her legs folding around each other, arms open outward, she's reaching for me.

But she makes it to me as I close the distance and I pick her up and swing her high into the air and she is all smiles, and I take a minute to appreciate her smile, the way happiness just beams from her face when she smiles, the way her eyes pop with joy.

We make it to the dead end and stop for drinks and Wayland and Mad go down a side path looking for lizards, and I peer worriedly down at them as they navigate a steep wall leading down to a chasm where the river is winding through. I don't worry too much, because I know Wayland would never let her fall, that he's careful, and then I wonder at my steady belief in that.

Violet is thrilled because Mad's leaving her stuffed cats unattended, and she's talking to them and moving them from cement block to cement block, sorting. I lean back on one of the cement blocks and stare up at the sky and wish I had my camera because the light is beating through the trees overhead in a different way. It's still summer and still hot, but it feels different somehow, less oppressive, and as the sun warms my skin and I rest and listen to Violet playing happily. I wonder why people feel compelled to take pictures of the sky, and I know it's not really so much an attempt to capture what they're looking at but how they feel when they look at it, that there are days when the sky and you match perfectly, the wide expanse, the sun the stuff of life and you believe in it, you feel it's blessing you: go ahead and hope. Really, it's why you're here.

And Wayland and Mad come back and they don't have a lizard, but they go to another side path and a few minutes later they come back out and Mad is holding her tupperware container out in front of her, looking triumphant. "Tell her," says Wayland and Mad is so excited she can't really tell me anything. She thrusts the tupperware container out and finally says lizard! And I am on my feet peering inside.

"She caught it herself," says Wayland. "I had nothing to do with it; she just plucked it from the ground and said, 'A SKINK!'"

I look at it. She was right -- it is a skink. I look at her beaming with pride.

In a few seconds the moment passes because Mad notices that Violet is playing with her cats and there is the usual fight over stuff. It is time to go home and the girls fall apart; Mad is tired and ignoring our directions, Violet is tired and crying, wanting to walk but not reallywanting to walk, so the whole walk home is trying to make her okaywith being held but mostly just juggling her weight, trying not to drop her as she thrashes angrily. And I am miserable in it, miserable again.

Life is that. A journey that is sometimes miserable, sometimes not, toward a goal that may or may not pan out. But you go, you do it anyway, because that moment of realization, that second of attainment - the smiling daughters, the caught lizard - is what you live for. It's what you ache for. It's what sustains you on the second leg of the journey, when all you want to do is run away, or at least stop moving, or just fast forward yourself to the next destination.

I want to learn these things, then remember I have to relearn them over and over again. I want my daughters to know these things. I want them to always look for lizards. I want them always to seize the moment, grasp opportunity, like Violet did when she played with Mad's toys. I want them to always stare up at the sky even when they are tired and restless and feel miserable, and recognize it, I want them to always want to take its picture.

Reposted from Umbrella Sewing, the old blog, because it's a good reminder today.

Lovely snail.

rain flung from the fingers of the universe

gray knuckles swelling with weather; the day's grown older

rheumy streets running their faltering way

and autumn rises up from the ground,

this tender brace of color

the universe rests its hand on treetops, whispering,

Shhh, now. Be still.

This isn't death or even dying, but tell that to the trees.

The why of shadows.

some people know the why of shadows

of bracing light and casting darkness

I wish I had a photograph of her face

the only thing visible in the deepest dark

white light offering up her laugh to the sky

while shadows moved around her

so I could know the why of shrieking joy

of moments that feel solid: this is what I want to remember

her dancing father, her spinning laugh

and a small hand cupped quietly in mine

forgetting all the shadows.

Etch-a-sketch vision

What is my problem, anyway?

I feel timid. Unsure.

Where are my bold strokes of brilliance, light steps, raised fists, solar bursts of joy?

Where is my elemental sense of belonging?

I don't feel right. Down to my cells. Something is wrong.

It's that I have this clear vision of what I want for my life in my head and it is NOT AT ALL what my life actually is right now. It's not like I'm asking for diamonds or leather boots for unicorn riding. I'm not asking for a unicorn.

I'm asking for BALANCE, yes, a feeling that I am doing well at my work and doing well in my home. I'm asking for more time at home and less time at work. I'm asking for passion for home and passion for work. And, well,

I might as well be asking for diamonds.

I can't unstick myself. I'm like detritus snagged on a submerged limb in a river. I can't go with the flow.

This the problem, how I frame myself. Detritus. Snagged. Submerged limbs. Can't.

Be the river, maybe. Don't make a plan. Erase that etch-a-sketch vision I have for my life, just give it a good shaking and it's gone. Color within the lines of what I have, then smudge it a bit. Cerulean blue streaking the page into yellow into red then off the table.

Make a mess and get there.

Do magical, miraculous movie moments ever happen in real life? If so, I'd like one to happen to me today or some time soon. Pleaseandthankyou.

The people I really like to see.

From Geese Aplenty:

"The people I really like to see are a rare occurrence, but I keep an eye out for them. They’re the people who come at you from the opposite direction. And they’re smiling and laughing. You have to look to see if they’re actually talking on a bluetooth, or if a little white wire trickling out of their ears indicates they’re listening to a funny podcast. If not, then you’re in the presence of a very rare sighting. You’ve found the people who are remembering something or thinking something so great that they can’t keep it inside of them. It floats up to their face and causes them to grin as they walk, and they carry their amusement with them like a balloon."

