Forest spirits.

It's storming when I leave work, raining hard, thunder rumbling every few seconds, lightning flashing somewhere in the near distance. I've got my umbrella, so I stand in the parking lot and revel in it for just a moment, taking it all in: the deep gray, the low clouds, the cool wind.

And then dread. The dog. The dog will need to go out and pee, as I'm sure she hasn't done that all day. She also hasn't gotten the exercise she needs. What will we do? Wayland isn't home yet, so I will need to take the girls out with the dog. It will be wretched. The dog hates the rain and it takes forever just to get the girls out the door. Plus dinner needs to be made and I have no idea what it will be.

When I get home I swallow the rising swell of stress rolling over me and ask the girls if they want to go for a rain walk. YES, they exclaim, enthusiastic. We don't worry about shoes or raincoats; we just head out the door in 20 seconds flat. A new record.

I anticipate Violet being afraid of the now more distant rumbles of thunder. She isn't. I think Mad will be cold in her shorts. She isn't. I think the dog will refuse to go outside. She doesn't. The girls both just run through the river of rain raveling down the curb, kicking up water, shrieking with joy. The dog tries to pull me faster down the street.

When we hit the trail I'm actually relaxed and the girls are no less joyful, running full tilt to puddle after puddle. Madeleine runs to me and ROARS, and here comes the stress - I think she's going to pretend to be a jungle cat, which always freaks Violet out, but instead she says, "I'm TOTORO!" And Violet laughs. "Are we forest spirits?" I ask. YES! We bend down and raise up from our knees, extending our arms high into the air, roaring the whole time. We are helping the trees to grow, here in the rain. Thunder rumbles and I laugh. "Maybe we can control the storm," I say, and we all roar at the sky.

The dog finally pees and we make it to the bridge, where we look at the spiderwebs tattered and heavy with droplets of rain, illuminated from behind in gray light. The girls run the course of the bridge - we have it all to ourselves in this weather - and look for spider egg sacs tucked into corners. We see all sorts of bugs taking refuge from the rain on the underside of the bridge railing: spiders and aphids and even ant lions.

"This is wonderful," I tell the girls as we head back home, and we are smiling. We talk of warm baths, cozy PJs, and soup and honey bread for dinner.

Life is just this good sometimes, and so surprising. All that dread and worry I felt driving home evaporating in just a second, stepping out into the cold rain, embracing the gray skies and the moments this rain afforded us, three fearless forest spirits controlling the elements.

If I had an orchard.

"Do you ever feel like you're failing yourself?" I ask Wayland. It's nearing midnight and he's mostly asleep, so he pulls himself out of a half-snore and mutters, "Sometimes."

"I think that lately -- that I'm failing myself," I tell him as I walk back into the bathroom to take my contacts out. "I'm not being what I should be." You are what you should be, my brain pulls out of a half-snore to mutter at me. I tamp it down. "But that's okay," I say. "It's a challenge. I can take it."

Like I tell Violet to say out loud every time she falls on a hike and starts wailing, no matter how severe the injury (it's never severe): "I am ROCKING this trail." I urge her to say it, and remind her: "You fell because you are going for it. You are ROCKING it. And you got that fall out of the way, so now there won't be any more falls."

I'm lying to her because of course there will be more falls. There are always more falls, literal and metaphorical. She falls again not five minutes later and there is a small scrape on her knee. A little blood. She does the open mouthed, full body sob. "Violet," I remind her. "You are ROCKING this trail." And she sucks in a breath. "Yes!" She exclaims, turning the tears off almost immediately. "I got that fall out of the way! I'm getting my falls out of the way!"

It's a good lesson, I decide, and not a lie, exactly. You go, you fall, you get up. That fall is out of the way so you can get ready to repeat the process. Is that what life is? Falling down, getting up. Getting up, falling down? Is life more getting up or falling down? I think it's the middle of that, the comma between the phrases, the pause between highs and lows. Keeping balanced when gravity and inertia are working against you.

My problem is not that I am failing myself, it's that I'm in a pause, seeking the high -- when the pauses are what to seek. Where to stay.

It's maybe why this song "Helplessness Blues" by Fleet Foxes basically kills me dead. It's a song about living in the pauses. "If I had an orchard/I'd work 'til I'm raw/If I had an orchard/I'd work 'til I'm sore."

You go back, but it's never the same.

An odd morning. Monday, gray and dark and cold. Constant rain and distant rumble of thunder. I'm tired, Mad is tired - the whole family is tired because we got a dog from the shelter and the transition has been a little bumpy. Not to mention our daughter who wakes easily during thunderstorms. I wake up to the news that Osama bin Laden has been killed, and that Americans are rejoicing. This makes me uncomfortable - it feels gross that scads of people converged upon the capitol just to celebrate a violent death, no matter whose death it was. Humanity, you know? Life is sacred, or it should be. And so I would hope that a death like this would be met silently, I guess. With pale faces. I don't know. I'm not mourning the guy, but this was ugly business, through and through. And to cheer it on -- well, it's just gross.

I don't know how to shape the day into something better, but I'm working on it. We'll start here, with "The Heron and the Fox" by Little Scream. It's sparse and beautiful. And kind of lush, too.