Here is what we grow toward.

Life begins in the first gasp of breath, when you take the outside world into your body for the first time and let it fill your lungs. When you give back to the world by exhaling, letting that piece of the world out again. So begins our relationship with human existence.

If you’re healthy, you’re expected to cry big lusty cries, gulping the world in greedily so you can send it screaming back out again.

Mothers hold their babies and feel whole and halved all at once, and they might cry, too, an overwhelmed give and take with the world. Gentle, thankful exhalations or great gulping sobs of fear and exhilaration. We feel it all at once.

Babies are calmer nestled against their mothers, mothers calmer nestled against their babies. So begins our relationship with eternity.

Plans are made. We imagine great big lives for our babies; we imagine the whole world for them. We see all the potential in them, expect to see them grow bigger than the room that holds them, to have every bit of greatness you ever imagined and were too scared to strive for, and then some. And somehow that they will still fit within us, that our shared bodies will still make sense in some cosmic way.

Sometimes our plans work and we are relieved or smug or both. Sometimes our plans don’t work and we despair.

But here is what we grow toward, regardless of plans: a simple life, a smaller life. We don’t ever really want to be bigger than a room. We do want to be contained, to fit somewhere. We want our lives to be small enough to slip into a pocket and go. What we really want is freedom.

Our lives end in rooms, in beds or chairs, in our bodies that will no longer accept the world, regardless of the plans we made. This is the universe’s plan for you, and it is never smug when its plans are realized, and its plans are always realized.

If you lived well, your life fitting just so into your pocket or the palm of your hand, the universe will cast its eyes up into the sky in relief, in thanks, to be carrying a soul so light and free that it can rise and fill a galaxy.

Three things.

1. Last night I dreamed I was riding a train on the way to a work conference that was far away. After riding for a long time, we stopped near a mountain for lunch. When we returned from lunch, the conductor was standing outside of the train, scratching his head and looking confused. "This is taking longer than I thought it would," he said. I saw a map of the route we were taking, and it was long and winding, circuitous. The conductor said, "Someone else is going to have to drive. Someone who will get us there faster." Then an old woman showed up and ushered a bunch of kids onto the train.

2. This quote by e.e. cummings: "To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."

3. This song by Josh Ritter, which will be the cornerstone of my Fall 2010 mix.

I belong to all my beloved.

(From the Breast cancer: High risk of reoccurrence series by Amanda Enayati)

This is not my world. You don’t own me and I don’t belong here. I belong to the lush green world, filled with grass and trees and flowers. I belong to rolling hills and mountains and rivers and oceans. I belong to fresh air and soft warm wind. I belong to Beethoven and Chopin and Corinne Bailey Rae and James Taylor and Simon and Garfunkel and Stevie Wonder. I belong to the scents of lavender and jasmine and honeysuckle. I belong to hours-long, leisurely bike rides with stops for lunch or to read under a tree. I belong to watermelons and cherries and Satsuma mandarins. I belong to the "Matrix" and "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" and all manners of random science fiction movies. I belong to Charles Dickens and Chimamanda Adichie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Maya Angelou and JRR Tolkien and Jhumpa Lahiri and every one of the Bronte sisters. I belong to Tehran and Shiraz and Den Brielle, to London, Paris and Edinburgh and Capri and Cape Town, to Washington, D.C., and New York. I belong to my girl and my boy and my husband. I belong to all my beloved. I belong to myself.

Maybe it comes from where we are.

>

The evening of the after-dark neighborhood fair for the kids was, in a word, lovely. It was pleasantly warm and there were kids and families milling about everywhere, some costumed and some not, and we all joined together on this evening with a shared purpose: to delight our children. And so we were delighted in turn.

Madeleine played games in her pink skirt with silver sparkles, tossing bean bags into tubs marked with snakes and navigating a pumpkin through a hay maze with a push broom. Once she played all the games, she selected a prize that came in a plain brown bag: a few erasers, a pencil and a toy centipede.

I walked with Violet to the face painting table, and she sat perfectly still while the high school volunteer painted a black nose and whiskers on her face. The volunteer held a mirror to Violet's face and I watched V, rewarded when a huge smile lit her eyes. Sheer pleasure is all you can see when Violet is happy, unadulterated joy every single time.

The girls sat in a fire truck and talked to the firemen who gave them plastic "stop, drop and roll" bracelets. We collected pumpkins from the pumpkin patch and the girls decorated theirs with markers and foam stickers.

We walked back home in the dark, the girls with their princess glow wands and Wayland with his phone set on the flashlight app to light the way. Madeleine was thrilled, chattering away the whole time as she ran down the sidewalk. Violet wanted to be held, so I held her, hefting all 30 pounds of her the mile + walk home.

Of course we were on the lookout for snakes, and we found one to the side of the trail, unmoving for a brief moment while Wayland shined a light on it. A copperhead, orange and almost pinkish in the light, stared back at him for a moment before it slithered back into the bushes.

Thanks to Madeleine's obsession with snakes, we have become very knowledgeable about the types of snakes in the area and have a healthy respect for the poisonous ones, knowing that if we keep our distance, we will be safe. Madeleine pondered ways we might have been able to catch it, determining that a net would be our best bet for capturing a copperhead.

"We wouldn't want to keep a copperhead for a pet," I tell her for the millionth time, and she pauses before replying. "I know, but I would be careful," she tells me. "It couldn't bite us with a net, and I know if I hold it I will just hold it by its head. And that way it can't bite me!"

My fearless daughter, staring at danger and summarily dismissing it -- simply because of her all-consuming passion for the subject at hand. And my other more timid daughter perched in my arms, patting my face and singing the "Nocturnal Animals" song. She makes up her own words: "Over by the twig, I hear a CAT," she sings. "Meow, meow meow." She lays her head down on my shoulder and I shift her weight. "You are HEAVY," I tell her. "No, I'm not," she replies. "I'm small."

And she is. They both are. My two daughters, one insisting she is bigger than a fear that most of us have, the other insisting she is small enough to remain comfortable in my arms forever. They are both right and wrong, this dichotomy that lives in us all: sometimes we are bigger than poisonous snake bites and sometimes we are smaller than our mothers' arms. And tonight, the night spins out all around us, a spiraling depth of darkness and stars and the loud hum of nighttime creatures, and we are all four such small, large things in the middle of it.

A wide, accepting universe.

Lately when I'm walking around campus, I like to look at other people and think, "We're the same." I know we're not the same exactly, but stripped of context, our experiences will be strikingly similar: we've all failed, made mistakes, had successes, enjoyed moments of sheer bliss. Maybe that guy's greatest success has been just getting out of bed on this day. Maybe he woke up and thought, "Not another day. I can't do this," but got up anyway. And maybe that other guy's greatest success is that he just finished a triathlon this morning, and totally rocked it. Either way, I want to pat them both on the back and say, "Good for you!" My greatest success has been having babies. Stretch that all out on the scale of human experience and they will be same-sized blips on the graph.

Thinking we're all the same helps yank me out of the world in my head, pulls me from that place where my problems seem insurmountable and my joys must be bigger than the world because they're happening to me. God, how exhausting. How heavy.

Instead I look around at all these people, who look different and talk differently and are different ages and come from different backgrounds, and think, I'm no different than you. You've been here before. Maybe you are there right now. And suddenly my life feels exactly as large and as small as it should be, and I look at these unfamiliar faces and feel such an incredible warmth toward them. I want to grab them and say, "Isn't it great how we're sharing this experience?"

How comforting this is, to walk in the world and suddenly realize that you belong to it -- and not the other way around. And that there are millions of people in the world who are just the same, resting in the arms of a wide, accepting universe. Resting even if they're thrashing against it because on a grand enough scale, from a far enough perspective, even the most dramatic movements will be imperceptible. We're all still in this place, and even time doesn't matter.

Intersect.

This is what you should know.

You step one foot in front of the other,
down a sidewalk, grass on either side,
buildings knocking against the sky.

It's all around you.

People walk by, whole worlds in their heads.
His is two triangles. Yellow and green.
Hers is placid dark and a silver dip in the distance.

They walk the same sidewalks.
Her shoe size is the same as yours.
He ate a banana for breakfast, you ate a banana muffin.

He is thinking about calculus.

And so are you, really.

Circuitous.

There is a day that unrolls and becomes
everything a day should be;
a day unrolling, a day of everything.

Chasing the light of day.

I'm coming back from my run this morning and the sun is just coming up. It's still hazy-dim, and in the distance I can just make out the figures of Madeleine and Wayland standing in the street across from our house. Madeleine sees me and starts running down the street, full speed ahead, in her pajamas and bare feet. I am exhausted from my 4-mile run, but run to meet her anyway, and scoop her up in my arms. "Mama!" she exclaims, happy. Then she grabs her foot. "That hurt my feet a little bit," she says. I squeeze her foot. "I bet it did," I tell her. "But I'm glad you ran to meet me anyway."

Later, she is sitting at the table, eating cheerios. She looks outside. "Wow," she tells me. "It's getting cold out there." She hops out of her chair and runs to stand in the window frame. "GO AWAY, FALL!" she exclaims. "TURN SUNNY! AND BE A TREE!"

Waking up Violet is one of my favorite things to do. She's so heavy with sleep, always, and she stretches her body out, arms overhead, eyes closed. She turns to her side and she's got a raging case of bed head, as usual. I pull her into my lap and she drapes her body over me, head nestled on my shoulder. "Good morning, Violet," I say softly. "Good morning, Mama," she replies in a sleepy, quiet voice. I ask her if she wants to go say good morning to Mad, and still heavy in my arms she says, "Yes," in her decisive way. I ask if I can kiss her. "Just two kisses," she dictates. I kiss her once, twice, then steal a third. She smiles, scrambles out of my lap, and heads down the hall clutching her blanket, looking for her sister.

Listening to "Light of Day," by The Plastics Revolution:

Someday.

If you do the things you need to do by Volume Twenty Five.

What we need is here.

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

Wendell Berry

A meditation of sorts.

I step outside and see the sky - its vibrant blue, the stacks upon stacks of white clouds - and the sky and its clouds belong to me.

I take a breath and feel it in my lungs. All of this air belongs to me.

Where the trees bend and leaves applaud the day, the curves of branches and the enthusiastic, shimmering leaves - it all belongs to me.

I gift polite greetings to the cashier; he gifts them back to me. They rest in my ear. These words belong to me.

This afternoon I will head home and my children will not show me the pockets of their days. They have existed in a space without me for most of it, and that empty space we share, somehow, belongs to me.

It is my space to fill with sure feet, steady legs, wondering eyes, grateful hearts. So the spaces without are not truly without. So that I guide them so steadily that they no longer know I am there. But in spaces of breath, blue skies and clouds, the ovation of leaves and interactions with strangers, they will see beauty. And hopefully feel me there with them.

Inner anchors

I still feel kind of crummy.

But I have been thinking, since just after my birthday, that I needed to go on a short journey early one morning. I need to bring paper and pen and spend time somewhere outside, jotting down intentions for myself. And then I pretty much got sick right away and have spent every spare moment since then sniffling and coughing and resisting the tightening pain in my chest. Sleeping as much as I can.

I've just had it in my head for a long time that 31 is not going to be a good year for me. 32 will be my year, I declared. Then I got to thinking about the folly in that, setting out to believe that just because I am facing a certain set of obstacles, a set of less than convenient or ideal circumstances, that it will be a bad year. Why? So that at the end of it I can say, "Well, I knew it," and revel in that grim self satisfaction?

No.

So 31 will be a good year. Maybe even GREAT.

I had a conversation with my husband where he said, essentially, well -- it's hard when X, Y and Z aren't in order. And I realized today that X is going to create a whole other set of problems.

And I thought, who cares about X, Y and Z? We should be cultivating joy in our daily lives REGARDLESS of X Y Z.

I'd like to get to a point where joy is something I carry around with me, a consistent thing, and not something influenced by the evil machinations of the random factors that can push and pull us in any direction. Life pushes at us from all over. At any given second something can happen to yank us down, pull is an abrupt left turn, or even subtly shift us toward point B.

I'd like joy to be my anchor, something that keeps me firmly in the moment. Something that I can pick up and move with me to the next thing. That joy, those inner anchors -- these are the only things we can ever really control anyway.

Tomorrow, no matter how crummy I feel, I'm getting up early to ride my bike. I'll bring pen and paper, and I'm going to ride until I find the perfect spot to sit and consider joy, to cast an inner anchor.

My life is everything already.

My throat is sore and scratchy and the muscles in my chest and back ache from so much coughing. My whole body feels fatigued, in fact, and while my sinuses are definitely clearer, I am sniffling every few minutes or so.

This is the tail end of the cold, thank goodness. I have the ability to weather a cold and feel like I'm dying, to just feel utterly bleak and miserable throughout the duration. But today is the day of clouds parting, of doors opening, of light streaming through windows. I feel more motivated than I have in all of a week. Who knows, maybe I'll clean something at the house today. Maaaybe.

It helps that yesterday was a day of rescuing snapping turtles from a busy road, cleaning up the kitchen, hot dogs and burgers on the grill, fresh mango, flawless bedtimes, and later, tiramisu and wine and good season finales on TV. Yesterday was also the day that I finally finished The Book Thief, and it is seriously the best thing I have read in forever. The end had me sobbing. Such a beautifully told story.

Plus, on Saturday I rediscovered Kimya Dawson's album, Alphabutt, more specifically the song "Happy Home (Keep on Writing)" and I listen to the "just make sure your life's exciting" refrain at the end and it makes me think of my girls. It fills my chest with that expansive sense of hope and possibility. Their lives can be anything. Why do we grow up and stop thinking that? That our own lives can be anything? My own life can be ANYTHING. Say it with me: My life can be ANYTHING.

Maybe it's better to think: My life is everything already. Say that, and wrap your arms around it and squeeze it hard before flinging it up into the sky and watching to see where it lands.

The fun theory!

More awesome videos here. So great!

Say, "I am just a speck of dust inside a giant's eye."

Is there anything more flattering than when someone tells you they were reading something and thought of you? Well, unless they were reading something vile. Anyhow.

Today a coworker brought me his book, "Peace Is Every Step" by Thich Nhat Hanh because the excerpt, "Flower Insights," made him think of me.

It was a tremendous thing to read on a day like today, where it has been raining all morning, everything gray, and my head is foggy with an impending cold. It got me thinking of mindfulness most especially, and what a difficult word that is to even wrap your head around. To be aware of the moment in its simplest form -- not just where you are and what you are doing, but to be aware of yourself, in your body. Aware of your own physical presence and the space it takes up in the universe. And to be acutely aware of that scale - the universe: grand, immense; you: tiny, small.

Here are two things that remind me of being mindful, that implore me to stop stepping outside of myself to worry and fret or plan and execute, that tell me: just be.

From "Flower Insights": That is the problem of life. If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything. When a child presents himself to you with his smile, if you are not really there thinking about the future or the past, or preoccupied with other problems then the child is not really there for you. The technique of being alive is to go back to yourself in order for the child to appear like a marvelous reality. Then you can smile and embrace him in your arms. Read the whole thing here.

And the Kimya Dawson song, "I Like Giants."

3 Lovely Things

1. Still dark on my morning jog, rounding the corner out of the park, listening to Arcade Fire's "Rococo" while lightning flashes in the distance.

2. Driving to work in the rain, listening to Frontier Ruckus' "The Upper Room."

3. A dark, gray day in September, hazy headlights sopping up the rain.

A shaking quiet psalm.

the rain itches

its cold way

through

a stitch of cloud

in and out of silver

out of silver,

blue and gray

she steps streets,

supplanted

this moving day

of replacement

from here,

to there,

now here again

she steps streets,

everything upended

she swims a

blacktop

through a story:

the beginning

a brightness

the middle

a dirge

the end

a shaking

quiet

psalm of a

rainstorm

Random Acts of Lovely

We the people need to be more engaged. That's what I think. And we ought to seek out lovely things. And! And! We need to spread the loveliness. There's magic in it, I swear, when you notice a little something that makes your day, or at least makes you smile even a little bit. There is magic in making people smile! With this in mind, I've decided to start a little project called Random Acts of Lovely, wherein I will try do little lovely things at least once a week and document them here.
This is my first attempt, just a quick jotted note on a post-it placed just so on the bathroom mirror in the public bathroom of the building where I work. Women so often look in the mirror and think decidedly un-lovely things. We shouldn't do that. Maybe this post-it will be an eensy little reminder for the women who happen through there today.

PS If anyone who reads this is inspired to commit their own Random Act of Lovely, send me a note and tell me about it. Take pictures! I will post them here on the bloggity blahg. [Email amberlynn underscore scott at yahoo dot com].

So inspired.

I just found Color Me Katie yesterday -- Katie Sokoler is a street artist and photographer living in Brooklyn, and her projects are just so happy-making. She's actually inspired me to do a little something something. Details to come!

Gossamer things.

Mulling over lock-step routine, of waking up and facing a day that is the same as the last one, every single day. I’m thinking of petty frustrations and short tempers and impatience, and teeth-gritting at the end of the day. I’m thinking of how I got to that place, why I should have this irritating gravel of discontent in my chest. How did that gravel get there?

I’m thinking of big ideas, about the decisions that have to be made to change the shape and texture of your life, of the hard work it can take to get there. I’m thinking of impossible dreams, dreams so big they’re almost unfathomable: dancing on your toes from star to star, swinging from the crescent tip of the moon. Gossamer things. Delicate wishes, crystalline hopes, the things so big and so beautiful you’re afraid that if you touch them, they’ll shatter.

Then there’s the pull of the two ideas: how to appreciate the moment while at the same time working to get yourself out of these moments because you yearn to be somewhere else.

How the answer is a seed of something inside, a small, round core that shines all the time when you let it. There should be something good in you, something to be content in, no matter where you are. And how I lose sight of that core all the time, how I let it lose its luster.

I’m sitting in an office, surrounded by square things. But inside, a small flare, a solar burst boundless and shapeless in the making. A light to live by.

The door is round and open.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

-- Rumi

What are you preparing yourself for?

"For a lot of my life, I was on autopilot. I made decisions that affected the course of my life but, not always with the final product in mind. I was short sited, just making decisions that seemed to satisfy or effect the here and now without much consideration for what I was really preparing myself for in the future. So, I'll ask the question again, "What are you preparing yourself for?" Maybe, I'm the only one who needed to hear this but, I for one am tired of believing that I don't have much say in how my "piece of the pie" shapes up. I for one want to make conscious decisions about what ingredients I choose to blend into the story of my life. My story does not have to be the result of an accidental mixture of events designed and delivered randomly by fate." -- from a post called "Preparation" on the fantastic Mangiez Vos Verts.

I can so relate to this. And lately I've been struggling with it, too. I really like the idea of asking myself, "What are you preparing yourself for?" as a way to shape the decisions I make. I think it would be a great motivator when a task before me seems too hard or when the desired outcome is so far away I can't really see it.

The book thief without the words.

"Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like rain."

-- from the beautiful, beautiful novel, "The Book Thief" by Marcus Zusak

Dandelion clothesline.

"Dandelion Clothesline, Santiago, Chile" by William Lamson

Tendrils.

So this is amazing.

Project Bandaloop dancing on the side of Thanksgiving Tower in Dallas today.

Because I can blink.

The days are fuller and emptier. The days could be anything.
I wake up and march toward another day.

These days are okay. They could be anything,
but they are unfurling coils; they are unraveled ribbons.

Each day is a chance to grasp at the multi-colored strands,
each day is a chance to make something.

To be something. And by this, I mean gentle. I mean forgiveness.

These days are beautiful because my limbs carry me to and fro,
because my lungs pull in air and let it out again, because I can blink.

Because today I can reach out, because I am filled with love,
because I choose to believe in it.

Because, because.

Because these days are everything.

That's when the tree sings

This has been a favorite song I've mine for awhile now, but I just saw the video at Mighty Girl and it is just as beautiful as the song.

There is only make.

The Rules by Corita Kent. (via kerismith.com)

index

the moon really is this quiet
and the soft folding houses curl
into streets

the heat really is this solvent
making liquid of our bones

and dry dust of our memories

And it's delicious.

Today, I love this post and the following comment thread. Kate, who is an amazing writer at sweetsalty, wrote about her feelings of inadequacy as a writer, especially in the face of two more widely accomplished and acclaimed writers.

I scroll and scroll and scroll. I note the word pussy used three times, once with capitals and exclamation marks. I get points for avoiding the word 'awesomesauce' but I lose points for almost throwing up on the side of a highway. I see rants and despair and I see that I'm much less resolved than I thought I was. Then I see the Humpty Dance. There is a no-fault clause for the writing about Liam but the rest is an increasingly directionless knee-jerk, a counterpoint. I write occasional darkness. Then I write hot pink with watermelon-scented glitter so that you don't turn away. But it's cheap tricks, all of it. Happy clown / sad clown. Either way, I wear bright green shoes and I can't look a Giller Prize nominee in the stars.

She asks her readers for advice, stories, perspectives:

...tell me about a humbling moment in your writing, art, sports, life. Anything. Tell me how you managed to leave the hotel room and fake it, so to speak, despite that crushing humility. And tell me what happened after that. I'd really like to know.

Her commenters are just so wise. A few of my favorite responses:

Mr Lady said: How did I manage to leave the room? I decided it was high time to find out what would happen if I did, instead of just resenting what has happened because I didn't. What came next? Contentment, laced with a fear. And it's delicious.

kyran said: I'll just say that it helps to remember whom you serve as a writer, whose attention and respect is worth your sweat. Hint: it's not other writers.

kate said this:When I feel that way, I try to come back to learning. It's hard to ignore the feelings of fraudulence and inadequacy, but I just keep challenging myself, "What can I learn from this experience? What can this person teach me?"

She also said this:I'm a firm believer that being uncomfortable is good because it means you're charting new territory and pushing your boundaries... So when I feel uncomfortable, I just remind myself that it means I'm moving forward.

Mariellen Romer said:This is how I live the creativity of my words and pictures. I hold on tightly to the idea of an abundance mentality, another idea that Kyran talks about on a regular basis; that there is space and room, need and meaning in the world for what each of us creates, in the myriad ways we all create it. I keep talking to myself and I reach out to others, and somehow it all works when I step back, and let myself look at it in the round.

Seriously, it's all worth at least a good browsing. Go check it out.

How to be alone.

Let it be that way.

Here is a thought. Why do I (and lots of other people, I think) approach life changes with fear and anxiety? Yesterday was fraught with it, and today, too, really. But this evening I am too exhausted to feel anything but resigned. And in that, a bit of clarity: this evening has been so much easier, and it's because I'm not trying so hard. I'm not examining the drawbacks of the situation; I'm just going with it. And there is a lot to be said for finding beauty in every detail, not just the easy ones.

Relax, I am telling myself today. Life is still quite lovely. Remember to let it be that way. Maybe if I remind myself over and over again, it will eventually become ingrained.

Good and bad and never black and white.

"How was your first day at the new job?" Everyone is asking, and I don't have an easy response. If I could dissect my day into bits, where the new job is over here and family is over there, I could say easily: The new job is GREAT.

And it is great. All on its own, I have nothing to complain about. Love it.

I come home, though, and it's just. Just. My girls are playing in the backyard with their grandma and they are intent on their play and I am just so thrilled to see them. Overcome with joy. It comes crashing down hard, especially because I haven't seem them all day and I swoop them up and kiss their faces. It is easily the best part of my day so far, and it's 5:20 p.m., and it seems a shame that the best part of my day happens then.

The rest of the evening is crammed with dinner prep and eating and I know I am singing the song that millions of mothers working outside of the home sing every single day, but it's a new one for me and it's just a miserable tune, isn't it? Awful.

And because I haven't seen them all day, I want to squeeze in some fun, give them something special, and so we take our nightly after-dinner trek to the river even though it's too late in the evening. While we're there, I feel this shift in me, this expansive, shaky shift in my chest, a sense of peace, of exhalation. The river is burbling and swirling in eddies and currents, the sun is setting over everything and my children are sloshing happily in the mud, trying to catch frogs and grasshoppers and two tiny ribbon snakes we found at the shore. Right here, I think. This is what I want every day to be.

Then we walk back home and Mad walks a little ahead, telling me a story about "treacherous snakes" and she is just a delight, and Violet is walking next to me, her little hand firmly in mind, and she is perfection.

Then we have bedtime, which is not usually the best time of day with Madeleine, and today is no exception. And I'm just not equipped to deal with it because it's too much. Forgive my spoiled rotten declaration, but I WANT THINGS TO BE EASIER.

But no. The girls are asleep and it just didn't end well. It's is 10 and the first time I've had to take a breath all day, and I'm just so torn. And here in my head is that vision I can't shake, the river, my girls in the mud, and the feeling of right, this is right squeezing my chest so tightly I can't breathe.

Transitions can be hard, major life changes brutal. Who knows how I'll feel in a week, a month, a year, when I've had time to adjust? Transitions mean growth, adaptation. And so today I am finding beauty in the final two lines of a poem I wrote last summer:

and how you stretched your arms and scooped
air, and how you grew toward the burbling river.

All-out effort

Wink from the universe.

Yesterday was terrible. I mean, awful. Culminating in me coming back to my margarita later in the evening only to find a salt-encrusted fly floating in it. Seriously.

I just didn't see the lovely in yesterday, not at all.

And that's the problem with life, if I may be painfully obvious. We get so stuck in the muck when things feel awful that it's hard to take a step out of the muck and find something pleasant. To even recognize lovely. When you're mired in awfulness, lovely can be a foreign, unfamiliar thing.

So I thought about it and remembered that yesterday morning, before the day had really much begun, I stopped to get coffee. And some kind soul had left a large amount of money with the cashier to pay for other people's coffee: my scone and latte were free of charge, as was the coffee of the five people and everyone who was behind me.

What a lovely gesture of generosity.

And in the afternoon, leaving work for the last time, I got a little wink from the universe when I turned on my car and heard a snippet of lyrics that perfectly encapsulated exactly what I was feeling right then. It felt like a confirmation that I made the right choice to leave, and it was something I needed to hear just then. Thank you, universe.

A grand experiment.

Tomorrow I leave my current job, the one I've held for more than five years now, for a brand new job. Changing jobs is always a big deal, I get that, but this is even a bit bigger in scale because my current job affords me plenty of schedule flexibility (I work part-time in the office, part-time at home), whereas the new job doesn't really offer flextime at all.

Being home with the girls during the day has always been a huge priority for me, and I am endlessly grateful for all the time I've been able to spend with them. At the same time, work seeped into every aspect of my home life, and even the time I was home with them during the day has been colored with work: deadlines and office drama and all the other stressors that come when the line between home and work blurs to where there really isn't a line anymore.

At the same time, my general job satisfaction has greatly decreased in recent past, due to a great number of factors, to the point where it was just plain ol' time for me to go.

The new job is a great opportunity -- better title, a very well-known organization, more money, and what seems to be a good team to work with.

But less face time with my girls.

Here is what I struggle with: If you wrote down the facts, I think the facts would tell you that I chose my job over my family.

And here is what I am hoping is true: That my decision to change jobs was a decision for my own happiness, and that making a decision to find happiness is actually the best decision I could make for my family.

Basically, on Monday, I feel like I'm stepping into this grand experiment. I could fail. I could be miserable working the 8 to 5 grind and not seeing my girls as much as I would like.

Or it could work out exactly as I hope it will -- that it will be tough but rewarding, that life will be better when I'm not miserable in my work, the area of my life that zaps so much of time in the first place.

This was a tough decision, and it might not work out, or it might -- but either way, I know I will learn something invaluable, something I'm not yet able to put into words -- about myself, about what's important in life, about where I ultimately want to be.

And here is the lovely in all of this: The beauty of choice, of options and opportunity, of taking big steps in your life just for the sake of seeing how it will work out. And wherever this choice leads me, I am so excited to watch it, to see how my own life will unfold.

Vivid as actual.

"Willful Creatures" by Aimee Bender is a collection of magical realism short stories, many of them (especially the early ones) fairly disturbing. As the collection progresses, however, the stories become increasingly more poignant, and to me, so very beautiful.

My favorite is the one called "Dearth," which tells the story of a woman who wakes up one morning to find seven potatoes in a pot on her stove. She didn't order these potatoes or buy them in the store -- she doesn't even particularly like potatoes -- so she throws them out.

They come back the next day.

This repeats for several days, as she grows more frustrated by their existence and tries a number of different ways to get rid of them, even mailing them to Ireland.

During the struggle, the potatoes start growing into little potato babies: "Her heart pulled its curtain as she held each potato up to the bare hanging lightbulb and looked at its hint of neck, its almost torso, its small backside. Each of the seven had ten very tiny indented toes and ten whispers of fingertips."

She still tries to get rid of them, even resorting to eating one. When only six come back the next day, she is horrified and wracked with grief.

By the eighth month, the potato babies are fully formed, and in the nine month, they come tumbling out of the pot and are these moving, living things. She steadfastly ignores them and eventually buries them in the backyard, reasoning that they belong in the ground anyway. It's then that she feels like something is missing in her life: "She sat for long spells, over the course of the next week, and watched the sky drift overhead. It all felt very familiar, and she recognized the shape and texture of her life before, but it was if someone had put her old life in the laundry and washed it wrong."

At the end of the week she digs them back up and the potato children are fine. She takes them to the cemetary to visit the graves of her mother, father and brother, and on the way home, it rains. The potato children are entranced by the rain. And it is here where the author writes some of the most beautiful prose I've ever read:

"They seemed to enjoy it, tilting their faces to the sky. She had never seen them wet before, and rain, falling on their dirty potato bodies, smelled just like Mother at the sink, washing. Mother, who had died so many years ago, now as vivid as actual, scrubbing potatoes at the kitchen sink before breakfast. How many times had she done that? Year after year after year. Lighting the new fire of the morning. Humming. Her skirt so easy on her waist. Her hands so confident at the sink. They were that memory, created. Holding their potato hands up, they let the rain pour down their potato arms, their potato knees and legs, and the woman breathed in the smell of them, over and over, as deeply as she could. For here was grandmother, greeting her grandchildren, gathering them in her arms, and covering their wide faces with kisses."

Easy lovely.

I had grand visions of making something lovely, a pristine, perfectly formed layer cake, covered in a smooth layer of delicious white frosting. You’d cut through the frosting to reveal a happy surprise – a rainbow cake, each layer a different shade.
I’ve never even attempted a layer cake before.

I was going to find the perfect recipes for the cake and the frosting and make everything from scratch. But then I thought, why not just do it? Why not stop getting caught up in the planning and the pursuit of perfection and make something mostly effortless. An easy lovely.

So: cake mix and jarred frosting.
The outside was sloppy, the layers clearly evident, frosting all over the place. The bottom layers of the cake broke, so much that I laid the cake on its side so it could maintain some structural integrity. It was not a beautiful cake.
But then I called the girls ‘round and we watched, anticipating as I cut the cake open.

Ooh.
It was even better than I thought, the happy surprise of rainbow layers I was looking for coupled with the awe on the faces of my girls.

And the face plants into the frosting because the littlest didn’t want to get her fingers dirty.

How I met my husband.

I am 20, sitting in Ben’s tiny, mustard-yellow car, and trying to breathe at a normal pace while also trying to still the wild thump of my heart. He was barely a foot away, and I was in his car, and he had gorgeous scruffy-curly hair and thoughtful blue eyes and his slender fingers were fiddling with the knobs of his stereo and he was turning to look at me, speaking, Oh my god, he is talking to me, and why did he ask me if I needed a ride? Does he like me? He said, “Do you know Mingus?” And I didn’t, but if that was the way into his heart, you bet I knew Mingus, so I lied. “Sure,” I said. Was I blushing? I was probably blushing.

He handed me the Ah Hum cassette and I scanned the song titles, boldly deciding to take my lie to the next level. “I like ‘Devil Woman’,” I told him. “That’s the only one I really know.” I had never heard it.

“That’s a great one,” he said, and I relaxed into my seat, feeling as though I had passed some test. The song filled the tiny space around us, and it was, at that moment, one of the most amazing songs I had ever heard. The horns were low and swelling, groaning, even, and Mingus’ voice was nothing but a deep, soulful moan as he sang, “Gonna get me a devil woman....Angel woman don’t bring me no good. Gonna get me a devil woman....” and the horns underscored the deep urgency.

I was for sure blushing now, I thought, and my stupid body was struggling here, some kind of fight or flight thing. Run away or kiss him? The “run away” part was winning, and my hands lingered on the door handle.

Was I sitting right? Should I cross my legs toward him? My arms! Uncross them! No, wait. Are you shaking? STOP SHAKING, IDIOT.

This was terrible, awful, and mostly because despite my overwhelming anxiety about being in such close quarters with this beautiful boy, and despite my sudden inability to form a coherent thought, much less speak one, I had this tiny fluttering bud of hope growing inside me. He must like me, I was thinking, and at the same time, despairing: Your shyness will kill this before it starts. I tried to crush that hope, because I knew that the other side, the more grim side, was right, but the hope wouldn’t be stopped. It was raging.

It was a short drive to my apartment and he dropped me off with a nonchalant wave and a “see you in class” comment, and I spent the next half hour explaining to my roommate the amazing and awful thing that had just happened to me.

The semester passed with several meaningless moments stacking up to feed the pathetic flames of hope, until summer dawned and my roommates were gone for vacation, and one evening there was a knock at my door.

Ben!

“Do you want to go get some food?” He asked. “I know a great place.”

“Sure,” I said, and that was the last thing I said for the evening, really. We ate at an Italian restaurant where his friend was playing jazz piano, and he tried in vain to make conversation with me over the candlelight. I said “yes” and “no” at the appropriate times and then continued the active conversation thriving in my head. You’re eating too fast these jeans don’t look right on you, in fact, you should have dressed nicer my god he is pretty and he knows so much about music I know lots about music SAY SOMETHING ABOUT MUSIC until dinner was over.

I knew it was going terribly and I just wanted to go home and cry because Poet Boy, you are the one I wrote about in my journals in high school and I am here with you and apparently lack the finesse to HAVE you, but he invited me over to his friend’s house.

She was older, pretty, quirky and completely comfortable with it. She had interesting art and books and lived in a refurbished house from the 20s. They chatted and I wandered around her open living and dining room area, examining her book titles and studying the paintings and sculptures. She had done most of the art.

Does he like her? Why did he take me here? Probably he likes her, I mean why not. She can speak more than two words to him. They should get married They probably will OH MY GOD I JUST NEED TO GO HOME.

Eventually I did go home, and it was awkward and terrible, and then I went home for the summer.

When I got back to school, I found out he was sleeping with our poetry professor, who was 44, very smart and witty and self-involved. And THAT was the horrifying end of that, except “Devil Woman” is actually now one of my all-time favorite songs, and Mingus’ version of “Stormy Weather” is the reason I met my husband. We have two beautiful daughters now, so it worked out, I GUESS.